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Short clips of the video were shown on Serbian television on Wednesday night. It was taken by a man participating in the murders at Trnovo, 18 miles south of Sarajevo in Serb-held territory, after the fall of the Bosnian "safe haven" of Srebrenica. At one point in the footage, he claims that the battery of his camera is low. The man is told by one of the executioners to go on as long as he can.

The video begins with a Serbian Orthodox priest blessing paramilitaries before they go into battle. It ends with what looks like the same paramilitaries shooting the six civilian prisoners in the back, with machine guns. The young men appeared to have been severely beaten and had their hands tied behind their backs. The killers in the video are wearing the black uniforms of the Scorpions.

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The Srebrenica massacre, the worst war crime in Europe since the end of the Second World War, remains a divisive subject for Serbs. Conservatives and nationalists have convinced the public that the crime is the invention of anti-Serb forces abroad with a recent survey showing that only half the population believe it happened. The same survey suggested that two-thirds of the public believedMr Karadzic and General Mladic were heroes.

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"Hopefully the videotape will start to erode this denial epidemic"

What about the Denial Epidemic in the West:

1. The denial that other leaders like Izetbogovic of the Bosnian Muslims, and Tudjman of the Croats, as well as the leadership (not just the soldiers) of the KLA were also guilty of war crimes, to much the same degree as the Serb leaders.

2. The denial of the ethnic cleansing of innocent Serbs, in Kosovo, Bosnia and especially Croatia where tens, maybe hundreds of thousands were expelled with many massacres with the knowledge of NATO and support of retired US generals.

3. The denial that more Serbs were, in effect, victims of ethnic cleansing, than other groups.

4.. The denial of the last five years in "liberated" Kosovo where most non-Albanians have been expelled or jsut left in fear and up to 100 Christian churches and monestaries have been destroyed.

5. The denial that the war could have been avoided.

6. The denial that the various detention or transition camps, especially those of the Serb were not new versions of Auchswitz, as promoted by Kouchner and other humanitarian warriors

7. The denial that the stories of 50,000 Muslim women in 'rape camps" were propoganda.

8. The denial that the 11-week bombing of Yugoslavia was a mistake and prevented a peaceful resolution of the conflcit.

9. The denial that the bombing of Yugoslavia was a prelude to the bombing and invasion of Iraq.

quote:

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Originally posted by swallow:

Hopefully the videotape will start to erode this denial epidemic.

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How crude.

I have never said that there were no war crimes committed by Serbs, or at Srebrenica? Neither has Rikardo to my knowledge though you choose outright falsehood over reasoned arguement to ridicule him, like bratty middle class children.

Jeff's lack of ecumen, and misrepresentaion and blanket smears are and the expected methods of an average lawyer* but I thought better of you.

I've seen nice footage of Chechyn rebels having a friendly chat with a bound Russian soldier before, slitting and then severing his head -- they sent the film to his mother (how nice.) Does it change my opinion on the war in Chechnya? No. I am opposed, still.

I have based my views on the NATO attack on Serbia with full regard to written testimonies and eyewitness reports, and the principals of justice I support and the logic I extend from there. Seeing one more graphic slaughter on film does not really impress me. If you want I can link you to some which make this look like civilized behaviour.

Would you like to look at a few of KLA guys parading around with Bojan Cvetkovic's (he was a sales clerk and volunteered when the Louise Arbour's war began. Think: This guy might be alive today if not for...) head, smiling like spoilt children at a birthday party:

Hopefully these photos will start to erode this denial epidemic: Louise Arbour's friends at a party in Kosovo. DO NOT LOOK VERY GRAPHIC PHOTOS OF VIOLENCE

Seeing it is somehow more convincing than reading about it? How TV generation of you. Is that how your views of the world are formed?

I mean: "Hopefully the videotape will start to erode this denial epidemic."

Really?! That is pretty sad Swallow. That's a trite dig, given that it is I who posted the friggin link, and the length an depth of discussions we have had on this subject.

*

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Well, as can be seen from the above post, denial is a pretty powerful pyschological force.

Holocaust denial was never much troubled by the many photos and videos which exist of mass murder.

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Invoking Godwin's Law by comparing people to Nazi Holocaust deniers wins the case every time Jeff -- ever heard the phrase "boring the judge?" Would you like me to find some nice videos of Iraqi insurgents executing unarmed prisoners so that you can compare that to the massive extermination of Jews by the Nazis in concentration camps over a period of five years, as well?

Your such a tasteless fuck.

A real Human Rights lawyer would call this an illegal summary execution, and a war crime, which is what it is, it is not Bergen Belsen.

[ 06 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Almost 80 persons were killed. This video shows really nice close up's of Thai Officers and men shooting unarmed civilians. Taken by themselves of course, just like the Serbs in the Bosnia video.

Perhaps you would do us all a favour and call up Lousie Arbour and ask her if she might use her influence with Carla Del Ponte recommend putting together a an Ad Hoc Tribunal for War Crimes in Thailand, or perhaps even an invasion!

DOH!

I am so stupid! I forgot Thailand is a Major US Non-NATO Ally

[ 06 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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There have been a few posters whose only concern is to delegitimize the prosecution of Milosevic, and they are a pretty tiresome bunch, true.

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Jeff, I do not know if you put me in the category you've mentioned but to deligitimize that "trial" is not my only concern. My concern is to end the violent involvement of governments I may have an influence over and that is the Canadian one which may make some waves with its European-Nato allies and which may have some influence on US policy. I know of no other path that a progressive activist may take when coming to international affairs. Of course, alone we cannot do anything and as such must coalesce with others.

I have attacked the Western narative on the Conflict of Yugoslavia because it is a fraudulent story. Yes, it is based on truthful elements namely violence committed by Serbs as well as support to violent elements that committed war crimes by the Serb leadership. Many who post - and who do not share my views - have also agreed that the other parties also committed War Crimes but that the conflict began with Belgrade (tacitely supported by Moscow) in order to seize all parts of Yugolsavia that had a large amount of Serbs on them and as such create a greater Serbia even if that took killing every other ethnic group there. The narrative states that it was Belgrade that was intransigent and that exacerbated the war.

The Trial of Milosevic has been used to legitimize this Narrative as well as the subsequent illegal bombing of Yugoslavia. The Narrative also outlines that the West's only concern was human rights and peace and that it took too long for them to intervene.

Those who have looked into events more carefully, who have looked into the origin of photos proving widespread concentration camps, or the numbers of victims, or speeches of hate, or events as they generally unfolded have uncovered a very different story. Facts show that the Leadership of Zagreb wanted to unilateralyy seperate from Yugoslavia and suppress the bi-national character of Yugoslavian Croatia as well as seize territory (via proxy govenrments) in BiH. Facts also show that the Muslim leaderhsip wanted to create an "pure" muslim state in BiH. Facts further show that westen powers supported them (as they did in Kosovo-Methohjia, where KLA forces wantred an ethnically pure Kosovo as well as a Greater Albania and very openly too). Facts further show that Belgrade leadership was not at all intrasigent and made many offers for a political settlement, moving away each time from the wish of keeping Yugoslavia together (including a logical swiss-like canton system for BiH). The west ignored every opening, offer for negoatiation each time.

The facts on the ground show reprehensible crimes against humanity having being committed by the three major ethnic groups. Such as those disgusting photos above (as well as others committed against Serbs but that are always ignored by the Media). The facts also show that there a three way ethnic conflict and crimes committed by many autonomous criminals (albeit with them getting weapons from their respective ethnic leaderships and those leaderhsips getting weapons and financial ad political support from the outside).

The facts show that there was a propganda campaign to demonize one of the ethnic groups by focusing on their crimes only, by exagerating their crimes, by ignoring the crimes of all other parties and by concocting stories such as the video link I place above. The west chose a side for geo-political reasons that I have mentioned before. By choosing a side and backing their interest with propaganda and ignoring offers that were coming out of Belgrade (as well as Moscow and other smaller players) for a settlement the west (i.e the US with British and German Support) exacerbated the conflict and caused much bloodshed.

The trial only serves to hide these actions of the West and not punish those who participated in these crimes. By supporting it, we are opening the door to more Myths of our Empirialburden to save the backwards people of the world from themselves.

Jeff, do you not believe that by exposing this story we are exposing the manufacture of consent within our own societies and the violent involvment of the states in which we live in a brutal ethnic and cessionist conflict we force the powers the be here to answer some serious questions and that we may just may make a better world?

Of course, supporting this trial against the "man who did it all" is easy, requires very little insight into any of the events and allows us to pat ourselves on the back believing we were just witnesses to a disaster rather than financial, military and political supporters of that disaster as well as a hindrance to peace settlements.

More precisely on the Milosevic issue. My personal opinion for clarity is that I believe that Milosevic was a thug, was not a democratic socialist (as he claimed) but an authoritarian statist (albeit winning elections but he spent most of his life as an appartchik)) I believe he turned a blind eye to many war crimes Serbs committed but also to the Serbs who were being persecutted, I believe he was also a criminal and on the take, making himslef a little retirment plan with arms sales, I believe that he should be brought before a Yugoslavian court for all of this. I do not believe he was the instagator of the concflicts in Yugoslavia, I do not believe he supported the Greater Serbia idea as well as ethnic cleansing and genocide to create a pure state (he had ample opportunity in Voividina for this). I believe he was responding to cessionist forces that were attacking for the Yugo Army and civilians (Serbs) and that had western support and that he was someone that was ready and offering to negotiate a political settlement. I mean he did not even do anything to support the 250,000 serbs being ethnically cleansed from Krajina.

I believe the US/NATO have painted the genocidal ultra-nationalist criminal picture to sweep their involvement under the rug. I believe that attacking this trial and exposing this involvement we may be able to pre-empt such actions in the future by Western powers. I believe that this is a pre-requisite for international law and real functioning United Nations as opposed to the Benevolent Empire.

I hope this clarifies my *real* concern.

[ 06 June 2005: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

To elaborate slightly: I think societies where terrible things have happened need to come to terms with them. Like our own society, founded on genocide of the peopel who lived here before we came. Like Serbia's, where there has been a denial epidemic -- one worsened greatly by the NATO attack, since people tend to react defensively. I hope that the videotape will help erode this tendency to deny what happened, common among many Serbians. I also wish there was video footage of what European settlers did to first nations here, but that's another topic altogether. (Hopefully the Dudley George case can serve in that sort of role.)

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People like Rikardo are never going to stop denying what happened: they're caught in binary thinking. But i'm still hopeful that actual people in Serbia may.

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My personal opinion for clarity is that I believe that Milosevic was a thug, was not a democratic socialist (as he claimed) but an authoritarian statist (albeit winning elections but he spent most of his life as an appartchik)) I believe he turned a blind eye to many war crimes Serbs committed but also to the Serbs who were being persecutted, I believe he was also a criminal and on the take, making himslef a little retirment plan with arms sales, I believe that he should be brought before a Yugoslavian court for all of this.

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Well, that is a good start, and I agree with most of it. But "turning a blind eye" to war crimes when you are the leader of a country is called "wilful blindness" in law, and is treated as identical with doing an act intentionally.

Few people believe Milosevic, or Rumsfeldt, committed war crimes personally. Mostly, they create the conditions, then "turn a blind eye". The most recent Human Rights Watch Report calls for an independent prosecutor of Rumsfelt, and discusses the legal doctrine of "command responsibility", also called "wilful blindness".

However, I disagree with your suggestion that he be tried in Yugoslavia. When he was turned over to the Hague, he had very substantial remaining power throughout Yugoslavia, or at least, Serbia.
(I presume you don't think he should be tried in Croatia or Bosnia). Trials are easily subverted when one controls a militia, or elements of the secret police, or other security apparatuses.

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Well, that is a good start, and I agree with most of it. But "turning a blind eye" to war crimes when you are the leader of a country is called "wilful blindness" in law, and is treated as identical with doing an act intentionally.

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But Jeff, that has to be put in the context of cecessionist forces instigating these wars and attacking civilians and being fully supported by the US and its Nato allies. The cessionists I am talking about were the ones under Tudjman's and Izetbegovic's control, the civlians I am talkking about are Serbs. This must also be put into the context that I firmly believe given everything I have see that Milosevic did not support the Greater Serbia myth and was the one who tried many times to find a political solution for a multi-ethnic federation, he was constantly looking to find a political settlement. He desired to keep Yugoslavia together as a loose confederation but accepted the right of cecession of the other republics. It has to be understood that Milosevic did not have full control on the ground in BiH, he supported the Serb side no doubt, but one must understand the the Croat and Muslim cecessionists were being backed by the west and were attacking Serbs and ethnically cleansing them. Karadjic and Mladic retaliated because of what happened in Krajina (the largest ethnic cleansing, 250,00 people) and because Izetbegovic wanted a pure Muslim state and would not share power with the Serbs (as the constitution demanded). Both Tudjman and Izetbegovic were supporterd by the west. Had Milosevic not backed the Bosnian Serbs there would have been the complete destruction of Serbs in Bosnia-Herecegovina(via slaughter and scorched earth tactics). Tudjman and Izetbegovic were supported by the west and this could have been avoided had they brought them to the negotiating table where Milosevic wanted to go (on many, many occasions). In fact Milosevic was attacked by Karadjic for not supporting the Bosnian Serbs and by others for letting the Krajina disaster happen.

In this conflict engineered by the west's support of these cecessionist forces that wouyld break up Yugoslavia there was not a uniform leadership on the Serbian side. Hence, there were many paramilatary groups that received arms through various intermediaries and took matters into their own hands, there was not a full chain of command as one would believe and we see this from transcripts of conversations, there was much division.

Then we must also look at the propaganda aspect which inflates the crimes of one group, makes it look like an official policy and ignores that of the other groups. A narrative is created. So yes, there are crimes being committed and now we have videotapes of things everyone knew, but this does not change the alleged numbers and the amount of victims we are finding at the ethnic makeup of those victims. When looking at those details we begin to see a brutal ethnic war in which there are comparable amounts of victims on both sides. But this reality does not fit into the narrative we've been sold.

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Mostly, they create the conditions,

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And this is where I strongly disagree. Milosevic did not create those conditions. The Narrative of the Speech at Gazimestan (Kosovo-field) and the "no one shall beat you" reel is all a lie (if one actually reads that speech and listens to the reel) to give the impression of man who fired up nationalist sentiments. The other lie is that Milosevic took advantage of the instability that cecession caused and used it to gain territory and power and as such allowed these crimes to occur since they benefitted him. This is aslo not true. Milosevic was the one who tried the most to find a diplomatic solution, he claimed no ones territory and he did not seek to create a pure Serbia (this is why to this day Serbia is 35% non Serb, unlike the other parts of ex-Yugoslavia which have been cleansed of the minorities).

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I think the trial of Milosevic is no worse than the Nuremberg trials

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The supreme crime according to Nuremberg was to start a war. This is what was ruled. It was not Milosevic who started the ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia it was cecessionist forces who were backed by the West. The Serbs defended themselves from those under the command of Tudjman and Izetbegovic and within that context committed their own attrocities as well.

Jeff, is it not ironic to put the leader that was the most supportive of a negotiated settlement on trial and to ignore the leaders who started the conflict and were supported (politically, financially and miritarilly) by western powers­?

True there is hypocrisy at Nuremberg, the massacres at Dresden, Hisroshima and Nagasaki are ignored and so are the crimes of Stalin but those who through Europe into a war that lead to 50 million deaths were not the US, nor the British, nor the French, it was Nazi Germany.

In this case it was not Milosevic who started that war it was Tudjman and Izetbegovic and later on the KLA all of which were backed by the US, the UK and Germany.

Again, the events need to looked at in greater detail to uncover the full story of what occured.

The Milosevic "trial" has political aims and is not trying to prosecute those responsible for the crimes of the Yugoslav war it is trying to hide the crimes of those who started and prolonged the conflict and of those who backed them, namely the powers who set up this ad hoc tribunal.

I answered, ``Some S.O.B. 400 years ago.''

Mackenzie is among those who don't insist that the events in the Balkans in the 90's are entirely the result of Serb agression and the Hitlereaque Slobodan Milosevic.

Those who try and reference the Ad-hoc Tribunal in the Hague with Nuremberg always (it seems intentionally) evade the fact, that the primary charge at Nuremberg was not "war crimes," but the breach of the peace, or as it was the crime of war itself.

In other words the Nazi's were on trial for starting the war, not so much because of the related crimes. This is why the only real living jurists who participated in those trials today opposed the Ad hoc tribunal, as Milosovic did not start the war, NATO did.

It would be nice if some so called lawyers would at least admit the difference, rather then trying emotionally enforce their case by again comparing Serbia to Nazi Germany.

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As a primary source of international law, the judgment of the Nuremberg Tribunal in the 1945-1946 case of the major Nazi war criminals is plain and clear. Our leaders often invoke and praise that judgment, but obviously have not read it. The International Court declared:

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

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-- Walter J. Rockler, (was a prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial.)

Counterpunch

Surely students of International humanitarian law would be aware of this fact. Perhaps, they are simply lying to cover their complicity in setting the historic precedent set in Kosovo, whereby the US can assemble any higgledy-piggldey coalition or alliance it likes and seek "regieme change" where ever they like.

The fact is that after WW2 and until Kosovo the United States had never acted to directly intervene for the purposes of overthrowing a foreign government outside of its immediate sphere of influence (the Caribbean, and Central America) without an explicit UN mandate to do so. In both Korea and Vietnam, it is the case that the US was already pre-deployed in those places as a direct result of World War 2, and military action was more or less confined to maintaining the status quo, not regieme change.

Since Kosovo it has done so twice.

In other words members of human rights community who support this courts attempt to justify NATO's "war of agression," -- in the name of prosecuting the lesser crimes that result of war -- have put themselves at the disposal of "the accumulated evil of the whole," on an ongoing basis, not just in Kosovo, but also by helping set the precedent upon which the US has operated politcally, morally and legally when it committed the "supreme international crime" in Afghanistan and again in Iraq.

[ 07 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I have a Serb friend who used to teach piano in Sarejevo whose fingers were deliberately crushed by a Bosnian Muslim militia man during a sexual assault, or so she says. This during the Bosnian war. Her comment was hardly one of denial, but a plea for balance. Her sailent comment was "Everyone talks about what we did to them, no one talks about what they did to us."

Another friend who I spoke to recently about the footage of these executions simply said: "I never said we were saints." He's right. He never did.

Yes I agree it's a very complex dispute. And It is folly to blame the Serbs wholus bolus.
Also it's a fine example of what's possibly in store for Iraq....but hat's a whole other question. I must say this is a fascinating thread. Thank you to all. There is much to learn.

[ 07 June 2005: Message edited by: Peech ]

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On Tuesday, U.N. war crimes prosecutors presented evidence that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's police directly controlled the unit, contradicting his testimony that its members operated on their own.

The Scorpions were one of several Serbian paramilitary groups that spread fear and conducted ethnic cleansing operations against non-Serbs during the Balkans wars that accompanied the splintering of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, military analyst Dejan Anastasijevic said.

[SNIP]

When presented with the document in court, defense witness Obrad Stevanovic, who was deputy interior minister during Milosevic's rule, said he didn't doubt its authenticity, but insisted only some of the Scorpions' members were regular police officers.

The Scorpions, some 150 shaven-head men, gained international notoriety last week with the televising of a gruesome video that showed gunmen identified as unit members kill six Slavic Muslim prisoners near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.

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[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Mr. Nice asked Gen. Stevanovic some additional questions about the Skorpions. Nice had documents from the Serbian Interior ministry that listed members of the Skorpions as being reserve policemen.

Pursuant to the court’s request, Gen. Stevanovic checked with the Interior Ministry to see if certain members of the Skorpions, who Mr. Nice claimed were active in Bosnia as members of the Serbian MUP, had ever been employed by the Serbian Interior Ministry. Stevanovic got the answer that the Serbian Interior Ministry had never employed the eleven men in question.

Stevanovic stuck to his assertion that the Skorpions were never accepted into the reserve forces of the SAJ as an intact unit during the 1999 NATO bombing. He said that only certain individuals from the Skorpions were accepted as volunteers. The fact that eleven known members of the Skorpions were never employed by the MUP goes to show that Stevanovic is telling the truth. If the Skorpions had been taken as a group, then all of the Skorpions would have been listed as reserve policemen.

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Here's another link on the alleged origin of the Skorpions

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The Skorpions were a volunteer unit from in Djeletovci in Eastern Slavonia. Their leader was a man named Slobodan Medic aka “Boca.” The Skorpions were established on the initiative of Milan Milanovic, the Deputy Defense Minister of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK). Milanovic, who testified as a prosecution witness at the Milosevic trial on October 14, 2003, claims that he proposed to the director of the Krajina Petroleum Industries oil company that Medic should establish a security force to guard the Djeletovci oil fields, and that is how the Skorpions were established in May of 1992.

The Skorpions also participated in other operations. The Skorpions were essentially a mercenary group. They went to the Bihac area, and while they were in Bihac they were subordinated to the command of the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, according to Milanovic's testimony.

Milanovic testified that the Skorpions went to the area of Trnovo in Bosnia-Herzigovina in 1994. While they were there, he said, they were subordinated to the MUP of Republika Srpska.

On May 14, 1996 the Skorpions were forced to vacate their base at Djeletovci by UNTAES forces. According to statements given by Slobodan Medic the Skorpions were disbanded at this point.

By all accounts, the Skorpions were inactive until NATO attacked Yugoslavia in 1999. When NATO began bombing and a state of war was declared in Yugoslavia, a mobilization order was issued. The government sought volunteers to help with the war effort, and this is when the Skorpions reconstituted themselves and allegedly became involved with the Serbian Interior Ministry – four years after Srebrenica (although nobody had any idea that they had anything to do with Srebrenica until the videotape surfaced).

According to Milan Milanovic's testimony, when NATO attacked Yugoslavia, the Chief of the Public Security Department (RJB) Gen. Vlastimir Djordjevic, called him asking if he could get any volunteers to help out in Kosovo.

Milanovic says that Slobodan Medic also called him asking if he could arrange for the Skorpions to go to Kosovo as volunteers. Medic specifically said that he wanted the Skorpions to go as part of the MUP, and not as part of the Yugoslav Army (VJ).

Milan Milanovic testified that he proposed Medic and the Skorpions to Gen. Djordjevic. The Skorpions went to Kosovo right after the bombing began.

According to the February 14, 2003 testimony of prosecution witness Gen. Aleksandar Vasiljevic, who served as the former head of military security in the Yugoslav Army, the Skorpions were affiliated in some way with the SAJ (anti-terrorist unit of the MUP). Slobodan Medic has also given statements claiming that the Skorpions were used as a reserve unit of the SAJ.

For its part, the SAJ denies that it used the Skorpions as a reserve unit, or that it even had a reserve unit.

Unfortunately, some members of the Skorpions committed serious crimes against Albanian civilians in Kosovo. In May 1999 the Serbian authorities launched an investigation against two members of the Skorpions, Dejan Demirovic and Sasa Cvjetan, on the suspicion that they had massacred 19 Albanian women and children in the village of Podujevo. The investigation was led by Dusko Klikovac, a homicide detective at the Nis SUP. Klikovac brought Demirovic and Cvjetan in for questioning, but he did not have enough evidence to hold them.

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Originally posted by FabFabian:
Maybe the people of the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia need their own Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

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Everyone here would probably agree on that. It would be very hard to achieve -- there's currently only one TRC in the world that involves more than one government (Indonesia & East Timor), and that one has been criticized in both countries. Still, it's well worth striving for.

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The supreme crime according to Nuremberg was to start a war. This is what was ruled. It was not Milosevic who started the ethnic conflicts in Yugoslavia it was cecessionist forces who were backed by the West.

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You are channelling Michael Mandel, but inaccurately.

Nuremberg decided that aggressive war, that is, a war attacking a sovereign state for non-defensive purposes, is the supreme crime.

It said nothing about civil war.

Also, you say that secessionist forces were "fired up" by foreigners, but that avoids the question of whether the various minorities agreed they were being well-treated within Yugoslavia. Blaming outside agitators is rarely convincing.

Generally, they made fairly specific complaints. For example, I think it would be hard to claim that Kosovo's ethnic Albanians had been well-treated within Yugoslavia.

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In 1995, Croatian forces launched a massive offensive against the Krajina Serbs. The offensive led to approximately 14,000 Serb civilians being killed and about 300,000 Serb refugees. The lightning attack included attacks against civilians, namely burning Serb homes, looting Serb property, and killing and mutilating Serb civilians, especially the elderly. In retaliation the Serbs launched a rocket attack on the Croatian capital of Zabreb, causing a few deaths and over 100 injuries. There is some controversy as to the role that the US and the West in general played in this offensive. There were reports that NATO planes were used to take out Serb command and control centers in the Krajina, allowing the Croats a much easier time with their offensive. The private consulting firm Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) was key in helping train the Croatian military. It should be noted that all firms that engage in such work must get a licence from the State Department before being contracted by a foreign government for military consultation. MPRI received such a licence from the State Dept in April of 1995. It has also been speculated that the US gave Croatia the green light to begin this offensive, considering a return of the Krajina worthy exchange for the Bosnian Croats to join sides with the Muslims in the new federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The degree and level of US and NATO involvement in the offensive is of some debate, but among most Serb circles this involvement is unquestionable.

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This is not a pro-serb site

This precedent, where NATO allowed Croatia to conduct a massive ethnic cleansing campaign with impunity set the stage for the Srebrenica, wherein the Serbs tried to "clarify" the confused ethnic composition of the borders near Serbia. Is it worthwhile noting that the Bosniaks were allied with the Croats? Up until that time, terrorization and death squad activity by all sides in Bosnia was selective and most probably the result of the personal initiative of individuals, not an explicit campaign. As in Kosovo, later:

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The point we want to make is that, whatever the explanation, most of these crimes would not have been committed and most of the victims would be alive today if not for NATO's bombing. Nothing remotely like this had occurred in the three years of civil conflict that preceded the war, and nobody is saying anything like it would have occurred but for NATO's belligerence.

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Mandel

On the one hand NATO was insisting on maintaining the territorial integrity of the borders of Croatia, it was overtly lending a hand to Bosnia muslim and Croatian seperatists (backed needless to say by Croat regular army units) in Bosnia, forging and alliance between them in 1994, and backing the creation of the state Bosnia-Herzogovina.

NATO and the US took a side in a civil war, thereby committing the highest "International Crime." This implicit fact was expressed explicitly in 1999, when NATO directly attacked the Serb heartland.

The attempt to compartmentalize the various phases of the civil war in Yugolslavia, events that are actually interlinked, are part of the shell-game played by the legal appologist for European and US war criminals. They want us only to remember Srebrenica as cover for their support for the Croatian ethnic cleansing in Krajina, and that the Srebrenca was in part and explicit reaction to the Krajina.

Consistently, NATO's escalations resulted directly in increasing the "accumulated evil of the whole."

[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Nuremberg decided that aggressive war, that is, a war attacking a sovereign state for non-defensive purposes, is the supreme crime.

It said nothing about civil war.

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Yes, I understand what Nuremberg stated, I was merely replying to your comment (and that of many others) of comparing the Hague Tribunal to Nuremberg and applying what Nuremberg said about Crimes against Peace as being the supreme crime mutatis mutandis to a war whithin one republic but betwen three ethnic groups. I think the logic remains that the supreme crime should fall on those who instigated the conflict that lead to other crimes. If not then, international politics and real events mean nothing. Things just happen and we arrest the losers or the party we don't disagree with. INternational Law which should be an expression of international values should search ways of avoiding conflicts from begining and when foreign meddling is pivotal and then used as a pretext for foreign invasion I think those of us concerned with peace should attack the problem at its source. The fact that people won't get along is one thing, the fact of pushing them into war is quite another. This is what we as progressive people in the west should be focusing on.

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Also, you say that secessionist forces were "fired up" by foreigners,

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It was not that they were only "fired up" as you stated by foreigners, it was much more direct than that. As early as 1990, the US demanded that there be electinos in each Republic of Yugoslavia or that there would be economic sanctions. The US funded political parties that would undermine the unity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The US supported unilateral secession of Slovenia and Croatia. About 12% of the population in Croatia was Serb and was driven out with thousands of casualties and the full support of NATO bombing the Serb forces. There was no referendum on the matter, no negotiations with the Federal government and no garantees to the minorities, in fact they were driven out with NATOs help. The US and Germany supported Tudjman's actions (including the removal of Serbs from government posts) and backed him financially, militarilly and politically. In Bosnia, Izetbegovic's party (which was also secessionist) was funded by the US and it received financial, military and political support from the US as well as Saudi Arabia). According to the constitution of this BiH which consisted of about 45% Slavic Muslims, 35% Serbs and 25% Croatians there was supposed to be a rotating 1 year presidency so that each of the ethcnic groups can hold the presidency. Izebegovic at the end of his one year term decided not to pass the presidency to Karadjic. Izetbegovic called for an independent and muslim BiH, even though this was a multi-ethnic state. The US backed him. The Serbs did not go along with Izetbegovic and the civil war began.

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but that avoids the question of whether the various minorities agreed they were being well-treated within Yugoslavia. Blaming outside agitators is rarely convincing.

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Well ok, this is a valid point. Each Republic has the right to secession. Slovenia was not a problem since it did not have a large minority. Croatia was more complicated since there was a Serb majority in the Krajina. Let us deal with these two issues first. Slovenia should have the right to seperate yet there should be negotiations with the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. (My personal opinion is that secession should happen with a popular plebiscite not by declaration of a government that has less than 50% support). Croatia had a large Serb minority and there should have been negotiations to garantee some sort of arrangement for this minority. Again secession was without a plebiscite, unilateral and without negotiations. Worse, the minority was attacked under pretext that they served the interests of Belgrade. In Bosnia-Hercegovina, the situation gets more complicated since you have three ethnuic groups and a stae cannot be delcared by only one or even two. Of course the Serbs who formed only 35% should not be able to force the other nationalities to remain in Yugoslavia either. Hence, there should be negotiations between the three parties to come up with a new arrangement in a new state (I've repeated this many times, but a logical step for such mixed small states is a swiss style canton system which avoids in trying to draw borders between close communities, such ideas were supported by Belgrade but not by the US. So yes, the three aformentioned republics do have the right to secede from the FRY, but all of this must be taken into account. The US recognised secession in a multiethcni societies as well as backing Leaders that attacked the other ethcnic groups. This is what caused the wars. This was deliberate in order to undermine the FRY.

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Generally, they made fairly specific complaints. For example, I think it would be hard to claim that Kosovo's ethnic Albanians had been well-treated within Yugoslavia.

And if they weren't, then there is nothing wrong with secession; it is a form of national self-determination.

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This is where I disagree. Self determination of a minority does not always include the right to secession. States also have a right to their territorial integrity. As I mentioned above Slovenia, Croatia and BiH all have the right to secede from the FRY since they are Republics in a Federation of 6 Republics. Yet, the Serbs of Krajina did not have a legal right to a seperate state, they did have a right to be garanteed autonomy and rights over their land etc. as they enjoyed in the FRY. The Slavic Muslims, the Serbs and the Croats for BiH did not have the legal right to secede out of BiH since the ethnogeography of that state is intertwined. All of these ethnic groups though did have the right to self determination as national groups within one state. The US undermined this by supporting one of national group within a mixed society that everyone knew would cause a civil war. The US actually went further and aided via arms and politcal backing attacks on the Serbs since this would further weaken Belgrade's hand in the region (and Moscow's as well). Coming to the Kosovo-Methohjia and Vojivodina these are regions within the State of Serbia which has the legal right to its territorial integrity, that have national minorities. Hence, the Albanian population of Kosovo has the right to self-detemrination and autonomy over its region (while respecting the rights of the other minorities, mostly Serbs and Roma) it does not have the legal right to seperate the region from Serbia. If international law allowed this it would send the world into never ending ethnic conflicts. Moreover, the US was clear in not recognizing the Krajina Republic as an independent state as well as not Recognizing the Republika Srpska in BiH, even though the Serb minorities in both cases claimes to be attacked and eventually kicked out in the former case. Hence, the same applies to Kosovo. What is more particular about Kosovo is that a paramilitary organization, the KLA, was financed and politically supported by the US. The KLA attacked the Federal Army which responded with equal brutality, it was not the other way around. The US along with Russia could have easily helped restore contitutional autonomy to Kosovo's Alabanians with respect to minority rights in the region. Milosevic was always expressily open to this, he rescinded this autonomy via constitutional means (the same articles that granted autonomy to the region) since the KLA was planning secession against international law. Had the US not supported this illegal act and worked with Belgrade to negotiate a settlement, which was readily available, there would not have been a conflict.

The US along with Germany deliberately undermined the FRY and helped cause the conflicts.

Yes, all 6 Yugo Republics should have the right to secede from the Federation, yet given the ethcic diversity of each Republic certain considerations should have been taken into account. They were not, deliberately to cause regime change in Belgrade, thus weaken the last part of the Balkans that was outside the neo-liberal order, creating small states which would be more easy to influence and exploit and breakig Russia's small influence in the region. It was more than just firing up.

The US, the EU and Russia should not have backed waring factions or supported unilateral declarations of independence, they should have brokered negotiations between the Republics, garanteeing the right to a referendum for all national groups, as well as self detemrination which does not include cutting up the Republics. Nothing garantees that Yugoslavia would have been broken up if a looser confederation was set up. Nothing garantees that there would have been civil war if national rights were respected. The US quashed demands for this coming from Belgrade and Russia (as well as other smaller players) and supported those who instigated the wars. The US began to sporadically bomb Bosnia since 1995 and then bombed Belgrade in 1999.

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but I don't think that site is really all that credible, do you?

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The site is partisan no doubt and supports Milosevic's case. This does not mean that it is illegitamate per se. Nevertheless, it was the reference to the court trancripts that I wanted to post rather than the overtly biased commentary. The point I was trying to make was to show the division on the Serb side, between Pro-Yugoslavs like Milosevic and nationalist fascists like the Skorpions. I do personally believe that everyone on all sides knew what was going on and that they did not have full control of the ground, very hard to do in these types of ethnic conflict. Nevertheless, I believe this trial is only used to whitewash US and NATO crimes, which did not begin in 1999 but in 1990 and I still think looking at the evidence and sequence of events that Milosevic did not seek a conflict and did not attack the secessionist Republics to seize more land, he did support Serb forces in BiH. The point I was making was that the Serbs were initially attakced by Izetbegovic (who wanted a pure Islamic state according to his URL=http://www.srpska-mreza.com/library/facts/alija.html]Islamic Declaration[/URL])

Again, the US is hiding its intervention in this human catastrophe and using this ad hoc political trial as a justification for it. I think this is the key lesson we must remember since like Cueball explained above, this has a precedent.

[

[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Toronto Star claims that Milosevic has been directly connected to the people who committed the murders in the title of this thread.

The group, the so-called Scorpions, were supposedly an independent militia, with no ties to the Serbian government. But documents filed at the Tribunal show that they were part of the "Serbian Anti-Terrorist Police" and were getting salaries of $1000.00 per month from the Serbian government.

The Deputy Interior Minister of Serbia conceded that the documents were authentic, but claimed that "only some" Scorpions were regular police officers.

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t has to be understood that Milosevic did not have full control on the ground in BiH, he supported the Serb side no doubt, but one must understand the the Croat and Muslim cecessionists were being backed by the west and were attacking Serbs and ethnically cleansing them. Karadjic and Mladic retaliated because of what happened in Krajina (the largest ethnic cleansing, 250,00 people) and because Izetbegovic wanted a pure Muslim state and would not share power with the Serbs (as the constitution demanded). Both Tudjman and Izetbegovic were supporterd by the west.

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Tom, you've in effect outlined a counter-narrative to the one you critique -- one offered by many people who are critical of the ICTY process. The things you state as fact, such as the intent of Izetbegovic, are in the view of many people not accurate -- and they're at least disputable, if you remember the first thread we have on Izetbegovic.

But i'm not looking for another arguemnt over the facts by saying this. I'd rather look at it this way: since you've raised the very interesting point about attempts to build narratives, don't you think the counter-narrative also needs to be read critically? I'll grant that these narratives are not of equal power, but the narrative you're offering is one that, for instance, gives very short shrift to the multicultural community of Sarajevo which was so utterly destroyed. It seems to reduce people in the region to little more than puppets of "NATO imperialism." I think the NATO attack gave a great deal of ammuntion to the counter-narrative by allowing Milosevic to appear as victim. But mostly i think these two narratives need to come into dialogue with one another a little bit.

In this case, we have the suggestion that foreign powers were responsible for the secessionary activities of some ethnic groups in Yugoslavia.

But when thinking about Milosevic, we are told that he did not have control "on the ground".

Actually, I think he did. I think those thousand dollar a month salaries were a mechanism of control. But there were others. The Star story quotes the human rights activist who delivered the tape to the tribunal as saying that the some of the Scorpions were recruited in Yugoslav prisons, and that it was expected they would act as killers.

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When constructing narratives, it is also useful to examine the links of each narrative to see whether the same standard is being used to judge the behaviour of each party.

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Exactly, that is why some people find it odd that your narrative establishes financial and organizational links between Serb militias, paramilitary groups and polic forces, as being evidence for culpability in war crimes, while ignoring direct financial and organizational links between Croatian militias, paramilitary groups and police forces that attacked Serbs in Croatia and in Bosnia in early 1995.

Were there members of Serb regular army and police units operating in Bosnia during the war? Of course. Could Milosevic have stopped them even if he had wanted to? Probably not.

Anyone, who appeals to the idea that the more or less aribitrary boundaries of individual state adminstrative departments of a federated republic have the same value as long established national boundaries, can not be taken as a serious student of history or politics.

Earth to Osgoode Hall? Earth to Osgoode Hall?

These boundaries were accepted as immutable by NATO and the US only in the case of Serbian interests, Crotian infilitration into Bosnia was of course a non-issue after they allied themselves with the Bosniak forces.

And in point of fact it is not the Toronto Star that is saying that the Scorpions were directed out of Belgrade, but the Hague Prosecutors, who no doubt have an interest in buttressing their flimsy case with some shocking film footage, so that they can further manipulate public opinion, and finesse a genocide verdict against Milosovic. The star is merely parroting the Hague.

Doesn't anyone find it odd that NATO went to war in Kosovo justified by what Louise Arbour characterized as a "iron clad case" of genocide in Kosovo, only later to have add new charges linking Miolsevic to Srebrenica because the original charges were so obviously preposterous?

That little sand castle your standing on gets smaller and smaller, and has fewer and fewer people on it with each turning of the tide.

Rolie Keith

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What is crucial to have happen then, is that the unjustified moral certitude that that has resulted in the demonization and vilification of Yugoslavia and its nationalist President Milosevic cease, and be replaced by a rational discourse to enable a fair and just solution to be agreed to.

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No doubt you will now tell us that Rollie Keith is not a reliable source because he is a defrocked former BC NDP candidate, and that proves his bias.

´This is a lynching´

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Milosevic may be a thug, but even a thug is entitled to a fair trial. A justice system that is not completely free from political influence undermines all notions of justice. To treat a political court as if it were a real court is to give it a cloak of undeserved legitimacy.

Perception is nine-tenths of the law. The opening statement of Del Ponte and May´s silence show that the result is a foregone conclusion.

There is a famous maxim: "Justice should not only be done but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done." In the Hague, justice is manifestly and undoubtedly seen to be not done.

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[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

From the article linked by Cueball:

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U.N. war crimes prosecutors in The Hague, Netherlands, on Tuesday showed a 1999 police document that says the Scorpions were a part of the Serbian Special Anti Terrorist Unit and not a vigilante group seeking to help ethnic Serbs as Milosevic has claimed.

The document earlier was shown on Belgrade's independent B-92 television.

War crimes prosecutors contend the unit was part of Serbia's regular police from the early 1990s. Directly linking Milosevic with wartime atrocities is vital for the prosecutors' case against him.

When presented with the document in court, defense witness Obrad Stevanovic, who was deputy interior minister during Milosevic's rule, said he didn't doubt its authenticity, but insisted only some of the Scorpions' members were regular police officers.

The Scorpions, some 150 shaven-head men, gained international notoriety last week with the televising of a gruesome video that showed gunmen identified as unit members kill six Slavic Muslim prisoners near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.

After the broadcast, Serbia's leaders acknowledged for the first time that their country had a role in the slaughter of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys after Serb forces captured Srebrenica, the worst mass killing in Europe since World War II.

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Originally posted by swallow:
But the Hague prosecutors are not the ones saying the Scorpions are linked to the Milosevic government. A Serbian police document revealed on B92 (independent Serbian media) is saying it. The Hague prosecutors are simply taking advantage of the new evidence to enter some of their old evidence and thereby bolster their case. In fact, it appears the link is not even disputed. The only argument given appears to be over how much of a link there was.

From the article linked by Cueball:

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Sure. As I said before: Were there members of Serb regular army and police units operating in Bosnia during the war? Of course. Could Milosevic have stopped them even if he had wanted to? Probably not.

After the slaugter in Krajina I have no doubt that thousands and thousands of Serbs from all the Serb enclaves, and Serbia proper went to Bosnia. I am sure they went there with vengence on their minds. Post men, mechanics, soliders, journalists, house wives, police officers and people from all walks of life. And I am sure that they blodd in there hearts and did not care who they killed, Croats or the Croats Bosniak allies.

My point is that it was NATO's responsibility to defend the Krajina Serbs. Not only did they not do that, but it appears as if the most powerful NATO member may have green lighted the military operation, and provided air support to an operation in which a massacre took place. Did those people in the Whitehouse necessarily expect a massacre. Possibly, possibly not.

They must have at least know it was possible.

But if you are going to charge that Slobodan Milosevic is responsible for the massacre in Srebrenica because he green lighted the military operation in which the massacre took place, then you also have to apply the same standard to US State department officials. Did Milosovic necessarily expect a massacre. Possibly, possibly not.

He must have at least known it was possible.

There is a clear double standard here. This is especially so, since both events are so closely linked, and in all likelyhood had the ethnic cleansing not happened in Krajina, Serb tempers would not have been so inflamed, and Srebrenica might not have happened either.

It is as if justice in the Hague only applies to forward of June 1995.

[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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A number of MPRI's current international contracts are directly established with foreign governments. Each has in place a license from the U.S. Department of State. MPRI conducts Democracy Transition Assistance Programs, Long Range Management Programs, and Military Stabilization Programs involving the training and equipping armies around the world. As part of these programs, MPRI established and runs Simulation Centers and a Combat Training Center. A wide range of programs is ongoing in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

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MPRI

and further...

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Republic of Croatia Army Readiness Training System (CARTS) Program: Building on the foundation of LRMP and DTAP, MPRI devised and assisted the government of Croatia in the implementation of an Army wide system of readiness analysis, evaluation, and validation, improving Army capabilities, enhancing planning, and maximizing resource management.

[SNIP]

Military Stabilization Program (Train and Equip) for The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina: MPRI’s Military Stabilization Program (MSP) was initiated in early August 1996 to assist the Federation Armed Forces (FAF) with the development of their military structure, the fielding of military equipment and the conduct of a broad-based individual and unit training program. This assistance is being provided, through an international effort led by the United States, to improve the Federation’s military capabilities.

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Corporate senior management includes:

General (Ret.) Carl E. Vuono (President) 1
General (Ret.) Ronald H. Griffith (Executive Vice President) 2
Colonel (Ret.) Stephen E. Inman (Chief Financial Officer)

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1) Vuono, oversaw both the Gulf War and the Panama invasion as army chief of staff.

2)Ronald H. Griffith, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army

Taking Expertise Around the World

Also on the board: Thurman, headed the U.S. Southern Command during the Panama invasion; Kroesen, (board chairman,) used to command all U.S. forces in Europe (can you say NATO ) Hardisty, another board member, served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff and headed the U.S. Pacific Command. He also serves on the CIA's military advisory panel.

"We've got more generals per square foot here than in the Pentagon." - Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Ed Soyster

Soyster is MPRI's operations chief, and a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

MPRI: Washington's New Private Army

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Given its rapid expansion and its already deep and far- reaching presence, MPRI is a major new force to be reckoned with. It has influence in the most sensitive reaches of the U.S. government, and in many foreign governments as well.

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And as if that is not enough: Colombia:

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In cooperation with the government of Colombia and the United States government, MPRI provided advice and assistance in developing specific plans and programs to assist the Ministry of Defense and the armed forces of Colombia in institution building, long range planning, and interagency cooperation to enhance their counter drug capabilities. [MPRI website]

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[ 08 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by swallow:

Hopefully the videotape will start to erode this denial epidemic.

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It's hardly denial. Having spoken to Bosnian Serbs, Croats and Muslims face to face (thru an interpreter of course) they are quite proud of their respective groups actions during the war, atrocities and all.

Bosnia is a country that has been in a simmering conflict for hundreds of years. few people have been able to keep peace, and one notable person was able to almost create a paradise.

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MANJACA, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Bosnian Serb army has dismissed 553 conscripts for refusing to take an oath of loyalty to the Bosnian central state.

The recruits were the first since the 1992-95 civil war to be asked to take an oath to the Bosnian state, which includes a semi-independent Serb unit, the Republika Srpska, and a Muslim-Croat Federation.

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One trial monitor effortlessly tracked down the testimony of a Krajina Serb official from October 2003, indicating that the Scorpions were a mercenary/militia outfit established in 1992 and fighting in Bosnia. Only some individual members of the unit later volunteered for anti-terrorist operations in Kosovo, and were indeed on Serbian police payroll – in 1999. Two of them were found guilty of murdering Albanian civilians; one is in prison, the other fighting extradition in Canada. That the Scorpions as a unit were never part of the Serbian police was confirmed by General Obrad Stevanovic, former assistant police minister currently testifying at the Milosevic trial.

But to claim that a 1999 document listing several former Scorpions members as belonging to the Serbian police is "proof" that the unit – or the individuals – were in police pay four years earlier is patently absurd.

[SNIP]

Yet the Serbs actually waited for Srebrenica Muslims to surrender. They evacuated the women, children, and the elderly they found at the Potocari UN camp. Serbia itself sheltered some 800-plus Muslim refugees from Srebrenica. And in another Muslim enclave that fell just a few days later, Zepa, there was no massacre. Even assuming, arguendo, that the recorded act of the Scorpions was somehow standard practice for the POWs taken in the attempted breakout from Srebrenica, or even that Serb forces preferred not to take prisoners, such atrocities do not amount to genocide. But "breaches of the Geneva convention" doesn't sell newspapers and TV ads; it doesn't justify invasions and occupations, nor the creation of Imperial inquisitions out of thin air. "Genocide" and "worst atrocity since the Nazis" do.

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I'm not sure how much I like this guy, it seems more arguement than fact, but I thought the perspective and some of the details are intersting. There is more in the original about the background of the people who uncovered the tape. They have been involved in a lot of the stuff that has come up in the Hague as "smoking gun" type evidence that has been undermined with close examination.

People who know the case will remember the "Freezer truck" with no bodies in it.

[ 09 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I haven't mentioned Croatian militias in this thread.

In other threads, I have said that I think Tudjman (of Croatia) was a war criminal whose death caused him to escape prosecution.

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With respect, people pointing to what NATO did months or years after these murders is hardly a reason not to prosecute those responsible.

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No one on these boards has been arguing what NATO did months or years *after* these murders but what they did *before* and *during* as well as *after* and *now*.

The argument was that the US and its NATO allies deliberately supported the conflict which lead to these attrocities on all sides and it was not Milosevic who initiated the conflicts which lead to these attrocities. The argument is not only was the US instrumental in backing secessionist forces that caused the conflict but that also supplied weapons to the war criminals on the other side.

This is what our own Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia said at about these events

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As former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia during the crisis, Bisset had direct experience of the crisis and has been extensively involved in Balkans affairs, making him a leading authority on the subject. The former Ambassador testifies that U.S.-led Western policy systematically resulted in the aggravation of conflict in the former Yugoslavia, thus directly contributing to the eruption of war.

“During my period in Yugoslavia as the Canadian Ambassador I witnessed how time and time again it was interference from the Western powers that did little to bring a non-violent and diplomatic solution to the problems of Yugoslavia. On the contrary, Western involvement complicated an already complex problem and ensured that a peaceful settlement among the several parties became impossible. American and Western European policy driven by selfish domestic issues contributed directly to the bloodshed and violence that tore the Yugoslav Federation apart. As Yugoslavia began to experience the first signs of disintegration the United States policy of indifference and later ambiguity encouraged the extremists on all sides and undermined the authority of the central government.”

In a damning indictment of U.S. policy in the Balkans, former Ambassador Bisset further reported that:

“[I]t was the United States that undermined every subsequent peace initiative that might have brought an end to the killing. The Vance/Owen and later the Owen/Stoltenberg peace plans were both subverted by the Americans so that the fighting was prolonged… It appeared that the United States was determined to pursue a policy that prevented a resolution of the conflict by other than violent means.”[5]

...
Bisset notes, for instance, that:

“Germany’s determination to reassert its dominance in the Balkans led it to encourage and support Slovene and Croatian independence. Chancellor Kohl’s insistence that Slovenia and Croatia be recognized as independent states was the death sentence for Yugoslavia. Sadly it was also the death sentence for many thousands of Serbs and Croats.”[8]

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In an interview with Bisset

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What is the biggest misconception of the war in the former Yugoslavia that people in the West have?

The US led NATO powers have done a masterful job through manipulation of the popular media of blaming the Serbs and Milosevic for everything that happened since the breakup of Yugoslavia. They have been able to convince the people in the West that Milosevic and the Serbs not only broke up Yugoslavia, but also are responsible for all the killings and ethnic cleansing. This is a very scary thing. It shows how easy public opinion can be manipulated. That is why it is important for the truth to come out.

Already we see that people have forgotten Kosovo. It is no longer a subject of interest to the media. Over 2000 Serbs have been murdered in Kosovo since NATO and the UN took over and not one person has been charged. Almost all the non-Albanian population has been forced to leave Kosovo. Yet, not a word of complaint about ethnic cleansing. Albanians have burned or blasted down over 150 Christian churches, some of them treasures from the 12th and 13th centuries. Not a word of protest from Christian leaders in the USA and Canada. How can this be explained?

We are dealing here with double standard and the manipulation of western public opinion. It is shocking and frightening. This is why the Tribunal in The Hague must be discredited because if it is not - its files and testimonies will form an important part of the historical record. Unfortunately it seems obvious that Milosevic's guilt has already been ordained by the Americans. And they represent as we know the most powerful nation in the world.

[Excerpts from the interview with the former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, James Bissett, September 27, 2004]

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Ignoring the fact that powerful states such as the US and Germany used their leverage to obstruct peace and support elements that caused the conflict and that all of this lead to the events which prolonged the wars as well as the conditions for all these attrocities is the most irresponsible thing a western progressive activist who cares about world events can do.

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Yes, NATO are the bad guys.
Meanwhile, in the real world,

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Jeff, in the real world, our responsibility lies in using our democratic power in stopping our own governments in causing these conflicts and pushing them to use their leverage to find epaceful democratic solutions, which in the Yugoslavian case were readily available.

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Tom, you've in effect outlined a counter-narrative to the one you critique -- one offered by many people who are critical of the ICTY process. The things you state as fact, such as the intent of Izetbegovic, are in the view of many people not accurate -- and they're at least disputable, if you remember the first thread we have on Izetbegovic.

But i'm not looking for another arguemnt over the facts by saying this. I'd rather look at it this way: since you've raised the very interesting point about attempts to build narratives, don't you think the counter-narrative also needs to be read critically? I'll grant that these narratives are not of equal power, but the narrative you're offering is one that, for instance, gives very short shrift to the multicultural community of Sarajevo which was so utterly destroyed. It seems to reduce people in the region to little more than puppets of "NATO imperialism." I think the NATO attack gave a great deal of ammuntion to the counter-narrative by allowing Milosevic to appear as victim. But mostly i think these two narratives need to come into dialogue with one another a little bit.

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First, I think what we should be doing is looking ourselves in the mirror and expect frmo ourselves what we expect others to do. In the Yugoslvian case the US and NATO bear much responsibility not all of course but they were instrumental in provoling this human catastrophe. Moreover, we could have done so much to mitigate this catastrophe from the begining. This is the true lesson here. Yes, we can say that there is counter-narrative and we should look at all things in a critical way of course, but Swallow don't you think our primary concern should be for our own actions? Especially, if these actions have the power over life and death. I think that events show that the US followed by NATO suported parties and actions that lead to the outbreak of war and stood in the way of peace settlements that as I mentioned were readily available.

I am not saying that the people in the region were not responsible, of course they were. I believe that there would have been a war in Bosnia if the US and NATO did not meddle in that state. Everyone who has even superficial knowledge of the Blakans and the history of Yugoslavia knew that once Titoism collapsed the old ethnic conflicts would resurface. I don't believe that these views were majoritarian, they were the extremists but they seized the vaccum. So this adds to the point I am making, we knew that Yugoslavia was created to keep the pece in the ethnically diverse Balkans and if it would be dismembered there would be an invevitable war, just look at the Map Cueball posted. Hence, we should have done the repsonsible thing and tried to negotiate a fair settlement between the Republics. Not only was that not done, but the US and NATO actually supported the unilateral secessionists as well as armed them and to top it all off obstructed readily available agreements (that Milosevic was ready to support) and that the Tudjman and Izetbegovic would have supported with pressure from their backers (the US and Germany). Instead the US did the opposite, escalating and prolonging the conflict and then fully participating in it, as such bear great responsibility for war crimes not in 1999 but from the onset of the conflict. Not only that a but a media propaganda campaign of this civil war was launched to demonize one side while ignoring the crimes of the other and finally an ad hoc tribunal was set up to blame Milosevic as the one who started this whole thing.

And this is mostly for Jeff, do you not think that our role was pivotal, do you not think that the Milosevic trial only serves to whitewash this pivotal role, do you not do think that we should expose all of this and that this direction is what can stop such events in the future in this real world?

As for Izetbegovic's pivotal role (from the first link above):

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Although this agreement would have prevented the war, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees, “Washington sabotaged this original agreement by telling the Bosnian regime of Alija Izetbegovic that it could get much more - possibly domination of the whole region - with U.S. backing,” as Sara Flounders reports. “The U.S. role in destroying the carefully crafted agreement is acknowledged by all sides. The U.S. government officially encouraged Izetbegovic [head of the Party for Democratic Action] to unilaterally declare a sovereign state under his presidency”.[9] Jose Cutileiro, Secretary-General of the Western European Union, further observed that “the Muslims reneged on the agreement” signed at Lisbon which was to be the basis for future negotiations. “Had they not done so, the Bosnian question might have been settled earlier, with less loss of (mainly Muslim) life and land.” But Cutileiro adds the important fact that the decision to renege on the signed agreement at Lisbon did not issue forth from the Bosnian President alone: “To be fair, President Izetbegovic and his aides were encouraged to scupper that deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state [by Western mediators]”.[10] The Washington Times specified that: “The (Lisbon) agreement was scuttled by hapless Mr. Zimmermann [then U.S Ambassador to Yugoslavia], who encouraged the Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, then signatory to the Lisbon Agreement, to reverse himself and withdraw”.[11] The problem with the West’s policy was that by recognising Bosnia as an independent state under the March referendum, they immediately subjected Bosnia to war, since in the words of the New York Times: “Bosnian Serbs [had] boycotted [the referendum on Bosnian independence], warning that it was a prelude to civil war”.[12]

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The New York Times reported the role of United States in sabotaging this agreement, which under the circumstances was probably the only peaceful alternative:

“Leaders of the three ethnic factions [Serbs, Croats, Muslims] agreed to [a partition of Bosnia] just before the outbreak of the Bosnian war. Meeting in Lisbon on March 18, 1992, under the auspices of the European Community, [the three ethnic leaders] agreed to partition the republic into three ethnically based cantons, which were to have been loosely joined in a confederation that would function as a sovereign state... On returning to Sarajevo, [Bosnian Muslim leader] Mr. Izetbegovic was encouraged by United States and European Community diplomats to choose instead a sovereign Bosnia and Herzegovina under his presidency, saying that this was justified by the referendum on March 1 on independence.”

On 29 February to 1 March 1992, the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina voted for independence. “The problem with that referendum”, observes America’s ‘newspaper of record’, “was that although the Bosnian Muslims and Croats overwhelmingly endorsed it, the Bosnian Serbs boycotted it, warning that it was a prelude to civil war”.[13]

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So the US deliberately participated in events that lead to the war and also stood in the way of agrrements that would have lead to a peaceful arrangement then they escalated the attorcity by militarily supporting one side that was committing crimes and demonizing another side that was also causing attrocities but that was also the victim of attrocities. Is this the type of world we want. Well, the Milosevic trial garantees this.

For the comments on control on the ground. I sated that no leader had full control of what was going onthe ground and that weapons were coming from various intermediaries as well. If weapons supply is the criteria then many governments should be in accused box.

This is not a trial to prosecute those who committed attrocities, this is a trial to prosecute a Leader who did not comply with US demands, that is it. Every crime that was caused or wasn't will be thrown at him to prove this point. This is merely political. Furthermore, the events show that Milosevic was always ready to negotiate and was not instransigent and was not a suporter of the Greater Serbia Myth or of a pure Serbian state.

Of course all committed crimes. But Clinton and Kohl were pivotal in their support of Tudjman's Izetbegovic's actions in starting the conlict that lead to so many deaths and refugees not Milosevic.

[ 09 June 2005: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

I do believe in focussing our critique on our own governments, but i believe it's vital to also critique other governments and stand in solidarity with civil society on the "other" side of these conflicts. If we oppose the US war on Iraq and refuse to admit the blindingly obvious fact that Saddam Hussein was a mass murderer, we have no credibility. If we spend all our time poking holes in the rhetoric of empire, and don't devote part of our effort to a clear critique of human rights vioaltions by the "other" side of whatever conflcit we're looking at, then we are making a pretty poor effort of building a better world. If we tear down the first sdmall faltering steps towards a world without impunity for war criminals, then we make it harder to create a world where ALL war criminals, including those on "our" side, are no longer free to kill and rape and torture.

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And there's the counter-narrative again.

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Well then it comes down to which story you believe and that responsibility falls on you. You have to look into these events and see how they unfolded and who did what and make up your mind if the story is that Milosevic provoked these conflicts or if the US and NATO acted as such and created the conditions for this civil war as well as escalating it and then bombing ceivilinas themselves. That's the first point.

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I do believe in focussing our critique on our own governments, but i believe it's vital to also critique other governments and stand in solidarity with civil society on the "other" side of these conflicts.

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Yes, we should have stood on the side of civil society from the begining. We should have prompted our governments to use thier leverage to be brokers in negotiations that would garantee the self determination of all the national groups in Yugoslavia as well as the territorial integrity of all the Republics as well as a negotiated settlement with respect to the relationship between these Republics. C'mon we knew about this problem since 1914, it is why the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was set up after the demise of both the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires. The precedent was there.

Did we stand with civil society? No we believed the demonization of one of the warring parties, we did not look into what our western governments were doing and all of this lead to the criminal bombing of other human beings by NATO from the sporadic bombing of 1993 that helped cleanse Krajina (Dalmatia) of Serbs to the bombing of Belgrade's hospitals, bridges, schools, churches, factories, power plants and houses with deplpeted uranium and cluster bombs and finally setting up this tribunal to legitimize what happened and worse what will come.

We can go on all day with narrative and counter-narrative, it is a question of taking the time and looking at the evidence. The NY Times honestly reported the sequence of events, then ignored their reporting please see what I posted. We've debated the speeches at Kosovo field and then when we see the words well it's somthing else. We've debated the pictures of the death camps in Bosnia
It is a matter of looking into the facts and trusting your judgement.

Now why should we look at ourselves first and foremost. Maybe, bcs we happen to be the most powerful states in the world and that we can use tat power responsibly like brokering a deal within a civil conflict as we did in Lisbon concerning BiH or saying the hell with it let's make a war as the US later did as is cited above (and them decided to do more bombing themselves).
With great power comes great responsibility, since we live in free democratic societies this repsonsibilty falls on us.

Had we known what the US and Germany were concocting in Yugoslavia, I believe a mass movement could have influenced our governments to act differenlty and the results would have also been much different especially for the victims of this human catastrophe.

I really don't think by informing ourselves and agitating so that our western governments don't deliberately destroy a country and finance a civil war and actually use their power to broker an readily availbale agreement is not ignoring the crimes of other governments or not standing with civil society. I am not talking about intellectual criticism I am actually talking about activism. The other side, those who bought into the demonization and it was the Serbs' fault propaganda tacitely supported our covert crimes with respect to the breakup of Yugoslvia and prolongin the ethnic conflicts there and enthusiastically suported the covert "humanitarian" bombing of other human beings and finally they have patted themselves on the back for this great Tribunal that will bring international law back into world affairs whereas, those of us who have attacked it have done so because it functions to do the opposite. It is the court as well as the process. It is political nothing more and nothing less.

We can go all day on claiming narrative and counter-narrative it is all a matter of each individual informing themselves to the best of their abilities and acting accoringly.

I have tried, to bring as many things forward on this in the hope that progressive people do not sleep walk into tacitely supporting a purely imperial strategy.

That being said, a trust and reconciliation committee would be ideal. Of course, that cannot happen in the present circumstances (i.e the US would block it) but we can understand these issues in the *real world* and be ready to pre-empt such actions by the US and NATO, yes, they are the bad guys but so are we if we let them get away with this.

[ 09 June 2005: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

[ 09 June 2005: Message edited by: Tom Vouloumanos ]

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Originally posted by swallow:
That's a great example of the counter-narrative right there. It's as black and white as the NATO version. Serbian democracy campaigners and the current Serbian government, for example, are reduced to nothing more than "Empriue-supporting NGOs." Everything becomes about the machinations of Empire: local people lose all agency in this telling.

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I more or less pointed that out, and established its value only in that it brings specific facts to light, which I don't think you will dispute. The first think I noted was that it was overpolemicized.

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I will only respond to one point: one of the posters claims that "my narrative" ignores the actions of Croatian militias, and is thus unfair to Milosevic.
I haven't mentioned Croatian militias in this thread.

In other threads, I have said that I think Tudjman (of Croatia) was a war criminal whose death caused him to escape prosecution.

His death, though, should not interfere with the prosecution of others, such as Milosevic, who committed war crimes.

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Yes Jeff, we know that you avoid ever talking about the Croatian militias, or Tujdman (how fortunate for you that he is dead,) or the link between the Croatian massacre of Serbs at Krajina, (by forces trained by MPRI operating under US state Department licence with US-NATO air support) and Serbian war crimes in Srebrenica.

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When constructing narratives, it is also useful to examine the links of each narrative to see whether the same standard is being used to judge the behaviour of each party.

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-- Jeff House

This is so true, that it bears repetition.

Of course we don't want to spend to much time talking about Krajina, NATO, Trudjman, the US State Department, when we are trying to convict Solobodan Milosovic on the basis that he is part of a "joint criminal enterprise," in Srebrenica and elsewhere, because to actually enter a discussion of those events that pre-date Srebrenica by some months we might actually discover a "joint ciminal enterprise," that reaches quite a bit beyond the conveniently small jusridiction of the ICTY, and ends up at some Barrister's super club in Washington.

Nor is it convenient, I guess, to speak to much of that, because the events at Krajina, served to break what had been an uneasy quasi-truce and escalate the conflict into a new a brutal phase of ethnic slaughter, unlike what had gone before.

As Mandel says (this also bears repeating) in the case of Kosovo:

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The point we want to make is that, whatever the explanation, most of these crimes would not have been committed and most of the victims would be alive today if not for NATO's bombing. Nothing remotely like this had occurred in the three years of civil conflict that preceded the war, and nobody is saying anything like it would have occurred but for NATO's belligerence.

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[ 09 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Swallow, I find very little denial in the Serbian community. More I find genuine outrage expressed at the double standard enforce against them and their leadership.

I have a Serb friend who used to teach piano in Sarejevo whose fingers were deliberately crushed by a Bosnian Muslim militia man during a sexual assault, or so she says. This during the Bosnian war. Her comment was hardly one of denial, but a plea for balance. Her sailent comment was "Everyone talks about what we did to them, no one talks about what they did to us."

Another friend who I spoke to recently about the footage of these executions simply said: "I never said we were saints." He's right. He never did.

Not denial, but the insistance on the existence of a Serbian narrative which is not entirely based on the absolute vilification that has been propogated to support NATO's war aims in the Balkans.

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As I've mentioned before on babble, I'm Serbian, and this reflects my reading of the majority Serbian opinion on the matter.

Swallow said: "Like Serbia's, where there has been a denial epidemic..."

Where is this "denial epidemic?" On what do you base this opinion?

I was in Serbia last summer, and while the war and its aftermath are still much discussed, I didn't meet a single person in Belgrade or in any of the rural areas where I have some family, who where in "denial" about Serbian war crimes. The general consensus was that there indeed were Serbian war crimes, which should be punished. But there is also a continued outrage, which I share, that the west and its compliant mainstream media have focused on Serbian war crimes to the almost complete exclusion of war crimes committed by the other major ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia.

For example, when "ethnic cleansing" is mentioned in relation to the Balkans, the average Westerner immediately thinks of Serbs as the cleansers. Yet the single greatest act of ethinic cleansing in the Balkans in this whole mess was done against the Serbs, in Krajina, where at least a quarter million people were violently expelled from their ancestral homes in a four day miliarty operation by Croatia's security forces with tacit approval of the US forces in the region. Where are the demands on rabble and in other progressive quarters for the immediate and unconditional return of these people to their homes? (And not just a few thousand elderly Krajina Serbs, which are all that have been allowed back.)

And speaking of denial, how is it that the now independent state of Croatia is welcomed among the world of nations without making apologies or reparations for its native fascist death camps in WWII where some 750,000 Serbs and 60,000 jews were slaughtered? Would Germany be allowed to get away with such a denial?

And now in Kosovo, Serbs continue to live in fear. Historical Serbian churches and monasteries continue to be destroyed. Where is the outcry to stop all this?

I think the more significant denial is among progressives who, like Hitchens and Ignatieff, uncritcally swallowed the propaganda churned out by America's and Europe's mainstream media in support of Balkan intervention, and now hold fast to their positions, seizing upon anything that supports it, ignoring anything that makes it suspect.

I find it remarkable that the progressives on this site and elsewhere, normally so skilled at seeing through official deception to identify underlying causes and motives, seem oblivious to the real reasons why America's war party bombed Serbia. As one writer so aptly put it, when the Balkans first started to disintegrate in the early nineties, champagne corks could be heard popping all over Washington, because this was an historic opportunity for the US to extend the life of the dying NATO by "proving" the post-cold war necessity of the transatlantic alliance (an Alliance which has a number of key economic benefits for the US).

The American media quickly took the cue from Washington, and with the help of top-level PR firms (Rudder Finn, et al), weaved the right kind of black/white, cowboys/indians narrative that would get average Joe America on board for the bombing. And many on the left, finding the human rights elements of the narrative irresistable, put aside their usual scepticism for imperial military actions, and signed on for the war as well.

Now, in the aftermath, progressives who supported the bombing mainly seek to defend their position. Krajina is a red herring. Jasenovac is a red herring. Kosovo's Orthodox churces are a red herring. My cousin's sister-in-law is a pediatric oncologist in Belgrade. She tells me that childhood leukemia in Serbia has risen ten-fold since the bombing, so loudly cheered by pro-active progressives, that used massive quantities of depleted uranium. But that's just a red herring.

I had the chance to drive through towns and villages of all three ethnic backgrounds. I may not be up to speed on who is responsible for starting the civil war or which party started the killings of civilians and burning villages to the ground however I can say that all three ethnic backgrounds took part in slaying each other.

There is a valley east of Tito Drvar, that is about 40 km long and about 10 km wide and every single building in every village was damaged if not destroyed. There was at least one type of ethnic village in the valley.

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Milosevic's arrest was a direct result of the military attack upon Serbia. How can you support as "legal" an indictment brought to trial through "illegal" means?

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Well, insert the usual "half a loaf is better than none" and "three wrongs don't make a right" arguments here. I mean, it's a rhetorical question, right?

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Milosevic's arrest was a direct result of the military attack upon Serbia.

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I thought the arrest of Milosevic occurred several years after the intervention in Yugoslavia.

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I think the denial that Serbian forces committed atrocities is part of a narrative constructed by the Milosevic regime to manufacture consent for its rule.

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Again this is yet another official version of what the Milosevic government said. Unlike Bosnia-Hercegovina, there is no debate that Milosevic had direct control over forces in Kosovo. Milosevic admitted in many instances that soldiers and police committed crimes such as summary excecutions, burning houses. In fact, ex-security chief Markovic during his testimony at the Hague stated this and added that hundreds of these criminals had been charged by the Yugoslav government at the time. This idea of Milosevic stating that Serbs never committed crimes is not true. (Part of) His defence has been that he nor the people under his control ever had such crimes as an official policy. Again, there's never been this denial epidemic just a more balanced view of what occured in that civil war.

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I thought the arrest of Milosevic occurred several years after the intervention in Yugoslavia.

I thought a new democratically elected government turned him over for war crimes prosecution

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Originally posted by swallow:

Well, insert the usual "half a loaf is better than none" and "three wrongs don't make a right" arguments here. I mean, it's a rhetorical question, right?

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Originally posted by jeff house:

I thought the arrest of Milosevic occurred several years after the intervention in Yugoslavia.

I thought a new democratically elected government turned him over for war crimes prosecution, [because they were threatened with denial of aid for their war torn country, a point of leverage used to this day. Even the election of the government is supect given the conditions of duress.]

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[Corrected to reflect the reality.]

[ 14 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Do think really think that the average person had a master plan for the country, no he / she saw that the Serb or Muslim beside them had a better farm so one day they decide they would take it by force

I think the whole conflict is based around a conflict that were started about 1000 years ago, it is base on greed, religious matters and the fact that all sides had something the other wanted.

Not everything that happens in this world is based around of grand scheme of global empires that is being ran by NATO.

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Originally posted by swallow:
Not so much wilful blindness, as an unwillingness to repeat circular arguments that have been rehashed any number of times here. There were Serbian democrats trying to overthrow Milosevic before NATO intervened, and they continued afterwards (although NATO set back their cause). I do not believe for a second that they acted only under US government pressure. These are people we're talking about, not puppets.

Hey, here's a thought. Let's make a babble corollory to Godwin's law. When you compare someone who disagrees with you to Macabee, the argument is over.

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I was comparing Mr. House to Macabee. And it si willful blindness not to see a firect link between NATo preassure and the removal of the Milosovic regieme. Albright announced that this option for the Serbian people was preferable. He removal was an explict STATED foreign policy goal. I can'r believe that you are denying that the bombing or post-war economic preassure had any relationship to the manner in which Serbians related to their government.

I mean realy Swallow, have you actually read anything about the subject? The fact that you don't seem to remember repeated public assertion by the Clinton adminstration that the removal of Milosovic was their goal?

You are right Webgear, conspiracies of that kind are way to hard to manage, but look at it this way:

For fifty years the United States led NATO in an explicit campaign to roll back the Iron Curtain. Within in that context a number of countries played a double game and managed to eek out a kind of neutrality. When the USSR collapsed it created a power vacuum and Yugoslavia became politcally and economically vulnerable to outside preassure.

In a sense you could think of the dismantling of Yugolslavia as geopolitical inertia.

Believing that the world is at the command of conpiracies is a foolish as believing that it is commanded completely without them.

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Originally posted by swallow:
I do not believe for a second that they acted only under US government pressure. These are people we're talking about, not puppets.

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Emphasis added.

[ 18 June 2005: Message edited by: swallow ]

But that does not mean that those same governments had entrenched interests that they served, and the former Yugolslavia was not a gulag. However the US was more than happy to tip the balance against the socialist government, and a lot of that was fair play. Bombing the country was not, and that more than anything else precipitated "regieme change," as we have come to call it.

Trying to pretend "regieme change" was entirely the the result of internal dissent is simply absurd. This fact calls into question the legitimacy of that regieme change and the so called "democrats" who took over.

Many of them aren't so excited by repeated bribes and manipulation used to get the country to offer people up for the tirbunal either, whatever they think, thought, would like to think about Milosovic. Mostly my impression is they would like to have the same internal soverienty enjoyed by most nations in the world, and that is the focal point of the complaint.

Most Serbs I know are about as fond of Madeline Albright as they of Milosovic, if that is any indication of where they stand politically.

[ 19 June 2005: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Tom Vouloumanos:
On the points that Webgear and Swallow raised, I would just like to add that I did state above that I believed that wars between the ethnic groups of Ex-Yugoslavia would have occured had there not been intervention (This is why Yugoslavia was created in the first place in order to keep the peace in the ethnically diverse Balkans yes between the peoples but also between competing foreign powers in the region). The wars could have been at least substantially avoided had the Green light not been given by Germany and the US as I have argued above. Milosevic probably did not have majority support but the electoral results were not just the free choice of people those elections were under threat, our western threat. The wars and sanctions and destabling of Ex-Yugoslavia created conditions in which like other civil wars, neighbours killed each other to get more land, or too revenge upon each other. The conditions were created by the war, the war was exacerbated by the West and it could have been substantially avoided. The trial serves only to legitimize the West's interventions and not find justice for the peoples of Yugoslavia who have been victimized. The statements I make should be looked at within the context of the other posts I've written. Nato does not have a grand conspiracy, it has geopolitcal interests and takes advantage of situations in order to meet those interests. People are not puppets but they are subjected to decisions of others. Let us not overstate what is being said here since there are many lessons for progressive activists to draw from the Yugoslav tragedy.

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One thing a person learns quickly, is that politicians tend to be human... Prone to mistakes, blunders and out right foul-ups.

The politicians fouled Bosnia up in a collosal way. Though, it is possible that it was with the best of intentions (I would hope that the idiots that said "sure seperate" did not have a clue about the cultural difficulties involved), it is just as possible that it was intentionally done (I will go with the former, the latter would depress the hell out of me).

It is the biggest lie put about by some that persons opposed to the Hague tribunal are Milosovic supporters, and also that, such as Swallow's off hand remark about "denial" that they also deny Serbian war crimes.

Nothing could be further from the truth. So of course I posted this link. Someday, take the time to read over what I have said on this issue in the past, and maybe you will see that some of the things that you think I think, I don't think, and that it is possible to have views wich are not pro-one side.

So one more time, my opposition to the process used in Yugoslavia is not about Serbs and Croats, but about setting in stone one-sided types of international law that are evaded by the powerful but never by the meek. Also, the idea that NATO or any other "alliance" has the right to intervene whereever they see fit.

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Originally posted by Cueball:
You really seem to have a problem thinking that my view may not be one formed on the basis of an ideological bias, but based on what I know, and what I have seen.

It is the biggest lie put about by some that persons opposed to the Hague tribunal are Milosovic supporters, and also that, such as Swallow's off hand remark about "denial" that they also deny Serbian war crimes.

Nothing could be further from the truth. So of course I posted this link. Someday, take the time to read over what I have said on this issue in the past, and maybe you will see that some of the things that you think I think, I don't think, and that it is possible to have views wich are not pro-one side.

So one more time, my opposition to the process used in Yugoslavia is not about Serbs and Croats, but about setting in stone one-sided types of international law that are evaded by the powerful but never by the meek. Also, the idea that NATO or any other "alliance" has the right to intervene whereever they see fit.

The results of all this can be seen in Baghdad. The first, set the precedent for the second.

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I'm hurt, here I was trying to compliment your fair mindedness and...well, ok, maybe just a bit of light needling added. I have read what you say Cueball, most of which makes some sense to me even if I strongly disagree and yes, I have learned to appreciate the more nuanced position you take, you don't fit the typical Marxist mold, but its not like I'm arguing that its All the Serb's fault Either or that the US intervention didn't have darker motives too. That's to be expected in politics, particularly the international kind.

I mostly just can't accept the idea of "Jihad" anymore than "McWorld," and since we're recognising more nuances now, there should also be recognition that not Everything the US does is predicated on some dark scheme of global domination either. Politics make strange bedfellows and policies can be decided on any number of factors, including public opinion, inter-departmental pressures, personal whims or rivalries that cut across the usual divides. Without recognition of that on the left our own analysis becomes flawed and stilted.

GW Bush doesn't recognise the court in the Hague either and the Republicans didn't support the Kosovo intervention, for example, but that of course doesn't demonstrate any actual link or coordination between them and the ultra-nationalist Serbian leadership. NATO was itself bypassed in the Iraq war, and is now almost irrelevent to the situation there, except possibly as an early test run. Whether it was crucial to what's happening now is doubtful. And the EU did remain mostly passive in the face of Serbian aggression earlier on, whatever reasons may or may not be attached to it.

What has to be shown by critics of the Kosovo campaign, now that Milosevic's links to the Serbian 'irregulars' has been more or less corroborated, is real Evidence that the EU and US actively undermined the many failed truces and/or that Croatia, Slovenia and others actually began the campaigns of ethnic cleansing -which Did happen, even if exaggerated somewhat in Kosovo. (which mainstreams also admitted before it was over) Something more substantial than some American bag man whispering in some Croat's ear or some Slovenian politicians declaring a desire for independence from the Serb dominated state. Takes more than that to decide these things; the rest of the world isn't always just passive pawns or victims to American/corporate manipulation. I think that's the central issue at hand now.

[ 21 June 2005: Message edited by: Erik the Red ]

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And the EU did remain mostly passive in the face of Serbian aggression earlier on, whatever reasons may or may not be attached to it.

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This is if one believes that Yugoslavia was broken up because of Serbian aggression. Erik, I think that you should look into the details of how Yugoslavia was broken up and who attacked who and why.

It's not a matter of whispering into someone's ears. But the geopolitical interests of WWI and WWII remained the same. Initially, the US did want to keep Yugoslavia together, many right wing Americans (Kissinger for example) have always disagreed with the US' geopolitical role in the Blakans that it will backfire at some point.

Of course there are long standing historical reasons that were never quite resolved between the peoples of Yugoslavia and it is precisely for this reason that great caution should have been taken to provide for a negotiated settlement as soon as Leninism collapsed.

That being said, let us look at the events. Tudjman declared unilateral independence and began removing Serbs from public office since they as well as many Croats were Federalists. The Serbs of the Krajina area did not agree with this unilateral independece and wanted to remain within multi-ethnic Yugoslavia and not become a minority within a new natinoalist Croatia. The memory of Jassenovac was still alive. Their worst fears were realized with 250,000 Serbs being ethnically cleansed from Krajina causing thousands of deaths. This delcaration of independece was actively supported by Kohl and the German leadership, to be recognized by the US later on. The EU was not supportive of it. Why? Bcs the unilateral secession of one Republic with a large minority from a Federation would tip the ethnic balance of the rest of the Federation. Hence, the Croats and Bosnian Muslims would now not want to be in a Serbian dominated federation.

Everyone knew that there would be civil war once Yugoslavia dissintegrated.

So comes Bosnia, which had a rotating presidency, as stated above Izetbegovic, the Bosnian Muslim leader was backed by the US not to pass on his Office to the Karadjic. So the Bosnian conflict began.

Muslim and Croat secessionist paramilitarties were backed by the US. Did they not commit war crimes? Did the not break the agreement signed in Lisbon for a swiss style canton system for BiH. Dod the US not support them? Didn't everyone know that this was a recipe for a bloody civil war?

The comes the Republic of Serbia, where an secessionist paramilitary movement, the KLA, attacked the Federal army which responded with equal brutality. The death toll according to NATO's own numbers was 2,000 people the victims were about 50% Albanian, 50% Serb and others. Belgrade made many proposals during the false Rambouillet period for an autonomous province within the Republic as well as NATO-Russian peacekeepers to negotiate such a settlement. The US bombed, and now under NATO the Serbian and Roma minorities have been ethnically cleanssed from Kosovo-Metohjia.

Then came the elections under US threat of sanctions and not receiving money to rebuild a once industrial country that was sent to the Dark Ages. By this times the US was also backing secessionist elements within Montenegro (this never went anywhere though).

It's not a matter of Dark goals or McWorld, but have you ever studied history and how greater powers interven in smaller states for their own interests. Yugoslavia was fragile because of its ethnic diversity and history.

A loose federation could have gotten some consensus but western powers never gave it a chance they actually exacerbated the violence.

I do not understand your story of the Serb agression. Do you believe it was the Serbs of Yugoslavia who proviked a war in order to seize as much land of the other Republics and create a greater Serbia. There are probably nationalist who wanted this but they were not in power. Milosevic was and he supported the idea of a loose confederatrion.

It is not true when you say that the links betwen the irregulars and the regime in Belgrade have been corroborated. The arguments in the Hague right now are that the Scorpion militias, which are undoubtedly war criminals, were not unde the interior ministry until 1999, 4 years afer that video. The scorpions were a paramilary group from Krajina. Nevertheless, my feeling is that everyone was giving weapons to anyone in the chaos of this bloody civil war. But I think we should really look at how the wars began, who did what to mitigate the attrocities and who did what to exacerbate.

Please look at the words of Mesic, who was the number 2 man in Croatia after Tudjman, and later Presisdent of Croatia. Andrej Grubacic, a libertarian socialist and no friend of Milosevic (he actually worked very hard to topple that authoritarian regime and has the bruises to show it) has written At the beginning of December 1991, Mesic, the author of the book "How we brought about the collapse of Yugoslavia", announced in the Croatian parliament: "I think my mission has been accomplished, Yugoslavia no longer exists ." Six months later, in May 1992, the late president Franjo Tudjman reminded those assembled in the Ban Josip Jelacic Square in Zagreb: "The war could not have happened had Croatia not wanted it. Had we not done it, had we not armed ourselves, we would not have achieved our goal!"

As for the influence of western countries on destroying Yugoslavia, I think they were instrumental. Germany wanted to reassert its influence and that could only be done via Slovenia-Croatia. The US was not keen on seeing Yugoslavia breakup since there would be much instability but later on, I think there was a relaization that the war could be managed. The US could not allow Germany (and through that the EU) to gain control over the Balkans, it also saw the opportunity of furthert isolating Russia from the region another tactical reason was that the US needed a "gift" to the Saudis and the Sheiks in the Emirates for their support in bombing Iraq and that gift could not be a palestinian state it could be a Muslim state in Europe though. This was also a tactical consideration. There were many competeing interests of course and this situations have always been histotically multifold, there is not a group of wise evil men planning these things in detail there are competing policies within the bureacracu and opportunities present themselves.

This is not too say again, that there would not have been conflict in the region without outside influence given the historical conflicts within the region.

BUT, western powers were pivotal in unilateral declaration of independence of Slovenia and Croatia without negotiated settlement even though history shows that there would be a war (as Mesic and Tudjman wanted of course to purify their new state). The Bosnian canton settlement was ursurped with US influence.

Nato bombed Serbia on the Kosovo issue even though there was a readily available agreement (unlike Rambouillet which was unconditional surrender, France tried to renogotiate but Nato started bombing)

The major crime of Milosevic was that he was not ready to fully dismantle the system of state enterprises wich also had some form of worker's management. Of course this does not make Milosevic a democratic sopcialist, he was a former communist apparatchik, his style of rule was authoritarian and clientelistic but nothing out of the ordinary in eastern europe or latin america, this was not a totalitarian by far. So this is what had to be destroyed along with Russian influence in the region.

Furthermore, NATO was 50 and needed à raison d'être so this was also behind the bombing.

In general US intervention within the Balkans would assert its influence in Eastern Europe (Western Europe's first third world) and push back Russian power as well as European power. Hence, removing any competeing power.

All of these have to be considered.