PART THIRTY SEVEN: SOME DAMNED SILLY THING IN THE BALKANS
PART THIRTY SEVEN: SOME DAMNED SILLY THING IN THE BALKANS
OK, I decided to split up this update into two, and start with this shorter one. Bosnia is going to be a key in coming post and rather than try and rush it I wanted to set it up with a bit more detail. Now in OTL we know that the Serbs and Croats in Bosnia secretly agreed to split up Bosnia in Graz Austria. The question is what impact does the influx of NATO and UIS weapons coupled with the sudden interest from both the UIS and the USA in Russia have on the eventual Serb-Croat tag team on the Bosnians in OTL. Well, the answer is, not much. But as Bosnia explode the rest of the world suddenly realizes that they just got invloved in some damned silly thing in the Balkans...
Some new names and places to focus on for this update...
Fikret Abdic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fikret_Abdić
Bihac during the war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Bihać
Mate Boban
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mate_Boban
Graz Agreement:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graz_agreement
PART THIRTY SEVEN: SOME DAMNED SILLY THING IN THE BALKANS
CNN interview with James Baker, former Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush
July 13, 1997
CNN: You famously called President Kerrey’s response to the UIS invasion of Bosnia in February of 1993 the “biggest disaster of his presidency” and his role in the Croat-Bosnian war in 1993 “a misguided mess.”
Baker: President Kerrey promised the American people, and the world, that he would stop the UIS in Yugoslavia. It really was the center of his campaign. He also authorized over five billion dollars in aid to the Croatians, with the understanding that they would use those funds to help counter the Russian threat in the Krajina. Needless to say, when the Croatians and the Serbs entered into secret negotiations to split up Bosnia between them, it was a tremendous disaster for us. To this day the Muslim world is furious at us over the fact that it was American artillery that destroyed the Mostar Bridge.
CNN: But many democrats countered that the Croats felt abandoned by the United States, and was backed into a corner in February of 1993 when they entered into secret negotiations with the Serbs.
Baker: That’s a bunch of malarkey. There is no excuse for what they did in Herzegovina, just as there is no excuse for what the Serbs did in Krajina. We could have kept them in check, but Walter Mondale simply did not know how to handle Yugoslavia. To him it was entirely black and white. To be honest, President Kerrey should have named Warren Christopher as Secretary of State from day one. Warren Christopher would have kept the Croats from stabbing us in the back and going to bed with the Serbs.
UIS Presidential Candidate Vladimir Putin in an interview with the BBC on August 1, 2011.
Discussing the UIS role in the Bosnia Civil War of 1992-1993.
BBC: You recently indicated that the joint Croat-Serb operation in Bosnia, dubbed Operation Graz after the Graz Agreement, caught the UIS off guard and came as a complete shock to General Lebed and General Yakovlev.
Putin: Yes. In early 1993 the sanctions and general weakened state of the UIS military was making the Krajina a very expensive endeavor. And the fact that now we were tied into a civil war in Romania had many of us in the 16-man Committee for State Security and Defense deeply troubled at how things were spiraling out of control. We were perfectly happy with the status quo in Bosnia, as long as the Serbs controlled northern Bosnia, our troops in the Krajina wouldn’t be cut off from the motherland. But we never expected that the Croats and Serbs would switch gears so quickly and become partners in Bosnia.
BBC: But UIS troops began moving into Bosnia just days after the operation kicked off. Is it your contention that the UIS entered Bosnia, just two months into the presidency of Bob Kerrey, as “peacekeepers” as General Lebed and others have contended?
Putin: Yes, we initially entered as peacekeepers, but things on the ground changed rapidly.
BBC: Many find that contention absurd.
Putin: It may seem that way to some. But we were working hard to lift the sanctions, and when the Tigers overran the Bihac Pocket we realized that Arkan was poised to kill thousands of civilians. If that happened on our watch the world would never lift the sanctions. Ever. So we sent UIS troops into Bihac to try and restore order and keep Arkan from committing a major war crime. We even put a Bosniak as head of the autonomous province of Western Bosnia, a man named Fikret Abdic. But it didn’t matter. By then Bosnia had spiraled out of control, and before all was said and done after the Split Peace Accord, we found ourselves in the middle of an ethnic war we had no business being part of.
BBC: So you are trying to say that UIS had no actual desire to annex the Bosnian Serb Republic into the UIS?! That seems highly suspect.
Putin: No, we didn’t. Even though the Croats and Serbs were all for it, we knew that it made the lifting of sanctions much more difficult. But unfortunately, we were tethered to the Serbs at that point, and anything they did would inherently be blamed on us. Particularly since Zhirinovsky and Yakovlev gave Arkan dictatorial powers in the Krajina. Once we realized that the Split Peace Plan was not being honored by either the Croats or the Serbs, we moved in so that those two nations didn’t drag us into another conflict we could ill afford to be part of.
The destruction of the Mostar Bridge by Croat forces
_______________________________________________________________________________
Croat troops capture Mostar
Excerpts from the book “The Soviets and the Serbs: Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the conquest of Yugoslavia
By Edward Ellis.
Published by Random House © 2004
Bihac, Bosnia I Herzegovina, February 11, 1993:
The joint Croat-Serbian led operation, dubbed Operation Graz, kicked off on the morning of February 9, 1993 and proceeded to surprise leaders in both Moscow and Washington. It also proved confusing to diplomats on both sides of the Iron Curtain, as many were suddenly unsure of who was aligned with who in the former Yugoslavia.
“The Americans feared that the Croats had suddenly switched sides and joined up with the Russians,” former UN observer Phil Maklin recalled, “and the Russians were afraid that the Serbs had made a deal with the Americans over Bosnia and were about to cut ties to the UIS. There was mass confusion at first before it started to become clear that both the Croatians and the Serbs simply didn’t give a damn about what the Americans or the Russians thought. They just wanted to beat up on the Bosnians since they were suddenly seen as weak and ripe for the taking.”
In perhaps one of the great ironies of the emergence of the former Yugoslavia as the a modern frontline of the Cold War, the Croats and Serbs suddenly found themselves awash with weapons as both the Russians and Americans anticipated a proxy war between the two enemies and armed them accordingly. But it was Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban who realized that there was another age old dispute that needed settling, one with the Bosnian Muslim population.
“It really shouldn’t have come as a surprise to anyone who was familiar with Balkan history,” Maklin added, “but the Croats and Serbs weren’t content with arming to the teeth and waiting for the other side to blink. Especially since, thanks to Russian and American military aid, the Bosniaks were now so badly outgunned. So they put aside their differences and secretly agreed to implement the Graz agreement by force.”
Once it became clear what was happening both Moscow and Washington became enraged and tried to move quickly to quell the operation.
“At no time did they discuss this with their American or Russian allies,” Maklin recalled, “They just decided to split up Bosnia amongst themselves, and if it triggered World War III, well, so be it.”
Perhaps most troubling to the Russians and Americans was the brutality of both armies as they stormed through southern and western Bosnia. In Mostar, Croatian troops shelled the world famous bridge that connected the Catholic and Muslim sections of the town before overrunning the Muslim-held enclaves. Almost immediately, the Croats began a campaign of terror that shocked the western world, which had, prior to the operation, seen Croatia as an ally and a victim of Serbian and UIS aggression. The image of frightened women and children being driven from there homes disgusted many western leaders who felt betrayed by the Croats.
“For six months the leaders of the United States, France, Britain, and Germany had been telling their subjects that the Croats were a freedom loving people who wished only to live in peace,” Maklin added, “well, the image of that bridge collapsing shattered that picture.”
For leaders of the UIS, the concern was not over Serbian war crimes committed against civilians but over the fact that those crimes committed would almost certainly be blamed on them. If acts of ethnic cleansing, or even worse, genocide, were to occur, the result would almost certainly be the strengthening of international sanctions.
“The UIS felt that they had created a wedge in the sanctions,” Maklin added, “and they believed, realistically or not, that the sanctions were about to fall apart. But they had one man who suddenly stood in the way of that: Arkan.”
In what some historians called “Zhirinovsky’s Hindenburg moment,” the appointment of Arkan as head of Serbian security forces proved disastrous for the UIS military despite his success at subduing restive elements within Krajina itself. Within months, Arkan emerged as the most powerful man in the region. Unwilling to remain in Krajina, Arkan frequently raided Bosnia and conducted military operations against Bosnian Muslim forces. The raids, however, were often coupled with war crimes and in some instances, executions. And with each report of prisoner executions, the Russians often found themselves blamed for the actions of the Tigers.
“Yakovlev ordered Arkan to stay in Krajina, even threatened him like he did Babic” one Russian officer recounted years later, “but Arkan told him point blank ‘no’. He said he would rather die in Bosnia fighting for his people than to sit in his home in Knin knowing that his country was being raped. He told him if he were not allowed to fight in Bosnia then they would need to find someone else to serve as head of security in the Krajina.”
It was Arkan’s successful operation into the city of Bihac in western Bosnia that terrified Moscow. With over 200,000 civilians living in the pocket, almost all being Bosnian Muslims, the thought of Arkan and his Tigers in control of the Bihac pocket terrified Moscow and caused General Yakovlev to move 10,000 Russian troops into the city of Bihac before Arkan began a campaign of terror that could lead to a triggering of increased sanctions of even UN military action. But, in a move that most historians believed was clearly planned out by the Serbian paramilitary leader, the Russian troops arrival prompted the Serbs to quickly abandon the town. Arkan, seeing the Russians moving into Bihac, moved east and turned his attention toward the eastern portion of the country, and towards the enclave of Srebrenica.
Bosnian Serb forces seize Srebrenica
CNN
February 13, 1993
5:30 PM EDT
(SREBRENICA) A large force of 2,000 Bosnian Serb troops overran the enclave of Srebrenica Friday, despite strong diplomatic pressure from the United Nations to refrain from “entering Srebrenica or the Bosnian-held areas surrounding the city.”
The move into Srebrenica is widely seen by many in the west as a direct result of UIS aid into the breakaway republic of Srpska, and many in the United States have called for renewed sanctions on the UIS.
“Since 1992 over 2000 civilians have been killed in or around Srebrenica,” UN spokesperson Duk-U Yi said in a press conference, “and much of that can be directly traced to UIS military aid to the paramilitary group known as the Tigers. We call on the UIS government to prevent the targeting of innocent civilians, and stress that the UIS will be held responsible for any war crimes committed in Srebrenica by their proxies.”
UIS President Anatoly Lukyanov countered that the US backed Croatian separatists have already “committed war crimes comparable to those committed by the Nazis fifty years ago.”
However, although several members have expressed deep concern over the Croatian response in southern Bosnia, it is in Srebrenica where many observers are fearful that a massacre is poised to occur. Many point to the clear policies of ethnic cleansing committed by the Serbs since the outbreak of the war, as well as the large number of civilian casualties killed in various raids on villages around Srebrenica.
“All eyes are on Srebrenica,” one American diplomat said after the city fell, “If the Russians can’t control the Serbs in Srebrenica then it is going to be the point of no return for many UN members. If we see a massacre like we saw in Baku, then the Russians may be faced with even deeper sanctions and a UN protection force entering Bosnia and directly engaging Russian troops.”
Bosnians recall the “fall of Srebrenica” on fifteen year anniversary of Split Peace Accord
Foreign Affairs (3/14/2002)
by William Hason
(SARAJEVO, BOSNIA)- Senad Mehmedovic cringes as he hears the fireworks explode overhead, despite the fact that his neighbors south of the Miljacka River had been setting them off for much of the day.
“They purposely shoot them over the Miljacka River,” Mehmedovic said with disgust as he looked across the river, “they have to rub our faces in it!”
It is a sentiment that is shared by many Bosnian Muslims who live is the city of North Sarajevo. As Mehmedovic sits at a café in the Baščaršija district of North Sarajevo, music from the celebrations just across the river can be heard, much to the chagrin of Mehmedovic and his fellow patrons.
“Those fools have nothing to celebrate,” Mehmedovic said sarcastically, “they lost their dreams of a country on March 13th! At least we still have our independence! But they can’t admit they were wrong about the Russians. So they make that entire ruckus just to torment us.”
Whether of not the Serbs who live in South Sarajevo, capital of the UIS Republic of Srpska, actually feel any regret over the course of the 1992-1993 conflict is hard to know. Entry into South Sarajevo is difficult for Americans, and even tougher for men like Senad Mehmedovic, who dreams of some day returning to his home in Srebrenica. But from what can be seen in South Sarajevo, the indication is that reunification has a long way to go. The emotions connected to the 1993 Split Peace Treaty, which was signed on March 13, 1993, are as strong with the Serbs as they are with the Bosniaks. Places named after famous Bosniaks in South Sarajevo were renamed March 13th Avenue or March 13th Square. And in the Republic Srpska (or UIS-RS as it is commonly called) March 13th is a national holiday: Victory Day. But in the North the sentiments are much different. Here March 13th and the Split Peace Treaty are often referred to by a much different name: Nakba, or the catastrophe (named after the Palestinian exodus following the end of the 1948 Israeli war for independence).
“It was a catastrophe for the Bosnian people,” Mehmedovic said angrily, “but it was more than that. It was a betrayal by the United Nations and NATO. They betrayed us just like the West betrayed Czechoslovakia in 1938. They let fascist Croatia and fascist Serbia split our country up just like they let Hitler split up Czechoslovakia.”
Widely hailed as a major coup for then US secretary of state Walter Mondale back in 1993, the Split Peace Accord has gone on to become a major thorn in the side for the United States and the West. The unresolved status of the division of Bosnia has caused friction with both the UIS and the Muslim world. But even more troubling is the refusal of both Serbs and Croats to honor the Article 3 provision of the Split Peace Accord: the right of return for refugees.
“As soon as we read the terms of the peace treaty we knew what would happen,” Mehmedovic said sadly, “and we knew what the Russians would do. I had first hand knowledge of how they would treat us. I knew that the last thing they wanted was a return to a multi ethnic Bosnia.”
For Mehmedovic, his first encounters with the Russians came shortly after the fall of the Bihac pocket in February of 1993. Srebrenica had briefly been overrun by Serbian forces the previous year, but under the leadership of a Naser Oric, a 25-year old officer of the Bosnian Territorial Defense (TO), the poorly armed Bosniaks were able to repel the Serbs and retake their city. However, the actions of the Serbs during the brief occupation frightened many Bosnian Muslims and showed them that surrender was not an option.
“They burned homes and raped women,” Mehmedovic recalled, “and they made it abundantly clear that they were going to drive us out of Srebrenica or kill us. It was clear they wanted no Muslims in Srebrenica.”
Armed with little more than hunting rifles and stolen Zastava M-70s, the Bosnians were able to repel the Serbs, but the heavily armed Serb army soon surrounded the city and besieged it. Although the Bosniaks held out, a disturbing trend began to emerge.
“The Serbs were getting stronger,” Mehmedovic said, “and better armed. We were noticing that the Russians were flooding weapons into Bosnia, and into the hands of General Mladic.”
It was at this point that the 16-year old Mehmedovic decided to join his older brother and fight alongside Naser Oric in defense of his city. Although his parents objected, the growing hopelessness and desperation began to take its toll on all of the residents of Srebrenica. After a few days training alongside a handful of other teenagers, Mehmedovic took his father’s hunting rifle and joined his first patrol in February of 1993.
“My parents kept trying to keep me from fighting until I was older,” Mehmedovic recalled, “but after a while the hunger and the constant shelling began to take its toll. We were surrounded on all fronts, and there was no hope of rescue from the west or even from our fellow Bosnians in Sarajevo or Tuzla. We were alone.”
The sudden and unexpected Operation Graz, where Croatian and Serbian forces inside of Bosnia decided to join forces to wipe out the Bosnian army and split the nation between themselves, came as a surprise to much of the world. However, in Srebrenica it shocked nobody.
“Once the Americans started sending military aid to the Croats and the Russians started sending military aid to the Serbs we knew what would happen,” Mehmedovic said, “the Croats and the Serbs are bullies and terrorists. We knew that they wouldn’t pick a fight with each other under those circumstances. Not when we were so badly outgunned.”
Bosnian forces found themselves the unlikely victim of the United Nations provision that was, ironically, designed to protect them. An arms embargo, implemented in 1992, proved disastrous for the Bosniak population as Croatia, the UIS and Serbia all ignored the embargo and sent weapons to their allies inside the country.
“The only people that stupid embargo hurt was us,” Mehmedovic said angrily, “it robbed us of the means to defend ourselves.”
It was on Mehmedovic’s first patrol just outside of the town of Potočari that word of Operation Graz spread. Within days reports began coming in of the fall of Mostar and the fall of Bihac. For Senad Mehmedovic and his brother, Rasim, there was no question that the Serbian forces stationed around the city would soon be on the offensive.
“We knew that the Serbs were desperate to capture Srebrenica and Gorazde,” Mehmedovic said, “we knew that an assault was imminent. Still, we were prepared to fight them off and die to the last man. At least until we discovered that Oric had abandoned us.”
Controversy still remains over the departure of Naser Oric on February 12, 1993. To this day, Oric claims that he was ordered to withdraw from his superiors in Sarajevo, a claim that is denied by many. Regardless of who ordered his retreat, Oric’s withdrawal (by helicopter) just hours before the Serb assault on Srebrenica effectively destroyed the morale of the Potočari TO and destroyed any resistance that the Bosnian army could have mounted. Soldiers suddenly abandoned their post to check on loved ones, many abandoning their weapons in the field.
“Some people in Sarajevo called us cowards,” Mehmedovic spat out, “but we had no weapons and no ammunition. I had eight bullets and a hunting rifle! The only thing we had was each other, and our family! Once we realized that Oric fled, our next concern became our family.”
Senad Mehmedovic and his brother Rasim ran home once they realized that the line had been broken and the Potočari TO was now effectively no more. The two brothers ran 10 kilometers back to their hometown of Srebrenica, only to see a horrible sight when they reached the outskirts of town.
“Serb troops were in the center of the city,” Mehmedovic said, “we saw them rounding up men and women and saw dozens of homes on fire…including ours.”
Rasim argued that they needed to go into town and find their parents and sister, but Senad knew that it would be a suicide mission.
“We were wearing uniforms,” Mehmedovic said sadly, “and we were young men. The Serbs would have shot us dead as soon as we were seen.”
Instead Senad convinced his brother to flee into the woods outside of town and wait for a counter offensive from Bosnian forces.
“Deep down we both knew there would not be a counter attack,” Mehmedovic said, “but hiding in the woods was the only way we would survive.”
However, the plan soon encountered problems. The two brothers found that they were not alone, and that they were also not ignored.
“As soon as we got into the woods we started finding other Bosnian soldiers and civilians from town who fled,” Mehmedovic recalled, “you couldn’t go ten feet into the woods without bumping into a refugee. That first night a dozen of us made a small fire and hoped that the Serbs would not come looking for us. But within an hour we started hearing gunshots in the night…and screams. We then realized that they were hunting us like pigs! I was so frightened, because I knew that sooner or later they would find us, and that if we tried to flee that there was no way we could make it all the way to Sarajevo or Tuzla. I realized that we were all dead.”
Throughout the night Senad and Rasim Mehmedovic hugged each other and softly prayed as the sounds of Serb laughter and gunshots filled the air. Oftentimes Mehmedovic would recognize a voice, a plea from an unseen friend begging for his life, followed by the sound of a single gunshot and then laughter.
“That was the worse night of my life,” Mehmedovic recalled, “we could hear them, just a few feet away. Friends. Comrades. And in every instance they were shot by the Serbs. To them it was just a game.”
The hunt continued until sunrise, when the Serbs elected to return to Srebrenica. The two brothers realized that they had little time before they would be back.
“I wasn’t sure if it was a change of guard or if they were just stopping to eat breakfast,” Mehmedovic said, “but we knew they would be back shortly. And that it would be even easier for them to find us now that the sun was up.”
What Senad and Rasim Mehmedovic saw in the woods shocked and terrified the two brothers.
“One of the men who had been with us in the forest was dead in the woods,” Mehmedovic recalled, “but he wasn’t a soldier. He was a baker. When we saw him he had nothing but a sweater, a warm jacked, and some bread. But as he lay dead we saw that someone had put a rifle in his hand. The Serbs now had so many supplies they could use them to dress up dead Bosnians as soldiers to hide their war crimes!”
Moments later the two brothers came across another dead man, again with a rifle. Overcome with curiosity, Senad decided to see if the weapon was of better quality than they hunting rifle he was holding.
“I stopped and leaned over to look at the rifle,” Mehmedovic said, “it was a Zastava, an M-70. I figured I’d use it instead of the rifle I had. But as soon as I picked it up I realized that it was a piece of junk. The firing pin had been removed and most of the gun looked to be broken. It was clearly inoperable and it had no ammunition. I realized that the Serbs were simply dumping off their old weapons now that the Russians were giving them better ones. It was only a minute at most that I stopped to look at the rifle, but in that minute I allowed myself to be distracted and allowed the Russians to sneak up on us.”
As soon as the two brothers looked up they saw a dozen soldiers had surrounded them and had aimed their weapons on them. Mehmedovic was certain that this was the end; that the Serbs would kill them just as they had killed the others. But as one of the soldiers ordered him to drop his weapon, he quickly realized that they were Russians and not Serbs.
“The accent jumped out at me,” Mehmedovic recalled, “and then I saw the UIS flag on their uniforms. But still, we knew the Russians were in bed with the Serbs. We assumed they would kill us.”
Mehmedovic started to try and plea for his life, saying that he wasn’t a soldier and that he just found the gun in the woods. But he was shouted down by his older brother.
“I have never been as proud of Rasim as I was at that moment,” Mehmedovic recalled, “he just yelled at me to shut up. Then he said that I was just some boy who came out to the woods to watch the battle. But he then added that he was a soldier in the Bosnian army and he was prepared to die for his country right then and there.”
Mehmedovic watched as he brother dropped his rifle and stood firm, expecting the Russians to shoot him on the spot. But what followed stunned him.
“Take off your clothes,” the Russian soldier ordered.
Both brothers looked at each other nervously before looking back at the solider.
“This can be easy or it can be difficult,” the soldier continued, “but you will take off your uniforms.”
“I saw my brother looked confused and frightened,” Mehmedovic said, “we honestly didn’t know if we were about to be raped or if they wanted to steal our uniforms before shooting us. I didn’t even realize that I was complying. It was like I was in a daze. But before I knew it I had taken my jacket off and my pants.”
The two brothers were forced to strip to their underwear and sneakers before being marched through the snow towards a UIS tank. It was there that they were handed civilian clothing and told that they would be returned to Sarajevo.
“I was given a thick jacket and some slacks,” Mehmedovic recalled, “but Rasim was handed a woman’s coat. I cringed as he put it on and was told to sit on the tank as it drove off.”
A chance encounter with the Serbian military commander in Srebrenica moments later gave Mehmedovic something he never expected to feel as a UIS prisoner…hope.
“As we pulled into town, we saw that the Russians had now established themselves in the center of town and were loading men onto a bus,” Mehmedovic said, “the Serb military commander, General Mladic, arrived just as we were being pulled off the tank.”
The visibly angry Mladic demanded to know what the young Russian major was doing, and demanded that the UIS prisoners be turned over to the Serbs.
“He even pointed to my brother and demanded to know why he was riding on the side of a tank,” Mehmedovic recalled, “that’s when the Russian major said that he wasn’t a soldier. That he was caught having sex with another man in the woods. Mladic nearly exploded; screaming that there was no way my brother was not an enemy combatant. The whole time my brother’s face was beat red with anger.”
The UIS major continued to listen to General Mladic rant and rave before saying something that stopped the Serbian military commander in his tracks. Although there has been much controversy over the exact nature of the discussion, Mehmedovic claims that he was present during the exchange.
“He informed General Mladic that the UIS was now taking part in a peace keeping operation,” Mehmedovic said, “and the next time the Bosnian Serbs decided to invade a country without UIS permission, that President Zhirinovsky and General Yakovlev would hold him personally responsible.”
Mehmedovic and his brother were soon loaded onto a bus filled with dozens of other Bosnian men, some Mehmedovic recognized as soldiers and others he knew as civilians. All looked shocked at how the events had unfolded and few spoke until they crossed the cease fire line and ended up in Bosnian controlled Sarajevo several hours later.
“We didn’t know what to expect,” Mehmedovic recalled, “but we didn’t expect to be loaded onto a bus by the Russians and sent off to Sarajevo and just dumped off. And we didn’t expect that to be the last time any of us would see Srebrenica.”
Although Mehmedovic grudgingly acknowledges that the UIS prevented a potential massacre in Srebrenica, he also holds little good will towards the UIS. Although he was soon reunited with his sister and mother, the whereabouts of his father, and nearly 500 other men from Srebrenica, were unknown. He immediately tried to return to Srebrenica to find out what had happened to his father, but was turned back by the same UIS “peacekeepers” that brought him to Sarajevo.
“Look at what they did in Bosnia,” Mehmedovic said, “look at what they did all over the country. They clearly are partners with the Serbs. Even though they prevented a massacre in Srebrenica, they have killed thousands more across Bosnia. Including Rasim.”
When the Bosnian civil war flared back up in 1997, Rasim Mehmedovic quickly reenlisted in the Army of the Bosnian Republic. He was determined to liberate his hometown and to drive the Serbs and Russians out of Sarajevo.
“He begged me not to go with him,” Mehmedovic recalled, “he said that since our father had disappeared and our mother had died that I couldn’t sacrifice myself; that I had to take care of our sister. He made me promise. And to this day, I hate myself for keeping that promise.”
Rasim Mehmedovic was killed when UIS forces overran the Stari Grad district of Sarajevo and executed over 1500 prisoners in what has often been referred to as the “Rape of Sarajevo.”
Excerpts from the book: “Croatia: The Nation That Almost Was”
By Steven Martinovic
Published by University of California Press, © 2009.
Chapter Four: The Battle of Zenica
Once the city of Mostar fell, the Croatians found little resistance as they moved north. Capturing the predominantly Muslim towns of Potoci and Konjic, there soon emerged a strong desire on the part of Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban to not only seize the predominantly Croatian regions in central Bosnia, but to also capture the cities of Visoko and Zenica, much to the chagrin of NATO.
“Zenica had a small Croat population, around 15%,” commented Phil Macklin, “and in Visoko it was even less, around 3%. But the Croats suddenly saw the opportunity to capture more land than they lost the previous year in the conflict with the UIS over Krajina and they were determined to do so.”
The Croatians rapid advance into Bosnia and Herzegovina also worried many NATO observers who feared that the capture of heavily Muslim towns like Visoko would prompt the Serbs to try and duplicate the Croatians success in Gorazde and even Tuzla.
“Prior to Operation Graz there was really was no serious claim made by either the Serbs or the Croats on places like Tuzla,” added Macklin, “in fact, the most common threat was that there would be a Lesotho like republic around Tuzla and Visoko for Bosnians, while the rest of the country would be either Serb or Croat. But Operation Graz showed that the demands were changing. We were now faced with the very real possibility that there would soon no longer be a Bosnian nation.”
Although Croatian troops met little resistance at first, eventually their supply lines were so badly stretched that they were forced to slow down their assault and give the badly demoralized Bosnian army the opportunity to regroup outside of Visoko and Zenica. The Croatian assault on Zenica fared poorly, and the assault on Visoko went even worse. Still, with Croatian troops on the outskirts of both cities, and more importantly with Sarajevo, and much of the Bosnian First Corps now surrounded by Serbian forces (thus rendering the largest military force in Bosnia a non-factor in the Croat advance in central Bosnia) many Bosnian Croats were confident of a total victory.
“The Serbs surrounded Sarajevo, along with nearly the entire First Corps which was within the city,” commented Anton Manolic, an aid to Boban “so the Bosnians would kill themselves trying to break the siege and the Serbs would kill themselves trying to ensure the Bosnians didn’t escape, all the while we had a clear path all the way to Brcko. It was perfect!”
However, as the world watched in horror, eventually the pressure from NATO and Zagreb forced the Croatians to go to the negotiating table in Split, Croatia.
“We had total victory in our hands,” Martinovic would recall years later, “but everyone was so frightened that the Russians and the Americans would start another Korean War in Bosnia that President Tudjman was forced to bring us to Split and discuss a ceasefire.”
