Serbian Orthodox suffer since the United Nations took control of Kosovo

Evangelical Times ^ | 02/21/03 | Evangelical Times, UK

[homeagain balkansvet]

Well, now we get into what we used to call the Map War. Next some Chetnik will come on line and show the extent of Serbia under Tsar Lazar in 1389 and say, SU MA SRPSKA! WHERE ANY SERBIAN EVER LIVED THAT IS SERBIA! (What that means about certain suburbs in Chicago and Detroit goes unmentioned...) Next, some Ustashe will show a map of Croatia under King Tomislav and say, THIS IS CROATIA! WHERE ANY CROAT EVER LIVED THAT IS CROATIA! Then some Turk (by which I mean someone from Turkey, NOT a Bosniac) will show up and say, "We once ruled this ENTIRE thing...." etc.

Seems reasonable at first. But the end result? Kravica.

If Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia didn't like the local government, they had every right to vote with their feet and move to Serbia, selling their homes at a reasonable price to Croats or Muslims who didn't want to live under Slobo. But NOOOOOO. YOU guys started playing the "Why should I live as a minority in YOUR state when YOU can be a minority in MINE?" game. End result? Kravica.

Maybe civil war was inevitable given the Jackson Pollock demographics of the three countries, which to an outsider is really one nation consisting of three groups of religious bigots. Had you kept the fighting to solder-against-soldier, we wouldn't have gotten involved.

But when you exterminated huge numbers of helpless and captured prisoners, you lost the right to settle it by inherent force of arms. We came, we saw, we kicked your ass. And peace, of a sort, came.

Be glad you didn't REALLY tick us off. The Republika Srpska is a corrupt bastard state, Moldova without the charm, and given the way things out, we would have been better off having the Croats and Muslims conquer the whole thing. As it is, we're stuck with it. And you.

[Karadjordje]

Wow, thank you for this great maps!

Karadjordje

[DestroyEraseImprove]

These maps are from 1981, not from a few hundred years ago. Can't you read? You haven't answered any of my questions yet. Looser.

If Serbs in Croatia or Bosnia didn't like the local government, they had every right to vote with their feet and move to Serbia, selling their homes at a reasonable price to Croats or Muslims who didn't want to live under Slobo.

No, I have to repeat it again for you. The Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia were Yugoslav citizens on Yugoslav soil at that time. No one had the right to stripp them of their constitutional rights. As Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina claimed the right to self-determination to seperate from Yugoslvia, the serbs of Krajina and Republika Srpska in response claimed their right to self-determination and secession from the newly created statelettes. That right was denied to the serbs from the begining on, no negotiations were offered, it was just prohibited by Tudman, Izetbegovic, Genscher... and so the doors for an armed conflict were openend. Not to mention, that the secession of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina were unconstitutional in the first place and against the declared will of the serbian population, a constituent people, within those republics.

Is that so difficult to understand for you?

Let's just set the record straight: recognition of Yugoslavia's breakaway republics as independnet states was a violation of the Helsinki Agreement because it was a violation of the Yugoslav as well as republican constitutions. Recognizing internal republican borders as international boundaries was also illegal.

[Karadjordje]

Look what the Communist Canadian (UN) soldier James D. Davis writes in his book "The Sharp End":

"Our orders so far had made no mention of exactly how we were to enforce anything. In fact, we were pretty much told to step aside if the belligerants wanted to kill one another. If that was a case, what the hell were we doing? Why had they named us the 'UN Protection Force'? The Serbs in the enclave agreed to remove the very weapons that were protecting their lives because they believed the UN would protect them. Unknown to them, our orders were to simply let the Croat forces pass if they really wanted to attack, which is exactly what happened. The end result was that we managed to defeat the Serbs for the Croats by preying on their faith in the UN. If that little with the flower died when the Croats attacked, then it was my fault and the fault of the UN's stupidity."

James R. Davis' book "The Sharp End, A Canadian Soldier's Story", published by Douglas & McIntyre, Vancouver/Toronto, 1997, p. 131.

Source: http://www.balkanpeace.org/wcs/wct/wctu/wctu02.shtml (<- click)

Karadjordje

[homeagain balkansvet]

In fact, we were pretty much told to step aside if the belligerants wanted to kill one another. If that was a case, what the hell were we doing? Why had they named us the 'UN Protection Force'?

Well, ahem, they were there to protect the relief personnel, NOT the locals. And what the UN failed to do in Serb-controlled Croatia in 1995, they ALSO failed to do in Srebrenica in what became Serb-controlled Bosnia in 1995 as well. So don't complain. The very fecklessness that allowed the Croats to get away with it in Knin ALSO allowed YOU GUYS to get away with Kravica.

The utter fecklessness of the EU/UN piecekeepers is well known. But one thing for DAMN sure: EVERYONE in Bosnia knew not to screw with the United States--we're such crazy cowboys that nobody dared to take us on.

[DestroyEraseImprove]

You know cowboy, I'm fed up with you claiming here some moral highground. You can come up with bs like Srebrenica and I'll tell you about Nasir Oric. Or what about the killings in Vukovar by the ZNG'e, before the serbs liberated the town? The Racak hoax? What about the extermination of native americans, the indians? What about Hiroshima, Nagasaki? What about agent orange in Vietnam? You don't have any moral highground. Climb down from your horse and start answering to my questions from the begining of this discussion. So let's go back...

Articles written when Kosovo was not famous...

Background material about Kosovo, especially the material disseminated by mainstream channels, is deficient in many aspects, but perhaps the most startling feature of many such articles is the singular way of examining the history of the region. We are told that Kosovo is the cradle of Serbian nation and we learn about the battle of 1389 and then, in most articles, with a gigantic leap that would make envious any athlete, the article strides 600 years later, in 1989, when the Kosovo autonomy was rescinded by Milosevic. What happened during these 600 years, pray tell? Or, at least, what happened during the last few years before 1989?

It is now difficult to write about the recent past of Kosovo without taking into account the war which is raging just now. So, it occurred to me that if I managed to find articles written in the 80s, when Kosovo was not famous, at least these would be free of any bias due to the later events.

A good friend who is also a wizard in database searching undertook the task and here is the fruit of his labours, a bunch of older articles about Kosovo. Be warned, the articles were not written for posterity. These were run-of-the-mill, "boring" articles about contemporary events. But perhaps here lies their interest, for they present the situation without any make-up. Anyway, here they are...

N.S.

http://members.tripod.com/~sarant_2/ksm.html

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Be glad you didn't REALLY tick us off. The Republika Srpska is a corrupt bastard state, Moldova without the charm, and given the way things out, we would have been better off having the Croats and Muslims conquer the whole thing. As it is, we're stuck with it. And you. "

New York in 1985
Mr. Lika : for life
Mr. Fici : 80 years

The Wall Street Journal, Monday, September 9, 1985
WSJ: The ´Balkan Connection´

By Anthony M. DeStefano

NEW YORK - The informant who visited the office of U.S. Attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani last December had a chilling story to tell:

A defendant in a drug racketeering case that Mr. Giuliani was prosecuting was offering $400.000 to anyone who would kill a certain assistant U.S. attorney and a federal drug enforcement agent.

For 45 minutes Mr. Giuliani and his chief assistant, William Tendy, listened to and evaluated the tale. Five other informants later corroborated it. The threatened lawmen-assistant prosecutor Alan M. Cohen and narcotics agent Jack Delmore - were given 24-hour-a-day protection by federal marshals.

For years police and court officials in Italy have had to deal with Mafia attempts on their lives, some of which have succeeded. American gangsters have rarely dared such crimes. But certain criminal groups in the U.S. now seem less restrained. Mr. Giuliani says he has recently heard of more threats against law-enforcement officers and judges around the country than at any other time in his 15 years as a prosecutor.

A number of his colleagues share that perception. Mr. Giuliani says that he himself has been threatened.

The ´Balkan Connection´

The drug case that brought forth the threats Mr. Giuliani is concerned about involved the disruption of the so-called "Balkan connection," heroin trade conducted by among others a loosely organized group of ethnic Albanians, centered in New York. A federal probe into this drug traffic and other possible crimes, including the alleged plot to kill officials, is in progress. The drug investigation and the criminal activities of small group of Albanian-Americans have attracted little publicity.

Many Albanians came to the U.S. after World War II via Yugoslavia. Others before the war, came directly from Albania. A small, mountainous Balkan country, communist Albania is bordered on the west by the Adriatic Sea and on its other boundaries by Yugoslavia and Greece.

Conservative and industrious, many Albanian-Americans manage real estate and run small businesses, living and working in decent obscurity. An estimated 100,000 live in the New York City area. Other Albanian communities are found in Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois.

But the small minority of Albanians who take to crime have created new and unique problems for some law-enforcement officers around the country. Language and a code of silence have protected the Albanian-American crime factions from outside penetration. "They are real secretive," says a detective in Hamtramck, Mich., a Detroit suburb where many Albanians live. He says police have tried but failed to infiltrate Albanian gangs here.

Various Crimes

Alabanian-Americans criminals, police say, are involved in everything from gun-running to counterfeiting. In New York City, a police intelligence analyst says, some ethnic Albanians living in the Bronx are involved in extortion and robbery. Federal officials believe that Albanians run gambling in certain New York ethnic clubs.

Violence within the Albanian community can be particularly brutal, whether related to organized crime or not. In Hamtramck, an Albanian, reportedly enraged by the belief that his wife had contracted a venereal disease, shot three people at a clinic and then killed himself. In some attacks, women have been slashed with knives: crowded restaurants and bars have been raked with gunfire. "They´re a wild bunch of people," says Capt. Glen McAlpine of the Shelby Township, Mich., police.

During an investigation of Albanian crime in Shelby, a bomb exploded next to the police station. A police officer also was threatened, Capt. McAlpine says.

But it is drug trafficking that has gained Albanian organized crime the most notoriety. Some Albanians, according to federal Drug Enforcement Agency officials, are key traders in the "Balkan connection," the Istanbul-to- Belgrade heroin route. While less well known than the so-called Sicilian and French connections, the Balkan route in some years may move 25% to 40 % of the U.S. heroin supply, official say.

Ties to Turks

Once serving only as couriers, some ethnic Albanians and Yugoslavs now are taking over more command of the traffic, says Andrew Fenrich, a DEA spokesman in New York. Federal agents say that Balkan crime groups are well suited for trafficking because of close historical and religious ties with the Turks, some of whom are sources of heroin.

DEA agents say the heroin flows from Turkey through Bulgaria and Greece into Yugoslavia. From there it can wind up in Rome, Brussels, The Hague and the U.S.. Once in America, the Balkan heroin is believed by officials to be distributed by some ethnic Albanians and Turks.

(Albania itself, long cut off from the most of the world by its recently deceased leader Enver Hoxha, isn´t believed by the U.S. to be involved in the drug trade.)

On the surface, at least, Skender Fici seemed to be a law-abiding businessman. He ran a Staten Island travel agency, Theresa Worldwide, which made a specialty of booking trips to Yugoslavia, where many Albanians live. He became a specialist in handling immigration paper work, and he sponsored a local ethnic Albanian soccer team.

According to federal prosecutors and a sentencing memorandum they filed in Manhattan´s Federal District Court, Mr. Fici´s travel agency made a perfect vehicle for arranging quick trips for drug dealers and couriers working the Balkan connection. One of Mr. Fici´s first shipments arrived In New York

In February 1979, according to the prosecutors´ memo. A kilogram of heroin was distributed in New York partly through the efforts of Xhevedet Lika, known as Joey Lik, who made his base on New York City´s polyglot Lower East Side. There, according to the sentencing memorandum, Mr. Lika sold the drug to other dealers from a social club located in the midst of Judaica shops and Chinese clothing stores.

By 198O, according to federal court testimony and the sentencing report, Mr. Lika was importing heroin as well as distributing it, traveling to Turkey and Yugoslavia to arrange shipments. He also allegedly dealt in cocaine with Xhevedet Mustafa, who disappeared in 1982. Mr. Mustafa had been a supporter, of the late, deposed Albanian monarch King Zog, who died in 1961.

Mr. Mustafa skipped out before his own federal trial on drug charges could take place in 1982. In September 1982, be reportedly led an unsuccessful invasion of Albania aimed at restoring the monarchy.

Mr. Hoxha said the invaders all were "liquidated," but Mr. Mustafa still is listed as a fugitive in federal court records. Mr. Lika, meanwhile, was expanding his heroin business In New York with other associates, according to federal prosecutors. He had fallen out with one of his old partners, Dujo Saljanin, who in 1991 had agreed to import several kilos of heroin for Mr. Lika and others but short-weighted the delivery by a kilo.

To resolve the discrepancy, a January 1981 meeting was held at a Park Avenue South restaurant Mr. Saljanin operated. Joey Lika and two other men, Mehmet Bici and Vuksan Vulaj, were present. Mr. Bici later testified in federal court that Mr. Vulaj pulled a gun and shot Mr. Saljanin.

"Mr. Lika had a gun, and he shot him, too," Mr. Bici testified. "I was there, too, and I shot him too. And then we just left, crossed the street," he testified.

Even with 13 bullet wounds, Mr. Saljanin lived a short while, long enough to talk. Mr. Vulaj was later shot gunned to death. Hampered by lack of cooperation in the Albanian community, as well as by difficulties with the Albanian language that made electronic surveillance useless, police and federal agents worked about three years before they broke the case in 1984.

Federal officials estimate that the group had imported more than 110 pounds of heroin with a retail or "street" value of $125 million through the Balkan connection before the ring was broken up.

Federal agents believe the drugs had been sold in New York, California, Texas and Illinois. The trail that Mr. Delmore, the DEA agent, followed led to Mr. Bici, who was then serving a sentence in a New York state prison for attempted manslaughter of his wife. Questioned by Mr. Delmore, Mr. Bici at first denied having any knowledge of drug dealing or the Saljanin murder but ultimately decided to cooperate. He was indicted along with Joey Lika, Mr. Lika´s brother Luan, Mr. Fici and others on federal charges of drug dealing and racketeering. Luan Lika was never arrested and remains a fugitive. Mr. Bici pleaded guilty to transporting heroin and to racketeering. He was sentenced to eight years and is serving time under guard in the "prisoner witness´ protection program.

The atmosphere at the trial, which began late last year, was highly charged. Early in the proceeding, Mr, Cohen, the prosecutor, mentioned that a witness claimed to have been threatened with death by Mr. Lika´s father.

(Judge Vincent Broderick kept Lika family spectators seated near the back of the courtroom.)

Another witness reported that a man outside the Manhattan courthouse had threatened her. Gjon Barisha, a prospective witness, fled before the trial, after claiming that he had been fired at. He evaded federal agents for months before being arrested on a material witness warrant last month.

Others who were to be called as witnesses hid out or refused to testify, prosecutor Cohen says, because they feared, as one of them put it, "a bullet in the head." Prosecutors allege that some witnesses perjured themselves at the trial.

Judge Broderick remarked during the trial that the case involved the most reckless disregard for human life that he had ever seen. The message wasn´t lost on federal officials, who took the threats against them seriously. Since World War II, there have been more than 800 revenge killings by Albanians in Yugoslavia and several in New York, according to Dushan Kosovich, a scholar who has studied Albanian mores.

Mr. Giuliani says of the threat against Mr. Cohen: "This was the most serious threat I have seen yet to an assistant U.S. attorney."

For three months from late 1984 into early 1985, Mr. Cohen and Mr. Delmore and their wives shared their homes with federal marshals acting as bodyguards. "You can´t believe what it is like," says Mr. Cohen, who was guarded in court-even when he went to the men´s room.

A Jury this year convicted Joey Lika and Mr. Fici on charges of racketeering conspiracy. Mr. Lika was also convicted of the more serious charge of running a criminal enterprise. To emphasize to the defendants that their opponent was the government, and not just Mr. Cohen, U S. Attorney Giuliani himself appeared in court for the sentencing in March. Mr, Lika denied in court as sentence was about to be rendered that he wanted anyone killed, and his attorney protested the government´s use of evidence from unnamed informants about the alleged threats.

Nevertheless, Mr. Lika was sentenced to life in prison, Mr. Fici to 80 years. They are appealing their convictions.

Mr. Giuliani refuses to discuss details, but he says he has learned recently that there had been an effort to fulfill an assassination contract against him and Messrs. Cohen and Delmore. "After you have been convicted," he says, "there is no rational reason to kill a prosecutor, except revenge."

While Mr. Giuliani says he now considers the threat against himself "minor," DEA agent Delmore and his family have moved-away from New York. Prosecutor Cohen is still investigating other drug dealers in New York but he, too, has a new residence.

Federal officials aren´t sure how much lasting damage they have done to the Balkan connection. Mr. Cohen says the Lika case and others, prosecuted by local authorities, have resulted in the conviction of more than 10 Albanian-American drug traffickers, and that has got to have some impact. Mr. Fenrich, the DEA spokesman, says that the Lika case made it clear that vendettas against law enforcers won´s be tolerated.

As for Joey Lika, prison may be the safest place for him. Because he testified about his part in the Saljanin killing, federal agents say he now is "in the blood" - that is, the object of a vendetta - with relatives of Mr. Saljanin.

The Wall Street Journal, "The ´Balkan Connection´", September 9, 1985

Source: http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/kam/kosd/kosd05.shtml (<- click)

Karadjordje

[A. Pole]

I have photographs of the morgue where 4000 lie rotting and unidentified. I have stood in their presence.

I se that you are an insider. OK, assuming that you speak the truth, whose those unidentified bodies where? Serbs or Muslims or both?

[DestroyEraseImprove]

The so called 'save heaven' in Srebrenica was used by Nasir Oric as a staging ground to attack the surrounding serbian villages. After the Muslims accomplished their killing and rampaging missions they withdrew to the 'save heaven' to be protected again and were able to plan their next missions with impunity.

[Karadjordje]

BBC correspondent Misha Glenny about Srebrenica in 1993 (<- click)

Karadjordje

[homeagain balkansvet]

No, I have to repeat it again for you. The Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia were Yugoslav citizens on Yugoslav soil at that time. No one had the right to stripp them of their constitutional rights. As Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina claimed the right to self-determination to seperate from Yugoslvia, the serbs of Krajina and Republika Srpska in response claimed their right to self-determination and secession from the newly created statelettes. That right was denied to the serbs from the begining on, no negotiations were offered, it was just prohibited by Tudman, Izetbegovic, Genscher... and so the doors for an armed conflict were openend. Not to mention, that the secession of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina were unconstitutional in the first place and against the declared will of the serbian population, a constituent people, within those republics.

Is that so difficult to understand for you?

Okay, I'll take the bait. Though it requires a quick review of Yugohistory. I'll give it a shot.

Yugoslavia was a "constitutive kingdom" when founded in a mutual love feast between Serbs and Croats in 1918 (the international equivalent of two drunken lovers having a night of really great sex and then getting married the next morning before they sober up). The kingdom was, in point of fact, a mini-Serb empire, a reward to Serbia by the Western allies for what it suffered at the hands of the Hungarians. Croat, Slovenia, and a chunk of what had been Hungary was given to Serbia, as well as a piece of Bulgaria and the formerly-Austrian controlled Bosnia. The Serb king became the king of all of the Kingdom-of-Serbs-Croats-Slovenes-And-A-Bunch-Of-Minorities-Whose-Existence-They-Did-Not-Deem-Worthy-of-Mention-Because-We're-More-Important-Than-They-Are.

What it really was, though, was a mini-Serb empire. The Croats and Slovenes discovered that their marriage to the Serbs meant rule by a Serb king, a Serb bureaucracy, a Serb army, and a Serb-dominated national assembly. Naturally, they decided they didn't like it very much.

In 1929, the Serb kingdom decided that a foot-long official name was unwieldy (they had to print their currency on butcher paper to fit it all in) so they shortened it to "The Kingdom of Yugoslavia." The Serb king (Peter I? one forgets) decided to abolish all the internal provincial identities and impose "banovinas" (governorships) to try to suppress local nationalist pressures. Didn't work; the Serb king was shot by Croatian Nazis in '34, replaced by his 11 year old son, and by 1940 Yugoslavia was on the brink of civil war all on its own.

Then Hitler showed up and the whole thing fell into a byzantine mess. The Croats declared independence and became a Nazi minor ally; the Serbs were occupied by the Germans; the rest of the territories were carved up like a Christmas turkey and served to the neighbors.

The Serbs, I'll say, DO have a legitimate beef with the Croats' cooperation with the Germans in War Two, and a hell of a lot of them DID die at the hands of the (REAL!) Ustashe in 1940-1945. The Croats, who were the villains of THAT war, built a death camp at Jasanovac and killed a hell of a lot of Serbs (whether 70,000, 700,000, or some number in between will not be revealed to us in this life).

A three sided civil war then broke out, between the Ustashe in Croatia, the Chetniks in Serbia, and the Partisan Communists all over. The Partisans of course gained the upper hand through military victory, skilled diplomacy with the Allies, and a number of stupid moves made by the Chetniks in particular (involving temporary cooperation with surrendering Italian Fascists that got misinterpreted by the wrong parties in London).

"Modern" Yugoslavia, founded in 1943, was absolutely a bastard Communist construct from the beginning of its reemegence. It was entirely artificial and a Communist creation. The Communists built the state on a pile of skulls, 300,000 or so executed after the war. Most of the skulls were Croatian Ustashe, but a lot of them were Serb Chetnik skulls as well. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s nationalism was suppressed and the state was maintained through a secret police force. The chant "Bratsvo i edinstvo" (Brotherhood and Unity) and a political correctness that would make you gag with disbelief was used to drown out any nationalist sentiment at all.

Then Tito died, and the system began to die as well, in 1980.

As the Commie party began to rot after Tito died, the Serbs saw this as a chance to reimpose the old Serb-dominated order, less the royalty. The beginning of this was the entirely artificial sense of "crisis" over the situation in Kosovo. Slobo, in 1988+, started to suck up to Serb nationalists in the province, crushed the local elected government (as well as that in the former Hungarian territories in Vojvodina) and reasserted Serb dominance over the Yugoslavian national government, given that four of the eight votes in the central counsel--Serbia, Voivodina, Kosovo, and allied almost-Serb Montenegro--were now in a unified voice.

Naturally, nobody else in Yugoslavia was really keen on being under the thumb of the Serbs. The Slovenes had seen the train coming for years and bolted at the first opportunity. The Serbs let them go; no Serbs live in Slovenia (or at least not all that many). But Croatia and Bosnia made for a different story.

The Croats only got on board the independence bandwagon about 1990 or so. When they decided to bolt, they were only half prepared. And Bosnia, which also bolted with Croatia, was COMPLETELY unprepared; Alia Izetbegovic trusted that Bosnia's status as an Internationally Recognized State would make it immune to Serb aggression. As Otter would say, "he ----ed up! He trusted us!"

So the upshot: Serbia, driven by old imperial fantasies, less old fears of Croatian genocide, and new fantasies of Muslim "aggression", decided to take as much of their neighboring territories as they could.

What was the Serb error?

Simple. The Serbs could not comprehend that the rest of the world, and particularly the Europeans, could not tolerate the concept of forced transfer of territory from one nation to another.

From the point of view of the world system of nation states, with the impending death of Yugoslavia as a state, authority then devolved down to its constituent republics. The international system is VERY committed to the maintenance of international borders. It is one thing for one nation to split into two, like Czechoslovakia--or in the case of the former Yugoslavia, into six. It is quite another thing to imagine that provinces can be grabbed from one country by another by force of arms. THAT is a grave threat to the international order; once that is allowed, the flood gates open to wars of miniaggression and irredentism worldwide. THAT is intolerable.

A Bosnia that has split into two might be tolerated; a Serbia that splits Bosnia into two and then eats one of the two halves is NOT.

So. Anything that protects the territorial integrity of nation states will be supported by the international community, the EU, the US, and the UN. In that, Alia Izetbegovic was not far wrong. HIS mistake was thinking we'd show up over the horizon on Day 1 and save his bacon. We weren't prepared to do that, until Srebrenica made ignoring the Bosnian problem intolerable.

What I'm saying is this: the old Yugoslav communist state's death was INEVITABLE with the death of the Communist party, since it was founded ab initio as a Communist state. Hence, claims to the 'constitutionality' of constituent state independence is inoperative. HOWEVER, the territorial integrity of each of the subordinate states of the former Yugoslavia MUST be preserved as much as possible, as the international order is based on the involiability of international borders. So Serbia was between a rock and a hard place. They didn't want to let Croatia and Bosnia and etc go, but had no legitimate claim on the whole of Croatia and Bosnia because the Communist system that had kept all the states together was as dead at Tito himself. On the other hand, Serbia tried to assert authority over cantons and opcinas of its neighbors, and that the international community could not tolerate. So it was a losing proposition.

Had Serbia and Croatia (leaving Bosnia aside for a moment) been ruled by Vlacev Havels or Mikhail Gorbachevs, there's a possibility the Yugoslav state could have been preserved or, more likely, an amiciable "velvet divorce" achieved. But NOOOOOOO. Serbia was ruled by the Nazi Milosevic, Croatia by the thug Tudjman, and Bosnia by the naive and romantic noodnik (albeit very sharp negotiator, as we discovered at Dayton) Izetbegovic.

So back to your question:

The Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia were Yugoslav citizens on Yugoslav soil at that time.

Unfortunately Yugoslavia had been founded by a thug party that was dead. Without the Communists, the state was as dead as Tito. Claims of any legitimate hold on that basis was inoperative. No one had the right to stripp them of their constitutional rights.

Well, they still retained their full measure of inalienable human rights. But the constitution that protected them was gone. They tried to replace it with claims of rank nationalism. Didn't work.

As Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina claimed the right to self-determination to seperate from Yugoslvia, the serbs of Krajina and Republika Srpska in response claimed their right to self-determination and secession from the newly created statelettes.

See above about the inviolability of international borders.

Is this ultimately the interference of outside powers in the affairs of the Balkans? Yep. Tough noogie. You guys want to sell Yugos to unsuspecting customers in other countries, that carries with it an obligation to play by Real World Rules under the international community. And that meant, ultimately, that Serb attempts to grab pieces of Croatia and Bosnia were intolerable to the rest of the world, and had to be stopped.

Okay, where does that argument leave what happend in Kosovo?

Well, we have a new factor, born in the ashes of WW2, and asserted in Bosnia: genocide and ethnic cleansing is become intolerable in Europe. We intervened in Bosnia when Sreb happened. We intervened in Kosovo when it became clear to us that a second Sreb was going to happen in Kosovo.

So where does the inviolability of national borders apply in Kosovo and Serbia?

Beats the hell out of me. My guess? Kosovo will eventually be either allowed to become independent or to federate very loosely with Serbia (just as Montenegro has just done). Whatever the solution, the International Community will never allow Albania to take Kosovo. That would violate the same rule about the sacredness of national borders mentioned above.

This is not the best of histories, I'll admit, but it sure beats chanting SUMASRPSKA while beating Muslims over the head with truncheons.

[homeagain balkansvet]

I have photographs of the morgue where 4000 lie rotting and unidentified. I have stood in their presence.

I se that you are an insider. OK, assuming that you speak the truth, whose those unidentified bodies where? Serbs or Muslims or both?</i>
MOST CERTAINLY Muslim. Most carried Bosnian currency, Army-of-BiH military gear or IDs or uniforms. Some had ID cards. All had bullets from JNA/BSA weapons. Number of Serbs found in these mass graves: 0. Number of known Muslim bodies in these mass graves? More than 4000, with 4000 located by as yet unretrieved; it's slow work. (They found maybe a dozen or so Croats, who presumably were married to Muslim women in Sreb.)

[homeagain balkansvet]

You know cowboy,

Cowboy? COWBOY? Thank you. I haven't felt so good since the first time my wife asked me if I was a cop.

I'm fed up with you claiming here some moral highground.

I ain't perfect, we ain't perfect. But SOMEBODY had to blow the whistle on the wargy of '95.

You can come up with bs like Srebrenica and I'll tell you about Nasir Oric.

Oooh ooh ooh, Nasir Oric, the boogyman. Oooh. Oooh. Interesting cat. Granted, he's a thug, and he certainly did some things that were Not Very Nice. But you know what? The ICTY has dug and dug and dug through the evidence of his war time activities: they'd LOVE to send his butt to the Hague. But every time they dig into his "war crimes" they turn out to be just militarily successful guerilla raids. They have never found ANY evidence he committed atrocities. Did he kill a lot of SBA soldiers? Youbetcha. Did he kill civilians in combat? A few. Did he stick old people into churches and massacre them? No. Zero evidence has been found of that. The ICTY very publicly arrested him a few years ago. They let him go for lack of evidence. Pi$$ed them off too--they would have LOVED to show how evenhanded they were. But you know those damn lawyers and those damn rules of evidence...

Is he a crook? Oh yes, he belongs in jail. But is he a war criminal? So far, doesn't look like it.

Or what about the killings in Vukovar by the ZNG'e, before the serbs liberated the town?

What about the killings in Vukovar before the CROATS "liberated" the town?

The Racak hoax? What about the extermination of native americans, the indians? What about Hiroshima, Nagasaki? What about agent orange in Vietnam? You don't have any moral highground.

Maybe not, but we got drug in there willy nilly. I'm here to tell you this: I, and my friends, didn't kill any indians. We didn't nuke Hiroshima. We weren't in 'Nam. And SOMEBODY had to sort things out. No, we're sinners. But Satan forever points at the sinner and screams "SINNER!" to keep the sinner from interfering with Satan's work. No, we're not perfect. We're just the only thing to put a stop to what happened.

Climb down from your horse and start answering to my questions from the begining of this discussion.

Read on, MacDuff. Or is that Duffovic...

[joan]

I lived in Bosnia for two and a half years. Every time I travelled through the Republika Srpska I encountered hate propaganda: SU MA SRPSKA, SMRT MUSILIMANSAMI, the Four-C Swastika (no, I *don't* mean sister-in-law), etc, spraypainted every-damn-where. Nowhere in the Federation did I *ever* see anything similar (with the exception of the WELCOME TO REPUBLIKA SRPSKA signs I saw covered in red paint).

Stavka2, who served in Bosnia, claimed the Croats marked their properties with Swastikas. Do you say otherwise?

[homeagain balkansvet]

Stavka2, who served in Bosnia, claimed the Croats marked their properties with Swastikas. Do you say otherwise?

I never saw it, but that's not saying much; the American sector has very few Croats (maybe 10% of the population). One DID see swastikas, but generally either in Serbia or on the Welcome-to-Republika-Srpska signs as I described earlier. In the Bosnia context the German swastika means a generalized "eff-you" more than anything else.

[Destro]

Was it in the American sector that you let al-Qaeda run around willy nilly? How useless your service was-how unsafe you made America-how eagerly you served America's enemies---and still do.

I behold the Islamic 5th column and I am amazed at its impotency.

On FreeRepublic you are just an opportunity to prove how the cancer of Islam had a hold on this nation in the 90s. You know a report about the destruction of churches even you do not repute is approved by you and every response of yours bumps this thread to the top. Let the thousands read it and learn. In this I thank you.

While in Bosnia-did you enjoy the services of the underage white slave girls in the Muslim sector or just looked the other way when passing the slave pens?

[homeagain balkansvet]

I don't dispute a word of your post about the Ustashe in WW2. Not a word. And Tudjman's playing footsie with the old Ustashe isn't pretty. But that does NOT justify Srebrenica et al. Nothing does, or ever will.

[Karadjordje]

homeagain balkansvet wrote:
"Oooh ooh ooh, Nasir Oric, the boogyman. Oooh. Oooh. Interesting cat. Granted, he's a thug, and he certainly did some things that were Not Very Nice. But you know what? The ICTY has dug and dug and dug through the evidence of his war time activities: they'd LOVE to send his butt to the Hague. But every time they dig into his "war crimes" they turn out to be just militarily successful guerilla raids. They have never found ANY evidence he committed atrocities. Did he kill a lot of SBA soldiers? Youbetcha. Did he kill civilians in combat? A few. Did he stick old people into churches and massacre them? No. Zero evidence has been found of that. The ICTY very publicly arrested him a few years ago. They let him go for lack of evidence. Pi$$ed them off too--they would have LOVED to show how evenhanded they were. But you know those damn lawyers and those damn rules of evidence...

Is he a crook? Oh yes, he belongs in jail. But is he a war criminal? So far, doesn't look like it."

Have you ever been at the Serb graveyard in Bratunac?

Karadjordje

[homeagain balkansvet]

While in Bosnia-did you enjoy the services of the underage white slave girls in the Muslim sector or just looked the other way when passing the slave pens?

So tell me, Destro, are you still beating your wife?

We acted to stop trafficking in women where we could. But 1200 troops can't be everywhere. That's the whole point of leaving as much as possible to local cops in charge.

The only case I know of "white slavery" where US guys (not soldiers) were involved was where two guys bought a 14 year old girl's passport, gave it to her, and immediately (i.e, within 10 minutes) put her on a bus back home to Ukraine. Her freedom cost them $3000.

There WERE SFOR troops who bought local girls for themselves: but not Americans, or under American command. That would have been very harshly punished, to keep guys like you from making snide comments like this one.

[homeagain balkansvet]

Have you ever been at the Serb graveyard in Bratunac? Karadjordje

Matter of fact, yes. Very nice, very clean, very well kept. The dead are respectfully buried with headstones. None of them are wrapped in plastic and waiting in a refrigerated morgue complex. Unlike some dead I could name.