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Mila
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Topic: Alija Izetbegovic Posted: 02-Mar-2006 at 18:52 |
I saw something on the news that Turkey named a mosque for him in the Little Bosnia district of Baliksehir.
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YuGo
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Posted: 02-Mar-2006 at 19:37 |
This is no way, is trying to attack Alija Izetbegovic.
http://www.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,91134-bosnia _p3705,00.html
I found this video, it is a small documentry about radical islamists in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It also shows Alija Izetbegovic meeting with radical islamic soldiors. It's worth a watch! I don't know where else to put it, and since it shows a clip of Alija, I supose this is the best place.
What are your opinions about this video?
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Mila
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Posted: 02-Mar-2006 at 23:50 |
You can attack him all you want to - and if you do so with anything
worth mentioning (like a video of him meeting with mujahedeen) all the
better.
Well, my opinion is this...
Alija Izetbegovic said, while he regrets bringing Arab fighters to
Bosnia (mainly for the public relations problems this caused), in the
same circumstances he would do the same thing again because we were
desperate and needed all the help we could get.
In the area between Zenica and Tuzla, where most of the mujahedeen
operated, they most certainly made a difference in the defense of the
Bosniak population. That doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them and
ourselves responsible for any crimes that were committed against other
ethnic groups.
As for Izetbegovic... he must certainly have at least heard reports of
crimes being committed by the mujahedeen (Bosniak soliders as well, of
course, but I'll stick with the mujahedeen for now). Whether or not he
believed they were true can be debated. There were constant reports of
massacres of Serbs by Muslims coming from the Serb side. "Serbs are
being fed to lions in Sarajevo", "Serbs must ride the yellow trams",
"Trebinje has been destroyed, thousands dead", etc, etc, etc. It's
possible Izetbegovic heard of these crimes and thought they were simply
more of these morale-boosting stories designed to push the Serbian
soldiers.
Where I can't really dismiss Izetbegovic's involvement is when you
realize he met with this mujahedeen, as your video shows. These
fighters didn't put on a show for Izetbegovic, that would be foolish to
even imagine. If they discussed policy, if they discussed their
actions... and common sense dictates they did... then Izetbegovic must
have known their methods and what they planned to do to ethnic Serbian
soliders, and probably civilians as well.
Either way, if he was alive he would have to answer for their crimes.
Incompetence is not an excuse for war crimes and if they were committed
under his watch, as they certainly were, then he should have some
responsibility in that. I'd like to think he'd have taken it, but who
knows.
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Mila
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Posted: 03-Mar-2006 at 00:04 |
By the way, YuGo...
I'll mention this here because it's not worth a new thread and I know you'll check back.
Dodik is new Prime Minister of the Republika Srpska and, although he is
severely denying it in the news now, he allegedly said his goal was to
be the last Republika Srpska Prime Minister.
I don't like him - he's still a Cetnik, but he's about as good as they
come. He accept the Republika Srpska in 1992 but he was still opposed
to Karadzic. He's bumped the nationalists from power twice now...
He cooperated fully with the Hague last time and he'll certainly do that again.
So we'll see. Could be good news who knows.
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erci
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Posted: 03-Mar-2006 at 00:05 |
Originally posted by merced12
he is hero
rahat uyu bilge kral |
Last I heard these words was in the Conan comics in Turkish.Nice words nevertheless...
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YuGo
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Posted: 03-Mar-2006 at 19:10 |
@ Alija Izetbegovic,
I don't have much of an opinon of him, Mila. He is just anouther war criminal to me. Saying anything more than that, and I will be considered a Serb nationalist by Bosniaks, and attacked by all of your Turkish, and Soudi Arabian friends!
EDIT:
I will say, I was ready to punch my monitor when I first saw that video, I was so angry. Seeing that Islamic flag over the map of Bosnia Herzegovina, and destroying the Serbian Orthodox Church, and the fact that most of them still live in Bih today just infuriates me!
@ RS Prestident,
I supose that is good news? Anything that gets RS closer to unification with the Federation is good news to me!
Why is he a Cetnik to you, by the way? lol, I don't know much about this man.
Edited by YuGo
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Jay.
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Posted: 03-Mar-2006 at 20:44 |
Yugo, I shall punch the moniter with you.
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Bosniathebestcountry
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 00:02 |
I never heard of any bosnians ever (except the controversial hanjar division from WWII) destroying serbs or serbian property or hating on orthodox religion. Its all propagandanized B.S.
The serbs are and always will be the ones blamed for the '92 war. there is no excuse for it. and whats worse...that war accomplished absoloutley nothing, in fact it messed things up much worse.
Alija Izetbegovic....many bosnians like him but many dont cuz they thought he was "too soft" and a coward and he never shouldve signed the Dayton contract because the bosnian army at the end stretch had a very big chance at winning the war because they started forcing the serbs out slowly.
In my opinion, he seemed like a good person who only wanted peace. A good president?....i dont know.
You know, btw... i'm also from Bosanski Samac. I left it when i was 4 because of the war of course. I got a chance to visit it one time right before i came to the states and i bathed in the magnificent river Sava. It used to be a beautiful, peaceful little city and now..... an empty depressing place, with like 8 bosnian-serbs and 2 bosnian-muslims living in it and its belonging to "srpska republica". Every ex-samcanin (no matter what ethnic background) that sees samac now cries when they visit it.
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Mila
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 00:23 |
Thats common for everyone. Even if the city still had much of its
pre-war population and had been significantly rebuilt, you'd still cry
to see it for the first time since the war.
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Bosniathebestcountry
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 01:05 |
LoL, yeah but in that case youd probably cry in happiness, not sadness. Samcan people are so pissed off and sad most dont even want to visit, its too painful. Walking around dowtown and you see a bunch of villagers? mostly serbian village people that were located around samac before.
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Mila
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 01:25 |
Nah, still sadness I think. I remember the footage of refugees
returning from Turkey in 1996 - and even with Sarajevo burried in
Bosnian flags and the city free from the siege, they still were
devastated.
There was a documentary by a Norwiegan filmmaker and he followed a
Bosnian Serb family returning to Sarajevo from Belgrade after the war.
They were on the bus and once they got close enough in the finished
film he stopped narrating and just had subtitles of what was being
said. And the mother of the family saw the city and kept saying, "Heart
of Jesus, heart of Jesus, oh my God, oh my God, heart of Jesus, heart
of Jesus..." and crying. And he just kept that footage unedited for at
least 10 minutes. At the end she stopped saying heart of jesus and
started saying oh my city, oh my city, oh my city, oh my city -
completely hysterical.
It felt like 10 years just watching it.
There was a photography book by Roger Richards...or Richard Rogers, I
can't remember - called Impressions and it was photographs of refugees
taking a walk downtown for the first time on their return.
He divided them not my people, but by reaction. It was really nice. So
the first one was five people, five different pictures, with their
hands over their mouths and watering eyes. Then different progressions
for the following sets, and the last ones were four or five different
people kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk and crying. One Catholic
woman had her hands over her face but from cry-praying, not just crying
- she had those beads in her hands. And there was an old guy who prayed
the Muslim way, with his head down, etc.
Really good piece of history recorded by these things. This was still
back when the refugees were hated for having left at all, and welcomed
back the same way you'd welcome a traitor.
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YuGo
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 16:16 |
Originally posted by Bosniathebestcountry
I never heard of any bosnians ever (except the controversial hanjar division from WWII) destroying serbs or serbian property or hating on orthodox religion. Its all propagandanized B.S.
The serbs are and always will be the ones blamed for the '92 war. there is no excuse for it. and whats worse...that war accomplished absoloutley nothing, in fact it messed things up much worse.
Alija Izetbegovic....many bosnians like him but many dont cuz they thought he was "too soft" and a coward and he never shouldve signed the Dayton contract because the bosnian army at the end stretch had a very big chance at winning the war because they started forcing the serbs out slowly.
In my opinion, he seemed like a good person who only wanted peace. A good president?....i dont know.
You know, btw... i'm also from Bosanski Samac. I left it when i was 4 because of the war of course. I got a chance to visit it one time right before i came to the states and i bathed in the magnificent river Sava. It used to be a beautiful, peaceful little city and now..... an empty depressing place, with like 8 bosnian-serbs and 2 bosnian-muslims living in it and its belonging to "srpska republica". Every ex-samcanin (no matter what ethnic background) that sees samac now cries when they visit it.
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I respect your opinion, although I can't say I feel the same way.
For you to say that you have never heard of Bosniaks massacring Serbs and Croats... is very surprising. Have you ever been to central Bosnia, or heard of what had happened in places like Zenica, or Maglaj? Even in Srebrenica, for years before the horrible massacre of thousands of Muslim men in the town, Serbs were the victims (kind of the same story in Knin, except the Croats were the victims for years, then ending up massacring the Serbs, in the last days of war).
You have to understand that it isn't even important who started the war, or who had the most dead etc. The most important thing is that we as a country, Bosnia and Herzegovina try to rebuild this country into what it once was. Nothing would make me happier than seeing a Muslim woman take her child to the Ferhadija Mosque in Banja Luka, and at the same time a Serb Man with his children in the Orthodox Church in Mostar.
I can also relate to you when you talk about going back to your hometown, and it not being what it was before the war. I think all places in Bosnia are like that, both in the RS and Federation. Even if they rebuild all the Mosques, Orthodox and Catholic Churches.. we have to wonder will towns like Mostar, Banja Luka, or Drvar ever be the same again?
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Mila
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 16:25 |
It wasn't as though the massacre of Srebrenica was the first time these
people saw a Serb either, though, YuGo. The city was held under
constant shelling and sniper fire for years as well.
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Cunctator
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 18:43 |
Mila,
I respect your opinion but I just do not share it, and I understand but cannot endorse your feelings. (Not having a drop of Slavic blood in my veins, I have "no dog in this fight." to quote George Bush Sr.) Nevertheless, let's be frank, Izetbegovic was no saint, and there were atrocities committed by all sides in the Bosnian war, and they are documented. (Orric is on trial at the Hague for committing many such crimes, and we know that the ICTY were sitting on an investigation of the Bosnian president and only announced its existence when he died.) As to Izetbegovic's tolerance for other cultures/religions, I am no authority. However, I do recall very clearly that he publicly complained about the behaviour of Bosnians during the Christmas 1995 and New Year 1996 celebrations as not being consistent with Islamic faith. Such an opinion is again consistent with his beahviour and ideas during the Second World War and immediately after.
Civil wars are reputed to be the most bloody. In the Bosnian Civil War all sides had their heroes and villians, and all had victims of war crimes. The Bosnians were the most skillful at orchestrating global public opinion and the image of the beleagured old man in beseiged (though the tunnels at the airport made it a rather porous seige) aided that effort. The Serbs were, by far, the least skilful, made no effort at public relations in the West and are now blamed for everything that happened. And Serb leaders were possibly the least photogenic. It will probably take another generation before the historians can do a really good in-depth study of the events a decade and more ago.
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Mila
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 19:05 |
I don't believe in making the aggressors equal to their victims at all,
Cunctator. We don't say WWII was a civil war between Germans and Jews
because of the Warsaw uprising... it just seems strange to me.
You have a side in this war with an official policy of ethnic cleansing
- so official that this is where the term "ethnic cleansing" comes
from. The West didn't invent it, the Belgrade authorities did. You have
village after village, town after town, city after city being attacked
for days and sometimes weeks, sometimes months, sometimes years. Those
that fell were 'ethnically cleansed' and dedicated in celebratory,
televized ceremonies as gifts to the Serbian people.
If you want to compare Naser Oric to that, go ahead. Maybe if he had
been commiting his crimes in Novi Sad while Belgrade was under siege
and half of western Serbia was occupied by Bosniaks it would make sense.
I will never accept that Naser Oric's crimes were acceptable or even
necessary, but I will never say all sides were equal.
EDIT 1: And "Bosnian civil war" makes me sick. The first people killed
in Bosnia were Herzegovinian Croats massacred in 1991 by the Yugoslav
People's Army during the war in Croatia. The first Serbian soliders to
enter Bosnia following our referendum of independence crossed over the
Sava from Croata. That's there independent countries involved before,
and literally on day 1.
EDIT 2: To me this "all sides were equal" approach is just like people
saying, "I don't care what homosexuals do, I just don't want to see it."
It's the form of denial and prejudice that is still politically correct and, in some circles, acceptable.
EDIT 3: It started as, "Nothing happened."
Then it went to, "They did it to themselves."
Then it went to, "Okay, we did it, but they did more."
Then it went to, "Okay, we did it, but they did it too."
Someday, hopefully soon, it will be "Okay, we did it - and they did that."
Edited by Mila
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Bosniathebestcountry
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Posted: 08-Mar-2006 at 20:51 |
Bosnia was destroyed the most in this war. and thats the bottom line. Slovenia had like what....4 days of war? croatia 6 months? bosnia.....4 years! the west knew what was happening, the serbs would massacre a village, they would put on bosnian army sings and stuff like that to make it look like "the muslims did it". You dont need to tell me anything. Bosnia was betrayed and annihilated in this war. And who knows if it will ever recover.
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Cunctator
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Posted: 09-Mar-2006 at 21:28 |
Mila,
I am not disputing that atrocities were committed. That would be very foolish. All I am saying is that all sides committed war crimes and all sides had innocent victims. Does it really matter if one side killed 10,000 and the other only 2,000? (I am choosing those numbers arbitrarily.) To suggest that one side was all good and the other all bad only serves to obscure the reality on the ground. I am certain that the Serbs did kill many more than the Bosniak forces, but that is to be expected -- they were better equipped and armed and were on the offensive for much of the war. But, many of the Serbs were just as fearful of living under Bosniak rule as vice versa, and that fear grew as the war continued -- I know that you will not like reading that, but it is true and is often obscured by the nationalist rhetoric of the leaders and by media reports that tended to paint the war in black and white colours.
I cannot agree with one of your statements. The situation of the Bosniaks did not at all resemble the situation of the Jews under Nazi rule (to use your example), although I am certain (and your last posting demonstrates this) that many people felt and still feel that way. It is one thing to force a people to leave their homes in the course of which some people are murdered, and another to create an elaborate system to exterminate a whole race. The latter never happened to the Bosniaks.
I would also point out that many Balkan wars have tended, historically, to involve what we call today "ethnic cleansing". The Republika Srpska wanted to push the Bosniaks out of as much territory as possible and eradicate their presence. The Bosniaks did much the same with the Serb minority in Sarajevo. After Belgrade was defeated, the Albanians have been doing this since 1999 in Kosovo. And we should not forget earlier examples -- where are all the Turks that used to live in the region? They didn't all move back to Turkey. In this sense, what happened in Bosnia is just another chapter in that region's bloody history. That is not to minimise recent events, or to be morally equivocal, but it is an attempt to put them in some perspective.
As to your disputing my term "Bosnian civil war", I do not care about the label. We can call the war by whatever name is agreed upon. All three combatants in Bosnia (Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks) had outside help, in different amounts but it was still from outside. I do not have any figures to cite, but I think it is generally accepted that most of the fighters in the Republika Srpska and Bosnian-Croat Federation were from within Bosnia itself.
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strategos
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Posted: 09-Mar-2006 at 22:01 |
Perhaps it is time Republika Srpska joins Republic of Serbia
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Mila
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Posted: 09-Mar-2006 at 23:33 |
I responded so many times and each time I deleted it.
Originally posted by Cunctator
All I am saying is that all sides committed war crimes and all sides had innocent victims. |
I would never claim otherwise. Thinking that disproves or even
validates the dynamics of the war as I explained them is desperate.
Originally posted by Cunctator
Does it really matter if one side killed 10,000 and the other only 2,000? |
Of course it matters. It matters even more than more than 100,000 were
killed in an organized, purposeful campaign using everything from
arbitrary executions to concentration camps.
Originally posted by Cunctator
I cannot agree with one of your statements. The
situation of the Bosniaks did not at all resemble the situation of the
Jews under Nazi rule (to use your example), although I am certain (and
your last posting demonstrates this) that many people felt and still
feel that way. |
You're right, it doesn't compare at all. In fact, Greta Ferusic -
who survived Auschwitz - said life in Sarajevo during the siege was
even worse.
Originally posted by Cunctator
It is one thing to force a people to leave their
homes in the course of which some people are murdered, and another to
create an elaborate system to exterminate a whole race. The latter
never happened to the Bosniaks. |
Actually, that's called genocide - and it did happen to the Bosniaks.
Originally posted by Cunctator
The Bosniaks did much the same with the Serb minority in Sarajevo. |
Blasphemy. Sarajevo still has all of its Orthodox Churches, Banja
Luka dynamited all of its more than 40 Mosques, all of its more than 15
Roman Catholic churches, as well as it's two Synagogues - one of which
wasn't even a Synagogue anymore.
Banja Luka's Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats were herded onto cattle
cars and many were sent to their deaths at 23 concentration camps in
and around the city of Prijedor. Sarajevo's Serbs remained in the city
until the United Nations refused to allow them to continue construction
of a Berlin-style wall and opted to award the whole of the city to the
Bosnian government. Sarajevo's Serbs packed up their belongings, dug up
their graves, and moved the living and the dead a few kilometers east.
Serbian forces set fire to everything as they fled - especially the
homes and belongings of the 40,000 Serbs who refused to leave. All of
this has been well documented and could only be disputed in bad faith.
Originally posted by Cunctator
After Belgrade was defeated, the Albanians have been doing this since 1999 in Kosovo. |
The Republika Srpska was an important lesson for the Kosovar
Albanians - kill who you can, drive away who you can't, and the United
Nations will allow you to establish you're own entity on the territory.
The UCK's own documents prove as much.
And as for strategos, well...
I hate stooping so low... but perhaps it's time Vojvodina joins
Hungary and Kosovo joins Albania. Then we'll have a little war to
ethnically cleanse Bosniak-dominated regions of southern Serbia. Then,
we'll of course, have to attack Serbian-dominated territory to create
an ethnically homogenous land bridge linking the Republika Bosnjacka to
Bosnia and Herzegovina proper. Then they have the Republika Srpska and
we can have our Republika Bosnjacka.
I'd rather not, but if people like you get to make the decisions perhaps we will see it.
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Mila
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Posted: 09-Mar-2006 at 23:41 |
A little message from Sarajevo's Serbs who stayed behind in regard to
your claims that Serbs were ethnically cleansed from Sarajevo, Cunc.
The president of the Serb citizens council/Citizen's movement for
equality, Mirko Pejanović, stated that "Nobody, not even Bukejlović,
can change or cover up the truth for the sake of current political
needs. In Sarajevo, during the four year siege carried out by
Karadić's military forces and the SDS, there were deaths of Sarayliyas
of all ethnicities. The people were both suffering and dying from
hunger, cold, they were being killed by mortar shells... among the
12,000 killed Sarayliyas recorded in the war, at least one fourth were
members of the Serb nation or had Serb ethnic ancestry. Thus, we can
not talk of an extermination or genocide of Serbs, but of a
responsibility of the SDS and Karadić's military forces for the
overall extermination of Sarajevo and Sarayliyas, and within that of
the Serb people".
There's a careful refutation of the rest of the claims there as well:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Sarajevo
EDIT: Anyhow, I'm so sick of this conversation and it was so nice not
to have it for so many weeks. I've made my point - the same points I've
been making for a decade - and now I'm, once again, bowing out.
Edited by Mila
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