About that “Serbian” Siege of Sarajevo: Part I

*Posted by Julia Gorin under Republican Riot

Below is an AP Worldstream story that didn’t make it to the AP’s “A” stories that become available in the U.S. and AP Online. Let’s see if we can figure out why. Oh look — it must be because it concerns Bosnian-muslim war criminals:

Police detain three former Bosnian Army soldiers suspected of war crimes (April 8th):

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) - Officials say police have detained three former Bosnian Army soldiers suspected of war crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 conflict.The prosecutor’s office of the Court of Bosnia-Herzegovina says that Adil Ruznic, 41, Mehur Selimovic, 46, and Emir Mustafic, 47, were detained Tuesday in the western Bosnian town of Bihac on suspicion of having committed crimes against civilians and war prisoners in 1994 and 1995.

The Bosnian Army tried for more than three years to break the Serb siege of Bosniak-dominated Bihac before finally succeeding in 1995. Serbs have claimed the Bosnian Army committed crimes against the Serb population in surrounding villages during those attempts.

First, let’s note the use of the word “claim” — always employed when the subject is crimes against Serbs. Whereas the Srebrenica “genocide/massacre” is a fact beyond debate, such that if you question the circumstances of those deaths and the actual tally in this “worst atrocity since WWII,” you’ve joined the ranks of Holocaust deniers.

But what happened to the Serbs in and around Srebrenica which precipitated the Srebrenica operation, can only ever be a Serbian claim. Especially since international investigators weren’t tasked with documenting dead Serbs. That’s why if a dead Serb is lying in front of you, it’s actually only a Serbian “claim.”

But getting to the point. Many a foreign “eyewitness” to the Bosnian war will tell you, as some have told me: “I saw the Siege of Sarajevo with my own eyes. There’s no defending the Serbs on that count.”

Andy Wilcoxson explains in his forthcoming book about the Milosevic trial that Fikret Abdic, a truly moderate muslim Bosnian leader and therefore not the one to win American support, sided with the Serbs in the war against the creation of a secessionist islamic Bosnia, and it was his forces that held northwestern Bosnia, with assistance from the Serb side. Canadian former ambassador to Yugoslavia James Bissett also gives us a glimpse into the infamous “Siege of Sarajevo”:

During the siege of Sarajevo it was not only the muslim population that suffered. The Serbs who remained in Sarajevo and who were prevented from leaving not only were on the receiving end of the shelling and sniping but were also victims of retaliation by a hostile muslim population. [Alija] Izetbegovic, the muslim leader, decreed a policy of “self-organization” and this meant that local Muslim strongmen took command of certain neighborhoods and raised their own private armies.

Many of them were former criminals and they adopted aliases such as: Juka, Caco, Celo, Puska etc. These local warlords broke into Serb homes, forced Serbs to leave their apartments, they looted and robbed and set up their own prisons for uncooperative Serbs, where many were killed and others simply “disappeared.”

Serbian shops and businesses were prime targets and Serbs were forced to dig trenches in areas of extreme danger. Sarajevo became one large prison for the Serbian population. Later when the muslims and Croats fell out and began to fight each other, the Croats in Sarajevo suffered the same fate as the Serbs.