Welcome to Bosnia
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‘For the next three years, British policy on Bosnia
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Douglas Hurd, Memoirs. Lord Hurd was the European Union council president at the beginning of the Bosnian War. Any diplomatic response to Serb aggression had to be cleared with him first.
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‘Evil prospers when good men do nothing.’
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Irish politician and barrister John Philpot Curran or Anglo-Irish statesman Edmund Burke (disputed provenance).
‘WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind,
and to reaffirm the faith in fundamental human rights,
in the dignity and worth of the human person,
in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small.’
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Charter of the United Nations, introduction
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Photo: children in a north Bosnian camp, 2000, relishing their dignity.
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The ovens at Dachau
One recent example demonstrates the feebleness of human rights legislation when diplomats hold sway. As war was unleashed on a progressive European people a one hour flight from London
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Outside the Neretva Hotel in Mostar , Bosnia
The pistol is not a toy. The city witnessed some of the most bitter fighting during the war in former Yugoslavia
‘We rounded a corner and blinked. Stretching away in front of us was the continuation of the same street we’d just trundled down. Where there’d been filth and rubble on the Muslim side, here we saw bright shop windows and cafes and pavements.
The buildings were hardly scratched.
‘What the f***…?’ Keith said. ‘Did we just breeze into an episode of Time Tunnel or something?’
I knew what he meant. Not only did it seem like a different era, it felt like we’d been plonked down in a different city. I hadn't seen so many neon lights and posers since the Via del Corso in Rome
This, I realised, was a bottled version of the Muslim-Croat divide across the whole of Bosnia Croatia
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Cameron Spence, All Necessary Measures
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‘After six centuries we are again engaged in battles and quarrels. They are not armed battles, but this cannot be excluded yet.’
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‘Genocidal violence is a natural phenomenon in harmony with the societal and mythologically Divine nature. Genocide is not only permitted it is also recommended, even commanded by the Word of the Almighty, whenever it is useful for the survival or the restoration of the earthly
kingdom of the chosen nation, or for the preservation and spreading of its one and only correct faith.’
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His opposite number, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman (1922-1999),
Wastelands of Historical Truth, 1987
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‘I think it would be a good idea.’
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Quote attributed to Gandhi on being asked his view of Western civilisation. Religious leaders too were quick to fan the flames of war.
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‘The West is not aware of the penetration of Islam in the Balkans, where mosques are rising where there were none before.’
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Serbian Orthodox Bishop Atansije,
speaking of Hercegovina in 1992
In 1992 a Bosnian Serb artillery shell penetrated the minaret of this ancient Hercegovinan mosque (right:)
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‘There was (to be) no cavalry coming over the hill. There is no international force coming to stop this.’
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Sunday Telegraph 16/8/1992
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Douglas Hogg MP, of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, describes to journalists at Sarajevo airport how he explained to Bosnia
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Colonel Norrie Phillips, commander of over 1,400 fighters in Mostar, is a former 22 Special Air Service staff sergeant. Employed by the Bosnian Croats as a trainer of potential officers, he later fought with the Bosniaks until the end of the war against his former protégés when their betrayal became apparent at a commander's planning meeting in Medjugorge. Outside Listica , Bosnia
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‘I don’t give a f**k. These people are
paying your wages.’
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Ian Greer on the Serbian government, 1992. President Milosevic paid British political lobbyists Ian Greer Associates nearly £100,000 to use his stable of tame ‘Cash for Questions’ MPs to promote Serbian interests in Parliament.
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‘I learned to treat Britain Bosnia
Department. Or maybe the Serbs themselves.’
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US State Department senior official
A hospital in Mostar, 1992. This doctor explains why her patients had to be moved into the relative safety of the basements; the building was situated next to an army headquarters and was coming under repeated artillery fire from the Bosnian Serb Army. The room she is standing in was an operating theatre which received a direct hit just minutes after an operation. The outer wall was a ragged hole.
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‘Let us do nothing - AT ONCE!’
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Mathew Gordon, former United Nations chief press officer, on a previous conflict.
He was translating a representative’s speech for the English-speaking press corps.
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‘If these governments are not moved by those pictures of death and suffering if they are not moved by the position of ethnic cleansing in Europe, two million refugees, mass graves being found in Croatia, then they should be; we cannot let things go on like this. It is evil.’
Lady Thatcher rounds on EC leaders, including then-Prime Minister John Major, during an interview with the American NBC News channel, April 15, 1993.
A day later the UN voted to make Srebrenica a ‘safe haven’. Two years later, over 8,000 civilians, including children, were massacred there as Dutch UN soldiers, commanded by the craven Colonel Thomas Karremans, looked on. During that day, the colonel was filmed raising a glass with General Ratko Mladic, shaking his hand and smiling. He was promoted to full colonel shortly after his return to the Netherlands
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Malcolm Rifkind MP, Secretary of State for Defence, condemns Margaret Thatcher’s pro-Bosnian stance.
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Left: A hospital basement
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‘There are people around here (Beverly Hills Rockies . My dad would have loved this place; no idea is too silly.’
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blind adj 1a unable to see; sightless…
2… unable or unwilling to
understand or discern
Collins English Dictionary
Right: ‘press a button and Rambo arrives’. An armed Australian mercenary arrives in Split
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‘Beginning in April, Serb forces attacked Muslims and Croats living in towns, villages, and smaller settlements, most of which were undefended and contained no military targets. Muslims and Croats were mistreated and killed. Men were often arrested and taken to detention centres, while women and children were forced to leave their homes, and were either detained or forced to leave the municipality…
Many detainees were also deliberately killed, by members of paramilitaries, police or other Serb forces.’
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Extract from the Summary of Judgement against Momcilo Krajishnik, highest ranking politician at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
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‘Asked why the prisoners were so thin, (police chief) Mr. Drljaca said the Muslims were naturally skinny because they did not eat pork and fasted each year during Ramadan. ‘That's the way the Muslim nation is,’ he said. ‘Have you read the Koran?’’
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Chuck Sudetic, New York Times,
August 8, 1992
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‘The eerie silence lasted around ten minutes. ‘You got a Dedo Crnalich on this bus?’ came the first call in the bus right next to Djemo. Now they were after Dedo, a guy everyone in Prijedor knew, the owner of one of the nicest restaurants in town, an athlete, and someone always involved in one public office or another. As he was getting out, one of the beasts said, ‘Now let me show you how hamburger meat should be ground up,’ and drew a sharp knife across Dedo’s back, right at the door of the bus. Blood spattered all over everyone crumpled up on top of each other by the door. They could hear Dedo’s blood gurgling and his breath expiring as his body went into convulsions; then the deathly silence returned.’
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Rezak Hukanovich, The Tenth Circle of Hell
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A peasant farmer released from detention. He told me (via interpreter) that his children and grandchildren had been murdered.
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‘Time is a violent torrent; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place.’
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Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121 - 180)
Meditations
book 4, section 43
Aurelius was depicted in Gladiator
‘At this stage the fighting in Bosnia Hercegovina began to break the bounds of imagination. Around the Konjic area, Serb units guaranteed the Croats safe passage as they were retreating.
When Gornji Vakuf was being contested, a fight between Croats and Moslems was being monitored by a nearby Serb unit.
After some hours the Moslem guns fell silent.
The Serb commander radioed his Moslem counterpart. ‘Why have you stopped firing?’ he asked.
‘We’ve run out of ammunition. Give us some ammunition,’ the reply came.
Instead the Serb commander requested the Croat co-ordinates which the Moslem commander duly supplied.
Over the next four hours, the Serb unit pounded the Croats into surrender.
The following morning at dawn, the Moslem commander ordered his men to run up the Yugoslav flag instead of the Bosnian ensign in order to thank the Serbs.’
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Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia
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During a siege in Gorazde, the SAS team commander on the ground told forward headquarters at Gornji Vakuf of the dire situation the town was in.
‘Wait a minute! Hold it!’ An unfamiliar voice had burst through on the radio… I recognised the voice now. It belonged to a Major, a member of the (SAS) Regiment on (General) Rose’s staff in Sarajevo
‘Charlie, this is Richard at headquarters. Watch your choice of words man.’
‘What the hell do you mean?’ Charlie said.
Despite the frailty of the signal you could hear the mixture of astonishment and indignation in his voice.
‘I’m saying that you should think before you speak. This isn’t just a military situation that we have on our hands here. The whole thing is highly politically charged. Gorazde has not fallen, it will not fall.’’
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Cameron Spence, All Necessary Measures
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‘And if, to be sure, sometimes you have to conceal a fact with words, do it in such a way that it does not become known, or, if it does become known, that you have a ready and quick defence.’
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Florentine diplomat and political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli, 1469-1527, Advice to Raffaello Girolami when he went as Ambassador to the Emperor (October 1522)
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‘Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.’
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‘According to Marco Altherr, former head of the International Committee for the Red Cross in Yugoslavia
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Ian Traynor,
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‘Everything has changed for us. But the real difference is that the shelling could start at any moment. When your main reason for being alive is luck, life becomes very strange. I don’t think people who have not been in that situation can understand it. It’s not so much a question of whether we survive, it is a question of staying normal.
After all the refugees, the dead bodies and the destruction, all those terrible things, the question is this: tomorrow, when all this is stopped, how will I live without remembering? Will I have a smile as before? Will I be happy as before? That is the question for all of us to answer, but I don’t know the answer.’
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Emir Tica, 25, speaking from Travnik to Ed Vulliamy, Seasons In Hell
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‘Nato involvement is something that is not going to happen.’
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British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Sunday Times, February 13, 1994
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‘Sa nama nema neizvesnosti’ (With us there is no insecurity)
Electoral promise of Slobodan Milošević’s Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS). The SPS armed Bosnian Serbs just prior to the start of the war.
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‘The overriding priority is the safety of British troops.’
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Conservative MP David Sumberg, Hansard, May 3, 1995
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‘If that were so, the troops should have been kept out of harm’s way on Salisbury Plain preparing for a war they would never have to fight since to do so would have compromised their precious safety. This attitude was not only craven and cowardly – it was contemptuous of the armed forces themselves.’
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Martin Bell, Through Gates of Fire
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‘At the height of the Bosnian crisis, in May 1993, Poland
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Matthew Omolesky,
Düsseldorfer Instituts für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik (DIAS)
Düsseldorfer Instituts für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik (DIAS)
(Dusseldorf
June 26, 2006
June 26, 2006
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| Command bunker overlooking sangars |
Sir Rifkind’s nose also caught the whiff of lucre once the war was over. The International High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina , Lord ‘Paddy’ Ashdown, had to put Rifkind in his place in 2003: ‘There were… meetings with… ex-British Tory Minister of Defence Malcolm Rifkind who came to Bosnia
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A year later, in 1996, ‘a freshly retired Douglas Hurd, now acting as deputy chairman of NatWest Markets, visited Milosovic in Belgrade in pursuit of a lucrative contract to advise on the privatisation of Serbian utilities.’
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Unfinest Hour, Brendan Simms. Cambridge
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‘Appeasement was a term of praise between the two world wars of the twentieth century; it is a term of abuse today. But the peacemakers have their ration of praise, in phrases which have come down through twenty centuries and will be remembered
when the arguments of today are forgotten.’
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Douglas Hurd, Memoirs, first published in 2003.
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‘I am ashamed to say that the British government, by a huge miscalculation, has been an unwitting accomplice to… a policy of such incompetence and arrogance that it is akin to the appeasement of the Nazis.’
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Sir John Nott, Defence Secretary during the
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‘During the escalation of the conflict, few ‘front line’ photographs appeared (in the media). The extensive omission of maps or drawings, which could have made war operations easier to understand, was particularly striking. Clearly, the aim was to make it difficult for the recipient to trace the actual course of (the) conflict, in order to increase confusion, fear and feelings of anxiety. In this way, the (Croatian) government secured
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… ‘Belgrade ’s counterpart of the Zagreb
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Dushan Reljic, Killing Screens: Media in Times of Conflict
Page 55 (PDF file, website) from the
Left: a convoy from Hereford Humanitarian Aid delivering supplies to somebody’s enemy, 2000
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‘…damage to cultural property belonging to any people whatsoever means damage to the cultural heritage of all mankind, since each people makes its contribution to the culture of the world.’
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Preamble, Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, 1954 (international legislation)
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‘There is no Bosnian culture.’
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Henry Kissinger urging a Croat/Serb partition of Bosnia
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‘Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.’
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American satirist Tom Lehrer
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‘There never were any mosques in Zvornik.’
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Branko Grujic, Serbian mayor of Zvornik, after the Moslem population had been expelled and the mosques destroyed.
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‘You can’t mix apples and pears. Apples with apples and pears with pears.’
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Greta Kuna, a Bosnian education minister, explaining in 2007 why Moslim and Croat children are kept ethnically segregated despite going to the same school: The ‘Two Schools Under One Roof’ policy.
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The Serbian parliament refused to condemn the Srebrenica massacre on it’s tenth anniversary in 2005. Meanwhile, a search of the Royal Netherlands Army Museum Bosnia
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‘A myth arose… that Britain capitulated on recognition of Croatia Maastricht Maastricht Maastricht , and Douglas Hurd did not agree to recognise Croatia
British Prime Minister in 1992 Sir John Major, The Autobiography. Former banker Sir John applied to become a bus conductor on leaving school but was beaten in his quest by another applicant.
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Who to believe? Sir John, a politician, a man surrounded by people out to line their own pockets? Or former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell, who has risked his life many times to find the truth? Whatever the case, time proved yet again that without political will, the high-sounding words of Nuremberg
They say the Vietnam War which finished in 1975 was lost on America Europe .’
But he was wrong. In the world of celebrity culture, a smashed village and a burnt out school count for much less than a pretty princess on a jetski.
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Right: Making a difference. Unpaid volunteers from a British aid convoy heading home, leaving a still-shattered country. That reads unpaid, Sir John, banker.
It means voluntary, done for free.
Out of the goodness of their hearts.
Oh forget it... you're a banker. You'd never understand.
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Forward to Ulster
