A Rare Glimpse at the Reality of the Bosnian War

During the trial of ex-Bosnian Serb official Biljana Plavsic, Madeleine Albright and Elie Wiesel made speeches about the supposedly monstrous Bosnian Serbs. They portrayed Bosnian Muslims as analogous to Jews and Bosnian Serbs as analogous to Nazis. As I shall demonstrate in an upcoming article on that trial, what Albright and Wiesel said amounts to Holocaust denial. In addition, I will demonstrate that in his so-called testimony, Mr. Wiesel lied.

Anyway, while researching Elie Wiesel's earlier statements about Yugoslavia, I happened to read a most revealing 1992 Associated Press (AP) dispatch. It is posted below.

1) It describes an all-out attack on the Serbian civilian population in and around the Bosnian town of Gorazde.

Prior to the attack, there had been sustained fighting between Bosnian Serb troops and Muslim military forces who controlled the town of Gorazde which had a mixed Muslim/Serb population. The Serbian troops withdrew as a peace gesture. After that, on August 26th, a column of cars and buses including:

The AP dispatch was published on September 12th, that is, 17 days after the attack. Yet up until then,

This AP dispatch is unusual in that it actually *mentions* the attack on these Serbs. Mostly the media was silent when Serbs were attacked. As we shall show in a soon-to-be-published article by Prof. Francisco Gil-White, in fact it was the Serbs and also their moderate Muslim allies who were the main victims of anti-civilian terror in Bosnia. This was not because the Serbs were saints. It was because the people whom they and their Muslim allies were fighting were fanatical Islamic Fundamentalists, misportrayed in the Western media as peace loving, moderate democrats. But all that is discussed in Prof. Gil-White's forthcoming article. (When posted, it will be at http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/bsn.htm The point here is: this AP dispatch stands out because it at least reports the anti-Serb atrocities.

2) But even this article reveals anti-Serb media bias. From the start the article refers to anti-Serb violence as "revenge." Revenge for what? What does the AP claim happened to provoke such "revenge"? The article gives no details, saying only that the town had been under siege.

By using the terms, "siege" and "revenge," the writer creates the impression that monstrous crimes must have been committed *by the Serbs* because how else could what the Muslims did constitute "revenge"?

The article says the Muslims outnumbered the Serbs in the Gorazde area, 70% to 30%. A 30% minority is probably not in a position to terrorize a 70% majority. More, this particular majority was armed and prepared to carry out the sort of atrocities described in the AP dispatch.

Supporting this point, the AP uses the term, "siege." If Gorazde was under siege *from Serbian forces* then it must have been controlled *by Muslim forces.* So: the town had a mainly Muslim population; it was militarily controlled by Muslims; they were quite capable of carrying out massacres. This hardly sounds like a situation in which the Serbian forces would feel safe in provoking the Muslims, even if they wanted to.

Moreover, as the article states, the Serbs withdrew their forces as a peace gesture. Would they have done so without first rescuing the Serb civilian inhabitatants of Gorazde if, having committed outrages, they had every reason to expect anti-Serb "revenge?"

The withdrawal of Serbian troops, the coordinated assault on the Serbian neighborhoods, the desperate flight of columns of cars and buses without troops to protect them, the ambush and the extreme violence all suggest that a) the Serbs naively misestimated their foes' capacity for terror and b) after the troops withdrew, the Serbian civilians were caught unaware by the anti-Serb attack and fled in disarray.

And a Serbian military official says: "'Muslims have abused our peace gesture by launching attacks on innocent civilians.'"

Based on all of the above, I would suggest this hypothesis: the presence of Serb military forces near Gorazde *prevented* atrocities against Serbian civilians. When the Serbian military withdrew, the extremists among Muslims launched a pogrom: ambushes, horrific murder, torching and looting of houses, slaughter of livestock.

3) Speaking of livestock, note that the article describes the attackers as having slaughtered pigs in the Serbs' yards. The Bosnian Serbs were/are mostly peasant farmers, many of whom do indeed breed pigs. This is an important detail. Let me explain why.

The AP dispatch states that, "The Serb forces hold about two-thirds of Bosnia's territory." It was common for the Western media to make such statements, suggesting that the Serbs had *seized* most of Bosnia, i.e., they were aggressors.

A small point that the media neglected to mention was: the Serbs *owned and occupied* roughly 2/3 of Bosnia.

Before the fighting broke out in Bosnia, the Slavic Muslim population was comprised mainly of city dwellers. The Slavic Orthodox population was overwhelmingly farmers. Because farming is land-intensive, in 1991 the Serbian population owned about 2/3 of the land in Bosnia - that is, they owned the land they lived on and farmed. Bosnian Serb farmers were important food producers for Yugoslavia and other European countries.

The Bosnian Serbs forces controlled *only* 2/3 of the land because, in fact, they fought a mainly defensive war. Many Serb farmers lived near Muslim-majority towns, and what the Western media continually called "laying siege" actually involved the Serbian army posting troops near concentrations of Serbian farmers and town dwellers to protect them from attack by Islamists in nearby cities. In the upcoming article by Francisco Gil-White, he shows that the Bosnian Islamic Fundamentalists had an ideological commitment to *not* living in peace with non-Muslims.

BODY:
Charred human skeletons, decomposing corpses and burned-out cars are the grim remnants of a Muslim assault on a column of Serb refugees fleeing war-ravaged Gorazde.

When Serb forces on Aug. 26 eased their four-month siege of the town in southeastern Bosnia, most of Gorazde's Serb inhabitants tried to escape. Many feared retaliation by majority Muslims who had been under Serbian guns during the siege.

At dawn the next day, one of the columns of cars and buses carrying 3,000 Serbs, mostly women and children, was ambushed by Muslims at Gnjila canyon, 11 miles north of Gorazde. Witnesses said at least 50 people were killed and many more injured. Others managed to escape the hail of bullets and grenades by jumping down the steep rocky ravine or by hiding in bushes and woods, they said.

"It was like hell. Everyone was screaming as people and children, some cut in half by volleys of bullets, stumbled all over the place," said Dragica Gavrilovic, one of the refugees.

"People were trapped in their burning cars. Others crawled looking for their relatives, or jumped down the cliff in panic," she said, standing frozen next to the grave of her 11-year-old son, Dragan, who was killed in the ambush.

"Many others were not that lucky. They had to leave their dear ones behind," Gavrilovic said.

Evidence of the massacre was still visible two weeks after the ambush. No one has dared to remove the remaining corpses, fearing another attack from nearby forests.

Skeletons sat in burned-out cars, and decomposing corpses lay on the side of the dusty road. Stray dogs were eating the remains.

Many Western governments and international organizations, including the United Nations and the European Community, have blamed Serb forces for much of the violence in the civil war that has killed thousands. The Serb forces hold about two-thirds of Bosnia's territory.

But rival Muslims and Croats have also come under increasing international criticism for crimes and human rights abuses, including "ethnic cleansing" of territories under their control.

"Ethnic cleansing" is the term used to describe the expulsion of people to create ethnically homogeneous areas.

After the Serb forces left their positions on the hills above Gorazde, Muslim residents, 70 percent of the town's prewar population of 40,000, looted and torched the houses of fleeing Serbs, witnesses said.

Almost every building, including Serb Orthodox churches, has been torched in the Serb quarter on the southeastern bank of the Drina River that divides Gorazde, a trading center about 35 miles southeast of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

The move to loosen the siege on Gorazde coincided with an international London peace conference in which all warring groups participated. The decision by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic angered local Serb warlords - and those who had to flee.

"Muslims have abused our peace gesture by launching attacks on innocent civilians. We may have to counterattack to regain the territory," Dusan Kornjaca, the commander of Serb forces, said in an interview.

In Rogatica, heavy cannon and machine-gun fire could be heard from the direction of Gorazde as trucks towing howitzers headed there.

"The decision to give up Gorazde is a treason. Karadzic should be ashamed," said 68-year-old Marko Ratkovic, who managed to flee to Mladenovac, 75 miles northeast of Rogatica, in neighboring Serbia.

"All of us here have lost at least one family member in this brutal war. It has to stop before we all exterminate each other," said Ruza Blagojevic, one of about 200 Gorazde Serbs who settled in the Mladenovac refugee center after a harrowing journey.

She said when a charity organization offered them clothes, all the women chose black - for mourning.

"For these reasons, it remains impossible to state with any certainty how many men were executed following the fall of Srebrenica and how many perished during the march to Tuzla. It is likely that we shall never know."

-- NIOD

According to forensic at the ICTY, at least 1/3 of the bodies found were those of Naser Oric's soldiers killed in a fair fight.

The rest of the bodies were found in and around Serbian villages were Naser Oric's death squads operated and have yet to be id'd. It is possible that these graves hold the bodies of victims of Naser Oric.

Madeleine Albright and Elie Wiesel made speeches about the supposedly monstrous Bosnian Serbs. They portrayed Bosnian Muslims as analogous to Jews and Bosnian Serbs as analogous to Nazis.

Barf

You do know that Jared Israel has been hired by Milosevic's supporters to write propoganda, don't you?

Hmm, are you saying that Jared Israel gets donations from those who oppose Hague Tribunal or are sympatetic to Serbs? Your point is? Should Free Republic accept the donations ONLY from the certified liberals?

Try to find one thing that Jared Israel has ever written that is even remotely critical of Milosevic... I guarantee you won't find it.

In reverse, show me when you were supportive of Milosevic. This argument is silly.

He agrees with absolutely everything Milosevic has ever done, even when most Serbs don't... Don't you think there is something odd about that

The only thing that is "odd" is your reasoning. Jared Israel is not a Serb, so why are you comparing him or holding him to the same standard? Jared Israel is a leftist, a socialist, or even a communist. No one implies that he is absolutely objective in his topics or in his role as a defense mouthpiece of Miloshevich.

He is entitled to his (biased) opinion. However, what Jared Israel posts is factual and varifable. If he leaves out the negative, that's his prerogative. That doesn't mean that what he does present is wrong. It may not be the "whole truth." But that's why we have resourceful and intelligent people like you to match his facts with yours, right? My suggestion is: if you have facts to the contrary, post them. Wasting time on getting all hot and bothered over Jared's facts is not very onstructive.

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