Posted on 06/02/2005 8:54:24 PM PDT by Hoplite
Agencies in Belgrade
Friday June 3, 2005
The Guardian
They are the images that have finally, 10 years later, shocked a nation. A man, several men, are unloaded from a truck, marched to a wooded hillside and shot, one by one, in the back. Two prisoners are ordered to carry the bodies to a barn. They too are then executed. The murder of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in the summer of 1995 is well documented. But a video that emerged this week during the trial of the former Serbian president, Slobodan Milosevic, has provoked a bout of soul-searching in Serbia, parts of which are still in denial over the horrors of the Bosnian war.
The footage was the first such graphic material from the massacre in Srebrenica to be shown in the country, where more than half of the population refuses to believe it even took place, according to a poll last month. "Serbia is deeply shocked," President Boris Tadic said. "Those images are proof of a monstrous crime committed against persons of a different religion. And the guilty had walked as free men until now."
Eight alleged former members of a Serb paramilitary group, the Scorpions, filmed actually carrying out the murders, have been arrested on the strength of the footage, officials said yesterday.
The faces of the perpetrators can be seen and their insults to the Muslims heard. The film was shot by a member of the Scorpions.
"The killers had walked freely among us, on our streets, behaving as if they were ordinary, honorable citizens," Mr Tadic said. "All those who committed war crimes must be held accountable; only in this way will we be able to have a future. We must not close our eyes to the cruelty that took place."
He added that the crimes at Srebrenica "were carried out in the name of our nation".
"But crimes are always individual and the perpetrators of these monstrous crimes must be punished."
Srebrenica was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, with UN peacekeepers powerless to stop their advance. Some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were led away to their deaths, survivors telling of how they were lined up and shot in several batches, then buried in mass graves.
The prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, called the executions a "disgraceful".
UN prosecutors say the killings in the video footage took place on Mount Treskavica near the wartime Bosnian Serb capital, Pale, which is south-west of Srebrenica. The Scorpions were allegedly under orders from Serbian police in Belgrade and the link could directly tie Mr Milosevic with the crimes committed in Bosnia.
Did they have a heroin addiction like the rest of the Jihadis seem to or just alcohol and brothels stocked with eastern european women
Lighten up. They'd go out and have a beer, just like most of us do. I doubt they frequented the brothels since two of them were female.
By Yaroslav Trofimov
Monday, May 23, 2005, at 10:00 AM PT
As countries from the Netherlands to Hungary to Ukraine peel off from America's fast-shrinking "coalition of the willing" in Iraq, one unlikely new ally is riding to the rescue. Welcome Bosnia-Herzegovina, a nation that has yet to remove the war rubble from recent carnage at home.
Featured in the credit column of America's involvement in the Muslim world, Bosnia is often held up as proof that the United States—despite a deepening belief to the contrary among many Muslims—hasn't embarked on an evil crusade against Islam. After all, here is one place where Americans actually fought to help Muslims, against Christian Serbs.
So, as Washington cast a wide net in its quest for international partners in Iraq, it seemed only natural to ask Bosnia to return the favor. Paul Wolfowitz first broached the subject on a visit to Sarajevo shortly after the fall of Baghdad. Bosnia's three-man presidency acquiesced. And, after several months of training, a multiethnic Bosnian mine-clearing unit numbering about 30 soldiers is slated to begin its Mesopotamian stint next month.
Of course, such a token force won't make much of a difference on Iraq's battleground. But, in Bosnia itself, the debate over the Iraq expedition has bared the extent of anti-American feelings that flourish these days, even in such unlikely places as Sarajevo. As reactions in Bosnia show, the U.S. engagement in Iraq, which was meant to convert the Muslim world to America's gospel by building up a model democracy there, has so far achieved precisely the opposite result: Anger over Iraq's unfolding tragedy has superseded the memories of America's own past good deeds in Muslim lands.
For Bosnia's politicians, the Iraq deployment was all about keeping America happy. "Bosnia-Herzegovina's future lies in strong political ties with the U.S.," Adnan Terzic, the country's prime minister and the deputy head of the main Muslim party, told me. Sending the troops would also certify Bosnia's new status as a nation at peace: "This is our main message—we're such a stable country that we ourselves can assist the stabilization of other countries."
But Bosnia's public wasn't quite buying such arguments. Polls published in Sarajevo newspapers showed that military involvement in Iraq was highly unpopular. Bosnia's non-nationalist opposition focused its political campaign on rejecting entanglements on America's side. In a Friday sermon at Sarajevo's Begova Mosque, the second most senior cleric in the country, Ismet Spahic, decried American actions in Iraq as "genocide."
Near that mosque I bought a glossy magazine called Saff, the favorite publication of Bosnian Islamists—a once-tiny group that has gained strength in postwar years thanks to Saudi proselytizing. The editor, Kemal Bakovic, met me over a fruit juice in a grim neighborhood of Soviet-style housing blocks, still pockmarked by shrapnel. An Arabic-speaker, he had studied in Zarqa, in Jordan—the hometown, he was pleased to remind me, of the man described by the United States as al-Qaida's chieftain in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
"We are all sick of wars here in Bosnia," Bakovic scoffed when I asked him about the Iraq troop deployment. "These guys, if they get killed in Iraq, they'll be killed for a foreign idea, not for their own country. Nobody will take care of their kids."
Some other Bosnian Muslims, he added, had already joined the war—on the insurgent side. This should be no surprise: Back in 1993 and '94, while the United States mostly watched from the sidelines, jihadists from around the world streamed to Bosnia to help. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, was in Bosnia at the time, as were at least two of the 19 hijackers, according to the 9/11 commission report.
Bakovic told me he had run into a young Bosnian man who had just returned to Sarajevo from Fallujah, where he participated in attacks on U.S. soldiers. Bakovic asked the jihadist what he would do if he came across fellow Bosnian Muslims serving alongside Americans in Iraq. "The Iraqi fighters won't give preferences, won't look at what flag patch you carry on the shoulder, or ask what's your name. They will shoot at anyone who's on the enemy side. And so will I," the man had answered coolly.
These, of course, were extreme opinions in a country where beer billboards dot the landscape and miniskirts outnumber veils. But I was intrigued: Where did Bosnia's Muslim religious establishment stand on all this?
In a Sarajevo mosque, I met Mustafa Ceric, the reis ul-ulema, or chief religious leader, of Bosnia's Muslims. A former ambassador with a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, he is known as a rare voice of sober, European Islam. But, as our conversation drifted to Iraq, he abandoned the detached professorial tone with which he had greeted me.
Muslims everywhere, Ceric said, are losing the ability to think rationally. "You see every day the scenes of your relatives being killed, and no one is doing anything about it. ... Why Abu Ghraib could happen? Why Srebrenica could happen? Your mind is getting stretched. The Muslims feel that they are threatened, that the West is trying to enslave them, literally."
I asked Ceric whether he shared his deputy's description of American actions in Iraq as genocide—a loaded word for Bosnia, which itself experienced the real thing so recently. Ceric wouldn't endorse or disavow the imam. Nor would he condemn those Bosnians who head off to join the Iraqi insurgents.
In early 2003, he said by way of explanation, Bosnia's Islamic hierarchy issued a statement against the looming Iraq invasion—while at the same time cautioning the believers not to mistake the Iraq war for a religious clash between Christian and Muslim civilizations. "But now people are beginning to change their views," Ceric said, looking at me. "People are questioning [Western] motivations—and of course including the factor of Islam."
He clasped his hands before getting up and abruptly ending our meeting: "Everyone sees. I don't think we have a safer world now than before."
Yaroslav Trofimov is the author of Faith at War: A Journey on the Frontlines of Islam, From Baghdad to Timbuktu, a book on how the West has been transforming the Muslim world since the Sept. 11 attacks. This article is based on a chapter in the book.
It may become a fight to the finish between the white Christians of Europe and the Islamic newcomers (who, until now, have been welcomed - even encouraged - by the European Christians, for reasons unfathomable, perhaps "Christian guilt"). At this point, it is unclear who will win. What _is_ clear is that the United States _stopped_ the Serbians in Bosnia, and now it is the Christians who have become the persecuted, there.
I was for the Serbs. Yes, they were extreme in their zealousness to win the battle with Islam in Bosnia. But, I sense they _knew_ the viciousness of the enemy they opposed, and they _also_ knew that if they lost, equal (or greater) atrocities would be visited upon them. Is not that actually happening to some of the Christians that remain in Kosovo now?
Islam intends to take Europe by whatever means necessary. What will it take, in turn, to stop them?
Cheers!
- John
Perhaps you'd care to spin the Serb's war on Catholicism in Bosnia, while you're at it.
Well this video is not new - it was around for a awhile and hinted at. It was suspect because it is not introduced as evidence in Slobo's trail.
Slow down, chief.
Those arrested were seen either herding the prisoners or from other reports just known members of the Scorpions not any seen on the video per say.
Let us see if they dare place face from video to face of the men arrested.
Slow down, chief.
Oh, I know - just filling you in.
...but I guess you'll find an excuse even for Nazis
The video is a carefully planted propaganda, as DTA points out. It shows a war crime, but so did the footage we saw from Iraq and we still don't have a single soldier convicted of war crimes or sitting in the Hague. Worse, no one is blaming everyone up the chain...
What the footage does not prove (except to those who have already made up their minds) is that this was evidence of the claimed Srebrenitsa massacre. What it does show is that someone carefully waited to profit from this for full 10 years until the moment was just "right".
But, such was the dirty game all along.
Even I could shoot a better video than this one, which seems to spend more time showing the lovely grass than it does on anything else.
It was all shot in Detroit with digital backgrounds from Dreamworks, now that my uncle's optical printer is no longer needed.
Fortunately, at the State Dept. level, this is all so "whatever".
Balkan policy continues apace.
Of course, ICTY answers to NO ONE and can use even Disney cartoon as 'evidence'. They fear no backlash. After all, they prosecute even book characters.
Sadly, NOT ONE voice in Serbia requested forensic analysis of the tape prior to drawing any conclusion. They have thrown the towel to ICTY scammers. Perhaps they are plain stupid, perhaps they are corrupt, perhaps they are afraid of receiving Djinjic treatment.
You hit the nail on the head, DTA -- all three.
Why?
"And when I see injustice anywhere, I'm free to kill the bastards or to call on my government - which is my delegated agent for such matters - to do so."
God hates bullies.
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