Bosnia and Herzegovina Presidency Chairman Željko Komšić highlighted that it is very important to preserve the strings connecting the immigrants and their home country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

CABINET OF BiH PRESIDENCY CHAIRMAN ŽELJKO KOMŠIĆ

  The policies of aggression and ethnic cleansing implemented by Serb forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992-1995 meet the terms defining the crime of genocide in Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide[i]

 In these resolutions, the United States government recognized that the premeditated and well-organized mass murders, rapes, forced detentions, torture, and forced expulsions of hundreds of thousands of defenseless Bosnian civilians as well as the wanton physical destruction of the Bosnian people’s ancient cultural, national, and religious objects and symbols that took place from 1992-1995 constituted a vicious genocidal campaign carried out by Serb forces intent on extirpating the native Bosnian population from its ancestral homeland. The passage of these landmark resolutions was a vital step in remembering the victims of genocide and thwarting the efforts of individuals and organizations intent on denying the Bosnian Genocide. History has shown that genocides that are not recognized, remembered, and discussed are inevitably denied, trivialized, and forgotten.

 It is disappointing that six years after the United States government formally recognized the Bosnian Genocide we rarely hear the American media and political establishments refer to it as such. Today we hear about the Rwandan Genocide, the Armenian Genocide, the Holocaust (the genocide against the Jewish people), the Cambodian Genocide, and even the genocide in Darfur but almost never do we hear the Bosnian Genocide mentioned or discussed by the media and our public officials. When the 1992-1995 genocidal campaign against Bosnian civilians is discussed in the media and in political circles we often hear about an “ethnic conflict”, about a “civil war”, about “ethnic cleansing”, about heinous atrocities committed against civilians because of their ethnicity or religion, and we hear about the “massacre” at Srebrenica – what we often don’t hear is the word genocide being used to correctly and succinctly describe the nature of the crimes committed and the intent of the perpetrators.

 Despite the fact that the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) have both rendered judgments[ii] that the atrocities committed by Serb forces in Srebrenica were acts of genocide as it is defined by international law[iii], members of the news media continue to misleadingly refer to it as a “massacre” more often then they refer to it as genocide. It’s rather shocking that more than a few well respected sources of news and information seem to think that the word massacre, which denotes an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people[iv], is in any way interchangeable with the word genocide which denotes a specific well defined international crime – considered to be the most heinous crime imaginable. Other well researched instances of genocidal mass slaughter of Bosnian civilians that took place in towns and villages like Visegrad, Foca, Prijedor, and Zvornik – just to name a few -are almost completely ignored. It seems that the entire four year genocidal military campaign intent on establishing an ethnically pure “Greater Serbian” fascist state that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians, resulted in the rapes of thousands of young girls and women, the forced displacement of millions, and the complete destruction of many priceless national, religious, and cultural treasures all over Bosnia-Herzegovina has been reduced by the American news media and political establishment to one horrifying incident in July of 1995 that is routinely referred to as being merely a large “massacre” of “Muslims” seemingly separate and disconnected from all other then ongoing  and ideologically connected genocidal massacres against the Bosnian people. We need to start thinking of the genocide committed in Srebrenica as being to the Bosnian Genocide what the Auschwitz extermination camp was to the Holocaust – one preeminent and visceral example of a much larger genocidal campaign. It’s unfortunate that the solid evidence that has been collected over the past decade and a half proving that genocide took place, the international court rulings that unequivocally state that it did, and the national as well as international resolutions that formally acknowledge that it did are all seemingly ignored by a majority of those charged with informing the American public.

 By avoiding the use of the word genocide to correctly describe what took place in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992-1995, most American journalists, editors, and public officials are knowingly or unknowingly trivializing the Bosnian Genocide and are thereby opening the door to historical revisionism and genocide denial.   

 Public officials and members of the news media can and must do a better job of presenting the truth about what happened in Bosnia-Herzegovina to the American public and informing themselves and their respective audiences about the genocide that was committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina as well as all other historical and currently ongoing instances of genocide. Our ability to prevent future genocides from taking place depends on us recognizing and learning from those that took place in the past.

 For the sake of serving the truth, upholding justice, and working towards a future free from genocide and mass atrocities against civilians it is time for the 1992-1995 genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina to be fully recognized, for it to be referred to by its proper name, for the American public to be informed about it, for its victims to be honored and remembered, for its perpetrators to be brought to justice, and for its painful lessons to be learned and applied – it’s time we started talking about the Bosnian Genocide.  

Endnotes

[i]  Senate Resolution 134 passed by the 109^th Congress

   House Resolution 199 passed by the 109^th Congress

[ii] ICTY court ruling: By seeking to eliminate a part of the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Serb forces committed genocide. They targeted for extinction the 40,000 Bosnian Muslims living in Srebrenica, a group which was emblematic of the Bosnian Muslims in general. They stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and young, of their personal belongings and identification, and deliberately and methodically killed them solely on the basis of their identity.

   ICJ court ruling: The Court concludes that the acts committed at Srebrenica falling within Article II (a) and (b) of the Convention were committed with the specific intent to destroy in part the group of the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina as such; and accordingly that these were acts of genocide, committed by members of the VRS in

[iii] In Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

• (a) Killing members of the group;
• (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
• (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
• (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
• (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

 [iv]  Oxford Online English Dictionary defines massacre as an “indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people”

To the Nobel Prize Committee for Literature

Letter of appeal to deny Nobel Prize nomination for Dobrica Cosic

The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), Institute for Research of Genocide Canada (IRGC), and Bosnian-American Institute for Genocide and Education (BAGI), on behalf of victims of crimes of aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, voice their concern over possible proposal to the Committee of the Nobel Prize that Dobrica Cosic be awarded a prestigious award for literature. Such a proposal would not only be an insult to the Nobel Prize institution, but also a moral blow and insult to mankind and civilization in general.

Dobrica Cosic is the well known creator of the Serbian policy of aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and genocide against Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Sandzak. He is the creator of an agreement between the Serbia and Croatia (agreement Milosevic – Tudjman) on “humane” displacement of Croats and persecution of Bosniaks from the Bosnian Posavina region, so that it could be inhabited by Serbs, which would ensure that the corridor between Belgrade and Banja Luka is inhabited exclusively by Serbs. By creating the ideology of “Greater Serbia” and practical application of such an ideology within the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cosic’s crimes of aggression and genocide were adopted and recognized as a legitimate means of achieving nationalist policies, whose ultimate goal was for all Serbs to reside in one state. UN Declaration on Genocide expressly qualifies as a genocidal crime any displacement or coercion of any national, religious or cultural communities to abandon their traditional place of living forcefully moved to another location.

The creator of the biggest crimes against humanity at the end of the twentieth century, created in a criminal Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences recently stated that the President of the Republika Srpska, a smaller of the two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Milorad Dodik, is a pragmatic politician with lifestyle awareness about the dangers that await creation genocidal warrior and a willingness to defend the acquired state. To the victims of crimes of aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, these statements are reminiscent of the war drums of the 1990s after which the Bosnian land was devastated with more than a hundred thousand killed, tens of thousands of people tortured in concentration camps, tens of thousands of women raped, more than one million people expelled, and tens of thousands of Bosniak historical monuments and symbols destroyed.

This disqualifies Dobrica Cosic for the Nobel Prize, which has traditionally been a significant recognition of high significance based on highest moral standards. If Cosic were to be awarded the Nobel Prize, it would mean rewarding the strategic and ideological creators of aggression and genocide. Nobel Prize institutions would then be permanently tarnished, and lose all moral significance. This would give the impetus to create a new crime of aggression and genocide.

Dobrica Cosic’s entire political action was centered on creating an environment in which ultra-nationalism and policies of aggression can be executed to achieve their objectives at the painful expense of all others in the region. On behalf of hundreds of thousands of victims of crimes of aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we ask the Committee for the Nobel Prize not to take into consideration the nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature for Dobrica Cosic.

Sincerely,

Haris Alibasic, MPA, President
Congress of North American Bosniaks
www.bosniak.org

Prof. Emir Ramic, President
Institute for Research of Genocide Canada
www.instituteforgenocide.ca

Sanja Seferovic-Drnovsek J.D, MEd, Chair
Bosnian American Genocide Institute and Education Center
www.baginst.com

Author: Haris Alibasic, MPA, PhD Candidate

Comparing Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia) and the U.S. in terms of governance and public policy is a very challenging task even though some of the key elements of Bosnia’s political, legal, economic and judicial systems were created by the U.S. administration. In terms of evaluating the current system of Bosnia and Herzegovina it is important to review the United States’ system of governance and its basic democratic principles.

The long term success of the US style of democratic governance can also be attributed to years of trial and error attempts and a somewhat bloody history of civil rights for all American citizens. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s current political and legal system is a result of a war which ravaged the country and the hastily constructed Dayton Peace accord. Even one of the main creators and chief negotiators during the negotiations, the now late Richard Holbrooke, acknowledged the shortfalls of the Dayton Peace agreement regretting not to have made “a stronger effort to drop the name Republika Srpska” and further clarifying that the US administration “underestimated the value to Pale of retaining their blood-soaked name” (Holbrooke, 1999, p. 135).

In order to define representative democracy, constitutional democracy, and republic, one must look into the historical development of these core democratic principles, as well as the current context, and some examples of failed federalism. There are many examples of failed federalism namely in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The balance needed to sustain the different interests of states which entered into union shifted from federal to state interest. Roust and Shvetsova (2007) argue that “only the states with well-developed (properly institutionalized) democratic electoral competition have a chance to form a resilient federal union and sustain their federal constitutional arrangement not just in form, but in their political practice as well” (p.245). This cannot be accomplished in purely singular political systems, where one party rules, as was the case in both of the above-mentioned countries. China will soon face similar problems as well as other non-pluralistic societies.

While constitutional democracy guarantees a contract between the federal government, states and constituents, representative democracy provides for election of representatives who answer to the will of the majority of the populous. But due to the dynamic expressed through the type of federal government the United States offers, the necessary checks and balances are obtained through balance of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. This view is further supported with the following statement that “the government of the moderns is not defined by election per se, but by the relations between the participation and representation (society and the state), instituted by elections” (Urbinati, 2006, p. 8).

McCoy (2001) contends that “The United States is a federal republic instead of liberal democracy” (p. 12). The United States’ success can be attributed to the governance and strength of states in providing effective republic. As put by Lovett (2006) “The significance of the rule of law for republican liberty …in the classical republican tradition, this was expressed as the “empire of law” ideal—the notion that in a free republic laws, not men, rule” (p. 17) This rule of law is best expressed in the United States, where sometimes the desire of the majority is overruled by the Supreme Court or other court decisions, as seen in the example of the Arizona Immigration Law or the recent zoning decision allowing the Islamic Cultural center to be built two blocks away from Ground Zero in New York. This is despite objection from the majority of the population in the United States, if we are to trust national polls.

The necessary adjustment in dynamic relations between the state, local and federal government is best evidenced in many government programs. Boyd (1997) explains American federalism in a historical context and states “In 1981 Congress passed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act that consolidated a number of social programs into nine block grants, which allowed for greater state and local autonomy and flexibility in the fashioning of local strategies to address federal objectives” (para. 20). This change is further enhanced with the new American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and the way funding is redistributed to the state and local governments and as argued by Gordon (2010) “Yet, the stimulus act may contain the seeds of a new fiscal federalism” as it “targeted funds to local economic conditions and required extensive, some say intrusive, reporting” (para. 6). He concludes that “These innovations may hold lessons for the design of an ongoing countercyclical assistance program, a ‘Federalism 2.0’” (Gordon, 2010, Para 6). This makes sense in an ongoing dynamic of give and take and redefined roles of the state and federal governments.

In the above context, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s current complex political system faces insurmountable challenges. This is especially difficult for a relatively small country in Europe, which gained its independence from Yugoslavia in a referendum conducted in 1992 and was recognized by the United Nations, European Union, United States and almost every country in the world soon afterwards (Malcolm, 1994, p. 234). Bosnia survived the tragic “genocidal aggression” and atrocities in the period of 1992-1995, which resulted in over 100,000 dead as reported by various sources and countless injured (Weine, 1999, p. 139; Nettelfield, 2010, p. 97). The Dayton Peace agreement stopped the war and “stipulated the Bosnian constitution” but it “established a highly decentralized state, with weak, sometimes non-existent state-level institutions” (European Forum for Democracy and Stability, 2010, p. 1; Juncos, 2005, p. 92). The Office of the High Representative (OHR) was created as “an ad hoc international institution responsible for overseeing implementation of civilian aspects of the accord ending the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (OHR, 2010, para.1).

The United States’ administration under former President Clinton led the efforts at stopping the war in Bosnia and supported the post war political, legal, economic, and infrastructure rebuilding efforts. Most of Bosnia’s post-war political system, its governance and public policy structures are a complex mixture of efforts to appease various regional players, the United Nations, the EU, and the U.S.. European Forum for Democracy and Stability (2010) reports that Bosnian and Herzegovina’s “political system is a complex and an inefficient one” with “a highly decentralized state with weak state institutions” and “an unhappy mixture of a parliamentary, presidential and half presidential political system” ( p.1). Bosnia and Herzegovina, with its complex voting mechanism and political system which requires that “each political unit has its own governing body, accumulating to 700 elected state officials and more than 140 ministers” is still considered a democracy (European Forum for Democracy and Stability, 2010, p.1).

Fifteen years after Dayton was signed there have been recent calls for reforms and revisions to the Dayton agreement in order to provide for a more robust political system and to enable Bosnia to join the European Union. The Congress of North American Bosniaks (2010), the largest Bosnian American and Canadian organization, called upon the United States government to lead efforts to change the current structure and stated that “the most glaring need and obstacle to Bosnia’s long term peace, progress, and stability are the constitutional reforms,” which are necessary for Bosnia to join the EU (para. 2). The United States Institute for Peace (USIP) Vice President Serwer (2009) in his testimony to the Congress insisted that among other elements needed for reform “entity voting should be eliminated for any legislation that the EU determines is required for EU accession” (p. 2). These calls are made for governance and political reforms beyond those “ongoing reforms,” which “are mainly the result of pressure over local authorities by the international community” (Open Society, 2006, p. 41).

Perhaps the most glaring difference between the governance and policy in the United States and the most pressing issue threatening Bosnia’s democracy is that while in the United States, political parties debate economic, political, and social issues, Bosnians debate national and ethnic issues. This hypersensitivity to controversial domestic issues leads to political stalemate and a lack of progress. As reported by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (2009) “because ethnic issues crowd out other issues, and thus repress the formation of other political alignments, Bosnians do not have the possibility to debate and argue over other topics” as unresolved ethnic and national issues continue to dominate and manipulate the policy and governance issues in Bosnia and Herzegovina (p. 7).

Without truly reforming the Dayton agreement, the Bosnian government’s hands are tied. Bosnia has a very ethno-centric political system, where nationalistic sentiments easily prevail over economic or other issues. Bosnia and Herzegovina was divided into two political entities, Republika Srpska (RS) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The main problem with this division is that “the ethnic majority in the RS was made possible only by ethnic cleansing” (Stadlober, 2010, para. 7).

In some cases those who committed some of the worst atrocities and war crimes have accomplished their goals and their supporters remained in power. There is a continuous and flagrant violation of the Dayton agreement and constant denial of the country’s sovereignty and right to exist by Serb leadership. One such violation came on September 17, 2010, when the RS —the smaller entity’s government— “ordered a plan to be drawn up for the demarcation of the Inter-Entity Boundary Line (IEBL) that separates the RS from Bosnia’s other entity, the Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina “ (Hoare, 2010, para. 6). Hoare (2010) further notes that Dayton Agreement “stipulated that adjustments of the IEBL must be carried out with the agreement of both entities, under the supervision of the international military force” (para. 6). Most recently, the RS politicians have threatened the rest of country with a referendum of secession “despite stringent objections from the Western community, which says the move violates the terms of the Dayton agreement” (Dervisbegovic, 2010, para. 2). Until such time as all war criminals are placed behind the bars, it will be hard to see a significant progress.

Bosnia and Herzegovina can make it on its own but not with the current structure in place. The Dayton Peace agreement stopped the war, but now it is time for true reform. The international community failed to intervene in time to prevent some of the most horrific atrocities committed against Bosniaks, including genocide which occurred in Srebrenica in 1995, when “almost 8,000 of them were rounded up and shot in an operation that required extraordinary levels of planning and logistics” (ICTY, 2004; Traynor, 2010, para 4). These atrocities occurred under the UN watch (Grünfeld & Vermeulen, 2009).

While the United States did make it on its own through difficult times and has progressed throughout history, it is impossible to compare Bosnia and Herzegovina and the United States histories. One would need to take into consideration background information on the geopolitical situation in the Balkan region, the sphere of influences between Russia, United States, and the EU, historic rivalries in the regions, Serbia’s role in the aggression and its efforts to dominate regional politics, including attempts to influence policies and governance through its proxies in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well.

Furthermore, Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens are facing significant challenges within the current geopolitical context in the region, failed constitutional system, lingering divisions, and the political influence Serbia continues to exercise in Bosnia. The need for significant changes supported by the international community is ever more pressing. The most recent decision by the EU to allow a visa free arrangement for Bosnian citizens may seem late but it is a step in the right direction (Vogel, 2010).

References:

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Juncos, A. E. (2005). The EU’s post-Conflict Intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina: (re)Integrating the Balkans and/or (re)Inventing the EU? Southeast European Politics. Southeast European Politics. Vol. VI, No. 2. p. 88 – 108. Retrieved from: http://www.seep.ceu.hu/archives/issue62/juncos.pdf

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Weine, S.M. (1999). When history is a nightmare: lives and memories of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Rutgers University Press.

I get older, they stay the same age – as someone once said in another context. It’s one thing I like about Bosnia genocide-deniers. When I first started taking them on at the age of nineteen, their arguments were already easy to refute, and I was hampered only by the limits of my own knowledge. Now, nearly two decades on, I know a lot more, but I still periodically find myself repeating the same old refutations of the same old canards – canards that sound increasingly silly as time goes by. Evidence that Germany ‘encouraged’ Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia, or that the Western media was ‘biased’ against the Serb side in the war, or that Bosnian forces shelled their own civilians to provoke Western military intervention against the Serb rebels, has proven as elusive as the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The steady gathering of forensic evidence has made the Srebrenica massacre the most well-documented genocidal crime in history. Yet like lambs to the slaughter, new waves of deniers step forward to sacrifice any reputations they might have in the service of a long-discredited cause.

I say ‘like’ because it makes the job of the historian wishing to refute their propaganda very easy. But it’s also extremely boring. A couple of years ago I sacrificed a couple of days of my life to writing a review that catalogued the numerous falsehoods and distortions contained in the sensationalist anti-Muslim propaganda tracts about the Bosnian war written by Christopher Deliso and John Schindler. Since then, I have never seen either of those books cited by any reputable author. If my review contributed to this happy state of affairs, then writing it was a worthwhile use of my time. But it’s a chore rather than a pleasure; I’d rather devote this time to historical research or writing.

Consequently, it has been with a certain inner groaning that I’ve become aware of the latest regurgitations of the old denialist narrative. One such regurgitation is David N. Gibbs, First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Vanderbilt University Press, Nashville, 2009). To give a foretaste of what you can expect of this book, Gibbs has this to say about the Srebrenica massacre: ‘Certainly, the murder of eight thousand people is a grave crime, but to call it “genocide” needlessly exaggerates the scale of the crime.’ (p. 281).

Needless to say, Gibbs has no academic expertise on the former Yugoslavia or the Balkans and does not read Serbo-Croat. He hasn’t bothered to engage with the existing literature, but simply ignored all the existing works that undermine his thesis. He has not tackled the evidence presented by Daniele Conversi, myself and others, that the Milosevic regime and the Yugoslav People’s Army deliberately engineered the break-up of Yugoslavia; or the work of Michael Libal and Richard Caplan, exploding the myth that Germany encouraged Croatia to secede from Yugoslavia; or the work of Brendan Simms, demonstrating that Britain’s intervention in Bosnia actually shielded Karadzic’s Serb forces from hostile international intervention. Instead, Gibbs has cherry-picked a few odds and ends in order to present the same old revisionist story, only with a larger number of endnotes than the previous versions written by Diana Johnstone, Michael Parenti et al. Yet he must know very well that his book will not survive a critical review by a genuine specialist in the field, that it will be ignored by all serious scholars and that it will serve only to confirm the views of the small, dwindling minority already committed to the revisionist narrative.

Dear readers, I promise I will get round eventually to doing a demolition job on Gibbs’s sorry little propaganda pamphlet. For the time being, I mention him because he practices the old denialist trick in relation to the Srebrenica massacre, of describing the military actions of the Bosnian military commander in the Srebrenica region, Naser Oric – involving attacks on Serb villages around Srebrenica and atrocities against Serb civilians – while neglecting to mention the incomparably larger-scale Serbian offensives that preceded Oric’s actions, and to which the latter were a response. Gibbs writes:

‘The Srebrenica safe area had an especially brutal history, and it was besieged by Serb forces throughout the war. It is important to note, however, that Muslim troops also behaved brutally. Especially problematic was the Muslim commander Brigadier Oric, who based his forces inside Srebrenica and conducted forays against Serb villages in the surrounding region. One UNPROFOR commander later described Oric’s activities as follows: “Oric engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed [Serb] villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the [Srebrenica] region… [etc.]“‘ (pp. 153-154).

Anyone reading this who didn’t know better would be left unaware that, prior to Oric’s offensives, Serb forces had massacred and expelled Muslims across the whole of East Bosnia – at Bijeljina, Zvornik, Visegrad, Foca, Bratunac, Srebrenica itself and elsewhere; that 94.83% of the civilians from the Podrinje (East Bosnia) region killed during the war were Muslims and only 4.87% were Serbs (according to the figures of the Research and Documentation Centre); or that more Muslims from Podrinje were killed in 1992 than in the year of the Srebrenica massacre. The military actions of Oric’s forces against neighbouring Serb villages were those of defenders of a beleaguered enclave whose inhabitants were threatened with massacre, rape, torture and expulsion already inflicted on other towns all over East Bosnia. That Gibbs lays such stress on Oric’s atrocities while wholly neglecting to mention the incomparably greater-in-scale Serb atrocities in the same region that preceded them is distortion of the most blatant kind; equivalent to writing of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising without bothering to mention the Holocaust. No doubt the sort of bone-headed ultra-left activist who would turn to Gibbs’s book for information on the Bosnian war, instead of to a serious work, is easily and happily deceived.

Those wishing to read the history of the genocidal massacres of Muslims in East Bosnia in 1992 that don’t find a place in books like First do no Harm are recommended Edina Becirevic’s splendid Na Drini genocid, soon to appear in English translation, which demonstrates that the Srebrenica massacre was not an aberration but the culmination of a genocidal policy that began in East Bosnia in 1992. In addition, an excellent case study of the background to the Srebrenica genocide by Daniel Toljaga has recently been published on the website of the Bosnian Institute, entitled Prelude to the Srebrenica Genocide. Toljaga’s knowledge of the history of the Srebrenica genocide is unrivalled, and he traces the grim story: the summoning of local Serb-nationalist leaders to meet with Milosevic’s agent Mihalj Kertes in Belgrade in early May 1991; the killing of the first Muslim civilians in the Bratunac municipality on 3 September 1991; the killing of the first Muslim civilians in the Srebrenica municipality on 15 April 1992; and the deployment of the Yugoslav People’s Army around Srebrenica by April. As Toljaga recounts:

‘Following the takeover of Bratunac, the Serb forces began the attack on Srebrenica on 18 April 1992, firing around 5000 mortar shells on the town and the surrounding Bosniak villages. There was no resistance. The same day, Serbs entered the town, looting Bosniak property, setting houses on fire and killing Bosniak residents who were unable to flee into nearby woods. The Serb occupation of the town of Srebrenica lasted until 8 May, the day when Serbs burned to death 23 Bosniak civilians in the downtown Srebrenica. The victims died in excruciating pain. From April 17 to May 8, a total of 74 Bosniak civilians were killed in the occupied Srebrenica. The youngest victim was the 12-month-old boy Nezir Suljic whose charred body was still lying in his cradle. His father Huso, his mother Muška, and his brother Nisvet were burned to death in the same room. Nezir’s nine-year-old sister Sanela survived by jumping through a window and hiding in nearby woods.‘

Anyone reading Becirevic and Toljaga cannot pretend, as Gibbs does, that the ‘extraordinary hatred’ in the Srebrenica region began with Oric’s counteroffensives, which occurred subsequent to the Serbian attack on the region. Or can they ? The evidence suggests that revisionist authors of the kind under discussion here simply disregard all inconvenient evidence and go on repeating old falsehoods in their books and articles, which consequently have no scholarly credibility but which are nevertheless eagerly seized upon by their ideological fellow travellers. In his book, Gibbs touches on the question of Rwanda in 1994, which he avoids describing as a genocide. Complaining of the ‘asymmetrical focus on specific conflicts, such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, or more recently, Darfur, and the ‘emotionalism’ that this involves, he advances the bizarre thesis that the massacres in Rwanda were caused by a fall in the price of coffee (pp. 219-220) ! Needless to say, this thesis is not borrowed from a genuine scholar of the Rwandan genocide; it is taken from an article by Michel Chossudovsky, a conspiracy theorist who has likewise argued that break-up of Yugoslavia was engineered by German imperialism as part of a ‘long Western efforts to undo Yugoslavia’s experiment in market socialism and workers’ self-management and to impose the dictate of the free market.’

Gerald Caplan, in tackling Edward Herman and David Peterson, two Srebrenica genocide deniers who have mutated into Rwanda genocide deniers, has written of ‘a tiny number of long-time American and Canadian genocide deniers’, who disregard the copious work of genuine scholars that undermines their denialist thesis, but ‘who gleefully drink each other’s putrid bath water. Each solemnly cites the others’ works to document his fabrications’. Indeed, as I recently wrote, the Srebrenica deniers simply will not stop digging, and are applying their same methods – already discredited over Srebrenica – to the if anything even more monumental task of trying to deny the Rwandan genocide.

In his latest response to Herman and Peterson, Adam Jones has noted:

‘Like Herman & Peterson, the deniers cherry-pick a few useful factoids and declamations from serious scholarship on Rwanda (or halfway serious, like Davenport & Stam), while dismissing the vast bulk of the scholarly and human-rights literature as hopelessly corrupted by nefarious (western/imperialist) interests. This has the additional advantage of cutting down on what would otherwise be an onerous reading list, since the literature on Rwanda is now so extensive, detailed, and utterly contrary to Herman & Peterson’s formulations. I confess I wondered, when preparing my first response to Herman & Peterson, whether their depiction of events in Rwanda in 1994 resulted from ignorance and incompetence, rather than actual malice. Their latest post rules this out, I’m afraid.’

Readers are strongly recommended to read Jones’s article, to confirm again – if any further confirmation is needed – what happens when genocide-deniers come up against a genuine genocide scholar.

This brings us back to the question of why genocide-deniers will devote so much time to writing texts that cannot withstand scholarly scrutiny, and that merely succeed in covering the deniers with infamy in the eyes of everyone outside their tiny denialist circle. These are the activities of a sect that needs its own myths to feed its followers so as to perpetuate itself. Bosnia and Rwanda are not treated as subjects for genuine scholarly enquiry, but merely episodes to be incorporated into the mythical narrative. So long as the sect’s followers continue to imbibe the myths, it does not matter if the rest of the world despises the sect and its myths.

In this context, the task of genuine genocide scholars is not to struggle to de-programme the sect’s followers – a generally impossible task – but merely to ensure that their poison is kept out of mainstream discourse on genocide.

Over a year has passed since Florence Hartmann had appealed against her sentence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). On September 24, 2009, the Author of “Peace and Punishment, the secret war between international politics and international justice” (2007) was convicted and sentence to a fine of 7000 Euros by the ICTY for having questioned in her book and in an press article the validity of two court decisions.

In convicting Florence Hartmann, the ICTY re-imposed a form of censorship aiming to protect international judges from all forms of criticism. The long awaited Appeal judgement should therefore clarify whether the ICTY deems necessary to set new limits to freedom of speech in violation of international standards.Florence Hartmann did not disclose any parts of the Serbian State’s war archives held by the ICTY.

She was convicted for explaining how and on which legal grounds the ICTY judges had decided to forbid the disclosure of this evidential material provided by Serbia in the Milosevic case.In the name of transparency, the legal reasoning of court decisions, especially in criminal cases, are public. Since the ICTY Judges were not keen to expose to public scrutiny the reasons of their controversial decisions, they convicted Florence Hartmann of contempt of court for having reported on the functioning of the criminal justice system and so enabled the public to exercise its right to oversee the ICTY judicial activities.

However, the information published in her book and in her article Vital genocide documents concealed had long been in the public realm. It was mentioned earlier in many press accounts and even in several ICTY public Court decisions. The notion that Florence Hartmann’s book and article posed any harm to the Tribunal and justice was so absurd that it seemed trumped up to dissuade from further critical writing on the functioning of the ICTY.

 Florence Hartmann was not convicted as the former ICTY prosecution spokesperson (2000-2006) but as the author of the incriminated pieces, thus in her status of journalist and investigative writer. The ICTY did not deny the information was legitimately obtained in the course of newsgathering outside the Tribunal, after Hartmann left the Tribunal.

 European and American jurisprudence agree on the fact that journalists can not be ask to withhold information deemed privileged by an institution if the information is already, in part or entirely, in the public domain. By indicting and convicting Florence Hartmann, the Tribunal has set a precedent that contradicts the applicable laws in the democratic world.

 The renowned international non-governmental organization Article 19 interceded with the ICTY as a friend of the court -amicus curiae – in the context of the appeals procedure in order that international conventions regarding freedom of speech be respected.

IF the first instance judgment issued over a year ago were upheld, the ICTY, by nature of its international authority status, would then definitively create legal precedents with prescriptive values which would therefore be legitimately invoked to limit freedom of speech in place of international standards in force today. In that eventuality, there would be a conflict between this new international case law and the rules set out in particular by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) concerning Article 10.

Source: caseflorenchartmann.org

The Congress of North American Bosniaks (CNAB), an umbrella organization representing the interests of American and Canadian Bosniaks, is deeply concerned over the continued human and religious rights violations of the state of Serbia against its minority ethnic group, Bosniaks in the Sandzak region. The Serbian government continues to undermine the rights of the Bosniak minority by meddling in internal religious affairs, denying them their political, cultural and other rights in Serbia. Serbian government continues to illegally confiscate property owned by the Bosniak Islamic Community in Serbia and is using the fear and intimidation against local minority groups. This is evidenced by an increased presence of police forces in the area with Bosniak majority population and recent military exercise.

CNAB is concerned that continued encroachments by the Serbian government on human rights will increase tensions which have a potential to escalate and threaten the stability of the entire region. We call for immediate stop of all human rights violations and restoral to the independence of Bosniak religious and cultural institutions in accordance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities.

According to the UN declaration, Republic of Serbia has an obligation under Article 1 to “protect the existence and the national or ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic identity of minorities within their respective territories and shall encourage conditions for the promotion of that identity.” Furthermore, according to Article 2 of the UN declaration, Bosniaks of the Sandzak region have the right to “enjoy their own culture, to profess and practice their own religion, and to use their own language, in private and in public, freely and without interference or any form of discrimination…and the right to establish and maintain their own associations.”

The Republic of Serbia has failed to defend the constitutional and human right of Bosniaks to full equality and right to preserve their identity, including their rights to religious and political freedom. Instead of encouraging peace, dialogue, and economic prosperity for all people, Serbian government is purposely looking to cause division and keep the Bosniaks from achieving equal socioeconomic status.

CNAB demands that the rights of Bosniaks in Serbia are protected.

Hamdija Custovic, CNAB spokesperson

E-Novine is a Belgrade-based for profit, nonpartisan organization founded in 2008. Registered as a public media outlet, E-Novine produces an online news daily of the same name (www.e-novine.com) featuring critical and independent coverage of current events and politics. E-Novine aims to present every piece of news with a unique point of view, so that the reader is not only informed, but also encouraged to form his or her own opinion about the issue.

E-Novine’s website currently receives over 150,000 unique visitors per month. It has a readership base throughout the former Yugoslavia as well as in Western Europe, the U.S., and Canada. In addition to its regular news and commentary, E-Novine has also published more than a dozen texts analyzing the role of the media during the wars in the former Yugoslavia, including an interview with the Special War Crimes Prosecutor about journalistic responsibility.

E-Novine employs 9 people on a full-time basis, and its editor-in-chief is respected journalist Petar Lukovic. Previously, Mr. Lukovic was deputy editor-in-chief and columnist at the Belgrade weekly Vreme and a contributing journalist at the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

ORGANIZATION DESCRIPTION:

What is the purpose (mission) of our organization?
- To become a regional, widely read and influential portal which is a recognizable symbol of independent, free and democratic journalism in the whole region.
- To be a barrier against all sorts of fascism, chauvinism, nationalism, war mongering and hate speech.
- To promote European values through constant mutual dialogue on all biggest topics in the region’s societies.
- To gather together as associates the journalistic, cultural and social elite, as well as readers who shape the editorial policy through its texts and comments.

What is the structure of our organization?
Managing board (Director, Editor in chief, Deputy Editor in chief)
19 people (9 employes, 10 by contract, 12 volunteers).

SITUATION ANALYSIS:

Experience has shown that even after wars and long-lasting conflicts, people do want to live normal lives, overcome the past and begin rebuilding disrupted relations.

A recent survey researching willingness and readiness for reconciliation in the region (amongst Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks) showed that there is individual capacity for reconciliation in all three environments. However, subjective potential, alone, is insufficient to bring reconciliation about. The process of reconciliation is a complex, long and risky one and it depends on overcoming deep suspicions that cannot be dispelled only on the individual plane.

The processes of building lasting peace, life together, co-operation and new relations in the region have not seriously taken root although the Dayton Accords were signed in 1995. The problem is related to the halt in the process of exchange the information between the medias in the region. Our reality lacks all prerequisites for initiating and deepening the process of reconciliation – building trust in the other party’s intentions, restoring the perception of the members of an until recently hostile group as human beings (re-humanisation), willingness to co-operate, readiness to offer/accept apology. Systematic overcoming of the past is lacking as well. There are no important preconditions for reconciliation. Even when peace came the xenophobic governments in the region did non re-establish the broken links because a quality exchange of information is opposite to the nature of the newly established regimes and elites.

It is really difficult to imagine this region guaranteeing stable peace and prosperity in the near future if such a relevant issue is left to spontaneous events alone, if there are no systematic, focussed social and media actions. Restoration of trust and readiness for co-operation can be consolidated only in as much as it is possible to remember ‘that’ past, to unblock collective memory. Recollection of the war past is obviously still bearable only to the degree to which each side can (distortedly) perceive itself as its greatest victim. The notion that these are the same economic, political, cultural and social problems, even similar methods of governing of the apparently different regimes in terms of ideology, contributes to the creation of a front of solidarity, co-operation, expansion of the public opinion which will ask the political elites for a quicker, more efficient and more effective implementation of Euro-Atlantic integrations.

OBJECTIVES:

To establish dialogue in the territory of former Yugoslavia:
Inclusion of the most famous and best journalists from across the region in the concept which provides full and constant information not only through news but also through author’s columns and comments on daily topics. A special focus is on the constant examination of and facing with the recent past (columns, texts and analyses are regularly published in order to introduce younger audience to the events of the recent wars).

As a beginning e-novine established co-operation with the media in the region: H-Alter (Croatia), Monitor.hr (Croatia), Radio Sarajevo (BiH), Novi list (Croatia), BH dani (BiH), Jutarnji list (Croatia), net.hr (Croatia), Novosti.hr (Croatia).

Our intention is to create the stronger cross-border cooperation among journalists, medias and their audience and try to cerate a strong front of solidarity and co-operation among the public in the countries of Region through implementation of the Euro-Atlantic integration process.

ACTIVITIES:

Publication of news, texts, analyses, feature stories and comments by some of the best journalists about unfolding events and other topics in the region. Consistent implementation of a durable political and cultural dialogue in the region; important political or cultural topics, regardless of whether it is a topic in Serbia, Croatia or Bosnia and Herzegovina, are written about by authors and guests from across the region, as it is an area which shares identical problems and challenges.

“MAP has been granted to Bosnia-Herzegovina today, but with clear conditions attached on implementation,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai told a news briefing after talks among NATO foreign ministers in the Estonian capital Tallinn.

Appathurai said NATO would accept Bosnia’s first annual reform plan under the program, only when defense property, such as bases, was registered as belonging to the state and for use of the defense ministry.

A Membership Action Plan is a multi-stage process of political dialogue and military reform to bring a country in line with NATO standards and to eventual membership. The process can take several years.

Bosnia applied for the membership plan for the 28-nation NATO in October, but the alliance declined this in December on the grounds it still needed to carry out more reforms.

Appathurai said the ministers noted that since December Bosnia had made “significant” progress on reform and they had welcomed its decision to destroy surplus ammunition and arms and to contribute troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan.

“They remain concerned, however, that the defense property issue is not yet resolved,” he said.

Bosnia agreed this month to send an infantry unit to join the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan — one of the conditions NATO placed on Bosnia’s application.

Bosnia has united its rival ethnic armies that fought each other during the 1992-95 war and its NATO-sponsored defense overhaul is seen as the most successful reform in the country, which remains ethnically divided 14 years after the war’s end.

But Bosnia has lagged behind neighbors, all former republics of Yugoslavia, in progress toward EU and NATO membership.

Croatia joined NATO along with Albania last year and Montenegro was granted a membership plan in December.

(Reporting by David Brunnstrom and Julien Toyer; Editing by Matthew Jones)

The RS Government’s conclusions of 19 April are a despicable attempt to question that genocide took place in Srebrenica in July 1995 by deliberately distorting established historical and legal facts, and propagating misinformation and disinformation with the intent to obscure the truth.

Although there have always been recidivist extremists who would try to deny genocide, nothing can change the facts of what happened in Srebrenica in July 1995. The conclusions of the current SNSD-led RS Government discredit the RS both at home and abroad. They demonstrate a gratuitous and callous disregard for the catastrophic impact of the Srebrenica events on the lives of the surviving family members, and for the obligations under the European Convention and the Genocide Convention, as well as responsibilities under Annex 7 of the Dayton Peace Agreement and the process of tracing persons still unaccounted for.

Acknowledging and coming to terms with the fact of the genocide is essential for the health of any society, particularly one in whose name these crimes were committed. It is therefore important to highlight that:

• By now casting doubts over the results of the RS Srebrenica Commission’s report, the RS Government is returning the RS to a position where it is not in compliance with a binding decision of the Human Rights Chamber, a Dayton institution;
• By dismissing decisions and findings of fact by both the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that what took place in Srebrenica in July 1995 was genocide; the RS is again rejecting the rule of law. The ICTY Trial Chamber has stated that the Srebrenica crimes defy description in their horror and noted the implications for humankind’s capacity to revert to acts of brutality under the stresses of conflict.
• By claiming that the number of victims was inflated by burying family members at the Srebrenica-Potocari is propagating disinformation, as the facts clearly indicate otherwise. The board of the Memorial made some 50 exceptions to the rule that only genocide victims are buried in Potocari, citing compelling humanitarian reasons such as allowing children and parents to be buried with each other. Although justified, the board has stopped making such exceptions for some years now. These decisions are well documented, and these individuals are not included in the report as victims of the Srebrenica genocide.
• By refusing to appoint a representative to the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial Foundation, the RS has deliberately foregone the opportunity to participate in the Foundation’s decision-making and efforts to advance reconciliation in BiH.
• By referring to an alleged list of some 35,000 persons who were ethnically cleansed in parallel to the killing operations, the RS Government somehow refutes the fact that the remains of 6,414 victims have already been conclusively identified while more remains found in mass graves await identification is both preposterous and offensive.

There can be no political, legal, or moral justification for the 19 April conclusions of the RS Government on Srebrenica questioning genocide. The RS Government should reconsider its conclusions and align itself with the facts and legal requirements and act accordingly, rather than inflicting emotional distress on the survivors, torture history, and denigrate the public image of the country.

Source: OHR

Bosnia’s president in turn praised relations with Croatia, remarks that starkly contrasted with his harsh criticism of Serbia the day before.

As Yugoslavia was falling apart in the 1990s, the leaders of its republics of Serbia and Croatia planned to carve up Bosnia — positioned between them — and annex half each. Bosnia’s Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks — Bosnian Muslims — also clashed in hostilities that also drew in the neighboring republics and took 100,000 Bosnian lives.

“I’m deeply sorry that the Republic of Croatia … has contributed to the suffering of people and divisions which still burden us today,” President Ivo Josipovic told Bosnia’s parliament, describing the politics of the 1990s in the countries involved in the war as planting lasting “seeds of evil” in Bosnia.

At present, a Bosniak-Croat federation makes up half of Bosnia and a Serb republic the other half. Because of the three perceived different national interests, Bosnia barely functions on a federal level, primarily because Bosnian Serbs do not want to transfer any of the powers of their ministate to the central government. This is a key obstacle standing in the way of Bosnia’s EU membership.

On his first visit since his election in January, Josipovic urged Bosnian Croats to accept Bosnia as their country — a plea prompted by the continued push by some Bosnian Croats for their own Bosnian ministate.
Croatia itself is a member of NATO and hopes to join the EU very soon.

“But the Croatian accession project will not be complete until our neighbors are included, particularly Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro,” Josipovic said. “We have to find strength to overcome our doubts and fears and get out of this vicious circle.”

Bosnian President Haris Silajdzic said that “Our relations with the Republic of Croatia have been good and friendly for some time, regardless of some outstanding issues.”

A day earlier, Silajdzic accused his Serbian counterpart of paying only lip service to reconciliation as he criticized Serbia’s demand for the extradition of former Bosnian Vice President Ejup Ganic.

Ganic was arrested in London last month on Serbia’s request. Serbia accuses him of ordering an attack on retreating Serb soldiers in what was then the Yugoslav army in the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, at the start of the Bosnian war. The allegations were investigated by the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague, but legal officials there decided there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

Reporter: Aida Cerkez-Robinson. Associated Press writer George Jahn contributed to this report from Vienna.

Jolie visited a collective centre in the town of Gorazde where the residents live in dilapidated accommodation with little support and with many completely overwhelmed by helplessness. She then moved on to a village near Visegrad where Jolie visited a family and talked about their return to an area that saw some of the worst atrocities of the war. Jolie said she was “so inspired by these families. Despite the grim realities of their unsettled existence, they have an incredible determination to make a better future for their children.” Jolie then travelled to the town of Rogatica where she visited displaced people in another collective centre lacking basic amenities, such as running water.

From 1992-95, when war raged in the country, over 2.2 million people were displaced. That displacement shattered lives then and the suffering continues to this day for many. Some of those Jolie met during her visit spoke of the terrible anguish they had endured, including rape and torture, with one woman saying “I have my body, but it no longer has a soul.”

“After seeing these people and hearing their stories, I cannot overemphasise the need to focus on the wellbeing of the most vulnerable individuals of the population,” Jolie said, adding that “…by ending displacement and ensuring quality of life, we can help to promote progress and long-term stability.”

Jolie also met UNHCR staff who told her about proposals to help resolve the situation of those still displaced. “I hope we can find solutions for the remaining tens of thousands of displaced people,” Jolie said, adding “…only then can we really close one of the most tragic chapters in modern history.” Although her visit was short on this occasion, Jolie said that she hopes “to return to this beautiful country soon and meet with political representatives to further discuss the solutions that are so badly required.” Looking to the future she noted that “Bosnia and Herzegovina now has the opportunity to move forward by ending displacement and further capitalising on the EU accession process. The local leadership has the ultimate responsibility to make choices to ensure that this will happen.”

Monday, March 1, 2010, on the eve of his 64th birthday, Professor Ejup Ganic was arrested. A United States-educated academic and former member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzogovina, Ganic was en route to his home in Sarajevo via Heathrow Airport. Taken into custody by officers from Scotland Yard’s Extradition Unit and brought before a magistrate, he was immediately incarcerated in a London prison. For three days, he was denied access to consular services, his lawyers and his family. The United Kingdom government’s excuse was administrative error.

Over these several weeks, the highly regarded system of British justice has been seriously questioned. Though Ganic has now been released on bail, the conditions are stringent: He must report daily to the police, stay at one address in London, and he is not allowed to travel.

This stunning state of affairs came about because the Republic of Serbia, which waged a bloody war on Bosnia from 1992 to 1995 and placed Sarajevo under the most appalling siege of modern times, made a preliminary request to the U.K. for Ganic’s extradition. It alleged that he had committed war crimes in 1992 during the Serbian-led aggression against Bosnia. These allegations have already been investigated — and dismissed — by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

Serbian authorities have one month to produce evidence to back up their request for extradition. At that point, a date will be arranged for a judge to decide the future of Ganic. His barrister, or Queen’s Counsel, Clare Montgomery, has described the attempt to prosecute him as a mockery of justice. His solicitor, Stephen Gentle, maintains that Serbia’s request is flawed and misconceived.

Bosnian authorities have protested strongly to the British ambassador in Sarajevo about Ganic’s treatment. They maintain rightly that this action is in contravention of international treaties on consular and diplomatic relations. The shadow foreign secretary, William Hague, has asked Foreign Secretary David Miliband to investigate. He is anxious that there is a real risk of repercussions between the U.K. and Bosnia, as well as other Balkan nations. In fact, thousands of Bosnians have gathered outside the British embassy in Sarajevo to register their concern and show their support for Ganic.

Why did they arrest Ganic? The allegations are a thin attempt to pretend that the conduct of Bosnian leaders to defend their country during the war was no different from the barbarism perpetrated by Serb political and military forces. Human rights groups have consistently found that the huge majority of atrocities committed during the war were at the hands of the Serbs. It’s not a blanket indictment of all Serbs to insist that those who allegedly led the genocide be put to trial, nor is it “even-handed” to accuse leaders on all sides.

The world will never forget news reports as Serbia surrounded Sarajevo, former host of the Winter Olympics, and from the hills rained down rockets and bullets on citizens. Casualties of the war were massive; 150,000 were killed in a country with a population of 4 million; hillsides today are filled with white tombstones. Still, though 60 percent of the housing was destroyed, the spirit of many Bosnians stayed strong.

Now Serbia is anxious to draw public attention away from the trial of one of its former leaders, Radovan Karadzic, which resumed in The Hague on the day Ganic was arrested. According to the New York Times, the Bosnian Serb is “widely regarded by diplomats as the chief architect of ethnic cleansing … crimes that were Europe’s worst atrocities since World War II.”

In his speech to the tribunal, Karadzic maintained, on the one hand, that the killing of thousands of Muslims was “just and holy,” and on the other, that the killing of 8,000 unarmed Muslim men and boys by Serbs at Srebrenica did not take place. The mass graves, he suggested, were filled with bones brought from elsewhere — shades of Holocaust denial yet again.

This whole affair is embarrassing for the British government. The U.K. is regarded as a soft touch for the execution of many extradition requests issued for spurious reasons. The government now claims to be unable to intervene in Ganic’s incarceration; the strictly observed separation of powers means that the matter is now in the hands of the courts. It leaves open the possibility that Bosnia will carry out its threat to rescue Ganic by issuing a request that the U.K. hand him over to authorities there.

Bosnia argues that there is an agreement between Serbia and Bosnia for those alleged to have perpetrated war crimes to be tried in their home jurisdiction if the alleged crime was committed there. Such an action would lead to an unprecedented double extradition contest between Bosnia and Serbia, and a long legal battle in the U.K. courts.
Ganic is a true patriot. He returned to his country from America to enter political life. As deputy to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, he chose to remain with his people during the war, enduring pain, cold and famine alongside them when he had every opportunity to enjoy a comfortable life elsewhere. Since 1995, he has sought — first, as a politician, then as an educator — to bring political stability and economic security back to his country.

Convinced that education is the future, in 2004, after an introduction to the University of Buckingham by Lady Thatcher, he entered into a joint venture and opened a new multi-ethnic, English-language university, the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology. The university offers both Bosnian and U.K. degrees. It’s ironic that Ganic was returning from Buckingham on the day of his arrest, having watched his second cohort of students enjoy their graduation ceremony.

Serbia has succeeded in creating maximum chaos, and expense, for both Ganic and the U.K. It’s a moral shame to abuse these extradition proceedings as a means of satisfying one state’s political insecurity, rousing the inter-ethnic conflict Ganic has struggled so courageously to counteract.

Mary Welstead is a visiting professor at the University of Buckingham. She has held similar appointments at McGill University in Montreal, the University of Cambridge U.K., and the University of Warwick U.K. From 2003 -2008 she helped set up the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology.

The Balkans are, in these spring times, crowded with so many high-level visits, failed conferences, empty promises and controversies about further regions’ accession to the European Union and NATO that it would be better to wait for better circumstances regarding the first part, considered by the complex term Euro-Atlantic, and focus on the second one.

It is not to say that the NATO accession process is going more smoothly and that it is less politically motivated and dependent, but it has wider geopolitical scope, broader impact on the Alliance’s relations with Russia, clearer actual position and greater urgency.

First, contrary to the EU approach limited for the time being to the Balkans, the NATO enlargement strategy could be regarded as a comprehensive political and security development on the broader area ranging, let us say, from Bosnia to Crimea. That region, encompassing the Black Sea, had been for a few centuries the scene of political and military struggle for dominance between Russia, the Ottoman Empire and Europe. The year 1878 was pivotal and a turning point in that regard: by defeating the Turks, the Russians established control over the northern Black Sea coasts, but were pushed back — more or less together with the Ottomans — from the Balkans by the European great powers’ decisions at the Vienna Congress.

And what is the situation we are witnessing more than 130 years later? After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, there are similar developments on the same geopolitical outlines, with the only difference being that we call them rivalry more often than a struggle for dominance.

After a pause caused by the 1990s Balkan wars, Western powers have launched diplomatic offensives to regain the European positions lost by the emergence of communism. A joint strategy was adopted to expedite the integration of countries created by the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to the Euro-Atlantic alliances. The Partnership for Peace (PfP) was created as a transitional form for testing the capabilities of a further approach to NATO. Neither did they hesitate to use the alliance’s military means, namely in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999, to stop the Serbian military efforts to transform most of the former Yugoslavia’s lands into a Greater Serbia. In the Balkans, Bulgaria and Romania were accepted in to NATO and the European Union, regardless of the level of European standards achieved in judicial reforms and the fight against organized crime and corruption, a prerequisite imposed on other regional countries not having such high security and military importance.

Western alliance approaches Ukraine and Georgia
Similar efforts, however, failed when the Western alliance approached the Russian borders and tried to draw Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO membership. The former American administration, pushed by President Bush’s bulldozer policy, caused great damage to the US and European modern diplomacy by that premature move, checking the advance of those two countries towards Euro-Atlantic integration for a few more years, if not decades.

In the meantime, Russia re-emerged as the global power in the new multi-polar world, using its energy resources rather than conventional arms and nuclear weapons. Its undisputable leader Vladimir Putin, being president or prime minister, has shown his muscles particularly towards neighboring countries seeking to bring NATO to Russian borders. With Ukraine he used the price and supply of gas, a vital resource, to initiate an economic crisis and popular dissatisfaction with the pro-Western government of that country. The final result was that the pro-Russian candidate Victor Yanukovych won the recent elections. Georgia was punished for its NATO plea two years before in a much harsher way. Tensions between the two countries that already existed led to the August 2008 South Ossetian war.

That war and the Russian recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhasia that was justified by the earlier unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence, strongly supported by the US and majority of the UN member-states, has increased rivalry over the disputed region. As stressed by Today’s Zaman a few days ago, the Russians are intent on continuing with their “backyard” politics, seeking “to have complete control of any integration in the Caucasus.” A good example in that regard is Moscow’s dealings with Armenia and Azerbaijan that have expressed their ambitions to join the Euro-Atlantic integrations, but that have the grave dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh as well. When Russians tell Armenians to normalize their relations with Turkey, they are also saying to Azerbaijanis at the same time: “See how your [Turkish] brothers are selling you out.”

While putting aside temporarily the membership issue, NATO is not giving up the intention to move nearer to the Western sphere all that area of the Caucasus and Central Asia that has once again become an important route towards China and South Asia. It keeps its doors open by the PfP programs and other forms of cooperation, such as GUAM (the regional cooperation with Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova).
Yes, we almost neglected it, but Moldova is also on that line being drawn around the Black Sea-board. Leaving the Caucasus in a form of status quo, we are sailing again towards the Balkans, where the topic of NATO enlargement is still a hot spot.

The subject of the EU and NATO accession processes was removed by the integration of Bulgaria and Romania from the east, and Hungary and Slovenia from north, to the peninsula’s central part that is commonly called the Western Balkans. I avoid using that term — aren’t there enough other Balkan divisions! Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and Kosovo are meant by that vague expression. All of them are on the waiting list for the EU. Croatia is closest, and Kosovo probably most distant on that route. Regarding NATO, Croatia and Albania have already been there since 2009. From the alliance’s secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, and the commander of NATO joint forces, Adm. Mark Fitzgerald, who last week toured the region, it could be understood that for Montenegro only procedural problems are left and for Macedonia, the name dispute with Greece remains to be solved.

The black Balkan hole
Serbia, Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina have been left in that black Balkan hole, each possessing a specific position, but common interdependence as well. Still waiting to be accepted by the UN and being regarded by Serbia as part of its territory, Kosovo is far from being considered for NATO membership, although having on its soil more NATO troops than some member states and a huge US military base, Camp Bondsteel. Bosnia and Herzegovina, also under an international protectorate, was expecting desperately to be granted the Membership Action Plan (MAP) for NATO last autumn and is still waiting to see if it will get it at the alliance’s next ministerial meeting to be held in Tallinn, on April 22. It hopes a stronger NATO covering might prevent the country’s further destabilization by the Bosnian Serb nationalist and secessionist rulers of its entity Republika Srpska. The EU and NATO authorities, however, are using the NATO MAP card to push the Bosnian politicians to adopt constitutional reforms before the elections that will be held in the fall. They recognize that the Bosnian Serb leadership is the key obstacle to such reforms, but they are not ready to impose them using the mandate given by the UN and EU, or to organize a new international conference on Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Contrary to all other Balkan countries, Serbia plus half of Bosnia and Herzegovina (its entity Republika Srpska) regards the NATO intervention in Bosnia in 1995 and in Kosovo in 1999 as “NATO aggression” and its member-states as “NATO villains.” The Serb public has never been informed of Serbia’s atrocities against Kosovo Albanians and its aggression against Bosnia. In fact, Serbia wants the West to accept it in the EU, but not in NATO. And it is a Moscow slogan that Serbia falls under, “To the EU yes, possibly, but to NATO, not at all, nyet!”

NATO expansion was even clarified as a national threat in the new Russian military doctrine, announced in February by President Dmitri Medvedev. But the foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said there was still space to cooperate with the West in other fields, such as missile defense and curbing strategic nuclear and conventional arms arsenals. Those matters are already being discussed prior to the Washington superpowers summit to be held in April.

That “nyet” could have a stronger impact if directed at countries closer to the Russian borders. The Balkans, however, offers proof of a stronger rivalry between NATO and Russia. It evokes times of bipolar struggle for interests in the region. Besides the significant NATO presence in Kosovo, Russia is also concerned by Romania’s approval of the deployment of US interceptor missiles on its territory as part of a missile shield to protect Europe. From the other side, Russia uses Serbia’s anti-American sentiments to keep it more distant from the Euro-Atlantic alliances. In addition to significant energy deals and a pledge of a $1.5 billion loan, Russia will build by 2012 in the Serbian town of Nis a humanitarian center for emergencies with potential military use. The investor in that center that might easily be transformed into a standard military base is the Russian ministry for emergency situations that, besides being the wing of the country’s military intelligence, has its own paramilitary force as well. Perhaps a recent comment by The Economist regarding Serbian President Boris Tadic’s refusal to attend any conference if Kosovo’s leaders are invited could be put in that framework. It said that “staying away would have only enhanced Serbia’s international image as a recalcitrant regional bully that refuses to accept the reality of Kosovo’s independence.”

By Branka Magaš — A member of Bosnia’s war-time presidency, who subsequently served as president of the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ejup Ganic, was arrested at London’s Heathrow airport on 1 March 2010, at the request of the Serbian war-crimes prosecutor and on the basis of a European extradition treaty. Ganic appeared at a London court on the evening of his arrest, and has been remanded in custody until 29 March; bail was refused on 3 March and he remains in Wandsworth prison, denied contact with his family or lawyer. It is becoming increasingly difficult to understand the British government’s own role in the arrest.

As president of the Sarajevo School of Science and Technology, which is twinned with the University of Buckingham, Professor Ganic has been a frequent visitor to Britain. The Serbian extradition request alleging his responsibility for deaths connected with an attack by Bosnian forces on a column of troops belonging to the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in Sarajevo on 3 May 1992. The Serbian government is expected to provide full papers to support their extradition request, before a date can be fixed for an extradition hearing, according to British sources. ‘A judge will then consider whether there are any bars to the extradition.’ But as pointed out by several analysts, Serbia is seeking Ganic on the basis of evidence that has already been dismissed by the UN war-crimes tribunal (ICTY) in The Hague. And Serbia has only recently signed an agreement with Bosnia-Herzegovina according to which people sought for war crimes would be tried in the countries where they are domiciled, but which it has now chosen to disregard. Ganic’s arrest is all the more puzzling given that the Bosnian federal government is itself, in fact, already conducting an investigation into the events of 3 May, and has consequently applied to the British government for the professor to be returned to Sarajevo.

Ganic’s arrest is only the first step in the execution of Belgrade’s plan to indict all members of the wartime Bosnian presidency, which in turn would make liable every single Bosnian who served his country in any capacity during the war. According to the current members of the Bosnian state presidency Željko Komšic and Haris Silajdžic, by bringing charges against Bosnia’s wartime leaders Serbia has violated the Rome Agreement signed in 1996 by Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia. ‘This agreement clearly states that, before the countries who signed it can bring charges, they must first ask for the Hague tribunal’s opinion, which Serbia has failed to do, thus violating international law’, say Komšic and Silajdžic. They stress that they themselves would seek the Hague tribunal’s opinion, ‘because Bosnia-Herzegovina’s sovereignty is also being violated.’

Bosniak, Croat and Serb members of the wartime government have sharply condemned Ganic’s arrest, which in their view is designed as an attempt to criminalise Bosnian resistance to Serbia’s aggression of 1992-5. Ivo Komšic, like Ganic a member of Bosnia’s wartime presidency, told local media that: ‘This is an attempt to show that defence against aggression is a crime. It is shocking to see a respected member of the international community such as Great Britain colluding in it.’ Mirko Pejanovic, another member of the wartime presidency, agrees: ‘The issuing of warrants for the arrest of defenders of Sarajevo and Bosnia-Herzegovina is an attempt on the part of Serbia to revise history and to present the war in our country as a civil war in which all parties were equally guilty.’ And he expressed his concern for the impact which Ganic’s arrest will have on Bosnia’s internal stability, the maintenance of which underpins regional peace. One can only wonder why the British authorities have allowed themselves to become involved in Serbia’s dangerous game.

For Serbia the war goes on

It might be thought that a country which spent much of the 1990s making war against its neighbours, and committing numerous crimes in the course of it including that of genocide, a country that has harboured many indicted and yet-to-be indicted war criminals including ones sought for genocide, would be the last country on earth to be so moved by the plight of soldiers belonging to an invading army which it did not legitimately command, and which was operating outside Serbia’s own borders, that it would be willing to give the lie to its own proclaimed commitment to improved regional relations, in order to bring the alleged perpetrators – who are not its own citizens – to justice.

So why is Serbia seeking extradition of the Bosnian wartime leader Ejup Ganic from an unaccountably pliant Britain? Why does the Serbian government feel impelled to override both ICTY, which has found no case against Ganic, and its recently signed treaty with Bosnia-Herzegovina which precluded any such actions on its part? Why is its government so ready – at the very moment it has been trying to polish up its image in preparation for being formally invited to begin the process of joining the European Union – to jeopardise its still fragile relations with its neighbours, all of whom at different times fell victim to its aggression? What is it that makes this Serbian government so willing to face the charge that it is – yet again – trying to throw this part of Europe, only now beginning to stabilize itself, into fresh turmoil, with unforeseeable consequences for European peace? Why is Belgrade so keen to get hold of man who teaches engineering to Bosnian and British university students, and plays no role in Bosnian national politics? In sum, why do Ejup Ganic and others responsible for Bosnia’s defence in 1991-5 remain such a threat to Serbia, fifteen years after the end of the war and ten years after the fall of Slobodan Miloševic who started it in the first place?

The simple answer is that Serbia is doing it out of fear. The nationalists who seized power in Serbia on the eve of the fall of Communism, and who remain in control of the Serbian state, have sought to build their case in the eyes of the Serbian population by erecting a bi-polar image of its national history, in which one pole stands for a saintly Serb nation living under a permanent threat of extinction, the other pole its numerous enemies including Serbia’s neighbours, faiths other than Orthodox Christianity, and the West in general. This image is now under mortal threat. For Serbia initiated genocidal wars at a time when the European continent was at peace, and then found that the crimes these entailed cannot easily be swept under the carpet. Ever since the ICTY and the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Serb forces had committed genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serbian government has been living in constant dread that this preferred national image would be tarnished for good if Serbia itself were to be found guilty by the ICTY of having committed genocide. As the national guru Dobrica Cosic has recently declared in connection with the pressure on Serbia to pass the European parliament’s resolution condemning the genocide in Srebrenica, Serbia should never accept the ‘lies about Serbs committing genocide in Bosnia’, because this would make the Serbs a ‘genocidal nation on a par with Nazi Germany’. (Pecat, 12 February 2010.)

Serbia managed to get round the ICJ, which did not find it guilty of committing genocide at Srebrenica, but ‘only’ of not doing enough to prevent it. The court had relied on evidence collected by the ICTY. But, as Sonja Biserko of the Helsinki Committee in Serbia points out, several trials are currently taking place before the Hague Tribunal – against Radovan Karadžic, Momcilo Perišic, Jovan Stanišic and Franko Simatovic – include charges pertaining to genocide in Bosnia. Karadžic’s own charge for genocide has been extended beyond Srebrenica to include dozens of other municipalities across Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Belgrade has devised a complex strategy to fight the Tribunal, which involves hindering its work through lengthy delays (a tactic adopted by Slobodan Miloševic, Radovan Karadžic, Vojislav Šešelj), opting for an overwhelmingly political defence, intimidating witnesses, withholding documents (see its agreement with the Tribunal’s former prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, to prevent publication of sensitive documents testifying to Serbia’s direct involvement in the Bosnian war), etc. And from the very start of the Tribunal’s work Belgrade has relied on a policy of equalisation: on the claim that all parties to the war were equally guilty of starting it and equally criminal in its prosecution. Karadžic’s defence before the Tribunal contains all these elements, including also the claim that it was the Bosniaks who started the war, and that they even habitually killed other Bosniaks in order to throw the blame unjustly on the Serbs.

Thrown into disarray by the ICJ verdict in 2007, Belgrade has tried to establish the ‘all are equally guilty’ thesis by focussing on the alleged plight of the JNA in places like Tuzla during its withdrawal from Bosnia, when a number of troops were killed and wounded after coming under attack on 15 May 1992. A high-ranking local police officer, Ilija Jurišic, was arrested on Belgrade airport in May 2007, charged with having ordered the attack, and in 2009 sentenced to 12 years in prison – even though the B-H war-crimes court, which has jurisdiction in the case, had dismissed the case against him. Having met no dissent from the EU, the same recipe has now been applied to Ejup Ganic in connection with similar events on Dobrovoljacka Street in Sarajevo (see the interview with Jovan Divjak in the next post).

Belgrade’s concern with the suffering of JNA soldiers (rather than their civilian victims) relates only to Bosnia. This preoccupation with Bosnia reflects the fact that two international courts have ruled that soldiers under Belgrade’s influence and command have committed genocide there. The earlier arrest of Ilija Jurišic and now that of Ejup Ganic should be seen as an integral part of the effort to re-interpret the causes and nature of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in such a way that, by criminalising its resistance, Serbia’s aggression against it might appear justified and the crimes committed during it more intelligible, however unfortunate. And Bosnia is a country in which Serbia holds an important stake in the form of Republika Srpska. The already shaky legitimacy of this entity founded on heinous crimes committed against unarmed civilians would suffer a grave blow if Karadžic were to be found guilty of genocide and if Serbia’s own role in it were legally established. The current debate in Serbia over the adoption of a parliamentary resolution on genocide in Srebrenica testifies to a very real fear of the nationalist establishment that, in the words of its favourite historian Cedomir Antic, by having the Serbian parliament finally accept that what happened in Srebrenica was indeed genocide, Belgrade will accept also ‘collective responsibility on the part of Serbia and Republika Srpska’ for the crimes their armies committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina (Vreme, 4.2.2010).

As Biserko argues, Belgrade’s warrants serve a wider political purpose, a purpose that runs counter to regional and European interests. Western governments would do well, therefore, to halt Belgrade’s destructive policy. They should also put pressure on ICTY to release all protected documents, in order to present a true picture of what actually happened during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Back in the 1990s, the West failed miserably in its basic duty to uphold collective security in Europe, when it chose not to halt Slobodan Miloševic’s murderous adventure. British complicity with Serbia in carving up Bosnia-Herzegovina is well attested. Ganic’s arrest shows London determined not to learn from past mistakes.

What actually happened in Dobrovoljacka Street? We publish in an accompanying post an interview given in October 2009 by retired general of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina Jovan Divjak to Omer Karabeg of Radio Free Europe (RFE) about the events in question. General Divjak participated directly in these events, which took place on 3 May 1992, when during the evacuation of the former Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) from the command centre of the second army district, the column was attacked and a number of soldiers and officers were killed. The army’s withdrawal was part of an agreement reached on 2 May after the JNA had failed to take the centre of Sarajevo and had imprisoned the president of the Bosnian Presidency, Alija Izetbegovic, his daughter and personal secretary Sabina, and a member of the Bosnian negotiating team, Zlatko Lagumdžija, as they landed at the Sarajevo airport on their return from internationally staged negotiations with the Karadžic faction in Lisbon.

Credits: Bosnian Institute, UK. / March 4, 2010.

Congress of North American Bosniaks strongly condemns the latest political provocation…

that continually shows that Serbia doesn’t recognize the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and its citizens. Issueing the warrant on the basis under which Mr. Ejup Ganić, former member of the BiH Presidency, was arrested in London, is yet another confirmation of the Serbian bullish arrogance and attitude towards Bosnia and Herzegovina through the attempt to equalize the victim and the aggressor.

For CNAB it is unacceptable and incomprehensible that the state is the only one in history convicted of a violation of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide has the right to call warrant for people who stood to defend their homeland and whose right to self-defense is enshrined in the Charter of Human Rights and all of the UN Charter and international conventions. Serbia has with this move shown that it is more interested in the destabilization of the situation in BiH than to face its own crimes and criminals whom she gave rise to and carefully guarding and keeping them within its own borders. One of them is in the Hague, just on the day of Mr. Ganić’s arrest, a trial started for kind of crimes not remembered in Europe since the Second World War.

Issuing warrants (and now the arrest of Mr. Ganić) for members of the War Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina is a direct attack on the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of its authorities, officials and citizens who were just performing their patriotic duty and obligation to defend homeland from attacks and aggression. The goal of such warrant and the arrest is not law and justice, but true political humiliation of the true victims and attempt to equalize the victim and the aggressor, which illustrates the most prominent political judgment case of Mr. Ilija Jurišić. The state of BiH must not allow Mr. Ganić or any other citizen of BiH to experience the same fate.

CNAB is requesting from the state authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina clear and decisive response that should result in:

- termination of all diplomatic relations with Serbia and the withdrawal of the Ambassador of Bosnia and Herzegovina from Serbia

- BiH formal request to apply a system of reciprocity and raise the indictment against Serbian war leadership

- Sending a protest note to the Government of Great Britain and seeking immediate release of Mr. Ganić

Brendan Simms said in his book The Darkest Moment: “Britain and the destruction of Bosnia (Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia), published by Penguin Press described the negative role the British government played during the aggression on Bosnia-Herzegovina. The arrest of Mr. Ganić is put into doubt the intentions of Great Britain in and against the BiH.”

- initiate proceedings against Serbia in the European Court of Justice because of the false charges against the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina

We call upon citizens and patriots of BiH, BiH and in the Diaspora to:

- in the states and cities where there is the Embassy or Consulate of Serbia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UK-a) organize peaceful protests and from the protest send protest letters to the Serbian government and the UK, as well as a call to governments of countries and international and European institutions to stop the process of destabilization of Balkans, which is continuously implementing the official policy and the justice from Serbia.

- boycott products and services of companies with headquarters in Serbia until Mr. Ganić and Mr. Jurišić have not been released

CNAB believes that every crime must be punished, but does not accept the thesis that the criminals are those who were defending their lives and their homeland, especially if this thesis represents the state that doomed it, did nothing to prevent the crime of genocide, although it could have had.

Serbia will not experience catharsis by condemning bh patriots, that can only be achieved by condemning those who have in her name and on behalf of the Serbian people committed atrocities.

CNAB BoD

The parliament of Republika Srpska voted on February 10 to approve the measure, which was strongly backed by Prime Minister Milorad Dodik. Dodik has repeatedly called for greater autonomy for the Bosnian Serb entity and has threatened to use a referendum to challenge the authority of Bosnia’s international monitors or even break with Bosnia’s Muslim-Croat half.

Either vote would violate the terms of the Dayton peace accords that ended the Bosnian War in 1995. They would also likely scupper talks on constitutional reforms meant to centralize Bosnia’s governing structures.

In an interview with RFE/RL, Lieberman expressed regret that Bosnian Serb lawmakers proceeded with the vote despite calls from Western officials to reconsider.

“This is very disappointing and alarming news from Republika Srpska,” Lieberman said. “It’s not totally surprising because Mr. Dodik has threatened this before. This is a nation that experienced genocide only approximately 15 years ago. Dayton ended a war, but it did not achieve yet a genuine solution to these problems.”

U.S. and EU officials are desperately trying to convince Bosnian officials to agree on a set of constitutional reforms that would unify the country and put it on a course to EU membership. Supporters argue it is essential to strike an agreement on the reforms well ahead of the country’s October elections.

Lieberman said the autumn vote will give Bosnians in both the Serb Republic and the Muslim-Croat Federation an opportunity to indicate “whether they want to go toward an orderly unified government and membership in the European Union, or back to division and conflict.”

Lieberman last week traveled to Bosnia with Senator John McCain to meet with members of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, who called for greater Western involvement in resolving the country’s political impasse.

Lieberman today suggested that both the United States and the EU could create new posts with a special focus on Bosnia.

“I wonder whether the European Union and the United States ought now together to appoint special envoys to go back to Sarajevo to stay there and to try to bring the parties together,” he said. “Because the consequences of not doing so are very bad.”

Dennis Blair, the director of U.S. national intelligence, warned this month that Bosnia this year represents Europe’s biggest security threat.

Source: RFE/RL

“While a referendum can be a legitimate mechanism in the right circumstances, it can be counter productive, and even provocative, when used to pursue a narrow political agenda,” the US embassy in Sarajevo said.

“The United States would consider provocative any referendum that threatens the stability, sovereignty or territorial integrity of Bosnia-Hercegovina,” an embassy statement added.

It also warned against “any question that would challenge the structures of the Dayton peace accords (which ended the 1992-1995 war), including the authorities and decisions of the High Representative,” a reference to the powerful international envoy to the Balkan country.

A push towards staging a referendum in the Bosnian Serb entity in the ethnically-divided Balkan nation has sparked fears that it could further deepen the rift between Republika Sprska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

Post-war Bosnia consists of two highly-autonomous entities — the Serb-run Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation. Each has its own government.

The Bosnian Serb parliament met earlier Tuesday to discuss amendments to the law on referenda that would remove obstacles for their organisation.

Under the current law, the Muslim and Croat minorities in the Bosnian Serb parliament’s upper house can effectively block a referendum with stalling tactics until a deadline passes but the new law would scrap time limits.

Bosnian Serb Prime Minister Milorad Dodik said recently his government wanted to hold a referendum on decisions by the top envoy Valentin Inzko, who Bosnian Serbs see as biased against them. The top envoy can impose laws and sack obstructive officials.

Dodik has often warned that he would call a referendum on independence for Republika Srpska if its autonomy were threatened.

Bosnian Serbs continuously refuse any strengthening of Bosnia’s central institutions, sought by the international community to make the country more functional, at the expense of their autonomy.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved

Serbia is mulling over a resolution expressing remorse for the massacre in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica. This time, EU accession aspirations may prove a big enough incentive to make it happen.

By Anes Alic
- a senior writer for ISN Security Watch, based in Sarajevo and the co-founder and executive director of ISA Consulting, based in Sarajevo and Tel Aviv.

The Serbian Parliament is expected to discuss and possibly even pass a resolution on the Srebrenica massacre in the coming weeks, in a move that is causing mixed feelings among the opposition and a dispute among members of the ruling coalition.

But more interestingly, and in the true Balkan fashion, it is not remorse over what happened in Srebrenica that Serbia is willing put its condemnation down on official paper, rather it is a matter of pleasing the international community as Belgrade seeks European integration.

In early January, Serbian President Boris Tadic announced that the parliament would prepare and adopt a resolution condemning the July 1995 massacre of some 8,000 Bosniak men in the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica and adopt a resolution condemning the incident. Immediately, the announcement was met with criticism by both opposition forces and members of the ruling coalition, who vowed to present a counter resolution.

While most members of parliament agreed that a resolution should be adopted, many object to singling out Srebrenica, noting that crimes were committed elsewhere in the region during the Yugoslav wars. As such, it is possible that the Serbian Parliament will debate two separate draft resolutions in an attempt to satisfy all parties.

The original resolution will specifically condemn crimes committed against Bosniaks in Srebrenica, while the parallel resolution condemns all war crimes on the territory of the former Yugoslavia – including against Serb victims in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

Though theoretically, this should be a sufficient compromise, it is not still safe to predict that the resolutions will pass without further compromises.

Serbian media predicts that Tadic’s initiative could secure the support of 120 parliamentarians from the ruling coalition and the opposition Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). However, this is not enough for the resolution to pass in the 250-seat parliament.

When is a spade a spade?

Still another issue could deepen the dispute and prolong the debate: How exactly should Serbia refer to what happened at Srebrenica? Though some agree that the incident should be labeled ‘genocide,’ the majority would rather call it a ‘severe crime.’

“The crimes committed against Serbs in the recent wars are tragedies, but the Srebrenica massacre is [also] a tragedy, and Serbia’s shame. We have to call it what it is: genocide,” Nenad Canak, leader of the League of Vojvodina Social Democrats (LSV), Tadic’s coalition partner, told ISN Security Watch.

Canak, whose party initiated the previous failed attempts to pass the Srebrenica resolution, said that it was important, for both moral and political reasons, that the resolution be approved by parliament, since it would distance Serbia from crimes and be a major contribution to reconciliation in the region.

“Serbia as the society, which for years neglected the crimes committed in its name, has to show support for such a resolution. I don’t know why we are afraid in Serbia to call the crime in Srebrenica its proper name, genocide,” Canak said, stressing that his party would not lend support to the alternative resolution in Parliament if in the final draft the term ‘genocide’ was left out.

The League of Vojvodina Social Democrats and the Liberal Democratic Party are unique among Serbia’s political parites in that when the speak publicly about the Srebrenica resolution, they discuss moral obligation above all else, due to Serbia’s involvement in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

All others who would support the resolution, including Tadic, stress the necessity of its adoption in terms of easing the country’s EU accession bid, and in terms of Belgrade’s legal obligations to the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In February 2007, the ICJ cleared Serbia of responsibility for the genocide of Bosniaks and Croats, but said that Serbia had failed to use its influence with Bosnian Serbs to prevent the genocide at Srebrenica, and failed to comply with its international obligation to punish those responsible.

Tadic said that only by recognizing the suffering of others could Belgrade gain credibility in the international community, stressing that adoption of these resolutions would be beneficial to the people and the state of Serbia.

Sonja Biserko, the president of Serbia’s Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, told ISN Security Watch that the political elite’s failure to face up to Serbia’s role in the massacre has backfired, leading much of the world to assign collective guilt for Srebrenica to all Serbs. According to her, the passing the original resolution is the only way to make a break with Serbia’s wartime heritage.

“By doing so, we would confirm that the Republic of Serbia is sincere in its attempts to build a society different from the one led by [former Serb leader Slobodan] Milosevic, to condemn crimes and show respect for the victims,” Biserko said.

The resolution was also on the Serbian political agenda in 2005 but for the same reasons – the sticking point of singling out Srebrenica – it was sidelined.

Bigger carrots

This time around, however, Serbia may have a stronger incentive – EU accession.

Following the EU’s move last month to ease visa rules for Serbian citizens traveling to EU countries, authorities in Belgrade began to step up measures to fulfill the requirements for joining the bloc, hopefully by 2014.

For long, Belgrade’s European ambitions have been hampered over the failure to turn over major war crimes fugitives, particularly Bosnian Serb wartime General Ratko Mladic, indicted over Srebrenica and believed to be hiding out in Serbia.

But in early December 2009, chief UN prosecutor Serge Brammertz said Serbia had improved cooperation with the ICTY and was making satisfactory efforts to capture the fugitives. The Brammertz report led to the unfreezing of Belgrade’s interim trade pact with the EU.

Still, the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA) – the first step toward EU membership for western Balkan nations – remains blocked, as some member states, particularly the Netherlands, insist that Mladic first be captured.

The EU Council of Ministers is unlikely to consider Serbia’s membership application before June if the fugitives remain at large. Dutch and Belgian officials insist that the bloc wait for Brammertz’s next assessment before putting Serbia’s bid on the Council agenda.

Should Mladic be apprehended, the agreement would be immediately unblocked. And indeed, few experts would be shocked to learn of his arrest in a Belgrade suburb after over a decade on the run.

Indeed, if the Srebrenica resolution passes in parliament, it may prove a strong indication that political will to arrest Mladic is not far behind.

Regional will

And certainly, Serbia has been more cooperative in terms of Srebrenica than its neighbor, Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose Bosnian Serb leaders have shown no effort at discussing the issue at an institutional level.

Should Serbia end up adopting the Srebrenica resolution, Bosnia and Herzegovina – where the massacre took place – would be the only country in the region not to have adopted such a resolution.

In January 2009, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on Srebrenica calling on the all countries to endorse the measure and proclaim 11 July, the day the massacres began, a day of commemoration throughout the EU. The European Parliament’s resolution was followed by the adoption of similar resolutions in Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro.

Bosnia itself failed to pass the resolution, though this was not unexpected, as the Bosnian Serbs in the government rejected the idea, saying that it failed to take into account Bosnian Serb victims of the war.

Bosnian Serb officials refuse to adopt a resolution on this single incident, saying any resolution should take into account all war crimes committed against Serbs on the territory from World War II on. Initially, Bosniak politicians agreed to such an arrangement, but insisted on highlighting the Srebrenica massacre. But this, too, is unacceptable to Bosnian Serbs, since it would lend credence to the claim that Republika Srpska (Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity) was created on the foundations of genocide. As such, we should not expect a Srebrenica resolution to be on the Bosnian agenda for some time, as it would further inflame high ethnic animosity.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

1. Thanks to EU and US complacancy in the face of Bosnia’s continuing disintegration, it has been left to Croatia’s president to promise resolute action in defence of this fragile state.

2. The secession of the Republika Srpska from Bosnia-Hercegovina would be catastrophic for stability in the Balkans, and would most likely spark a renewed Serb-Bosniak war.

3. A Croatian threat to attack the Republika Srpska in the event that it secedes makes war less rather than more likely, by deterring an action that would most likely result in war.

4. We should therefore encourage Croatia to act as Bosnia’s guarantor in this manner, while hoping that Serbia will eventually show a similar degree of post-nationalist regional responsibility.

Outgoing Croatian president Stjepan Mesic earlier this month threatened to intervene militarily in the event that Bosnia’s Serb entity, Republika Srpska, attempts to secede and establish itself as an independent state. He was responding to repeated separatist noises on the part of the Republika Srpska’s aggressively nationalistic prime minister, Milorad Dodik, who makes no secret of his hostility to the state of Bosnia-Hercegovina and his designs against its territorial integrity, and whose atrocity denial and friendship for convicted war-criminals indicate a dangerous contempt for the norms of civilised behaviour. Mesic has warned that if Dodik announces a referendum on secession – as the first step toward the Republika Srpska’s unification with Serbia to form a ‘Great Serbia’ – he would send the Croatian Army south across the River Sava to cut in half the Bosnian Serb entity, which ‘would then have to disappear’. Yet the establishment of a Great Serbia is not the only danger about which Mesic has warned. He has highlighted also the possibility that, with Republika Srpska seceding and the Bosnian Croats following suit, it would leave behind an embittered Muslim rump-state, that ‘would find itself in a hostile surrounding, and would be able sustain itself only with the help of a fundamentalist regime.’ Consequently, ‘In the next 50 to 70 years there would be a new center of terrorism. It would be a new Palestine in the heart of Europe.’

German Ambassador to Sarajevo Joachim Schmidt is reported to have said that Mesic’s military threat ‘is not of help’. Yet it would not be left to Bosnia’s western neighbour to issue such a threat if the EU and US had not shown themselves to be quite so complacent in the face of Bosnia’s threatened collapse. Bosnia was lumbered with the unworkable and unsustainable Dayton settlement that ended its war in 1995. To sustain this unsustainable settlement, to make the unworkable work, required a powerful High Representative wielding authoritarian powers, backed up by a large international military presence. The Dayton system enjoyed its golden years in 2002-2006, when the Office of the High Representative (OHR) was held by the energetic Paddy Ashdown, and Bosnia superficially appeared to be making genuine strides towards reintegration. Yet the EU, naively believing that the farcical Dayton constitutional order could actually be made to function without massive outside interference, has since been rushing to wind down the OHR, and has withdrawn its support from Ashdown’s successors. With few international troops now remaining, the OHR has been left as a paper tiger, something that Dodik has taken advantage of to pursue his secessionist policy. It is as if a zoo-keeper had decided that, since his caged tiger had not eaten many people recently, it was now tame and could safely be let out of the cage, not realising that it was only because of the cage that the tiger appeared to be safe.

With the EU and US blithely fiddling while Bosnia burns, it has been left to the Croatian president to behave like a responsible European statesman, and make clear that the destruction of the international order in the Balkans will not be tolerated. Those condemning Mesic forget that his policy toward Bosnia is the exact opposite of that pursued by his predecessor, the chauvinistic tyrant Franjo Tudjman. Where Mesic defends a unified Bosnia, Tudjman joined with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in attempting to destroy Bosnia and crush the Bosnian Muslims. And that is really the choice that Europe has, so far as Croatia is concerned: between a Croatia that upholds Bosnia, a la Mesic, and a Croatia that undermines Bosnia, a la Tudjman. It does not take a genius to realise that a Mesicite Croatia is preferable to a Tudjmanite Croatia.

Under Tudjman, Croatia was a corrupt and despotic state that sheltered war criminals, persecuted national minorities and undermined the territorial integrity of its Bosnian neighbour. The Tudjman regime represented a synthesis between the authoritarianism of the Croatian Communist ancien regime – whose child Tudjman himself was – and right-wing Croat emigre nationalism, combining the worst features of both. Yet since Tudjman’s death in 1999 and the electoral defeat of his Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in 2000, Croatia appears definitely to have made the transition to becoming a democratic European state. Both Ivica Racan’s Social Democratic government, which took power in 2000, and the government of Ivo Sanader, who reconstituted the HDZ as a mainstream conservative party and took power in 2003, have guided Croatia down the democratic European path. Over them presided President Mesic, a reformed nationalist who honourably broke with Tudjman as early as 1994 over the latter’s Bosnian policy. These politicians redeemed Croatia in the 2000s from the disgrace brought upon it by Tudjman in the 1990s: they turned their back on anti-Bosnian Croat irredentism; refrained from pandering to neo-Ustasha sentiment; cooperated with the war-crimes tribunal in the Hague; put on trial war-criminals who persecuted Serb civilians in the 1990s; recognised the independence of Kosovo; and have brought Croatia into NATO and up to the gates of the EU. Croatia’s citizens should be as proud of their rulers’ record in the 2000s as they should be ashamed of their predecessors’ record in the 1990s. Of course, Croatia still faces huge problems of corruption and organised crime, but measured against where it would be now if Tudjman’s policies had been continued into the 2000s, the achievement is monumental.

With the election victory of the Social Democrat Ivo Josipovic in this month’s Croatian presidential election, Croatia has reaffirmed its democratic European path. His opponent in the presidential election, Milan Bandic, was a vulgar and corrupt populist who enjoyed the support of the nationalist emigration, of the better part of the clergy and of war-criminals such as Branimir Glavas and Tomislav Mercep. Bandic waged a red-baiting campagin directed against the Social Democrats on account of their Communist past – despite the fact that he too had been a member of the Communist party. Had he won the election, he would have become a Croatian Berlusconi. Yet Josipovic, a composer and law professor, crushed Bandic, winning 60.26% of the vote. Zivjela Hrvatska !

Josipovic is a civilised, non-nationalist individual who will serve to consolidate Croatia’s democratic transition and guard against any resurgence of Tudjman-style chauvinism. Yet there are indications that he lacks Mesic’s toughness. He has spoken of the possibility of withdrawing Croatia’s lawsuit against Serbia at the International Court of Justice; this would be an error, for although Croatia is unlikely to win the case, the verdict is highly likely to recognise Serbian war-crimes in Croatia in 1991-92, as it did in its judgement on Bosnia’s case against Serbia, when it recognised that ‘it is established by overwhelming evidence that massive killings in specific areas and detention camps throughout the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina were perpetrated during the conflict’ and that ‘the victims were in large majority members of the protected group [the Muslims], which suggests that they may have been systematically targeted by the killings’, and that ‘it has been established by fully conclusive evidence that members of the protected group were systematically victims of massive mistreatment, beatings, rape and torture causing serious bodily and mental harm, during the conflict and, in particular, in the detention camps.’ Croatia can reasonably hope for a similar recognition of its people’s suffering in the early 1990s.

Josipovic has also distanced himself from Mesic’s threat to intervene militarily to prevent the Republika Srpska’s secession, saying ‘sending the Croatian Army to a neighbouring country for me is not an option’ and ‘problems must always be solved through negotiations and with the agreement of all interested parties’. The pacific sentiment is commendable; the naivete less so. The Western alliance, given its past record, cannot be relied upon to take action to prevent the Republika Srpska’s secession; if it does not, and if Croatia does not either, then one of two things might happen. The Bosniaks might be stupid enough not to respond militarily, on the grounds that ‘problems must always be solved through negotiations and with the agreement of all interested parties’, in which case Republika Srpska will become independent at the price of some token concessions to the Bosniaks. Or the Bosniaks might take military action alone, in which case the consequences cannot be predicted, but are unlikely to be good.

It is worth stating again the case against allowing Republika Srpska to secede: it would represent a violation of the right to self-determination of the nearly 50% of the territory’s population that was Bosniak and Croat before 1992, that was mostly ethnically cleansed during the war and that has not been able to return since Dayton; the quid pro quo for international recognition of the Republika Srpska’s existence, with a massively disproportionate share of Bosnia’s territory, was the Serb recognition of Bosnia’s unity and indivisibility, and if the Serbs cease to recognise Bosnian unity then nobody is under any obligation to recognise the Republika Srpska’s existence any longer; the secession of Republika Srpska and its eventual unification with Serbia would derail Serbia’s own democratisation, and send it back down the path of expansionism and regional troublemaking; if Bosnia is allowed to break up, it will create a precedent for the break up of Macedonia and the secession of the Macedonian Albanians to unite with Albania and form a Great Albania, with all the dangers that would bring; and finally, the elements responsible for the bloodbath of the 1990s must never be rewarded. For all these reasons, Republika Srpska should not be allowed to secede. It is for the Bosnian citizenry as a whole to decide whether Bosnia should be divided into separate Serb, Croat and Bosniak states or whether it should remain united as a single state; it is not for either of the Bosnian entities to decide this unilaterally.

A threat, such as Mesic’s, makes a war in the region less rather than more likely, since so long as it is plausible, it will serve to deter an act of secession that would at the very least greatly destabilise the Balkans, and that would most likely spark a new Serb-Bosniak war. Dodik may be ready to pursue a secessionist policy that will result in war if he only has to fight the Bosniaks; he will be much less likely to do so if he has to fight Croatia as well, because he would inevitably lose. Those, such as Germany’s Ambassador Schmidt, who would like to deter Croatia from promising to defend Bosnia militarily if necessary, are contributing to the likelihood of war in the Balkans. Rather than praising him for not doing so, we should do well to encourage Josipovic to adopt Mesic’s policy.

We have spoken of Croatia’s tremendous achievement in turning its back on the politics of the late Franjo Tudjman. Serbia, too, has made tremendous strides in its democratic transition, particularly since the victory of the pro-European parties in Serbia’s 2008 parliamentary elections. Serbia has become a fully democratic state, embraced the European path and put war-criminals on trial, and however misguided its attempt to retain Kosova might be, it is at least using judicial means that are within its rights. But in one respect in particular Serbia scores much lower than Croatia: it has not abandoned its nationalist paradigm vis-a-vis Bosnia. Whereas official Croatia today sees Bosnian unity as its national interest, and refrains from promoting Bosnian Croat separatism, official Serbia continues to see its interest in undermining Bosnia and promoting the separateness of the Republika Srpska.

The day when Serbia sees its national interest as defending Bosnia’s unity and integrity from enemies such as Dodik, is the day when post-nationalist Serbia will truly have arrived.

Marko Attila Hoare is European Neighbourhood Section Director for the Henry Jackson Society

A row has erupted between Bosnian Serb politicians and the top international official in Bosnia-Hercegovina over the role of foreign judges and prosecutors.

The international High Representative, Valentin Inzko, says the Bosnian Serb republic, Republika Srpska (RS), has violated the 1995 Dayton peace accords.

His statement came after RS rejected his extension of the judges’ and prosecutors’ mandate until 2013.

They work on Bosnian war crimes cases, in line with the Dayton peace accords.

The Bosnian Serb prime minister, Milorad Dodik, has rejected Mr Inzko’s comments, and accused his office of undermining the peace deal.

Under the Dayton agreement, which ended the 1992-1995 war, Bosnia was divided into Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim)-Croat and Bosnian Serb entities, with a federal presidency.

Plea to respect Dayton

The High Representative has the power to impose laws and dismiss elected officials.
A statement from Mr Inzko’s office says Republika Srpska’s government and parliament “are in violation of the Dayton Peace Agreement” because they rejected his extension of the foreign judges’ and prosecutors’ mandate.

“The Republika Srpska must respect the Dayton Peace Agreement in its entirety and must not challenge actions undertaken on the basis of Dayton,” the statement said.

Mr Dodik, quoted by the Belgrade-based Radio B92 website, countered that Mr Inzko’s team “are the ones committing crimes and violating Dayton, not us”.

Mr Inzko, an Austrian diplomat, is taking the matter to the UN Security Council and to the governments monitoring implementation of Dayton.

Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serbs plan to hold a referendum on the issue.

The leaders of Bosnia’s divided communities have stalled over reform of the Bosnian constitution – seen as a vital step towards eventual EU and Nato membership.

The 14th anniversary of the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords passed unnoticed in November. The collapse of a US-EU diplomatic initiative in Bosnia-Herzegovina last month went virtually unreported too, as has the fact that Bosnia’s cold peace is under serious threat.

Bosnia may seem less significant than it used to be to the US and her allies. Pressing challenges in Afghanistan and beyond need great attention. But the risk of a failed state taking root in Europe cannot be ignored by Europe or in Washington.

Brussels struggles with serious Balkan diplomacy – so many capitals to confer with and tactics to co-ordinate, and so little political will to take difficult decisions. The EU hopes that its all-carrots, no-sticks approach linked entirely to the promise of an eventual EU accession process will change the domestic politics of Bosnia and neighbouring Serbia, and produce political co-operation. The US backs this approach, despite the fact that Bosnia is further from EU membership than any other aspirant country.

Bosnia’s economy has grown with foreign aid, but the state has not grown, and today it does not work. The Bosnian Serbs have exploited the autonomy they were granted at Dayton, relying on stalling tactics to keep the country divided, its government dysfunctional, and their hopes of secession alive, while some Bosniak leaders can be equally rigid. Some resistance has been overcome when the international high representative overseeing Dayton has insisted on it. But even this level of effort has overtaxed the patience and capacity of the EU and US. The high representative’s office has been allowed to be demeaned so that none of the parties, particularly the Bosnian Serbs, heed its efforts. It is now proposed to weaken the role further by recasting the high representative as an EU special representative and stripping out real authority – the “Bonn powers”.

With the election season in Bosnia imminent, nationalist rhetoric will certainly increase in all parts. Even the Bosnian Croats increasingly talk of their own entity and a break with their federation with the Bosniaks.

What happens in Europe’s backyard matters: the consequences of Bosnia’s disintegration would be catastrophic. The breakdown of the country into independent ethnic statelets would not only reward ethnic cleansing – surely a moral anathema – but would also risk the creation of a failed state in the heart of Europe; a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and crime, and a monstrous betrayal of all those who survived the concentration camps, mass graves and displacement of the 1990s. Bosnia will not solve itself, nor will the prospect of EU integration be enough to pull the country back from the brink.

Instead we must recognise that all the countries in the region are linked and cannot be dealt with in isolation.

We urge the US and EU to each appoint a special envoy to the region, who would work in lockstep to deliver a united message and drive forward progress. We must impress on Bosnia’s leaders that the sovereignty of the country is unquestionable and its break-up unthinkable. But we must also say to European candidate countries Serbia and Montenegro that they are expected to uphold EU policy towards Bosnia.

A robust international approach should focus on a single goal: a central government in Bosnia effective enough to meet the responsibilities of EU and Nato membership. Each Bosnian leader should have to stand for, or against, that simple idea – and face consequences for his or her answer.

The international community should be prepared to use sticks as well as carrots. There is a strong argument for the threat of targeted sanctions against politicians who undermine the Bosnian state.

Talk of timelines for the closure of the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia-Herzegovina is premature. The Office should only be closed once constitutional reform has been achieved. Meanwhile, the high representative must have the solid backing of the EU and US so that all parties know they cannot sit out the international presence in the country.

Finally, the EU peacekeeping mission in Bosnia must be retained, and reinforced if necessary, to send a strong signal that neither secession nor violence will be tolerated.

Today Radovan Karadzic is finally on trial in The Hague on charges of alleged genocide and war crimes in Bosnia. As he and others are called to account over their part in the horrendous events of the 1990s, it would be a supreme irony if their plans for carving up Bosnia-Herzegovina were to be realized simply because the international community was too busy to care.

Mr Hague is UK shadow foreign secretary, Lord Ashdown is a former high representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina. This article was co-written by James O’Brien, a former US presidential envoy for the Balkans, Morton Abramowitz, former US ambassador to Turkey and a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, and Jim Hooper, a managing director of the Public International Law and Policy Group

If there is one foreign dignitary whom a majority of Bosnian citizens do not want to see in the new year, it must be Carl Bildt, the Swedish foreign minister, whose country holds rotating presidency of the European Union for a few more days.

He would be welcomed, of course, to come together with his wife, Anna Maria Corazza Bildt, to ski at Sarajevo’s Winter Olympics venues, but not in a political capacity. But even then, both would likely be asked unpleasant questions about their political dealings concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Carl Bildt merits a different outlook from Turkey, for example. Sincerely or not, he tried until the last moment to unblock Turkey’s EU accession talks, stressing that it was “in the strategic interest of Europe” to do so. In Tel Aviv, he was called a “stupid man” due to his comparison of Israel with Hamas. He was not welcomed in Moscow during the war in South Ossetia because of his comparison of Russia with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina, however, he lays all blame for the country’s political impasse on Bosnian politicians, not making any distinction between those struggling to preserve its integrity and those threatening to further destabilize — or even divide — it.

People — whether as individuals, small social groups or whole nations — when unable to recognize their weakness and impotence to solve grave problems by themselves, place the blame on others. But in the Bosnian case in particular, the international community has the essential responsibility for the current Bosnian political stalemate. The international community stopped the war in Bosnia with the Dayton Peace Accords in 1995, but at the same time imposed a constitutional structure that, aside from rewarding aggressors, prevents the country from entering 2010 as a normal and functional state.

Bildt was part of that international community’s mechanism and, thus, shares its responsibility. He served as the co-chairman of the Dayton peace talks as well as the co-chairman of the recently failed US-EU attempt to ease the crisis in Bosnia. He has been involved in Bosnian and other Balkan problems, representing the UN or the EU but adding to his missions a personal, and very often controversial, touch.

I met the man only once, in İstanbul. It happened on a rainy winter day shortly after the Dayton Peace Accords were concluded when Bildt came to consult Turkish officials about its implementation. We were having dinner in a restaurant being splashing by the choppy waters of the Bosporus when a Turkish colleague whispered to me a question while pointing at Bildt. “On whose behalf did he come here?” We guessed it was more on the behalf of the Americans, or the Britons, or even the French — but these were all guesses. “You should know,” he whispered to me. “Western powers like to engage Scandinavians, particularly Swedes, to accomplish dirty diplomatic jobs for them.” He said the same was the case even in Ottoman times, citing the conclusion of treaties in 1813 and after the Balkan wars in 1913. I never again met with my interlocutor from that stormy Bosporus night to continue our talk, and I have yet to find a Swede who served as a mediator in the years he mentioned. I also did not have the opportunity to ask Turkish historians, such as İlber Ortaylı, about this, but they should know if indeed there was someone.

The role of Swedes

However, ever since, I have kept somewhere in the back of my mind the idea of “dirty diplomatic jobs” whenever there was talk of international mediation missions in the hands of Sweden or other Nordic countries. Modern history remembers some mediators and conciliators who, risking even their lives, exerted themselves to direct great crises and conflicts toward a peaceful settlement. Perhaps most prominent among those who gave their lives on that path in the last century were the Swedes.

One was Count Folke Bernadotte, the United Nations’ mediator for Palestine. After the failed UN effort to partition Palestine into an Arab and a Jewish state in November 1947 and at the beginning of the first of the wars in the Middle East, in May 1948, the UN General Assembly chose the former International Red Cross mediator to undertake the first serious UN attempt at peacekeeping after World War II. Seeking to stop the war between newly proclaimed Israel and the Arab states, Count Bernadotte proposed a new plan of partition, with Jerusalem ruled by Jordanians. Jewish extremists did not like it at all, and their terrorist group Lehi, led by future Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, assassinated the UN envoy when he was passing through the Jerusalem streets only four months after his arrival in the conflict area.

That assassination left no hopeful trace for future developments. Jerusalem is still one of the stumbling blocks in the Middle East crisis. From the other side, weakness displayed toward the Jewish state for its reluctance to prosecute the murderers of the UN mediator seriously damaged the image of the world organization at the very beginning of its existence.

Another one was Dag Hammarskjöld, a Swedish statesman and the second UN secretary-general. He was known as an international peacemaker of great moral authority and sensitivity. He was killed in a plane crash over today’s Zambia at the peak of the Congo crisis in 1961. It is believed that Hammarskjöld was assassinated as well. He initiated the sending of a UN peacemaking force to Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but Russia, then the Soviet Union, strongly opposed UN involvement. It was one of the largest tests of East-West rivalry, so Hammarskjöld could also be considered a victim of the Cold War. He was posthumously awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. “I realize now that in comparison to him, I am a small man,” US President John F. Kennedy said at the time.

Mediators for two centuries

At the crossroads of two centuries, Scandinavians were again engaged as international mediators: Swedes in Nagorno-Karabakh and Bosnia, Norwegians in the Oslo talks between Israelis and Palestinians and Finn Martti Ahtisaari, who acquired fame in Kosovo.

Swedes have also considerably contributed to studies and expertise in the fields of international mediation, conciliation and peacekeeping. There is the Swedish Forum for Mediation and Conflict Management, the Folke Bernadotte Academy and the department of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University.

A question was raised when Olof Palme served as prime minister over whether Sweden had taken on the role of a critic at the expense of that of a mediator. Palme was also assassinated. He was known as a harsh critic of everyone: the Americans because of Vietnam, the Russians because of Czechoslovakia, the Britons because of the apartheid in South Africa, the Israelis because of the Palestinians. Ulf Bjereld was right, proving in his study “Critic or Mediator? Sweden in World Politics, 1945-90” that his country’s taking on the role of a critic in the 1960s was not followed by a decrease in its mediation or bridge-building missions. He concluded, however, that “restrictions on criticism and attitudes come up in conflicts where that country is also acting as a mediator or bridge-builder.”

There was also an interesting recent study by Professor Isak Svensson from Uppsala University examining the effect of biased versus neutral mediation on the content of peace agreements, but I have yet to see its full text to see if he considers Bildt’s missions in the Balkans and Bosnia as biased or neutral.

Concerning Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bildt would deserve a secure place under the first category. That’s why a majority of its citizens would like to bid him a full-hearted adieu.

Everything aside, he cannot be forgiven for what he did immediately after the peace deal was signed in Dayton. He was appointed as the international community’s first representative in the country. He gave Serbs a full month, enabling them to dismantle factories and take them to Serbia as well as to abandon devastated territories Serb leader Radovan Karadzic ordered them to leave.

Bildt was not alone in appeasing Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic as a Balkan “capo.” He introduced the term “collective guilt” for whatever Serbia was doing in Bosnia and Croatia, where he was declared persona non grata, but he went further, saying in his memoirs, “I had no way of knowing who was responsible for what was happening around Srebrenica.” The words genocide in Srebrenica never passed his lips.

The families of Srebrenica victims were recently very outraged when they became aware that Bildt was implicated in the early release of Biljana Plavsic, who was among the Bosnian Serb leaders most responsible for the killings of more than 8,000 of their sons, husbands and relatives.

In the end, Bildt’s wife, a Swedish delegate in the European Parliament, gave all this a particular touch. She was the most vociferous opponent of a proposal that would grant citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina the right to join those from other regional countries in being able to travel to EU member states visa-free.

Who knows what causes lie behind Bildt’s controversial behavior. Is it a more or less biased approach, as seen in his dealings in the Balkans and in Bosnian affairs, or an unrealistic desire to enroll himself among the most prominent Swedish and European statesmen? Or is there is a personal complex or even a simple human fear that he could lose his life, just as his great compatriots Hammarskjöld and Palme did? In any case, I have been unable to find an idea of Bildt’s worth remembering, but I know an appropriate one from Hammarskjöld’s diary: “He who wills adventure will experience it — according to the measure of his courage. He who wills sacrificed will be sacrificed — according to the measure of his purity of heart.”

GfbV/STP President Tilman Zülch observed that “Pavle maintained very close and friendly relations with the two major Bosnian Serb war criminals Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic during the time when they were imprisoning more than 200,000 Bosnian Muslims and Catholics in concentration and detention camps and 20,000 Bosnian Muslim women were being systematically raped”. The Patriarch remained silent as Serbian troops commanded by the two war criminals destroyed centuries-old mosques and madrassas (a total of 1186) and over 500 Catholic churches and other religious buildings.

Throughout Serb-occupied Bosnia only a single mosque was left standing. Pavle, who conferred his blessing on the war criminals on a number of occasions, later sought to gloss over his support for genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina later with vague declarations in support of peace. Pavle’s macabre involvement is illustrated by the photograph above which shows him blessing Radovan Karadžić (currently before the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague) and Ratko Mladić (protected for years by the Serbian authorities and the Serbian Army). “We are still waiting for Archbishop Zollitsch, a child survivor of a Tito concentration camps where thousands of Danube Swabian women and children perished, to show some respect at least for the victims of Sarajevo and Srebrenica”, Zülch added.

GfbV President Tilman Zülch can be contacted for further information on 0151-15309888 or 0171-7100713.

The Congress of North American Bosniaks, an umbrella organization representing 350,000 Bosniaks residing in United States of America and Canada, was shocked to watch the video clip which has surfaced, as part of the “Global Awareness Lecture” held on September 17, 2008 at College of Saint Benedict / Saint John University in the U.S.A. given by Bosnia and Herzegovina Deputy Minister of Affairs Ana Babić – Trišić. 

It is appalling and unethical to see the manner and the way in which the statehood, historical events, war crimes and criminals in Bosnia and Herzegovina are maliciously misrepresented. We would like to point out among other things that  the history of Bosnia and Herzegovina is not 13, 14 years old as Mrs. Trišić suggests, but over 500. Throughout the 1 hr long presentation it can be considered defamatory not to mention by name, the first and only single Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović.

Conveniently omitting the events and dates such as; when Bosnia gained independence, when UN recognized Bosnia as independent state, some would think that these events had some ma j or significance when speaking on behalf of a new country, instead rendering them meaningless. Falsely portraying events and reasons for war in Bosnia, as well as distorting historical events, such as; JNA (Yugoslav National Army) involvement in the start of the war, omitting the truth about  systematic ethnic cleansing and genocide in Srebrenica, implying it takes 2-3 parties to have a war, globalization cause for war… is simple and utter deception. 

While talking about Dayton most of the 1 hr lecture, Deputy Minister of Affairs Ana Babić – Trišić did not once mention the signatories of this milestone agreement. Even after being the witness of stalled political progress for 13 years, threats of secession of RS, she had the audacity of calling the Dayton agreement:  the right solution for Bosnia, very good, most splendid agreement of American diplomacy, best guarantee and in-viable instrument for B&H stability, who satisfied everyone, and reintegrated the country.

B&H Deputy Minister of Affairs Ana Babić Trišić deliberately forgets to mention any High Representatives, Heads of state, her own boss, or any political figures involved in all critical decisions for Bosnia and Herzegovina by name. It is a shame to see Bosnian government official downplay the importance and purpose of High Representative, calling him “the King”… “ruling the country”. Mocking international institutions, heads of state, other Bosnian partners should not be foreign affairs policy of Bosnia.

Audience of professors, Ambassadors, journalists, students are being immersed into a biased, misleading, and twisted terminology where all aspects of negative topics relating to Serbs, were addressed by terminology such as; Yugoslav’s, confessions, ethnicity, Bosnia, we or left out by silence. Where as at every chance the Muslims were deliberately and in derogatory manner described with: Bosniaks, Islam confession, mujaheedin, or even worse terms. It does not escape knowledgeable and informed viewer that every Serb propaganda is being propagated here as only true solution for Bosnia; such as closing of the Office of High Representative prior to amending Constitution and ethnic voting, closing the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), changing the election system. But statements such as: Democracy brought us into war, or either we decided or we were put into war… etc. left us wondering how Minister of Affairs Ana Babić – Trišić can hold such a lecture.

In addition, it should be considered a criminal act to deny decisions brought by ICTY in regards to 160 war crime inducements against Serbs, and instead imposing her own views on the justice served. It was superfluous to mention the implication of Karadžić’s trial and Mr. Holbrooke or lengths of sentences Serb criminals have been serving.

It is pure public deception to say: Human rights is excellent – while Bosniak returnees are facing threats, fear mongering from “Ravnogorski Pokret”, economy made remarkable progress - while 40% of country is unemployed, Yugoslav languages – while Bosnian language is left out, and others.

As the Bosnia and Herzegovina Deputy Minister of Affairs Mrs. Ana Babić Trišić compared the ending of Bosnian Dayton situation, to a movie with “good ending”, we conclude our letter with the hope that the ending of this lecture-movie as the ending of her carrier as the Deputy Minister of Affairs for Bosnia and Herzegovina. We urge the Bosnian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deeply examine the portrayal and representation of Bosnia and Herzegovina by its members abroad and at home. 

We invite the Bosniaks and pro-Bosnians to watch the video of Ms. Ana Babić Trišić’s lecture.

On behalf of the Congress of North American Bosniaks
Semir Djulic
Spokesperson

Transcript of the lecture is provided by Sanel Babic, member of the CNAB Board of Directors.