Balkan historian. Assoc. Prof., SSST. One-nation conservative opposed to woke/tankie left and Putinist right. Anti-genocide, anti-fascist, pro-life, pro-statue.
The genocide in Bosnia of 1992-1995 was not just an attempt to destroy the Bosniaks or non-Serbs as a group in Serb-occupied Bosnia, but was intended to destroy Bosnian statehood as an obstacle to Great Serbia. Russia's goal today is similarly to destroy Ukrainian statehood.
I've watched Boris Malagurski's 'Srpska: The Struggle for Freedom'. As genocide-denialist propaganda goes, this is a thin effort: the whole film is narration by a Serbian-Australian TV presenter. Except for Emir Kusturica, no actual Serbs or anyone else were interviewed🧵
@trollishdelver
They're better than the original trilogy. Anakin's turn to the dark side was much more interesting than the black-and-white morality of the original trilogy.
On the anniversary of the Srebrenica genocidal massacre, let's remember:
1) Genocide occurred across Bosnia, not just at Srebrenica;
2) The international community was fully complicit;
3) There's an ongoing genocide by the Chinese regime of the Uighur people, who need solidarity.
The United States condemns the ongoing action by Kosovan authorities to access municipal buildings in the north of Kosovo. Today’s violent measures should be immediately halted.
John Pilger may have begun as a good guy but went down the 'anti-imperialist' rabbit hole and became one of the worst genocide apologists.
I had a personal encounter with him in 2007, when I confronted him over his denial of Milosevic's crimes...
Overjoyed Ukraine is getting so much solidarity. Why didn't Croatia + Bosnia get so much solidarity in 1991-1992 ? 1) anti-Balkan prejudice; 2) misconception of Cro/BiH war as 'ethnic conflict' not aggression; 3) belief that Milosevic+JNA were 'socialist' + fighting 'separatism'.
Douglas Murray wrote back in 2013 that 'London has become a foreign country. In 23 of London's 33 boroughs "white Britons" are now in a minority.'
In other words, he views black Britons as foreign, non-British, purely because of their skin colour.
If it comes down to it, and NATO abandons Kosovo and Serbia attacks it, I have no doubt Kosovo could defend itself as well as Ukraine. We've come a long way since the Kosovars were stateless in 1999. But what a bloody tragedy it would be for Kosovo, Serbia and the whole region.
President Vucic must be left in no doubt that NATO will defend Kosovo, whose borders must be as secure as Bulgaria's or Romania's. Western weakness in the face of aggressive Serbian irredentism resulted in the wars of the 1990s. Let's not make that mistake again.
Good to see Sarajevo's mayor Benjamina Karic celebrating BiH's independence day with other patriots. Incredible that even the tiniest trace of Bosnian patriotism expressed by a Social Democratic mayor = 'Bosniak extremism' in the eyes of some people 🙄
How Bosnians choose to organise their country constitutionally is none of Croatia's damn business. Or should Italy, Slovenia, Hungary + Serbia be consulted on what Croatia's constitutional system should be ? Zagreb's opinion on 'constitutional reform' in BiH should not be asked.
Yesterday Croatian Prime Minister’s Advisor Drobnjak and I agreed that Bosnia (BiH) needs to move forward electoral and constitutional reforms. Also appreciate Croatian leadership on Ukraine support. It was a good call leading into this week’s U.S.-Croatia Strategic Dialogue.
Douglas Murray says London is a 'foreign country' because it has too many non-whites + that the Nazis felt bad about killing Jews. He called for Europe-wide persecution of Muslims. Now he's a cheerleader for the far-right Israeli govt's war of destruction vs the people of Gaza 🤔
The fact that Kosovo's actions in the north of its territory have elicited so many complaints from Western officials is a sign that the policy of
@albinkurti
and his government is correct. Keep going, Mr Kurti; these people don't reward meek behaviour.
Kosovo must never, ever, agree to any 'Association of Serb Municipalities' on its territory. Don't be bullied,
@albinkurti
. Kosovo's resistance to the diktat of pro-apartheid Western leaders is an inspiration to us all.
People tell me that Scotland seceding is like Republika Srpska seceding. I keep forgetting that as recently as the 1990s, the Scots occupied 70% of UK, besieged London for 3.5 years, set up rape camps for English women and carried out a genocidal massacre of 8,000 English people.
This is why, no matter how strongly I oppose Netanyahu's war and support Palestinian statehood, I won't participate in the kind of demonstration that took place in London today. I won't march alongside such people.
🚨Hamas supporter in London says the quiet part out loud
“Hitler knew how to deal with these people"
It always has been pure Jew-hatred under the guise of anti-Zionism.
Watch more from
@ThevoiceAlexa
on the ground at .
Douglas Murray always got a free pass for his vicious far-right bigotry from a certain type of 'liberal' because he was a) hardline anti-Islamist and pro-Israel, b) 'posh' - privately educated, with the appropriate accent and manners, and c) had many friends in high places.
None of the former Soviet or Soviet bloc countries that joined NATO since 1999 has since been invaded by Russia. Russia has only attacked countries that haven't joined NATO. The Ukrainian war was not caused by NATO expansion, but by insufficient NATO expansion.
@KayaJones
I appreciate a public bathroom I can go into with my six-year-old daughter without either of us feeling uncomfortable. So I'm all in favour.
It's good that Bosnians feel solidarity for Palestinians. I hope one day this same energy will be mobilised to oppose the colonial OHR regime at home in BiH.
The Dayton system is a prison in which the international community keeps the Bosnian people, denying them the sovereignty due every free people. Bosnia's predatory neighbours, Croatia and Serbia, are the prison wardens. 'Electoral reform' is an attempt to tighten Bosnia's chains.
What Israel is doing in Gaza is genocide - not a Nazi- or Rwanda-type total genocide, but similar to Milosevic's genocide in Bosnia, aimed at destroying part of the victim group along with its statehood, civilian infrastructure and culture, and expelling the rest of it.
You can oppose Israel's oppression of Palestinians without supporting Hamas's method of 'resistance'. Just as in the 1930s, you could oppose Serbia's oppression of Croatia without supporting the Ustashas.
Brazil's president-elect Lula blames Ukraine for war: 'I sit and watch the President of Ukraine speaking on television, being applauded, getting a standing ovation by all the [European] parliamentarians. This guy is as responsible as Putin for the war.'
Alternative to
#NATO
bombing of Serbia in 1999 was the total expulsion of the c.1.8 million Albanians of
#Kosovo
, many thousands more civilians killed by Milosevic's forces and creation of a Palestinian problem in the heart of Europe. That is what opponents of bombing preferred.
Serbo-Croat rules of democracy:
1) Rule of Serb majority in Serbia is good
2) Rule of Croat majority in Croatia is good
3) Rule of Serb majority in Republika Srpska is good
4) Rule of Bosniak majority in Federation is unacceptable outvoting !
It takes a bizarre cognitive dissonance to be aware of Vukovar, Omarska, the siege of Sarajevo, the Srebrenica genocide, the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Albanians from their homes, the Racak massacre, and *still* to think that the culprit in the
#KosovoWar
was NATO.
Imagine opposing the establishment of a 'Serb Republic of Krajina' on Croatian territory, but supporting the establishment of a 'Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosnia' on BiH territory. Is there a single case of hypocrisy in the whole of human history that's as bad as this one ?
#HDZ
We all know the catastrophe that befell Bosnia when it succumbed to US threats and accepted the ceasefire and Dayton agreement in autumn 1995. Kosovo must not make the same mistake today of giving in to US blackmail.
During the 1990s genocide in BiH, the Western powers were dragged only slowly, kicking and screaming, into military action vs the Serb rebels. Mostly due to media coverage of atrocities prompting Americans to pressurise Clinton to act (Europeans largely didn't care) [thread]
Following the Albanian insurgency in Presevo valley from 1999, Serbia was treated like a real state + allowed to reestablish authority there. Kosovo is not treated like a real state but kept weakened, colonially governed. Hence northern Kosovo is a crisis zone and Presevo is not.
Germany and France became the leaders of Europe because they stopped viewing Belgium, Austria, Poland etc. as territory they wanted to annex, and started genuinely respecting their neighbours' independence. However far it goes, Serbia's irredentism will lead it into a dead end.
People who claim Nazism among the Ukrainians is a serious issue are liars deflecting from their support for Putin's genocidal fascist aggression. Like Milosevic supporters in the 1990s pretending to be worried about Ustashas/Handzar division. You think we were born yesterday ?
'The United States strongly supports the territorial integrity, sovereignty, and multiethnic character of Bosnia and Herzegovina'
No it doesn't. The international community won't defend Bosnia; Bosnians must defend their country themselves if they don't want it dismembered.
The Republika Srpska National Assembly (RNSA) today carried out a reckless attack on the Dayton Peace Agreement and the BiH Constitution it established. No amount of political rhetoric or misinformation can alter the fundamental fact that Article III (3) of the Dayton
Imagine if the West's solution to the Ukraine crisis were to divide Ukraine into two entities, with 49% becoming a 'Russian Republic', and Jews and Roma barred from becoming president...
Ramallah |
Journalist Mohammed Farra in Ramallah received the awful news that his wife and children were all killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younes, South Gaza
Serb nationalists have long indicated that they are awaiting the retreat of Western power so they can overturn the territorial settlement in the Western Balkans. Kosovo, BiH and Montenegro must prepare to defend themselves without reliance on the West.
You would think that after the experience in the Bosnian war of Serb forces kidnapping international peacekeepers and tying them to runways, Western leaders would have learned something, but apparently not.
Dramatic footage from the streets of Zvecan by
@evropaelire
. Kosovo police confirms five people were arrested, while at least 41
@NATO_KFOR
soldiers were injured, most of them Italian and Hungarian troops.
The US gave up on Bosnia in 1995 - if not before - when it saved Republika Srpska from military defeat and imposed a racist, segregationist constitutional order on the country.
No single state should be able to veto the accession of a new member to either NATO or the EU, as this just empowers bullies. Time to change the rules for both organisations, and permit new members to be admitted on the basis of a qualified majority vote.
In Croatia/Serbia, the pro-Croatian/pro-Serbian majority holds absolute power. In BiH, they say the pro-BiH majority comprising at least 55-60% of the population should only hold 1/3 of power while Serb-Croat minority that doesn't identify with BiH should hold 2/3. Fair ?
Croatia's international reputation ruined; liberation from Serbian occupation delayed; EU accession delayed; Croats convicted by ICTY. Now obstruction of NATO enlargement. How much more will Croat nationalists sacrifice to continue Tudjman's discredited anti-Bosnian policy ?
Yugoslav Partisans understood every Yugoslav people must have its own republic if they were to live in peace (their mistake was giving Albanians only an autonomous region). There can be only be peace between Israel and Palestine when both peoples are free, independent and secure.
Diane Abbott teamed up with Radovan Karadzic's advisor Sir Alfred Sherman in the 1990s to found the 'Committee for Peace in the Balkans' to lobby on behalf of the Great Serbian genocide perpetrators. She should have no place in British politics.
If you wait for the reintegration and normalisation of Kosovo and Bosnia to occur according to Western rules ('dialogue' with Vucic, Dodik, Covic etc.), you will literally be waiting forever. Literally. It's not going to happen.
Dodik has effectively ended Dayton. BiH's leaders should feel free to suspend ('provisionally') any and all of Dayton in the interests of defeating his secessionist bid. Expecting Schmidt to deal with Dodik is naive; they are two heads of the same monster.
The 'left-wing' Great Serbian nationalists are outraged because I said that Austro-Hungarian occupation was better for BiH than the Yugoslav kingdom was. Honestly, I didn't even think that was a controversial opinion.
The more concessions Kosovo makes at its own expense to please the US, the more concessions the US will demand to appease Vucic. Before you know it, Kosovo will be turned into a permanently crippled state like Dayton Bosnia.
Normality in the Balkans would mean Kosovo and Bosnia becoming fully sovereign states controlling their entire territory, with no international presence beyond what any EU/NATO member might have. The EU and US now seem to be working to prevent this.
The EU condemns Kosovo’s decision to force access into municipal buildings in the north of Kosovo despite our repeated calls for restraint.
Pristina must de-escalate and not take unilateral, destabilising steps.
🧵1
Picture of myself with my beloved grandmother, Nevenka Magas (1921-2009). She was imprisoned in Fascist Italy due to her wartime resistance activities in occupied Split, survived to raise three children, and taught me Croatian. Taken in her flat in Split, summer 2006.
My book 'Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943' - the prequel to 'The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War' - is now available in Bosnian translation from
@knjiga_dobra
Jessica Stern, citing an article of mine, claims 'Bosnian Partisans were composed of 78 percent Serb, 9 percent Muslim, and 5 percent Croat troops.' Yet I gave those figures for the six Bosnian brigades that participated in the Battle of Sutjeska, not Bosnian Partisans in general
The second edition of my book ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina: Genocide, justice and denial’, published by the Centar za napredne studije, is out ! PDF available here…
For all the talk of '3 constituent nations' in BiH, there are really only two groups: those who identify with BiH and those who don't. Why should the second group, which is in the minority, have 2/3 presidency members, and the first group, which is in the majority, have only 1 ?
The choice over Kosovo in 1999 was between a NATO intervention that killed several hundred civilians or the permanent dispossession of nearly 1.8 million Albanians, thousands of deaths, creation of a Palestinian problem in Europe and victory for Milosevic. Not a difficult choice.
Stuart Seldowitz, genocidal racist and Islamophobe who was arrested after harassing an Arab street vendor and saying 'if we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn't enough', was a senior US official involved in the Dayton Peace Accords, which rewarded genocide vs Muslim Bosniaks.
MAGA extremist Jackson Hinkle, who pretends to be a Palestine supporter, thinks 'Kosovo is Serbia', 'Ukraine is Russia' and 'Taiwan is China'.
Not a good guy.
Solidarity with Melina Borcak. Time to kick Schmidt out of Bosnia. Martin Luther King didn't accept Jim Crow. Nelson Mandela didn't accept apartheid. The people of BiH don't have to accept the Dayton apartheid regime and its unelected colonial governor.
The attacks against me are enormous since I reported on Christian Schmidt, High Rep of "International Community" in Bosnia. Even from members of the German Bundestag. I don't want a new round of attacks, insults+defamation. But what Schmidt pulled off yesterday, I HAVE TO report:
To be fair, Palestinians murdered and oppressed by Assad and other Arab regimes also receive little solidarity. Assad treated Palestinian Yarmouk much as Netanyahu is treating Gaza today, but the world mostly didn't care.
Ukraine is receiving much more international solidarity than Croatia or Bosnia did in 1991-1995 because it is understood as a war of aggression by one state vs another. The 1991-95 wars were widely viewed through Balkanist spectacles as 'ethnic conflict'.
Heartbreaking to see young Palestinians throwing their lives away in a suicidal confrontation with the Israeli army at the Gaza border. A better path to a free Palestine would be to keep the border quiet, build a model administration and show the world your fitness for statehood.
Mehdi Hasan forgets the complete unwillingness of Western leaders to call what was happening in Bosnia in the 1990s genocide; their victim-blaming talk of 'warring sides'; their collusion in the genocide through their arms embargo and partition plans to reward the perpetrators.
When this happened in Sarajevo, the world called this a genocide without hesitation. But in the occupied West Bank and Gaza it’s just normal everyday life, apparently.
Zoran Milanovic's denial of the Srebrenica genocide is further proof that there are no limits to the extent to which 'Herceg-Bosna' Croat nationalists are ready to disgrace Croatia in pursuit of their anti-Bosnian obsession. Time to liberate Croatia from them.
I hope the international community - above all the Western alliance - will belatedly intervene to end Dodik's armed secessionist ambitions. But since it cannot be trusted to do so, Bosnians need to be militarily prepared to respond forcefully to any attempted secession.
International tribunals ruled leaders of Serbia and Croatia engaged in Joint Criminal Enterprises in 1990s due to their anti-Bosnian, anti-Bosniak policies. There are c.7 million Serbs, 4.5 million Croats and 2 million Bosniaks. Imagine thinking Bosniak hegemonism is the problem.
During the war in Bosnia, there were voices complaining we were only showing solidarity to Bosnians because they were white and European. Boutros Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary General and arch-appeaser, dismissed the war in Bosnia as a 'rich man's war' (whatabout Somalia ?!)
Funny how much easier and safer people find it to condemn aggression, genocide and imperialism that happened decades or centuries ago, than that which is happening right now...
In the 1990s, the Bosnian government and army were accused of shelling themselves so they could blame it on the Serbs and provoke Western intervention. Today, the Ukrainians get the same treatment from the next generation of Western genocide-facilitators.
Utterly shameless grifter Jackson Hinkle already blaming Ukraine for “blowing up their own children’s hospital.”
Just the lowest of the low. Seriously, I would personally prefer death to selling out my soul like Jackson Hinkle.
Croatia in the 1990s was prey to two conflicting impulses: to resist Belgrade to establish a genuinely independent state, or to collaborate with it to partition Bosnia, with Croatia becoming Serbia's junior partner - a corrupted residue of Serbian-Croatian partnership in Yug 🧵
The US worked to deliver Srebrenica into the hands of the genocidal killers in 1995, then imposed the Dayton settlement that crippled BiH and legitimised the genocidal entity 'Republika Srpska', then maintained that racist order for 28 years. So this is pure gaslighting.
No country, no group of citizens, outside of the United States, has cared more for, invested more in or done more to support and help the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina, no matter what anybody else says. And that is not going to change.
#USAmbBiH
Re the moral wrongness of occupied people collaborating with the Nazis in WW2, there is a spectrum ranging from participating in atrocities to, e.g., being a cleaner in a barracks. But USSR joining with Hitler to destroy Poland was on a par with what the very worst of them did.
If
#PeterHandke
had been a prominent supporter of the Nazi party, or of the Ku Klux Klan, or of al Qaeda, I doubt he would have received the
#Nobel
prize. He got it because genocidal racism against Balkan peoples is considered more acceptable in the West.
The white far-right and the 'anti-imperialist' left were on the same side over Bosnia and Kosovo, as they are over Syria. That is why people like Rania Khalek feel the need to deny the connection between racism and Islamophobia in the Balkan wars and in the West.
In 1990s, when 1/3 of Croatia was occupied by the Great Serbian aggressor that massacred Croats and shelled Croatian cities, certain Croats viewed this aggressor as an ally and model for the establishment of their own RS-type entity ('HZHB') in BiH. Never forgive these traitors.
The most shocking thing about this case isn't even official Serbia's endorsement of genocide. It's the utter degradation of academic + meritocratic principles; awarding stipends to vulgar trolls. How about giving stipends on the basis of academic merit ?
'I believe Croats should be free to outvote non-Croats in Croatia, where they have the majority, but should be protected from being outvoted by non-Croats in BiH, where they are in the minority. It is a complete coincidence that I hold this view and that I am myself a Croat.' 🙄
The current Israeli regime is similar to the Serbian regime of the 1990s. It has the similar goal of creating a territorially 'Greater' state through massacres and expulsions. So the mutual solidarity is understandable.
Israeli ambassador to
#Serbia
said "crime in
#Srebrenica
was not a genocide."
Back then,
#Israel
supported Bosnian-Serb army, while since last October Serbia has been secretly shipping weapons to Israel.
Arms export is key in Serbia-Israel relationship.
We should return the Parthenon marbles to Greece only on two conditions: 1) it recognises Kosovo's independence; 2) it allows Macedonia to call itself 'Republic of Macedonia' and share the legacy of Alexander the Great and Ancient Macedonia
25 KFOR troops injured by Serbs in Kosovo and Italy's Meloni concludes 'it is essential to avoid further unilateral actions by the Kosovan authorities' 🤡 But this is what happens when you prevent Kosovo's legitimate authorities from establishing order.
During the 1999 NATO action in Kosovo, leading Western academic specialists in the Balkans and others signed an open letter opposing it. It accused the West/NATO of encouraging Bosnia's and Croatia's secession from Yugoslavia, offending Russia and being the 'airforce of the KLA'.
Noam Chomsky spent much of his life claiming genocidal atrocities weren't real or proven. So it's ironic that now people aren't sure if he's dead or not.
Carl Bildt is being slaughtered in the replies to this tweet. Nobody is defending him. Consciousness has risen and nobody any longer buys the propaganda; everyone knows the extent of the UN's complicity in the Bosnian genocide.
Today is the 🇺🇳 day. The indispensable global organization whose rules, efforts and work we are more dependent on than most of us realize. Picture is from 🇺🇳🇸🇪 forces saving lives in 🇧🇦 during the early 1990’s.