Srebrenica Genocide

Pretty heavy stuff to be happening in Europe's backyard during the 90s. After reading around it, the following questions arise in my mind:

# Why the hell didn't the UN protect their self-designated "safe haven" from those bastards?
# How the hell can people be driven to perpetrate such evil, especially towards people who were their fellow countrymen a little less than a decade earlier?

:-?

 

*cough*fanatics*cough*

Saw the article in the Toronto Sun and thought....sucks to be the Dutch guys in that situation......that way I read it they were orderd to stay out of it or something

speaking of the Sun, one of Canada's soldier made the front page today.....by getting shot. (wounded soldier was the cover page....)

 

I dont think you can convince people to stop hating each other.

 

..children have to be taught that bigotry and intolerance are evil and wrong , i belive that most members here were raised this way ,i know i was ...that the holocaust was the greatest crime of the century and to never use the N word ...i taught my own kids that prejudice is wrong and hateful . unfortunatly much of the world does not ascribe to these lofty ideals and in the balkans especially there is much bad blood and very real grievance which was contained by titos iron will ..if you think the 90s were brutal , check out the horrors of the ww2 years , where the serbs surely bore the brunt of a massive ethnic cleansing , supported by the nazis and gleefully carried out by their croat and muslim neighbors ...ww2 in the balkans makes the invasion of russia and ukraine seem almost tame by comparisin

 

Basicly IMHO the entire war was last cry of WW2.
Let's start at the beggining shall we. One has to remember that Croat Serbs were shit scared after ex Tito general Tudjman took the power. Suddenly their old enemies reapeared and streets were named after few very unsavory characters of NDH state ( Nezavisna Država Hrvatska= Independant state of Croatia = very brutal and genocidal nazi collaborating regime = Ustaše). Also the rethoric changed and Sebs goverment officials were beeing quietly removed from their posts. JNA ( Jugoslavenska narodna Armija= Jugoslay Ppl. Army) did try to hold things together at the time and by my opinin they were sincerly trying.

My roomate at the collidge was serving army in Knin (conscript officer candidate = Bileća reserve officers school + practice command-Ssinisa will know what i'm talking around here). Commanding officer of of Knin army corpus was gen Ratko Mladić (yes the same one). After shit started and Serbs in Knin demanded arms ( arms for reserve units was stored in the barracks) a serb officer ordered to kick them out ( and ordered if they try again to shoot). After thet incident entire barracks ( there were more than one in Knin) had one after another "smotru" ( entire garrison of the barracks is gathered on the field in formation) and gen Mladič threthened them that he will personnaly shoot those who remove star ( simbol of federal YU army) and relace it with something else ( double headed white eagle=Serbs, Chessboard shield=Croats...). That was 1990. Nex year breakup started.
Higher echallones of JNA were predominantly Serb and all were scared of 1941 repeating. Example JNA chief of staff gen. Ađić; (eng. pron. Adjich) was 13 when his entire family was sloughtered (literaly) by Ustashas and he was not the only one with such memories.
After rael breakup started everyone jumped on his side (not all mind you) and nationalism erupted even more violently. A note on nationalities involved. Basic detrminantion of nationality is ussualy the language and race but what if all is the same? Language of Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims is basicly identical ( minor defferences), they are all Slavs, all that remained for diffrentiate "us" from "them" was the religion ( Serbs=orthodox christians, Croats= catholic christians, Bosnian muslims = muslims). War in the beggining had little to do with religion as such and was the only determening factor in national differences.

After the start of war in Croatia and eventual lul in the fighting there (Slovenia got off lightly as it did not have significant ethnical minorities) it was BiH ( Bosna i Hercegovina) turn. Everone knew that if war starts it will be bloody. After the first succesfull Serb attacks war went into ww1 mode (shelling, trench fighting and snipers). Srebrenica, Žepa (Zhepa) and Goražde (Gorazhde) were Bosnian muslim enklaves behind Serb lines. Their existance and protection was guarantied by UN. Muslims had to store their weapons in UN guarded warehouses. Serbs did try to clean them out before and were stopped by famous stand by french gen. Morrillion ( he pesonaly flew into enclave and stated that Serbs will not attack in his presence-he was right). French were replaced by Duch troops and their new commanders ( Morrillion was pansioned off and given Legion d' honour) did not have the same guts as Morrillion. Basicly Duch were understrenght, underequipped and did not have clear orders to defend the enclaves.
Would it made a difference if the took stand. Probably it would as Serbs would not like to pick the fight with UN (especcialy not the French contingent which was comprised mostly by their marines and Legion and they had "experiance" with). Same as in Srebrenica happened in Žepa (ussualy forgotten).

 

its been said that even hardened ss veterans from the eastern front were caused to vomit when they witnessed their partner ustasi units in their dealings with the many thousands of ordinary serbs who fell into their hands ..serbs and bosnians also had their share of attrocitys that are really quite beyond the scope of imagination for most westerners , strangly enough from what ive read only the slovinians seem to come off as relatively civillized ..is this correct, tiso ? and if so ,why ?

 

I will agree with TISO about whole Yugoslav wars.It was planned for some time, Serbian army finded several underground bunkers full of weapon,ammo,food ,and rest of suplys for the army more then 20 years old. Not so known thing in Srebrenica is that in that region died more then 1500 serbian soldiers and civilians, coz troops of Naser Oric raided from Srebrenice souranded Serbian vilages. Culmination was in Vilage "Kravica" When Oric troops attacked on Xmass and killed 60 Serbs in that vilage.Most of civilians (but not all unfortunatly) manage to eascape trought deep snow when hand full soldiers stayed to delay muslims from reaching them,and moust of them died. After that Serbs commited full scale attack on Srebrenica. Suprise,in Srebrenica was no muslim soldiers! So who shooted and raided Serbian vilages? Aftermath is shamest part in Serbian history from day of exsistance,killing the 5000 Muslim prisoners. Ratko Mladic is charger for war crimes,and still in escaping. But who is charged for Serbian killing in same region?

I still dont get,what maked ex friends in bloodthirst animals. And im Sry for that war,really sry. It shoud not heapen , only thing i can think is that was fabricated by Some high polititians from some reason.

 

I belive it is a combination of various factors.
Pack instinct - poeple like animals do behave differently in closed groups. Especcialy if it is us against them situations packs are way more vicious. All know it is wrong but no one will go against the group.

unnanimity- uniform does offer a certain level of anonimity. Poeple tend to consider a soldier as part of larger machine and not like individuum.

Brutality of war- war does tend to mess poeple up.

 

Is a lot known about the canadians in the former yugoslavia ? Especially with the Medak pocket ?

 

UN forces did not done much fighting in Ex YU battlefield,but Medak pocket is one battle where they did. On my personal opinion they shoud do it alot more,some lifes would have been saved...

 

leave countries to there own destruction?

 

Unless I've misread it, to me what sinissa's post is saying is that he thought the UN should have done more fighting and been less passive in the former Yugoslavia and that they may have saved lives by taking a more active role. I don't see that as leaving countries to their own destruction.

 

Yes Simon that is my humble opinion.UN forces was more passive then active in conflict ,i dont say they shoud fight all the time,but if some side break agreement they shoud interfeer to prevent spiling more blood.

 

it seems to me that unless you actually fire at the blue hats themselves ,you can pretty much do whatever you want to any ethnic enemies within the so called sphere of operations of un troops ..un troops in somalia ,in rawanda and in the former yugoslavia were plainly "paper tigers" toothless and ineffectual ...even when cun commaders tried to act to prevent the slaughter of innocents they were often prevented from acting by orders from above ...

 

A joke.

Slobodan Milosevic, Franjo Tudjman and Alija Izerbegovic fall from plane. Who will hit the groung first?






























































Not matther as long they hit the ground :lol:

 

That was my question in general, wasn't responding to Sinissia.

 

the un is expensive , corrupt ,inept ,moribund and pretty much useless ....

 

One of my buddies told me that the UN dosent work because the USA isnt more dedicated to it

 

sure , thats prolly it...more dedication by the usa would fix everything...

 

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majorwoody The UN is not useless ,
it's not an action center
it was designed as a discussion center , a job it does admirably well
the premises on which the U.N. is founded is the sanctity of national borders
the interdict on a country government throwing bombs on an other and to talk a lot about problems ,
the big boys opinions are given due weight , little countries can make a lot of noise , sometime in a crisis an agreement of everybody happen quickly ,
usually it doesn't ,
it's like a market place , a convention center of international politics where one can buy or sell its ideas and positions and make deals

It is not a sovereign or legal governing body and should never be one

.