Friday, October 28, 2005
Activist Warns on Genital Mutilation Among Immigrants
Thursday, November 25, 2004
VIENNA, Austria — Young girls born in Europe to immigrant families from Africa are being subjected to ritual genital mutilation (search), and authorities are doing little to discourage it, a leading women's rights activist warned Thursday.
Somalia-born supermodel and best-selling author Waris Dirie (search), who has campaigned to end the disfiguring practice she suffered at age 5 in her homeland, said she estimates one in every three African families living in Europe is secretly carrying out the ritual on their daughters. No official figures exist.
The procedure — illegal in most European countries — is especially prevalent in Germany and the Netherlands, as well as in Austria, where an estimated 8,000 girls born into immigrant families have been affected, Dirie said.
"We don't know who's doing it and where," because there are few initiatives to prevent it or to encourage doctors, nurses, social workers, teachers and others to report suspected cases, Dirie said. An exception is France, where there is strong awareness and education, she said.
"What good is a law if no one is paying attention?" Dirie told reporters in Austria, where she was being honored Thursday by a Roman Catholic men's movement for her efforts to stop the practice.
Islamic religious leaders are telling Europe's Muslim Africans that the prophets recommend the ancient ritual, which involves the removal of the clitoris, often with a dull blade and no anesthesia, Dirie said.
"That is a catastrophe," she said. "Every imam who is not actively against genital mutilation is guilty. Mutilation is not a tradition — it's a crime that must be abolished."
Although women generally perform the procedure, sometimes called female circumcision, men are ultimately responsible because "untrimmed" young women "face great difficulties in African societies in finding a husband," Dirie said.
Between 100 million and 140 million women have undergone genital mutilation worldwide, and 2 million girls are at risk each year, according to the World Health Organization (search), which says the practice can lead to infection, the spread of AIDS and crippling physical, psychological and sexual problems.
The practice has been on the rise not only among immigrants in Europe but also in Australia, Canada and the United States, WHO says.
Petra Bayr, an official with Austria's Socialist Party, said the bloc's women would press the government to consider genital mutilation an "act of violence" and legitimate grounds for women fleeing it to be granted asylum in Austria.
"Women who are threatened with genital mutilation or have already suffered it should not have to wait for months for an open door," added Raimund Loeffelmann, a spokesman for the Catholic men's organization honoring Dirie on Thursday.
Dirie, 39, has spoken out frankly about her own experience as a victim in her native Somalia. The U.N. goodwill ambassador is the author of the best-selling autobiography "Desert Flower," and two sequels, "Desert Dawn" and "Nomad's Daughter."
"I didn't move," Dirie told The Associated Press in a 1996 interview describing the ordeal she endured at age 5. "I just shivered. There was no painkiller, no anesthesia, no nothing."
When her father, Dahire, arranged for her to marry an elderly man in exchange for five camels, she ran away from home. Just 13 years old, the skinny girl walked 500 kilometers (300 miles) across Somalia to the capital, Mogadishu, drinking from camels in the desert to survive.
She moved to Britain, where an uncle served for four years as Somalia's ambassador, and was discovered by a photographer and hired as a model for Revlon, Inc.
Dirie appeared in "The Living Daylights," a 1987 James Bond film. She has modeled in Chanel perfume ads and has appeared on numerous magazine covers.
Dirie, who now lives in Vienna, is this year's recipient of Austria's Romero Prize for her campaign against genital mutilation. President Heinz Fischer was to present the honor at a ceremony in Vienna's museum quarter Thursday evening.
The $13,000 prize is named for Oscar Arnulfo Romero, a Roman Catholic bishop in El Salvador who was slain in 1980.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139615,00.html
Friday, November 26, 2004
By Steve Harrigan
MALMO, Sweden — Swedish authorities in the southern city of Malmo (search) have been busy with a sudden influx of Muslim immigrants — 90 percent of whom are unemployed and many who are angry and taking it out on the country that took them in.
"If we park our car it will be damaged — so we have to go very often in two vehicles, one just to protect the other vehicle," said Rolf Landgren, a Malmo police officer.
Fear of violence has changed the way police, firemen and emergency workers do their jobs.
There are some neighborhoods Swedish ambulance drivers will not go to without a police escort. Angry crowds have threatened them, telling them which patient to take and which ones to leave behind.
Because Sweden has some of the most liberal asylum laws in Europe, one quarter of Malmo's 250,000 population is now Muslim, changing the face and the idea of what it means to be Swedish. Asylum seekers may bring spouses, brothers and grandparents with them. Civil servants say the city is swamped.
"You have 1,000 students in a Swedish school. How many are Swedes? Two," said Lars Birgersson, principal of the Rosengrad School.
Students arrive at age 10 or 12 from countries like Iraq, Iran and Lebanon with no knowledge of Swedish; some have never been to school at all and many classes require interpreters.
Still, more than half won't graduate.
"They are not a part of Swedish society, so to speak. It is difficult for them to get inside society," said Torsten Elofsson of the Malmo Police Department.
However, they are the most rapidly growing segment of Swedish society — outsiders who are already inside, posing a challenge to legendary Swedish tolerance that has now been stretched to the breaking point.
Malmo's main mosque was recently set ablaze by arsonists. When firefighters arrived on the scene, they were attacked by stone throwers.
Editor's Note: This is part two of a four-part series about the Muslim population in Europe. Tomorrow's installment of this series will focus on how Islamic extremists are recruiting young would-be terrorists in European suburbs.
Mujahedins to Attack US Bases in Petrovec and Kosovo
By Aleksandar Damovski, Hristo Ivanovski
translation by Aleksandra Ilievska
A link has been discovered between the humanitarian organization Jeta operating in Macedonia and Osama bin Laden�s Jeda-based bank 
US Bondsteel base - a desgnated terrorist target
Well-trained mujahedin groups are prepared to strike U.S. facilities in this region in case the United States attacks Afghanistan, Dnevnik reports relying on well-informed sources. Part of those groups is located in the Debar region and Kosovo and is put on stand-by to attack the U.S. bases Able Sentry in Petrovec near Skopje and Bondsteel in Kosovo. Anonymous sources say the threat has come from �Commander Beard� (or �Mjekra� in Albanian). �Commander Mjekra� is one of the key persons in the collaboration between the NLA and the KLA and is in charge of intelligence issues. He is the connection between the mujahedin group of 200-300 that has been located in the surroundings of Debar for quite some time now, and the mujahedins stationed in Kosovo. The Debar mujahedins have come from Albania, presumably from one of the training camps near Peshkopea and Kuks and are linked to the NLA.
Macedonian intelligence officers say this is yet another proof of the NLA ties with the Islamic fundamentalists that are directly bound up to bin Laden�s warriors. These ties are now confirmed by the U.S. intelligence, even though they have kept silent so far regarding these matters.
In the wake of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the founded suspicion that it was Osama bin Laden who masterminded the attack, as well as following the articles published in Dnevnik about the possible link of this terrorist with the NLA, the foreign intelligence services operating in Macedonia suddenly increased their interest in the domestic intelligence�s past reports on possible ties between bin Laden and the Balkan events.
After this, we may well say, expected turn of interest of the foreign intelligence officers in Skopje, they started sifting through the activities of the humanitarian organizations in the territory of Macedonia, such as Jeta, Spikes of Goodness (�Klasje na dobrinata� in Macedonian) and El Hilal. During the Kosovo crisis, Macedonian and foreign media already ran features on possible financial connections of these organizations with the Islamic Bank in Jeda, Saudi Arabia, and on the money laundering attempts through certain banks in Pristina and Tirana. And it is exactly the Jeda-based bank that the foreign intelligence for a considerable time has regarded as financial branch office of bin Laden�s organization Al Qaeda. According to U.S. intelligence reports, the Albania-based training camp Bajram Curi is directly financed by Al Qaeda through these banks. Reports addressed to foreign intelligence services also list some actual names assumed to be involved in all these humanitarian military transactions. For instance, Zharku Gafur is one of the leading figures in Jeta, while his relative Xhabir Gafur is NLA commander. Following data exchange with American colleagues concerning the presence in Macedonia of Ali Husein and Mahdi Dindirevi, Islamic Bank representatives, both from the Sudan, the Americans confirmed that this has to do something with bin Laden.
web/news_page.asp?nid=446
How NATO Failed Macedonia
Posted Tuesday, Jun. 26, 2001
There is more than a little irony in the fact that Macedonia came apart at the seams in the same week that Yugoslavia moved to send Slobodan Milosevic for trial in the Hague. Milosevic may be history, but Macedonia now appears irrevocably bound to repeat the horrors of the Balkan wars of the last decade. Milosevic, of course, has had no hand in the Macedonian tragedy. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for NATO.
The Western security alliance's overriding concern throughout its tenure as the Balkan constabulary has been the safety of its own personnel. And in a mean frontier town, a sheriff whose priority is keeping out of harm's way is always in danger of being ineffective — or worse. NATO feared that aggressive peacekeeping and enforcement would provoke attacks on its troops not only in Macedonia but back in Kosovo; by dithering — and legitimizing the rebels by pushing the Macedonian government reluctantly into cease-fire agreements — it has all but ensured the territorial divisions it desperately wanted to prevent.
The Macedonian mob that drove President Boris Trajkovski from the parliament building late Monday was enraged that NATO and the European Union had forced him to adopt a new cease-fire with a rebel movement that NATO's own leaders had dubbed "terrorists," "extremists" and "murderers" only a few weeks ago. But the mob wasn't simply calling for a more robust counterinsurgency effort against the ethnic-Albanian guerrillas that had menaced the capital for weeks; they were baying for blood and vowing to drive all ethnic Albanians out of the city. If that hatred translates into random attacks on ethnic-Albanian communities, a civil war will have begun that will ultimately carve up the territory and force NATO into yet another permanent peacekeeping mission.
A territorial division, of course, is exactly what the guerrillas want, despite all protestations to the contrary. The idea that the hard-eyed men in the hills have launched an armed insurgency in order to achieve constitutional changes and greater civil rights for Albanians in Macedonia is, frankly, preposterous. This was no mass civil-rights movement that bumped into an unyielding state and then took the fateful decision to respond to violence with violence. This began with small bands of armed men dispatched from NATO-controlled Kosovo by the advocates of a Greater Albania (comprising Albania, Kosovo and those pieces of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and even northern Greece populated by Albanian majorities), and has ripened into a situation dangerously close to civil war.
These insurgents, calling themselves the National Liberation Army, launched attacks on government forces, hoping to provoke a ham-fisted response that would drive Macedonia's Albanians — who have plenty of political, economic and social grievances — into the movement's arms. They also hoped to repeat the success of their de facto parent organization, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which managed to provoke such extreme brutality from the Serb authorities that NATO eventually intervened on the Albanian side.
Guerrilla warfare is not a tactic of civil-rights movements; it is a tactic used by liberation movements whose objective is to free a particular piece of territory from the control of an existing authority, and (replace it with a new ruling authority). There is plenty of significance in the rebels calling themselves the National Liberation Army, not least because the acronym, in Albanian, is UCK — the same as the KLA. NATO's firm opposition to any further redrawing of Balkan borders prompted the NLA to hurriedly proclaim itself a civil rights movement, but its strategy and tactics — even its negotiating positions — make clear that the objective is to divide Macedonia on ethnic lines.
That, of course, is precisely what NATO has hoped to avoid throughout the past decade. But the fact that such an eventuality now appears to be upon us is in no small part a product of NATO's failure, out of concern for the safety of its own personnel, to do two things: Tackle the Albanian extremism incubated in its Kosovo protectorate, and lend a firm hand to Macedonia's efforts to stop it from taking root.
NATO was certainly well-advised to press Macedonia to begin addressing the grievances of its Albanian minority — after all, it is those grievances that have created fertile soil for the extremists to grow their insurgency. NATO was also aware that the ham-fisted Macedonian military might make a mess of a counterinsurgency campaign against the lightly-armed but mobile guerrilla forces and cause civilian casualties that would irreversibly radicalize the Albanian population.
Sound advice, but what about the guerrillas? And what about the possibility that the Macedonian majority, faced with an armed insurgency that neither NATO nor their own government appears capable of ending, might begin casting about for a Milosevic of their own?
The combination of NATO's squeamishness and the opportunism of the ethnic-Albanian politicians in Skopje has created a situation where the guerrillas are increasingly being treated as a legitimate party to an armed conflict. That situation was once intolerable to both NATO and the majority of Macedonians; now the alliance appears to have rethought its position.
By essentially elevating the status of the NLA to that of a legitimate protagonist in Macedonia's future, NATO and the European Union may have already effectively conceded the carving up of Macedonia on ethnic lines. And that's another great victory for the hard men in Kosovo dedicated to the pursuit of a Greater Albania through guerrilla warfare. By looking more to the safety of its troops than the accomplishment of its mission, NATO has made sure it will remain reluctantly engaged in the Balkans for the next decade — with the real victims the region's long-suffering people.
http://www.time.com/time/columnist/karon/article/0,9565,165346,00.html
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
September 27, 2005
(Correction: Changes reference from OSCE to KFOR in 21st paragraph)
(CNSNews.com) - Following five years of United Nations control and billions of dollars of international aid, Kosovo is a lawless region "owned" by the Albanian mafia, characterized by continuing ethnic cleansing and subject to increasing infiltration by al Qaeda-linked Muslim jihadists, according to a whistleblower interviewed by Cybercast News Service.
The U.N.'s repeated failure to act on received intelligence has allowed illegal paramilitary groups to flourish and engage in terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing regional governments in the Balkans, said Thomas Gambill, a former security chief with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), self-described as the world's largest regional security agency.
Gambill was responsible for overseeing the eastern region of Gjilane in Kosovo from 1999 until 2004 under the authority of the U.N. His criticism comes as the United Nations prepares to launch final status talks on the troubled province of Kosovo, which has been a U.N. protectorate since North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces bombed Yugoslavia between March and May of 1999 to compel the Serb-dominated government of Slobodan Milosovic to withdraw its forces from Kosovo.
The U.S. mission in Kosovo alone cost $5.2 billion between June 1999 and the end of 2001, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
NATO bombing leads to Muslim retaliation
The NATO bombings were also launched in response to reports of large-scale ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians by the Serbs. But as soon as the bombing campaign ended, ferocious, retaliatory ethnic cleansing allegedly took place with Albanians, who are predominantly Muslim, targeting Christian Serbs. The violence was witnessed and documented by the U.N. and OSCE.
Gambill shared hundreds of pages of U.N. and OSCE documents with Cybercast News Service, showing how the Serbs and other minorities were systematically and successfully targeted for removal from Kosovo.
Following the NATO bombing of Kosovo, American troops under NATO command were stationed in neighboring Macedonia and Albania while then-President Bill Clinton decided on the size of the U.S. contingent to be deployed in Kosovo. When U.S. troops entered the province in June 1999, the alleged retaliatory ethnic cleansing was already underway.
Incidents of sexual violence, torture, arson, murder, kidnapping, and verbal threats were allegedly widespread as part of an organized and successful campaign conducted "right under the U.N.'s nose," said Gambill.
Minorities targeted by ethnic Albanian extremists for expulsion or death included Serbs, Roma, Muslim Slavs, Turks and Croats.
Reports filed by the OSCE indicate that the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which had been trained and supported by the Clinton administration, was predominantly responsible for the ethnic cleansing. In April 1999, congressional Republicans also promoted legislation seeking U.S. military aid for the KLA, causing Michael Radu of the Foreign Policy Institute to warn of the consequences of such a move.
Other armed extremist groups also participated in the ethnic cleansing, said Gambill.
The overall goal of the groups was the creation of an ethnically pure state that included Albania, Kosovo and parts of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia "They will push for more. That is the plan. It's called Greater Albania," said Gambill.
OSCE documents reveal that elderly Serbs who were unable to flee were threatened and women were thrown down staircases. Others were tortured, beaten and murdered. Some elderly Serbs fled to monasteries for protection, but the monasteries were later attacked as well, including as recently as March of 2004, according to the OSCE documents
Entire villages emptied in the wake of large-scale arson and looting. OSCE documents describe "massive population movements" by displaced minorities after so many of their homes were set on fire, that one region of Kosovo resembled "a war zone."
An OSCE report notes that in one particular month of 1999 ethnic-related crimes dipped, but the report adds that it is unclear if that was due to the success of NATO's KFOR (Kosovo Force) or simply because there were relatively few Serbs left.
After six months of NATO presence, the violence aimed at the Serbs became less frequent, though grenade attacks, drive-by shootings and abductions continued as weekly occurrences for the next five years, according to Gambill. "Even as of a couple of weeks ago, it hasn't stopped," he added.
The perpetrators of ethnic violence were emboldened by a lack of functioning local police or a judiciary system, Gambill said. Even now, the "good cops" are threatened by former KLA members, who are also on the police forces. "One female cop, she was a real Serpico," recalls Gambill. "She wouldn't give up an investigation after being threatened. She was killed soon after being warned."
Minorities are still being denied health care by Albanian medical professionals who quickly dominated the health care profession following the NATO bombing, Gambill said. He recounted an incident in which a Serb doctor was taken behind a building and shot in the back of the head. "Sometimes they had to take wounded Kosovar Serbs all the way to Serbia for medical aid," said Gambill.
'Don't Rock the Boat'
Gambill told Cybercast News Service that he was most frustrated by what he saw as apathy on the part of the U.N. Mission in Kosovo and OSCE, despite what he described as lower-level officials who "worked really hard and cared about the mission.
"There was a don't-rock-the-boat atmosphere," Gambill explained. "Many people deployed to the region simply wanted to make their hefty pay and have a good time vacationing in Greece. They didn't want any 'problems' on their watch."
Aggressive patrols were discouraged, Gambill said, for fear that any ensuing firefights would give the appearance that KFOR forces did not have control of the area.
"It was all P.C. (politically correct). People were afraid to say anything," said Gambill, adding that those who spoke out on serious issues were subjected to transfers or other reprisals. "No one seems to want to listen or make waves. They said 'I can't do anything to change the system, so why speak out?'"
The result of such an attitude, Gambill said, is that "every time there is an attack against a Serb, it's always described as an 'isolated case' -- an event swept under the rug, so to speak."
Gambill said his warnings and reports on grave security threats were often met with a condescending attitude and even laughter. During a briefing given at the end of 2000 to OSCE delegates from Vienna, Austria, Gambill identified illegal paramilitary groups operating in the Balkans in violation of U.N. Security Council resolution 1244.
Albanian mafia flourishes
At the same briefing, Gambill said he tried to explain the regional mafia structure, however, U.S. and Russian delegates in the audience complained about the content of Gambill's speech. As a result, he said, OSCE headquarters in Pristina sent a message to Gambill's regional superiors with the message, "Shut Tom up."
"You couldn't get up in front of meetings and say, 'We've lost control of [Kosovo], the mafia controls it,'" said Gambill. "But they do. They run the damn place."
Gambill cited OSCE data that showed 42 mafia leaders had moved into Kosovo in the wake of the NATO bombing in order to set up criminal organizations. They continued to thrive despite efforts to establish mature law enforcement operations in the province, he said.
"Drug smuggling, counterfeiting, weapons, human trafficking were all booming when I was there," said Gambill. He also alleged that high-level mafia leaders are in senior political positions.
"Good cops," who want to target the corruption are "under threat," said Gambill, adding that the Albanian mafia maintains ties with Russian, Serbian, Croatian and Italian mafia organizations to further their common agendas.
Gambill also warned his U.N. superiors that the newly formed paramilitary group, the Albanian National Army, was "highly dangerous and skilled" and operating in Kosovo as well as northwestern Macedonia. But those warnings, he said, were also met with disbelief.
Within months, the Albanian National Army was taking credit for terrorist attacks, prompting the U.N. to acknowledge the group's existence.
Now Kosovo has entered what Gambill calls "The Fifth Phase," characterized by attacks against the United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) itself. A September warning from UNMIK to staff members warns, "Before you turn on your vehicle, inspect it all around, to see if anything is unusual or suspicious." The warning followed the blowing up of an UNMIK vehicle.
"UNMIK Out!" reads the graffiti seen on many buildings in Kosovo.
A field officer currently working with the U.N. Mission in the Kosovo area spoke with Cybercast News Service on condition of anonymity. After noting that the explosives used by al Qaeda terrorists in the March 2004 Madrid bombing attacks had come from the Balkans, he stated: "I sit here watching special patrol groups surveying and doing nothing. How many more people will die; whilst terrorists rest and recuperate here in the not so moderate Muslim regions of the Balkans theatre?"
"The cat and mouse game is coming to an end," the field officer noted. "Kosovo is saturated with extremists so NATO [may] pull out before it all blows up in their faces. War on Terror! [It's] more like support [of] terror!"
"My biggest concern has always been the incursion of radical Islam into the area," said Gambill. "They're making preparations in Macedonia for terrorist attacks against internationals if Kosovo is not granted independence."
If the United Nations recommends against independence, Gambill said, it will spur the Saudis to increase their involvement in the region. "They've got the money, they've got the power. They'll remind Kosovars that they are their true friends. And they'll help the extremists fight and prepare terrorist attacks against internationals and even NATO troops stationed there," Gambill told Cybercast News Service.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200509%5CSPE20050927a.html
RAF:Operation Allied Force
Russia and China condemned the attack, and shortly after the strikes began Yugoslavia declared war on NATO. Targets hit included military airfields, barracks, command and control centres, and radar installations. NATO claims 20% of the target list was hit in the first night, three Yugoslav air force jets were shot down, and no NATO planes were lost, although other sources claim two NATO aircraft were shot down. All British aircraft returned safely to their airbases, as did the UK-based B-52s. All but one of the RAF aircraft did not drop their bombs to avoid possible civilian targets as cloud cover masked their objective. NATO objectives, as stated by US President Bill Clinton were:
- To demonstrate NATO's resolve
- To deter Belgrade from launching more offensives against Kosovo
- To degrade Yugoslavia's military capabilities to carry out future attacks against Kosovo Albanians
NATO resumed strikes on Yugoslavia in the mid-afternoon of Friday 26th March 1999, and air-to-air action saw NATO fighters shoot down two Yugoslav MiG warplanes over Bosnia. Cruise missile attacks launched the first daytime raids on Yugoslavia. B-52s from RAF Fairford were also involved for the second time. Russia failed to force a resolution through to stop the NATO air attacks at the UN Security council. Only three members, Russia, China and Namibia voted in support of the resolution, while Russia expelled NATO personnel from the NATO office in Moscow. Greece said that NATO should stop the attacks and return to the negotiating table, as Italy did the day before.
Attacks continued on Saturday, but bad weather stopped many aircraft from launching their weapons, so the emphasis shifted to missile attacks until the weather cleared up. NATO suffered its first loss during the evening, with an American F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter crashing west of Belgrade, due to an unknown cause. Although the Serbs claimed it was shot down, the pilot was rescued and returned to his Italian base safely. The British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, promised more British aircraft for the NATO air offensive, including four British Harriers and eight Tornado GR1 bombers, as well as a Tristar tanker. Ethnic Albanian Kosovar refugees from Serbian reprisal attacks flooded into Macedonia and Albania. B-52s also took part in the attack, with several B-52s flying back to the USA and being replaced by others later.
In order to aid Albania with the flood of refugees a NATO force was established to help cope, AFOR, and was commanded by British Lieutenant General John Reith.
Sunday saw more attacks, and Macedonia asked for urgent entry into NATO, fearing Serbian reprisals. The Harrier reinforcements left England in the morning and arrived in Italy later that day. Again B-52s took part in the attack.
On Monday, NATO opened its first true daylight air attacks involving American A-10 ground-attack aircraft, now concentrating on Yugoslav military targets in and around Kosovo. The attacks were started in response to Serbian suppression of the Kosovar people. More Kosovar people flooded into the neighbouring countries as NATO air strikes continued on Tuesday, with RAF Harriers taking part in their first daylight attacks.
Tuesday saw attacks continue, and Wednesday saw three US soldiers captured by the Yugoslav military. NATO insisted that the soldiers were in Macedonia, but the Serbian government said the soldiers were in Kosovo, and Yugoslavia planned to try the soldiers in a Military Court. 
Strikes continued on Thursday and Friday. The USA promised more Stealth Fighters and B-1B 'Lancer' bombers joined the strikes for the first time. NATO continued to target Yugoslav army units in Kosovo and their fuel supplies. Saturday and Sunday saw more strikes against Yugoslav Army units engaged in 'ethnic cleansing' and the countries infrastructure, and fuel supplies. NATO troops began to erect shelters for the mass of Kosovar refugees in Macedonia and aid flights continued into Albania and Macedonia.
RAF Tornados joined the attacks on Serbia on Sunday night (4/5th April). Attacks continued on Monday and Tuesday with RAF Harriers bombing ground targets in Kosovo. Yugoslavia called a ceasefire from 7pm London time on Tuesday 6/4/99 but NATO rejected the ceasefire saying it did not meet their requirements for Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosovo and the ability for NATO troops to act as peacekeepers in the area.
Massive numbers of Kosovo Albanians vanished from the border, and NATO was concerned about their fate, Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th April 1999. Strikes continued against Yugoslav targets, especially troops operational in Kosovo. On Friday 9/4/99 a statement by the speaker of the Russian parliament led to the fact that Russia had targeted its missiles on NATO countries, but this was quickly denied by the Russian military. Russia continued to oppose the air strikes and warned the NATO allies not to send in ground troops or it might force Russia to get involved militarily. The Russian President, Boris Yeltsin, warned of another European, possibly World War.
On Saturday the Chinese also added their voice to the argument surrounding the air strikes. The UK announced that HMS Invincible would be sent and the USA announced another 82 aircraft were being sent to the region.
On Sunday 11/4/99 Albania ceded its ports, airspace and military installations to NATO control. Serbian TV showed an Australian aid worker apparently confessing to spying for NATO. NATO was becoming concerned for the hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees reported to be in hiding in the Kosovar hills. Serbian artillery also struck across the Albanian border killing two civilians and wounding several more.
NATO asked the US for 300 more aircraft, and 500 from all countries were requested. Russia accused the United States of arming the KLA and Britain deployed 1,800 more troops to the area. The British Prime Minister told the Commons that the reinforcements would consist of a second armoured battle group on Tuesday 13th April 1999.
On Wednesday 13/4/99, NATO aircraft destroyed a civilian refugee convoy by accident. Wednesday 21/4/99 saw NATO bomb the headquarters of the Serbian Police, and the following night the Serbian TV Station in Belgrade. The Serbian government put forward a peace proposal, which involved unarmed UN peacekeepers, which was rejected by NATO as insufficient. At the 50th Anniversary summit of NATO, an oil embargo was announced against Yugoslavia and NATO announced it was seeking a UN resolution calling for Yugoslav withdrawal from Kosovo and an autonomous government for the province.
Britain agreed to send more planes to the conflict on Thursday 29th April. The day also saw NATO bomb a bridge, and destroy a civilian bus that was crossing the bridge in Kosovo. HMS Ocean was ordered to the area on Sunday 2nd May.
On 3rd May RAF Harriers were in action against Serbian military and police units in Kosovo. 3rd May saw 17 sorties flown by RAF Harriers, all of the same mission type.
| 4th May saw RAF Harriers fly 8 sorties. Up to 6th May, RAF aircraft had flown 800 plus sorties for NATO, and 4 more Harriers arrived in Italy. 7th May saw RAF Harriers attack Sjenica Airfield with 1000lb bombs, but adverse weather continued to disrupt other combat missions. Also on 7th May NATO bombed the Chinese embassy by mistake, due to an outdated map, outraging China. 8th May, NATO announced it had flown over 18,000 operational sorties. RAF Harriers flew 16 sorties. |  |
May 10th saw RAF Harriers and Tornados in action again during a period of improved weather. 11th May saw 20 attacks by RAF Harriers, with the same number on the 12th May. The Duke of York and the Armed Forces Minister visited the British forces in Italy at Gioia del Colle.
May 25th saw NATO attack the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Belgrade. RAF strikes by Tornado and Harrier aircraft continued. Several blunders occurred during the last weeks of the campaigns including several attacks on bridges that were in use at the time of attack.
On 4th June the Serbian Parliament accepted a G8 peace agreement, and talks between Serbian and NATO generals for the Serbian withdrawal from Kosovo began on 5th June at an Albanian border town, and the Serbian evacuation of Kosovo was to be completed within seven days. NATO bombing continued until evidence of Serbian withdrawal was confirmed. 6th June saw a detachment of the Parachute Regiment leave for the Balkans as the first reinforcements for the NATO peacekeeping force if the peace plan went ahead.
The Serbian military continued to stall the peace plan, and on Tuesday 8th June, G8 countries drafted a peace proposal, and Russia offered troops for the peace implementation force. NATO bombing continued.
Serbia finally signed the G8 Peace Plan on Thursday 10th June, and NATO air strikes were suspended on Friday. In the early hours of Saturday, Russian troops reached Pristina, while British troops were delayed waiting for US troops to reach the Kosovo Border.
NATO had mounted 38,004 strikes in 10,484 sorties, the United Kingdom having contributed 1,618 strikes in 1,008 sorties. 23,614 air munitions with 1,011 released by UK forces. These were 230 1,000lb bombs, 226 Paveway IIs, 18 Paveway IIIs, 531 RBL 755 and 6 ALARM missiles. By the end of the operation the UK RAF had deployed 16 Harrier GR7, 12 Tornado GR1, Three E3D AEW Sentry, one Nimrod, four Tristar and five VC10 aircraft as well as eight Chinook, six Puma and 4 Lynx helicopters. The Royal Navy contributed seven Sea Harrier FA2s to the air campaign, which mounted combat air patrols.
Operation Joint Guardian
The surrounding countries feared escalation across their own borders, as well as reprisal attacks against UN troops based in Bosnia and Macedonia, where the US embassy was set ablaze. 4,000 British troops were in Macedonia waiting permission to enter Kosovo as peacekeeping troops, but NATO leaders had reiterated time and again that there would be no ground war.
NATO and Serbian Military Forces Comparison
NATO
8,000 troops in Macedonia, including a British contingent. Britain also has troops in Bosnia.
US Navy taskforce, including Tomahawk-armed submarines and ships.
Royal Navy task force including HMS Swiftsure, the first Royal Navy Tomahawk-armed attack submarine.
Yugoslav Forces
The Serbian Navy, which must operate from the Republic of Montenegro's coastline, has 4 submarines, 4 frigates and 7,500 men.
The Serbian Army boasts 90,000 troops. 1,270 tanks, 570 armoured infantry fighting vehicles. 1,300 artillery guns and 60 SAM launchers including SA7, SA9 and SA13 missiles systems.
| No.1 Squadron; 16 Harrier GR7. No.8 & 23 Squadrons; 3 E3D AEW Sentry No.9 & 31 Squadrons; 12 Tornado GR1 No.14 Squadron; 8 Tornado GR1 No.27 Squadron; 8 Chinook helicopters No.33 Squadron; 6 Puma helicopters No.39 Squadron; 2 Canberra PR9 reconnaissance No.51 Squadron; 1 Nimrod No.101 Squadron; Five VC-10 Tankers No.216 Squadron; 4 Tristar Tankers Airfield activaton and protection team drawn from various units |
In December 2002, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth awarded RAF participation in the operations over Kosovo and Yugoslavia with the award of the Battle Honour 'KOSOVO' to the squadrons who participated between 24th March and 20th June 1999. Nos.1, 9, 14 and 34 squadrons have the right to emblazon the honour on their squadron standard. No.7, 8, 23, 51, 101 and 216 are awarded the battle honour but without the right to emblazon the honour on their squadron standards.
Former UN Employee Admits UN Armed Srebrenica Muslims
May 7, 2005-May 13, 2005
Almir Ramic, Bosniak UN Employee � Mary Mostert, Journalist
This e-mail exchange, which took place between May 7 and May 13, 2005, sheds an entirely new light on events that took place in Srebrenica in July of 1995 that have been described as a �massacre� of unarmed Bosnian Muslims by the Serbian Army in a supposedly �safe� UN Haven city. According to Almir Ramic
This is a long exchange (37 pages), much of it very angry attacks on me and pro-Bosnian Muslim propaganda. But, I think the public needs to know that according to this man, Almir Ramic, who claims to have be present in Srebrenica as a UN employee, the truth is - the Muslims in Srebrenica were NOT unarmed in a UN Safe haven. They were actually GIVEN arms by the UN! I have outlined key points in red font. You can skim through it to find the red font.
On May 7 � in response to an article written by journalist Mary Mostert entitled "Correcting the Lies about a Great WW II Hero," Amir Ramic, who identified himself as a UN employee in Srebrenica when either a battle or a massacre took place in 1995. In this exchange, Ramic admits the Bosnian Muslims who were supposedly �massacred� actually had weapons that were given to them by UN personnel. Ramir wrote to Mostert
(11:10 AM: May 7, 2005)
Ms Mostert,
I just read your article on Draza Mihajlovic (http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/mostert/050506) and I could not help responding. As an individual representing only myself I'll allow myself the liberty to be very blunt and direct.
Your article only suggests that your source of information must be either under a heavy influence of radical Serb nationalism or coming from them directly.
Your careless, unresearched, irrational and shameless use of twisted facts suggests that your level of writing is probably not worth my or anyone's time to comment, but as a victim and survivor of the Bosnian Holocaust by the same Serb radicals you are supporting so openly -- knowingly or not -- I cannot be indifferent.
Your study on the demographics of Sarajevo is so shamefully wrong and shallow that it is as laughable as it is sad and insulting. To say that 155,000 Bosnian Serbs from Sarajevo are missing is actually a blatant lie produced by either you or your disturbing sources. Most Bosnian Serbs evacuated from Sarajevo just before the beginning of the torturous Bosnian Serb army siege following the orders from Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic -- The Hague's most wanted. The evacuation was urged so that constant shelling from numerous artillery pieces would hurt as little Serbs as possible. My good Serb neighbors came to my family just before they left crying and panicking telling us that they were "ordered to leave, because Sarajevo was about to be attacked by the Bosnian Serb Army" The population of Sarajevo is now mostly Bosniak simply because Dayton Peace Agreement decided it should belong to the Federation, so the Serbs who decided to leave before the siege decided to stay out in their newly formed Republic -- formed mostly by cleansing and killing non Serbs from the areas they occupied.
So if you are at all interested in putting the demographics of Sarajevo in perspective, besides correcting your facts, check the demographics of the municipalities in Eastern Bosnia and compare them from before and after the war. Then ask yourself where the missing Bosniaks are now. Even though I know your convictions are already decided you should try and compare your sources with others who are not playing into the interest of Serb radicalism. You will find very different demographic changes from what you have been told so far, you will read proven and countless stories of state organized war crimes of torture, rape and mass murder of 6 digit counts of Bosniaks regardless of age and sex. These days we Bosniaks are collecting remains of or loved ones from up to three different mass graves in order to put them together and identify them. What human sickness takes a mass grave and mixes it up with dozers and split it in three smaller graves just to make it difficult to identify the victims? While The International Community is trying to make sense of the horror that happened to Bosniaks and while we are trying to recover from this fresh experience of genocide you are allowing yourself to through blatant lies, deception and fact twisting be placed on the side of the same element that's responsible for genocide and ethnic cleansing from the 1990's war and WWII.
I don't even want to lose any time on responding to other twisted facts and lies in this article. I'll just add that Draza Mihajlovic was the first Chetnik to have officially used the term (ethnic) cleansing in an official order to his troops during the WWII. Specifically, the written order asked for non-Serbs to be cleansed by knives in order to save bullets. Ethnic Cleansing was finally forced into the UN language by well documented continuation of Mihajlovic's war tactic by war crime fugitives Karadzic and Mladic. Therefore to award the Legion of Merit to Mihajlovic would be exactly the same as awarding it to Karadzic and Mladic. And if this horrible irony is really true, the US government is making an uncalculated historical mistake that will insult thousands of survivors and victim families of Bosnian Holocaust from the 1990's war and WWII alike.
Shame on you and I can only hope that one day you may realize just how dead-wrong, manipulated and offensive this article is.
Almir.R.
I responded to that e-mail as follows:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Friday, May 06, 2005 4:37 PM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Cc: 'Mustafa Focak'; eldinkajevic@hotmail.com; 'Mustafa Focak'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Almir,
It so happens that the data used in my article, which is still in my files, came from U.S. Government, Yugoslav census, World Almanac and United Nations Sources. I�ve been monitoring what was happening in the old Yugoslavia for more than a decade. I suggest you give me YOUR sources for the demographics of Yugoslavia in 1990 � which is the starting point for the population shifts that have taken place since then. Your statement: �The population of Sarajevo is now mostly Bosniak simply because Dayton Peace Agreement decided it should belong to the Federation, so the Serbs who decided to leave before the siege decided to stay out in their newly formed Republic -- formed mostly by cleansing and killing non Serbs from the areas they occupied� is laughable and you must know it.
In the Holocaust Museum, the second largest number of people slaughtered by the Nazis, after Jews, were Serbs. And, who was it that was doing the slaughtering? You must know it was mostly the Croatians.
As for your mythology about Draza Mihajlovic, I�ve heard all those fake stories before. When tracked down � what do I find? Croatian communists, mainly, who were behind the tales told Major Felman about the Serbs cutting off the ears of American pilots. Pure garbage and you must know that. A bit in the same category of the KLA tales of �100,000 Albanians slaughtered by Serbs and buried and in mass graves in Kosovo in the 1990s. After the bombing, forensic experts from many nations looked all over Kosovo for those bodies � and did not find them. They found mass graves with Serbs in them � however.
Quote your sources that can verify ANY of the statements you made. I doubt you can do so. I have in front of me out of my files a New York Times News Article of September 30, 1995 on the Croatian forces driving 120,000 Serbs out of the Krajina region of Croatia : �Our U.N. patrols are continuing to find bodies, usually of elderly Serbs, killed in their homes. Despite repeated requests by theU.N. to the Croatian authorities to intervene, they make little effort and usually do nothing.� That was a quote from Alun R. Roberts, the UN press officer in Knin at the time.
The UN reported that 13,000 houses in 240 Serbian villages that had 18,232 houses in them had been totally destroyed. 73% of the Serb homes had been destroyed by the Croatians. �The killing of elderly Serbs, many of them too weak to flee, has shocked and angered U.N. and European Union monitors here.�
Look up the population figures for Croatia in the latest World Almanac. The CIA Factbook states the population of Croatia today is 89.6% Croatian and 4.5% Serb in a population of 4,495,904. The 1993 World Almanc put the population figures for Croatia at 75% Croatian and 18% Serb in a 4,763,000 population, 2 years after Croatia declared independence. . Where ARE all those missing Serbs?
Mary Mostert
Amir responded:
Mary,
I'll let Croats and Albanians discuss the parts of your article concerning Croatia and Kosovo. As a survivor of Srebrenica massacre and as a witness to the start of the war in Bosnia in Sarajevo, my goal here is to point to your very insulting use of Bosnian war to victimize Bosnian Serbs and glorify their war leaders -- war criminals. Your problem here is that the whole world and the United Nations know and confirm that the facts are 360 degree from your account.
So to put you back in the perspective of your own article you are trying to prove that Serbs were the victims in the 1990s Bosnian war and that Bosniaks (please check the constitution of Bosnia-Herzegovina and get the names of the nations right) whom you deliberately call Muslims trying to twist their character into the post 9/11 trend to identify all Muslims with terrorism breeding herds. In one subhead of your article you even put "(Christians)" next to "Serbs" which is a naive and transparent attempt to characterize the Bosnian conflict as a clash of Christianity and Islam. And of course as the goal of your article mandates, Islamic Terrorism is quite present there. All your research goes to tank right here because if you actually did attempt to do any impartial research even at the most amateur level, you would know that Bosniaks are very different from Middle-East cultures and it is very clearly not in their history, nature and mostly secularist approach to Islam to be related to terrorism.
The ultimate flaw and insult of the parts of your article concerning Bosnia is that you are trying to victimize the perpetrators of a horrible war crime that was a product of the Bosnian Serb state-level war tactic: terrorize, starve, kill, rape. Let me remind you again that I LIVED the Bosnian war and saw Bosniak naked women corpses floating down the Drina river half burnt, I saw Bosniaks male corpses on the same river with their genitals cut off, heads smashed with sledge hammers, I saw burnt child corpses floating down the same river. These were just some of the Bosniak victims of Visegrad, the town where I was born where the ones who gave in to Serb Army deception who occupied the city and called the Bosniak refugees to return, guaranteeing them normal life and security. When the flow of returnees stopped, all villages were burnt, returnees killed, many women children and elderly burnt in stables while men were executed on the bridge. If you are interested I can give you the details of some of the most horrific tortures of women you have ever heard even in movies. This was the Bosnian Serb policy toward the majority Bosniak population of Visegrad. The same fate found Foca, Zvornik, Rogatica, Srebrenica, Bratunac, and other eastern Bosnian towns.
So many corpses floated down the Drina river in fact, that they posed a problem to the Perucac power-plant. Even though we tried to collect and identify them all from Zepa where I was as a refugee from Visegrad. Sometimes we could not work because of shelling sometimes it was hard to see in the night.
I saw the shelling of a school yard where close to a 100 children and their mothers were massacred. In fact I helped evacuate the survivors. I was in the same UN APC where a shocked mother held a 2 year old baby with its head half-blown off, believing her baby was asleep. Pieces of scalps of these children were still hanging on the school fences of the school months later. Well documented by UN. At this time I was already a UN employee and you have the bad luck of your article finding its way to my mailbox, because I worked for UN in Srebrenica during the safe-heaven status of Srebrenica. Many of my reports from Srebrenica are now a part of the horror picture of Srebrenica massacre, confirmed by today's exhumations of mass graves and other UN expatriate accounts. I am not even sure if you know that the horror of Srebrenica massacre, as an example of other massacres of Bosniaks, was a cause for first GENOCIDE conviction of a Serb Army officer at the Hague War Crimes Tribunal. I participated in UN as well as government investigations into Srebrenica genocide as a UN witness and observer. So please, your pathetic attempt to victimize the perpetrator in order to stand on the side of another war criminal from another war who started the sick policy of ethnic cleansing has no ground if you don't know it you must be kidding me with your credentials.
I am a part of the statistics you are trying to twist, I am a witness, victim and observer of the history you are trying to misinterpret so shamelessly and arrogantly.
Of course, I can easily put you in the corner and discredit you single-handedly but to do that in a private conversation like this would be pointless. This would have to be more public so both you and I can be judged. But to entertain your pathetic challenge regarding Sarajevo, where I was days before all hell broke loose and where I lost many friends, I'll add to my statement that most Serbs left either just before the start of Sarajevo siege like I said and right after the Dayton peace agreement when they realized that Sarajevo was outside of their ethnically cleansed republic. I claim this to be the fact and your statement that 155,000 of them seem to be missing is a blatant lie and misleading like the most of your article -- not even a fact twister. So please prove me laughable. Let's see the list of these missing 155,000 Serbs. Let's see the source that came out with this figure and its claim that they are missing... How did you conclude that they seem to be missing?
Dear Mary, your article reeks of lies, misleading fact twists and shallow attempts at deception. That's my accusation, not a call to challenge. To call this private correspondence a challenge is totally pointless, and now that you are standing before your own discreditation I am quite sure you'd like it to be that. But nah, if you'd like a challenge I would only consider this in a public environment...
My intentions are different here. I am forwarding this conversation as is to the Congress of North American Bosniaks representing the Bosniaks now living in US and Canada. I ask them here to read and study your article and demand nothing short of an unconditional apology for such vicious misrepresentation of the Bosnian Holocaust that it tries to deceive the reader into believing the factual perpetrator to be the victim. I further ask the Congress to contact the website that allowed this article to be posted and not ask for it to be removed but only to make the owners of the website aware of its shallowly researched fact base, intentionally misrepresented events and insulting nature. If I were the Congress, I would deliberately compare this article to other shameless attempts we have all witnessed in our lives to minimize or even deny the Jewish Holocaust. This article even goes further and attempts to switch places of the victim and the perpetrator. Contrary to removal of this article, I think it would be helpful that it stays live as a strongly negative credit to the writing credibility of one Mary Mostert.
Here is the link to the article. I am also attaching a text copy: http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/mostert/050506
May you one day see your ignorance.
Almir R.
My Response:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Saturday, May 07, 2005 5:51 PM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Almir,
You have not answered one single question in my letter OR fact in my article. The facts can be very easily verified. Where is the verification for your tall tales about the Serbs? After all, the UN observer who was a witness was not a Croat, a Bosnia or a Serb. I have no connection of any kind with any of the Balkan ethnic groups and, therefore, I have no reason to believe you just because you claim you experienced something or other since you obviously hate Serbs. Your word means absolutely nothing to me.
The fact is, unbiased sources such as the World Almanac tell a very different story. My 1993 World Almanac states the 4,365,000 people in Bosinia and Herzegovina were 43% Moslem Slav, 31% Serbian, and 17% Croatian.
The Almanac count for Croatia was 75% Croatian and 18% Serbian. Today the CIA factbook puts Croatia�s ethnic mix at: Croatia is 89.6% Croat;, 4.5% Serb, 0.5% Bosniak, 0.4% Hungarian, 0.3% Slovene, 0.2% Czech, 0.2% Roma, 0.1% Albanian, 0.1% Montenegrin, 4.1% (2001) others. Lots of Serbs are missing from Croatia.
When I check the same Almanac for the remaining Yugoslavia, i.e Serbia and Montegegro, Kosovo and Vojvodina, the population was 10,337,000.
Today those areas, according to the CIA Factbook, the Republic of Srpska, and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a 2005 total of 4,025,476 people� which is about 340,000 FEWER people than were there in 1991. According to other sources, 90% of Srpska is Serb and the population of Srpska is 1,391,593. The current population figures show 37.1% of the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are Serb � or 1,493.451. However, very few Serbs live in the Sarajevo area. The official count at this point shows that 81.4% of the population of Sarajevo Canton is Bosniaks, and they are over 90% of the population in the municipalities of Stari grad, Had�ici and Trnovo. 11,2% of the population is Serbs; 6,7% is Croats, and 2,5% of population are other nationalities. (http://www.ks.gov.ba/eng/population/ethnic.htm) Obviously, most of the Serbs were driven out of Sarajevo. Just as the was reported by in the 1990s. Elderly Serbs that could not run were slaughtered. According to UN observers.
Albania, of course, is MORE than 90% Albanian. The only nation in the area that seems to be open to all groups is Serbia and Montenegro. Their ethnic mix, according to the CIA, in a population of 10,829,000 is: Serb 62.6%, Albanian 16.5%, Montenegrin 5%, Hungarian 3.3%, other 12.6% (1991). The empirical evidence indicates that the only group that seems able to live in peace with other ethnic groups are the Serbs. Obviously the Bosniaks, the Croatians ( What�s the matter with you people that causes you to be unable to live peacefully with others? The figures tell me a whole lot more than your made-up stories. President Clinton told us in the 1990s that our troops would be out of Bosnia in 18 months. That was more than 10 years ago. Finally, in December 2004 the European Union took over baby sitting the Bosnians.
After more than 10 years, the Bosniaks STILL have to have a foreign police force to keep you people from killing each other, in spite of the fact that you have segregated yourselves into pockets of Bosniaks here, Croatians there, and Albanians somewhere else. The Serbs are able to run a country with an ethnic mix, it appears, without a foreign army baby sitting them.
While you are running to the Congress to get them do whatever � why don�t you ask them how come the European Union is still patrolling the streets in Bosnia? You can�t blame it on the Serbs any more. There are not enough Serbs left in Sarajevo to be much of a problem.
Mary Mostert
Amir responded at 7:21 PM on May 8, 2005
Mary,
I answered all of your questions actually. I told you already that I have very little knowledge of the facts in Croatia and Kosovo because I was not there. I owe you one more answer which for some reason you hold very important for our conversation. Yes Croats and Serbs hated each other in WW2 and yes, Croats joined with the Nazis for strength and used it to slaughter Serbs. But of course all my arguments are related to Bosnia which I can support with facts and my rich first hand account. Of course you will chose n ot to believe me. That's of course not even relevant because my original question to you and focus of this conversation -- that you are so transparently trying to avoid by spreading it out beyond the context of Bosnia-Herzegovina within its borders -- is your false claim that 155,000 Serbs from Sarajevo are missing. That's a lie and if, as you claim, you are not associated with Serb radicals then I must conclude that the lie is yours and yours alone, unless of course, you can prove to me that you have been unknowingly manipulated by wrong sources. So please, if you want to keep respondiong to me stay within the focus and explain the 155,000 missing Serbs froim Sarajevo. Remember I contacted you first an challenged this specific claim. So, I am not yet obliged to answer any of yor further questions until you answer mine. And don't worry, I have access to all the resources I need once you decide we should take ths some place public and challenge each other.
If you would like a taste of the credibility of my story, please contact the Dutch Institute for War Docummentation, UNHCR, MSF, UNMO and UNPROFOR and ask tehm to confirm my presence and activities in Srebrenica between 1992 and 1993. My full name is. If you have access to General Morillon, please ask him too to confirm my identity. Als contact Dr Simon Mardel who at that time worked for WHO. With Simon I experienced together massacres in Srebrenica, Konjevic Polje and Kravica. Simon Mardel I believe was one fo the first internationals to be able to tell of the horrors once he got out. Oh, Larry Hallingworth then of UNHCR. He wrote a book his experiences. I believe I am even mentioned in his book. He was one of my favorites. Also Marry, please contact Tony Birtley who was one of the first journalists to have brough out the horrors of Srebrenica. I believe at that time he worked for ABC. I am pretty sure he still remembers me. We visited a couple of frontline spots together and interviewed many faces. Many others. Pleas let me know if you would like a list. My full name is Almir Ramic. Please feel free to find out how credible I am, and once you decide that it is worth the risk to have your article challenged by a credible witness and observer with substantial fact database please let me know.
Nice job concluding that I hate Serbs. Judging by the arguments you used to make this accusation, I can then safely conclude that you hate Croats but of course, I will not do that because that would be wrong. Of course I dont't hate them I have many frineds among htem. I do hate what their army under the leadership of war crime fugitives Mladic and Karadzic did to my people, and you know what... I hate that openly, with dignity and sense of responsibility to the wellbeing of humanity. Facsizm and genocide are someting we should all genuinly hate.
Now, to maybe help you understand how dead wrong and ignorant you are with this, I'll point to some patheticly wrong interpretations of your own facts:
"After more than 10 years, the Bosniaks STILL have to have a foreign police force to keep you people from killing each other, in spite of the fact that you have segregated yourselves into pockets of Bosniaks here, Croatians there, and Albanians somewhere else. The Serbs are able to run a country with an ethnic mix, it appears, without a foreign army baby sitting them."
BREAKING NEWS for you: Albanians are not the constitutional people of B-H. It is Bosniaks Serbs and Croats. You are mixing former Yugoslavia and Bosnia-Herzvgovina. The Bosniaks are a nation. Bosnians are referred to as all the peoples living in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I don't even want to ask you to explain then your imagination of who the international police is preventing from killing eachother because you got it all wrong. Fact: International police is patrolling whole of Bosnia, including Serbs and their republic built on genocide, rape and murder.
"The Serbs are able to run a country with an ethnic mix, it appears, without a foreign army baby sitting them."
You probably slept during the NATO raids of Serbian forcess all over Serbia luckily succeeding to stop and revert Milosevices bid to rid Kosovo of Albanians. That was not babysitting, that was a beating. That's waht it took to convince Milosevic that the same tactic of ethnic cleansing was not going to work. These air raids by NATO were also the first time NATO interveened in an internal conflict of a sovereign country. Do you have enough unpoluted brain cells left to connect the dots and revise this pathetically wrong convictitio of Serbs and babysitting? It was this language of force my dear Mary, that Milosevoc understood. It was his defeat by NATO and later political pressure that finally gave the courage to Serbs to forcibly remove him from power after destroying Serbina values and putting a stain on their entire history during the short period of one decade.
This is probably news to you as well: NATO had to bomb Bosnian Serb positions in 1995 in order to stop the war in Bosnia. NATO did not bomb Croat or Bosnaik forces. It bombed Serb forces and kept bombing them untill trhey finally agreed to talks. Why? Because they inherited the remains of JNA in Bosnia and made themselfs more powerful than all other forces in B-H combined including the UN peace keeprs. They then used this force to commit GENOCIDE. Does this word have any meaning to you? Does it ring any bells in your polluted mind that the UN is prosecuting Serb officers for GENOCIDE? Missing 10,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica only, killed by Serb forces triggered the establishment of the International War Crimes Tribunal. It is this institution and these events that brought about the entry of the term "ethnic cleansing" you misery of a writer. Mladic and Karadzic, you ignorant outcast of the journalist community that are this institution's most wanted. It is their derranged officers that are being tried for GENOCIDE. It is the monser creation of Republic of Srpska that they produced by GENOCIDE, MASS GRAVES, ETHNIC CLEANSING, organized RAPE and execution of INTELLECTUALS. All doccumented at the UN. Can your polluted mind even consider to fantasize about the possibility that you are on the wrong side of the moral values of the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Find these facts you misery of a human being and then talk to m e about the Serb ablility to run a multinational state without being babysat. They put FACISM, GENOCIDE and MASS graves back in todays news - something we only thought belonged to WWII THe whole world including Serbs seem to know this except for your polluted twisted mind.
"European Union took over baby sitting the Bosnians." And this includes the entire population of Bosnian Serbs you misery of a writer -- if only you had enought brainpower left to actually see this from your own facts you are laying out here. You even have the wrong picture of maps and where who lives you are WRONG and I can only hope you onde day see your shame.
"However, very few Serbs live in the Sarajevo area." Have the guts you polluted soul to take the figures from each and every municipality in Bosnia-Herzegovina and then see how. To answer you on Sarajevo directly I ask you here now to take a look at your own figures from the same source and tell me where the MAJORITY pre-war Bosniaks (Muslims) are from these municipalities: FOCA, VISEGRAD, SREBRENICA, and many other. YOUR OWN FIGURES if you have the guts to see your own MISTAKES. Also note while you are checking FOCA fror example, that after CLEANSING THE MAJORITY BOSNIAKS that they renamed the city to SRBINJE, you misery, like they did to all other towns that they CLEANSED. Put all municipalities togethe then and see where you are wrong. See how the figures of SARAJEVO fit into this picture. Look into the archives and find the EXODUS of Serbs leaving Sarajevo willingly after Dayton gave the city to the Federation. THey are now back re-claiming their homes all over the city you miserable amateur. If you have any capacity to judge impartially left you will conclude from yiur own figures that their diminished numbers from Sarajevo are mostly of their own will and a direct result of their own goal to establish ethnically clean republic of Srpska within ethnically mixed Bosnia-Herzegovina. Does the name of that monster republic ring any bells in your head? DO you know that the international community is forcing them now to rename the towns they cleansed back to their originals. THey renamed all of those towns to something that contains the word SERB. Can you see obvious logical signs of their FACISM you ignorant idiot. You are still avoiding to answer my question to explain the 155,000 missing Serbs from Sarajevo. I will not let you go away with this untill you prove yourself WRONG with the truth and no redefinition of this argument that you are attempting to do will help you with thsi. I will always sit you back where this started I sent much mroe important UN figures home from Srebrenica when they behaved like you are behaving now. You are a singlehand job for me simply because the TRUTH, INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE and PROPER JUDGEMENT are on my side. All the values you so OBVIOUSLY and ALARMINGLY lack.
"Today those areas, according to the CIA Factbook, the Republic of Srpska, and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina has a 2005 total of 4,025,476 people� which is about 340,000 FEWER people than were there in 1991. According to other sources, 90% of Srpska is Serb and the population of Srpska is 1,391,593."
Analyze this a little further and answer these to me if you have the guts:
- How many of the 340,000 are dead. Out of this number please produce the break down of victims in percentage: Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats. Please come back to me when you collect the courage after you find out?
- Please check all the municipalities now within Republic of Srpska (and I do mean ALL) and check the percentage of Serbs before 1990s war in Bosnia. Then compare the that percentage with todays 90% Serb.
We'll continue discussing these figures after you find out from official and believable sources what those figures are. This is my answer in hopes that you will be able to open your eyes.
"The figures tell me a whole lot more than your made-up stories."
"Let's go on CNN you arrogant disgrace. I'll come with the proof of my stories. You come with the proof that they are made-up." My challenge to go public with all of this still stands.
"There are not enough Serbs left in Sarajevo to be much of a problem."
You hang on to the isolation of demographics of Sarajevo like a little child hanging on to a baloon hoping to lift off. That's pathetic. Any 4-grader who even heard of the word demographics knows that this is not a way to study demographics of a country. There are too few LIVING Bosniaks left in Republic of Srpska for me to give up what's HUMANE and HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT to do: DESCREDIT the idiots like yourself who seek to twist the history for the personal gain of CREDIT. You stepped on the wrong pride - THE PRIDE OF HUMANE, JUST and TRUE. Your enemy in this is your own LIES and not me. I am only offering you THE TRUTH in hopes to heal you from your own DARK AND TWISTED ILLUSIONS.
I am here offering you to come visit me in Canada. I will finance your travel expenses, I will finance your stay for a month. Lets analyze your data and mine together. Let me prove to you just how miserably wrong you are. And I will use your own data. I will also let you meet with surviving families from Srebrenica so they can tell you that every family is still searching for their fathers, brothers and sons all surrendered as civilians to Serb forces then some of them found in mass graves -- others still missing. I encourage you to interview them. I'll show you my UN reports from Srebrenica from before and during the attack. My story is quite an interesting one and is as yet untold. Maybe you will see just how sharp and painful insult you have caused. And maybe we can heal that ignorance by shedding some light on the self deception you've done to yourself. I'll also tell you just how my grandfathers died during Mihajlovic era. I'll connect you to as many witnesses as you'd like from WW2 and 1990s war in Bosnia. Maybe my wife will be willing to tell you some stories of how Serb forces evacuated her from Srebrenica. She went that route herself. Maybe you don't know about the 7 year old girl who was raped by a Serb Soldier who also forced her father to watch and then let them both LIVE. Maybe you have not seen the picture of a self-hanged teenage girl who could not live with the shame of having been raped. Maybe you don't know of doccumented rape camps. Maybe you don't know of the Potocari memorial center where thousands of Bosniaks are being burried. Lets go together there this summenr it is the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica GENOCIDE. Maybe you have not heard of Hasan Nuhanovic, a friend and colleague of mine who lost his entire family (Father, Mother, younger brother) whose only fault was an attemt to negotiate safe evacuation. Look him in Google. Let's go meet him this summer in Sarajevo and tell me and him in our eyes taht our stories are made-up. Maybe you have not yet read how thousands were mass executed byt burning in stables, by putting them in factory halls and throwing grenades into them until they were all dead. Imagine this happening to a thousand at the same time. And then to another 2 thousands. Then imagine that this is all forensically investigated, proven and documented and people are being tried at the hague. I'll connect you to survivirs of mass executions who lead UN forrensics to the eexecution spots and mass graves. I'll also produce doccuments of caves filled with bodies of executed civilians. I';ll tell you how old were the youngest victims of Serb forces creation of Republic of Srpska. I'll tell you of the oldest. Can yiou imagine that in a mass execution forensics found a 48 hour old baby who's parents were also executed there. She was not even named yet. I 'll prove to you that that a 102 yr old Bosniak woman was the oldest registered. She actually died in a prison camp. Then we'll compare this to the 90% Serb population of Republic of Srpska and prewar stats. Maybe you will find a connection between these horror stories the prewar figures of Republic of Srpska and the 90%. Maybe you will be abble to peel-open your eyes and just see how much you owe an apology to Bosniaks for your article and how much you owe it to me from this correspondence. You may also just be able to realize how justly desirving you you are to be called all these names. ANd once you see your dakness I WILL take it all back and accept your apology sincerely and with a sense of a humane achievement.
I can also tell you a wonderful story of how I as a UN employee managed to evacuate a 10 year old boy hit by a Serb forces sniper whose only hope to survive was treatment outside of Srebrenica enclave. I will teach you of a new term A NOBLE LIE. I will tell you where my father is burried and when was the last time I visited his grave. I'll tell you how my mother died. I'l let you talk to my brother so he can show you and tell you in which circumstances he was wounded on his head by a Serb sniper. I'll take you to my niece and the boy who is damaged by a sniper for life in Sarajevo. They were playing together. They were less than 10. The snipers logic was to choose the boy - future soldier. I'll tell you in which appartment a Bosniak died trying to put out the fire in a Serb appartment caused by a Serb tank. Maybe the Serb owner of that appartment will be able to tell you why he left his appartment before the start of the war. Maybe you'll be interested to know how much a killogram of salt was in Srebrenica. How much a cubic meter of burning wood was in Sarajevo during witers under the siege. Maybe you will be interested to talk to people who witnessed deadly quarrels between Bosniaks in Sarajevo -- quarrels about who found a wood splineter first. I'll tell you my diet during the starvation years of Srebrenica and Zepa. I'll tell you how my mother provided food for us. I'll tell you oll the crazy recipees of what you can make bread from. I'll show yoiu my pictures when i weighed under 70kg with the height of 185. I'll tell you how you can survive 2 months of constant diarrhea. I'll tell you under which circumstances I met Dr. Simon Mardel - the WHO surgeon. I think I still have some pictures of his patients from Konjevic Polje. I'll tell you what kind of shoes I had when I decided to join him on his journey. I'll put you in touch with him too so he can explain his state of mind when a father approached us holding two children with both legs blown off by a shell. The father knelt in front of us and cried for help while still shocked children tried to sooth him by telling him that they were not hurt. Dr Mardell will tell you how he used metal saw to amputate crashed limbs of a woman. What he used as anasthetics and how we provided electricity for his makeshift ER. I think he still has the picture of a dead mother to be whose dead baby was forced out of her womb by a shell explosion. Him and I can tell you how we hid undet UN APCs while Serbs shelled the convoy itself trying to deblock it from surrounding civilians who know if the convoy left all would be lost. These and many other wonderful stories from the noble and innocent Republic of Srpska. Real people, real documents, real stories. Credible international witnesses. Pullitzer prize winning international journalists. An ABC journalist with his leg almost lost from a Serb shell. Many other people and documents you will find very interesting. Many other stories, real people real documents.
Please be my guest. Let's organize your visit. I am very excited about this possibilty! I'll let you have all the credit even if you decide to write a book. Then I'll ask you to read your article again and consider whether Draza Mihajlovic is really deserving of the Legion of Merit. Then I'll leave you alone whatever your decision may be.
Let's do this. Please let me know.
Here is my phone number. Let's talk and arrange this: +1 604-866-3125. Are you willing to take the challenge and join me on this journey?
Almir
I responded to that as follows on May 9, 2005 as follows:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 1:29 AM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Now, Almir, why in the world would I want to spend a month, a week or a day in Canada with you? I�ve already told you I simply do not believe what you are saying and, besides, you seem to think that your abusive language is going to somehow make me believe you! How bizarre! It certainly appears to me from your letters that you are desperate to hide something from the world.
According to last Census of the former Yugoslavia, of the 525,9980 people in Sarajevo, the ethnic mix was:
1991
City Inhabitants Croats Muslims/Bosniaks Serbs Others
SARAJEVO 525,980 6.6% 49.3% (259,308) 29.9% (157,268) 14.7%
SREBRENICA 37,211 .1% 72.9% (27,126) 25.2% (9,377) 1.8%
FOCA, 40,513 .3% 51,6% (20,905) 45.3% (18,352) 2.8%
VISEGRAD, (not listed)
2002
SARAJEVO 413,649 7.5% 77.4%(230,000) 12% (35,000)
SREBRENICA, & FOCA statistics not available or conflicting.
Obviously, the Serbs driven out of Sarajevo are NOT back.and the Muslim population has grown to 77.4% from less than 50%.
You wrote: �I will also let you meet with surviving families from Srebrenica so they can tell you that every family is still searching for their fathers, brothers and sons all surrendered as civilians to Serb forces then some of them found in mass graves -- others still missing.� One of the more notorious cases of fabricated data and unverified hearsay masquerading as indisputable fact was the use of "ham radio operator reports" as a basis for coverage. During a number of combat situations (e.g., Srebrenica, Gorazde, Bihac), lacking any other information, these sources with their desperation pleas and messsages of impending doom were passed along by the media essentially unchallenged, the medium itself adding a note of utter emergency. In reality, these reports were largely exaggerated (most often, entirely fabricated) accounts generated by the Muslim Sarajevo government, as has been subsequently proven. So tell me how a city that had a census figure of 27,126 Bosnian Muslims in it in 1991 managed to add almost 100,000 people to it in 4 years time? As for the Albanians not being part of Bosnia-Herzegovina �that is true. They are, however, quite involved in the Kosovo situation which is part of the overall picture of the Balkans.
And, No I didn�t sleep through the NATO bombing of Kosovo. I was writing about it almost daily. You might want to check out what I wrote so you won�t continue to waste your time and mine making silly statements as if you were dealing with an amateur. Your style of e-mail appears to be quite common in Albanian, Bosniak and Croat circles. (see: The Truth Is a Threat to the Spin Doctors and their Friends Or go to my Bosnia-Kosovo page (which also has transcripts of the Milosevic trial � which is in its 4th year � at
I don�t expect you will like that page much since I deal with facts, not made-up stories.
Mary Mostert
Amir�s response was:
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 10:48 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Cc: info@bosniak.org
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
I am offering you DOCUMENTS. I am offering you to talk to JOURNALISTS whose ranking you will never seem to be able to reach because of your obvious siding with a party in the conflict. Finally I am offering you to talk to INTERNATIONALS ranging from psychologists to general who were very much= involved. But of course you did not care to notice this you have already made up your mind to label me a liar. That's very typical of someone who is guilty of the same. I offer PROOF that you are lying and twisting facts. I offer you PROOF that I am telling the TRUTH. And finally I offer you a meeting to analyze FACTS and PROVE how shallow, partial and insulting your research into the matter is. Of course you will refuse. You are afraid that your fake credits might crumble.
To offer me statistics from before the war and say that after-war stats are missing or conflicting -- after I asked you to check and see what happened to prove how wrong you are -- is lower than I have ever seen from anyone and you claim to be a writer. You are still hanging on to isolation of Sarajevo figures. Then ignoring everything else in Bosnia and Herzegovina and jumping to Kosovo and Croatia. Pathetic, Ignorant, Transparent. Don't you see how deserving you are of the names I called you? Don't you see just how exactly they mach your style? How shameful and childishly transparent your flight from the truth is?
To say that I am trying to resurrect THE MYTH OF SREBRENICA shows me and anyone who will read this correspondence just how ignorant you are when it comes to actually knowing what happened. About 10,000 Srebrenicans are REGISTERED missing. Srebrenica is RECOGNIZED BY THE UN to be Europe's worst massacre since WW2. Srebrenica massacre brought the first indictment and conviction at the International Tribunal for War Crimes for GENOCIDE. I worked for UN at that time. I can give you exact figures of Srebrenica population. Do you want them broken down by age group or sex? Or are you going to try and brush me off again as a liar as you are trying to do so typically of someone who is afraid of the truth and starting to realize own delusions?
I already explained to you how Sarajevo came to where it is now with demographics. Why are you asking again? Generally, Serbs left just before the conflict and left after Dayton. Then Bosniak survivors mainly from massacres in Eastern Bosnia came as refugees and stayed there. Stayed because they cannot go back to a burnt village in Visegrad, because no one ca guarantee they security and because incidents of provocation, attacks and even deaths have been recorded. But you will not see this as truth until you have the guts and actually study the census before and after and I believe that much gut you will never be able to collect because you have already decided to side with Chetniks and try to victimize them. Too bad for your credit that you are trying to vast majority of the World including the UN that the facts of Bosnian Serb Army's massacres of Bosniaks are somehow made up stories, and that they are the ones that should be considered victims. And to what end? So that you can defend your way of keeping alive in the writing community by being controversial and opinionated? It is one thing to do this in a country where politics don't mean death and suffering. Quite another where it does. You were supposed to approach this matter first and foremost with respect toward the dignity and sorrow of everyone who is still grieving their losses in the sad reality of Bosnian bloodshed.
Here is some material for you, if you have the guts to even open them.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/cryfromthegrave/
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/675945.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3799937.stm
In the latest admission of guilt by Serb officials from Republic of Srpska over 800 Serbs from all segments of population are implicated.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/intljustice/tribunals/yugo/2003/1205siege.htm
These are just some links. So you may ask your self whether you are insultingly wrong by calling Srebrenica a MYTH.
Amateur you are not. Even amateur journalism requires truth and impartiality. You don't seem to be capable or willing of that. I apologize. It was wrong of me to give you that compliment. You still have growing up to do to deserve it.
Now that you have refused to meet and let me show you how wrong you are with facts, proof and credible witnesses. Now that you have refused public challenge by simply trying to brush me off as a liar myself -- hoping this correspondence will stay between you and me and the Congress of North American Bosniaks. Now that I have seen absolutely no journalistic interest in hearing the other side of your subject -- not even curiosity. I came to you as a very serious challenge with quite heavy accusations and claims and all you did the whole time is try to brush me off and label me a liar. This WILL go public whether you want it or not. You will be judged and I hope TRUTH will set you free some day. Unfortunately your lack of will to even consider that you might be wrong by pointing at your own misinterpretation of your own figures forces me to conclude that you are hopeless, so I will not spend much more time trying. At least not in this manner.
Almir
My Response to that was:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 9:48 PM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Almir,
You can�t be serious. What empirical evidence would some psychologist have? Not only eye witness accounts testified that Serbs were driven out of Krajina, and those that were too old or ill to run were simply killed, but the STATISTICS verify that the Serbs simply are not IN Croatia. They also are not in Sarajevo. What FACTS does a psychologist have who wasn�t even present when the battle between the Serb and the Bosnian armies took place in Srebrenica? Now you are saying there are 10,000 Srebrenicans (out of a 1991 population of 37,211) that are missing. Have you counted the 3000 supposedly missing and dead Srebrenicans who voted in the October 1997 election in Srebrenica? (Christiane Amanpour, a Muslim, reported on that election � but did not mention that the Muslims won the election with the help of 3000 people who are missing or dead.) The facts do speak for themselves.
So far as the �conviction� on this issue at International Tribunal for War Crimes � I�ve read a lot of the transcripts of the Tribunal. From the questions asked by the judges, it appears that they halted questioning and answers of witnesses if the witness began casting any doubt on the �genocide� claim. Many of those witnesses were medical or Red Cross personnel � and neither Serb nor Bosniac. Some were French. Those witnesses told such a radically difference story about Srebrenica than you are telling that it is quite obvious there is not, and may never be, agreement between the contending parties as to what happened in 1995 in Srebrenica. The killing of the minority Serbs that predated the situation in 1995 in Srebrenica is, strangely, not even MENTIONED.
You list BBC and PBS as sources of TRUTH? Which of their many conflicting stories is true and which are false? The fact is � the current situation in Sarajevo, Kosovo, Bosnia, Albania � speaks volumes. And, the resignation of Kosovo�s Albanian Prime Minister Ramush Hardinaj in March of this year, after he was indicted on 17 counts of crimes against humanity, including murder and rape, and 20 counts of war crimes � appears to indicate that the one-sided approach of blaming everything on the Serbs may well be coming to an end in President Bush�s second term.
It is about time. In 1995 the Muslim soldiers in Srebrenica � consisting of Muslim men IN Srebrenica were attacked by the Serb Army. The claim was that 8,000 of those Muslim men fled Srebrenica � and/or they were killed by the Serbs. The issue was � the UN had declared it a safe haven � but the killings of Serbs that had been taking place indicated SOMEONE was not observing the UN rule. No action was taken by the UN when it was minority Serbs being killed � but when armed Muslim soldiers were killed � somehow it was a �massacre.� Perhaps if the Muslims had been stopped from killing Serbs in 1992 whatever happened in 1994-5 would not have happened.
And, it is still happening, of course. As the story below in the Prague Post indicates:
KFOR soldiers defend Serb enclaves against attacks by Albanians
"Albanians smashed everything inside, including our communications center, made a big pile in front and set it on fire. Then they turned their attention to the adjacent Serb cemetery. They knocked over tombstones, dug up the coffins and scattered the bones in them", says Czech captain Jindrich Plescher - "I have never seen anything like it"
By Eva Munk
For The Prague Post
(March 25, 2004)
Captain Jindrich Plescher had never seen anything like it.
"We were defending a Serb Orthodox church in the town of Podujevo against a mob of 500 Albanians, but there were too many for us," he recalled. "When they broke through the wall [around the church], we got orders to retreat.
"They smashed everything inside, including our communications center, made a big pile in front and set it on fire. Then they turned their attention to the adjacent Serb cemetery. They knocked over tombstones, dug up the coffins and scattered the bones in them."
For the first time March 21, the professionally optimistic voice of Plescher, press spokesman for the Czech-Slovak KFOR battalion in Kosovo, sounded tired.
"Sorry, we've been on our feet since last week," he said. "Our boys have been rounding up Serb families, pulling them out of cellars and out of burning houses -- saving their lives."
Czech and Slovak soldiers have been supporting KFOR's Brigade center -- a multinational unit consisting of Finnish, Swedish and Irish troops, located around the administrative center of Pristina -- since mobs of ethnic Albanians went on a rampage against Kosovo's Serb minority March 17.
"The Serbs are very happy to see Czech and Slovak troops. They see us as keepers of the peace," Plescher said.
For most of the week, they helped defend Serb enclaves in the towns of Lipljan, Plemetina, Babin Most, Caglavica and Gracanica. By March 21 they had consolidated around the village of Obili�, a Serb enclave northwest of Pristina, and were evacuating the remaining Serb inhabitants to military headquarters in the city. The Serb homes in the village were ransacked and burned, said unit commander Josef Kopecky. Albanian rage
In times of peace, the 500-strong Fourth Czech-Slovak KFOR battalion keeps the peace in an area of 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) in the northeast corner of the province, including 104 kilometers (65 miles) of borderland and a long stretch of the Belgrade-Pristina highway. The area was expanded by 179 square kilometers March 22 to include more ethnically mixed villages.
Now their mission is simply to protect Serbs from enraged mobs of ethnic Albanians.
"The residents have gone to war with each other using whatever they can -- iron bars, rifles, handguns and even grenades," Kopecky said March 19. "In Serbian enclaves, Kosovo Albanians are destroying property, burning houses, chasing people away and even lynching them. The Serbs are trying to defend themselves and we are trying to keep them apart."
No Czech or Slovak soldiers have been hurt, except for one Slovak who was hit on the head with a rock, Plescher said. "He was up on his feet again the next day. Please, please tell everyone back home that all our boys are alive and well."
The Czech government had planned to withdraw 100 troops from Kosovo by May 1. But the performance of the Czech soldiers in quelling the riots has made the government change its mind about downsizing the force in the province, Czech Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla told reporters.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can�t fool all of the people all of the time. And a lot of people besides me are beginning to wonder why it the world we put up with the whining, lying, murders and drug dealing so rampant among Bosnia and Albanian Muslims.
Mary Mostert
Amir responded to that with:
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Monday, May 09, 2005 12:48 PM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: THE MYTH OF SREBRENICA
Hey Mary,
Look how good we are at resurrecting the myth of Srebrenica: http://www.gva.be/dossiers/-b/balkan/img/srebrenica.jpg
That's a pile of our bodies we planted there.
http://www.gfbv.de/images/aktion/srebrenica.jpg These mothers are all lying that they used to have husbands, sons and brothers and that they are now missing.
http://www.ohr.int/ohr-info/photos/images/2sep20hr-srebrenica03b.jpg We managed to convince the world and international forensics that we are burying real bodies here. We even fooled them into verifying their identity before burial. All fake.
http://www.amnesty.org/images/resources/bosnia/destroyed_mosque.jpg That's a mosque in Srebrenica. We destroyed it after Serbs took over Srebrenica and lied it was them who did it.
http://www2.rnw.nl/assets/images/srebrenica.jpg It says "Srebrenica. Father, where are you." Our acting even at this age is impeccable.
http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,407146,00.jpg That's not a pile of bones.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://image.pathfinder.com/time/europe/photoessays/srebrenica/images/sreb1_02.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.time.com/time/europe/photoessays/srebrenica/&h=437&w=308&sz=30&tbnid=DvO21zEXKtwJ:&tbnh=122&tbnw=86&hl=en&start=77&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsrebrenica%26start%3D60%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en%26sa%3DN What a fake sob story.
http://images.sarajevo-x.com/temp/noz_zica_srebrenica.jpg These caskets are not filled with identified remains of real people.
http://adamjones.freeservers.com/srebsmal.jpg This is not a CBC screenshot and these captive men guided by Serbs are not mostly missing 10 years on. I, as a UN employee was not standing a 100 meters from this location watching helplessly and saying goodbye to some of my friends I've never seen again, All made up.
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2003/04/01/wsreb01.jpeg We wanted the world to believe that this was a mass burial, so we all acted as one.
http://www.bosnaprkosnaodsna.mine.nu/Srebrenica2004/dzenaza/photo4.jpg No this is not a mass burial of exhumed and identified remains.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.bosnaprkosnaodsna.mine.nu/Srebrenica2004/dzenaza/photo4.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.bosnaprkosnaodsna.mine.nu/Srebrenici2004slike.htm&h=201&w=300&sz=22&tbnid=4O2ESOmY9VsJ:&tbnh=74&tbnw=110&hl=en&start=145&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsrebrenica%26start%3D140%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en%26sa%3DN In fact all of these are probably fake.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/srebrenica.jpg Our acting would make Hollywood jealous.
http://www.sandomenico.org/media/sp/Bosnia/Ian_Sethre_0711_Srebrenica_Crowd.jpg These fake mass burials are happening every year. This July will be 10th anniversary of this alleged massacre. You should come and prove the lie once and for all. I'll pay your your return ticked and stay for 7 days.
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.hdlskl.hr/Srebrenica/Untitled_Page10_B.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.hdlskl.hr/Srebrenica/Srebrenica5.html&h=556&w=694&sz=79&tbnid=13lACws8CcwJ:&tbnh=109&tbnw=136&hl=en&start=184&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsrebrenica%26start%3D180%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26rls%3DGGLC,GGLC:1969-53,GGLC:en%26sa%3DN No, those are not racks filled with human remains of Srebrenicans waiting to be identified.
http://www.notes.co.il/karny/user/Srebrenica_bodies.jpg Now this can't be real.
http://scholieren.nrc.nl/weekkrant/2002/16/1.jpg No, these kids are probably waiting for candy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/graphics/2002/09/28/wmilo28.jpeg That's probably shopping list, not a list of missing.
http://www.dfi.dk/dfi/english/shortfilms/stills/war300.jpg This Dutch soldier who was at Srebrenica when it allegedly happened is not crying while testifying at the Hague.
I'll send you more. You have to help Chetniks fight these lies.
Oh, my father did not die in Russia after his attempts to return to Bosnia were denied by Yugoslavia. It is not true that I am still collecting resources to transfer him to Bosnia. Not true that I have not visited his grave since he died.
It is not true that Draza's chetniks took both my grandfathers away, killed and buried them together with others in a mass execution that happened to each Bosniak village in Visegrad. It is not true that my wife's grandmother watched her entire village killed and burned while she as a little girl hid in nearby bush. It is also not true that the way this village was kept from fleeing the knife by a civilian Serb who came to announce that a Chetnik unit was coming just to check up on them. It is not true that they were all killed by throat cutting. It is not true that my wife's grandmother can't sleep because she still hears the screams.
No Draza's chetniks were noble freedom fighters. You should sleep very well knowing you are defending this noble man.
It is not true that in Zepa we caught a floating body of a woman who was naked, half burnt, her tongue tied to a string pulled through knife holes on her breasts, tying her hands on the other end. Not true that this is documented.
Go ahead pin the award on Draza and sleep well tonight. He was a good guy. We are fakes.
Almir
I responded with:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 1:03 AM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: THE MYTH OF SREBRENICA
Almir,
The fact is � these men were fighting in a civil war. I note that you have not shown the pictures of the Serb dead � and beheaded by the Muslims. And, the hard fact remains that TODAY there are more Serbian Refugees who have lost their homes and loved ones than there are Muslims.
The myth of Srebrenica is � it was not a massacre. It was a battle that the Serbs won � in spite of a losses on their side.too.
And, when you compare it with the 1.5 million Serbs slaughtered in World War II by the Bosnians and Croatians � the deaths at Srebrenica in battle are tiny. Even if ALL 27,000 Muslims had died.
And, by the way, I just discovered that Mihailovich was given a Legion of Honor many years ago � but it was kept secret to avoid upsetting the Communists running Yugoslavia at the time.
As for bodies:
B92, February 17, 2004
New data on Serb victims in Croatia
BANJA LUKA -- The Veritas Documentation Centre has released information showing that a total of 6,780 Serbs were killed or went missing in Croatia and the former Republic of Srpska Krajina.
Of that total, 2,805 Serbian nationals are still listed as missing, of whom 603 are believed to have been buried and another 479 known to be dead, said Veritas director Savo Strbac.
Strbac said today that about five hundred Serb bodies had been exhumed in the former Serb republic in Croatia, of which about two hundred have been identified. He added that there are another 350 unidentified Serb bodies in Zagreb.
"Veritas has information that there are about a thousand registered graves in the former Republic of Srpska Krajina of Serb victims who died in the military operations Flash and Storm," he said, adding that he hoped that international pressure would lead to Croatia beginning exhumations in the spring.
"The Croatian authorities moved Serb bodies. There�s a well-known case of eighteen bodies of Serbs having been moved from Paulin Dvor to Razvanusa in 1991 and the 1993 Pakrac Valley case, where Hague Tribunal investigators found empty graves," said Strbac.
Veritas director Savo Strbac said that the missing Serbs were categorised as "ordinary disappearances".
Is the KLA's and Clinton's "Final Solution" Near in Kosovo to Rid the Area of Serbs?
Only Kofi Annan Opposes Clinton's and the KLA's "Final Solution" For Serbs in Kosovo
By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
October 18, 1999
I should have known that there had been a news item I missed when Ralph wrote me another scathing e-mail Saturday, which didn't seem to be connected with anything I had written, which said: Hitler and his Nazis believed in the BIG LIE. In other words make up some preposterous tale and repeat it again and again until some people believed it. Apparently Milosevic and his Serbs also believe in the BIG LIE. Your repetitions of these lies are helping him. You should be ashamed and hopefully you will be punished. Your web site is full of incorrect information designed to mislead people.
Then a reader sent me a clipping from the New York Times, which had been published last Wednesday which said:
No Bodies at Rumored Grave Site in Kosovo
By REUTERS
PRISTINA, Kosovo -- War crimes investigators have found nothing in a Kosovo mine shaft where hundreds of bodies were rumored to be hidden, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has said. "They found absolutely nothing," a tribunal spokeswoman, Kelly Moore, said on Monday.
Rumors that Serbian forces had hidden the bodies of up to 700 ethnic Albanians in the Trebca lead and zinc mine, near the northern city of Mitrovica, had been circulating for months. Tribunal experts had brought in special excavation equipment to investigate the rumors, which had been widely reported in the Kosovo media.
The Hague-based tribunal has indicted President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia and four other senior Yugoslav and Serbian officials on war crimes charges stemming from the Serbian campaign of violence against Kosovo Albanians earlier this year.
Forensic scientists with the tribunal have investigated more than 150 mass grave sites across the Serbian province in the last few months and have hundreds more suspected sites to examine.
This followed on the heels of the report on September 28th from Spain issued by the group of Spanish forensic experts who had been given the Istok area which, they were told by NATO, was "one of the worst sites of mass killings by the Serbs." NATO informed the Spanish forensic experts that "there were over 2000 dead Albanians" slaughtered by the evil Serbs in the area. Istok contains a prison where a group of convicted felons were housed. "Crimes of War - yes, Genocide - no," the report states. "This was definitely shown yesterday by the group of Spanish experts formed by officials from the Scientific Police and Civilian Forensics that has just returned from Istok, the Zone in the North of Kosovo. 187 cadavers found and analyzed in 9 villages were buried in individual graves, oriented for the most part toward Mecca out of respect for the religious beliefs of the Albanian Kosovars and without sign of torture. 'There were no mass graves. For the most part the Serbs are not as bad as they have been painted,' reflected the forensic official Emilio P�rez Pujo." Furthermore, most of the prisoners had been killed by shrapnel when NATO bombed the prison. Others were shot while fleeing the prison after the bombing.
On September 22nd, Ralph had written me an e-mail to tell me how inaccurate my writing is, because I had consistently questioned NATO figures, which they appear to have gotten from the KLA. Ralph wrote: Like the Nazis the Serbs today are engaging in horrible atrocities against many innocent peoples.
There was a large scale effort by the Serbs in Kosovo to hide their crimes and their victims bodies
1) ie. they were dug up, burned, reburied in garbage dumps etc.)
2) Many mass graves of Serbian victims have already been uncovered. and
3) There are (many more than) 100,000 Kosovars missing.
While many Serbs have been killed in Kosovo since the NATO takeover, this is not NATO's fault. The resident ethnic Albanians are seizing every opportunity to revenge themselves upon their oppressors. NATO troops are daily risking their lives to PROTECT the Serbian population. It would help greatly if the Serbian population acknowledged their guilt, repented and punished their war criminals themselves. Treating war criminals as heroes and appointing them to leadership positions generates additional hatred towards the Serbian people from their victims. As long as the ethnic Albanians, the Croats, the Bosnian Muslims etc. do not get justice from the Serbian people, these Serbian people will be subject to revenge atrocities.
So, here we are, three weeks later, and one by one all the big "mass graves" sites which were supposedly the location of the bodies of some of those supposedly missing 100,000 Kosovars are turning up either totally empty or with a few bodies that could easily be explained by the NATO bombs or the ground war that was going on between the KLA and the Yugoslav Army. And we still have not been given ANY numbers of deaths from the ground war, except by Milosevic who said 476 Yugoslav soldiers had been killed in the war - something over 300 of them by the KLA and the remaining by the NATO bombs. Remember Jamie Shea claimed during the bombing that NATO had killed 10,000 Yugoslav soldiers in their stated aim to "degrade" the Yugoslav military. Apparently that 10,000 was actually less than 200.
Most of the Kosovo minorities have fled - including not only 175,000 Serbs, but, according to reports from Albanian opposition parties, up to 150,000 ALBANIANS who oppose the KLA, plus the Gypsies, the Jews, the Gorans, the Egyptians, the Montenegrins and the Turks. Increasingly, Kosovo is inhabited mostly by Albanians and KFOR troops, and there are about 800,000 MORE Albanians now than in 1998. The State Department said there were 1.3 Million Albanians in Kosovo in 1998. Today, they claim, there are 2.1 million Albanians in Kosovo. If, as it increasingly appears, all those massacre horror stories the KLA told gullible journalists, NATO and UN officials turn out to be false, it will be increasingly obvious to the rest of the world that NATO used its massive military power to destroy a sovereign nation and then took part of its land and handed it over to a non-government group of criminals known as the KLA, which in 1998 was designated even by the Clinton State Department as a terrorist organization financed through crime - illegal drugs, prostitution, robbery, etc.
On March 25th, less than 24 hours into the bombing of Yugoslavia, I wrote in a column entitled, "Kosovo - Clinton Propaganda vs Eye Witness E-mail War Correspondents" (http://originalsources.com/OS3-99MQC/3-25-1999.1.shtml). I noted, in that column that "This is the first war that is being reported by on the spot eye witnesses sending e-mail around the world to friends and family, not merely by reporters who faithfully follow the political direction given by government leaders - whether that leader is Bill Clinton or Slobadan Milosevic." Clinton ordering the bombing of Serb television and trying to halt all e-mail coming out of Yugoslavia was not entirely successful. The e-mail kept coming and has chronicled the Kosovo war in thousands of separate accounts by ordinary people, some of them Americans married to Serbs, who were under those bombs. Even that early I was questioning the rationale for the bombing, the so-called "Serb atrocities" which had never been documented and which are not being documented now. We don't HAVE bodies, as we did at the end of World War II when Allied forces took control of Nazi concentration camps. I ended that column with:
Accusations by Muslims and Croatians of Serb "atrocities" have been widely reported with some newspapers, like the Los Angeles Times, publishing 8000 anti-Serb articles compared to Zero "pro-Serb" articles. That kind of imbalance alone is suspicious.
When a possible worldwide conflagration is at risk, the truth needs to be known. And, when the truth is tracked down, and we find that the KLA, a largely mercenary army that hired its own PR firm in Washington, possesses the most up-to-date weaponry and has technical advisors for training in their use, is being financed with money made from selling heroin all over Europe, the matter takes on a truly sinister nature. Milosevic is stubborn and nationalistic but he IS the legitimate elected head of State for Yugoslavia. If he needs to be removed, the people of Yugoslavia need to do the removing, not the President of the United States directing missile shots from 10,000 miles away. And, if the choice is between stubborn and nationalistic Milosevic or unknown, unnamed drug lords who run a mercenary army with a New York Public Relations firm and Washington Lobbyists as its propaganda arm - I think I'll choose Milosevic. We don't need another nation which has a government controlled by drug dealers.
The natural result of putting a group of drug dealers with their own army in charge of Kosovo is what now exists there - corruption and violence. Even the rabidly pro-KLA London Telegraph is beginning to see a few problems. In Sunday's paper it reported:
And as ethnic hatred continues to plague the territory, fresh violence erupted in the divided city of Mitrovica when French troops fired tear gas and clubbed young Albanians who tried to storm across a bridge into the Serb quarter during several hours of rioting. The events in the two towns illustrate how the defense of the remaining Serb pockets in Kosovo is the biggest dilemma facing the international peacekeepers of Kfor. For although Tony Blair and President Clinton insisted that the air war was intended to forge a safe and multi-ethnic Kosovo, the reality is very different. More than three-quarters of Kosovo's 200,000 Serbs have fled. And while United Nations officials consider plans to create "safe havens" for those still there, such de facto areas already exist under Kfor's auspices.
It then repeats KLA propaganda about the area of Veliko Krusa being the: "scene of one of the conflict's biggest massacres and one of the war crimes listed in the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav President. That gives the role of ethnic cleansers still at large in Orahovac particular significance. "Some of those responsible for the killings are in jail, but others are still up there," Lt-Col Tony van Loon said. "We are creating a database of possible war criminals based on the testimony of local witnesses. There are some Albanians, but the big majority are Serbs."
Of course, all that is lacking to indict the Serbs is evidence. Not hearsay. Evidence, like the dead bodies of those 100,000 the KLA claim the Serbs killed. At least the Serbs produce the bodies, and the NAMES of the people when the Albanians kill Serbs. So far, there are more Serb bodies than Albanian bodies. Finally the Telegraph verifies what the Serb media has been saying for months. The Serbs remaining in the area are in real danger:
As it is too dangerous for them to venture down the hill to the shops, they now rely on food supplies delivered by charities and the Red Cross. From what was once a small grocery, boxes of milk, flour, biscuits and canned meat are handed out to keep people going. Nor can they bury their dead in the Orthodox cemetery as that lies outside the enclave. Instead, a small plot of land behind the church has been turned into a makeshift graveyard for the Serbs who have died recently - some naturally; others in revenge killings by Albanians. ...But elsewhere, Kosovo is fast becoming a Serb-free territory and ethnic enmity shows no sign of easing. On Pristina's main throughfare, Mother Teresa Street, a Bulgarian UN worker was shot dead by a group of Albanian thugs last week. His crime was to have answered in Serbian when asked the time.
Folks, the skepticism I had before and during the bombing about believing the stories of drug dealers and criminals, and their accomplice in the White House who will go down in history as a president who lied even to a grand jury, is being borne out by what is happening now in Kosovo. Americans were propagandized by liars - Bill Clinton and the KLA, - just as effectively as the Germans were propagandized by Hitler. Just as no major national leader, not even Franklin Delano Roosevelt, stood up to defend Hitler's victims, it seems today's leaders are just as cowardly about defending the Serbs against an ongoing "final solution." Only Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General, seems to be speaking up in protest against Clinton's and the KLA's "Final Solution" in Kosovo.
Is this how America will end the 20th Century? Not even OBJECTING to another holocaust experience for Serbs who lost 1.7 million to the Nazi forces of Croatia, Bosnia and Albania in World War II?
Amir�s reply to this was:
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 1:38 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Your invention of armed Muslim men killed by Serbs is based on captured civilians who decided to surrender. The armed men and skeptics or the ones who considered themselves in the Bosnian army fled through forests. Some were captured some made it alive. As a UN employee together with UNPROFOR, UNHCR and MSN I escorted and even helped organize the evacuation. The evacuation of these unarmed men included separation from women and children as soon as they exited the compound. Taken to places we are now exhuming them from. This is very well documented by various sources. The picture you are seeing is only one of the angles from where separation of men can be seen. Your pathetically unfounded claim that they are armed is another blatant lie.
I am speaking of witnesses and am not offering them as a source of empirical evidence. Of course you know that. You are trying to change the context in which I said that. Oh I've seen these cheap tricks many times before. I am showing you reports of large and respected news houses not as evidence but as an attempt to make you, a freelance columnist, see where you are in the media World.
To speak of any of Srebrenica related issue which you are so ferociously trying to dismiss as a hoax is completely pointless, of course, it only shows how unethical, ignorant and misinformed your entire article is. It is starting to be repetitive to try and shed some light on your darkness that based on exhumed bodies, registry of missing people, DNA identification, ADMITION by SERB officials, CONVICTION of SERB officers at the UN tribunal, ADMISSION of accused SERB officers Srebrenica was a genocide: a deliberate and organized act of extermination of civilians and captives based on their nationality and religion, etc. That's a FACT and you are now starting to attempt to deny it in the name of factually tried and convicted war criminal from WW2. You are deliberately siding with Karadzic and Mladic -- two of Europe's and UN's few most wanted -- wanted for charges of genocide, crime against humanity and customs of war. That's your choice, and even though I proved your lies and fact-twisting, you continue to fight by masking my deconstruction of your case by repeating yourself even using the same statements that I already showed to you as lies, deception and fact-twisting. You are caught in a moment of pride. That's normal human behavior: pride is the fuel of ignorance.
You are still hanging on to isolation of Sarajevo demographics. Oh Mary, do you think about the readers of this conversation and how pathetic they will find you after I elaborated why your Sarajevo case is a transparent attempt at deception?
Srebrenica's population of 45,000 between 1993 and 1995 was amassed from refugees fleeing Serb Army slaughters and village burning from surrounding municipalities of Rogatica, Bratunac, Zvornink, etc. Your attempt to show me figures from 1991 before the beginning of the war, shows me how you have not even an idea of how the war went on. But of course, I am not being fair to you. I know much more because I WAS THERE. I worked together with UNHCR, MSF and UNPROFOR on making our independent count to prevent locals from manipulating numbers. Oh Mary, your pride is your blindness.
Don't educate me about minority Serbs in Srebrenica. With MSF, ICRC and UNHCR I interviewed registered and helped relocate some of them for security concerns.
1992 was when all the Bosniak (Muslim) villages in Visegrad were burned and thousands killed. 1992 is when we documented floating bodies on Drina. 1992 is when Bosnian government army struggled to create a structure and collect any weapons they could find and capture from Serbs while Bosnian Serb Army received more than any army can ask for from Yugoslav national army which melted together with Yugoslavia and in Bosnia quickly became Bosnian Serb Army. 1992 is when I fled Visegrad. 1992 is when I had to leave Zepa again in search of food. 1992 is when I ate bread from milled corn cobs. 1992 is when my mother begged for food doing 45 km at a time on foot. 1992 is when I watched in horror hungry dogs eating a dog that just died from starvation. 1992 is when a kilogram of salt costed about $100 in Srebrenica. Please save your self from trying to educate me about 1992. I lived 1992 and all you CAN REALLY do in your pride-fueled ignorance is call all of my experiences lies even after you have been offered proof. How pathetic is that?
But, to go back to the beginning of this and try and approach your sad case from a different angle -- in hopes you will understand your insult:
I am a great admirer of everything American. I support the war in Iraq and its struggle to do us all a favor and rid us of terrorism. Having experienced what I have, I came to truly appreciate freedom democracy and rule of law. I truly see America as a beacon of freedom -- maybe with a better understanding of the meaning of it than many Americans. You are a Republican and I respect that. I am absolutely in awe of how much interest ordinary Americans take in their own politics. So I do not want to be taken wrong when I say that I appreciated that US government under Clinton back then decided to give a damn and stop tolerating the Bosnian ongoing tragedy.
I am going to try and give you a little bit of perspective in very rough outlines as we don't want go forever with this. The opinion on the war in Bosnia was dominated by Western Europe until US/NATO decided to intervene. But before that Europeans were locked in a dilemma between islamofobia and the sense of responsibility to act before ongoing massacres which happened to all involved but factually in vast majority to Bosniaks as ethnic cleansing was - as established today -- Bosnian Serb Army's strategy and means. Even though I am on the victim side, I do understand the fear of Islam but I do blame Europeans for failing to understand that Bosnian Muslims are the very westernized example Islam that they strive to support an hope the Middle East will one day embrace. If they had known this -- their voters that is -- they would have acted sooner and help prevent bloodshed on all sides. If it had not been for the US decision to get involved the poor Bosnian government defense would have crumbled and the massacre of Bosniaks would have been much greater and I probably would not be alive today. Because our struggle to maintain already poor defense was hampered by numerous factors out of our control. This is why I still refuse to give up on you -- an American -- who by will or not has made a mistake of twisting the Bosniak tragedy into moral support for a WW2 criminal.
About Draza and the context of WW2. I will never deny that Draza helped Americans as you describe. This is probably true. But your mistake here starts from failing to observe Draza Mihajlovic in the context of reality at that time. Draza's Chetniks were a local force with their own local agenda -- specifically they struggled to expand Serbia's territory by conquering new lands and cleansing it of non -Serbs. The history of my moral obligation to attempt and point to where you are wrong lies right here -- my people are the victims of this Draza's doctrine. Now, every local force at that time sided with someone and/or was supported by a greater force. This was based on mutual interests, affinity or plain siding with the stronger. Draza's choice to help Americans at that time is logical, although the gamble was great so it did not come without hesitation. To maybe give you a comparison, you should go rent Rambo II and analyze the state of mind of Americans during the cold war. In addition to this I am sure you know that American government were friends with the mujahadeen in Afghanistan. Americans knew they were ultra radical, but hey, anything to throw at Russia. Do you think you would find a lot of support for an attempt to pin a medal on one of those mujahadeen now? I doubt it. That's, of course, because times have changed and the products of the same unltraradicals are causing trouble to America and all of us.
The case of Draza is quite similar. After the brief touch with Americans Draza continued with his bloody agenda (I am from eastern Bosnia where we suffered his agenda the most) and never really established a firm connection. Your case for his award starts with this brief touch. If you isolate this event, of course he must be judged deserving of it. But, the fact that his local agenda was very bloody and that someone tried and convicted him of war crimes adds complexity to your case and puts it on the international judgment board. For me personally, it is a moral reflex to try and prevent it because of my experiences and appreciation for American values. You on the other hand have to ask yourself, being politically active, how much politically motivated your case is and how the US army's bottom-line value of the event involving Draza balances with the local an international reality of Draza's war track record. Ultimately your own order of moral priorities will be the judge, and my role here is to try and point to you where your connection with the recent events is factually and morally wrong from the perspective of the person who's family tree was trimmed and whipped around by Draza Mihajlovic's, Radovan Karadzic's and Ratko Mladic's war strategy of ethnic cleansing.
In order to support your case you are trying against all my attempts at helping you rationalize your own and facts you did not know, to victimize this hopefully brief part of Serb history that brushed with such ideologies as fascism. I am morally and humanely responsible and justified to help you realize at least the complexity of this matter. And stubbornly hope that one day you may understand the moral aspect of this complexity maybe -- just maybe, if you can keep an open mind -- carrying the weight of hundreds of thousands of dead Bosniaks alone.
You can try to brush me away, but if I am even successful at maintaining a corner in the back of your mind, I will at least prevent you from saying at the final judgment that you were never offered an exit from your ignorance.
Sleep well.
>I replied as follows:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 11:31 AM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Amir,
Well, so at last you admit the Bosnian army WAS in Srebrenica! I can only laugh. That, exactly, is one of the major points. The Bosnian Army was in a City designated as a UN HAVEN � and using the protection of that status to kill Serbs! When the Serbs attacked, as you point out �The armed men and skeptics or the ones who considered themselves in the Bosnian army fled through forests.�
And, yes, the Serbs DID separate the men from the women and children and send them, by bus, to other areas. The argument is what happened next. The Serb Army did pursue the cowardly Bosnian men who abandoned their wives and children to save their own skins by fleeing. Now, if you object to that characterization of the cowardly Bosnian men leaving their wives and children to the mercies of the Serbs � whom you claim are such monsters � what DOES that say about them as men? Did they flee leaving their wives and children to be raped and slaughtered by the evil Serbs � or did they actually know their wives and children would not be raped and slaughtered and fled to fight another day? The women and the children did not die. From your figures, apparently the town of Srebrenica had doubled in size from the census in 1991 to the capture of Srebrenica by the Serbs in 1995. So � they DIDN�T belong in Srebrenica, did they?
Either way you choose � the so-called �massacre� in Srebrenica where supposedly thousands of men who fled the city � was in fact a situation when men - with their weapons � were killed or disappeared. At least 3000 of those men came back and voted in the 1997 election, according to independent observers. So, they were not dead. Or, else someone was voting illegally in their names, if they were dead. Either way � there is something wrong with the story.
Obviously, you agree that armed men fled through the forests when the Serbs attacked them. What is not agreed on is what exactly happened next.
In the experiences the world has had with Muslim terrorists SINCE that event � the story is rapidly beginning to look very different to a lot of Americans who are beginning to learn about our own experiences in the Balkans in World War II � when the Bosnians were on the side of the Germans � and the Serbs were saving hundreds of our downed fighter pilots from being captures and killed.
Frankly, it is beginning to look different even to me. I simply could not comprehend WHY Bill Clinton was allowed to get away with bombing Belgrade to preserve and protect the KLA which had been on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations for YEARS. Now I realize that by allowing the arms from Sudanese and Iranian �fundamentalist Muslims� through the UN Arms Boycott back in his first Administration, Clinton gave Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network the boost needed to perfect a worldwide terrorist organization that led to the destruction and the deaths when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was bombed on September 11, 2001. I wrote about this drug-terrorism link in 1996 and in numerous articles since then. In 2002 I wrote about it when President Bush brought up the link � see http://www.bannerofliberty.com/BOL1-02MQC/2-20-2002.1.html And, of course others have written about it � see: http://www.stoptheftaa.org/artman/publish/article_83.shtml
As for your charge of �islamphobia� that is simply an effort to stop me and other writers from criticizing the Fundamentalist Muslim terrorists � both in Kosovo, and since 9/11, and as a means of blocking President Bush�s foreign policy. I have a copy of the Koran and refer to it often. I can�t find ANYTHING in that book that would support a man strapping bombs around his waist and walking into a group of children who were talking to an American soldier and setting off that bomb � killing the children and the soldier who was giving them little presents. And, that happened recently in Iraq. Furthermore, my Muslim friends can�t find anything to support terrorism in the Koran either.
Your style of attack writing is technique I have not only watched for years, but have seen used on me personally. Attack journalism is based on the same concept as terrorism � efforts of a small group of people to control the thinking and the actions of the majority.
As for Mihailovich � now at last you admit he was the one saving the American pilots. Too many American pilots have tried for 60 years to get that story out. You cannot deny it or try to convince Americans that you are telling the truth and their own WW II pilots are lying about it � en masse. And what was the issue between Mihalovich and Tito? The issue was communism versus freedom. Josif Tito was a communist and he executed Mihalovich as a means of getting rid of his political opposition. And for many decades after the war the people of Yugoslavia suffered under the communists.
It appears to me, after the fall of communism in the Soviet Union in 1989 that even some things are changing in the Balkans. They are changing in Afghanistan and Iraq. For 8 years the American people went along with a foreign policy in which Bill Clinton came down on the side of drug dealers and Muslim criminals. However, that policy is changing under George W. Bush and Bush has gotten a lot of support � where it counts, in the elections. I think both the Kurds and the Serbs will have a better chance in the future. Both groups have shown in their histories major efforts to stop communist and fascist dictatorships. Hopefully, there is a future for both groups that will reward their efforts to fight for freedom.. And a lot of that will depend on the ability of the general public to get more of the facts. I think it is absolutely ridiculous to discover decades later that the Legion of Merit was given to Draza Mihailovich under President Truman! And the American people never knew about it � in order to not �offend� the communist leaders in Yugoslavia! I will certainly write about that � and I know other writers will pick up the information. That happens a lot with my articles � because of the in depth research I do.
What needs to happen is for the personal experiences of those hundreds of WW II American airmen to be far more widely read. This is beginning to happen through independent writers like me. Once the American people have the facts � you may find your efforts to rewrite that history far more difficult. The American people are beginning to realize that narco-terrorism of the kind that exists in the Balkans cannot be allowed to continue as the public is deluged with the kind of false �history� that you peddle. .
Mary Mostert
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 2:17 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: THE MYTH OF SREBRENICA
I have no comments. you are starting to lose complete sense of even what we are talking about. The World (and some Serb officials already) says GENOCIDE, Mary says battle losses. I can only repeat what you just said because your conclusive definitive statements are proven lies my convenience is that they are proven by countless experts working on Srebrenica. Your statements are also becoming more and more definitive. They are trying to contain themselves and not feel responsible to explain themselves. Ah the tricks our ego plays on us when it starts to show the signs of deflation. If this was not a sad matter, I would b laughing out loud right now and passing it on to friends as a joke, no... an anecdote. You continue to spit out such transparent proofs of your ignorance on this subject that I find it entertaining not to try and point to them for you.
If Draza was given the Legion of Merit years ago, then at that time the US was in an entirely different state of mind. Luckily in the last decade or so they came to their senses and saw the evil they flirted with. Even decided to fight it on many occasions including 2 all out wars within just years. There is hope. No wonder it was so hard to find out the facts about the Legion of Merit. The US is kind of not extremely proud of it, I surmise. Oh well, we'll forgive them. We all have to fight ignorance.
Now Mary, are you starting to quote Serb newspapers (maybe you don't even know you are), yourself (oh my God) and other obscure sources to support your crumbled lies and deception? You have to be kidding, right?
Are you still trying to escape ALL of Bosnia by jumping from THE CITY of Sarajevo demographics to Croatia and Kosovo. Please, you can do better than that.
Your entire case is based on genuine hatred of Democrats, Sarajevo's post war demographics, denial of Srebrenica genocide and a truckload of selective statistics that you so arrogantly, clumsily and transparently misinterpret. Shall I throw in a bit of post 9/11 islamofobia that you are finding quite convenient to capitalize on? Can't you see how fake you are? And on top of that you are quoting Serbian news sites and YOURSELF to support your woolen claims. Don't you see how I deconstructed your fake and naively politically driven ego segment by segment? If you are restless and wonder why the answer is simple: TRUTH. You can hide and mask it, but it always manages to shine through and challenge your darkness.
Almir
Almir, obviously agitated, wrote again making CLEAR the extrodinary admission that the UNITED NATIONS armed the Bosnians at Srebrenica - so, in fact, he admits the Serbs were not attacking unarmed civilians!
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 12:28 PM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Mary, when Serbs attacked, Bosnian army asked for their weapons back, and of course they were given back fro UNPROFOR. That's how they became soldiers again. Please, why do I have to keep educationg you and embarrasing your idiot misconceptions.
I'll tel you what happened next, with the separated men. They werre all executed except for few lucky escapees who are witnesses today. You keep denying the work of hundreds of international forensics and investigators. You must have some serious mental problems. Your perseption of reality is dangerously warped by some complexes you probably carry from childhood.
YOu are exctly right, not all of the 45,000 were Srebrenicans. Like I said they were refugees from other municipalities. Luckily common sense logic nd hiumanity does not count them out as victims. Your call to 1991 demographics again points to just how fake you are. Your palms must be sweating if you have any rationale left. If they are not, considering your age, you are hopeless.
You are right not all men and boys from Srebrenica were executed. Only the ones who surrendered. So the ones who chose to flee came back to vote, an why would not they? You illiterate outcast, even if they werre armed -- which they were not -- customs of war should have kept them alive. YOu are so ignorant that I am seriously starting to doubt your mental capacities.
It was not about the KLA you ignorant being, it was an intervention in the middle of an all out campain to send Kosovars to Albania.
Congratulations, you have discovered tht the Kuran and terrorism don't have much in common.
You completely missed my pint on Mihajlovic and are isolating statements from the context to interpret them as some admitions., Do you think I even care to discuss such low and transparent attempts at deception. I call that argument hijacking. Sorry, thwarted.
Mary, one interesting thing about writing is that every article you post states your ego. Do you know that you are a transparent baloon and that I saw that from the very beginning?
Your perception of the war in Bosnia is so clearly siding with the ethnic cleansers that I simply cannot blieve that radical serbs are not presend in yiour daily life. If not you must have some serious mental issues. You are a sad case Mary. Retire already and stop attempting to pollute public opinion.
You are quoting yourself again. How sad.
Almir
My Response:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Tuesday, May 10, 2005 3:59 PM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Almir,
The ethnic cleansers are illustrated by the lack of other ethnic groups in their �countries.� Like � the Albanians, the Bosnian Muslims, the Croatians. In Serbian run territories � there are other ethnic groups. Why, even the Romas can live there! But - not in areas controlled by Albanians, Bosniaks, and Croatians.
Like trees, you guys are identified by your fruits. And what is the �fruit� of Albania, Croatia, the KLA in Kosovo and Bosnia? Other groups � don�t exist among you folks. They Yet � there are Albanians and Muslims living among the Serbs.
Mary Mostert
Amir�s comment:
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 9:08 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Pathetic. You know nothing of demographics, politics and history. You use every opportunity to completely avoid Republic of Srpska when you speak of demographics which is the largest instance of Serb ethnic cleansing. It is this territory that your number-twisting must shy from in order to keep the lie seemingly alive. It is where they committed genocide.
Very sad.
Thirty minutes later, Almir wrote again:
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 9:29 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Of course, I already explained to you that you are twisting recent facts to put this war criminal in positive light. Now you are trying to make this look like an argument about truthfulness of the event. Another attempt to escape the real reason I dismantled your lies. If you have read what I wrote with any capacity to understand, you would understand that I never challenged the event. I only challenged your fact twisting and lies about the dark side of Draza's track record and the continuation of his fascist goals by Karadzic and Mladic.
You truly are pathetic. It seems to me that since you left Democrats you took the Republican agenda too naively and made yourself into a Republican clown. They seem to find you useful only in low level activities such as being a low-level columnist. They seem to know that you are only very loud and that this loudness keeps some democrats busy trying to debunk you -- wasting their time. I can now see your tactic of shouting trying to win over my voice of reason. Of course, the moment your shouting gets closer to any serious media attention you are being ignored by higher-level Republicans because they know you are fake and have a history of lies, deception and number-twisting.
For you this was just another color you added to your clown outfit. I feel sorry for you.
Almir
That afternoon I responded to Almir�s two e-mails, pointing out to him that he had ADMITTED that it was United Nations employees who armed the Bosnian Muslims at Srebrenica - which, if true, makes the charge that the Serbs "massacred innocent civilians in a UN designated "safe" town totally ridiculous:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 11, 2005 3:28 PM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Almir,
You may be many things � but a voice of �reason� you are not! Repeating over and over that Mihajlovic was a �fascist� will not make it so. That is simply an old communist disinformation technique that is not only very transparent, but tiring.
On the one side on this issue we have hundreds of American airmen who tell one story about Mihajlovic and then we have the Anti-Serb lobby who tell us totally unsubstantiated stories about Serb atrocities. Let me again repeat your OWN WORDS: �The armed men and skeptics or the ones who considered themselves in the Bosnian army fled through forests. Some were captured some made it alive. As a UN employee together with UNPROFOR, UNHCR and MSN I escorted and even helped organize the evacuation.�
You followed that up with �Mary, when Serbs attacked, Bosnian army asked for their weapons back, and of course they were given back fro UNPROFOR. That's how they became soldiers again.�
Now, you have admitted that you were with the UN and that the UN gave the Bosnians �their weapons back.� So, you admit in you e-mails to me that the UN, which did absolutely NOTHING when Serbs were being massacred in 1991 and 1992, armed the Bosnia Muslims! CNN�s Muslim correspondent, Christiane Amanpour quite often told CNN audiences that the dead or wounded victims being displayed were �Croats or �Muslims� � when in fact they were dead and wounded Serbs! As the editor of Defence and Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy (London) put it in December 1992: �Pictures of dead or wounded (or raped) Serbs often fill the screens o fthe world�s television and print media, only to be re-labeled as dead or wounded or raped Croats or Muslims. Many Serb victims not only suffer the indignity of defeat in death; they also are used in death as models in the macabre image manipulation operations of the Croatian and Muslim Bosnians. If the Vietnam War was lost to the United States by the negative television images of its own reporters, then the Balkan war against the Serbs is being won...by an active, planned manipulation of international television�Gregory R. Copley,
In your OWN WORDS you have told me that the UN was siding with the Muslims and Croats � against the Serbs � including ARMING them! Alija Izetbegovic, during World War II, was a main actor for "SS Handzar Division". He joined the organization "Young Muslims" in Sarajevo on March 5, 1943, and was engaged as a member of the organization in recruiting young Muslims for "SS Handzar Division" in collaboration with Hitler's intelligence service (ABWER and GESTAPO). In 1946, however, he was sentenced by former Yugoslav Supreme Military Court to three years of imprisonment and two years of deprivation of civil rights, because of his fascist activities . Alija Izetbegovic was elected president of Bosnia and Herzegovinia in 1990 and the total disintegration and slaughter soon followed, of course. I am sure that you remember that the SS Handzar Division was created to �eradicate Serbs.�
Thanks for the valuable information you have revealed. I will make sure it is widely distributed.
Mary Mostert
Almir�s response
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 11:51 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Well, you can continue only selecting fragments of my statements that when twisted and stitched together do create the illusion of contradiction. Your entire case that Serbs were somehow majority victims in 1990s war is actually based on this basic technique of ignoring everything that contradicts with your case in your article, your correspondence with me and even my statements.
Mary, this is why you have reached your peak long time ago. Whenever you had a chance to make some serious progress, this shallow and naive ego inflation and radically partial approach to facts is exactly what has prevented you from serious recognition. I analyzed and showed to you where your writing stops being serious and rushes into euphorical and blind fact twisting, lies and conscious ignorance of facts that not only contradict but destroy your arguments. You intentionally keep your own statements out of the context of the very subject you are writing about in order to present an illusion of black-and-white. You do this because of your clown-like naive roll playing in the cause of a political party. Quite typical of many converts, cultural, religious, ideological or political.
This makes you somewhat of a guerilla columnist who narrow-mindedly acquires a target and stubbornly attempts to follow a straight line to achieve it without much regard to consequences and awareness of reality. Allegorically and in simple terms CLOWN is a very appropriate description of your status. It is this stubbornness that prevents you from achieving a serious and affecting status in almost anything you do. You succeed only when your arguments coincide with truth -- not because you are aware of it. Very often, however, you are convince yourself of a truth even before you start researching it. This is where you fail. But I suspect that all of this is stemming from a single or a group of negative events in your life -- maybe even from childhood -- that you are trying to bury by being simplistic, naive and stubborn -- as if to hide your true complexity from yourself.
Almir
I answered:
From: Mary Mostert [mailto:Mary@bannerofliberty.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2005 10:58 PM
To: 'Almir Ramic'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
Almir,
You know, by now I would have thought it would have dawned on you that I do not respond to nor am I upset by personal attacks. I merely consider the source. You reveal a lot more about yourself with your childish attacks and amateur psychoanalysis of me than you apparently realize. The fact is � you did not answer one single point I have presented. You have not even responded to, much less presented any fact that would contradict the points I brought up.
Let me just point out, again, a specific admission that you made which now you do not want to admit to. You said:
�The armed men and skeptics or the ones who considered themselves in the Bosnian army fled through forests. Some were captured some made it alive. As a UN employee together with UNPROFOR, UNHCR and MSN I escorted and even helped organize the evacuation.� You followed that up with �Mary, when Serbs attacked, Bosnian army asked for their weapons back, and of course they were given back fro UNPROFOR. That's how they became soldiers again.� What you describe is that you and other UN employees re- armed the Bosnian army, which then ran away with their weapons through the woods rather than stand and fight the Serbs.
What does my ego, such as it may or may not be, have to do with YOUR description of what YOU and other Muslims did at Srebrenica? What you did, from your OWN description, as a UN employee was to arm the Bosnian men, who then fled Srebrenica with their weapons, leaving their wives and children to face the Serbs alone. The Serbs did not harm them � but put them on busses and sent them to try to catch up with their fleeing husbands and fathers. The Serbs did pursue the armed men � and there is no doubt that a lot of them died when the Serbs could catch them.
There are only about two conclusions to draw from your description. Either you are not telling the truth about how evil the Serbs are � or you are admitting that you helped arm Muslim men who promptly ran off through the forests from fear of the Serbs � taking with them the guns you gave them but leaving behind their wives and children to face the evil Serbs alone.
This does not compute.
Mary Mostert
Amir replied:
From: Almir Ramic [mailto:info@almirr.com]
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 11:54 AM
To: 'Mary Mostert'
Subject: RE: Your Article on Draza Mihajlovic
I used your own facts to contradict you and I do not need you to tell me what happened. + I offered you documents and people who can provide you with more. Your siding with the perpetrators of Europe's worst massacre since WW2 is argument enough against your ridiculous use of Bosnian war for Republican clown outfit.
BTW, here is why we Bosniaks asked for their weapons back and why the Dutch responded: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=637946 (This article seems to verify that the so-called �unarmed� Muslim men in the so-called �safe UN City� actually were armed, as the Serbs have said.)
That was not a personal attack. Although I am sure your response was to be expected. That was an attempt to help get a little bit of feel for reality and where you fit in.
What's to admit there? Do you want me to say it again? If you kept that sentence in its context you would first know that those are two separate sentences. The bolded sentence refers to civilians who decided to flee toward the UN compound. But of course your blindness from euphorical argument hijacking prevents you from rationally processing those two sentences, so you convince yourself of an illusion that supports another you firmly decided on even before you started your selective research.
"What you describe is that you and other UN employees re- armed the Bosnian army, which then ran away with their weapons through the woods rather than stand and fight the Serbs" - You don't even have a faint picture of what happened. All you have is a game-like perception of war. In your cowboys-and-indians perception of war I guess that would be a way to describe it -- they fled. And I did not re-arm them, thank you very much for trying to put that in my mouth. I worked for a civilian UN agency. But yes, UNPROFOR re-armed them with the little primitive weapons they had before demilitarization. That was not even enough to secure their safe flight to central Bosnia. But of course if you had any ability to process information rationally and see all facts as equal in a normal study you would have already known why Serbs were stronger than UNPROFOR and BiH army together. You are exposing your complete misunderstanding of anything that happened there every time you respond to me. That's good because someone other than you and me will be and already is analyzing your ridiculing yourself. Please continue.
Wow you dedicated an entire article to my imaginary arming of Bosniak armed men. And then you continue on with another blind attempt of denial of proven massacre of civilians who did not even surrender. They were surrounded and forced into trucks. But I don't need to waste my time on trying to explain anything to you. Luckily I have history and proven facts, convicted/admitted criminals and truth on my side of the argument. It is such a nice feeling to side with the truth, you should try it some time.
Your ego has everything to do with all this. You can't remove it from your writing and attempt at objective journalism. Instead you let your clown-like self-indoctrination pollute your judgment. Therefore everything you write tells me plenty about you. Your ego screams through your writing my dear Mary. It owns your writing.
"What does my ego..." This entire paragraph summarizes your illusions, deception (though childish and transparent), and lies. No need to comment. It is a proof for itself.
What foes not compute is your own illusions. Somewhere somehow you are picturing me handing the weapons back to Serbs. I took care of civilians for as long as I could until I had to be evacuated with the big UN convoy that last left the enclave.
How does this compute with your fake convictions:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3799937.stm or this:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35992-2004Jun11.html
"The Bosnian Serbs had long refused to acknowledge that their forces committed the worst civilian massacre in Europe since World War II. The work of the Srebrenica Commission, too, initially was obstructed by some of its members and authorities who refused to provide information.
Only after Ashdown fired several Bosnian Serb officials and threatened others with dismissal was information made available. " They publicly ally and officially admitted to massacre of civilians at Srebrenica. What are you doing, denying it despite their admission, and your cause is really only to blindly present anything Republican in positive light. They are convicted or currently being tried for genocide by the UN from police officers to top leaders. The masterminds are still at large and UN, NATO and EUFOR are trying to catch them. I can't believe you count your self as serious. You are a joke marry. You know it and I find satisfaction not in any hope of admission, but knowing that you know it and that my name will always pop up in your head whenever you think about it. And you know what, you deserve it after I tried fruitlessly to explain to you that you are insulting fresh wounds writing about something you can't even begin to understand or judge rationally.
Almir
So - if Almir Ramic actually WAS a UN employee and if it is true that, as he claims as a UN employee in Srebrenica at the time, the Bosnian Muslims WERE armed by the United Nations personnel, and if, as Almir states, those armed Muslim men took their guns and fled through the forest - leaving behind their women and children - the entire media campaign and the nonsensical trials at the Hague need to be exposed. This is, it appears to me from what Almir is saying, is an obvious United Nations scandal comparable to the rake-offs the UN and the French and the Russians were getting in the "Oil for Peace" program that financed a lot of arms and palaces but evidently not much food for hungry Iraqi children and their mothers.
Someone needs to track down this information and find out if this really happened. If it did - the charges against Serb military leaders imprisoned at the Hague is simply a farce.
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