Speaker 1: Blow and welcome to It could Happen Here a podcast
Speaker 1: about the continual state of bad things happening and how
Speaker 1: sometimes you can make them less bad or not happen.
Speaker 1: And today we're gonna I'm Christopher Wong, by the way,
Speaker 1: and today we're gonna be talking about Bosnia, a place
Speaker 1: where things went about as bad as they possibly can,
Speaker 1: and about how they're heading in very scary directions now.
Speaker 1: And with us to talk about this is Arnessa Kustra.
Speaker 1: Arnessa is a genocide survivor and a academic expert on
Speaker 1: genocides in general. Arnessa, how how are you doing? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing okay. I think all things considered, you know,
Speaker 1: being sort of bombarded on a daily basis with you know,
Speaker 1: possible threat um and talks about you know, a new
Speaker 1: conflict war brewing in the Balkans is the thing. Not
Speaker 1: an easy thing to convent, definitely not. Yeah, But other
Speaker 1: than that, I'm doing great. Thanks for asking. I'm glad.
Speaker 1: I'm glad. I'm glad you could be here with me
Speaker 1: today because the Balkans extremely complicated place, which I guess
Speaker 1: the story of both places. But yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: guess that that's that's where I wanted to go with
Speaker 1: my first question, because reading about what's happening now, my
Speaker 1: first instinct was go back to the day and accords.
Speaker 1: But I'm actually not sure that that's that that's that's
Speaker 1: that's even the best place to start, And so I
Speaker 1: wanted I wanted to, I guess ask you if so, okay,
Speaker 1: so if if if you're coming into looking at the
Speaker 1: Balkans for the first time and you're trying to understand
Speaker 1: what's going on, now, where do you think is the
Speaker 1: best place to start on it? Because I think you
Speaker 1: know the best. God, it's not we're talking about so
Speaker 1: much history, honestly, But the thing is, let's you know,
Speaker 1: let's start with the death of Tito. That's always a
Speaker 1: good place, I think, because that's really when things started
Speaker 1: to kind of shift in the Balkans and the former
Speaker 1: you know, socialist udo Slavia was really once Tito died
Speaker 1: and his place became, you know empty as this sort
Speaker 1: of unifying factor of all the various ethnicities and nationalities
Speaker 1: within Yugoslavia. You know, once he was gone, that sort
Speaker 1: of left this vacuum that needed to be filled, and unfortunately,
Speaker 1: instead of being filled, by another socialist you know, pro equality,
Speaker 1: pro unity leader. It was filled with a nationalist uh,
Speaker 1: which is kind of where we still are unfortunately. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it started obviously with with little things I think,
Speaker 1: with little sort of conversations and and little subtle I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, Ethno nationalist rhetorics, and it just kind of
Speaker 1: like grew and spiraled from there. And obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing led to Miloshevich and Kosovo giving
Speaker 1: his infamous speech, which kind of really gave that full
Speaker 1: fledged stamp on. Okay, yes, this is a ultra nationalists,
Speaker 1: you know, Ethno nationalist president that we now have, UM,
Speaker 1: who's threatening war across the other ethnicities. What do we
Speaker 1: do next? Um? And at that point, you know, that's
Speaker 1: when you sort of see the other countries start to secede,
Speaker 1: you know, Slova, India, Croatia, they're attacked by Serbia and
Speaker 1: then obviously eventually it goes down to Bosnia. UM. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it starts with yethno nationalism, as it always does,
Speaker 1: I think. Um, you know, I don't think we're anything
Speaker 1: special in terms of having conflict with our neighbors. Look
Speaker 1: at France and England or in our or America and
Speaker 1: Mexico or anyone. Really it's just you know, I think
Speaker 1: people make it sound as if we're special or we
Speaker 1: have these ancient hatreds, but you know that's not really true.
Speaker 1: It all comes down to the freaking politics and the leaders.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, you know, Middlitchevitch was removed, but is policy
Speaker 1: is um beliefs continue to kind of stick around. You know.
Speaker 1: I think, uh, you know, people thing people like Miloshevitch
Speaker 1: and Radovan Katach, who were you know, genocidal war criminals,
Speaker 1: as a thing of the past. But really you look
Speaker 1: at you know, the Serbian president um or the republic
Speaker 1: Subska president and they are really just the continuation of
Speaker 1: Katach and Miloshevitch UM. So nothing, you know, has fundamentally
Speaker 1: changed since Tito died, except you know, we got some
Speaker 1: new agreements, we got some new territories, some new ethnic
Speaker 1: lients drawn up, and not a new pretty buildings too.
Speaker 1: We have those now as well, but we don't really
Speaker 1: have that coexistence um, at least that on paper, not
Speaker 1: in politics. Certainly. I want to go back for a
Speaker 1: second too. I guess the moment of Chito dying because
Speaker 1: It's always been a sort of interesting thing looking at
Speaker 1: it for me because I remember, I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: so from from studying Chinese history, right there, there's a
Speaker 1: period where in the seventies where okay, like everyone's looking
Speaker 1: for reform in China, and you know what, what you
Speaker 1: would consider like the sort of the I guess you
Speaker 1: could call them the I don't know, left and right
Speaker 1: is complicated in China, but you know, they're like there
Speaker 1: there are a lot of sort of what you would
Speaker 1: call like the sort of left socialist like democratic reformers.
Speaker 1: Who are you know, I mean people people like they're
Speaker 1: looking at Yugoslavia as a model and they're going, oh,
Speaker 1: we can have like workers participation and we can have
Speaker 1: we can have these democratic enterprises. And then that just implodes,
Speaker 1: and and yeah, I wonder if we can talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about more about that, because my my very
Speaker 1: limited understanding of it was like there's an economic crisis
Speaker 1: from the oil shocks, and then once Tito dies, it's
Speaker 1: just like the wheels come off the whole system. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's a really good way of putting it. Um you know,
Speaker 1: like life in Yugoslavia. I don't think it was like
Speaker 1: ever perfect, and I definitely don't think it was a
Speaker 1: perfect system. I think you know, me being a Bosnian
Speaker 1: who was born to Vary, I think pro Yugoslav parents. Um.
Speaker 1: I just like many of my you know, fellow Yugoslavs
Speaker 1: or x Yugoslavs, have a tendency to look at Yugoslavia
Speaker 1: with like rose colored lenses. You know. We think about
Speaker 1: the coexistence, the unity, the multi ethnic part, the worker
Speaker 1: owned you know, socialist models, the fact that our parents, um,
Speaker 1: you know, we're able to provide for their families and
Speaker 1: take vacations and travel and um, you know, get together
Speaker 1: and all these sort of wonderful things. But in the background,
Speaker 1: really in the sort of depths of the you know,
Speaker 1: politics and the economic issues were kind of always there. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. The one thing that Tito did was obviously
Speaker 1: he relied unlike I think other socialist leaders of his
Speaker 1: time is you know, he basically worked with anyone, you know,
Speaker 1: the non align movement, but also with the West, with Europe,
Speaker 1: you know. So he was a very picky choosy I
Speaker 1: think was you know, the betterment of the country by
Speaker 1: kind of any means necessary. Um. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: he made mistakes just like um other leaders do. And
Speaker 1: I think obviously we had, you know, two issues. One
Speaker 1: he was sick, he was dying, um. And two there's
Speaker 1: an economic crisis happening. Um. And three then we had
Speaker 1: like the economic reforms, which really shifted the entire I mean,
Speaker 1: they just they very much shifted the the system that
Speaker 1: the Yugoslav people were very much used to. UM. It
Speaker 1: became more and more prior, you know, privatized after his death. UM.
Speaker 1: And and you know, Miloshevich, he was he was a banker,
Speaker 1: he was a businessman. He was he was who he was. UM.
Speaker 1: And I don't think that he ever really pretended to
Speaker 1: be a socialist, which is why I get so upset
Speaker 1: when American leftists call him a socialist or call him
Speaker 1: an anti imperialist, because those aren't even words that you know,
Speaker 1: he himself would have really used to describe himself. I think.
Speaker 1: But but I think, you know, there was just it
Speaker 1: was that sort of thing where there's an economic crisis brewing,
Speaker 1: they have no wise to really fix it. People are broke,
Speaker 1: people are starving. Suddenly the ownership, the worker you know
Speaker 1: owned sort of model is being shifted to a more
Speaker 1: privatized model. And people are just not happy. What's a
Speaker 1: good way to distract from that? You know, It's just
Speaker 1: we see it happen everywhere. It's not a new it's
Speaker 1: not like a new you know tactic. It's a tactic
Speaker 1: that everyone has utilized. Blame it on the other. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia didn't really have you know, immigrants that they could
Speaker 1: blame it on, but they had Muslims. So and they
Speaker 1: had the Kasabo you know, Albanians and the Bossians, and
Speaker 1: that was, you know enough, and suddenly the conversation really shifted.
Speaker 1: And obviously I'm simplifying all of this a lot, so
Speaker 1: much more complicated. Um. But you know, there there are
Speaker 1: books out there and and that obviously go into a
Speaker 1: great you know level of detail, um, into the actual
Speaker 1: sort of breakup. So I can give some recommendations later.
Speaker 1: But um yeah. But I think in in in that
Speaker 1: sort of very simplistic kind of sense, is there was
Speaker 1: an economic crisis happening. A good way to sort of
Speaker 1: distract that was the use of ethno nationalism, and it
Speaker 1: just kind of spiraled from there. I think, you know
Speaker 1: what Miloshevitch and what people like Miloshevitch always wants more
Speaker 1: power for themselves, and so his whole thing wasn't really
Speaker 1: ever about keeping Yugoslavia intact as Yugoslavia. It was keeping
Speaker 1: this vision of a greater Serbia alive. Because the thing is,
Speaker 1: you know, if we had not had a person like Miloshevitch,
Speaker 1: if we just had somebody who was you know, the second,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe more or less worse or better, who cares.
Speaker 1: I think people would have been fine. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't see this like war breaking now. But instead
Speaker 1: we had Miloshevich who was like way more concerned about
Speaker 1: consolidating power, exerting that control. And when he realized that
Speaker 1: he could use ethno nationalism to get to his goals,
Speaker 1: of course he was going to use that. Of course,
Speaker 1: like who wouldn't you know, we see it today with
Speaker 1: like what Trump did. He utilized you know, Muslims and
Speaker 1: immigrants and refugees and black people, all his scapeboats to
Speaker 1: distract from all the other things that are wrong with him,
Speaker 1: his leadership and the overall country. And Miloshevich did the same.
Speaker 1: He just did what any other politician did. And you know,
Speaker 1: that's the thing I think, you know, in thinking about Bosnia, Croatia,
Speaker 1: Slovenia and all these countries that started to succeed, I
Speaker 1: think if they had felt comfortable with, you know, staying
Speaker 1: in a country that is multi ethnic, at least in
Speaker 1: the case of Bosnians, and not going to speak for
Speaker 1: the Slovania's or croations because they have their own I
Speaker 1: think complicated identity. But with Bosnians, are are saying collectively,
Speaker 1: I think while we're not a monologue, not monolith, but
Speaker 1: collectively was always where are united? We are multi ethnic,
Speaker 1: multi religious, multi cultural, and it's such a big part
Speaker 1: of like our entire history and identity. And so if
Speaker 1: the choices being you know, under served, control, being secondary citizens,
Speaker 1: not having that equality, not having that multi ethnicity, of
Speaker 1: course we're not going to take that choice. Of course
Speaker 1: people are gonna want to you know, when when you
Speaker 1: have like that, you know, that boot on your neck
Speaker 1: of saying like we're going to control you, We're gonna
Speaker 1: take your land and we're gonna basically rule over you.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants to deal with that. And you know, unlike
Speaker 1: a lot of the other countries in former Yugoslavia, Bosnia
Speaker 1: really was the most multi ethnic. It had one of
Speaker 1: the highest rates of you know, mixed ethnic marriages and
Speaker 1: multi religious marriages, and that kind of remains true even today.
Speaker 1: So especially in places like sary Evo, Mostadaniluka, you know,
Speaker 1: the bigger cities, it has this very proud history of
Speaker 1: you know, coexistence and multiethnic co existence. So I think
Speaker 1: what happened for so many people was just a huge
Speaker 1: amount of shock. Um, my own family, so many people
Speaker 1: in my own family just did not think it could happen. Now.
Speaker 1: They grew up with this idea of a united you know,
Speaker 1: multi ethnic Yugoslavia, brotherhood and unity. These are our neighbors,
Speaker 1: our friends, our teachers, are lovers, you know whatever. There
Speaker 1: they work with us, they live next to us. Of
Speaker 1: course they're not gonna you know, turn against us. And
Speaker 1: I think even while all the politicians were fearmongering, while
Speaker 1: you know, Miloshevitch and Kataguge were sort of leading their
Speaker 1: campaigns of you know, especially as lamophobic provacad propaganda, um,
Speaker 1: you know, in in newspapers, on the radio, on TV,
Speaker 1: any chance that any speech that they gave, they talked
Speaker 1: about how the Muslims were coming, we were going to
Speaker 1: make their daughters wear her jobs, we were gonna take over.
Speaker 1: We're going to kill them, you know before that's why
Speaker 1: they have to kill us, because they don't pill us.
Speaker 1: We're going to kill them. It was just whole, you know,
Speaker 1: really brilliant propaganda campaign in so many ways that has
Speaker 1: now been replicated in so many other countries. We can
Speaker 1: We've talked about that specifically for yes. Second, because I
Speaker 1: think there's something interesting in the way that, like the
Speaker 1: way that you get people to do with genocide always
Speaker 1: seems to be like you can't. It's extremely hard to
Speaker 1: get someone to like just murder their neighbor because they
Speaker 1: don't like them. You have to do this like they're
Speaker 1: about to exterminate us, and that's why we have to
Speaker 1: like strike first. And that Yeah, that that that aspect
Speaker 1: of it, I think is is something that I see
Speaker 1: a lot when when I do this and yeah, you
Speaker 1: you have you have done more genocide studies, I want
Speaker 1: to hear. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. Um, it's
Speaker 1: so funny. I gave like an interview um on this
Speaker 1: specific topic I don't know, like two years ago, and
Speaker 1: I remember turning to the guy who has interviewing me
Speaker 1: because he was just like his look on his face
Speaker 1: was I just don't understand, Like I don't. I can't
Speaker 1: wrap my mind about how people could do that to
Speaker 1: their friends, neighbors, students, you know, people that were sworn
Speaker 1: to like protect and and people they lived with their
Speaker 1: entire lives. How could they do that? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I turned to him and I said, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if I told you right now go kill him, you
Speaker 1: know you probably wouldn't. But if I came to you
Speaker 1: day in and day out and I slowly started to
Speaker 1: kind of whisper in your ear, and I started to
Speaker 1: tell you, you know, he's been really really I don't know,
Speaker 1: he's been saying a lot of stuff about you. He's
Speaker 1: been quite negative or I don't know, you know, do
Speaker 1: you think he's kind of acting weird? I feel like
Speaker 1: he might be planning something. You might be planning to
Speaker 1: take over your house. You may be planning to I
Speaker 1: don't know, probably attack your sister. I think he's going
Speaker 1: to kill your sister. I think you might make your
Speaker 1: sister wear her job. So it's these very like slow,
Speaker 1: subtle things. And that's the thing that people don't understand.
Speaker 1: You know, violence never interrupts, like, never up out of nowhere,
Speaker 1: you know, it it's always planned. It brewis and it bruise,
Speaker 1: and it bruised, and then it explodes. You know, then
Speaker 1: there's the thing. But it comes slowly. And that's how
Speaker 1: it wasn't Yugoslavia. It wasn't this sudden. You know. Oh, yes,
Speaker 1: we're brothers and sisters. Forever, Go Tito, go Yugoslavia too.
Speaker 1: You know, Oh, I hate you because you're Muslim, and
Speaker 1: I hate you because your servant, I hate you because
Speaker 1: you're croact. No, that was not the case. The case
Speaker 1: was that this was a very slow campaign of propaganda
Speaker 1: that started in the eighties, almost immediately after Tito's death.
Speaker 1: Let's say it started very slow, started with the you know,
Speaker 1: with the sort of i think the disenfranchisement of the
Speaker 1: coast of all Albanians um and kind of the targeting
Speaker 1: of them um. And again, yes, there was this economic
Speaker 1: component on of it, but the way they wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of sidetrack that was, you know, well, you're you're
Speaker 1: hungry because thes of Albanians are not, you know, and
Speaker 1: they're taking your jobs again some more, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: tactics that we see evening. Yeah, so it's not it's
Speaker 1: not that much different, but yeah, you know, it starts
Speaker 1: slow and and the Militievitch and the cottage and the
Speaker 1: Maladich kind of campaigning was God, it was brutal. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I always say, it was kind of brilliantly executed
Speaker 1: in that it really got two people so much that
Speaker 1: then again, you know, they turned neighbor against neighbor. It
Speaker 1: was it was subtle in the beginning. It was that
Speaker 1: sort of what are the Muslims up to? Can we
Speaker 1: trust them? Can you trust your neighbor? Can you trust
Speaker 1: the Muslims? You know, talking about islam sization, talking about
Speaker 1: Alia is a big of which this book that he
Speaker 1: wrote when he was like I don't know, eighteen or
Speaker 1: or whatever, like, and you know, talking about World War two,
Speaker 1: this was another thing, like like everybody owns that there
Speaker 1: was a period in World War Two where you know
Speaker 1: a lot of Serbs were killed by Guster shaw Uh,
Speaker 1: by the Nazi collaborationists. And I think obviously that's a
Speaker 1: real fear for you know, for a certain group of
Speaker 1: people who went through that. So there was a lot
Speaker 1: of that as well, you know, that's going to happen again,
Speaker 1: That's going to happen again. Meanwhile, there was no grand plan.
Speaker 1: There was never even talks of you know, committing violence
Speaker 1: or even you know, talks of you know, seceding from
Speaker 1: Yugoslavia or anything. It was all it was all set
Speaker 1: in motion by the Serbian leadership, you know. And I
Speaker 1: think that's what people don't understand. The Bousian leadership, while
Speaker 1: not perfect, we're simply reacting to what the Serbian leadership
Speaker 1: was in many ways making them do. And and that's
Speaker 1: kind of where, you know, what happens in these situations.
Speaker 1: You know, they kind of push you and push you
Speaker 1: and push you until they're able to get you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of rise out of you or response out
Speaker 1: of you, or or get you on that sort of
Speaker 1: offensive where you have to defend yourself, You have to
Speaker 1: defend your identity, you have to defend who you are,
Speaker 1: you have to justify it also in many ways. So yeah,
Speaker 1: the you know, the sort of propaganda campaign, god, there
Speaker 1: was you know, obviously the funny things were like things
Speaker 1: like they're going to make you wear the hit job,
Speaker 1: but it was also very insiduous because they would target
Speaker 1: like these you know, villages where they were like Bosnians
Speaker 1: and Serbs, you know, living together and they're quite small,
Speaker 1: but they knew that like in the village obviously usually
Speaker 1: have a gun or you know shotgun because of the
Speaker 1: animals or you know, working or whatever. So they were
Speaker 1: like target them specifically with like the you know, the
Speaker 1: radioto and instead of like the big cities, Like they
Speaker 1: worked up to the big cities, but they really started
Speaker 1: in like specific sort of areas like in eastern Bosnia,
Speaker 1: especially because there was like a lot of um i
Speaker 1: think majority Muslim like villages in that area that would
Speaker 1: also have like nearby served villages. So yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there was that. There was you know then sort of
Speaker 1: taking over all the radio stations and um kind of
Speaker 1: going full force. They think like in the sort of
Speaker 1: early days of the war, like we're talking April May,
Speaker 1: they you know, they would get people like pretending that
Speaker 1: they were Bosnians they were actually Serbs, and they would
Speaker 1: like talk about how they went to you know, kill
Speaker 1: all Serbs or something like that. Um. There was also
Speaker 1: when they were like having people in concentration camps where
Speaker 1: they like started kind of putting them in those concentration camps. Initially,
Speaker 1: they they would make the victims in the concentration camps
Speaker 1: the Muslims basically, you know, say that, oh, they're just
Speaker 1: there as a refugee and the Serbian army is like
Speaker 1: protecting them, and they're making me feel really welcome and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So it was right at the beginning
Speaker 1: between especially eighty nine too, like the propaganda was so
Speaker 1: visible and it really escalated, and it was like suddenly
Speaker 1: everywhere and you would hear cartategic and Middle we Shovitch
Speaker 1: talk about, you know, the Muslims and the things that
Speaker 1: we wanted and you know, the things that the goals
Speaker 1: that we had, which after all, we're not you know,
Speaker 1: nobody was saying it. There wasn't like a single person
Speaker 1: that was saying these things that they were attributing to us.
Speaker 1: But that didn't matter. What they were just doing was
Speaker 1: instilling enough fear and enough doubt into population to eventually
Speaker 1: get them to take up arms when the time comes.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, that's precisely what happened. When the time came.
Speaker 1: You know a lot of people did take up arms,
Speaker 1: whether or not they wanted to. They had enough of
Speaker 1: that doubt and fear stowed in their minds over the
Speaker 1: course of you know, several years that they ended up
Speaker 1: feeling like I have to protect myself. And I'm not
Speaker 1: saying that's the case for every certain person. I think
Speaker 1: some a lot of you know, especially in higher leadership posmissions,
Speaker 1: a lot of them were just sociopaths who wanted to kill.
Speaker 1: And I don't think it mattered why or how, because
Speaker 1: you're always going to get those kind of people. But
Speaker 1: I think when we're talking about how how that shift
Speaker 1: happened so last, we have to obviously discuss the propaganda,
Speaker 1: the huge amount of propaganda that I went into, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, implementing it. So I guess such a tangent.
Speaker 1: That's okay, No, no, that was that was that was
Speaker 1: really great? Yeah, I think you know, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess, like I think it's incredibly important for everyone
Speaker 1: to understand that propaganda works, like if you just say
Speaker 1: something over and over and over again, like it does,
Speaker 1: you know of event eventually it pays off. And you know,
Speaker 1: the quote unquote payoff here is the genocide. And I guess, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how far into detail you want to
Speaker 1: get into this here, but but I think one thing
Speaker 1: I want to kind of focus on because I think
Speaker 1: from from reading what you've been saying about this that
Speaker 1: this wound up being a big deal with like why
Speaker 1: things are sort of still fucked now, which is that
Speaker 1: like the international response to this, Like, I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the things I've always just like haunted by is
Speaker 1: there's this quote by mid irand who's the herm Mr
Speaker 1: France's like this, he wants to be the socialist. He's
Speaker 1: like the guy that like they finally put in power
Speaker 1: after like all of the stuff in the sixties, and
Speaker 1: he is this lying about like I'm sorry, I wish
Speaker 1: I wish I tould up the exact quote, but it's
Speaker 1: basically like I I know the quote, Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: want to say it over the exactly? Um, it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's what was it? A peaceful but necessary reconstruction of
Speaker 1: a Christian europe um and Bosnia does not belong. So
Speaker 1: I remember that differently. It's really stayed with me for
Speaker 1: such a long time because he said that at a
Speaker 1: time where the Bosnian Muslims were just completely defenseless. Um,
Speaker 1: they were being dragged the way to concentrate shim camps.
Speaker 1: The massacres were already well underway. We're not talking about stubborn,
Speaker 1: We're talking about sorry about flat um even Surbrins nine two.
Speaker 1: You know, this is all um, the things that happened
Speaker 1: in places like witchcoens running and all these places that
Speaker 1: you that I think the vast majority of people don't
Speaker 1: really know about any here about, like in a lot
Speaker 1: of my family is from there. Within a span of
Speaker 1: three months, that entire town, the entire town, which was
Speaker 1: once almost entirely Bosnia muslim Um, was ethnically cleansed. And
Speaker 1: that was done through forced deportations, concentration camps, mass rapes,
Speaker 1: and rape camps of women and obviously a lot of murders.
Speaker 1: You know. So we're talking about one small town that
Speaker 1: took you know, three three months. And my family when
Speaker 1: it comes to that town, on both my mother's and
Speaker 1: my father's side, interestingly enough, has like such a long history.
Speaker 1: My parents fell in love there when they were like kids,
Speaker 1: you know, they you know, my grandmother's house was there,
Speaker 1: my grandfather's house was there. Um on like both sides,
Speaker 1: and they you know, so is this beautiful little town
Speaker 1: where you know Bosnians then Bosniaks and serves and CoA
Speaker 1: hads lived in Jews Roma and you know, my parents
Speaker 1: talked about the beauty of it and this wonderful sort
Speaker 1: of experience that they had when they lived there. My
Speaker 1: mom is from Saraebo, UM and I saw my as
Speaker 1: well obviously, but the Chad was like the place that
Speaker 1: she would go kind of like for the weekend, just
Speaker 1: because of the family that we had there. UM so
Speaker 1: very special. I think in her heart my grandpa's heart
Speaker 1: as well, and you know, within it's just like so
Speaker 1: hard to like fathom that within just a few months
Speaker 1: that talent was completely ethnically climes and that the international
Speaker 1: community knew this and did nothing. You know, there is
Speaker 1: and I leave it's in the Clinton tapes as well,
Speaker 1: but there was this thing about how they had provided
Speaker 1: aerial footage of the massacres that were being that were
Speaker 1: being enacted in places like Pittugal and Vannique where, oh
Speaker 1: my god, depare military serve forces did some horrid, horrifying
Speaker 1: acts of like violence and torture against the civilians. UM.
Speaker 1: And they had you know, showed it to the Clintons,
Speaker 1: and they showed it to the French and the English,
Speaker 1: and they did nothing. You know, they knew that a
Speaker 1: genocide was unfolding. UM. And the Dayton Peace Agreement wasn't
Speaker 1: signed until so the international UM community I think as
Speaker 1: just as much of a responsibility in the you know,
Speaker 1: the genocide of the Bosniaks as Serbia does, because stay
Speaker 1: sat there and they watched when they had all the
Speaker 1: power to stop it. They always had the power to
Speaker 1: stop it. They had the power to stop it before
Speaker 1: it even before even one person got killed, um and
Speaker 1: and two they it's not even that they just watched,
Speaker 1: it's that they purposely left the Muslims defenseless because Serbia
Speaker 1: had all the Yugoslav army, all the weapons, all the
Speaker 1: you know, everything, all the tools that they needed to
Speaker 1: commit j others side. They already had it, all the
Speaker 1: arsenal everything, um And you do waslav army was like
Speaker 1: the most powerful in the region at the time, and
Speaker 1: I think the fourth, third, third or fourth most powerful
Speaker 1: in like the Europe Turkey areas, so we you know,
Speaker 1: quite a powerful army. And there was Bosnia which had
Speaker 1: no weapons, no military uh um. You know, you see
Speaker 1: these pictures of like civilians fighting against you know, tanks
Speaker 1: and mortar shells and snipers, and it's like these you
Speaker 1: know youths basically and like converse and jeans and like
Speaker 1: an army jacket playing soldier because that's all we had,
Speaker 1: you know, we had the homemade weapons, we had um,
Speaker 1: you know, how to make your own bomb books kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and trying to basically descend ourselves with anything
Speaker 1: that we could. Um. They specifically did not lift the
Speaker 1: arms embargo, knowing that they were leaving us defenseless. Like
Speaker 1: they just knew. There was no way. There's no doubt
Speaker 1: on everything that we have read about the international community response,
Speaker 1: everything that Clinton metedand John mayor major major um not
Speaker 1: mayor major have that you know about it during that
Speaker 1: period shows us that they absolutely knew that we were defenseless,
Speaker 1: you know. And this wasn't you know a lot of
Speaker 1: people say I didn't know about the Bosnian genocide, but
Speaker 1: it was discussed, you know, I've looked at the archived footage. UM,
Speaker 1: it was talked about it on television, it was brought
Speaker 1: up in parliament and incentive that was people at the
Speaker 1: time who were like, why are we leaving the Bosnians defenseless?
Speaker 1: Why are we you know, not helping them, Why are
Speaker 1: we allowing them to be allowed into slaughter? This is
Speaker 1: genocide blah blah blah. So even as early as there
Speaker 1: was still people who knew about this stuff. We're telling
Speaker 1: the leaders, but nothing. Yeah, I think I think like
Speaker 1: that part also, like it's it's not just that like
Speaker 1: they did nothing, like they like they did worse than
Speaker 1: do nothing, like Miterians actively cheering it on, Like you know,
Speaker 1: the arms in Bargo is just like the arms in Bargo.
Speaker 1: If you're applying in arms in Bargo on a conflict
Speaker 1: where one people one side has tanks and the other
Speaker 1: side has like molotovs, like you are actively supporting one
Speaker 1: of the sides. And I think that like that just
Speaker 1: like is completely lost in how like almost everyone seems
Speaker 1: to talk about this now because there's like, you know,
Speaker 1: because because when you sort of get like interventions later,
Speaker 1: like people are like, oh, look, the wester was like
Speaker 1: planning to intervene here the whole time, and it's like no,
Speaker 1: like they were literally cheering, was cheering. Like it's like
Speaker 1: it's so frustrating because you know, we you take what
Speaker 1: we know about. And here's the thing. I know that
Speaker 1: Islamophobia escalated after nine eleven, but is Islamophobia has existed
Speaker 1: for a very long time. And I think talked to
Speaker 1: the black Muslims of America, they will tell you more,
Speaker 1: you know, better than than I could ever tell you
Speaker 1: about the history of Islamophobia in in the United States.
Speaker 1: So it's a loam of phobia was always an aspect
Speaker 1: of life. And in Europe, Islamophobia just like anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is like the staple of European cultural cuisine.
Speaker 1: So to say it's like it's like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a there's they have. They have
Speaker 1: like they have like the like the the tri force
Speaker 1: of Europeans, of European civilization is anti Semitism, Islamophobia and
Speaker 1: hating the Roma are just like how for the force.
Speaker 1: And so I think the sort of thing about the
Speaker 1: explicitness of European leadership, especially at the time in in
Speaker 1: you know, effectively ensuring that we were killed off because
Speaker 1: in Muslim country in Europe could not exist, and that's
Speaker 1: the thing that they said, literally set a Muslim country
Speaker 1: in Europe cannot exist. Like the fact that that was
Speaker 1: so open and brazen like kind of takes me back.
Speaker 1: But it really like tells you how much is Lamophobia informed.
Speaker 1: I think the international community responds on this, and it's
Speaker 1: so interesting to me. Now I think I've seen it
Speaker 1: over the past, I would say, especially five years, the
Speaker 1: sort of leftist genocide and I sort of leftist, anti
Speaker 1: imperialist kind of defense of Miloshevich and oh they were
Speaker 1: the you know, the Serbs were the actual victims blah
Speaker 1: blah blah and NATO blah blah blah, Western intervention. And
Speaker 1: I'm just like, oh, my god, read a book, read
Speaker 1: an article from that, read their actual quotes. There's no
Speaker 1: way that you can actually convince me that Europe, fortress Europe,
Speaker 1: and the United States of America would do anything that
Speaker 1: would benefit you know, the Muslim What's this? What was
Speaker 1: one of the things. I think it's really interesting to
Speaker 1: me about some way that the sort of like left
Speaker 1: genocidees dialism works, like it always seems to be reginus lomophobia,
Speaker 1: like and I remember started seeing this with Bosnia to
Speaker 1: where they're like, oh, yeah, well it's it's it's because
Speaker 1: what's okay. They have two things. One it's like, well,
Speaker 1: the Bossians were Nazis been the second one was like,
Speaker 1: oh well the boss the Bossians were like allto hottists.
Speaker 1: And it's like like it's the exact same thing you
Speaker 1: see with China, and it's like, oh, it's because all
Speaker 1: the weakers are like Selafiji hottest iss c I A.
Speaker 1: And it's like no, yeah, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: honestly laughable at this point. It really is. And it
Speaker 1: also just you know, obviously I'm a leftist. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna cheer the left on to an extent, but
Speaker 1: that is my red line. The genocide anialism really is
Speaker 1: my red line. And the reason it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: my red line isn't just because I'm a genocide survivor,
Speaker 1: but because it's like, oh, for God's sake, the data,
Speaker 1: the statistics, the research, the forensic the analysis, the specific quotes, videos, articles, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, all of those things exist and are out there,
Speaker 1: and all you have to do is actually do your
Speaker 1: research and you will find out that actually know you're
Speaker 1: in the wrong. And the other thing is what you
Speaker 1: just said about the sort of thing of painting you know,
Speaker 1: the Muslims is like the Nazis and the you know,
Speaker 1: the extremists. Um, you know, the thing about like the
Speaker 1: Bazian and Muslims is like, we don't hide the fact
Speaker 1: that there were people of our community that participated in
Speaker 1: Nazi crimes. There isn't this goal of concealing those crimes,
Speaker 1: of minimizing the crimes or pretending that they were right. Um,
Speaker 1: there is I'm sure a French group of people who
Speaker 1: defend these kinds of people, like there is a French
Speaker 1: when I'm talking about the collective sort of Bosnian um,
Speaker 1: you know, state level response as well as like an
Speaker 1: individual response is that the you know, the the Nazi
Speaker 1: division had like seventeen thousand Bosnian soldiers and there's millions
Speaker 1: of Bosnians in the country. The vast majority ended up
Speaker 1: joining the Partisans and stood against the Nazis. And the
Speaker 1: thing is, you can't when it comes to Yugoslavia and
Speaker 1: World War Two and the Holocaust, you can't just say
Speaker 1: that the Bosnians were Nazi collaboration is because the thing is,
Speaker 1: so are the Serbians, So are the Serbs, so are
Speaker 1: the Croats. At that time, Let's be honest, who the
Speaker 1: hell wasn't a Nazi collaborationist. Now this doesn't excuse it,
Speaker 1: absolutely not, but what it does sort of show is
Speaker 1: that that history, that period um in Yugoslav history is
Speaker 1: really complicated because you know, you had the Gustia um.
Speaker 1: And then you had the Chechniques. And then there's a
Speaker 1: period where the Chechniks were against Ussia, right because like
Speaker 1: used to show we're killing Serbs and robots and drews.
Speaker 1: But then the Chechniques turned around and there are you know,
Speaker 1: these Serb nationalists. They start killing the Jews and the Roma,
Speaker 1: and then they start working with those shut to hand
Speaker 1: down the Jews in the Roma, and then they start
Speaker 1: working with them to stand against the you know, the
Speaker 1: Tito's Partisans. Um. Meanwhile, you know, Tito's Partisans had a
Speaker 1: multi ethnic coalition, like and we're talking about Serbs, Bosnians, Roma, Jews, Croats, Albanians,
Speaker 1: you know, all sorts of people who were very like,
Speaker 1: you know, anti Nazism. So you know, we're we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're gonna win, We're gonna rebuild our our country, We're gonna,
Speaker 1: you know, make this beautiful sort of you know, multi
Speaker 1: ethnic kind of state, which they did, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but it is a complicated sort of piece
Speaker 1: of history. So you can't really say, oh, yes, they're
Speaker 1: the Nazi collaborationists because, um, at some point or not,
Speaker 1: everybody was and at some point or not everybody was also. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like like it's when when when you when you
Speaker 1: start getting into like it becomes this like you know,
Speaker 1: it becomes a way of just getting people to I
Speaker 1: don't know how to describe it, like it you know,
Speaker 1: when when when it starts being like this specific ethnic
Speaker 1: group as a whole is responsible for all of these crimes.
Speaker 1: Just like no, they're not like that's that's not that's
Speaker 1: not how this works. Like it's not like like like
Speaker 1: they're like there are like they're yeah, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: people in the ethnic group who did things that were awful.
Speaker 1: There's also going to be people, especially especially in a
Speaker 1: citation like this, there's there's a lot like a lot
Speaker 1: of probably more people who fought them. Yeah, and that like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's such an interesting statement because I'm going to compare
Speaker 1: to the bossy and response after the genocide, which has
Speaker 1: consistently been no, we don't believe that every single service bad,
Speaker 1: and we were only talked about those that took place,
Speaker 1: took part in these crimes and those that concealed them.
Speaker 1: And that has always been the collective and state level
Speaker 1: response of all Bosans. Now you have to think about
Speaker 1: I have a friend who's who who's nine members of
Speaker 1: her family were killed in Stubriniza in July. That's an
Speaker 1: absorbinate number of people. These were women, children, and men
Speaker 1: and elderly. There was no discrimination when it Kimp comes
Speaker 1: to her. I'm sat with her as she's read all
Speaker 1: the names of her you know, killed the family members.
Speaker 1: That woman, with all the pain that she survived with
Speaker 1: being there as a young girl in the midst of genocide,
Speaker 1: in the midst of these her horrifying crimes, has never
Speaker 1: once publicly or privately to me said, yes, old serbs
Speaker 1: are the same. Yes, all of them are work aminals. Yes,
Speaker 1: all of them hate us, absolutely not. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: I think about myself as well, Like, you know, my
Speaker 1: earliest childhood memories me being shot at by a sniper,
Speaker 1: knowing my father was in a concentration camp, knowing that
Speaker 1: my grandmother was just killed by a bomb. Um knowing that,
Speaker 1: you know, my biological dad was dying in a hospital
Speaker 1: from an attack, and my mother could also be killed
Speaker 1: because she was pregnant with my brother at the time.
Speaker 1: And so these are my earliest childhood memories. Um, they're
Speaker 1: not very happy memories. And I know why those things happened.
Speaker 1: You know, I know why I was being shot at
Speaker 1: by a sniper, and it was because I was bossy,
Speaker 1: and it it was because I was Muslin, and because
Speaker 1: I was seen as the enemy, even though I was
Speaker 1: you know, a little kid at you know, six seven
Speaker 1: years old, um and absolutely not a threat to anyone,
Speaker 1: and nobody should have been shooting at me. They did. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Even though that happened, I never had that feeling of
Speaker 1: all serbs are awful, All serbs are you know, I'm
Speaker 1: going to paint them all with a brush. But a
Speaker 1: lot of them, unfortunately, especially on the you know, the
Speaker 1: the ultra nationalists that continue to not just the night
Speaker 1: the geniside, but also glorified and celebrate it. They do
Speaker 1: paint everyone with the same brush, you know. And and
Speaker 1: the worst thing, the funniest thing, is that they paint
Speaker 1: themselves with the same brush. You know. They they think
Speaker 1: that they get to speak for every single serve person um.
Speaker 1: And that's the tragic path. Like I'm not, I'm not.
Speaker 1: I get accused of like constantly talking to about serves
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I absolutely am not. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the nationalists, And I will call out all the nationalists,
Speaker 1: whether they're bausi in Serpient, Croatian, American, whatever, But we're
Speaker 1: talking about you know, what you're doing to me and
Speaker 1: your response to my criticism of nationalism is actually the
Speaker 1: thing that's ruining your reputation. Yeah, it's it's the it's
Speaker 1: that it's that's the nationalist camp. It it's it's you
Speaker 1: have you have to conflate all of the individual people,
Speaker 1: the ethnic group, and the state. They all they all
Speaker 1: have to be this like, you know, this must be
Speaker 1: this organic totality, and it's not true. It's just not.
Speaker 1: But that's you know, that's that's that's the sort of
Speaker 1: it's it's the motus apperanda behind their entire ideology, and
Speaker 1: it's what they deploy, you know, it's what they deploy
Speaker 1: when the genocides, is what they deploy when they have
Speaker 1: to sort of like you know, sort of promoted openly
Speaker 1: or less openly afterwards. Yeah, it's like that justification, it's
Speaker 1: how they justify it. Yeah, And like we all know
Speaker 1: about the ten stages of genocide. But my colleague um,
Speaker 1: who's brilliant actually has often talked about that the nihilism
Speaker 1: is not really the final stage of genocide. It is
Speaker 1: in fact triumphalism um. And that's what we're actually seeing
Speaker 1: in Bosnia. You know, we're not I get genocide denialism
Speaker 1: from American leftists and like British leftists who are on
Speaker 1: a certain spectrum. And obviously I don't get genocide denialism
Speaker 1: from et No nationalists sorbs. What I get from them
Speaker 1: actually is very openly celebrating and threatening another genocide. They
Speaker 1: are not in my mentions saying oh there was no genocide,
Speaker 1: uh Darren, my mentions saying no one shops a Steba
Speaker 1: and so, which is basically a slogan that says knife
Speaker 1: wire serbonida and it's like basically a threat that another
Speaker 1: Serebani that will occur. They're in my mentions, in my
Speaker 1: emails and in my d M s sending me threats
Speaker 1: about how they can't wait till I'm put in a
Speaker 1: rape camp again, How they can't wait untill they kill
Speaker 1: my family, until sorry ever gets bombed again, and how
Speaker 1: you know we're they're gonna finish the job. How Ram
Speaker 1: is a hero because he killed all those you know,
Speaker 1: people in Serbonizza and sugared Um kata juch is a
Speaker 1: hero because he's the same Milosha, which is a hero
Speaker 1: because he believes in a greater Serbian. These people don't
Speaker 1: hide it um and that's the thing. So it's it's
Speaker 1: very like just today, you know, the first thing in
Speaker 1: the morning, I opened my Twitter and the first thing
Speaker 1: that I see is a Bossian activist arrested for protesting
Speaker 1: the dot com La Ditch mural which the Serbian police
Speaker 1: were guarding. They were guarding a mural get like a
Speaker 1: mural of a war criminal who committed genocide, who who
Speaker 1: everybody knows committed genocide, a mural glorifying him. They were
Speaker 1: got the police were guarding, you know, the mural and
Speaker 1: inflicting damage on innocent civilians who were there too, you know,
Speaker 1: protest against the mural. And so I think that really
Speaker 1: tells too so much the issue in the Balkans. This
Speaker 1: has when it could happen here. Join us tomorrow for
Speaker 1: part two of this interview, in which we discuss the
Speaker 1: dangers of what's currently happening in Bosnia. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter It Happened here pod, and you
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Speaker 1: for listening.