Op-Ed Contributor
Crossfire War - Three Way Ethnic Divsions Restablished in Bosnia Elections
By Willard Payne
Crossfire War - TEHRAN WATCH - Southeast Europe Theatre: Tehran - Sarajevo - Zagreb - Belgrade/Brussels - Vienna - Berlin; Three Headed Bosnia Presidency at Odds with Itself - Recent Elections Create More Divisions
Night Watch: SARAJEVO - When the fighting ended in 1995 in Bonsia-Herzegovina an attempt to prevent further conflict was made by instituting a three-man Presidency, each one representing a major ethnic group, which the fighting in the former Yugoslavia revolved around. One representative was Muslim, one Serb and the third Croatian. Elections held Sunday revealed that not only are the ethinc divisions still very much there. but it seems with the campaign rhetoric still going on, that the country could come apart at the ethnic seams. [RAWSTORY]
The Bosnian Muslim winner, the one who
will hold the Muslim seat of the Presidency, Haris Silajdzic ran on a campaign
of national unity, in order to strengthen the central government. With that in
mind he openly advocated the elimination of the other two ethnic "statelets",
Republic of Srpska that represents Bosnian Serbs, based in Banajulka, and to
also eliminate the Croat ethnic federation. Responding in kind has been Bosnian
Serb representatives including the winner of the Serbian seat of the Presidency
- Nebojsa Radmanovic. He has stated that if Srpska is elimanted then Bosnian
Serbs will secede from the country, which would cause Bosnia-Herzegovina to
disappear from the map of Europe.
Recently, crossfirewar.com reported on
the state ceremony in Banjaluka by the Presidents and Prime Ministers of both
Serbia-Belgrade and Republic of Srpska-Banjaluka in which they signed an
economic unity agreement. I wrote at the time that I also suspected there was an
understanding between both Serb communities that in times of crisis they would
work together again militarily as in the first Balkan war from 1991-95. Both
capitals know they are by no means alone as a result of the security agreement
signed in January between Belgrade - Tehran. Iran is aware that a resumption of
fighting here will direct Vienna - Brussels - NATO's attention away from
Tehran's nuclear weapons program. This is definitely a crisis opportunity Tehran
cannot pass up.
Contributing to the self-destructive
forces within this three headed monster Presidency is that the Croatian winner
of the Croat Presidential seat may not have the support of most Croats. Zeljko
Komsic does not have widespread support among the Croatian community and it seem
he was mostly supported by Bosnian Serbs. Political analyst Tanja Topic told
Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, "If Silajdzic (Muslim) and Dodik (Serb) continue
with their rhetoric we can expect the radicalization of the situation in
Bosnia." She added, "Such a situation would push us some five to ten years back
and would just prolong the agony of a certain international protectorate here."
Nationalistic Croatians are openly threatening to overturn the
elections.
Nothing would please Tehran more than
to have the West confined to fighting so close to home in Southeast Europe in a
desperate attempt to prevent the war from spreading into Central Europe, Vienna
and beyond. But Vienna has only itself to blame along with the European
capitals, Berlin - Brussels - Paris, that created this three headed monster when
they eagerly recognized the preverse, twisted boundary of Croatia that
deliberately cut off Serbia's access to the Adriatic Sea. Nor was it any
coincidence the Muslim community was the most victimized by the resulting
violence, war, when NATO imposed an arms embargo on Bosnia-Herzegovina. But that
opened the door for Tehran-Ankara to send Islamic fighters into the area and
those military-terrorist bases are still there waiting for the call to be
re-activated.
The stage for this front was set by the
55 headed hydra called the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe), it was supposed to have been orchestrated by Vienna in the name of the
New World Order proclaimed in 1990. They intended to conduct a carefully
arranged crisis which they assumed they could solve diplomatically but they
underestimated the impact of weapons dealears. According to official statistics
the ethnic demographics are 48% of Bosnia-Herzegovina is Muslim, 34% Serbian
Orthodox Christian and 15% Croatian Catholic. Since the divided Yugoslavia
unleashed a lot of dormant old world chaos, each division can be a
religious-nationalistic reason to restart the war.
So now there are three flashpoints in
the Balkans that can erupt simultaneously: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo and
Macedonia. The eventual conclusion of that war will re-draw the map of Europe
once again.
Night Watch Information Service
http://www.crossfirewar.com
http://www.crossfirewar.com
