Task any dutiful student of foreign policy with explaining former President Bill Clinton's most famous military action as commander-in-chief, and they will likely mention the now well-known events of the Kosovo War, a conflict popularly marred by its apparent bastardization of the Serbian government for their genocide against the internationally lauded innocents, the Bosniaks. But while the press have done their finest to whitewash the event as an anti-Muslim catastrophe, there are less evident truths that should come to life as we approach history and pledge to avoid such a terrible happening again.
(Map courtesy of www.indiana.edu)
Without further ado, let us establish that the genocide committed was indeed horrific, and nothing to be listed as minor, yet simply viewing its manifestation as a separate event with no real backing in history is illogical and does disservice to lives that passed on long before the violence of the 1990s. Since the 10th Century, the Serbs have openly claimed Bosnia as their home, yet brutal Turkish invasions over the succeeding centuries left them ravaged, with Muslim sentiments growing in the region that the natives should be forced to convert--or die resisting. For hundreds of years, the Serbs fought to preserve their culture as the incoming Islamists swallowed up the Albanian map and became a dominant force in Eastern Europe.
In the 20th Century, the most evident showing of Bosniak hate for their neighbors came when Marshal Tito took power in Yugoslavia in 1943. Hardly one to remain neutral with his strength in the eastern bloc, Tito gladly served as Hitler's regional stooge, employing armies of Bosniak secret police and Muslim gypsies to hunt down and gas the Jews at the heart of the Nazi mission. Unbeknown to many in the modern day, the Serbs who were categorized as Nazis after the 1990s spent much of their early lives helping with anti-fascist and anti-communist activism to save their Jewish comrades.
As a Croat-Slovene, Tito had little sympathy for the Serbs, and his security forces regularly oppressed and murdered them alongside the Jews that they were striving to save. Thousands were murdered as they bravely defended the fleeing Jews, and the Bosniaks stood alongside Hitler's common goals. Estimates suggest as many as 655,000 people were systematically executed by Tito's Islamic-supported regime, the far greater part of that number ethnic Serbs. While human life should never be measured in such way, the 8,000 Bosniaks who lost their lives in Srebrenica are a far cry from what Tito accomplished, in his case with less technology.
So one must really propose, are we right to demonize the Serbs because of their involvement in the 1990s, while American and European forces stool by and embraced the Marshal as a supremely key ally in the war efforts as well as beyond then? Nothing can justify the senseless killing of innocents, yet Serbs must be recognized for all the struggle and hardship they endured, not battered about as convenient targets while the Muslim Bosniaks get a historic free pass.
Scholars will judge both parties with various standards, but the truth must reign dominant after all is said and accomplished. Hiding the light of such a great tragedy is only presenting another possibility of its repeating, and all should oppose such a thought with their dying breath. If the World Court is to pursue the nationalists for their crimes, then it should also look to charges for the Bosniaks who caused the issues of the 1990s in the first place. None should be above the law, even in the age of emotions.
Nikola Cicic
Adjunct Writer--The European Political Divide
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