There is no “Bosnian ethicity”, Bosnian muslims invented term “Bosniak” as a propaganda trick during the war. In the area we always called “Bosnia-n-” everyone who lives in Bosnia (Serbs, Croats, Muslims and other), but now in the MSM “Bosnia-k-s” are only Bosnian muslims, which implies that “Bosnia” is their land… Simple and effective trick used as Jihad tactic before. The same way, Kosovo Albanians call themselves “Kosovars”. Both words are invented during the war and were not in use before. “Kosovo polje” means “Field of blackbird” in Serbian, it has no meaning in Albanian. So only genuine “Kosovars” (Blackbird-people) can be the Serbs. Albanians have their own country – Albania.

Imagine the Serbs in Chicago start calling their selves “Illinoians” and claim the state of Illinois as our land!? With 10 children per family this goal is achievable in a two or three generations.

There are Serbian people, who speak a Serbian language and have a Serbian culture. A country known as “Serbia” exists because so many Serbs live there.

Likewise, There are an Albanian people, who speak an Albanian language, who have an Albanian culture. A country known as “Albania” exists because so many Albanians live there.

On the other hand, my father’s family came from Bohemia. Many years ago, some of my relatives even referred to themselves as “Bohemians.” Yet, they were Czech people, who spoke the Czech language. Their culture was Czech. Some of their neighbors in the old country were actually German. They spoke German and had German culture. Yet, they lived in Bohemia. We could call the Czechs and Germans living there “Bohemian,” but it would be very confusing. There really is no such ethnic group, as “Bohemia” is merely a place name. If we started talking about relationships between Germans and Bohemians, it would be very confusing. We might be talking about the relationship between Germans who live in Bavaria and Germans who Bohemia or we might be talking about Czechs and Germans who both live in Bohemia. (Bohemia is part of the Czech Republic today and was part of the former Czechoslovakia.)

Transylvania is place. There are no ethnically “Transylvanian” people. The Ruhr Valley is a place; there are no ethnically “Ruhr Vallian” people. In the U.S., we have individual States, such as New York. We may use the phrase “New Yorker,” but this does not refer to any specific ethnic group.

So clearly we have some place names without ethnic significance, and other place names that also identify the ethnic people who inhabit them.

Poland is a great example of place that is so named because of its ethnic population. Before World War II, Poland was much further east. After World War II, the Russians insisted that Poland be move westward. Today’s eastern Poland was western Poland before World War II.

Clearly, Bosnia is a place not named for any specific ethnic people. That is why we refer to it inhabitants as Bosnian-Croats, Bosnian-Serbs, Bosnian-Muslims, etc.

“There is no such ethnic group as “Bosnians.” Bosnia is a place. ”

Could one also state:

There is no such ethnic group as “Serbians”. Serbia is a place.

There is no such ethnic group as “Romanians”. Romania is a place.

There is no such ethnic group as “Germans”. Germany is a place.

There is no such ethnic group as “Brazilians”. Brazil is a place.

There is no such ethnic group as the “Japanese”. Japan is a place.

The perverse logic of racism reduces the world to that which it finds suitable, happily and promptly discarding everything else that blocks the rosy picture.

Good post.

Apparently he’s met one Serb who hates Croats and so naturally of course all Serbs are bigots and therefore we can conclude that there were no “good guys” in that conflict so damn them all to hell.

Comparing Serbs to fanatical muslims is just silly and not worth responding to, but the charcacterization of Serbian society as a whole as being bigoted and intolerant is demonstrably false.

For instance, in the south-western region of Serbia known as Sandzak-Raska, there is currently a population of around 200,000 Serbian muslims. They are an outright majority in the larger towns such as Novi Pazar, Prijepolje and Sjenica and have equal rights the same as any other citizen; they have equal representation in the police force, they serve as mayors and have ministers in the national parliament, they play on the Serbian national basketball and soccer teams and just recently, one of them was Miss Serbia. They are free to practice their faith without any meddling from Belgrade as is attested by the sight of women wearing the headscarf or the full body covering and the wailing of the Islamic call to prayer which blares from the mosques five times daily- indeed, they are in a much better situation with respect to freedom of worship and human rights than any non-muslim people in any muslim nation.

During the war in ’92, while muslim forces ethnically cleansed tens of thousands of Serbs from eastern Bosnia, which is on the border with Sandzak, no retaliatory expulsions or ethnically-motivated violence was directed at the muslim population of Serbia; despite the fact that thousands of muslims from Sandzak headed to Bosnia to serve as volunteers or paid mercenaries to fight the Serbs. Also worth mentioning is the tens of thousands of muslims from Bosnia who sought and recieved food and shelter in Serbia during the conflict.

Moving to the south of Serbia, on the border with Kosovo and Macedonia, there is still a population of Albanians that is numbered close to 100,000. Well, it was around that number when I checked a few hours ago; but taking into consideration the abnormally high birthrate among Albanians, that number could by now be well over 110,000. And these Albanians(whatever their number), are free to speak their language, build their mosques and cultural centers, operate their businesses and serve in government just as any other Serbian citizen; which is a situation that is in marked contrast to the near non-entity Dhimmi status that the Serbs still remaining in neighbouring Kosovo are subjected to.

I should also mention Vojvodina in the north of Serbia, which is only 65 percent Serb- the rest being Hungarian, Croat, Rom,Slovak etc. It is a fact that before one shot was fired in Croatia’s violent secession from Yugoslavia, tens of thousands of Serbs were ethnically cleansed from that country in a campaign of murder and intimidation fomented directly by Franjo Tudzman and his ruling HDZ party; with the final number of Serbs permanently expelled from Croatia at the end of the conflict being in the range of half a million. In stark contrast to this, no ethnically motivated violence was directed at Serbia’s Croat population during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

I could mention the Rom/Gypsy population, which is scattered all over Serbia with a large concentration in the south. But just google the term “guca” and you will come across the website for the Dragacevo Brass Festival which is an annual event that gathers all the brass bands from around Serbia(mostly Gypsy) for a week-long celebration of music, dance and excessive drinking; which, for the last few years, has been drawing crowds upwards of 500,000 people-tens of thousands of them being most jovial and very visibly un-threatened non-Serbs. A kind of celebration like this is most certainly not the product of a bigoted, closed society. As a matter of fact, some of the Serb and Gypsy musicians one would encounter at the festival have been cleansed from Kosovo- either in the immediate aftermath of the NATO invasion or after the pogrom of 2004. And what’s more, if you visit any of the remaining enclaves of Serbs in Kosovo, you will see a good number of Gypsies who live there-operating shops, selling cigarettes on the street or in a cafe sipping coffee and plum brandy as they talk with their Serb neighbors. And I can speak from first-hand experience that the stranger feels very welcome in Serbia and the Serb enclaves of Kosovo when he asks for directions to the monastery, or when he takes a seat at a cafe to order a beer or something to eat, or when he nods hello to a group of teenage girls passing by on their way home from school and his hello is answered by giggles and blushing and mirthful “Dobar Dan”s. And “welcome” is definitely not the word to describe what the traveller feels in the fully cleansed, mono-ethnic Albanian areas of Kosovo or Macedonia or Montenegro, where he feels a distinct sense menace and not-belonging and he’s asking himself: Where the f*** am I and how do I get to Detroit!

No, the lie that Serbs are this xenophobic, intolerant band of bigots is one of the Big Fat Lies to have come out of the recent Balkan conflicts. And like the lies told about Israel: that Fascist Apartheid State, Jenin!Jenin!, Sharon the Butcher etc.- repeated ad infinitum, only in order to sufficiently de-humanize the people and the Nation so that they be forced to sacrifice more and more land in concession after suicidal concession to eventual non-existence as part of a payment of protection money from the Eurabian whore to her Islamic pimp.

Punjab, Kashmir, the Mandate, Cypress, Bosnia, Kosovo, Gaza- where will it end?

It ends only with Submission

I heard they both hired real PR agencies to handle the situation. The Serbs, not thinking too deeply here, didn’t.

http://molonlabe70.blogspot.com/2007/12/rome-wasnt-built-in-day-nor-was-modern.html

It sounds like you met a Serb with an unusual sense of self-preservation. Given what they have been through the last century, I am surprise that more of them don’t have such an attitude about rival ethnic groups.

I have met a few like that, too, but very few. You also get a few more cosmopolitan ones who think that all people from Bosnia, even fellow Serbs, are a bunch of hicks.

However, you will find Serbs to generally be very inclusive people. Ask to visit their Church for a Serbian Christmas Eve service (January 6th on our Western calendar) and they will want to “adopt” you. If you try to dance their folk dance, they will consider you part of the family. One Serbian philosopher once defined a Serb as anyone who keeps the Christmas Slava and dances the Kolo regardless of actual ancestry.

There are indeed bad actors in all wars, including in the US military. However, the difference is that we punish anybody in our military who commits infractions, but the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims did not and still do not.

The government of Serbia (called Yugoslavia at that time) did, in fact, impose stringent sentences on anybody they caught committing what we would think of as war crimes.

Unfortunately, there were also some instances of jihadists stealing or counterfeiting Serbian military or police uniforms or insignia, and committing wrongdoing for the benefit of the press while impersonating Serbs, and even of using bombs to kill their own people in order to blame it on the Serbs. As if all that were not enough, dead bodies of Serbs who had been killed by Muslims were misidentified as being dead Muslims, so that other Serbs could be blamed all over again for that.

This has gone on for so long that many Serbs just gave up on ever being able to convince anybody of the truth. That’s because, even though individual Serbs can say that they never witnessed other Serbs committing war crimes, there is no effective way to prove a negative with regard to the Serbian people as a whole. That is why Americans, at least at one time, believed in the principle of “innocent until proven guilty.” Might be a good idea to take another look at that!

1) US support for the only civilized nation in a region of barbarians is fine by me.

2) The Muslims are incapable of gratitude, and will just view US support for a new terror state in the Balkans as a sign of weakness. Clinton took the Muslims side in Bosnia, and again in Kosovo, and we get nada gratitude for that. No need to repeat that mistake.

I sure do.

Economist, June, 1995

article, with picture, about a Canadian Serb tracked down and arrested for kidnapping and holding Canadian UN peacekeeper as a human shield in Bosnia

I am of the opinion there were enough bad actors on all sides, but the Croats and Bosnian Muslims had better PR.