Ocean
The Living Force
The Saker interviews Ljubiša Malenica from Sarajevo
Note by the Saker: a few months ago I was contacted by Ljubiša who let me know that a number of very interesting documents have been made available to the public. They are now all available on the bottom right of the homepage under the heading of “The Truth About The War On The Serbian People” and include links to all the documents we discussed with Ljubiša. Considering the importance of the topic, I asked Ljubiša whether he would agree to reply to a few questions, which he did below. To my great joy, Ljubiša gave very complete and detailed answers to my question, and I want to express my immense gratitude for him taking the time in such details. I would argue that this Q&A it, by itself, a very interesting document of its own right. I would also like to add here that in 2015 we published a (25k words long!) special report entitled “Special Report: The Truth about Srebrenica 20 years later” which I also hope can be useful to the reader. Finally, a note to our many enemies and to the enemies of the Serbian nation: the Saker blog will never “forget” the absolutely disgusting and genocidal war the united West, US+NATO+EU, waged against the Serbian nation, not only because we will never forget, or forgive, the innocent spilled blood, but also because that war against the Serbian nation was the prototype, the grand rehearsal or the model, for all the subsequent imperialistic wars the AngloZionist Empire has waged on many other countries since. I especially hope that with time the Muslim readers of the Saker blog will fully become aware of how they were used by their worst enemy, the AngloZionist, as a cannon-fodder for the Empire and how then the exact same techniques and lies (for example, Gaddafi handing out Viagra to his soldiers to rape Libyan women!) as were used against the Serbs. As somebody who, at the time, had access to classified information, I know that Markale, Racak, Srebrenica and many other atrocities were carefully orchestrated false flag operations. Worse, at the time, everybody with minimal access (say to the EU report about Racak) also knew that these were all lies, but they chose to remain silent. I remember writing to a US American friend the day the US+NATO attacked the Serbs for the first time “don’t you understand that this is a Kristallnacht for international law?!?!?!”. I got no reply. Decades later, we now all can see that I was right.The truth must be told about many recent wars, from Chechina or Iraq, to the war against Syria. But it all began with the Empire’s attack against the Serbian nation, and the full truth will never be restored unless the truth about this first major NATO war is restored and the lies told about the Serbian people debunked and rejected. Only then can at least some measure of justice be restored.
Andrei
The Saker interviews Ljubiša Malenica from Sarajevo | The Vineyard of the Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard
- 1. Please introduce yourself, your background, what you studied and have done in your life so far.
My name is Ljubiša Malenica. I was born in Sarajevo, in 1988. My father was a construction worker while my mother was employed as a cleaning lady in one prewar Sarajevo cinema.
As the situation deteriorated at the start of the nineties, my family, by that point living near Sarajevo urban center, was targeted by Muslim paramilitaries, the fate of many other Serbian families in the city as well. The breaking point, for my mother at least, was a visit from unknown men, clad in military fatigues, one evening, who openly threatened my parents, in front of our apartment. In their words, we were to leave our apartment as soon as possible, or they would return and kill us by slitting our throats, one by one. They promised to kill me first, then my mother, and in the end, my father. At that point, my mother was horrified and insisted we should flee to an area with a Serbian majority which my father, stubborn by nature, refused to do.
After all, they lived together in that apartment for a long time. Being a construction worker, I would be justified in saying he, in a literal sense, gave his contribution to building up Sarajevo as it was just before the war. In retrospect, I would say he believed he was a man living in his honestly gained abode, a man who might have toiled his entire life but who had no reason to be ashamed and who, in the end, still believed he lived in his own city. For him, Sarajevo was the city of his youth and of his life. What was going through his mind regarding death threats remains a mystery, for soon enough my mother, who could not endure the uncertainty and fear took me and fled.
With help from a family member the two of us were able to reach Serbian lines and safety, though once, while fleeing, we were shot at by a sniper who missed and hit a tree under which we were resting. My father was arrested and spent the following year in Viktor Bubanj, a holding camp for Serbian civilian prisoners and POWs. That same building today serves as premises for the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
My childhood during wartime remains a bitter sweet memory for it was not devoid of happiness even though my family fell into poverty, like many others, during the conflict and there were literal days when we had nothing to eat. Few and far in between, they still did happen and general state of wartime made it all the more difficult, especially for my parents I would say, who were far more aware than I of the danger.
I finished elementary and high school in Srpsko Sarajevo, part of old Sarajevo that was under Serbian control during the war and which is known today as East Sarajevo. I would be remiss if I did not mention my elementary teacher who had that role from first to fifth grade, late Vukota Skoko, a man who I remember by his strict but fair style of teaching, truly an old school kind of teacher, demanding discipline and knowledge but never missing an opportunity to impress upon us lessons whose value we came to understand only later on, and to set us, as far as he was capable of, upon a straight and proper path.
Afterwards, I went to Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Sarajevo, where I earned my bachelor’s in Political Sciences and master’s in International Relations. My five years of college went by mostly uneventful. Majority of my professors were professionals who tried to approach the subject of war within the parameters of their own subject and at least tried to offer some objective stance, though there were several members of staff who openly displayed their contempt for Serbs in general and who found in them culprits for every vile occurrence during the conflict.
I had very few personal issues with my colleagues, the majority of whom were Muslim and I would dare say I had a good standing with the majority of my professors, however, there were certain topics pointless to discuss, such as nature of war in Bosnia and main culprits for its start. There was an ever-present understanding these issues were closed as far as faculty and wider society, at least in Muslim Sarajevo, were concerned and conclusions were mirroring those heard many times before, Serbs were at fault for starting the war, Srebrenica was a genocide, Serbia committed aggression and there was no blame, except few petty crimes here and there, to be found with either Muslims or Croats.
As you can see, there was a divide between me and the majority of my colleagues when it came to the most important questions, and though we could openly discuss about many other subjects, positions we held on these few issues were in clear opposition to each other and remained as such. My master thesis dealt with the application of geopolitical principles to the Byzantine Empire, especially the overwhelming importance of Asia Minor for the survival of the Byzantium. After all was said and done I finished my master’s studies as a salutatorian of my generation.
I currently work as a back office manager for an IT project in Sarajevo. For four years I volunteered with Wikimedia Community of Republic Srpska, have published several dozens of articles regarding society and politics for media portals in Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, United States and Russia. Besides these texts, I have published several science fiction short stories. My free time is dedicated to some of my hobbies, usually writing, work in 3D modeling programs or reading.
- 2. Please give a general (even vague) description of what you would call your politics (if any!).
For the sake of clarity, I would say I am a conservative and a nationalist, despite the negative connotations being applied to these terms, especially the last one. I have always understood nationalism as synonymous with patriotism and do not subscribe to the contemporary left definition of nationalism which links it with Nazism as if that relation is somehow natural and implied.
Whatever might have been the rhetoric of the Third Reich, its actions provide clearer insight into its ideology and I would say there is no doubt Nazi Germany was not a nationalist project but an imperial one. Even the name itself reminds us of the previous iterations of the German imperial aspirations, such as Holy Roman Empire or German empire after its reunification by Bismarck. It is also worth noting that the full name of Nazi party was National-Socialist. Interesting how those whose mouths, in our day and age, are full of scorn for Nazism at the same time seem to skip, consciously or otherwise, over the second part of the name.
With all of its flaws, and they do exist, the national state is still the best way to protect both collective and the individual from the predations of imperialist tendencies, present in each and every period of human history. Today it might dress itself in garbs of liberalism, but the underlying tendency, to dictate affairs of the entire world from one center, to demand from entire humanity to think and behave according to one standard, to claim one’s own historical experience, national, cultural and traditional specificity are both vile and primitive, those are all characteristics of imperial worldview, very much alive and well.
Nation, as I see it and believe as it should be seen, is not something you can build. This is why I take issue with Western “nation-building” approach. You cannot construct a nation, the nation has to grow, through ages and within certain historic, cultural and geographical context. If there is some nation-building to be done, it can be done only in circumstances where you have all the necessary preconditions for emergence of a real nation, so outside actors take upon themselves the role of a catalyst, speeding up an already existing but slow process.
Just like the term nationalism itself, the definition of nation has been “updated” to fit more into the contemporary Western intellectual and political thinking, so I would say we have today two different understandings of a nation, a Western one, where nation is defined by the state and where one becomes a member of a nation by acquiring citizenship, and a European one, or to be more precise, Eastern European one where nation is a clearly defined collective of individuals with the same language, tradition, historical references, religion (in most cases) and culture.
There is expectance of general belonging to a certain race and group of people, though to claim all members of a nation are somehow linked by blood is unrealistic and I don’t think this subject should be understood as such but in a sense of a closely knit group of people, where certain genetic and biological bond exists, intertwined with same historical, cultural and language experience. It is a homogeneous collective.
All of these features are, by their very nature, inexorably connected to a specific geographical location, large or small, and through time, these geographical spaces become emotionally charged exactly because members of a nation recognize them as more than just relief features on a map, they gain a reality of their own brought into being by the weight of historical events pressing upon the geographical space. Those who understand this can understand why Serbs insist, seemingly against all reason sometimes, that Kosovo is Serbia.
For nation understood in this manner citizenship is not the way to become a member, gradual assimilation is. Outsiders can become part of such a nation but it would then require, on his or her part, willing acceptance of cultural norms specific for said nation, language acquisition and acceptance of important historical moments as one own. In comparison to citizenship route, this is far more complex and longer process which inevitably ends in assimilation, maybe not of the outsider, but of the offspring certainly. In this manner, stability of the whole was preserved, for the collective, that being nation, did not change in its fundamental characteristic, though new elements were introduced.
It would seem it is possible to preserve stability and homogeneity of nations while at the same time each nation is “trading” its individual members, in limited number, with surrounding nations and even those geographically more distant. However, this system falls apart if arriving foreigners are particularly numerous and/or if there is no incentive for gradual assimilation into the host nation.
From what I have written so far, it is easy to deduce I am adherent to the second definition of the nation and see it as a proper understanding of what nation is, especially in the European context. When regarding Serbian, French, German nation, I do not have the same understanding of them as, for example, British nation, if there is such a thing. However, I do understand the need for a different approach in the United States, and I believe the difference comes from a need for an established political order, a stable state.
While in Europe stable state required homogeneity of population and same cultural, religious and historical traditions, in the New World stable political framework was understood as set of rules which could be accepted by all, no matter their particular differences, and able to persist for an extended time period. In a sense, within the United States, state itself tried and seems to still be trying to build a nation, which would, ironically, be of the same nature as those of Europe, while on the Old Continent, nations were those creative forces which built states as frameworks for their own survival and development.
In my opinion a time dimension is far more present in the nation as I have described it than in nations we could call civic ones, for in a nation based on history and homogeneity there is a clear link between previous generations, the current ones and those yet to be born, which does not have to be the case of countries where belonging to a nation is observed from the point of citizenship. From everything said previously arise my arguments against introduction and advocacy for multiculturalism, which I cannot see but as a political paradox. Furthermore, it is by this point clear, thanks to the example of Western nations, that multiculturalism does not work nor can it work if we presume multicultural society is the one where all cultures, both native and imported are deemed equal and completely compatible.
If we are talking about two cultures from the same geographical area, which has developed in constant communication with each other, that share certain traits and could be understood, in objective terms, as more compatible than conflicting, then there can be a ground for debate about possible “multicultural society”. Even in this case, there are elements within each culture that are specific to one culture and not found in the other one.
To argue three or more cultures, from different parts of the world, can coexist without any issues whatsoever, within same political and legal framework is borderline fantasy and unwelcomed one as experience has shown positive effects of culture importations are, in general, short-termed, trivial and near the surface, so to speak. On the other hand, negative effects of foreign cultures forced into unnatural proximity of each other tend to be longer lasting, politically destabilizing and polarizing.
There is always a possibility of multiculturalism, both the term and its social manifestations, being used to sell an imperial ideology of the lowest common denominator to disparate national groups. Multiculturalism of McDonalds and Coca Cola, if you wish. In this case, there is very little of real cultural value, both in previously individual cultures, which are actively suppressed and watered down, and the “universal culture” which usually claims its origins in multitude of authentic cultures but actually holds nothing of their substance.
My conservative worldview comes to the fore in issues such as abortion, where I am, in American political parlance, prolife, or question of marriage, which I see as strictly a union of a man and a woman. For me, prolife choice seems to be the only choice when we talk about abortion given I see it as nothing less than a death sentence, delivered upon the most vulnerable and most incapable of defending themselves, both in word and deed. For certain situations, such as rape, incest, severe fetal deformation, danger to mother’s life and similar, there is a space to debate about abortion as an option, or possibility of other solutions if they exist, but if we speak about normal pregnancy then abortion should be off the table.
We must remove from our worldview the notion that abortion is some sort of female right, or any sort of right for that matter. The object of abortion is not “a clump of cells”, nor a “parasite”, nor is it “potential human” as some feminists like to phrase it. If we consider this last line of reasoning, then within the womb of a pregnant woman there could potentially be anything else instead of a fetus, given we are dealing with a potential here. In a sense, comically enough, we are talking about something like a Schrodinger’s Pregnancy. Do pregnant women carry human fetuses during pregnancies? Well, we do not know, possibilities are endless and we cannot possibly know until the moment of birth. It’s comical and simultaneously tragic to consider an unborn human being as anything less than human, but that is exactly what has been happening for a long time now. Even in the womb of its mother, a child is not devoid of its basic humanity, it cannot be, for implications of such perspective point to a conclusion that human life can be terminated as soon as it becomes an inconvenience. In essence, human beings become things.
Argument “my body, my choice” is deeply flawed and falsely represented given that fetus, I would argue, is not a part of female body. Yes, unborn child spends nine months within its mother’s womb and is dependent on her for sustenance and protection, however, if we categorize these processes in terms of “services” (sustenance, protection) and “placement” (fetus is found within mother’s womb) then we came to a conclusion you are as much part of your car as unborn child is part of its mother.
The average adult spends far more time in his car than nine months. Car provides certain services for its owner. It transports from point A to point B in shorter time frame than if the individual used his own capabilities, it provides comfort, ability to transport with oneself larger number of other objects, and people, it is resistant, in most cases, to outside weather conditions and in general it eases the life of its owner. In terms of placement and services, and logic of “my body my choice” argument, average adult is more part of his vehicle than fetus is of its mother.
For the sake of this conversation, let’s presume that average human life span is around seventy years. Consider now how arrogant is to presume you have a right to terminate someone’s life just because you are carrying that person for nine months out of those potential seventy years.
Throughout history, in every part of the globe, mothers, in their thousands, abandoned newly born children for one reason or the other, a story, if you wish, as old as time. I am not pointing this out as some cheap attack on motherhood, far from it, but to emphasize a simple point that you cannot separate with something that is presumed to be a part of “your body” in such an easy and straight to the point manner as to leave your newborn in a dark street, steps of a monastery or an orphanage.
Removing one’s limb in case of dire need is arduous, painful and possibly fatal experience, removing one’s internal organs in most cases guarantees certain death, and yet, leaving one’s offspring to indifference of the world brings neither certain death nor the possibility of fatal outcome. There is, for sure, psychological pain and trauma, and it should be noted when I speak about these issues I limit myself to the sphere of biology for that is where shaky foundations of “my body my choice” argument can be found. The issue of abortion should and I believe is only be properly placed once within framework of women’s responsibilities, not rights.
The whole point of the feminist movement is, to paraphrase their own words, providing women with enough individual freedom so they can become equal members of society. However, membership in society is predicated upon acceptance of certain responsibilities, and in the old debate between responsibilities and rights, I tend to prefer primacy of responsibility.
- 3. How did the International Commission on Sarajevo and the International Commission on Srebrenica arise? Who created them and what was the purpose? There have been quite a few books and reports written on this topic, what makes these reports different and unique?
I believe their creation was actually just a matter of time and political will, especially in the light of never-ending propaganda coming from Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and their supporters from the West, regarding events both in Srebrenica and Sarajevo.
For Serbs in the Republic of Srpska it became a necessity to subject events in these places under objective scrutiny of domestic and foreign experts so as to put all speculations to rest and provide firm and grounded, data based, reports on happenings in Srebrenica and Sarajevo for use of domestic and foreign audiences, general and intellectual.
Both commissions were created by the government of the Republic of Srpska for a clear purpose of establishing as close as possible to reality account of events which transpired during civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Furthermore, during preliminary talks, government of Republic Srpska offered all members of the commissions’ contract which clearly stated that it would publish reports of both commissions no matter what final research results were. They were completely independent in their research. In that way, it was ensured that the reports were objective and with scientific and professional integrity. One of the direct outcomes is that the government of Republic Srpska recognizes all crimes committed by Serbs against Muslims and requests the same treatment for Muslims who committed crimes against the Serbian population. The reports are owned by the commissions and not by the government of Republic Srpska. Each final report was prepared by the chairman, in cooperation with other members of the commission and it was signed by all members.
Commission for Srebrenica numbered ten members, two from the United States and one from Germany, Japan, Serbia, Nigeria, Australia, Israel, Austria, and Italy. Individuals in question are prominent experts in their fields and their biographies can be found on the official pages created for purpose of presenting work and conclusions of the commissions, pages which Saker has been kind enough to host on his site, for which I am deeply thankful. Commission for Sarajevo, just like the one for Srebrenica, was assembled from international experts from Russia, Serbia, Italy, France, Israel and the United States.
There are several reasons, from my point of view, why reports on Sarajevo and Srebrenica discussed here stand, in part, on their own from the rest of the material and bibliography on these subjects. Issues of Srebrenica and Sarajevo, as previously mentioned, have been extensively researched and written about, however, a significant part of existing work regarding these issues, possibly major part, is written by those who, for one reason or another, support the existing narrative of so-called genocide in Srebrenica and of Serbian guilt for civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Given the official status of these new reports, in sense of the government of Republic of Srpska involvement in creation of commissions, their work and final form could be understood as official position of Republic of Srpska and its institutions when it comes to events in Sarajevo and Srebrenica. Commissions took upon themselves investigation of everything leading up to the blockade of Sarajevo and crimes committed in Srebrenica, thus dealing not only with outcomes but with causes leading to these events.
In case of Sarajevo, attention of the commission was given to events during war, but also to historical context of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to role Islam and radical Islam played, role of media and restorative social justice with special attention given to subject of, mostly neglected in other sources, suffering of Serbs from Sarajevo and its surroundings with helpful insight into psychological and physical aspects of this suffering.
The work of this commission is pivotal because it also, clearly, indicates Sarajevo became, by the end of the war, a city ethnically cleansed of Serbs. Out of, roughly speaking, 150.000 Serbs who lived and worked in the Bosnian capital before the war, only about 10.000 remained after the conflict concluded. Sarajevo today is a city feverishly trying to remove any signs that Serbs ever lived within it. Footprints of Gavrilo Princip were removed from their location in the city, given how overnight he became a Serbian terrorist and not a member of the organization calling itself Young Bosnia.
Current initiatives focus on the removal of Serbian Orthodox graveyards and the appropriation of private land in possession of Serbs who were driven out or fled, by authorities of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
One should note all of this happened under the gaze of international officials, agencies and cameras of foreign media. Srebrenica, due to its low population numbers and remote position could be considered a rural community and something of a backwater, so lack of knowledge on things happening there could be somewhat understood, but Sarajevo is a completely different story, country’s capital with the largest concentration of foreign agents, aid workers, soldiers, journalists and none of them, supposedly, noticed ethnic cleansing of Serbs.
Commission for Srebrenica worked in a similar fashion, dedicating its effort to quantitative analysis of earlier court decisions and legal findings on Srebrenica, exploring chronology of events and history of Srebrenica region itself while at the same time undertaking a reconstruction of Srebrenica events through the use of criminology research, forensic archeology, anthropology and pathology data. Several chapters in the report on Srebrenica were dedicated to the role media and ICTY played with special emphasis on the issue of ICTY and its supposed function as an instrument of justice. The full chapter was dedicated to false claims of genocide that have been, for three decades now, used to stigmatize the entire Serbian people.
As we can notice, the work of both commissions went beyond particular events and attempted to present a complete picture of historical circumstances preceding and influencing developments in Sarajevo and Srebrenica during the civil war.
All those wishing to dispute final reports of these commissions need to undertake an extensive work of disproving and undermining the entire structure commissions on Sarajevo and Srebrenica built their work on. While reporting on Sarajevo, western media and elites often spoke of Sarajevo as if it was a completely Muslim city, being besieged by these half-savage, evil Serbs who fired indiscriminately at the city to cause terror and kill civilians standing in lines to have their ration of water.
Their entire story was about that “noble” resistance of oppressed minority before the aggression of Serbian thugs who, for all intense and purposes, seem to have spawned in and around Sarajevo as if we are dealing with a video game where the computer generates enemies out of thin air for the sake of advancing the story. Those who are familiar with Sarajevo before the war clearly understand this narrative is nothing but a severe deformation of facts on the ground. If you wish to understand Sarajevo during the war, the best place to start is to accept Sarajevo was a city divided, not a city besieged.
The other characteristic these two commissions have is their genuine international composition, an important obstacle for those who would detract from their work by using the underhanded technic of labeling these commissions as purely “Serbian” affairs and thus automatically making them “guilty” of pro-Serbian bias.
Like I mentioned previously, the majority of experts who took part in the work of the commissions are foreigners from North America, Asia, Africa and Europe. To question reports of these commissions is to question the individual value and professional expertise of people who are not stigmatized by being Serbs.
For example, Raphael Israeli is currently teaching Islamic, Chinese, and Middle Eastern History at Hebrew University. Holds Ph.D. in Chinese and Islamic History from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. Since 1974 Lecturer and then Professor of Islamic and Chinese History at Hebrew University, with sabbatical periods spent at York University in Toronto, the University of Pittsburg’s Semester at Sea program, Harvard University, Boston University, Australian National University in Canberra, Melbourne University, and Naruto University in Japan. Fellow of the Jerusalem Center since the 1970s. Author of over 50 research books and a dozen edited books, and some 100 scholarly articles in the fields of Islamic radicalism, Islamic terrorism, the Modern Middle East, Islam in China and Asia and Europe.
Laurence French, his colleague from the commission holds a Ph.D. in cultural psychology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and an M.A. in school psychology from Western New Mexico University. Pursued postdoctoral studies in “minorities and criminal justice education” at the State University of New York-Albany and completed the post-doctoral prescribing psychology program including the national exam. Served honorably in the U.S. Marine Corps and is a life member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars; the Third Marine Division Association; and Disabled American Veterans (DAV). He is a licensed clinical psychologist (Arizona); a Fulbright Scholar (University of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina – 2009-2010); and was a Visiting Endowed Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. In 2018, he won a Marquis Who’s Who Lifetime Achievement Award. He has over 300 publications including 20 books. His major areas of research interest are international and comparative social, human and criminal justice; Native American and minority issues; police and criminal psychology, neuro-clinical, and forensic psychology.
Gideon Greif specializes in the history of the holocaust Period and World War II, Modern Jewish history, history of the Concentration and Extermination Camps, particularly Auschwitz, Majdanek and Jasenovac. Professor Greif worked as a professor, lecturer, and researcher at universities in Tel Aviv, Vienna, Austin, Miami, and other places. For years he has been the Director of the Germany and Poland Desk within the European Department of the Yad Vashem in Israel, has edited various publications, worked as a historian, pedagogue, lecturer, and senior researcher at this world-renowned institution.
Professor Roger Byard is counted amongst the finest global authorities of forensic medicine. He holds the Chair of Pathology at The University of Adelaide and is a Senior Specialist Forensic Pathologist at Forensic Science SA in Adelaide, Australia. Has a specific interest in forensic pathology research and has published over 1,000 chapters and papers/short communications/letters in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to ten texts. In addition to his basic medical and other post-graduate qualifications, Professor byard is a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), a Doctor of Medicine (MD), and a Doctor of Science (DSc).
Adenrele Shinaba is a high-level official of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Nigeria and holds the rank of general. Through cooperation with the world’s leading security and police agencies, especially training in the field of counter-terrorism, he has become one of the key people in the fight against the largest terrorist organization in Africa, Boko Haram. Throughout his career, among other duties, he performed those of a DPO at the Divisional Police headquarters, Ogbomosho, in 1995, Commissioner of the Police Counter Terrorism Unit at the force headquarters, Abuja, in 2008, Commissioner of Police at the Federal Capital Territory Police Command. In 2012 he finished his extremely rich and honorable career as the Commandant at the central federal Police Academy at Wudil, Kano. He is an expert on security, crime investigation, counter-terrorism, and the Boko Haram terrorist organization.
Giuseppe Zaccaria was a professional journalist from 1975. He worked for Il giornale, Il Messaggero and La Stampa. For more than twenty years, he covered the main events in Europe and the Middle East as a foreign correspondent for La Stampa. As a war correspondent, he covered the first and the second Gulf War, the Afghanistan crisis, as well as the war between Israel and Lebanon in 2006, and all conflicts in the Balkans (former Yugoslavia). He interviewed many presidents and leaders, such as Muammar Gaddafi, Mandela, and all the main politicians in the Balkans, including Slobodan Milošević – managing to get the only interview given to a foreign journalist in over a decade – in 2000. Author of a number of books such as Noi, Criminali di guerra (We, the War Criminals), a book about war crimes in Bosnia, for which he was awarded the Hemingway Prize.
Patrick Barriot, member of the Sarajevo commission, coming from France, is a specialist in anesthesiology, intensive care, and disaster medicine. He has participated in and completed the international training course of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) Team. He had a career in the French army where he was successively assigned to the emergency medical service of the Paris Fire Brigade, to the 11th Paratrooper Division, to the Civil Security Intervention Unit N°1, to the Forward Surgical Unit N°7 (war in former Yugoslavia). Afterward he became a chief medical officer of Civil Security Intervention Units and medical advisor to the prefect in charge of Civil Security.
These are shortened biographies for just some of the individuals who participated in the work of the commissions, and whatever we might think of them, one way or the other, there is no doubt collective amount of experience and knowledge these commissions gathered for the sake of research is impressive and far from easily dismissed.
Now we come to the crux of the matter. Commission for Sarajevo established that nearly three thousand Serbs have been killed in Sarajevo during the war. For the sake of comparison, the initial number of dead in Srebrenica case, per claims of Muslim leadership, was between two and a half thousand and three thousand, as well. Furthermore, Sarajevo commission report clearly indicates the Bosnian capital is an ethnically cleansed city. Parts with Muslim majority were cleansed during the war, as early as 1992 and 1993, while the rest was indirectly cleansed when the international community, that is the western powers, arbitrarily gave all parts of Sarajevo controlled by Serbs over to the newly established Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Muslim-Croat entity.
This is something often overlooked with all the distraction provided by Srebrenica, but today, though Serbs still work there, there is just about, to the best of my knowledge, around ten to fifteen thousand Serbs permanently living in Sarajevo with a strong tendency to relocate into the East Sarajevo, the Serbian part. To put things into context, the city of Sarajevo today has around 250.000 citizens while Sarajevo canton, the city of Sarajevo and its outlying settlements, has a population of nearly half a million, at least according to census from 2013. In comparison to the prewar situation, where Serbs made around 30% of the Sarajevo population, today there are barely 2.5% of them.
On the other hand, when discussing Srebrenica, the most important achievement of the commission are scientifically and professionally established facts about the suffering of all victims from both warring sides. Criminal-forensic reconstruction of key events provided facts about the ethnic cleansing of Serbs during 92-93 and the massacre of 1500-3000 captured Muslim soldiers, who were subsequently shot, the vast majority of them, while a smaller group of several hundred was exchanged. Furthermore, the commission concluded this crime does not correspond to the UN definition of genocide thus providing confirmation that there was no such thing as genocide in Srebrenica. Crimes occurred, no one ever disputed that, not from Serbian side or otherwise, but genocide did not.
Valentin Inzko, former High representative to Bosnia and Herzegovina, more akin to a colonial governor, just before he left his position this year, amended the Criminal law on state level by prohibiting denial of the so-called genocide, which can be taken as either an attempt to further destabilize the situation in the already shaky country or as an indicator that works of both commissions, especially that for Srebrenica, struck a chord. Consider what is said, a foreign representative, not a citizen and definitely not someone who was elected by people in Bosnia, unilaterally makes a decision and has the power to push that decision without regard for the Parliament of an internationally recognized state, without any sort of discussion or debate. This act alone is against everything a democratic constitution should uphold, not to mention all those ad nauseam lauded international documents of basic human rights and freedoms. It would be only normal that a random individual, presented with this situation, came to a conclusion that Bosnia and Herzegovina is nothing more but a colonial fief, for it cannot at the same time be sovereign and independent and yet receive its laws from a single foreign bureaucrat. The illusion of one and reality of the other can coexist, but both as reality cannot.
No matter what laws foreign third rate diplomats might impose, in the supposedly sovereign and independent country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the fact remains there was no genocide in Srebrenica, nor was there any sort of Serbian aggression, but brutal civil war, in significant part stoked by outside influences.
- 4. Can you explain to use where (downtown, suburbs, hills, etc.) the Bosnian Serbs lived and where the Bosnian Muslims lived and why is that important in both the case of Sarajevo and Srebrenica.
Let me start with Sarajevo, for I am familiar with that city in more detail. After all, it was my birthplace. In terms of population distribution, the urban part of Sarajevo and its rural surroundings had significant communities of Serbs, Croats and Muslims.
Unlike the Ottoman period, when there was a somewhat more clear separation, Muslim population being urban while Serbs predominantly rural, before the war, like I already mentioned, there was a significant number of Serbs living in the urban part of Sarajevo. It was they who played a critical role in developing Sarajevo from an Ottoman town into a recognizable European city of the nineteenth century. This is important to those who are interested in wartime events surrounding Sarajevo to understand from the very beginning Serbs were never some sort of invaders or outsiders to Sarajevo, but were in fact its autochthonic inhabitants.
One should take into consideration that one of the first eparchies of the Serbian Orthodox church, after it received its autocephaly from Constantinople in 1219, was formed on territory which would roughly correspond to contemporary eastern Bosnia. If there were no Serbian nor Orthodox people there, what would be basis for creation of such church administrative unit? Rastko Nemanjić, who would later become known as Saint Sava, one of key figures in Serbian history, was supposed to receive, being a prince of the Serbian royal line, region of Zachlumia which encompassed southern parts of both modern Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.
Furthermore, one of the oldest religious structures in Bosnia and Herzegovina is the Old Orthodox church in Sarajevo, built on the foundations of a previous Christian temple, dating from the fourth century AD.
I mention all of this to simply point out Serbs have lived on territory of what is today Bosnia and Herzegovina before it became known as such. They did not appear out of nowhere nor did they commit any sort of aggression, as current narrative would like us to believe. For all intense and purposes, given the fact that oldest records regarding Serbs in these lands stretch back to seventh and eighth century AD, they are autochthonic people of both Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Once Serbs are understood in their rightful place, as inhabitants of Bosnia and Herzegovina for more than a millennia and as citizens of Sarajevo since its inception, there can be no argument about aggression nor can there be a claim Sarajevo was a city under siege, at least not in the way it is portrayed by Muslim and western media.
It is far more correct to observe Sarajevo, during the civil war, as a city divided between people that, just years before were its citizens. Breakneck demagoguery through which Serbs somehow became the bad guys in the story of Sarajevo and came to be observed outside the context of the city’s history is nothing else but a fabrication with very few connections to real history and events.
Once this becomes understood, it is clear that Serbian political and military authorities had no other choice but to blockade Muslim parts of Sarajevo. To do otherwise would be to invite a strategic disaster. It was clear, by propaganda of the time, that Muslims considered themselves the only “true” inheritors of entire Bosnia and Herzegovina. Actions of their forces on the ground, especially in the Muslim majority municipalities of Sarajevo indicated clear intent and willingness to enact ethnic cleansing where possible so as to change population distribution in accordance with this vision of Muslim Bosnia. This is a good moment to remind our readers of extensive links between Alija Izetbegovic and his political party with the Muslim Brotherhood, deemed a terrorist[1] organization by Christian and Islamic countries alike. Influences of the Brotherhood can be noticed in the Islamic Declaration,[2] work by Izetbegovic which serves as useful insight into his vision for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In considerations of events in Bosnia this connection should not be overlooked and is rather important when it comes to understanding the nature of war and its participants.
To ignore all these indicators would be to leave Serb population both in Sarajevo and around it to the mercy of enemy forces and their foreign volunteers. There was simply no other option but to blockade Sarajevo and keep hold of Serb majority parts of it.
However, when we talk about Srebrenica, Muslims were in a majority according to the census from 1991. Rough ratio was 2:1 in favor of Muslims. Unlike Sarajevo, Muslim population made up the majority within the urban core of Srebrenica, with the roughly the same population ratio of 2:1, though overall number of people living in this urbanized part of the municipality was relatively low, numbering around 5.500 in total.
From this we can conclude the majority of Serbs lived in villages in the countryside. Unlike Sarajevo, where foreign journalists and governmental representatives who supported Izetbegovic could not feign ignorance of Muslim troops, Srebrenica was proclaimed a demilitarized zone and that narrative survives to this day, despite the unquestionable fact the town served as operational HQ for the Muslim 28th division under command of Naser Oric.
The enclave was, just like parts of Sarajevo, quickly cleansed of Serbs and was for the majority of war used by Muslim forces within as a staging ground for attacks against Serbian civilian targets and military supply and communications lines.
There is no need here to write about alleged genocide, I have already written an earlier text on that subject and many people here and otherwise have written far more extensively and went into more detail than me regarding this subject. It is enough to point out that until 1995 Srebrenica enclave was firmly in control of Muslim forces, unlike Sarajevo, and Serbian forces limited themselves to defensive actions. Muslim forces in Srebrenica continuously attacked and provoked, all the while being provided safe haven of the “demilitarized” zone and protection of Dutch peacekeepers.
There are several conclusions to be taken from information provided above, both in cases of Sarajevo and Srebrenica.
First, Serbs are autochthonic to both regions and their respective urban cores. Whatever one thinks of the Muslim population, whether considering them indigenous population or Islamized Serbs, the fact of Serbian population presence in both central and eastern Bosnia is not something of modern origin but has historical continuation from before Bosnia and Herzegovina even got its name.
Second, given the overwhelming evidence for the continued existence of Serbs in Bosnia, the nature of war within Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be classified as aggression but rather civil war, for it was not a small minority of Serbs who refused to recognize the authority of Sarajevo but the majority of them. The overwhelming majority of the Serbian people identified the remains of Yugoslavia as their country and aspired to unify with it. Given it was not possible to preserve Yugoslavia from separatist actions, they then acted to create a political entity of their own given that historical experiences proved Serbs suffered greatly in times when they had no state of their own. In the end, if Croats and Muslims could secede from Yugoslavia then Serbs could secede from Bosnia as well. To talk about aggression one has to work with terms such as state and state borders. There was no such thing as a Bosnian state at the start of the civil war simply because a rough third of the population in Bosnia, Serbs that is, did not recognize developing changes as legitimate nor inclusive of their interests. It should also be noted that fighting between Muslims and Croats started not long after the initial clashes, with Croatian leadership looking to secede as well in order to join Croatia.
In certain situations there can be talk about treasonous behavior if a small number of individuals act against the state, but once we are dealing with hundreds of thousands of people who reject state organization, that is something different, and if we add to that a complex population composition of Bosnia and Herzegovina itself and understand an entire nation refused to give state authorities legitimacy, things delve ever further from the simple narrative of “Serbs who betrayed Bosnia”. It should be understood that acts of Croats and Muslims in the prewar Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina directly impacted constitutivity of the Serbian people, attempting to reduce Serbs to a status of observers while their fate was decided by the other two communities. To remain politically relevant in their own country Serbian people had to organize creation of their own political and territorial unit. Take note that the first Muslim military formation, organized by the SDA party, was already established in the summer of 1990, near town of Foča.
For the purpose of presenting a hollow picture of multicultural Sarajevo, and thus Bosnia and Herzegovina, Muslim leadership adopted several known Serbs from the capital within its ranks, such as Jovan Divjak and Mirko Pejanovic, but these were token Serbs and their very prominence, such as it was, actually indicated lack of any sort of multiculturalism within the Muslim political and intellectual elite who claim, to this day, Bosnia, and Sarajevo especially, are representative of a multicultural state.
Third, events in Sarajevo and Srebrenica only mirrored happenings all over Bosnia and Herzegovina with the implication that seeds of civil war which erupted at the start of the nineties were planted much earlier and that outside factor, though very active, was not the only catalyst for the events which transpired. Seeds I mention can be understood as “unsettled” scores from the Second World War and its ugly repercussions on the local population.
Given the format of our interview, I will not go deeper into it, there are far better sources than I on this issue, but the region of Srebrenica, so well-known today, was a site of gruesome crimes during the reign of the Independent State of Croatia, crimes against Serbian population committed by Croats and their Muslim allies. Sarajevo itself was a transit point for trains carrying Serbian prisoners to their grisly fate in Jasenovac.
For the sake of “brotherhood and unity” (bratstvo i jedinstvo) of the previous, socialist Yugoslavia, a lot of things were “swept under the rug” and the simple fact is Serbs were, undoubtedly, a nation which suffered the most in this period, despite the claims of Tito’s regime.
However, official policies usually run near the surface while collective memory runs deep. Atrocities of the WW2 were not forgotten, transmitted in both written, rather controlled, and oral fashion, which was at liberty to clearly state both victims and culprits. Since that period Bosnia and Herzegovina has been more and more transformed into an artificial state with diverging communities. Given opportunity each of these communities, except Muslims, would rather choose to separate than to further integrate into a more centralized country.
Continued at :-
The Saker interviews Ljubiša Malenica from Sarajevo | The Vineyard of the Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard
THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WAR ON THE SERBIAN PEOPLE
Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Suffering of Serbs in Sarajevo Between 1991 to 1995
The Commission created an extensive archive of records, official documents, and materials used as supporting evidence and sources about the suffering of the Serbs from Sarajevo.
www.incomfis-sarajevo.org
Map of the suffering of Sarajevo Serbs
Preliminary map of locations of camps, confinment places, prisons and detentions centers for Serbs in Sarajevo.
www.incomfis-sarajevo.org
Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Suffering of All People in the Srebrenica region Between 1992 to 1995
The Commission was guided by the premise of the necessity of scientific and professional research of all important issues and phenomena in our civilization, even the painful and controversial ones, and the awareness that scientifically documented facts are the best remedy against manipulation...
incomfis-srebrenica.org
Conclusions - INDEPENDENT INTERNATIONAL COMMISSION OF INQUIRY ON SUFFERINGS OF ALL PEOPLE IN THE SREBRENICA REGION BETWEEN 1992 AND 1995
The Report was prepared by the Chairman together with other members of the Commission, after it was inspected, revised as necessary, approved, and signed by all members of the Commission.
incomfis-srebrenica.org
Srebrenica mapping
Preliminary mapping of the facts stated in the Report. Certain facts from the Report may be subsequently mapped.
incomfis-srebrenica.org