ACTUALLY…the country did not officially become Yugoslavia until 1929, when King Aleksandar declared himself absolute ruler, under a temporary dictatorship, because he was so disgusted with no one getting along. He wanted to stop the feuding between the Croats and the Serbs and the Slovenes, so he tried to create a new state. He wasn’t a bad guy, but he simply lacked the imagination and the greediness it takes to succeed in politics. He was actually a very mild dictator, and in 1931 or '32, he gave back the constitution, still keeping absolute rule over the ministers, and would have given up the dictatorship in 1934 only…as assasinated by the Utashe and Mussolini was probably behind it, in October, on a visit to Marseilles, France.
His reason for originally suspending the constitution was that parliament was not working-his main man, Stefan Radich, was assassinated on the floor of parliament. Radich was a Croat and a very good friend of the king.
His cousin, the Prince Regent Paul, made a deal with Hitler-didn’t he?
Prior to WWI, Croatia and Bosnia had been under Austrian domination, I believe.
(Admittedly, this IS the Aleksandar I have a crush on, so I am a bit biased…)
BUT…
Aleksandar himself was opposed to both communism AND fascism. He lost his brother-in-law in the Bolshevik massacres in Siberia, his sister’s husband, and the girl he was in love with, Grand Duchess Olga, was murdered by the Bolsheviks, which was what REALLY poisoned the guy against Russia. That said, he was also very anti-Fascist. He wanted to have a constitutional monarchy, like in England, but could not achieve it. He wanted to stop the massive killings and terrorism, but didn’t know how to do it.
Pick a nit with me, will yas? Fine, the official name of what became Yugoslavia from 1919-29 was the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. However, the boundaries of the nation did not change.
London, a few things, then I gotta go.
Are you seriously arguing that the UN is a tool of the West? That explains why the American Right loves them so much :rolleyes: OK, examples - the “Zionism equals racism” resolution, the rulings against the U.S. mining of Managua harbor by the ICJ, the kicking off of the U.S. from the Human Rights Committee. Given that on the Security Council the U.S.S.R. while it existed and China have a veto, it’s not a tool of the West. As for the General Assembly, both the numbers and its history demonstrate it’s not a tool of the West.
Concerning peacekeeping, no one’s pointed out to me the West’s compelling interests in Sierra Leone, but there are U.N. peacekeepers there.
Damn straight, the forced expulsion of a people is a crime against humanity.
So long as the putative war crimes tribunal concerning Afghanistan and Pakistan adheres to the International Convention on Human Rights and the Geneva Conventions, which pretty much every nation in the world has signed on to, I have no problem with the court as now constituted getting involved. There is such a thing as the “law of nations”, and it ain’t a new concept - I think the first time it is mentioned in U.S. law is in the Alien Tort Claims Act, which was enacted in 1789.
Channeling the voice of my SO–regarding London Calling’s statement about the picture of the wafer-thin prisoner having been debunked–I don’t believe that’s correct. I believe the picture you are talking about, which was in Newsweek, was taken at a camp near Prijedor, called Omarska. The prisoner who was photographed was actually a prisoner, but he was ill. It was not necessarily the conditions of the camp that made him so thin. That said, Omarska was a very very nasty place. Many people there were tortured and killed. The well-educated in particular were targeted. Again, I must direct your attention to the report of the Commission of Experts.
Regarding the legitimacy of the Tribunal. It’s more legitimate that any previous war crimes tribunal or than summary executions. What way do we have to promote the rule of law, which promotes stability and decreases violence, other than to make agreements with each other that we all abide by. The tribunal has jurisdiction over crimes committed by any ethnic group and has prosecuted all. This would also cover the German tourists, or “Weekend-ashis” who would come to BiH for a “vacation” to join a paramilitary group–that, again, does not sound like a victor’s court. The statute of the Tribunal also has a provision that allows the countries to try their own people if they wish. In other words, there’s an escape valve with built-in assurances that the matter will be taken seriously.
As regards to Point 5. the Serbs (and Milosevic) were themselves reacting to their belief that they had been persecuted by the majority Albanians. You seem to gloss over this point by noting that Tito kept the peace, but you might just have easily have said that the majority Albanians dominated the Serbs, who reacted by etc. I don’t know exactly who is at fault - most likely it is one of these morasses that leaves both sides with much to complain about. But it is a fact (aparently) that the population went, over the years, from majority Serb to overwhelming majority Albanian, which would suggest that the Albanians had the upper hand (possibly aided by the Turks).
The reason I accept the fact that the Serbs were persecuted after the NATO bombing is because I was following the situation there with great interest at the time. I don’t think anyone denies that these events took place. You are correct in that many or most Serbs fled before the NATO forces assumed control. But they fled because they knew - quite correctly - that NATO would have little interest in protecting them. The killings were done by the KLA, which NATO allowed to return as a with their weapons (subsequently they were sort of disbanded) because they - under the influence of wartime propaganda - were being treated as the “good guys”. Prior to the conflict they were considered a terorist organization, but during the bombing campaign they were positioned as the good guys, to the point where there was serious talk of arming them. I remeber a NATO spokesman at the time saying they were being allowed to return with their weapons because we have no reason to assume they will be anything other than purely peaceful, or words to that effect. Of course, this was nonsense.
Truth is that I didn’t follow the conflict that closely until America was about to get involved, as I mentioned earlier. Since that point, I’ve seen none of the evidence you mention. I looked around a bit and found some references to this issue with regards to Bosnia - some of the Bosnian Serbs have been indicted in connection with internment camps. At this point, these have not been brought up in connection with milosevic. It is unclear to me to what extent he was in control of the situation on the ground in Bosnia. I don’t think you could charge him with causing the deaths by “inflaming Serb nationalism”. On what basis do you state that you know that SM was directly involved in Bosnia?
Beyond this, I’m surprised at your comments about “dangerously close to conspiracy theory”, especially from you. I would think it is beyond obvious that there is a tendency for the media to fall in with a certain story angle. From that point on, stories that fit this angle are highlighted, stories that don’t are suppressed. This applies to many areas (e.g. politics) but certainly when a country is about to engage in a military conflict there is a tendency to buy into all sorts of far-fetched stories about the evils of the enemy and the virtues of the allies, based on flimsy evidence. As an example, Saddam Hussein is probably a lot more ruthless than SM, but I think it is pretty much acknowledged in hindsight that many of the “atrocities” committed by Iraqi forces in Kuwait never actually happened (e.g. the much publicized stories of soldiers yanking babies out off incubators turned out to be a complete myth.) Perhaps you could could clarify your thinking on this point.
London_Calling
Yes it is, thank you.
Hamlet
It would appear that the matters that you discuss also concern the Bosnian situation. If the facts do come out as you state, and Milosevic is shown to have been in control of that situation, then I agree that he is a war criminal.
With regards to your point about the Newsweek photograph, you should admit that it does show in any event the fallacy of insisting that the case is proved based on popular media, as others have insisted in this thread.
Says here that a British jury found last year that the photograph was, on the whole, accurate. The barbed wire may not have actually been enclosing the man in the picture, but witnesses testified that he and others were, in fact, prisoners there who were kept in miserable conditions.
Hamlet - I don’t doubt the veracity of your wife’s comments about the way prisoners were treated at Omarska. I brought the photo up (as a subject) in response to Sua and to make the point that the media have their own agenda (which is not always consistent with factual reporting). Thus (and I related the facts incorrectly earlier but research reveals this): A visit to the camps of Omarska and Trnopolje by a British team from Independent Television (ITN) on August 5, 1992 gave rise to the image of the Serbs as the new Nazis of the Balkans. A widely published photo taken by ITN pictured an emaciated Muslin behind barbed wire with comrades imprisoned behind him. ITN’s photo was not, however, as accurate as it seemed. The men in the photo were not standing behind barbed wire. In fact the Hague Tribunal confirmed that there was no barbed wire surrounding the Belesn 92 at Trnopolje. The emaciated Muslim shown with his shirt off was in fact a very ill man selected to be featured in the photo. Trnopolje was not a concentration camp, it was a refugee and transit center. Many Muslims traveled there for protection and could leave whenever they wished.
Sources: CAQ “Misinformation: TV Coverage of a Bosnian Camp”, Fall 1998, No. 65 by Thomas Deichmann, and CAQ “Seeing Yugoslavia Through A Dark Glass”, Fall 1998, No. 65 by Diana Johnstone
Re-read the OP and my earlier responses. SM is not the victim of a massive media witchhut, nor is he a misunderstood politician being unfairly judged by the victors in a war. He is a power hungry, hate-monger who was ultimately responsible for horrible war crimes. Don’t try and rewrite this travesty by saying “well, the Serbs got screwed by NATO, or by claiming the media over-reported the situation.”
Izzy, my personal opinion is that all parties involved, not only in the mess in Yugoslavia, but everywhere else in the world that people can’t seem to get along, and insist on killing one another at the drop of a hat, ought to have all rights to their property, their citizenship, and even their residency stripped from them, and they all be shipped off to seperate parts of the world, never allowed to return home. A harsh solution, I’ll admit, and one that will never be tried or probably even work if it were. Still, I for one am tired of hearing one side claim innocence whilst accussing the other side of being next year’s Satan. Everybody commits attrocities in wartime, and the small messes in places like Bosnia, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland are in many ways worse than a large general conflict like World Wars I and II. At least in those wars, the issues of who’s the good guy and whose the bad guy were decided rather quickly. Whereas in the other messes, you’ve got one ethnic group slaughtering another and even persecuting their own for not joining in.
One of the claims made by one side or the other in the Bosnian mess was that the other side started back in the 11th Century when they committed mass slaughter or terror campaigns against the side that is now trying to justify their current atrocities. (I’m being vague here because I don’t remember the exact details, don’t have time to go searching for a cite, and I don’t need to be specific to illustrate my point. Which I shall do now.) Going back that far to justify your actions is simply fishing for an excuse. You didn’t know any of those people, you probably couldn’t even identify with how they lived their lives. (When was the last time an 11th Century king ordered pizza from Dominos, or you went years without bathing?)
By following the above logic, most of Europe would be justified in attacking Italy (after all, the Romans did hold most of Europe), followed by Europe attacking the Scandanavian countries because of the Vikings, and everybody attacking everybody else for some other conflict that they had at some point in the past.
None of this, of course, solves the current issues with SM, but it is an alternate solution to worrying about who’s right and who’s wrong.
In sme ways you may be right but what makes SM merit close examination of his behaviour at trial is that for decades the peoples of Yugslavia did live together, albeit under an extremely strong leader, and might possibly have managed either to continue in this way or have managed it with far less violence than resulted.
The blame for this can be laid squarely though not solely on the shoulders of SM with his nationalistic rhetoric, but that alone would not mean he was guilty of war crimes, for that one needs to examine policies.
As an aside, the reason that SM was extradited against the findings of the Serb judiciary is simple, all five judges on the panel were SM appointees and the government knew well in advance what their decision was likely to be, so they had already made the necessary arrangements.
This also explains why it would be impossible for SM to be tried for war crimes in Serbia as the presiding judges would likely have opinions strongly for or against him.
I believe that he was going to be tried for other offences such as seizing private property, corruption, frau etc but these pale into insignificance compared to his chrages brought by the Haig.
There is now a serious move afoot to extradite Ratko Mladic and Radavan Karadzic who have been seen moving with relative freedom in the Serb controlled areas of Bosnia.
Hardly an unbiased site but it is accurate even if it leaves out some of the Croatians players.
The crucial point in the findings of the UN security council reports is not that SM or any of the others are accused of directly ordering activities which would be recognised as war crimes, though SM trial on matters in Kosovo may well do this, but rather that the activities of the various ad-hoc security forces and regular army are so systematic and consistant across thier theatres of operations that they were as a direct result of policy.This was signed by BB Gali himself.
Add to this the destruction of anything that was representative of non-Serb culture such as churches and, for my money, it can only be construed as official Serb policy.
This is what places the responsability directly on SM’s shoulders.
casdave, don’t get me wrong, I think that SM’s a bad guy, and he’s probably going to get what he deserves (though I’m a little concerned about the method in which its being done), but at the Nazi war crimes trials we didn’t buy the “I was only following orders” excuse offered by some, so I don’t think that you can simply say that punishing SM and a few others is all that should be done. Of course, its impossible to root out all those who committed atrocities on either side.
Additionally, I think that NATO waited too long to become involved in the matter as well. IMHO if NATO had began carpet bombing Serbia the moment they first moved across the borders into Bosnia (or whichever one of the states that was the first to breakaway), the whole thing would have ended then, instead of dragging out for close to a decade.
The troubles in Bosnia were seen coming a long way off by Yugo observers, our own opposition MP and leader of the Liberal Party(which is too small to have any effective voice) pointed out as much very early on in the whole saga, and as I said earlier Slovenia found enough time to recruit, train and arm its forces and develop a command structure independant of the Yugoslave army.
The Slovenians trapped the Yugoslav army and could have destroyed it at their leisure but instead used their position as a lever to break away from the federation, maybe some thought that it had learned a lesson and that it would not start fresh campaigns elsewhere.
The first assaults were not officially Serb army but rather were Yugoslav army which officially had the job of enforcing unity,yet at the same time were deliberately undermining this by recruiting and training irregular troops especially in the Krajina region.
This made it difficult to pin the full responsability on Serbia directly in UN security council meetings as there was enough deniability for Russia to continue its support of the regime.
The reason that it was NATO that became involved rather than the UN was mainly down to this Russian support of Serbia, and in the early stages France refused to condemn Serbia too.
The result was that it took some time(too long perhaps) but as soon as it was clear that NATO would be involved the UN resolution was passed and the Russians quickly became involved with a token force to make it a UN affair.
This meant that NATO did not have the option of getting directly involved early on.
Russian concern was not just in maintaining its spheres of influence but also the possible loss of use of the Danube, a strategic waterway important for trade in the whole region, Russian objections were eventually overcome partly because it was promised aid to offset the effects of the loss of this route.
My opinion of this aid was that it was just an excuse for the Russians to get help for its faltering economy without appearing to be begging as it was clear by then that NATO operations would ensue anyway.
IIRC there was some concern also that newly democratised countries such as Romania and Bulgaria might suffer economic hardships too and their fragile governments brought down to replaced with regimes that might have ended up similar to SM’s
One of the first results of NATO bombing was to cut the crossing points of the Danube by destroying the bridges, the wreckage in turn blocked passage along the river.
You will no doubt be pleased to know that that well known foreign policy think tank, The Onion is also thinking along similar lines.
casdave
I checked out your link. Although it is headlined “Indict Milosevic: Commission of Experts Report”, the actual report does not appear to make any such recommendation. Unless I missed something.
I don’t think your final statement that “This is what places the responsability directly on SM’s shoulders” follows from anything in the linked document. I draw your attention to the following (emphasis added)
So it may not be at all clear to what extent the atrocities in Bosnia can be tied to SM.
I would agree that it would be difficult to pin responsibility for crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina on SM but the report does state that in the commissions view the blurring of the lines of command were deliberately constructed to make accountability harder to work out.
This alone would suggest that the whole thing was planned prior to execution with due regard to the fact that crimes were going to be committed, indeed these crimes were publicised as part of a terror campaign.
What is certain is that although the chain of command was blurred the systematic way these atricities were carried speak of a planned overall strategy.
MS did try to distance himself form Karadzic when it was clear that Serbia was under threat directly but I would find it hard to see how he could deny knowledge of the events that some of his own special forces were sent for.
Maybe it was deliberately constructed for this purpose. And maybe it does imply that it was an organized campaign. But it does not imply that the person organizing the campaign and deliberately obscuring his role was SM.
(Politics in Yugoslavia are hard to figure out even today. The extradition of SM was done despite the opposition of the President, the Prime Minister, the Parliament and the courts.)
It would be an interesting question if it were found that the forces that committed the atrocities (in Bosnia) were not under the ultimate command of SM, but that he could nonetheless have influenced them due to his alliance with their leaders. Would this make him culpable? I would think not. If it would, any country could theoretically be found culpable for the activities of their allies.
Looking around various sites it seems that SM was not just under arrest in Serbia for corruption charges, which might have earned him up to 15 years in prison, but also his is under investigation and was due to be charged with murder for ordering the elimination of a political opponent in a staged car crash, in that event Ivan Draskovic survived but some of those with him did not.(Ivan Stambolic, former Prime Minister, has also been missing for six months)
If found guilty he could have faced the death penalty, the fact that much of the information and evidence came from his former head of security Rade Markovic who is also in custody facing various charges gives it much more credibility.
Dusan Mihajlovic, the Serb interior minister, actually made light of SM’s arrest by saying, in April, that he might volunteer to be extradited to the Hague rather than face a death penalty trial.
One thing that SM has admitted when questioned about missing funds is that these were diverted to help support the ethnic Serb rebellions in Bosnia and Croatia, the old saying that he who pays the piper calls the tune springs to mind here, if this is true then he had some measure of control over those who ran the uprisings.
Kostunica is being disingenuous or at the very least saying things with one eye on his domestic situation, first he says SM will not be arrested, but he was with just 24 hours to go before the Haig commission deadline,then he says he is against extradition of course SM is now in a cell in Holland, others have also been arrested and will probably face extradition proceedings.It would cement Kostunica’s own position to be rid of those who still have considerable influence.
I think the ball has started to roll, there have been by all accounts several hundred ‘disappearances’ of those opposed to SM’s regime, the numbers depends on who the source is, there is plenty of motivation within Serbia itself to settle scores.
There are charges relating to Bosnia with are due to be brought in October, it will be interesting to see what those are but I’d expect them to be along the lines of responsibility of command.
Now that he is in custody it may be possible to get testimony from others in his former government, Markovic will probably do some sort of trade of testimony against immunity from the death penalty.
Serbs would much rather see SM tried in Serbia for his crimes there but Croatians and Bosnians would never trust such proceedings, its not just about Serbian pride being dented.
I would think that Montenegrans would also like the reassurance that the international community will hold SM accountable as they debate where their future lies.
The following appeared on an obscure Yugoslavian record label a couple of years ago…
Slobo ‘99"*
Yo, where my peeps at, straight outta’ Belgrade
Home of the air raid, bullshit NATO haterz
Think we afraid?
Fuck Albright, blue-bushed dyke skank
Ass wider than a soviet tank,
The ho that gives Hillary head, is wantin’ me dead
fucked up Yank
So Solana, wanna be my next NATO bitch?
You hafta deal wit’ la familia Milosevich
And the head Serb-G MC Slobo, the capo
Got 2 billion in Swiss accounts, my checks don’t bounce
But I bounce Czechs, Magyars…upside they’ ass
Gotten wishin they didn’t join up NATO so fast
Yeah Arkan and his tigers, let outta’ the pen
Loose on Kosovo, doin Slobo a favor again
Yeltsin’s got my back, behold the Slavic attack
From here to Pristina, the boyz get even meanah’
Grave diggin’ election riggin’ my fuse is tickin’
Don’t freak, just speak, catch up on the lingo
Cyrillic, fuck Roman script, give props’ to Slobo*
From what I’ve read, all the local charges against SM fizzled due to lack of evidence, as I mentioned earlier. One article claimed that witnesses were unwilling to testify and documents were missing. Maybe, maybe not. I know that’s what I would say if I had arrested a guy based solely on the desperate need to arrest him and an overriding sense that he must be guilty, only to have no evidence turn up for this.
I don’t know about this. The US has bankrolled some pretty thuggish outfits, who have committed some pretty heinous crimes. It is always an issue as to whether to fund such groups - practical necessity versus moral preference. But I’ve never heard the suggestion that US sponsering of such groups means that the US had control to the point of making US officials guilty of war crimes.
