Re: Yugoslavia

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

> > Now, a quick question.  Several on this list who are otherwise
> > perceptive and critical thinkers have accepted, and indeed
> > broadcast, the view that Milosevic is an agent of the devil, etc.
> > What evidence does anyone on this list have that he is evil, anti-
> > democratic, satanic etc. other than Albright's (sic) and company
> > diatribes.
>
> Srebrenica

*****   Weapons, Cash and Chaos Lend Clout to Srebrenica's Tough Guy

By: John Pomfret, Washington Post Foreign Service, The Washington
Post, February 16, 1994

SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of
his comfortable apartment -- one of the few with electricity in this
besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern
Bosnia. They're on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and
headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.

"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as scenes of
dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the
house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a
burned-out ruin. "He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough
luck."

Reclining on an overstuffed couch, clothed head to toe in camouflage
fatigues, a U.S. Army patch proudly displayed over his heart, Oric
gives the impression of a lion in his den. For sure, the Muslim
commander is the toughest guy in this town, which the U.N. Security
Council has declared a protected "safe area."

Perhaps the time for toughness in Bosnia is nearing an end. The
problem, though, is that hundreds of men like Oric who still want to
fight dominate all three sides in this 22-month-old war. Nobody
controls them; they have access to plenty of weapons and lead many
young men. And, if anything, Balkan tradition is on their side.

As the United Nations seeks to make a cease-fire work in Sarajevo
under the threat of NATO air strikes, officials face the issue of how
to neutralize men like Oric.

"I won't let these people destroy the peace," British army Lt. Gen.
Michael Rose, commander of U.N. forces in Bosnia, told people in
Sarajevo last weekend, referring to fighters who kept firing after
the cease-fire began. "If we find out who they are, we will put their
pictures on television and tell the world they are not serving your
interests."

But Oric and others like him have other plans -- in Sarajevo and
elsewhere. For him and his counterparts within Bosnian Serb and Croat
paramilitary units, the war has been a godsend. While the vast
majority of the 44,000 people crammed into this enclave about 50
miles east of Sarajevo have no fuel, Oric rents out his car -- a
shiny black Volkswagen Golf. While most people spend their days and
nights without electricity, Oric has power 24 hours a day. His
generator runs on black-market diesel oil. It's only natural, because
he's the biggest dealer in town.

These days Oric's men aren't fighting much -- although occasionally
they sneak up behind the observation posts established by the
Canadian U.N. troops on the borders of the "safe area" and take
potshots at the 3,500 well-armed Serbs besieging Srebrenica.

His troops' main task is making a nine-hour trudge, across Serb
lines, to the next U.N. "safe area" to the south: Zepa, where the
Ukrainian U.N. troops are more amenable to deals than the 150-odd
Canadian infantrymen here.

A formidably muscled 27-year-old with a patchy black beard, Oric, a
native of Srebrenica, kicked around for several years after
graduating from trade school, where he learned metalworking. In 1987,
out of work in Belgrade, he joined the Serbian capital's police
department and within several months was transferred to the
republic's police force, participating in a crackdown on Muslim
ethnic Albanians.

"I'm a man of action," he said in a recent interview. "I like
adventure."...   *****

Bosnian Muslim warriors like Nasir Oric were using U.N.-protected
"safe areas" as staging grounds for attacks on Serb-held areas.

*****   Widows of Srebrenica won't let cause be forgotten

By Barbara Demick

Knight-Ridder Newspapers

August 1, 1996

...The refugees also suspect their own government. The Bosnian Muslim
army commander in Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was conveniently out of the
city when it was stormed - giving credence to the widespread belief
that the government had secretly traded away Srebrenica for other
territory.

``These Srebrenica refugees have been treated as pawns at every stage
of the game,'' said Randolph Ryan, a spokesman for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees in Tuzla. ``Now, the government is afraid
of these people because they know they are potentially a powerful
political force.''...

<http://www.newstimes.com/archive96/aug0196/inc.htm>   *****

Yoshie