Posted on 12/30/2007 2:27:02 PM PST by kronos77
On 2 February 1994, Bhutto and Turkey’s Tansu Ciller, both democratically elected women leaders of two of the world’s largest Muslim nations, visited the besieged Bosnian capital of Sarajevo and expressed their solidarity with the Bosnian people: ’Rarely in the annals of human history has a nation been subjected to such merciless savagery in the full view of the world,’ Bhutto and Ciller said in a statement after meeting with Bosnian officials. Western policy at this time favoured Slobodan Milosevic’s fascist regime in Belgrade and the Bosnian Serb terrorists of Radovan Karadzic; the previous summer, international mediators had put forward the ‘Owen-Stoltenberg Plan’, that offered Karadzic’s Serb rebels 54% of Bosnian territory and the right to secede from the Bosnian state, amounting to an endorsement of Serb war-aims and the destruction of Bosnia. Defying this policy, Bhutto and Ciller publicly called for a lifting of the arms embargo that prevented Bosnia from defending itself. Only three days after their visit to the Bosnian capital, the besieging Serb forces murdered 69 people in a mortar attack on the Sarajevo market-place.
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(Excerpt) Read more at bosnia.org.uk ...
Ping!
Hmm. Thanks for the post.
I doubt whether Bhutto actually had much real influence, because events were already snowballing and clinton was making his plans, but it’s interesting to know that she piled on and did her little bit to push the propaganda and help the Muslim terrorists take over Kosovo and much of Serbia.
Sorry. Just woke up from a nap. Much of Bosnia.
No, she didnt hade big influence, Clinton just used her as a pawn...
Something tells me that she died as one...
Agreed. After all the arms embargo was NOT lifted. More's the pity. I remember thinking as far back as the end of the elder Bush's admin that this embargo was a bad idea. If it had been lifted then it might have obviated the need for Bosnian Muslims to turn to foreign jihadists, or at least reduced the ability of jihadists to establish themselves in the Balkans, and it would certainly have earlier and more forcefully confronted the Serbs, and those trying to maintain or reimpose the Yugoslav hegemony, with the reality of their limited means.
Actually a bit hard to say on the later point. Milosevic and his allies were pretty stubbornly stupid. They refused to get the point no matter how many wars they lost. But there was a good chance anyway that, by giving locals the means to defend themselves, the conflicts would have sorted themselves out far more quickly, and that we (U.S., NATO, U.N.) would not therefore have needed to intervene.
On reflection it seems to me that arms embargoes are a bad idea, and counterproductive to their stated aim, more often than not.
NATO patrols and ships allowed these arms to go through and they were enormous. The Bosnian Muslims and Croats became extremely well equipped during the so-called arms embargos. Additionally the foreign Mujahadeen were coming already from the start of the war in spring of 1992. There are even photos of them in Bosnia the summer of 1992 and reported fights with the UN.
Many of the arms were coming in from "charities" and mercenaries were often "retired" British and other NATO country soldiers who liasoned with the UN British contigent there. The UN was aiding the Muslims and spying and sabotaging the Serbs.
The Yugoslav army pulled out in late June 1992 and left the airport to the UN on condition it be used for humanitarian purposes only. Instead it was used to bring in arms and fighters.
Don't say that the international community wasn't doing anything when they were acting the whole time on behalf of the Muslims and propaganda purposes.
Then you had the Bosnian Muslim president, Alija Izetbegovic, who had been jailed years before the war for seeking out Islamic countries' help for the Bosnian Muslims. He wrote a book about how Muslims couldn't co-exist with others within a state and eventually they needed to take full control.
And, don't forget that the Iranians were helping the Bosnian Muslims.
In other words, this demonstrates the duplicity of the Clinton administration to the extent that if the Iranian were helping Hezbullah (at the same time), that's a big NO NO. But if the Iranian helped the Bosnian Muslims then they turn a blind eye - see the difference.
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