Published: October 05, 2006
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
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