Yugoslavia

[breakingcontact]

It get's me to wondering.

These folks were fighting over 100s (if not thousands) of years of ethnic and religious differences.

They valued their ethnic and religious groups really above nearly anything.

What do people value now in the US, what will people really draw lines around now when the chips are down?

Is it still ethnicity?

Religion?

Class?

Political ideology?

 

[breakingcontact]

Yes, I just finished the first part.
I'll admit, I didn't know much of how things came to be. I'm looking forward to the rest.

I'm starting to see where you were coming from with this thread.

Basically Tito was the strong man like in Iraq and once he wasn't in power...everyone was looking to settle the score from past atrocities.

The Croats collaborated with the Nazis in WW2 and killed around 500,000 people. I don't know if there is a more wild intersection in the world than Eastern Europe.

I guess Africa and Asia have some equivalents, but me being a Westerner, I better understand (even though slightly) the history and implications of European history better.

 

[TheDan]

Did they make a Yugo truck or was that just the VW?

I'm about 3 hours into the doc now. It's one you have to watch and not just listen too as there are so many subtitles.

Zastava definitely make's trucks, but I don't know if any were imported or not.

The documentary looks really interesting. Finding 5hrs of time to actually sit and watch it before this thread runs out of steam might be difficult, tho.

These folks were fighting over 100s (if not thousands) of years of ethnic and religious differences.

Yeah, they never really should have been made into one nation to begin with. These United States have a lot more in common with each other the Yugo states did.

 

[breakingcontact]

Yeah, they never really should have been made into one nation to begin with. These United States have a lot more in common with each other the Yugo states did.

I've been considering this...but the country went to war against itself before.

I think we are closer in some ways and divided in others.

Pop culture isn't much of a unifying force like religion or race.

Class on the other hand...

 

[breakingcontact]

The civilian deaths just make me sick. If they were well armed it wouldn't have happened or wouldn't have been as severe or swift.

I don't know how anyone who has studied history at all, doesn't understand that the only thing that force recognizes, is force.

 

[majormadmax]

Those were excuses they used, but basically there was no excuse for it. While over there, I always pointed out how many different ethnic groups and religions we had living side-by-side peacefully in our country. Tito may have used force to keep the peace, but the bullshit reasons they espoused to the media when the fighting broke out were pure propaganda.

As for pop culture, it was one of the things that helped bring the peace. Thanks to reruns of Baywatch and old soccer games via satellite, stability returned to the country once those advocating violence were run off. They ruined a truly beautiful country. When I got back to Germany, our neighbors showed us pictures of when they used to vacation along the Dalmatian Coast during the 1970s. I made an effort to visit every Olympic site I could, despite the fact that most were damaged during the war (the bobsled run down Mt Trebević outside of Sarajevo was notoriously used for defensive fighting positions). There were even a couple of sled frames left at the top of the run, which made for great photo ops!

Cheers! M2

 

[breakingcontact]

Awesome photo.

They display a lot of the double speak and propaganda in this doc. Also goes into the UN mishandling of the crisis.

 

[majormadmax]

Awesome photo.

They display a lot of the double speak and propaganda in this doc. Also goes into the UN mishandling of the crisis.

Don't believe the bullshit all three sides spewed to justify their acts, they were all guilty of atrocities against each other.

I had the opportunity to handle some evidence from the second Markale massacre, my job was to pass it to the right authorities to do forensics on it to see if it could be determined which side (Bosniaks or B-Serbs) launched it. Knowing that it was involved in the death of 43 innocents with another 75 wounded, we were adamant to doing everything we could to prove who did it.

Politics aside, I really loved Bosnia. I was lucky in that my job there had me traveling all over the country. The three soldiers in the bobsled picture worked in our watch center, they spent their entire tours indoors in a dark environment looking at video feeds and computer terminals. I got the idea to start taking them out during my daytime ops when it was permissible, they jumped at the opportunity and I never complained about having some extra shooters on board. These missions were the only times they go to get out and see the country, and I am glad I was able to show it to them. Of course, sometimes they were a bit reluctant to follow me into some of the sites I had to go to because they weren't the safest places around as some of the photos below show; but it was my job and I never took any unnecessary risks (well, not usually!).

It was a hell of an adventure, and I still hope to go back one day to see how things have progressed (or not)...

Cheers! M2

 

[breakingcontact]

Awesome pix. I only have a few from my time in the military. Hard to slow down and document things I guess.

Glad you posted. I forgot to post last night and ask you...

If not for their faith and ethnic nationalism, then what was the violence truly based in then? Were these more recent feuds? Just criminal gangs going at it?

 

[Shotgun Jeremy]

M2, did you ever cover the Yugoslavian massacre? Thats the one I heard about from the survivor.

Sent from my SGH-S959G using Tapatalk 2

 

[majormadmax]

Awesome pix. I only have a few from my time in the military. Hard to slow down and document things I guess.

Glad you posted. I forgot to post last night and ask you...

If not for their faith and ethnic nationalism, then what was the violence truly based in then? Were these more recent feuds? Just criminal gangs going at it?

They used faith and ethnicity as an excuse, but it wasn't that long prior to the war that they had lived in a peaceful co-existence. It is some zealous radicals that convinced them that the neighbor that they had lived next to contently for decades was suddenly their enemy because of some made-up incident that happened centuries prior.

M2, did you ever cover the Yugoslavian massacre? Thats the one I heard about from the survivor.

Which massacre? Unfortunately, there were many. I was not in-country during the second shelling of the Sarajevo market but I was supporting operations there which is why the items in question crossed my path. Unfortunately, my role both in and out of country was (and still is) pretty sensitive so I can't talk about it even today. Needless to say, for a diehard tourist like myself the opportunity to travel across that region was something I relished. I always lectured the Bosnians about how they let their "leaders" ruin the country for them over bullshit reasons. Honestly, prior to the war the place was a tourist destination and while it is slowly rebuilding itself, it will never be the same. It is truly sad and tragic the events that unfolded there, and for no reason whatsoever. Many other countries from the former Yugoslavia were able to reinvent themselves into productive states; but Bosnia had to be a "proving ground" for these ethnic/religious (there really is no separating the two in that country) battles and it wasn't until the International Community stepped in that it stopped. While there, all three factions were adamant that we (NATO) were protecting the other two; but I was proud of my role as a "peacekeeper" and would take no shit from the military forces I encountered there even though they tried viciously to give it to me. I was fortunate in that on a few occasions I pressed my luck it didn't come back to bite me in the ass, which was good as most of the time I didn't have any supporting forces near enough that could get to a situation in time to do anything. But I loved the autonomous aspects of my job, and they allowed me to not only get a lot done but also see a lot of the country and meet its people both good and bad. I am happy to say that there was a lot more of the former than the latter, but the latter were the ones that set things into a downward spiral...

 

[breakingcontact]

Another doc, but this one on modern "Yugoslavia".

 

[Sapper740]

LULAC

Its the new NAALP.

 

[Sapper740]

This reminds me of the MRAP I saw parked in front of a Sheriffs office recently. They just want everyone to know...

Yup, I saw one a few days ago northbound on I35E in Lewisville, all painted black with POLICE emblazoned all over it. Damn, I wish I had bought those RAUFOSS rounds on Gunbroker.com before they sold out. Will .50 BMG AP defeat the armor on an MRAP?

 

[Sapper740]

Honestly...all we have is a Fed that prints funny money to pay the masses to stay satiated. That goes away and it is on.

Absolutely. Watch the mayhem when the free shit runs out.

 

[Sapper740]

The largest battle fought by Canadian Forces since the Korean War was in the Medak Pocket when members of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry were sent to act as a buffer between the retreating Serbs and the advancing Croats. The Croats attacked the 875 members of the PPCLIs with heavy weapons but were unable to breakthrough the Canadians who had occupied the fortified positions left by the Serbs. The PPCLIs killed 27 of the attacking Croats with only a few wounded among their number. The Croat commander, realizing he wouldn't be able to make his objectives met with the Canadian commander and agreed to a ceasefire and a withdrawal of his troops. When the Canadians moved into the area vacated by the Croats they found many mutilated Serb corpses and all the buildings had been razed. This was but one of many massacres perpetrated by all sides in the war.

 

[majormadmax]

Another doc, but this one on modern "Yugoslavia".

That's Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, in that video still. He was a known career criminal who turned his thugs into a paramilitary forces. But what I remember most about him was his wife, Svetlana Veličković, who was a popular Serb folk singer under the name Ceca.

 

[breakingcontact]

That's Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan, in that video still. He was a known career criminal who turned his thugs into a paramilitary forces. But what I remember most about him was his wife, Svetlana Veličković, who was a popular Serb folk singer under the name Ceca.

Thats what a large part of this doc is about, "turbo folk" funded by organized crime.

 

[franzas]

Great documentary, BC. Now I'm really worried.

I'll look for one on Kosovo

 

[breakingcontact]

Man all those poor refugees clamoring to get into the UN camps. Gross. The UN sitting around while thousands died...sickening. Russian intervention stopped the violence temporarily then we apparently figure out blue helmets dont stop violence.