Okay, I know things have gone to hell in a handbasket there since the war, so I'm not terribly surprised to find the Muslims weren't angels. But then there's this:Pursuant to Izetbegovic’s end game, writes Michigan-based Balkans writer and historian Carl Savich, “the Bosnian Muslim faction engaged in propaganda, staged massacres, killed Bosnian Muslim civilians to garner sympathy [e.g. the Markale Marketplace bombings in 1994 and 95, and firing mortars from hospitals to elicit return attacks] and used civilian hostages or shields to further its propaganda of victimization.”
The widely cited 2002 official Dutch report on Srebrenica seems to confirm the use of such tactics. As BBC.com reported that year, the Dutch Government “pins part of the blame on the Bosnian Muslims themselves, saying the Bosnian army had provoked attacks.”
Srebrenica Muslims “ravaged and ransacked neighbouring ethnic Serb villages,” continues Kliphuis, “killing and maiming the residents, who were often too old to offer any resistance….The Serb villages were then set on fire.” After his role in killing up to 2,000 Serbs, Oric himself fled Srebrenica just before it was stormed by the Bosnian Serb army.
Eastern European and Balkan affairs writer Neil Clark summed up the trial in a UK Guardian article of Feb. 2004 (the month the prosecution wrapped up its two-year case): “Not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove Milosevic’s personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground, the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into question.”What the....? Hello? Weren't Serb atrocities the whole point of the war? Is this doubt the product of an incompetent prosecution or.... We took sides in a nasty civil war because... I think I need some time to process this.
(via Malkin)
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