Tag Archive for ‘Bosnia’

Hillary Clinton’s Ongoing Bosnian Fixation

Mrs. Clinton’s performance amounted to yet another coded demand for the abolition of the Republika Srpska, the autonomous Serb republic covering 49% of Bosnia—and the assertion of Muslim (“Bosniak”) dominance in a “reformed” (that is, unitarized) Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Bosnia, Hillary’s Playground

At a time when the U.S. power and authority are increasingly challenged around the world, the incoming team sees the Balkans as the last geopolitically significant area where they can assert their “credibility” by postulating a maximalist set of objectives as the only outcome acceptable to the United States, and duly insisting on their fulfillment. We have already seen this pattern with Kosovo, and it is to be expected that we’ll see its replay in Bosnia under the new team.

Karadzic and The Hague: Interview With Dr. Trifkovic

The BBC talks to Dr. Trifkovic regarding the forthcoming Karadzic trial at The Hague Tribunal. “This trial would need to mark a new beginning by The Hague,” he says, “and yet I have no reason to believe that such a beginning will indeed be made.”

BBC: The fact that Karadzic could face trial at The Hague is causing consternation among those who consider the court to be anti-Serbian. Srdja Trifkovic is one of them. He is an American historian, journalist and political analyst, and an expert on Balkan politics.

TRIFKOVIC: It would be a hugely significant moment if it were to be followed by a fair and just trial that would seek to establish the facts of the case, not only on Srebrenica but also on what came to pass in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. However, in Serbia many people—including those who favor the new, pro-European government—have a very jaundiced view of The Hague Tribunal, especially since the release of Nasir Oric, the wartime commander of the Muslim garrison in Srebrenica, came just before the capture of Karadzic. In fact, in Belgrade The Hague Tribunal is universally regarded as a politically motivated tool for providing quasi-legal justification of political decisions made by the powers-that-be back in the early 1990s.

Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed

The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim crimes are understandable.

This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was found not guilty by The Hague Tribunal of any responsibility for the killing of thousands of Serb civilians by the forces under his command in the three years before the fall of the enclave in July 1995. It is also apparent today, in the endless media repetition of Karadzic’s alleged bellicose intransigence before and during the Bosnian war.