Justice for Bosnia

jkitleft Tue Jul 22, 2008 at 02:04:42 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Radovan Karadzic was arrested last night. This is justice for so many Bosnians. He was the intellectual inspiration for the racism of Milosevic.


He will hopefully serve the sentence that Milosevic didn't get to at the ICC. The ICC is a great tool at fighting tyranny, from the Balkans, to Sierra Leone, to Sudan.


But, I hope that this isn't the last trial at the ICC. Hopefully Mladic and Al-Bashir will be next. And I'm still waiting for justice for the victims of Henry Kissinger.


But for today, we should congratulate the Serbs, for ignoring temptations to appease right-wing sections of their electorate, and to move closer to the EU.






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Justice for Bosnia | 3 comments (3 topical)

Re: Justice for Bosnia (#1)

by adwilliams134 on Wed Jul 23, 2008 at 09:44:17 PM GMT

I served in Bosnia in UNPROFOR1 in 92/93.   I have testified ias a technical witness in 3 war crimes trials.  All three sides were guilty of horrific war crimes and without justifying it,  all I can say is that during a civil war that sort of behaviour is 'normal'.  In fact,  you find a civil war where this sort of thing didn't happen.

Even the US civil war with Sherman's infamous 'March On Georgia'  with the assosciated butchery of the civilian population.

None of these three groups - Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian Croats, or Bosniaks (there's no such thing as a Bosnian in reality and never will be) - are animals or savages.  It's just civil war and you'd be a pretty big idiot to think it wouldn't happen.

The real criminals were the heads of the western powers - in particular the US, the UK, Germany, France and the EU who all conspired to make sure that the UN Force that was sent at the beginning did not have the firepower or the remit to intervene and stop it.  We sat there in Central Bosnia for seven months with some of the finest infantry hardware on earth,  RAF strike aircraft less than 2 hours away in Germany and we literally watched them butcher each other then afterwards cleaned it up and documented it when we could have actually stopped it.  All the while the leaders of the western world were hand -ewringing, tut-tuting and deliberately obstructing us - their own soldiers - from doing anything about it other than watch and take piccies.

The real culprits weren't the belligerents


Re: Justice for Bosnia (#2)

by jkitleft on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 11:25:52 AM GMT

I've always said that Douglas Hurd is a war criminal. In every way undermining the Bosnians, and then once leaving office, visiting Milosevic to persuade him to sell off Serbian utilities to British companies. These companies were paying Hurd. No wonder the Bosnian government were seriously considering taking the British government to court.

There was violence on all three sides. The Croat seperatists, and some of the Bosniaks were violent, but they weren't the whole side. This war was started by racist fanatics. The Serbs wanted to create an ethnically pure region. Although some of the tactics used by chunks of the resistants were horrific, this does not put the whole groups on par with what Milosevic and Mladic as well as Karadzic were trying to do.

 


[ Parent ]

Re: Justice for Bosnia (#3)

by adwilliams134 on Thu Jul 24, 2008 at 12:15:12 PM GMT

I think you will find, if you dif deep enough,  that the war in Bosnia was merely an extension of the struggle between Croatia and Serbia.  The Bosniak muslims were caught in the middle. 

I can assure you that the overwhelming majority of Bosnian Serbs saw creating two ministates in east Bosnia and the other in west Bosnia/east Croatia as merely a stepping stone to the amalgamation with Serbia to form a Greater Serbia. 

The same is equally true of the Bosnian Croats who had and still have no desire to be in Bosnia.  Their aim is the creation - by hook, crook, ballot box or gun - of a statelet called Herceg-Bosna again as a stepping-stone to full amalgamation with Croatia to form a Greater Community of Croatia.

The muslims are caught in the middle of this mess and are fighting for their lives by any (and I mean any) means necessary.

In the west we've tried to create a solution suitable to all sides and none by giving a large degree of autonomy to the Bosnian Serbs, dangling the carrot of the EU to Serbia-proper,  dangling the same EU carrot to Croatia and forcing at the point of a gun a loose federation between the Bosnian Croats and the Bosniak Muslims.

If you remove any of guns, money or the promise of more money from the set-up it will explode all over again.   It's all attitude.  To a Croat there is no such thing as a Bosnian-Croat - just a Croat.  Likewise to a serb the same thing.  The only people who want to be Bosnian are Muslims whereas the vast majority of the population - 75% - do not want to be Bosnian but either Croatian or Serbian.

It is unsolveable.


[ Parent ]

Justice for Bosnia | 3 comments (3 topical)