Response to last 3 messages by Paul Phillips (I'm the one who
asked for a copy of the Covert Action article) 8 points, pretty
long:
1) I have no serious disagreement with your analysis of
what are the available options now. Our major disagreement is
probably that I think when Clinton made threats he should have
followed through. Otherwise he should have kept quiet.
2) I stand corrected that in Serbo-Croatian the proper
name of the country may be 'Bosnia i Herzegovina'. In English
it is Bosnia-Herzegovina and also in German which was what it was
called under Hapsburg rule as a part of 'Austria-Hungary', not
'Austria and Hungary'. The real issue here was that you argued
that the 'B and H' name showed that it was not a "real country"
and that its existence and borders were artificial and arbitrary
creations of Tito after World War II. That was clearly not the
case and you have not refuted my point that its official current
borders are exactly those of the Austro-Hungarian province of the
same name (at least in German).
3) You have argued that 60% of the land in Bosnia was Serbian
controlled. The maps I have seen show the proposed peace settlements
leaving the Serbs with more territory than before the war. But then
perhaps this is all due to media bias induced by PR firms and plots
by rogue elements of Western organs in service of US capital. More
seriously, your point about urban populations should be noted. Much
of the "cleansing" has been of small urban areas.
4) You have asserted that the Muslims converted to Islam so they
could be landlords. It is true that the landlord class in Bosnia
was largely Muslim, but that misrepresents the actual dynamics of
their conversion. Most of the Muslims were previously members of a
heretical sect known as the Bogomils, dualists who had been severely
persecuted by their neighbors to each side, the Catholic Croats and
the Orthodox Serbs. When the Ottomans took over, they eagerly converted
and sought protection from their oppressors. All three of these groups
are arguably a single "ethnic" group; they all speak Serbo-Croatian,
although the Croats write it in the Latin alphabet and the Serbs write
it in the Cyrillic alphabet. It is religious and historical political
splits that are the sources of the national identities of these groups.
But that of the Bosnian Muslims has as much foundation as does that of
the Serbs or the Croats.
The statement about landlords and Islam is not correct. In Serbia
the Orthodox Serbs owned their own land in extended family groups
known as "zadruga". Some have seen these as a basis for the tradition
of worker management in Yugoslavia.
5) I agree that an important contributing factor to the collapse
of Yugoslavia was the economic changes in the mid-70's. Certainly this
aggravated the hyperinflation that emerged after Tito's death.
6) However I would still argue that despite economic difficulties,
which in fact were apparently being gotten under control in 1990,
the real impetus to the Slovenian and Croatian secessions was the fear
of Milosevic, a fear based on his imposition of Serb rule on Kosovo,
where the population is 90% ethnically Albanian. Albanian rule
had been in place long prior to the mid-1970's, much to the disgust of
Serb nationalists. Milosevic began playing to this rhetorically in
1987 and carried out his threats in 1989. With control of the Yugoslav
army in his hands, the other republics became justifiably frightened,
as the basis of his power grab in Kosovo, "defense of Serb minority
rights", could be made everywhere else, and certainly in Croatia where
there had been no trouble up to this time since the end of World War II
(there certainly was very bad trouble in the war).
I grant that inside Serbia, Milosevic is not a totalitarian fascist.
But his external policy certainly is. The right-of-him opposition only
got going after he adopted the nationalist line and encouraged such
rhetoric and approaches. As you must know, the Serbian media is full
of utter lies about the rest of the world, speaking of media distortions.
Most outside observers (perhaps manipulated fools again) see Milosevic
as funding the local militias and using his opposition and those groups
as covers for his behavior.
7) With respect to the 40,000 Serbs who fled from Croatia. They
were not "cleansed" but just got up and left because they were afraid of
Croat policy. I grant that they had good reason to be afraid of Croat
policy, but that is a far cry from the methods used by the Serbs in
forcibly killing and expelling entire populations from villages and even
cities, even large ones such as Vukovar. So much for those "urban Muslims
and Croats".
8) Perhaps BiH was (is) not a viable entity. But it did not
secede until after Slovenia and Croatia had. With them out, there was
no effective counterbalance to Serb domination of the remnant of
Yugoslavia. They had reason to be afraid and to want out and voted
so reasonably democratically. You have not responded to the point, that
unlike Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina's first government did EXPLICITLY
guarantee minority rights. They initially tried to be a multi-ethnic
state. But Milosevic and his local henchmen would have none of it.
Here is hoping that things do not get as bad as they seem to be
getting. In yet more sorrow.
Barkley Rosser
James Madison University
