Religious Wars in the Balkans

All of this really began in 1991 when Yugoslavia began to break up and the Croatian republic declared independence. The response to all of this by the West was defined in large part by Germany, and Germany's response was defined in large part by the Catholic connection to Croatia. The German government fell under heavy pressure by Catholic media, Catholic political groups, and especially leaders in largely Catholic Bavaria. Media coverage was very one-sided, and this helped shaped public opinion in favor of the Croatians against the Serbians, even though both sides engaged in the same sorts of atrocities. The Vatican also played a key role as the Pope declared Croatia to be the "rampart of [Western] Christianity" and moved to recognized it even before the European Union, which was itself under pressure from Germany.

On the other side, there was virtually unanimous rallying of the Eastern Orthodox world behind Serbia and against Muslim Bosnia and Catholic Croatia. This situation continues even today and is vital in understanding how political alliances are playing out in the current crisis. Russian nationalists, military officers, parliamentarians and Orthodox church leaders have been very outspoken in their unwavering support for Serbia and Serbian interests, attacking Bosnian Muslim fundamentalists and the Western imperialism behind Croatia. Russian leaders have been as quick to ignore Serbian atrocities and lies as Western European leaders were to ignore Croatian atrocities and lies. Being on the side of "right" wasn't nearly as important as aiding religious kin and members of the same "civilization."

Orthodox Reactions

Ignoring this would prevent any sort of appreciation of what is happening in Greece and Russia. Protestors throughout Greece have been aiming their anger at NATO, and especially at the American embassy in Athens. Greek newspapers have run editorial cartoons depicting President Clinton as Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and many headlines have labeled NATO pilots as murderers. All of this would be shocking and unexpected in any other NATO ally. Fortunately, Greek leaders are not yet ready to follow the rest of their citizens in denouncing NATO actions and possibly withdrawing from the alliance. More cautious and more cognizant of their treaty obligations, they have urged an end to the airstrikes and urged a resumption to negotiations. Unsurprisingly, NATO has not made use of any military bases in Greece despite their close proximity to targets in Serbia and Kosovo.

None of this is a recent political development. Throughout the Bosnian war, Greece was an active, if covert, supporter of Serbian interests. Shipments of food, chemicals, computers, and other important goods blocked by the embargo found their way from Greece into Serbia through Macedonia, with comparable amounts of embargoed Serbian oil flowing right back out. In 1994, Greek prime minister Andreas Papandreou voiced his support for the Orthodox connection to Serbia and publicly attacked the Vatican, Germany and the European Union for their hasty diplomatic recognition of Slovenia and Croatia in 1991. Greece's religious ties to the Orthodox world are coming into serious conflict with their economic and military ties to Western Christian Europe. Which will win in the end?

Russian Roulette

By far the worst reaction to NATO airstrikes outside of Serbia itself has been in Russia. Since the war in Bosnia, Serbian and Russian nationalists have worked closely together in an effort to oppose any Western "new world order." Cooperation here is not based upon former communist associations, but instead upon ancient religious and cultural commonalities. This also isn't an effort by a few powerful political figures looking for good press - in fact, this sort of religio-ethnic bonding is supported by large numbers of citizens. Nationalist leaders in Russia succeeded in recruiting many young men "in the cause of Slavic brotherhood" just as Croatian Defense Forces were augmented by the appearance of perhaps thousands of volunteers from Western Europe and other countries. Interestingly, many of the volunteers from Western Europe were fascists and neo-nazis, looking to gain combat experience.

Russian aid to the Serbian cause is having a significant impact upon both Kosovo separatists and now upon NATO forces. In 1993 Russian military and intelligence organizations sold at least $300 million worth of T-55 tanks, antimissile missiles and anti-aircraft missiles to the Serbs. It is not at all unlikely that one of those missiles, sold to Serbia in the name of Slavic brotherhood, was responsible for shooting down the American F-117A stealth fighter. Russian military technicians have reportedly been in Serbia operating the equipment and training Serbians.

In the current crisis, Russia has recalled its ambassador to NATO, expelled two NATO representatives and has promised to send undefined "humanitarian aid" to Serbia. Other issues have been seriously hurt, with the START II strategic arms reduction treaty considered now dead in parliament again. The Russian Navy in the Barents Sea has suddenly gone on "exercises," and military experts in Russia have started feasibility studies on the redeployment of tactical and strategic bombers into Belarus. Perhaps no actual military action against NATO is planned, but Russia isn't flexing its military muscle for no reason. They are expressing their solidarity with Serbia - a solidarity which has the potential of turning deadly. There may already be a beginning to this with one person in Russia firing shots at the American embassy and attempting to fire grenades as well.

America's Role

The role of America in all of this is complicated and interesting. Historically, the United States is allied with Western Europe. Culturally, America is tied with what Huntington calls "Western Christian" civilization. But rhetorically, if not practically, America supported the Bosnian Muslims in their conflict with the Christian Croats and Orthodox Serbs. America made no serious efforts to get European powers to also support the Bosnian Muslims in any serious way, but they did allow Saudi Arabia and even Iran to ship in arms, and in 1994 America stopped supporting the arms embargo altogether. This could have long-term political consequences for Europe if Bosnia turns fundamentalist like Iran.

Why did America break with traditional civilization allies? There are a wide variety of possible explanations. Perhaps it was an attempt to reduce the influence of Iran in an unstable region of Europe. Perhaps it was due to pressure from Muslim allies like Turkey and Saudi Arabia. On the other hand, Americans like to identify with underdogs and the "forces of good" against the "forces of evil," whoever they may be. Serbian atrocities first against Bosnian Muslims and later against Kosovo Albanians have allowed Americans to label them as the "bad guys" with very little difficulty. Muslim and Albanian crimes are just as quickly ignored.

In the current crisis, we find that America is actually joined by European allies in fighting against Eastern Orthodox people and on behalf of the Kosavar Muslims. A major reason why America is not alone in this as it was with Bosnia is probably that there are no Western Christian nations which are "on the wrong side." But taking sides against a more similar civilization (Serbia) with a less similar civilization (Kosovo) in this way is a dangerous game. Even Russian moderates have declared that their relationship with America "will never return" to what it was. How this will affect America and NATO in the long term is difficult to predict. Russia and other Orthodox countries will not forget. But many Muslim countries like Iran would never consider appreciating the NATO efforts.

Religion is playing a much larger role here than most people seem to realize. Those who ignore this basic fact will never be able to get a firm grasp on what is happening, much less figure a way out of it all. Only by acknowledging the religious morass which all sides are caught in and attempting to find a solution which works within the boundaries set by religion and culture will we achieve any sort of lasting, if shaky, peace.

Ratko Mladic Our Hero

When I was a child, I climbed up on a billboard to see our Heroes, Ratko Mladic, Karadzic, Arkan, and our solders heading for the firs line of fire. We waved flags and cheered. It was thrilling. I was proud that I could say, “I was there; I saw them.” I wonder what the people of Bethphage and Bethany thought as Jesus processed toward Jerusalem. It seems that their enthusiasm would quickly turn to disdain when he was captured, tried and put to death. Hero worship does not seem to enjoy a long shelf life.
Today when the excitement of the parade is over and the waving of the palms ceases, we should spend some time reflecting on the character of our heroes and specially those fallen in the war.
We should compare our suffering and hardship with the same of early Christians and Jesus. We don’t usually think of Jesus as a hero, but hero he is. We should try to understand why a week of betrayal and denial, of mockery and bloodshed is called holy.
Some of them are a heroes, but not in the traditional pattern of heroism. They actually looks more like a victim. They are not triumphant as we understand triumph. Instead they appears to be a failure. Judging by one set of standards—standards not unlike those of many people of his day— they have not met our expectations. But according to another standard—the standard of unconditional love—they have far surpassed our expectations.
But more than anybody else we should always remember those fallen in the first line of fire, those who had sacrificed their lives for us.

Croatia Catholic State

by Muhamed Filipovic
Croatian media in these days made sensational news that senior representatives of the Bishops' Conference of the Catholic Church at a special press conference sharply criticized the Croatian government and the entire state peak, including the Prime Minister Sanader and President Mesic of the Republic.
Critique is reportedly followed by inadequate policies, due to insufficient government fights for the rights of ordinary people and because of insufficient activity in the fight against recession. As the main cause of all these mistakes, the Catholic representatives stated the surviving spirit of communism in Croatia, which is still in the heads of many of the highest government officials.

My opinion is that Catholic clergy has two basic objectives . Firs is that they wants to be declared as a moral power which stands on the bumper of interests of poor, morality and justice, of course, hiding their relation and collaboration to all crimes and injustices that the President Tuđman government committed when a persecuted people, not only because of differences in political views, but primarily because of religious and national differences. All of this is the church worked to its traditional anticommunism, but in order to fast and complete restitution of huge assets the Catholic Church and its ranks.

At that time they didn't care about robbery, corruption, religious discrimination /not even now, against not Roman Catholics Now, when their property returned, became enormously rich, and when they secure their economic independence, while at the same time have a huge fiscal support of regime, they have remembered conscience, the poor and the "structures of sin", as if they are not part of the structure and it sometimes in the most difficult time of sin and a very active part. Did not care for the poor that is the subject of the concerns of the Bishops' Conference.
Another motive is fight against Islam, Russia and all those people who do not support idea of Holly Father, Sarkozy and Markel.
In this context, can understand and interpret all the huge effort of the Catholics in Croatia and Croatian nationalists and socolled Democrats to conduct an audit of 2nd World War II and from the forces he is cast antifascism Russia and all those who fought against fascism led by the communists. In this context, the statement of representatives of Bishops Conference renewed context and themes of influence of communism. No worries for the poor and the right, nor for ethics, but for the implementation of a strategic plan of creating a world led by a new Holy Alliance, which wants to re-divide the world, but can know that the world can not be shared without the war as a eficient mean of divisions among people.

Nick Hawton BBC Idiot.

.
How to call somebody who openly admits that don't know much about Balkans and in the same time write books and articles about the same subject?
"Idiot" was originally created to refer to "layman, person lacking professional skill", "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning".^[6][7] Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), such as the Athenian democracy, was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters. Over time, the term "idiot" shifted away from its original connotation of selfishness and came to refer to individuals with overall bad judgment–individuals who are "stupid". In modern English usage, the terms "idiot" and "idiocy" describe an extreme folly or stupidity, and its symptoms (foolish or stupid utterance or deed). In psychology, it is a historical term for the state or condition now called profound mental retardation.
So this is word we can really apply for this BBC journalist, by his own words.

Valentin Inzko - What to Expect

.
Valentin Inzko caps his career with a difficult posting as the UN and EU's representative in Bosnia.
At the Austrian ambassador's residence in Ljubljana there was jubilation. The ambassador to Slovenia had just been appointed the new high representative of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Washington, which would have preferred a “tough Brit”, had capitulated: Valentin Inzko was the man, the seventh and probably last high representative (HR). The champagne flowed, as did the congratulations reaching the ambassador's mobile phone. “Habemus papam” read a text message from the Czech ambassador in Sarajevo; a “mucha suerte” came from Javier Solana, the EU's foreign policy chief.
By happy coincidence, news of the decision arrived during a reception in Ljubljana for Michael Spindelegger, the visiting foreign minister of Austria, who made a speech about recognition for Austrian diplomacy, of the country's key role in the Balkans and so on.

But everyone in the room, Inzko most of all, was painfully aware that Bosnia's three ethnic groups – Serb, Croat, and Bosniak (Muslim) – are hopelessly log-jammed, rumoured (probably falsely) to be re-arming and that there is bad blood between the US and the EU over Bosnia. In short, that running the office of the HR, guardian of the cobbled-together 1995 Dayton Agreement, which ended a war in which 100,000 died, is difficult going on impossible.

It is, says veteran Balkan-watcher Paul Lendvai, the closest that diplomacy gets to kamikaze aviation.

Inzko said that he accepted the job, which involves doubling up as the EU's special representative, “with great joy, but with the sense of a heavy burden”. One wonders about the joy. Until his appoint-ment, Inzko, who turns 60 this month, was leading a comfortable life in what might easily have been a cushy last post-ing. “He has original ideas for what can be achieved in Bosnia, but he is not pers-onally ambitious,” observes a close friend.

Leaving the Slovene capital will certainly be a wrench. It is pretty, peaceful and for the Slovene-Austrian Inzko, utterly familiar, as it is for his wife, the world-famous opera diva Bernarda Fink, and for their two teenage children.

Any bilateral awkwardness at the embassy between Austria and Slovenia has been slight and predictable, usually to do with Carinthia, the Austrian region bordering Slovenia where Inzko was born into a cultured, conservative Slovene-Austrian family.

This was the fiefdom of the notorious populist Jörg Haider – until his demise in a drunken car-smash last October – who owed much of his success to anti-Slovene campaigns. One was against street-signs in Slovenian as well as German. The rabid ‘Carinthia goes monolingual!' campaign provoked Inzko to withdraw his permission to Haider to address him by the informal ‘du'.

He identifies strongly with Carinthia's Slovenian-speaking, mostly Catholic, minority. They owe much of their cultural autonomy to the liberation of 1945 and the executive decrees of the Allies. Inzko is aware of the parallels with Bosnia and his background has proved useful preparation for a diplomatic career in the region.

He now knows two generations of the political players in the Balkans, and all their languages (he speaks seven in all). When he says his return to Sarajevo is a homecoming, it is more than a diplomatic politesse. In 1996 he was the first Austrian ambassador in the city after the Serb liberation war. The window frames in the apartment block where he first lived had no glass.

Inzko did a lot for the city, which made him an honorary citizen. Some weekends he got away, as he still does now, to hear Bernarda perform in New York or Milan or the Grand Théâtre de Genève, where she first made her name as a mezzo-soprano and which is the city where they met in the 1980s.

Inzko's immediate predecessor as HR, the Slovak Miroslav Lajc?ák, made the mistake of staying on after being fatally undermined (notably by Solana). Lajc?ák openly attacked the international community's capitulation to local leaders, notably Milorad Dodik, the prime minister of Republika Srpska, comprising about half the country. Dodik had threatened to “wrestle with NATO tanks” if the HR used its executive powers against him.

Such is everyday politics in Bosnia, where the powerful external actors are the US, Russia and the EU – mostly in that order. The EU's only real leverage over the country is the prospect of EU membership – however unlikely it is any time soon. But even if the aspiration is now a routine item on the country's agenda, membership worries political actors. It would make it harder for the Serbs to break away one day, à la Montenegro, for instance. And Bosniak leaders fear EU membership would simply cement Serbian autonomy in place indefinitely.

The US matters a lot more than Europe. Washington is increasingly impatient with a European approach to Bosnia that it regards as unserious.

One of the causes of delay in deciding on Inzko's appointment was delay in establishing the team of US President Barack Obama. But Washington's reticence hardly strengthens Inzko's hand. Nor does talk of appointing a special US Balkans envoy.

As for the EU, it is busy proving the accuracy of US allegations of its incompetence. There is no consensus among member states about whether Inzko should be allowed to stay on after his contract as EU special representative formally ends next February. Others are already jostling for the EU position, which, it was announced last autumn, would be “reinforced” after the office of the high representative is closed down. So far Solana has failed to explain how it might be strengthened.

Not, evidently, by troops. In 1995 there were 60,000 peacekeepers in Bosnia. There are now 2,000 bored and disaffected Eufor men and women: troop levels are scheduled to shrink further in the next months, down to as few as 200.

Inzko is expected to be, if not a kamikaze, then a test-pilot in a hazardous experiment in soft power. The best he can hope for is a soft landing.
From our side we need to carefully balance between all this players and look for strong open support from Russia and not so open support from US and EU.

Russian-Israeli relations are at their best ever,

.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said after a meeting with his Russian counterpart. But the main focus of the meeting was the Middle East peace process.

This is Lieberman’s first visit to Russia after taking office at the end of March.

Apart from bilateral ties, the ministers have also discussed such issues as the Middle East peace process and Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Read more

Both Russia and Israel have spoken out on their diplomatic concerns in the Middle East.

Lieberman said he was very disappointed over Sergey Lavrov’s recent meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mashal in Syria, but Russia insists that ignoring Hamas is not going to help move the talks forward.

Lavrov said it was essential that Middle East Quartet negotiations should continue.

Lieberman acknowledged that it would take the efforts of all interested parties to resume talks, though added that his hopes are to build ties with the Arab world.

Russia was also asked about its arms trade in the region and whether it is something that Israel should be concerned about.

“Russia doesn’t sell any weapons through intermediaries. Our military cooperation with the west is strictly in accordance with domestic laws and international regulations. As for arms supplies to the Middle East, our main role is to prevent destabilization and preserve the existing balance of forces,” Sergey Lavrov responded.

As for Iran, Israel would want Russia to press the country into stopping its nuclear work. Israel is worried that Iran is developing an atomic weapon under the guise of a peaceful nuclear program.

Russia, on the other hand, is helping Iran to build its first atomic power plant.

That is the issue on which Russia and Israel do not quite see eye to eye, though Sergey Lavrov did stress that it is absolutely necessary to make sure that Iran’s nuclear program is indeed peaceful.

Israel’s relationship with the new US administration was also discussed.

“The US, just like any other state in the world, protects its interests, including in the Middle East. In our case both the US and Israel share a common approach and democratic interests based on human and cultural principles. This collaboration is simply natural,” Lieberman said.

The two also discussed such issues as cultural exchanges and holding a ‘Year of Russia in Israel’.

The sides have agreed to pool efforts against the falsification of history and also to celebrate the 65th anniversary of victory in World War II.

"We discussed such a complex and important theme as joint counteraction to attempts to falsify history, bearing in mind the attempts to deny the tragedy of the Holocaust, to obliterate the memory of those who freed Europe from fascism, and to glorify accomplices to Nazi rule," Sergei Lavrov told a news conference after the talks. "We are determined to counteract neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia, and agreed to prepare joint events in the run-up to the 65th anniversary of the victory to be marked in 2010."

The ministers decided to prepare a meeting of the intergovernmental commission on trade and economic cooperation, which would boost cooperation in state-of-the-art technologies and innovation projects.

On Tuesday, Avigdor Lieberman confirmed Israel’s readiness to participate in the preparation and staging of a Middle East Conference in Moscow, planned for late summer or autumn.

Boris Tadić

Boris Tadić (Serbian: Борис Тадић; born January 15, 1958 in Sarajevo) is a Serbian politician and the current President of Serbia. A psychologist by profession, he is a leader ofthe Democratic Party. Tadić was elected to a five-year term on June 27, 2004, and was sworn into office on July 11, 2004. He was reelected for a de facto^[1] second five-year term on February 3, 2008 and was sworn in on February 15. Prior to Presidency, Tadić served as the Minister of Telecommunications of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and as the Minister of Defence of Serbia and Montenegro.

Boris Tadić advocates full integration of Serbia into the European Union but he also believes Serbia can only join the EU if territorial integrity of Serbia with sovereignty over Kosovo and Metohija is respected.^[2] He is seen as a pro-Western leader but who favors well-balanced relations with Russia, the United States, and the EU.^[3][4][5