From: draskovi@usc.edu (Zoran Draskovic)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia
Subject: An article
Date: 10 Jan 1993 15:59:47 -0800
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: aludra.usc.edu



Alfred Sherman,  The "Jewish Chronicle",
London, England, December 4, 1992 - page 4


                     FALSE PARALLELS


     Mrs. Brenda Katten's abuse of her chairmanship to
harangue her guest of honour has already been disowned by
some in the community.  But her lapse of logic in comparing
the plight of Bosnian Muslims with that of European Jewry
under Hitler is far more dangerous, the more so because she
is not alone in the error.

     It does us no good to claim a "locus standi" in every
conflict by equating it with the Holocaust, or when third
parties take the name of our martyrs in vain.  Bosnia is
not occupied Europe;  the Muslims are not the Jews;  the
Serbs did not begin the civil war, but are predictably
responding to a real threat.

     Some years ago, I, among others, warned that, whatever
the logic of establishing Yugoslavia in the first place,
any attempt at hurried dismemberment, particularly along
Tito's internal demarcation lines, would lead to armed
conflict, self-intensifying bloodshed and floods of
refugees.

Bosnia and Croatia are former administrative provinces of
Yugoslavia with large, compact, indigenous Serbian
minorities.  These achieved recognition as a national group
only after centuries of struggle.  Since 1990, the
independent Croatia leadership --- with its extreme
chauvinist and clericalist colouring --- and the Bosnia
Muslim leadership --- seeking, in its Islamic
fundamentalist programme, to put the clock back to Ottoman
days --- have threatened to turn the Serbs back into
persecuted minorities.

     Immediately on declaring independence, the Croatian
government, ruling a one-party state under a former
Communist general, Franjo Tudjman --- whom Lord Carrington,
among others, described as an evil man --- began
persecuting Serbs in the former Marches (military
frontier).

     In Bosnia, Alia Izatbegovic --- a one-time secularist
who had reverted to strict Islam and preached the Koranic
state --- entered into an alliance with the Croatians ---
who account for 25 per cent of Bosnia's population ---
according to which they could have autonomy in certain
areas in return for support against the Serbs.

                    The Serbs cannot forget that, in living memory, the
"Independent Croatian State," set up by Hitler in Croatian
and Bosnia-Herzegovina, massacred close on half of the
Serbian population --- which was then the largest of three
communities in Bosnia --- and as many Jews as it could lay
hands on, the connivance of the Roman Catholic Church.

     It was helped by Muslims, who were encouraged by their
religious leadership, which then hosted Haj Amin el-
Husseini, ex-Mufti of Jerusalem, and which not support
Izatbegovic.  If there is any parallel with the Holocaust,
it is the martyrdom of the Serbs in Croatia-Bosnia, who
account for a third of the Serbian nation.

     Both the Croatian and Muslim leaderships enjoy support
and encouragement from Germany --- which is using them as
stepping stones in its "Drang nach Osten" (drive the East)
in the Balkans and Central Europe --- and from Muslim
governments, particularly militant ones like those of Iran
and Saudi Arabia.

     Lord Carrington, former chairman of the EC peace
initiative, has outspokenly denounced Germany for
deliberately precipitating these inter-ethnic conflicts
when they might have been avoided.

     He has criticised the other eleven EC members for
"supinely" going along with Germany in the name of a common
European foreign policy, against their own better judgment.

     Germany now enjoys American support --- partly in
pursuit of President Bush's will-o'-the-wisp of a "new
world order," and partly under pressure from oil-rich Arab
states.

     John Major has gone along, in spite of Foreign Office
and Defence Department misgivings, because, as his
apologists put it, he owes Chancellor Kohl favours for
smoothing his path to Maastricht, and, some add, wishes to
show that, unlike Lady Thatcher, he can "get along with
Helmut."

     Though Serbian refugees from Croatia and Bosnia now
outnumber Croatian and Muslim refugees combined, the
British media virtually ignore them.  It reminds one of the
late 1930s, when most of the British press demonised the
Czechs at Downing Street's behest, denouncing them as a
threat to European peace and for ill-treating their
peaceful German Sudetenland minority;  "Herr" Hitler, by
contrast, was held up as a reasonable man.

     True, the vast majority of Muslim refugees are
innocent people, suffering for the acts of their leaders,
whom many did not even choose.  The same can be said of
hapless Palestinian refugees, and ore recently of
Palestinians expelled from Kuwait and its neighbors, and
equally of millions of German civilians, women, children
and old people, who suffered during the closing stages and
aftermath of the Second World War.

     It is almost invariably the innocent who suffer in
war.  But that does not equate them with victims of the
Holocaust, any more than being a Jew automatically
qualifies one to pronounce on Yugoslavia.

     The only way to end the Muslims' suffering is to
broker a political solution to the national problems that
have been precipitated by the premature break-up of
Yugoslavia.

     This needs to meet the Serbs' legitimate claim to
self-rule with religious and cultural freedoms, otherwise
they will go on fighting even if the whole world is
mobilised against them.

     This solution would in no way prejudice the religious
rights which Muslims have enjoyed in Yugoslavia since its
foundation.

     This will not be achieved so long as European
Community foreign policy is made in Bonn, whose agenda
entails the reversal not only of Versailles, but also of
the post-1945 settlement.

     This should be the focus of our concern.
****************************************************************************
     Sir Alfred Sherman is a journalist and author,
     who has published a number of essays and articles
     on Yugoslavia over a period of 40 years. 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia