UN Warns of New Crisis in Bosnia - BBC News

Sep 11, 2023 | After a brutal war and genocide that claimed about 100,000 lives and displaced more than two million people, it was hoped that an international peace agreement would allow Bosnia to begin healing from the wounds of conflict.

Twenty-seven years ago this week, leaders of the three main communities agreed a set of principles that would form the basis of the Dayton peace agreement of 1995.

Now, the UN has warned of renewed crisis as Bosnian Serbs who launched the original war in 1992 are threatening to secede from the country.

When Bosnia Turned Muslim

Radicalization in Bosnia - Islamists Gaining Ground | DW Documentary

Religious extremists are gaining increasing influence in Bosnia. Social workers are trying to keep young people away from radical Islamist preachers.

Bosnian social worker Vahidin Omanovic warns young people about the dangers of religious extremism, and offers them the vision of a peaceful future. 20 years after the end of the Bosnian War, his country still suffers from high unemployment and political stagnation. He’s worried by conservative Islamist preacher Elvedin Pezić, who's now popular with many young Bosnian Muslims. Pezić rejects violence, but advocates Sharia law and an ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam that has its origins in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis have promoted the spread of this variety of the faith in Bosnia and many other countries by financing the construction of mosques and supporting conservative imams.

Bosnia On The Brink

Isis Targets Vulnerable Bosnia for Recruitment and Attack

A still from a new Isis recruitment video aimed at Bosnian youth.

THE GUARDIAN: High youth unemployment, ethnic tensions and political paralysis help jihadis lure young people to Syria and open up new terror front in heart of Europe

Islamic State has expanded its efforts to recruit fighters in Bosnia and incite terrorist attacks there, taking advantage of the world’s highest youth unemployment rate and chronic political paralysis.

The initiative, though small in scale, is causing alarm in western capitals, where diplomats fear that the mix of economic malaise and ethnic tensions represents fertile terrain for extremism, and that Europe could come to regret the failure to confront Bosnia’s profound structural problems in the two decades since the war.

Isis produced a new recruitment video this month, targeting the Balkans region and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular. The 20-minute film, entitled Honour is in Jihad, features several Bosnian Isis fighters exhorting their fellow countrymen to join the battle in Syria or carry out opportunistic attacks on perceived enemies of Islam at home.

“If you can, put explosives under the cars, in their houses, all over them. If you can, take poison and put it in their drink or food. Make them die, make them die of poisoning, kill them wherever you are. In Bosnia, in Serbia, in Sandzak [a region in south-west Serbia]. You can do it,” one of the Bosnians, identified by a pseudonym, Salahuddin al-Bosni, implores the audience in Bosnian. » | Julian Borger in Sarajevo | Thursday, June 25, 2015

Protesters Clash with Police, Set Government Buildings Ablaze in Bosnia

Thousands of people across Bosnia set fire to local government buildings and clashed with police. Hundreds have been injured in three days of protests in a state that's slipping into serious economic stagnation with around 40 per cent of the population out of work.

The capital Sarajevo, rioters set the Presidential building ablaze, along with police cars and tires. Authorities fired rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas to disperse the crowds. In other parts of the country protesters hurled rocks at security forces and torched local government buildings.

The unrest initially erupted over the closure of several state-owned companies that were sold off and then collapsed under private ownership.

Bosnian Serb Commander Jailed for War Crimes
Veselin Vlahović was known as the Monster of Grabavica. That was the area of Sarajevo that he terrorised during the war, from 1992 to 1995

Snow Causes Havoc Across Bosnia
Central European country reels under freezing conditions that have all but cut off aid to the far-flung areas.

Mladic Appears before UN Court
Ratko Mladic faced his judges at the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague on Friday to hear charges of genocide in the Bosnia war

”Schlächter von Srebrenica” geht Polizei ins Netz

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Ratko Mladic: War Crimes Fugitive Arrested in Serbia

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Ratko Mladic, the war crimes fugitive accused of orchestrating the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, has been arrested in Serbia.

The former Chief of Staff of the Bosnian Serb Army was reportedly seized by police after an anonymous tip-off.

Boris Tadic, the Serbian president, said that Mladic, has been captured.

"On behalf of the Republic of Serbia we announce that Ratko Mladic has been arrested," Mr Tadic said at a press conference.

Croatian media, which first broke the story, said police there got confirmation from their Serbian colleagues that DNA analysis confirmed Mladic's identity. Belgrade's B92 radio said Mladic was arrested Thursday in a village close to the northern Serbian town of Zrenjanin.

Serbian media reported that the suspect was living under the name of Milorad Komadic. » | Murray Wardrop | Thursday, May 26, 2011

Bosnian Serbs Convicted of Genocide Over Srebrenica Massacre
THE TELEGRAPH: Two Bosnian Serbs have been convicted of genocide over the Srebrenica massacre, the first such convictions in Europe since the Second World War.

Vujadin Popovic, left, and Ljubisa Beara wait for the court to hand down judgment at the War Crimes tribunal in The Hague. Photograph: The Telegraph
Vujadin Popovic, 53, and Ljubisa Beara, 70, were sentenced to life imprisonment for their part in the 1995 killing of up to 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, in the harshest verdicts yet handed down by Yugoslavia war crimes judges.

The men were high-ranking security officers with the army that overran Muslim forces and lightly armed United Nations troops in an area supposed to be a safe haven for Muslims fleeing ethnic cleansing. Both men were found guilty of genocide, extermination, murder and persecution. >>> Bruno Waterfield in Brussels | Thursday, June 10, 2010

Brutal revenge: In a High-security British Jail, a Serbian Warlord Has His Throat Slashed by Three Muslim Inmates
MAIL ONLINE: A former Serb general convicted of Europe's worst massacre since the Second World War had his neck slashed open by three Muslim prisoners in a British jail yesterday.

Radislav Krstic, 62, serving a 35-year sentence for war crimes, was in a critical condition in hospital after the attack at top security Wakefield Prison.

The Serbs were the deadly enemies of Bosnian Muslims during the Yugoslav civil war in the 1990s. At least one of Krstic's attackers is said to be a Bosnian Muslim.

The incident is a huge embarrassment to prison bosses because Krstic is regarded as one of Britain's most sensitive and high-profile inmates.

It is almost certain to be raised at diplomatic level and questions will be asked about how the suspects were able to attack him. >>> David Williams and Stephen Wright | Saturday, May 08, 2010

Radovan Karadzic's Death Squad Told Me to Dig My Grave, Says Muslim Survivor
THE TELEGRAPH: A Bosnian Muslim has described how he watched men dig their graves before Serb killers slashed their throats as he came face-to-face for the first time with the warlord Radovan Karadzic in a UN war crimes court.

The former Bosnian Serb leader, who is on trial for genocide and war crimes, was confronted by a victim of the ethnic cleansing and killings he is accused of unleashing during the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1992.

Karadzic, who is defending himself, was repeatedly reprimanded by the UN judge for hectoring, trying to browbeat and interrupting Ahmet Zulic, a Muslim survivor of Serbian executions and detention camps, as he cross-examined him.

As Mr Zulic, 62, entered The Hague court with his head bowed, Karadzic subjected him to a baleful stare over his reading glasses before the prosecution's first witness began his, often, harrowing testimony.

The former mineworker described to the court how Serbs shelled Muslim houses in Sanski Most, in north west Bosnia, before he and many others were rounded up in June 1992 and held in horrific conditions, where they were regularly beaten or taken off to be killed.

"Two men would kick us in one part of the body and another would use a baton to beat you over the head until you became unconscious," he said. >>> Bruno Waterfield in The Hague | Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Ex Bosnian Leader Accuses British Government of 'Rewriting History'
THE TELEGRAPH: A former Bosnian president facing extradition to Serbia to face war crimes charges yesterday accused the British Government of conspiring to "rewrite history" by allowing court proceedings to be brought against him.

Ejup Ganic, a university professor and friend of Baroness Thatcher, was arrested last month on suspicion of being involved in a 1992 massacre despite the charges having already been dismissed by a UN war tribunal.

Yesterday he appeared before Westminster magistrates after the Crown Prosecution Service accepted the Serbian extradition warrant.

It alleges that Mr Ganic ordered attacks that killed 42 Yugoslav soldiers despite a ceasefire in 1992. It also alleges that he was responsible for the torture and murder of captured soldiers and patients in a military hospital in 1992.

Mr Ganic, who spent 10 days in Wandsworth Prison following his arrest on March 1, claimed the warrant was a politically motivated abuse of the extradition arrangements between Britain and Serbia.

John Jones, his defence counsel, said that the charges had been examined and dismissed by the international tribunal investigating war crimes in the former Yugoslavia.

The 64-year old professor condemned the government's decision to accept the warrant.

"I am not happy with the decision of the British government, especially the Home Office, to initiate this process," he said. "It appears the British government volunteers to do the police job for the Milosevic regime which is still more or less in some way very active.

"The British government also volunteered to help Serbs to rewrite the chapter of Srebrenica and other places where genocide has been committed,"

He said the Serbian record was second only to "Nazi Germany in the books of genocide." >>> Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent | Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Serbia Apologises for Srebrenica Massacre
NRC HANDELSBLAD INTERNATIONAL: The Serbian parliament passed a landmark resolution Wednesday condemning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of over 9,000 Bosnian Muslims but stopped short of labelling the killings a genocide.

The ruling coalition of pro-Western democrats and socialists hopes to win EU and investor favour with measure, which was adopted after debate over nearly 13 hours broadcast on live television. The adoption of the text with a majority of 127 of the 173 lawmakers ends years of denial by Serbian politicians about the scale of the killings.

"We are taking a civilised step of politically responsible people, based on political conviction, for the war crime that happened in Srebrenica," said Branko Ruzic, whose socialist party was led by strongman Slobodan Milosevic during the 1990s.

According to the latest estimate by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Bosnian Serb forces led by general Ratko Mladic killed 9,210 Bosnian Muslim men and boys after taking over the eastern enclave that was put under the UN protection. The massacre is Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War.

Belgrade applied for European Union membership in December but must capture and send Mladic to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague before starting talks. The former general is believed to be hiding in Serbia. >>> AFP, NRC, Reuters | Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Gay Soldiers Attack US General Who Claimed Homosexuals Were to Blame for Srebrenica
THE TELEGRAPH: Gay soldiers have threatened to take a US general to court over his claim that the presence of homosexual troops was responsible for the Dutch army's failure to prevent the Srebrenica massacre.

John Sheehan, a former US general and Nato commander, outraged the Netherlands last week when he alleged that openly gay Dutch soldiers had so damaged military morale that the country's army was powerless to prevent genocide in Bosnia.

Up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces after Dutch UN peacekeepers failed to prevent the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in July, 1995, a legacy that has continued to haunts the Netherlands.

Peter Schouten, a Dutch activist, has founded the "Pink Army" to bring a class action lawsuit against General Sheehan in a Californian federal court.

With the support of the Dutch Homosexuality and Armed Forces Foundation, Mr Schouten is aiming to recruit seven homosexual Dutch soldiers to file slander and defamation charges against the general.

The litigants will demand a full-page retraction in US and Dutch newspapers, full legal costs and will ask US judges to send the retired general on compulsory "sensitivity training". >>> Bruno Waterfield | Tuesday, March 23, 2010



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Bosnia 'on Brink of New Civil War'
THE TELEGRAPH: Bosnia is heading for a new civil war as a constitutional crisis threatens to cause the collapse of the political system, the country's leaders have warned.

The concerns have been triggered by Bosnian Serb leaders who have stepped up their demands for independence with a warning the country is no longer "sustainable".

The growing ethnic divisions have raised fears of a return to the fighting which claimed the lives of up to 110,000 people between 1992 and 1995.

Senior European and US officials have called an emergency meeting in Sarajevo on Tuesday to meet the country's leaders to find a solution.

The crisis centres on attempts to overhaul the constitution which was imposed on the country in 1995 in the wake of the war.

Since then Bosnia has been made up of two semi-independent entities – the Serbs' Republika Srpska and the Muslim-Croat Federation.

The two are linked with weak central institutions whose functioning is often obstructed by ethnic rivalries. >>> Bruno Waterfield | Monday, October 19, 2009

Amnesty Urges Bosnia to Protect Gay Festival
REUTERS: SARAJEVO - Amnesty International on Thursday urged authorities to safeguard Bosnia's first gay festival from possible violence from Muslims who see it as an affront to their religious feelings.

The festival, due to take place in Sarajevo next week during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, has been branded by some Islamic media and officials as a "festival of homosexuality", which is regarded as a sin and disease in Islam.

The human rights watchdog said in a statement some media had mounted a homophobic campaign which had encouraged prejudice and could lead to violence. Amnesty Urges Bosnia to Protect Gay Festival >>> | September 18, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – USA)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardcover – USA)

Gay Festival During Ramadan Angers Bosnia Muslims
REUTERS: SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Plans to hold Bosnia's first gay festival during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan were denounced by the Muslim community on Thursday as an affront to religious feelings.

As in most of the Balkans, there is little tolerance for homosexuality in Bosnia, where for many it remains a taboo.

"Such an event dangerously threatens our religious feelings. It is not appropriate to hold it during the Ramadan," said Ezher Beganovic, a journalist with the Islamic magazine Saff.

Beganovic has spearheaded a debate about next month's four-day festival. He said in an article this week that the "festival of homosexuality", which is regarded as a sin and disease in Islam, could cloud the holy month of Ramadan and promt angry reactions from believers.

Organisers said the festival was planned a year ago without aiming to provoke.

"This is the festival of arts and culture and there are many believers in our population as well," said Svetlana Djurkovic, who heads the "Q Association" promoting the rights of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual population.

"It coincided with Ramadan unintentionally."

Sarajevo, a symbol of multi-ethnic co-existence and tolerance before the 1992-95 Bosnian war, is now predominantly Muslim. Gay Festival During Ramadan Angers Bosnia Muslims >>> | August 29, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>
The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Paperback, direct from the publishers (UK) >>>

Wahhabism, Financed By Saudi Arabia, Quickly Gains Ground in Bosnia
SPIEGELONLINE INTERNATIONAL: The Dayton Peace Accords called for the removal of foreign combatants from Bosnia after the Balkans war. But hundreds of mujahedeen fighters stayed, and today they are successfully spreading their fundamentalist Islamist views.

Thick iron bars block the entrance to Abu Hamza's store in Sarajevo's Islamic shopping center. Affixed to the bars is a handwritten note: "My Bosnian citizenship has been revoked. I have to defend myself, and for this reason my store is only open sporadically."

Abu Hamza, a bearded 42-year-old man originally from Syria, sits in his store among colorful veils and gold-embroidered tunics and speaks in a gentle voice about Bosnia's fate. Which, he says, will be either an evolution of true Islam, or a revolution. Fundamentalist Islam Finds Fertile Ground in Bosnia (more) By Renate Flottau

Mark Alexander