Sunday, September 13, 2015

Death of Yugoslavia: the agony of Bosnia

In July 8th 1995, 8,000 Muslim Bosniak civilians, mainly boys and men, in Srebrenica, Eastern Bosnia, were walked to their death by units of the  Army of Republika Srpska; an act tantamount to genocide, as recognized in 2004 by the International Court on the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). This was not, by far, the sole episode of ethnic cleansing in the war inBosnia; a conflict that, between 1992-1995, saw  100,000 people killed, roughly bewtween 20,000 to 50,000 women, the majority of whom Bosniak, raped, and over 2.2 million people displaced. It is worth remembering that the Bosniak legitimate government was left completely alone in his fight for survival against Croatian and Serbian backed forces except for the help of Saudi Arabia (resources and weapons) and Iran (weapons, soldiers and cadres encompassing volunteers from all over the Islamic world). 

Sarajevo 1993 from Architecture of Doom
For a closer look at the conflict in Bosnia and the US-arranged peace agreements we highly recommend two episodes of the 6-part BBC documentary The Death of Yugoslavia (Paul Mitchell, BBC, 1995) based on the book The Death of Yugoslavia  by Allan Little and Laura Silber (Penguin BBC Books  June 1996):  The Gates of Hell   and Pax Americana.
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