[glow=red,2,300]THE BALKAN PROBLEM LIVES ON[/glow]
by Alfred Mendes
"(...).
The republics of Yugoslavia would soon be embroiled in a long, drawn-out
civil war - but before examining this more closely, certain earlier events
in World War II should be kept in mind, inasmuch as they proved pertinent
to events of said civil war. In Vienna on March 25th '41, Yugoslavia - then
a kingdom - signed an agreement to join the (German, Italian, Japanese)
Tripartite Pact. Two days later, in Yugoslavia, the royalists were
overthrown by a group of officers under General Simovic, which exacerbated
the already-existing Royalist-cum-Cetnik vs. Republican schism within the
Serbs. Hitler bombed and invaded Yugoslavia on April 7th. In the subsequent
war between Heinrich Himmler's 13 Waffen Gebirgs Division der SS (the
Handzar) and Tito's communist-led Partisans, the Cetniks (avid
anti-communists under Draza Mihailovic), cooperated a number of times with
the Germans. Two intriguingly pertinent facts to the subsequent Yugoslav
crisis are worth noting here:
(a)
Alija Izetbegovic, the current President of Bosnia and Hercegovina, had
"joined the organization 'Young Muslims" in Sarajevo on March 5, 1943, and
was engaged as a member of the organization in recruiting young Muslims for
"SS Handzar Division" in collaboration with Hitler's intelligence service
(ABWER and GESTAPO)"... "Srebrenica area was under the direct assault of
this "SS Handzar Division" during World War II."...In '46 Itzobegovic "was
sentenced by former Yugoslav Supreme Military Court to three years of
imprisonment and two years of deprivation of civil rights, because of his
fascist activities." And because of his fundamentalism and intolerance of
other religions "he was sentenced to twelve years imprisonment by the
Supreme Court of Bosnia on March 14, 1983" [4]; and (b) Radovan Karadzic,
leader of the Bosnian Serbs in the subsequent civil war, was a committed
Royalist-cum-Chetnik, as he stated in a BBC interview at the time.
One further fact concerning the initial stage of the Yugoslav crisis needs
to be kept in mind: it is generally accepted that the subsequent civil war
began in 1992 as a result of the Bosnian President Alija Itzebegovic's
recantation of the Lisbon Plan, an agreement he had made with his Croat and
Serb counterparts in Bosnia - the Serb being the Chetnic, Radovan Karadzic.
Now, intervention by one-or-more countries into an internal conflict within
another "in order to maintain peace in this world" is, at least, a very
risky tactic, inasmuch as what was once no more than an internal conflict
could so easily become a much more widespread international conflict - of
which the interventionists in this case, America and Europeans, must
certainly have been aware. This could only have meant that their declared
aim of maintaining the peace was a double entendre in order to hide their
true aim - especially as it had been accompanied (as it had been) by their
diplomatic machinations and covert activities, as would be revealed by the
following sources (concerned, primarily, with Bosnia):
Chapter 4 of Appendix II of the Dutch-sponsored Netherlands Institute for
War Documentation (NIOD) report released in August 2002 supplies detailed
(though wordy) information covering said machinations and covert activities
- hence the following brief, condensed assessment of same: clearly revealed
in this chapter was the toothless, suborned role of the UN, as exemplified
by the ambiguous wording of the frequently-amended Security Council
resolutions aimed - ostensibly - at stopping the supply of arms/weapons
(most of which came from Iran and Turkey) to the infighting factions within
Bosnia, primarily via the well-known "Croatian Pipeline" and "Black
Flights" to Tuzla airport - all done with the connivance of NATO. In the
reports' own words "In spite of all the resolutions, UNPROFOR was not given
the mandate to monitor or enforce violations of the arms embargo on land;
NATO and the WEU did do so at sea".
More shockingly, it revealed that
Turkish, Malaysian, Bangladeshi and Maltese troops serving in UNPROFOR had
been selling ammunition on a large scale to the Bosnian army (ABiH)! In
view of the fact that, from its very inception in 1945, the UN's role has
been subordinate to that of America, the above is thus hardly surprising. Equally well-covered in the report were the diplomatic "behind-the-scene"
activities in Bosnia by officials of the American Administration - such as
the Nartional Security Advisor Anthony Lake; the Ambassador in Zagreb,
Peter Galbraith (who had been involved in the "Croatian Pipeline"); and
perhaps best-known - Richard Holbrooke - appointed by President Clinton to
act as the architect of a new strategy "to arm the Bosnian Muslims". [5]
That most publicised event of the Yugoslav crisis, the "massacre of
Srebrenica" in the aftermath of its fall on July 11 1995, was pounced upon
by the intruding West and its media as demonstrating the evil cruelty of
the Serbs - as illustrated by Ted Koppel's interview with Richard Holbrooke
in the "New Yorker" of November 1995, when Holbrooke said "The Vietcong
were dedicated ideologues, committed to a long term struggle.. These guys
[the Serbs] aren't ideologues; they're just murdering assholes". (Remember,
the Vietcong had killed over 58,000 Americans!). This was an alleged
massacre of 8000 "Muslim men and boys" - a figure apparently plucked from
an atmosphere of ambivalence, based, as it was (according to James Bisset,
Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia in the early nineties) on a Red Cross
report, dated September 13 1995, which "stated that 3000 Muslims had been
taken prisoner by Serbian forces in Srebrenica and a further 5000 had fled
to central Bosnia.." [6] This "massacre of 8000" is still awaiting
confirmation to this day.
On the other hand, very little attention was paid
to the numerous massacres of Bosnian Serbs in the Srebrenica enclave
between `92 and `93 by the Bosnian army "Handzar" division under the
command of Nasser Oric, who had been appointed by Itzebegovic, as was
revealed in the infamous kangaroo court known as the international Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Hague, which had been set
up primarily to try Milosevic for "crimes against humanity". Suffice it to
say here that, on February 12 2004, General Phillipe Morillon, who had been
UN commander in Bosnia in 1992/1993, appeared before the ICTY as a witness
in the trial of Milosevic.
In his evidence, Morillon confirmed that the
Srebrenica enclave had been used as a military base by the Bosnian Muslim
army under the command of Naser Oric, adding that "Oric had engaged in
attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the
inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary
in the region, and this prompted the region of Bratunac...that is the
entire Serb population - to rebel against the very idea that through
humanitarian aid one might help the population that was present there."
There were several other such attacks, and Morillon concluded his evidence
by stating that the fall of Srebrenica was due to the massacres committed
by Oric's forces in 1992 amd 1993. [7] (...)."
www.spectrezine.org/europe/Mendes2.htm 
