From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: Who is at fault for the Serbia-Bosnia War?
Date: 16 Aug 92 17:15:25 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

John Dimogotsis (jd@latcs1.lat.oz.au) writes:
>	The EEC had no right to recognise some arbitrary nation "bosnia"
>simply because it was a specific internal region of the colapsing
>"yugoslavia",

Had no right? I happen to think that the step to recognize B-H was
a very unfortunate one, and with little thought behind. But had no
right? B-H did declare itself an independent state, and this decision
was based on an referendum. I fail to see that from these circum-
stances that the EC (not EEC) would have no *right* to take the
decision they did.

>if from the begining the EEC had recoginsed the division
>of this region so that "serbs could be part of Serbia", "croats part of
>Croatia" and the "muslims independent and part of a smaller but homogeneous
>Bosnia", then this war could have firstly have been avoided,

And how do this "muslims independent and part of a smaller but homo-
geneous Bosnia" look like? What is your vision of B-H? Serbs in one
corner, Croats in the second and Muslims in the third? In reality
the most of B-H is a patchwork, often with Serbs on the countryside
and the Muslims in the cities. Again, I agree with the basic sentiment
that with a more thoughtful approach the EC would at least not have
incited the outburst of total war (there was non-neglible fighting
before the recognition as well) by the recognition. But I object to
your simple-minded approach.

>And for the EEC to arogantly impose a Bosnian state in
>the form it use to be when ex-Yugoslavia was alive is ludicrous.

The EC didn't impose anything. B-H was there asking for recognition.
Had the EC said "we don't recognize B-H as it is, but in these and
these parts", then we could talk about imposing something.

>The big problem would be to divide areas where population was intermixed.
>But if this was an easy problem we wouldn't expect of our leaders to solve
>it, anyone could do it.
>	Shifting populations may have been necessary to keep the resulting
>states as continous, united and integrated areas. This may seem difficult
>and even cruel, but if done peacefully and by mutual conscent would be
>acceptable, since a presume people would prefer to live with there own,
>the solution would be once and for all.

Do you realize that this precisely what is going on? (Although you
cannot really talk of peacefulness and mutual consent.) And I think
no one finds it tasteful. Involuntary population shifts should only
be applied as a very last desperate action.

I have advocated a division along the lines presented by John Dimogotsis
here - well advocated, I offered it as a least bad alternative - but
I think any "solution" will lead to significant minorities on the
wrong side of the border. And whether they are to move or not should
be their own decision. After all, as we for instance witnessed in the
Vreme article about Teslic, there are still Serbs, Muslims and Croats
who still think the other folks are perfetcly OK to live with.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Life is wonderful when the wonderlife is full
Xref: sparky soc.culture.yugoslavia:8085 soc.culture.greek:7702