The Trial Of Radovan Karadžić Enters The Final Phase

Note from the Saker: I have recently posted an excellent analysis by Stephen Karganovic of the legal farce or "judicial persecution" of Vojislav Šešelj by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the Hague. I was so impressed by this article, that I asked Karganovic if he would agree to update me, and my readers, about the situation of Radovan Karadžić. Karganovic kindly agreed and he sent me the article I am posting today. Considering some of the comments elicited by the previous article I sadly have to remind you all of two things which I consider self-evident:

1) To describe the gross violation of basic legal norms and civil rights of an accused person does not necessarily imply an endorsement of that person's views, actions or character.  For example, do denounce the murder by a lynchmob of Muammar Gaddafi does not imply an endorsement of his policies or character.

2) In today's world, it appears that *nobody* has the intellectual honesty or courage to give the accused Serbians at the ICTFY a fair hearing or even to express concern about the total lack of respect of even basic legal norms in their trials. I refuse to "forget" or "not notice". I shall not be a bystander and I shall not give in to the social pressure to conform.

I want to express my deepest gratitude to Stephen Karganovic for is superb analysis of these two trials.

The Saker
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The Trial Of Radovan Karadžić Enters The Final Phase

by Stephen Karganovic

The Prosecution and the Defence have filed their final submissions in the trial of Radovan Karadžić, former president of the Republic of Srpska, which was concluded on 2 May 2014. The trial was conducted before the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the Hague. A total of 195 Prosecution and 238 Defence witnesses were heard. The prosecutor, Alan Tieger, has asked for life imprisonment, the maximum sentence, for Dr. Karadžić who stands accused of genocide, crimes against humanity (persecution, extermination, murder, deportation, etc.), and violation of the laws and customs of war. Dr Karadžić was the political head of the Bosnian Serb state during the 1992-1995 ethnic conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, as President, he was commander-in-chief of its armed forces.

While during the lengthy trial the prosecution focused on a variety of imputed crimes, the main charges against Dr. Karadžić concerned “ethnic cleansing” of the Muslim and to a lesser extent Croatian population, the siege and bombardment of Sarajevo by Serbian forces, and events in Srebrenica following its capture by Serbian forces in July of 1995.

In his three-day summary of the evidence which began on 1 October, Karadžić reiterated his innocence of the charges outlined in the indictment. “I am not guilty,” he proclaimed. “This court has put on trial not me, but the Serbian people.”

Although not a lawyer but psychiatrist by training and representing himself in the proceedings, as the trial advanced Dr. Karadžić’s proficiency increased noticeably. While in his 876 page final submission he addressed meticulously every item presented in the prosecution’s case, in the concluding remarks he focused mainly on refuting the three charges which were at the heart of the prosecutor’s indictment.

1. There was never a policy or “joint criminal enterprise” to expel Muslims from Serb areas of Bosnia;
2. The shelling and sniping in Sarajevo was in response and proportional to outgoing fire and attacks by the Bosnian Muslim forces from the militarized city, and the most dramatic of these events, like Markale, were staged by the Muslims to obtain international intervention for their side; and
3. He had no knowledge that prisoners from Srebrenica would be, were being, or had been executed and the number of such executions has been exaggerated.

The defendant argued forcefully that while large-scale movement of each of the three ethnic populations (Muslim, Croats, and Serbs) to areas where their co-nationals constituted the majority or were under the control of their armed forces is undeniable, that is an inherent characteristic of most ethnic conflicts. The prosecution, Karadžić claimed, failed to present any evidence of a plan or policy on the Bosnian Serb side to expel members of the other ethnicities from territory under its control. Quite the opposite, numerous orders were issued to troops and authorities under Karadžić’s command prohibiting ill-treatment of Muslim and Croat non-combatants.

Radovan Karadžić

The siege of Sarajevo, as expected, was a very contentious issue during the trial. Karadžić reiterated the position of the Serbian side that while Muslims had a strong presence in the city, the surrounding countryside was mainly populated by Serbs. As a result, there was no “siege” in proper military terms but merely holding the line of demarcation between the respective territories of the two communities. Karadžić was largely successful in demonstrating that, contrary to agreements reached at the beginning of the war concerning its demilitarisation, Sarajevo contained significant and well-equipped Muslim military formations which conducted offensive operations against Serbian forces throughout the conflict.

One of the highlights of the defence case was undoubtedly the meticulous and competent dismantling of the story line constructed around Markale market bombings, with considerable civilian casualties, allegedly carried out by Bosnian Serb forces in February 1994 and August 1995. These bombings were significant in psychologically turning world public opinion against the Serb side and, additionally, served as pretexts for the military involvement of NATO forces on the Muslim side, thus helping to tip the military balance in the war.

Karadžić’s defence reinforced doubts that virtually from the start were circulating widely that the Markale massacres were a classical “false flag” operation conceived and carried out by the Muslims, perhaps with Western intelligence assistance. It was, he argued, designed to incriminate the other side, and not a war crime deliberately committed by Serbian forces. Forensic and eyewitness evidence produced by the defence left intact very little of the prosecution’s case with regard to Markale.

Turning to Srebrenica, while asserting that the prosecution offered no evidence to link him to the planning, execution, or knowledge of any crimes committed there in the aftermath of the Serbian takeover in July 1995, Dr. Karadžić vigorously disputed the standard narrative. His position was that the prosecution claim of 7,000 to 8,000 executed prisoners was an impossibility because the prosecution failed to produce evidence that more than about 3,500 Muslim POWs were ever taken captive in that military operation. Furthermore, according to evidence presented by the defence, a large number of Muslim losses were in fact combat deaths sustained during Muslim army 28th Division’s breakout from Srebrenica to Tuzla and were therefore legitimate casualties which cannot be imputed as war crimes.

Dr. Karadžić’s position is that up to 1,000 Muslim prisoners of war were probably executed after the fall of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995, but that – setting aside revenge killings – the executions had neither an official nor premeditated character and were carried out by rogue structures outside of the Bosnian Serb military chain of command. Karadžić did not deny that a massacre of prisoners took place, though on a far smaller scale than alleged in the indictment, but asserted that neither the military nor the political authorities of the Republic of Srpska were involved in it.

On the issue of “genocide,” which is particularly complex from the legal standpoint and sensitive morally, Karadžić maintained that the evidence does not demonstrate any intent, prior to the 11 July 1995 takeover of Srebrenica, to exterminate Muslims as a group protected under the Genocide Convention. Moreover, he referred to much contrary evidence produced at the trial indicating that captured prisoners were being treated regularly into 13 July, thus again refuting the existence of prior genocidal specific intent. Subsequently, groups of prisoners were shot at various locations, but the prosecution failed to link those events to state or military policy. According to Karadžić, it would be just as reasonable to view these murders as revenge by local Serbs for the atrocities previously committed by Muslim army forces using the UN-protected Srebrenica enclave as a launching pad for military operations against Serbian civilians in the surrounding areas.

In any event, Karadžić argued, the object of a genocide – even if there was the intention to commit it – could only have been Bosnian Muslims as a whole, not a comparatively negligible percentage of Muslim residents and refugees in a small town. However, no evidence was presented that a crime of such scope or nature was planned or committed either on the national or the municipal level.

The Karadžić trial (and the mostly parallel trial of Bosnian Serb army commander, General Ratko Mladic) is the last in the series of Hague show trials since the Tribunal was established and began its work in the mid-1990s. In an important sense it encapsulates the spirit and methodology of ICTY. Inequality of resources between the huge Prosecution staff and the tiny Defence team is blatant. The Chamber regularly granted Prosecution requests and blocked those of the Defence. The Prosecution deprived the Defence of thousands of pages of potentially exculpatory evidence during the trial without provoking the slightest effort on the part of the judicial Chamber to correct that outrageous procedural and substantive injustice. Defence request for access to important evidence for independent forensic verification, such as DNA data that allegedly supports the prosecution’s version of the number of Srebrenica victims, was flatly denied by the Chamber. And the list goes on and on…

The unequal conditions in which the trial was conducted leave little doubt that the judges will go to great lengths to look at the evidence and its significance from the Prosecution’s point of view. With respect to the formal outcome of the Karadžić trial, it is practically certain that the judges are highly unlikely to take the politically risky step of disregarding the prosecution’s recommendation of life in prison for Radovan Karadžić.

That being settled, the larger issue is how the verdict will be framed and what reverberations it will have on the Bosnian political scene.

Karadžić’s close collaborator, Bosnian Serb National Assembly President Momčilo Krajišnik, was initially accused of genocide, but in the verdict that charge was dropped by the court for lack of evidence. In Dr. Karadžić’s case, whether or not he is found guilty of genocide (it being understood that in light of Tribunal’s jurisprudence, there are in any event plenty of crimes in the indictment that the court could use to rationalize life imprisonment, if it so chooses) is bound to have considerable impact on local Bosnian politics. It would add considerable impetus and an apparent legal justification to the persistent Muslim demand for the dissolution of the Republic of Srpska as a “genocidal entity.” It would also provide a quasi-judicial basis for collecting from Republic of Srpska’s taxpayers huge civil indemnity judgments that individual Muslim “victims” have obtained in various courts for abuses suffered at the hands of Serbian forces during the Bosnian civil war.

There is also another important potential effect of the Karadžić judgment that is certain to have an impact on the Serbian Democratic Party (SDP) in the Republic of Srpska, which he founded. While Karadžić was in hiding and later at the Hague, his party, once considered a bastion of Serbian nationalism, was taken over by a new cadre of pragmatic politicians eager to avoid confrontations with Western powers and ready to make political accommodations in return for Western support to replace current pro-Russian Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik. SDP’s candidate lost the 12 October election to Dodik, but the party still has considerable influence with the support of about one-fourth of the electorate. It is rumored in Banja Luka, the Bosnian Serb capital, that the new SDP leadership has agreed to redesign party ideology to make it more acceptable to Euro-Atlanticist mentors, similarly to the way that operation was performed a few years ago in neighbouring Serbia by former nationalist Radicals Aleksandar Vučić and Tomislav Nikolić.

According to well-informed sources, again, current SDP leadership were warned by Western interests that by the time the Karadžić trial is over they would be well advised to fully transform their traditional image. Otherwise, their “extremist nationalist” and, after the Karadžić verdict, quite possibly also “genocidal” party might simply be banned by the High representative in Sarajevo who, after all, is the real ruler of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Saker interview with Nebojsa Malic aka "Grey Falcon"

Today I want to do something which I have not done in a long while: interview somebody by email and give that person the space to fully answer.  For those interested, in the past I did that with Mizgin (Kurdistan), Roger Tucker (One Democratic State), Taimur (Indian Kashmir), Gilad Atzmon (Palestine), Joel Bainerman (Israel), Uri Avnery (Israel), Jonathan Cook (Palestine), Joel S. Hirschhorn (USA), Anticapitalista (Greece) and Scott Horton (USA).  I think that I like this format and I will come back to it again.

[BTW - my dream would be to make such an "email interview" with a Hezbollah official or party member but, alas, all my attempts to obtain such an interview have, so far, failed.  If anybody could help me get such an interview I would be eternally thankful to him/her!!]

Just a few days after seeing him interviewed by Peter Lavelle on RT about Crimea, I got an  email from Nebojsa Malic who blogs at Gray Falcon and who is currently President of the R. Archibald Reiss Institute for Serbian Studies in Washington, DC.  I immediately seized the opportunity to ask him a question which had been nagging at me for many years already.

I understand that the topic of war in Bosnia might reopen old wounds for some readers and I also understand that some might categorically disagree with Nebojsa Malic's point of view.  To those readers I would say two things: the war in Bosnia left everybody wounded, not just one group.  As for what lessons can be learned from this war, they might be painful, but they are also important because of the undeniable fact that what happened in Bosnia was the blueprint which was subsequently applied to Kosovo, Chechnia, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine.

I would very much welcome another point of view on this topic, especially one from a supporter of Alija Izetbegovic.  If somebody is willing to share such a point of view here, I would be delighted to publish it.

Finally, and especially because this is a painful topic, I will be far stricter than usual in my comments moderation policy.  While everybody will be free to express disagreements or criticisms, any comment which will be rude or include any ad hominems will be deleted.  Likewise, I will tolerate no insults towards any of the Bosnian ethnic and religious groups involved in this war.  We all probably think that this or that party was in the right, and that's fine, but at the end all parties are first and foremost victims of this war.  Thus they ideally all deserve respect and, if that is impossible, then at least basic courtesy.  This restriction does not apply to any of the external parties to this conflict whom you may insult to your heart's content (if you feel that this adds something useful to the conversation).

A big "thank you!" to Nebojsa Malic for his time and very interesting answer.

The Saker

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Question from The Saker:

Ever since the war in Bosnia began, I have been convinced that the Bosnian-Muslims have been conned by the USA into the wrong alliance and that they would have been infinitely better off if they had sided with the Serbs against the Croats. Do you agree with that? If not - why not? As far as I know, Radovan Karadzic made several offers to make a deal, but they were all rejected. Is that true? Can you be specific and outline what the Bosnian-Serbs offered as a basis for negotiations? I also know that some Bosnian-Muslims were favorable to a dialog with the Bosnian-Serbs - why did that never happen? There is the mostly overlooked example of Fikret Abdic in Bihac. Why was his "model" not emulated by other Bosnian-Muslim leaders? Why has a "Bosnian Akhmad Kadyrov" not appeared during this war? Lastly, what are your hopes for a future national reconciliation between all Bosnians?

Answer from Nebojsa Malic:

My experience in Bosnia is enough to sell me on the idea of powerful personalities as forces of history. Because a lot of what happened in Bosnia cannot be explained other than through the man who emerged as the leader of the Bosnian Muslims, Alija Izetbegovic.

The rift between Bosnia’s communities is religious, but also historical. The Serbs are natives who remained loyal to the Orthodox Church. Bosnia’s Muslims are mainly local converts to Islam over the four centuries of Ottoman rule (1461-1878). And then you have the locals who converted to Catholicism, as well as settlers who arrived from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the 1878-1918 occupation; these two groups were later shoehorned into the catch-all category of “Croats.”

A century ago, there were both Serb, Croat and Muslim members of “Young Bosnia,” the organization behind the 1914 assassination of the Hapsburg heir in Sarajevo that was later used as a pretext for WW1. When Austria-Hungary fell apart at the end of the war, the unified state of South Slavs (in 1929 renamed “Yugoslavia”) got mired in a bitter conflict between the Orthodox Serb majority and the Catholic Croats. When Hitler invaded in 1941, Croats sided with the Axis and established their own state, which immediately began the mass murder of Serbs. Many Muslims, sadly, joined the Croats in this endeavor, perhaps seeing the German Reich as the return of Austria-Hungary (within which most of their Ottoman privileges were preserved). Others backed the Germans directly, unhappy that the Ustasha regime saw them as nothing more than “Islamic Croats.”

One of those people was the young Alija Izetbegovic – too young to join the two Muslim Waffen-SS divisions, but old enough to be an activist. Briefly imprisoned by the Communist regime after the war, he was released and later went to law school.

Originally intent on dismembering Yugoslavia, Tito’s Communists rethought the idea when they came into power in 1945. So they partitioned the country into “socialist republics.” One of these republics reunited the two Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a single polity, which was supposed to hold Yugoslavia together as a place belonging to Serbs, Muslims and Croats alike. A system of ethnic quotas was put into place to encourage parity, and in the 1960s the Muslims were recognized not just as a religious group, but as a proper nation (narod, as opposed to narodnost).

In 1971, young Izetbegovic wrote a treatise called “The Islamic Declaration,” calling for a return of secularized Muslim societies to political Islam – eight years before the revolution in Iran did precisely that. But his samizdat wasn’t noticed until the early 1980s, when Albanian separatism began manifesting as terrorist attacks, and the Communists jailed Izetbegovic – with a dozen associates – on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred”. Agitating the loudest for his release was a group of Serbian writers and political activists.

The Yugoslav Communist Party started to come apart in 1989, and by 1990, individual republics were holding their own elections. Izetbegovic met with a prominent Muslim who had been living in exile in Switzerland – Adil Zulfikarpasic – and together with him and historian Muhamed Filipovic established the “Party of Democratic Action” (SDA). This was prior to the abolition of a law banning ethnic political parties, hence the neutral name. Zulfikarpasic invested his money, Filipovic his idea of a Muslim-dominated “Bosniak” nation, and Izetbegovic his zeal. They scored another success by talking Fikret Abdic into headlining the SDA’s election ticket. Abdic was a successful Muslim businessman from western Bosnia, who late in the 1980s crossed a powerful political clan and was railroaded on charges of embezzlement; this garnered him much sympathy among all Bosnians, in addition to his regional popularity.

Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serbs split their support between the “nationalist” Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and the more “Yugoslav”-oriented Social-Democrats and the Reformist Alliance. SDS leader Radovan Karadzic, a poet and psychiatrist, kept trying to negotiate a “historic agreement” with the Muslims. But a deal he made with Zulfikarpasic and Filipovic was rejected by Izetbegovic, and the two were driven out of the SDA. After Abdic had won most of the votes in the presidential poll, he was pressured to cede the chair of the seven-member body to Izetbegovic, who thus became “President of Bosnia”.

Meanwhile, at Izetbegovic’s instructions, the SDA made a pact with the Croats (the local branch of the ruling Croatian party, HDZ, aiming to resurrect the 1940s independent Croatia). Even then, the Serbs offered Izetbegovic a deal: he could be the president of Yugoslavia, composed of Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and possibly Macedonia. He said no. In February 1991 he famously declared: “I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina… but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.” In October 1991, SDA and HDZ legislators illegally called an independence referendum.

The last-ditch effort by the Europeans to salvage peace in Bosnia resulted in the “Cutilheiro plan” proposed by the top Portuguese diplomat. Under it, Bosnia would be partitioned into three ethnic provinces, but in return the Serbs and Croats would recognize its independence and integrity. Izetbegovic signed it at first – then, in mid-March 1992, following the visit by U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmerman, reneged on the deal. The Croats were already raiding the border areas, seeking to continue Croatia’s war (officially ended by the January 1992 armistice) by proxy in Bosnia. Faced with the complete collapse of political dialogue, the Serbs took to arms as well.

Izetbegovic’s entire strategy was to get the U.S. military involved on his behalf. Meanwhile, he entrusted the head of the ulema, Mustafa Ceric, to “Islamize” the Muslims in line with Izetbegovic’s 1971 declaration, even to the point of importing Wahhabis and “Afghans” to serve as missionaries.

Fikret Abdic tried to make peace even then. He had left Sarajevo in March 1992, going back to western Bosnia. In 1993, he proclaimed the “Autonomous Region of Western Bosnia” (Autonomna Oblast Zapadna Bosna). At the time, Izetbegovic’s alliance with the Croats had fallen apart, and Muslims and Croats were fighting viciously in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both the Serbs and the Croats had made separate peace with Abdic.

While Izetbegovic thought he was using the Americans, they were using him. Washington continued to sink several European peace initiatives in 1992 and 1993, while gradually dragging NATO into the Bosnian War at the expense of the UN. In 1994, Washington arranged a truce between Izetbegovic’s Muslims and the Croats and forced them into a military alliance, as well as the political one (“Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina”). The Croatian Army was armed and trained by American “contractors” and in August 1995 – backed by NATO - launched an all-out assault on the Serb-inhabited territories claimed by Croatia. This was the cue for Izetbegovic’s Fifth Corps to attack Abdic. Outnumbered, outgunned and unable to get support from the hard-pressed Serbs, Abdic’s followers surrendered. They have been persecuted ever since.

But Washington had its own agenda: by ending the war in Bosnia, America could posture as a white knight coming to the aid of oppressed Muslims (thus scoring propaganda points in the Muslim world) while reasserting dominance over Europe. In the minds of American leaders, by the time the Dayton peace talks began, Izetbegovic and the Bosnian War had served their purpose.

According to Richard Holbrooke, chief US negotiator at the Dayton talks in November 1995, Izetbegovic tried to sabotage the talks several times. Holbrooke’s memoirs relate the Americans’ frustration with Izetbegovic at that point, describing how he drove even the normally sanguine Warren Christopher into a paroxysm of rage. In the end, Izetbegovic gave in – the Americans had secured the backing of the Serbs, the Croats, and the rest of his delegation, and he could not refuse the peace plan without being obviously responsible. The Bosnian War ended with a partition. It was essentially the same plan the Americans urged Izetbegovic to reject in 1992, only now a 100,000 people were dead and the country destroyed by war.

Izetbegovic claimed, echoed by his hagiographers, that he “saved” the Bosnian Muslims from “Serb aggression and genocide.” In reality, he almost destroyed them – by pushing them into a suicidal war against their friends, neighbors and relatives, by letting the West use them as propaganda pawns, and in the end by stealing from the billions of dollars in foreign aid that came to Bosnia after the war. Bosnia’s economy never recovered, but the bank accounts of SDA officials benefited handsomely.

With his wartime propaganda poisoning the well of Muslim relations with Serbs and Croats, it has been impossible to glue Bosnia together even 18 years after Dayton. Not only did he destroy the inter-ethnic trust by reneging on agreements with Serbs and Croats, Izetbegovic also deceived and discarded every Muslim associate of his. He double-crossed Zulfikarpasic, Filipovic before the war, Abdic during, and his wartime lieutenants Ganic and Silajdzic afterwards. The warlords he personally commanded during the war (such as Jusuf “Juka” Prazina or Musan “Caco” Topalovic) ended up dead on Belgian roads, or “shot while attempting to escape” police custody, or victims of mysterious suicides and “car accidents.”

None of this absolves the West from responsibility for the Bosnian tragedy, by the way. Their attempts to use Izetbegovic may have been the deciding factor in plunging Bosnia into war. And their behavior after Dayton – making Bosnia into a de facto protectorate and trying to impose their vision of what the country should be (which was often conflicted, and always confused) – created a powerful disincentive for any sort of internal dialogue. This is why the legacy of hatred and distrust has persisted to the present day, even though Izetbegovic himself died in 2003.

What motivated his hatred of the Serbs is difficult to divine – some say it was his family history, as they left Serbia in 1867 and settled in Bosnia, ever resentful of the Serb “infidels” – but ultimately doesn’t matter. The damage has been done. A generation of Muslims has grown up learning to hate the Serbs and Croats, and believe themselves the victims to whom the West owes a living. The real question is who among the Bosnian Muslims will have the courage to challenge Izetbegovic’s political dogma, and the vision to transcend it. Right now, there is no one that comes to mind.

Though Sulejman Tihic, who succeeded Izetbegovic as the head of the SDA in 2001, has made many attempts to mend fences with the Serbs over the years, the “old guard” within the party – led by Izetbegovic’s son Bakir – successfully undermined all his efforts. To make matters worse, Tihic has cancer, and his prognosis is terminal.

I hope the same is not true of the future of Bosnia. But nothing gives me reason to be optimistic.

Nebojsa Malic was born in Sarajevo (today the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina) and lived through the Bosnian War. He was a translator for the Sarajevo City Hall in 1995, as well as a freelance interpreter to the Anglosphere media. After leaving Bosnia in 1996, he got a BA in History and International Studies from Graceland University in Iowa. He started writing on Balkans issues in 1999, blogs at Gray Falcon since 2004, and is currently President of the R. Archibald Reiss Institute for Serbian Studies in Washington, DC.

The stupid charade is finally over

The stupid charade is finally over - the Hague tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has cleared the last two Croat generals not in the face of new evidence, but on a technicality:

Last year the two men were convicted of murder, persecution and plunder.  Judges at the time ruled that they were part of a criminal conspiracy led by late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman to "permanently and forcibly remove" the Serb civilian population from Krajina.  But on Friday, Judge Meron said there had been no such conspiracy.

No conspiracy and therefore, no crime.   Nice, no!?

Bottom line: only Serbs committed any crimes during the war in Bosnia.  All other parties to this conflict were innocent of any crimes.  No such thing as a Croatian war criminal, no such thing as a Muslim war criminal.

You got to love the "humanitarian Disneyland" the Empire lives in...

The Saker

The truth about Srebrenica finally?

With the recent postponement of the trial of Ratko Mladic in the Hague I have been looking around the Internet to see if any new interesting documents about the so-called "Srebrenica genocide" had come out and I came across a most remarkable documentary which has been online since 2011 but which I only noticed today.  It is a truly remarkable piece of investigation which I urge everybody to watch and download (just in case it it pulled by YouTube).

As some of you know, during the war in Bosnia I had daily access to confidential UNPROFOR information about what was really going on in Bosnia and I would like to say the following about this documentary:

I can confirm many, though not all, of the facts presented here and all those which I cannot confirm are fully consistent with what I know.  In fact, this report is, by far, the best I have ever seen on this topic.

The parts which I cannot confirm are the negotiations and discussions happening inside the Muslim Bosnian military and political leadership.  The part which I can fully confirm is the chronology and details of the Bosnian-Serb entry into Srebrenica and the nature and circumstances of the killing of Bosnian-Muslims by Bosnian-Serb forces.  The figures given in the movie are exactly the ones I am aware of.

I would like to add three elements which are not mentioned in the movie:

a) The Dutch UNPROFOR battalion commander and the UN Secretary-General's Personal Representative Yasushi Akashi made *numerous* request for NATO airpower to stop the Bosnian-Serb forces from entering Srebrenica and all those request were denied by the NATO political leadership.

b) Not all the 5'000+ Bosnian-Muslim solider of the Oric Infantry Brigade (aka " ABiH 2nd Corps 28th Mountain Division") was killed by Bosnian-Serb forces.  Many made it through the mountains and arrived in refugee camps in Tuzla and other cities.

c) Some Bosnian-Muslim civilians who were fleeing with the Oric forces also made it to Tuzla and other areas.  Many disappeared later in the war and their names were added to the list of "victims of the Srebrenica genocide".

The truth is finally coming out, but so many years later does anybody care?

You tell me.

The Saker

Sibel Edmonds confirms: US used "al-Qaeda" fighters in Bosnia and Chechnia

Srebrenica: requiem for a propaganda fiction

(Note by the Saker: at a time when the Empire is clearly re-playing the Bosnian scenario in Libya, it is extremely important to look back and understand what exactly happened during the war in Bosnia.  I am therefore very grateful to F for drawing my attention to the publication of this book and I urge you all to read it with attention and make up your own mind based on facts and logic, not ideology.  The Saker)

The Srebrenica Historical Project reports:

The controversy of Srebrenica enters a new phase. There is now a definitive new study in English incorporating the most up to date evidence and presenting a thorough critique of the evidence (or what passed for evidence) that was available previously. It is  the monograph prepared by a group of authors and published by Srebrenica Historical Project entitled “Deconstruction of a virtual genocide: An intelligent person’s guide to Srebrenica.”

The guiding concept behind the monograph was to address all the key points in this controversy within the confines of a single readable and well-documented volume. As we have always done since the beginning of our work, we have strived here also to achieve maximum balance and fairness with a minimum of emotion. The banishment of emotion from the discussion of such a highly charged topic as Srebrenica may appear to be a difficult and nearly impossible task. But it is not so daunting after all when it is approached in the right way. The now familiar descent into emotionalism whenever Srebrenica is debated occurs only when the subject is approached by those who have a set agenda. They usually take extreme positions and since their claims are not supported by facts they must resort to emotion, and on occasion even vituperation and ad hominem diatribes, to make up for the shortcomings of their “arguments.”

We are not in that position because we have no agenda, so we also have no need for emotional shortcuts. We are only interested in the truth, whatever in the end it may turn out to be, and that is a goal that we will continue to pursue dispassionately.

Since we are not finished with our task, we cannot draw any final conclusions. But we can suggest some preliminary findings which the evidence that we have seen so far supports strongly. What happened in the region of Srebrenica between 1992 and 1995 was a human tragedy of enormous proportions. Two neighbouring communities virtually annihilated each other. There are no winners in the Srebrenica story.

Chronologically, the first community in Srebrenica to be devastated was the Serbs. They were first expelled from the town itself in 1992, then their villages surrounding it were systematically attacked and torched while with medieval barbarity a part of the inhabitants were “put to the sword” and the rest were driven out. When predictably the boomerang returned in 1993 and with even greater ferocity in July of 1995, regrettably it was the turn of the local Bosnian Muslims to suffer. And, indeed, they paid a heavy price for the insane policies of their venal and incompetent leadership.

The controversy which has surrounded the subject of Srebrenica ever since defies rational understanding. There are established core facts about Srebrenica (focusing on July 1995) that all reasonable people can readily agree on: [1] After the fall of Srebrenica to Serbian forces on 11 July, 1995, a substantial number of Muslim prisoners of war were executed, and [2] That massacre was a war crime the perpetrators of which must be identified and punished. The incomprehensible, characteristically Balkan, overkill aspect of the debate is that the Muslim political leadership in Sarajevo insists on imposing its own, politically-driven and dogmatic interpretation of those facts. Notwithstanding the glaring lack of physical evidence after 15 years of assiduous searching, it requires everyone to believe, or at least to hypocritically pretend in public that they believe, that the number of executed prisoners was 8,000. They have also proclaimed it a dogma that the execution of the prisoners was an act of genocide, although – based on the evidence discovered so far – there is nothing to support such a radical interpretation of the massacre. It is for that politically twisted version of Srebrenica that our monograph is meant to serve as a Requiem.

The lunacy of this position should be apparent to everyone whose mind functions on non-Balkan principles. If you want to discredit someone, imputing the killing of a couple of hundred unarmed prisoners is bad enough; you are not going make him look substantially worse by exaggerating the figure tenfold. Likewise, it would seem ultimately futile (not to say ridiculous) to claim “genocide” on the basis of an 8,000 figure, whether it has a factual foundation or not, in a century of real genocides where figures range from 1,5 million (Armenian) to six million (Jewish). Certainly, no court would ever manage to convict the Sarajevo Muslim political leadership on the charge of subtlety.

We have earnestly sought to avoid as many minefields as possible (no pun intended, but readers are kindly requested to turn to Chapter VII of our monograph to understand the reasons for this notice). It was our goal also to sort out as many dilemmas as possible given the current state of Srebrenica evidence. As they always say on such occasions, we now commend the fruit of our labours to our gentle readers and, naturally, we are fully prepared to abide by their judgment.

Finally, we consider it appropriate to offer to our readers the “Introduction” written by former BBC journalist and political analyst, Jonathan Rooper, who has retained a lively interest in the affairs of the former Yugoslavia and in particular the controversy of Srebrenica ever since the Balkan conflicts of the nineties. The monograph “Deconstruction of a virtual genocide: An intelligent person’s guide to Srebrenica” can be downloaded in its entirety from the link which is at the end of Mr. Rooper’s piece.

INTRODUCTION

One question that anybody who takes up the critical study of the regnant narrative of the "Srebrenica massacre" always faces is ‘why?’ 

As a field of research and inquiry, hasn't the basic outline of the events that befell the Srebrenica ‘safe-area’ population after the enclave was captured by the Bosnian Serb army on 11 July 1995 been well-established since the second-half of that year, when Western reporters such as the Christian Science Monitor's David Rohde allegedly stumbled upon a ‘decomposing human leg protruding from the freshly turned dirt’ in a landscape that, Rohde claimed, he recognized from ‘spy-satellite photos’ that had been faxed to him just days before by ‘American officials’? 

Why then would it occur to someone to challenge what appears to be well-known about the ‘Srebrenica massacre’?  And why should this task be of interest and importance to anyone outside survivors and a relatively small coterie of fanatics? 

The critical study of the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ that Stephen Karganović collects in this volume is important because, taken as a whole, they show that within a very brief period of time – no longer than a handful of weeks -  what had originated in self-serving wartime propaganda and whispers about an atrocity that symbolized Serb evil, became institutionalized as The Truth, effectively removing the actual event from inquiry, and placing it under seal in a sacrosanct realm of myth where it has flourished ever since. 

Initially generated by a nexus between the NATO-bloc powers that had intervened on behalf of the Bosnian Muslim and Croat sides in the civil wars that destroyed the unitary Yugoslavia, and Western news media and human rights organizations committed to proving the veracity of this wartime propaganda, the myth of the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ has been re-institutionalized with every Srebrenica-related judgment at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (e.g., Krstic in August 2001) as well as the International Court of Justice (February 2007). 

As this book reminds us, it serves also as a "mass mobilisation vehicle" every year during the 11 July internment ceremony at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial and Cemetery for the Victims of the 1995 Genocide, where yet new layers of propaganda are laid upon the propaganda of the earlier years. 

It is of course also one of the two most frequently cited symbolic bloodbaths in the Western canon (the other being Rwanda 1994) whenever someone invokes the ‘Never again’ imperative of the Nazi holocaust to urge the great powers towards ‘humanitarian intervention’, the ‘responsibility to protect’, and most recently ‘mass atrocity response operations’.      

Because this ‘Srebrenica massacre’, with its alleged 8,000 victims, conformed so well to framework of what could be expected from the monster Serbs held responsible for the wars, very few inquiries into the real, if far smaller, massacres and executions carried out against the males of the fleeing ‘safe area’ population have ever been undertaken. 

This is why the critical study of the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ undertaken here is vital and stands as a far more honest tribute to these real victims than does the vast literature which it challenges and helps to overturn.

There is a further pertinent question to answer: why has it taken so long for the core facts about Srebrenica, so clearly expressed in this book, to be collected in this way?

The answer comes in two parts.  First, the process of international investigation and prosecution was very slow and much of the ‘evidence’ supporting the judgements handed down by the ICTY was not revealed in any form until years after the events. 

Second, few people have tried to make an independent assessment of what happened.  For example, of all the journalists who have ever written or broadcast about Srebrenica, only a handful appear to have made any real efforts to investigate the official account.  It has, as a result, been solely through the efforts of a loose collaboration of individuals around the world that we now have a thorough analysis of what happened in July 1995.

Predictably, many attacks have been made on these people.  They have been repeatedly accused of genocide denial.  Serious attempts have been made, in Europe and elsewhere, to criminalise their investigative efforts.  

The collaborations which have finally led to the publication of this book have developed almost entirely by chance. In the UK a number of us began to collect reports and broadcasts, building a chronology of events and a background database.  We did this separately at first, but by 1995, thanks to the former “Observer” journalist Nora Beloff, a group of us were in touch with one another, exchanging information and ideas. 

We had become quite an efficient monitoring machine by the time the Bosnian Serb Army took control of Srebrenica in July 1995.  We archived hundreds of reports.  As we went along, we noted many pieces of information which conflicted with the consensus narrative in the media in the UK, the USA and Europe.

We were conscious of Srebrenica’s short-term political importance in drawing attention away from the US-backed invasion of Krajina and the final abandonment of the international ‘neutrality’, which led to the ending of the civil wars and the terms imposed at Dayton in November.  But we did not yet foresee the full extent to which the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ would become the most complete symbol of Serbian evil in the Balkan conflicts.  Our work was therefore much more widely focused until at least 1997, and was further diverted by the Kosovo war in 1999.

Our network was gradually expanding. Through the internet, people researching aspects of the Balkan conflicts eventually became aware of each other and often made contacts that would lead to new partnerships.

One such development was the Srebrenica Research Group[1]  an international collective brought together by Professor Edward Herman in the summer of 2003.  This was not only a platform for the free exchange of knowledge, information and ideas, but a determined attempt to investigate exactly what had happened on the basis of academic rigour.

The work of the group was exciting and, I think, highly productive.  The outcome was in my opinion about the best analysis that could be made on the basis of available information.  Our constraint was that we had no resources beyond the limited amounts of our own time we could devote to Srebrenica research.  And we certainly had no means of carrying out our own fundamental investigations. 

In September 2008 I was contacted by Stephen Karganović, who had recently set up the Srebrenica Historical Project.  Based in Holland, this organisation had secured funding to mount conferences and to commission its own investigations and expert analysis of key questions about Srebrenica. 

The extent and quality of the work done by the SHP since that time has been remarkable.  In a little over two years they have taken on a range of challenges that would daunt the most skilled data crunchers. I believe this work has rewritten the Srebrenica narrative decisively.

The purpose of this Introduction is not to summarise the many revelations published on the pages that follow.  It is, rather, to commend this book in the strongest terms. This collection demonstrates that the stories about ‘the worst war crime in Europe since the 2nd World War’ are fictions, unrelated to what took place.

It is vital that the unadorned truth about the Balkan conflicts should be freed from the lies and misrepresentations that have characterised the first draft of this history.  Only then can there be some kind of genuine process of truth and reconciliation in the aftermath of the Balkan wars.  This work provides a platform from which such a process can begin.

==>>Book can be downloaded from this location: CLICK<<==

Jonathan Rooper

Jonathan Rooper was a BBC TV News & Current Affairs journalist from 1983 – 1999.  After several years as a desk producer on daily programmes, he became a field producer making short investigative films on social and political affairs issues.  He was head of the BBC News Features department for four years.   Since leaving the BBC he has worked in corporate communications and now earns his living as a freelance, specialising in corporate video production and editing, media and presentation training and corporate journalism.

Bosnia Redux - George Kenny inteviews Dr. Steven E. Meyer

George Kenny has interviewed Dr. Steven E. Meyer, formerly at the CIA and during the 1990s Deputy Director of the Interagency Balkan Task Force - he's now at the National Defense University, for his website Electric Politics. You can listen to this very interesting interview here (streaming and download on this page).

I HIGHLY recommend this conversation to you all.

The Saker

New Balkan Wars Loom on the Horizon

by Pyotr Iskenderov for Strategic Culture Magazine

The contours of the Kosovo separatists' plan to suppress the Serbian resistance in the northern part of the province with the help of the US and the EU are getting increasingly visible. The statements emanating from Pristina and the intensifying international debates over the Kosovo theme do not only show that the Albanian separatists are preparing an attack against their opponents but also give an idea of its potential scenario, the distribution of roles in it, and the extent to which Hashim Thaci and other former leaders of the terrorist Kosovo liberation army are relying on the international support in the process.

The debates at the January 22 open session of the UN Security Council on Kosovo were unprecedentedly heated. It was the first time since the summer of 2007 (when Russia managed to derail the Resolution recognizing the Kosovo independence, proposed by the West on the basis of UN Special Envoy Martti Ahtisaari's plan) that the parties to the dispute over Kosovo defined their positions with such utmost clarity. There was an impression that the world's major powers were speaking different languages. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the US, and West European countries “urged flexibility” in admitting Kosovo to regional and international mechanisms and forums, whereas Russia and Serbia regarded the approach as an attempt to dilute the role of the UN in the province and to legitimize its independent status. The discussions were centered around Pristina's so-called final solution plan for North Kosovo, which Thaci inadvertently unveiled several days prior to the session. He said the plan was being drafted jointly with the international representatives and was aimed at strengthening what he called Kosovo sovereignty and territorial integrity. Thaci said 2010 would be the year of consolidation for Kosovo. The priorities in the framework of the plan include the elimination of the Serbian self-government established in Kosovska Mitrovica and nearby Serbian communities based on the May, 2008 elections held in accord with the laws of Serbia. Another blow will be dealt to Serbian police forces and custom service, which at the moment are maintaining at least partial control over the traffic across the administrative border between Kosovo and the rest of Serbia.

NATO's KFOR deployed in Kosovo will render military assistance to Albanians. There is information that on the whole the corresponding decision was made during Commander of Joint Force Command Naples, Admiral Mark Fitzgerald's January visit to Kosovo, after which he described the Serbian self-government as... a threat to the security of Kosovo. “All violations of UN Security Council Resolution 1244 pose a threat to security. Since the resolution does not approve of parallel institutions, they are cause for concern”, said Fitzgerald.

Pristina's priority is the international support for the operation, which the US and the EU are supposed to ensure. The US will be blocking the attempts by Russia and China to have a response resolution passed by the UN Security Council. At the same time Brussels will be exerting ever greater pressure on Serbia to make it deny support to the Serbs of Kosovo and seal off the border with the province so as not let Serbian volunteers reach Albania.

Chances are that the operation will be launched already next April after the International Court of Justice issues an indefinite verdict on the Kosovo independence and the establishment of the Mitrovica municipality headed by Albanians and the few Serbs ready to cooperate with them.

Serbia's pro-Western President B. Tadic spoke with great caution of the anti-Serbian plan harbored by Pristina, NATO, and the EU, essentially saying little more than that the “final solution” promised nothing good to the Kosovo population. Russia's Deputy Permanent Representative to UN I. Shcherbak was much more outspoken. He said that from Russia's standpoint it is necessary to arrest decisively any attempts to float concepts harmful to Kosovo regardless of their source, as they do not only breach UN Security Council Resolution 1244 but also destabilize the province and provoke tensions.

There is information that the plan was co-authored by EU Special Representative and UN Civil Administration head Pieter Feith. The Administration was established in the spring of 2008, shortly after the declaration of the Kosovo independence and its recognition by the US and major EU counties. The Administration that no UN documents regulate comprises representatives of 14 EU and NATO countries and Switzerland, which are implementing the Ahtisaari plan, a EU brainchild the UN Security Council never approved. It is noteworthy that Kosovo separatist government foreign minister Skender Hyseni who represented Kosovo at the UN Security Council session made no comments concerning the plan for the northern part of Kosovo. Speaking to the media after the session, he claimed without elaborating that the EU mission and the Civic Administration were not promoting any final solutions for North Kosovo.

A survey of recent developments leads to the conclusion that the blueprint for suppressing the Serbian resistance in Kosovo is being drafted at a level much higher than that of the province. Given its basic parameters (a snap offensive supported by the NATO and EU pseudo-peacekeepers with international political backing plus the installation of a puppet administration), the plan for a final solution for North Kosovo is similar to the one Georgian President M. Saakashvili had in mind launching an attack against South Ossetia in August, 2008. Even the stated objectives – the restoration of the constitutional jurisdiction in Saakashvili's wording – is the same in both cases.

Even earlier, in August, 1995, a similar scenario was imposed on the Serbs of Krajina when Croatia sent regular army forces to attack them while the US and the EU backed the operation diplomatically. Actually, at that time the diplomatic support played no practical role as neither Yugoslavia nor the Russian leadership demonstrated any will to help Serbian Krajina in its tragedy. Yugoslavian leader S. Milosevic took more interest in getting rid of his competitors R. Karadzic and R. Mladic with the hands of the international community, and Moscow paid little if any attention to the whole Balkan theme.

It is hard to predict the outcome of the current developments as the Bosnian front, no less important to Serbs, Russia, and the Orthodoxy, is likely to gain a place on the map of the new Balkan war alongside the Kosovo one. Outgoing Croatian President Stipe Mesic said the Republic's army should launch an offensive against the Bosnian Serb Republic in case it holds a Kosovo-style self-determination referendum.

The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina will get strained soon as Bosnian Serbs are going to hold a referendum on their constitutional status. Its aim is not to let the leaders of Sarajevo, US and EU put an end to Republika Srpska. The outgoing Croatian President, Stjepan Mesic, promised that in case the referendum takes place, the regular army of Croatia will enter the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina to cut off the 15-km Posavina corridor, which connects the western and the eastern parts of Republika Srpska in the area of Brcko, close to the Croatian border.

“If Milorad Dodik (Prime Minister of Republika Srpska) decides to hold a referendum on separation, I will send the troops to divide the region inhabited by the Bosnian Serbs”,- the Croatian President said, adding that in case of success, a sovereign state of Bosnian Serbs will 'seize to exist'. He made the announcement during an informal press-conference in Zagreb on January 18.

A military campaign against Banjaluka may be held simultaneously with an armed action by Kosovo`s Albanian authorities against the city of Kosovska Mitrovica and Serbian communities in Northern Kosovo. In this case the US, NATO and the EU will manage to complete separation of the Serbian territories. The Serbian Republic will be surrounded by hostile states and thus will be no longer able to carry out independent foreign policy. The defeat of the Kosovan and Bosnian Serbs will become Russia`s biggest loss in the Balkans over the past two decades and will harm Moscow's attempts to play an active role in other strategically important regions in Eurasia.

The first reaction of Serbia and Russia to such rude interference of the Croatian leader into affairs of the neighboring state was surprisingly reserved. Serbia's President Boris Tadic made an attempt to respond to the remarks made by his Croatian counterpart at the UN Security Council meeting on Kosovo on January 22. But he commented on the issue not during his main speech (though parallels between what was going on then in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Kosovo were more than obvious). He spoke during the debates because he found such kind of issues could not be discussed during official reports. Mr. Tadic also met the UN Chief Ban Ki-moon to tell him that Mesic`s 'dangerous words were unwelcome in political discourse' but immediately noted that Serbia did not want to worsen relations with Croatia.

Such peace-loving rhetoric was accepted in Zagreb. Croatia's Prime Minister Jadranka Kosor told journalists that Serbia and Croatia should abandon debates and work together to develop neighborly relations. However, the Prime Minister did not disavow the President's announcement.

Russia's reaction is still too vague. Summing up the results of 2009 at the press-conference on January 22 in Moscow, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commented on Mr. Mesic`s announcement: “We insist that all the sides involved respect the Dayton Agreement and avoid the use of force”. (1)

Meanwhile, the way the situation is developing in the region in recent months proves quite the contrary: the West and the leaders of Sarajevo are definitely going to undermine the Dayton agreement. Two rounds of talks held by the heads of the Bosnian political parties in October 2009 at a NATO base in Butmir outside Sarajevo, revealed the the western strategy toward Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Bosnian Serbs are demanded to abdicate their authorities settled in the Dayton Peace Agreement. Though formally Russia is a member of the Dayton Agreement Peace Implementation Council, it did not take part in the discussions in Butmir. So, it would be a fatal mistake to expect the US, EU and NATO to abandon their new political course. It would also mean to be inexcusably weak in regard to Russia's interests in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the Balkans in general.

It was not accidentally that the International Crisis Group, which traditionally deals with promoting the western political propaganda in conflict regions, in every detail commented on the future of the Balkans a few months before the recent events. Experts in the Group believe that Moscow and Belgrade remain the West`s major rivals in the region because “an international approach to the Balkans is dominated by concern over Serbia`s reaction to the independence of Kosovo”. In their opinion, Russia “has become stronger to oppose to the Western policy it sees hostile to its interests”. (2)

Under these circumstances, Moscow should better revise its policy in the Balkans. Russian diplomats should no longer view the Dayton agreements as too weak to withstand political attacks. This all will make it logical to put in question political status of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This approach will help Moscow no longer be an outsider in Bosnia and launch a series of international talks on territorial, political and ethnocultural problems in the Balkans, where peoples and their interests are in jeopardy. Taking into consideration intentions of the West to put an end to the Serbian Orthodox community in the Balkans, revision of the existing borders in the conflict regions may become the only way for Russia to defend its interests. As of today, there are at least three self-proclaimed states which statuses are being doubted: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo and Macedonia. Their territorial and administrative revision could become the least painful way to avoid new wars in the Balkans.

It is remarkable that recently the authorities of Sarajevo have been urging Russia to contribute to the 'implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement', the Bosniak Muslim member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haris Silajdzic, said at the meeting with the Russian special envoy for Kosovo, Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko. And this is a very disturbing sign because Silajdzic has long been known for his extremist views about Republika Srpska. The majority of people in Western Europe cannot but be aware that the Bosnian Serbs remain the only counterbalance to radical pan-Islamic tendencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina. And this it what gives Russia the right to boost its activities in the Balkans.

Dr. Petr A. Iskenderov is a historian, senior researcher at the Institute for Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Science, and the Vremya Novostey and the Voice of Russia radio station international politics commentator.
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(1)Http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf
(2)Bosnia`s Incomplete Transition: Between Dayton and Europe. Sarajevo-Brussels, 2009. P.14

A frightening sense of deja vu

There is no doubt in my mind that what we are witnessing today is the biggest strategic psyop campaign since the war in Bosnia. Clearly, the conduct of such a campaign is expensive and very labor intensive, and I don't think that the USraelian Empire would be wasting such resources just like that. There is definitely a "phase two" coming next.

The more I look at what is happening in Iran, the more I see striking parallels with another war which I had the opportunity to follow, day by day, minute by minute (I was, at the time, a military analyst).

The Serbs in Bosnia were extremely confident that neither the USA nor Europe had the guts to fight them on their own turf. They also could count, or so they thought, on the help of their fellow Serbs from Serbia (Yugoslav Federal Forces). They new that the Bosnian Muslims had a numerical advantage over them, but the counted on their superiority in artillery to offset that disadvantage. The Serbs, who during WWII had successfully resisted against the combined forces of the German Nazis, Croat Ustashe and Bosnian Muslim SS just did not feel really threatened, least of all by the dispersed forces of UNPROFOR. But they did not count with the sophistication of the Empire who, instead of stupidly sending its jarheads into Bosnia, attacked the Serbs with a multi-dimensional strategy.

First, the Serbs were very successfully demonized. The word "Serb" soon began evoking images of concentration camps, torture, rape, executions, baby shooting snipers, etc. A number of false-flag attacks were staged, including at the Markale market in Sarajevo. Any information which deviated from the official line (such as the report of UNPROFOR intelligence section in Sarajevo which concluded that the Serbian forces could not have fired a mortar into that market) was immediately thrown down the memory hole.

Second, pressure was put to essentially co-opt Milosevic. That was done in a very low key, but the basic idea was that he would be allowed to remain in power in Serbia if he agreed to betray the Bosnian Serbs. Needless to say, being the Communist leader which he was, Milosevic agreed. Suddenly, the Serbs faced an embargo in which the Federal Republic had joined in.

Third, the Empire organized, armed, and trained Croat forces (the Empire never really trusted the Muslims in Bosnia) to first seize the so-called "UNPAs" (UN protected areas) in Croatia and then to attack the remaining Serbian forces in Bosnia. For this purpose, all the heavy weapons of the Serbs (yes, the ones they had counted on the offset their numeral disadvantage) were placed in storage which left the Bosnian Serbs with only small arms.

Lastly, when the joint US-Croatian forces attacked, Milosevic pulled back his brigades leaving the Bosnian Serbs to face the combined onslaught of the NATO airforces, the Croat mechanized troops and the Muslim infantry with little more than rifles. At that point, resistance was futile.

The doubleplusgoodthinking world shed very few tears over the Bosnian Serbs. In particular, Muslims worldwide had so thoroughly bought into the Imperial propaganda that they totally failed to see that the only real crime of the Bosnian Serbs (at least in the eyes of the Empire) had been to refuse to comply with the diktats of the Empire. The sole word "Srebrenica" was good enough to stop any fact-based and logic driven analysis of what had really happened when that city fell to the Serbian forces.

As for Milosevic, having outlived his utility for the Empire, he was dumped and immediately attacked through the war in Kosovo (which, by the way, was conducted *exactly* as the war in Bosnia had been). And again - the world bought into the bullshit spewed by the US Psyops.

Now, it is absolutely clear that Iran is next.

Like in the case of the Bosnian Serbs, the Empire has successfully created a political lever INSIDE Iran. Today, Mousavi has been instantly re-branded as a "liberal" (a laughable claim for anybody actually knowing this gentleman's full biography) and he is used against the Iranian government exactly as Milosevic had been used against Karadzic. Like Milosevic, Mousavi (and his puppeteers Rafsanjani and Montazeri) probably thinks that if he (they) come to power the Empire will let him (them) stay in power.

As for the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei camp, they probably feel that the USraelians will not dare attack Iran. I hope and pray that I am wrong and that they do understand the current psyop campaign for what it is - a first phase for a real war.

The public opinion in the West has learned exactly NOTHING from the previous US Psyop campaign. It is buying into the current propaganda 100%, in particular the Left which just need to be gently nudged into an ideological paradigm to immediately be outraged and condemn some putative "bad guy".

The one big difference between the Bosnian Serb situation and the one in Iran is that in the former case the lever was far more powerful than its object: Milosevic had far more economic, political and military power than Karadzic. In Iran the lever (Mousavi) is far weaker than the government. Unlike the Serbs who could only count of their own small forces, the Iranian government knows that it can use the Pasdaran to control the situation. So as long as the Empire does not find a lever INSIDE the Pasdaran, I predict that the strategy will fail. But if one such high-level traitor is found inside the IRGC all bets are off.

One thing the US psyop campaign has already achieved: with the demonization of the government it has carefully prepared the world's public opinion for an military operation overthrow the "regime". After all, just image that the "Basij thugs" who killed Neda* will do against their "neighbors" (the "I" word will not be used outside the USA) if they are armed with nuclear weapons!!!

I hope that the Iranian government has learned the lessons from the Imperial wars in Bosnia, in Kosovo and in Iraq and that it will fully prepare itself to simultaneously fight on two fronts: external and internal. On the internal front, it needs to make a huge effort to explain to its own population what is happening and externally it must continue to seek deter the Empire by all possible means. Lastly, it must be prepared to face a long war combining internal destabilization, terrorist attacks, economic sabotage, guerrillas and airstrikes.

There is one battle which I think cannot be won: the Western public opinion is clearly too stupidifed by the corporate media to ever get it right. The eagerness with which even presumably intelligent people have bought into the Imperial propaganda clearly proves that whenever the Empire wants to strike it will get a strong majority of its public opinion to believe *any* nonsense needed to demonize the target. As Einstein observed:

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former."

The Saker
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*The image of the poor Neda is now serving the same function as the famous (and faked) image of the emaciated man behind barbed wire in a "concentration camp" in Bosnia (a British TV crew staged that shot in Bosnia. Read "The Picture That Fooled The World" for details). This "icon" of the "resistance" will serve to outrage people even if it turns out that the shooter had nothing to do with the government.

Sacirbey: They knew about Karadzic deals

By Afshin Rattansi for Press TV

The following is Press TV's exclusive full-length interview with former Bosnian foreign minister Mohammad Sacirbey.

Press TV: I noticed that Richard Holbrooke is saying that it is an outrageous fabrication. What did Karadzic mean by a deal with Richard Holbrooke?

Sacirbey: I have actually been aware of the deal from almost the day it was made. In the summer of 1996, Karadzic withdrew from Bosnian politics, presumably. He withdrew from the leadership of his party. Then he was already indicted, but in fact, he was also running to become a member of the Repablica Serbska's (Republic of Serbia) chair in the presidency. All of a sudden he withdrew.

That night I met with a US diplomat, a very distinguished gentleman who I have a lot of respect for and he was quite enthused to tell me that Karadzic had withdrawn from politics, and, of course, when I said that why would he withdraw, what is the deal?…there was a bit of silence.

In the end, it was acknowledged that in fact Karadzic had been promised by Richard Holbrooke that he would not be arrested even though he was indicted and wanted by the war crimes tribunal if he did withdraw, and of course for the next two to three years, Karadzic, in fact, was quite free and was relatively at liberty and without any threat of arrest.

Press TV: Obviously, I don't expect you to name your source, but Richard Holbrooke is quoted here as saying "I never made such a deal. It would have been unethical and immoral."

Sacirbey: No, let me make sure. I have been very straight with the same picture for over a decade. My source was Ambassador Robert Frowick, at that time the head of the OSCE mission in Bosnia that was overseeing the elections. I have put this on the record, I think, at least 10 years ago.

Press TV: Would president Bill Clinton have been aware as well of this deal with Radovan Karadzic?

Sacirbey: Well, I am not sure of that. All I can tell you is that there was another deal that I think was much more serious and the consequences were much more grave and that was a deal that took place early in the summer of 1995.

That involved Richard Holbrooke and that involved Carl Bildt who, then, was the EU mediator and now is Sweden's foreign minister. It involved a French general who was the head of the military forces of the UN in Bosnia i.e. Bernard Jean Vieh. It involved Yasushi Akashi who was the head UN civilian official. They, in effect, acquiesced, gave the green light to Milosevic, Mladic as well as Karadzic to take over the territory of Srebrenica but also Zepa and Gorazda.

At that time there was enormous pressure on us to trade these territories and to give, in effect, to Belgrade and the Bosnian Serbs what they wanted in return for them presumably during the peace talks what would end up being Dayton. We refused and as we resisted the green light was given to the Serbian forces to attack that enclave. Of course, I did not know about it.

I do not think anyone in my government knew about it and the result was 8000 people murdered. So the second deal probably is explained by the first deal. I suspect many people who were in the US administration at that time, even if they objected to making deals with Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic, who all subsequently were indicted at that time, they clearly would not be very pleased if that information came out right now.

Press TV: The UN peacekeepers, of course, were watching the Srebrenica massacre in real time. Why do you think the Dayton agreement was so important to the United States that they would be willing to turn a blind eye to massacres like [the one in] Srebrenica. What is it about Dayton?

Sacirbey: First of all I am not sure that actually the Dutch peacekeepers knew of the deal. I think that the Dutch peacekeepers and the Dutch government were supposed to be left holding the bag as one would say. What I mean by that is they were supposed to be the excuse why, in fact, NATO and the United Nations did not act to protect Srebrenica as they were obliged to do under the UN and the NATO resolutions.

The defenders of Srebrenica were disarmed and the UN and the NATO were supposed to defend them, so when the Dutch peacekeepers were faced with substantial Serbian tanks and heavy weapons, clearly a superior force, all they had was small guns to fight back.

That is when the NATO was supposed to come in. In fact, the Dutch defense minister did call the NATO. I spoke to him on the evening before Srebrenica fell. He told me "I am calling in NATO. They are going to come in the morning and I am going to do it regardless of what the consequence are for the Dutch forces.

That call was not honored and that call resulted in a Dutch government falling. It obviously resulted in shame for the Dutch forces who were there and it resulted in 8,000 Bosnian men, children and also women being murdered. It also was a black eye upon NATO because obviously, NATO did not fulfill its commitment and it was clearly one of the worst moments for the United Nations.

So it is rather unfortunate, someone who always wants to speak of multilateralism, in fact, betrayed multilateralism in Srebrenica and here I am speaking specifically of Richard Holbrooke but I also must include people like Carl Bildt, like Bernard Jean Vieh and Akashi.

Press TV: Some people say it is even higher up than your making out and that right from the start it was a deal by Bill Clinton's government with the German government to dismember Yugoslavia and the Dayton agreement was about privatizing all the resources of a state which had resources in the hands of the government.

Do you think it goes as far as that and in fact all of this is part of an agenda for big companies? And do you think this will all come out in The Hague as we watch Radovan Karadzic defend himself?

Sacirbey: Well, I want to be very careful that I speak of what I have at least some limited first-hand knowledge of. I do have some, now, first-hand knowledge of the deal that was made, simply because as foreign minister certain things were told to me…certain things happened rather peculiar and coming back upon it all it fits into a deal.

Was this something that was arranged at the very highest levels? That I leave for someone else to speculate but clearly, I think, what would be more appropriate now is to talk about if Dayton was achieved through, in effect, genocide, if Dayton is the consequences of embracing the results of that genocide shouldn't we talk about reversing Dayton, in effect, reversing that which in fact rewarded genocide?

Let me be very clear on this, Bosnia is a multiethnic country. We have there not only Bosniac Muslims but we also have the Serbs who are orthodox. We have the Croats who are Catholics but Dayton is a form of Apartheid. Dividing these people in a way that they have never been divided and creating clear ethnic enclaves and this is something that I do not believe is consistent with the history of Bosnia nor with the future of Bosnia in a European family and I certainly can not see how Europe can tolerate that.

How the Euro-Atlantic family can tolerate that type of division in a country that clearly has a future as part of the Euro-Atlantic family. So there seems to be something rather funny here, which is that, that one country that has a Muslim majority seems to be subject to a different set of criteria. I will grant you that and as an American, remember that I am also an American, I see this very clearly these double standards.

On the other hand, the rather bigger game that you speak of, whether that exists or not, as I said, I leave that for someone else to speculate but I cannot understand how either the United States or the European countries can now tolerate the continuation of the Dayton. Built not only upon the framework, the foundation of genocide, but, in effect, perpetuating what amounts to fascist and racist ideas.

Press TV: Well, I can assure you that German companies, shipping, construction and so on and other European countries are very happy with the present deals. Do you think, in the end, that this was not NATO just out there in the former Yugoslavia trying to help Muslims and do you think that the people are quite frightened in Washington and in London and in Berlin and in Paris at the prospect of what we are going to here at The Hague in the coming month?

Sacirbey: Well, I think that is a good guess. They have been rather upset with some of the things that I have said as you can imagine and I have been saying this for over a decade. It is just that most people weren't either paying attention or they, of course, tried to make sure that my words were not heard too loud beyond the four walls I am sure there will be much more that comes out.

Nonetheless, as I said, looking at this as a Bosnian, I cannot be happy with what I have seen for the Bosnian people. It clearly is not something that is sustainable nor does it make a normal country and as an American I cannot stand behind something that is, in my opinion, so inconsistent with the values of the United States, a country that is divided along ethnic lines, along religious lines and, in fact, when something was achieved like that through the genocide of a significant portion of the Muslim population of Bosnia Herzegovina.

Fiercest Serb Hater, Dutch Judge Orie, Assigned to Try President Karadzic

Byzantine Blog reports:

Hague tribunal's decision to assign no other but the biggest Serb hater, Dutch judge Alphons Orie, to preside over the trial against former Republic of Srpska President Radovan Karadzic is the latest evidence of the kangaroo court's pathological Serbophobia. Judge Orie has gained notoriety as a man who had released Kosovo Albanian butcher Ramush Haradinaj, while issuing maximal convictions to all Serb indictees who had a misfortune to stand before him.

Belgrade Pravda cites lawyer Toma Fila, who said this is a major problem, because Holland has been engaged in a row with Serbia and Republic of Srpska.

"Problem with Alphons Orie is that he is Dutch, and Holland is openly hostile to Serbia and Republic of Srpska because it is directly responsible for Srebrenica events", Fila said, adding that "Dutch government fell because of their battalion stationed in Srebrenica" during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"At the time, they had a duty to ensure Srebrenica gets disarmed as a [UN] protected zone. Instead, they have allowed Naser Oric and his gangs to wreak havoc in the region", Fila said.

Asked whether this means Radovan Karadzic has been already convicted, he said:

"That doesn't have to be necessarily so, but it would be much better if it wasn't the Dutch that is trying him. Afterwards, when Republic of Srpska Army entered Srebrenica, the Dutch battalion surrendered and behaved in a humiliating way. That is why Holland demands that Serbia is not allowed to join the EU until General Ratko Mladic is also arrested, to wash off their dirty conscience," Fila explained.

Professor of Law Kosta Cavoski confirms nothing is a mere coincidence in the Hague, and assigning judge Alphons Orie to run the trial against Dr. Karadzic is yet another proof of the sham court's blatant bias.

"Karadzic has been assigned a judge who acquitted Ramush Haradinaj. Nothing is a coincidence in that court," Cavoski said.

Asked which aggravating circumstances can be expected to follow this appointment, Cavoski said that Orie will most probably "use all means to obstruct defense, including denying Karadzic's right to self-defense".

"In that court, all the verdicts are brought in advance, and that is especially true for Dr. Radovan Karadzic. The activities of this court are quite obvious in the very fact everyone talks about one's verdict, up in advance," Cavoski said.

Orie's Infamous Record: Acquitting Non-Serbs while Most Severely Punishing All Serbs

Zoran Krasic, Dr. Vojislav Seselj's legal adviser, is also convinced Alfons Ori was purposely assigned to try Dr. Karadzic, as a judge who issues the maximum convictions to all the Serbs and is "a well-known Serb hater".

"That is far from coincidence, since the assigned judge is well known as the fiercest Serb hater who issued the maximal punishments to the Serbs, while letting all the non-Serbs go off scot free. He should have not been allowed to be the judge in the process against Radovan Karadzic. In 2000 he took over the Vojislav Seselj case from Agius and imposed a legal representative to him. Orie forced Seselj to resort to hunger strike. In 2006 he was literally expelled from that case. I believe that this man is incapable of enabling a just trial when it comes to Serbs, although he is quite gallant when it comes to non-Serbs. This has been done on purpose, in order to hurt the dignity of Serbian nation even more, and at the same time to support those 'women in black' who haven't been climbing down from B92 -- Stojadinovic, Kandic, Dimitrijevic...", Zoran Krasic said.

Patriotic Pilot

In a separate news, a source from Serbian government is cited revealing that transfer of Dr. Karadzic from Belgrade, first to Rotterdam and then to Hague, which was planned for Tuesday evening (around 10 p.m., in the midst of massive Belgrade rally), has been unexpectedly delayed to around 3:45 a.m. Wednesday, because pilot of the Serbian Government's air fleet assigned the task to fly Dr. Karadzic to be delivered to the Hague, has refused to fly the plane and assist in delivering Radovan Karadzic to NATO's kangaroo court.