Pen-ners, As promised this is my last posting on the situation in Bosnia which, despite my optomistic conclusion yesterday, appears to have deteriorated since then. In any case, I will try to defend the broad contours of my argument without attempting to answer every point that was made by others on the net. First of all, I tried to support my arguments with documented references. None of these, as far as I know, had any vested interest in supported one side or the other in the war. I stand by these references and ask others to check them before attacking my analysis. Second, Neri in particular attacked my "conspiracy theory" of the west attacking Serbia. First, let me say it is not my theory but rather put forward by Sean Gervasi in his _Covert Action_ article "Germany, U.S., and the Yugoslav Crisis". The documentation of the US attempts to destabilize Yugoslavia basedon State Department material and, more specifically, Germany's role in engineering the split is contained there. As I indicated from more anecdotal evidence, Genser was obsessed with the subject. Third, I have never said that Serbs were innocent of atrocities or were not involved in ethnic cleansing. Clearly they have been and probably have been involved in more than their proportionate share. What I was arguing was that the same practices were being engaged in by all sides and that the Serbs were being blamed for atrocities that were, in fact, committed by others against them. Why this deliberate attempt to demonize the Serbs relative to the others? Nora Beloff in an article in the Jewish Chronicle argues that it is due to the effective PR of the US firm Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs which handles the Croatian and Muslim accounts. (December 10, 1993) She was reviewing the french journalist Jacques Merlino's book _Toutes les verites Yougoslaves ne sont pas bonnes a dire_. Her conclusion "Still, in the light of the public-relations revelations in Merlin's book, there is a clear need for all observers of the conflict to seek hard evidence before assuming Serbian blame." One thing that is certain is that Serbs were not the first to practice ethnic cleasing, nor have they necessarily been the worst. The original ethnic cleansing was of course Croatian cleansing of Serbs during the 2nd World War. But even in the present war, it was the Croatians who initiated the process. No less than Simon Wiesenthal has stated that "The first refugees in the Yugoslav conflict w conflict were the 40,000 Serbs who fled Croatia after a constitutional amendment defined them as a minority" (quoted by Reuters). In the Bosnian conflict the first ethnic cleansing occured in the Bosanski Brod area by the Croats against the Serbs.. A _Globe and Mail_ editor reported that there are over a half million Serbian refugees in Serbia, almost 300,000 of them cleansed from Bosnia (_G&M_ Dec. 9, 1993). Fourth, I would take up Barkley's argument that, in effect, Milosevic is the demonic figure behind the whole thing. Some of you may have thought you missed a posting or something when he refers to positions I had taken re Kosovo etc which you had not seen. The answer to that is that they were not posted to the network but were part of comments I had sent Barkely on the chapter on Yugoslavia for his forthcoming book. Without trying to summarize the whole argument contained in the notes (I think there were around 6 or 8 pages), we had a fundamental disagreement about the reasons for the split up of Yugoslavia. Barkley placed prime responsibility on Milosevic and the intervention in Kosovo in 1987 and declared that it was the rise of his nationalist fascism that was responsible. My (and my Slovenian co-author, Bogomil Ferfila) place prime responsibility on the 1974 constitution and 1976 Law on Associated Labour which fragmented the country and destroyed any posibility of the state acting as integrator for the economy -- resulting in a fragmentation of the party and the rise of a party based, non-statal parallel government -- with each republic party being autonomous. In any case, I think it is a dangerous deception to treat Milosevic as a Hitlerite fascist. When I was last in Serbia in 1992 there was relatively free discussion and dissent (most of my friends and colleagues being members of the liberal opposition). The threat to Milosevic came from the right, in particular Voj Sesel's Serbian Radical Party which I think can be labelled Fascist. Sesel has his own militia in Bosnia and is the most strident in his calls for ethnic purity. On the other hand, I spent several days with prominent members of the Beograd Jewish community who had no fear of Milosevic and the Serbs, but could not visit their summer place because it was in Croatia. Further, but without going into it, I don't think the Kosovo situation is quite what it seems. There have certainly been claims at least of ethnic cleansing of Serbs by the Albanian Muslims in the area. When I was there in 1987, there were certainly tensions but at that time little evidence of physical subjection. I have not been back since, however. There were also claims in the newspapers that guns were being run to Albania from Germany through Austria and Slovenia but whether there was any truth in these reports I do not know. In addition to the sources I have quoted in the postings I would add several others which I have utilized: University of Cambridge _Short History of Yugoslavia_ Alija Izetbegovic, _The Islamic Declaration_ Paul Phillips and Bogomil Ferfila, _The Rise and Fall of the Third Way: Yugoslavia 1945-1991_ (available from Society of Socialist Studies, University College, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba. R3T 2M8, at a cost of US$ 12; Cdn$ 16 including postage and handling). ps. would the person who asked for the Covert Action article repost me -- I've lost the request in the shuffle. Paul Phillips
