> don't you think it's a bit
>facile to accuse Bosnia of being run in an "imperialist" or
>"anti-democratic" fashion when a few years ago the Bosnians same close to
>wiping each other out?
Well, I hope not.
First, I think its reasonable to judge the UN protectorate in Bosnia in its own terms. It claimed a 'democratising' mission, but its principle activities have been to suppress democratic choice. That's true, whatever the previous history.
(Though clearly, if one were intending to justify the imposition of a protectorate, then it would help if you could argue that the subjects of this colonial rule could be said to be untrustworthy and barbaric, such that they could not be trusted to rule themselves. This was, for example, the British justification for colonising Africa: British rule over first Egypt, then the Sudan was extended to 'abolish slavery'.)
But second, I think you have to look again at the sequence of events. The official version is that the peoples of the former Yugoslavia went to war, with the Serbs as the main protagonists, purely out of internal hatreds and rivalries. The Great Powers, according to the official version, only involved themselves *after* the bloodletting, with the sole aim of preventing it. This version, I argue, is false.
We know now that US military personnel were advising the Croatian Army when it cleansed Krajina, and that Croatia was armed and supported by Germany. Further we know that the Slovene and Croatian separatist movements were sponsored by Germany. At that time there was no movement for Bosnian independence, which only came into existence because of US sponsorship - the Bosnian leadership were given political support by the United States, eager to sponsor their own nationalist movement in the Balkans. It was this hothouse atmosphere of competing Western powers, sponsoring local separatists that forced the pace of the break-up of Yugoslavia.
In short, the West was not the solution to ethnic rivalry in the former Yugoslavia, it was the cause. Ethnicities that had kept their differences subdued to the level of a squabble over resources, were pitched into full-scale military confrontation by the movement on the part of Western governments to carve up Yugoslavia. In Bosnia, a referendum that was boycotted by the largest ethnic group, the Bosnian Serbs, and that failed to secure a majority of the populace was - against all reason - recognised by the West as a legitimate basis for independence. That was a recipe for war.
Having set Yugoslav against Yugoslav in this bitter ethnic war, the West, protesting clean hands, played the reluctant virgin, protesting all the time that they did not want to get involved and had no special interests. But the truth was they were already involved - up to their necks. They sowed the seeds of the war, and then they presented themselves as the peacemakers.
>
> It's important at least to meet the arguments of your opponent: Mr.
>Westendorp et. al. say they are the only thing standing between the Bosnians
>and a renewed ethnic cleansing. Do you think there's a better alternative
>that would not result in another war in Bosnia?
You should look at the actual course of events. There is ethnic cleansing in Bosnia under Westendorp. The UN run the country along ethnic lines. Populations continue to separate. Resources are distributed along ethnic lines. Political control is organised along ethnic lines. Bosnia under the UN is operating an apartheid system.
To justify this divide and rule policy the apologists for the UN must tell us over and over that it would be worse if the former Yugoslavs were allowed to rule themselves - that, they say, must never be allowed to happen. As long as they can keep your attention fixed on the horrors of the past then however shabby the present it looks justified. But the truth is that if you look at the past, you see that the West was involved all along, and that the ethnic slaughter was provoked by a Balkanisation, that, like the first Balkanisation, was created by Great Power rivalries, played out between surrogates.
-- Jim heartfield