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Excellent diary, UpstateNY.

Like I said before, I'm not yet ready to form an opinion on Kosovo. There's more material that I'm waiting to get into, and I simply haven't started on Kosovo in earnest yet.

That being said, I have no problem with the objections to the Kosovo intervention stated here at ET, or with the disparity between those atrocities getting attention and those which go unreported. All of this and more is true. One thing I bear in mind, and if you could address this, is whether the fact that the Milosevic regime had already gotten away with at least one atrocity has any bearing on your thoughts. I believe it had considerable weight at the time.

Thank you.

"It Can't Be Just About Us"
--Frank Schnittger, ETian Extraordinaire

by papicek (papi_cek_at_hotmail_dot_com) on Mon Mar 9th, 2009 at 07:14:00 PM EST
Just how unbiased and creadible can this Wikipedia article be? It doesn't even mention Naser Oric and his Mujahideen troops which for months prior to the Serb offensive slaughtered over 1 500 serb civilians in the villages neighboring Srebrenica.
by vladimir on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 04:39:28 AM EST
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If a wikipedia article is incomplete, inaccurate, or does not conform to a "neutral point of view", you know what you need to do... It's a wiki.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 05:32:18 AM EST
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You know, remembering the coverage at the time I can't really believe that Milosevic (who broke up with Karadzic and Mladic over the Vance-Owen plan in 1993 which Milosevic had accepted but Mladic opposed) had any foreknowledge of the massacre in Srebrenica, or responsibility (except indirectly) for it. Milosevic had a tense relationship with Karadzic at the time. Interestingly Zoran Djindjic who later became some sort of pro-democracy icon, was feasting with Karadzic in Pale right after the B/S leadership's break with Milosevic and was campaigning for Karadzic well after his indictment, certainly in 1996.

See this 1994 report on Yugoslav politics a year before Srebrenica, in which it is clear that Milosevic is the pro-"Peace in Bosnia" camp while the so-called democratic opposition is the war-camp.

Also see this report on Milosevic and Srebrenica.

I should also mention that, as far as the "dictator" tag goes, a lot can be said about his authoritarianism and his corruption. But I really don't think that, say, election tampering by itself was what kept him in office. He was a populist opportunist and he ran against a comedy of an opposition, which was for the most part (the "Civic Alliance" being the only honourable exception) significantly more nationalist in rhetoric than him. He would have won anyway it seems - yet, had Kosovar Albanians actually voted in Yugoslav elections at the time as they could, he would have lost power very easily.

Note that I think Slobodan Milosevic was to a great extent co-responsible for the Yugoslav tragedy, and he should have been prosecuted on a number of charges. But I don't believe the claim that he was a monster who created the mess all by himself. In fact he was one of the outcomes of  triumphant nationalism in ex-Yugoslavia. And there was no-one to challenge him inside Serbia.

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 07:52:49 AM EST
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According to Lord Owen, Karadzic was very much in favor of the peace plan, and he was pushing it harder than anyone. Mladic pressured him into rejecting it, and Karadzic was put into a corner. That's when Karadzic decided to put the plan up for a referendum, but before that could take place, the plan was scuppered with outside pressure.
by Upstate NY on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 10:58:15 AM EST
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Not "very much", he was pressured by Milosevic to accept. It was Mladic that killed it for the Bosnian Serbs though, yes... See this for example...

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake
by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 11:12:44 AM EST
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I can't say other than what I read in Balkan Odyssey, but there Owen portrays Karadzic as pressing for the peace plan much more than Tudjman or Izebetgovic.
by Upstate NY on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 11:26:12 AM EST
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I have no sympathy for anyone involved in Srebernica, and feel that if you can punish them cleanly, then DO IT.

By cleanly I mean, don't start another war that will take many innocents down with the monsters.

I wrote this in another post above: Why didn't the UN Dutch troops intervene? The answer corresponds to something Vladimir writes in his response to you. The reason is that the Dutch were in the Bihac pocket in the prior year when Bosnian Muslims slaughtered many Serbs. Carla Del Ponte puts the number of Serb civilians killed in the pocket at 2,500 (but maybe she's taking all the deaths together from 1992-1994). The Dutch General together with Phillipe Morillon testified at the Hague that they saw Serb reprisals as revenge for the acts of the prior year.

One reason that Naser Oric does not appear in Wikipedia on Srebrenica is because he was arrested and acquitted by the UN's ICTY. Thus, in legal terms, he never committed those crimes. He is innocent. The most you can add is that the prosecutor, Del Ponte, thought his acquittal was an obscene travesty of justice, and that the UN generals on the ground knew him well and offered testimony against him in the mid 1990s.

Regardless, I can't see how anyone can defend a revenge that is essentially a horrific atrocity, the killing of captive thousands, and the dumping of them into unmarked graves.

Serb's took revenge on Muslims (who were probably taking revenge on them) and then NATO takes revenge on the Serbs by starting the Kosovo War which leads to ever multiplying acts of revenge between Serbs and Albanians? I do buy your theory. I think this is what happened. Obviously I don't think revenge is a proper response.

by Upstate NY on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 10:56:18 AM EST
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Upstate NY:
Regardless, I can't see how anyone can defend a revenge that is essentially a horrific atrocity, the killing of captive thousands, and the dumping of them into unmarked graves.
That is the key point. 1,500 deaths don't justify allowing another 1,500 deaths in a reprisal a year later. Two wrongs don't make a right.

Most economists teach a theoretical framework that has been shown to be fundamentally useless. -- James K. Galbraith
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 10th, 2009 at 10:59:06 AM EST
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