On June 20th the High Representative for Bosnia, Austrian Valentin Inzko, annulled legislation passed by the Bosnian Serb, Republika Srpska (RS), parliament that would reclaim some of the powers of “semi-autonomy” that were promised to it in the constitution but that have been stripped away incrementally by International Community (IC) High Representatives under the so-called Bonn powers. Inzko, the latest of seven High Representatives under the direction of Javier Solana, was offended that the Bosnian Serbs did not capitulate under the threat of “consequences” and withdraw the legislation on their own. Offering to negotiate and amend some things in the legislation was not satisfactory to High Representative Inzko, who has dictatorial powers over occupied Bosnia.
Inzko saw the RS legislation to reclaim some of the constitutional powers stripped away by openly pro-Muslim High Representative Paddy Ashdown ten years after Dayton as “regressive.” Until less than four years ago, the Bosnian Serbs had their own police force, army (even though they were pretty much stripped of armaments), courts, and so forth. But each new edict of the High Representative raised the bar and further stripped Bosnian Serbs of their institutions and constitutional “rights.” Each mandate to expand the role of the central government in Sarajevo was movement toward the ultimate goal of a united One Bosnia—abolishment of the Serb entity set up at Dayton and the Dayton agreement signed (under threat of further bombardment) by Serbs and, apparently, with disappearing ink by the IC.
While the UN occupation was biased toward Muslims and against Serbs as demonstrated, for instance, in the rules for and rate of reclaiming property by the two groups, the EU occupation appears even more intent on strangling the RS out of existence and humiliating Serbs into capitulating to a centralized government in Sarajevo, which for Serbs is really “regressive” to the some 400 years of Serb suffering under the occupation of the “Turks” of the Ottoman Empire. But Turkey is not the only country now meddling in the affairs of Bosnia and supporting the Islamic take-over of the entire country: Saudi Arabia is still a primary funder of Bosnian Muslims and the mosque-building (in some areas, one every few kilometers) that makes the country appear to be a real Muslim country (even though it is majority Christian); Iran supplied weapons to Bosnian Muslims during the war; and mujahideen fighters came from the Muslim world to fight Christians in their own back yards.
Not only are Serbs in the RS expected to submit to the Islamists in Sarajevo (see the Bosnian Grand Mufti’s defense of, for instance, Islamic education in public schools1), they also are being asked, in fact, demanded, to give up any thread of independence and, eventually, their Orthodox Christian religion, along with their democratic institutions. (Those who do not understand that “Islamic democracy” is an oxymoron should read Alija Izetbegovic’s 1970 Islamic Declaration and study Sarajevo Chief Imam Nezim Halilovic Muderris’ radical intolerance and calls for institutionalization of Sharia law in Bosnia.2)
The Bosnian Court, for instance, of the “centralized” government has demonstrated its bias and inability to deal with the crimes committed against Serbs. The focus has been on convicting Serbs who, in spite of being dubbed by international media as “aggressors,” were often fighting against foreign Islamic fighters from their own back yards to protect their families and property. Yet, the courts of Bosnia’s central government have sentenced Serbs to 1,118 total years in jail, Croats to 140 years, and Bosnian Muslims to only 42 years in jail in spite of the realities of the civil war and atrocities committed by the foreign mujahidin and Bosnian Muslims.3 On 23 June, the Bosnian “central” government refused to extradite Croat war criminal Branimir Glavas, who was convicted and sentenced last month to 10 years in prison for torturing and killing Serbian civilians during the war. Yet, Serbs are held responsible for finding and depositing at The Hague even the un-convicted as the West repeats ad nauseam the unsubstantiated 40,000-rape hoax. (Even if it were true, the West has a higher per capita incident of rape under peaceful circumstances.)
It is not as though Serbs, who produced Nikola Tesla, Mileva Maric (physicist wife of Albert Einstein who contributed to his famous theories), Mihajlo Pupin (Columbia’s Pupin Hall named after him for his work on x-rays, long-distance telephone service), etc. are too stupid to take lessons from not only the historical but also the recent past. For instance, Serbs know that the IC’s demands for “privatization” mean “rape” of their resources by the IC:
(1.) Examples are replete in Serbia. For instance, in Pancevo, the successful glass factory, electric bulb factory, chemical factory, and beer factory (since 1722) are now closed after being “privatized” and bought.
(2.) Croatia, after seceding with the bank in which all Yugoslavs had deposited, sold cheaply the Adriatic hotels (to which Croatia, historically a small province around Zagreb, did not have claim until all that was changed, first by Hitler when Italy capitulated in 1943 and then by the Croat Tito), mostly to Germans.
(3.) In the RS, many factory workers went to work for years without pay as crooked “directors,” supported by the IC, drove BMWs and as ancient forests were stripped, a la Brazil and then Haiti, and irreplaceable resources transported to Western Europe.
The “Bonn powers,” which allow High Representatives (called “viceroys” in another time) to fire elected officials and make or nullify laws, have been used mostly against Serbs. In spite of its efforts to comply with the Dayton Accords, the 49% of Bosnia included in the Republika Srpska remains the “bastard child” of Dayton, notwithstanding that the only major ethnic violence since the war has been between Bosnian Muslims and Croats who were unhappy in their “shotgun” marriage and that the Bosnian Muslims have been in violation of Dayton since January 1, 1996 when they were supposed to have sent home the foreign Islamic fighters who were imported to fight the Christian Serbs and, sometimes, Croats.4
Serbs stand alone against an IC which (along with the Vatican), during the 1990’s wars, supported Croats, knowing that Croat leader Franjo Tudjman’s goal was to have an “ethnically pure” Catholic Croatia, and Bosnian Muslims, knowing that Alija Izetbegovic had made clear in his 1970 Islamic Declaration that his idea of “democracy” was an “Islamic democracy.” And now, almost 14 years after the end of the war, Serbs are blamed for the lack of progress toward a “modern multi-ethnic” state. Leaving aside the fact that before the orchestrated break-up of Yugoslavia Bosnia was a modern multi-ethnic republic, Bosnia has still not regained the economy, employment, technology, industry, and infrastructure it enjoyed before the war.
The blame can easily be placed on Bosnian Serbs because they have not sufficiently cooperated in their own annihilation to make way for a One Bosnia, a Muslim-controlled Bosnia, in order to move toward “Euro-Atlantic integration,” now framed as (eventual) membership in the EU. Bosnian Serbs are accused of being distrustful of and of misjudging the IC. Yet, any Serb distrust of the IC is rational considering the IC’s involvement in the bombing of Serbs in Bosnia, Croatia (Slavonia and Krajina), Kosovo, and Serbia proper and the IC cheerleaders’ continuing anti-Serb bias. Even those Serbs who sell out to the West are subject to being thrown overboard if they step out of line. But saying that trouble in Bosnia results from “misjudgment of the international community,” as former High Representative Paddy Ashdown claimed last year in his editorial from Sarajevo after the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, is more than simplistic.5 It is wrong.
Bosnian Serbs know very well that the intention of the IC is to “reform” the constitution and discard Dayton to make One Bosnia, and they have witnessed first-hand the unequal treatment under the UN and the EU. To many Serbs, submission to Sarajevo for the dangling carrot of EU membership is not attractive. It is a future without the small protections of “semi-autonomy” in the RS and being once again under the yoke of Muslims and being once again under Germany, which has shown little sympathy for non-Catholic Slavs through the German-dominated EU.6 Already there is concern that the Dayton agreement was simply a way to buy time for Saudi-backed Muslims to continue building mosques and buying property from desperate Serbs to gain control through stealth as the IC slurps up Bosnia’s resources. IC lies might fool the uninformed Western public but not the Bosnian Serbs who have lived through the intervention and years of IC dictatorship. Mr. Inzko should reconsider his approach.
Notes
1 Interview: Bosnia’s Grand Mufti Defends Religious Freedom
2 See, for instance, http://de-construct.net/e-zine/?p=6690
3 The Hague court has been similarly biased against Serbs, meting out 904 years of sentences to Serbs, 171 years to Croats, 39 to Bosnian Muslims, and 19 to Kosovo Albanians. Figures from an interview with Dr. Elena Guskova on RTRS TV in Banja Luka, Republika Srpska.
4 Instead, the “moderate” Bosnian Muslim government gave the foreign mujahidin citizenship and failed to notice connections between those same fighters and major international terror attacks and has since banned Santa Claus. Also see the June 24th New York Times article “Documents Back Saudi Link to Extremists” (and Bosnia)
5 See Paddy Ashdown’s “Europe needs a wake-up call. Bosnia is on the edge again.” The Observer. UK, 27 July 2008.
6 Of the seven High Representatives to date, two were Austrian (Petritsch and Inzko), one German (Schwarz-Schilling), one Spanish (Westendorf), one English (Ashdown), one Swede (Carl Bildt) and one Slovak (Lajcak). Those who are from Catholic-dominated countries are joined by Ashdown, the Catholic Englishman.
