Sulejman Tihic looks sinister/evil
Posted on 12/05/2005 5:59:39 PM PST by montyspython
Bosnian Dayton Minus
By M. Bozinovich
Back in July of 2005, during the commemoration in Srebrenica, US ambassador to Bosnia Douglas McElhaney and Bosnian peace accords architect Richard Holbrooke were seen chatting at the field around Srebrenica, and according to the AFP report, McElhaney made the announcement that the US wants the Bosnian constitution changed. Expressing the demand euphemistically McElhaney said that "The US wishes to encourage [Bosnian] citizens to discuss the Constitution and ways in which they could change it."
In November, presidents of the three ethnic groups in Bosnia were summoned in Washington to participate in ceremonies congratulatory of the State Department's achievements in the field of nation building, a notion disdained during the 2000 Bush campaign. The official reason was to celebrate 10 years of the Dayton Accords, a peace deal struck between Serbian, Croatian and Muslim side in 1995 that ended the inter ethnic war in Bosnia.
In between the ceremonies, however, the Bosnian delegates, Messrs. Tihic, a Muslim, Jovic, a Catholic Croat and Paravac, a Christian Orthodox Serb, were forced to negotiate on ways that will make the country appear politically unified. On November 22, nine Serbian, Muslim and Croatian leaders from Bosnia signed the Commitment to Pursue Constitutional Reform at the US State Department so that the new, so-called Dayton-plus Bosnia will have one president, a strong prime minister and a parliament.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was pleased at the announcement and said that the Bosnian leaders reaffirmed during their meeting with her "their pledge to embark on a process of constitutional reform, and to complete it by March 2006, to create stronger, more efficient democratic institutions that can empower their citizens to meet the challenges of modern Europe."
The symbolism of the announcement did not bypass the mainstream media quickly seizing the moment to deflect the glory away from Rice, and impute fantastic imagery of a utopian society that is supposedly emerging out of Bosnia, thanks, of course, to the enlightened liberals who have engineered the Bosnian peace so that now a new chapter can be written where these three religious groups will be holding hands and singing kumba-ya.
Back in reality, however, all three groups saw the negotiations as a medium to pursuing their own interests. For Bosnian Muslims that means destruction of the Serb entity so that the Muslims can dominate the country; for Croats a status quo that tacitly allows meddling from Zagreb; Serbs holding on to their entity Republika Srpska and perhaps getting anointed by Washington with anti terror duties inside Bosnia that is becoming a launching pad for international Islamic terrorism.
Yet all three sides were suspicious of the American reasons behind the pressure to centralize the government in Bosnia. The suspicion is more pronounced because the pressure and the timeline to centralize Bosnia coincides with Bosnian talks of joining the EU and the negotiations to determine status of Kosovo.
Muslim Dilemmas
Led by Sulejman Tihic, the Muslim delegation in Washington was the most jubilant that the talks will yield the destruction of the Serb entity, Republika Srpska, viewed by Tihic's Party of Democratic Action (SDA), as the only remaining obstacle that prevents Bosnian Muslims from establishing domination over the remaining Christians so that it can, finally, and truly be referred to as a Muslim country. SDA also champions secular Bosnianism because it is so identified with Islam that, if imposed on Serbs and Croats, it can achieve islamic domination of them.
Tihic, who leads a misnamed radical Muslim political party that brought and gave sanctuary to al-Qaeda in Bosnia, has on several prior occasions filed a suit with the Bosnian Supreme Court seeking to extinguish Republika Srpska. Of course, the Bosnian Supreme Court does not have powers to do that because that would mean it would have to rule against the very document that created it - the Dayton Accords.
Although led by purely Islamic motives, SDA found a paid public scribe in the Western press to rephrase their desire to establish domination of Serbs in secular, Thatcherian conservative spin that could appeal to Washington.
Wrote Jonathan Steele in the Guardian: "Dayton was an eccentric construct... It produced a constitution which enshrined ethnic and group rights, created a self-governing Serb ‘entity’... This UN-sanctioned liberal imperialism... produces a highly visible financial apartheid in which an international salariat lords it over a war-wounded and jobless local population."
Much of the Muslim initial jubilee was also fueled by statements made by the US Undersecretary Nicholas Burns that bordered on a call for abolition of the Dayton Accords. "[S]imply put, the Dayton accords need to be modernized. They served Bosnia well over the last decade, but they were never meant to be immutable or set in stone," said Burns.
During the weekend of talks, it became apparent that Dayton was perhaps, after all, and indeed written in stone. Croats indicated that they will not sign anything while Sulejman Tihic, feeling betrayed that he overinterpreted what Burns said, at one point walked out of the talks.
"We decided not to get into specifics (in the agreement) or else the whole thing would fall apart," said Dan Fried, Assistant US Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. "The overall import of all of this is to put Bosnia on a road going to Europe. If you want the slogan, it's from Dayton to Brussels."
Bitter and disappointed that the negotiating agenda was not destruction of Serbs, Tihic reminded Burns of his own words at the press statement at the US Institute for Peace that expressed hopes that the ethnic parties will act more like Bosnians and less like Croats or Serbs. To Tihic, what Burns said meant that Serbs were suppose to get clobbered by the US and the fact that they didn't was betrayal and subterfuge.
"[W]e did not sign the agreement offered there and in Brussels, because we would have legalized bad Dayton solutions and the constitutional arrangement on ethnic and entity principles," said Tihic for the Bosnian Muslim TV program 60 Minutes and accused Washington and in particular the US diplomat Donald Hays "of tolerating and somehow favoring Serb positions with regard to constitutional changes".
Disappointed that he did not win one for Islam, Tihic then turned on Nicholas Burns. "Surely there has been lobbying. Lobbying is very much present in the United States," elaborated Tihic. In a clear reference to Burns, Tihic went on accusing him of being a liar: "But there is another very well known thing in politics - saying one thing, while doing another."
The Kosovo Connection
Donald Hays seems to have indicated that there is more to the Bosnian Kosovo connection then the simple transfer of al Qaeda fighters from Bosnian Muslim garrisons into Kosovo Albanian ones.
Right after his technical explanation that in Bosnia "You couldn't do anything inside the government, because everyone was able to checkmate everyone else" Donald Hays slipped in that a stable Bosnia could lead to negotiators' addressing the status of Kosovo.
Of course, Belgrade is aware of the connections and the dangers that, if careless, both could slip away from its control.
"The Serbs have now definitely gone off earlier ideas about separation. They want to be part of Bosnia but the Serb Republic must be an integral part of Bosnia too," said Milorad Dodik, the region's former prime minister, and warned that "if that position is threatened they could seek independence using the same argument as ethnic Albanians in Serbia's breakaway province of Kosovo."
We then are yet to see the outcome of the diplomatic bargaining between Belgrade and Washington that apparently is going on two fronts - in Bosnia and Kosovo.
The thing that I witnissed while in Bosnia, patrolling Republika Serpska, was the downright inequity in support of assisting Serbs in rebuilding their communities. I am aware of the attrocities and the stated reasons we were sent to BiH, but I thought this was disturbing. There seemed to be much more cooperation between BiH and the Clinton Administration than the Clinton Administration and RpS.
One of Free Republic's more virulent former posters, Ronly Bonly bin Laden, the notorious gay taxi-driver for one of the NATO JAG units, used to dream of the destruction of the Serb Republic, knowing the number of innocent Serb civilians that would be killed in such an action.
Guess someone should let him know that this will not be coming to pass.
Clinton remembered what happened to Carter when the Muslims reduced the oil supply. He wasn't about to let it happen to him.
Sulejman Tihic looks sinister/evil
Yes, Clinton like Carter had no backbone. He could have played the impartial mediary to these two parties but decided to choose BiH. Now another ethnic group has a reason to hate us thanks to Slick Willie.
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