As the former Bosnian president is arrested for war crimes, there is no doubt that Serbophilia is deeply rooted in British politics
Former Bosnian president Ejup Ganic leaves a police station in London after appearing as required by his bail conditions. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty
It is a dark irony that just as Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, has begun cross-examining witnesses at his trial for war crimes and genocide at the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague, his arch-enemy Ejup Ganic, a former Bosnian president, may soon appear in a Serbian courtroom on war-crimes charges.
Ganic was arrested last month at Heathrow airport, and has now been released on bail under strict conditions. He is one of 19 Bosnian officials wanted by Serbia in connection with an attack on a convoy of Yugoslav army soldiers in May 1992 in the besieged Bosnian capital Sarajevo, when several dozen soldiers were killed.
But Ganic is furious, and accuses the British government of rewriting history and acting as a policeman for the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, the late Serbian president. Putting aside the rights and wrongs of Ganic’s case, he is certainly correct that Britain has been rewriting Balkan history, and has done so for decades.
Serbophilia is deeply rooted in the Foreign Office’s psyche – and much of the British left’s – and reaches back almost a century. At the top of the sweeping Foreign Office staircase is a painting by Sigismund Goetze, Britannia Pacificatrix, painted after the first world war. It shows Britain shaking hands with the United States, while protecting Serbia, Montenegro and Belgium.
For much of the early 90s British policy seemed to be about “protecting” the Serbs. The beleaguered minority of Foreign Office officials who favoured military action to stop the Serbian onslaught on Bosnia were consistently opposed by the then prime minister, John Major, defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind and foreign secretary Douglas Hurd. These three ministers and their officials seemed to view Slobodan Milosevic’s regime as the inheritor of Tito’s partisan tradition, when in fact it was its destroyer.
This lazy view of the “plucky Serbs” as the only Balkan nation to fight the Nazis is completely at odds with reality. Certainly, many Serbs were fierce anti-Nazis and fought bravely against fascism. But so were many Slovenes, Bosnian Muslims, Hungarians and Croats – such as Croatia’s first president Franjo Tudjman, who was one of Tito’s youngest generals. Tito himself was half-Croat and half-Slovene. And numerous Serbs collaborated with the Nazis under the collaborator regime of Milan Nedic, setting up concentration camps such as Sajmiste, in Belgrade, where thousands of Jews were murdered in gassing vans.
Hurd, Major and their grandees were powerful advocates of the UN arms embargo against Bosnia, which denied the new nation even the means to defend itself. As Diego Arria, who served as the Venezuelan ambassador on the UN security council during the Bosnian war, told me: ” The United Kingdom was, through the whole process, the only one with a clear view of what it was going to do. When the Bosniaks refused to play their role of passive victims and their resistance grew, the British and the French became very irritated. They were desperate for it to be finished, but the Bosniaks would not cooperate.”
Certainly, the relatives of those Yugoslav soldiers killed in the convoy in Sarajevo in 1992 deserve justice as much as those who mourn their loved ones murdered at Srebrenica. But only 161 indictments have been issued for war crimes by the UN tribunal, and the vast majority of perpetrators continue to live freely, and will likely never be called to account. So Ejup Ganic’s claims that he has been arrested for political, not legal reasons, will continue to find a ready echo across Bosnia.
Comment that i think sums this up:
DefenderOfTruth
14 Apr 2010, 6:52PM
This is a great article that finally states on obvious fact: The British government under John Major was a willing and vital accomplice and supporter of Milosevic and his genocidal policies. In the newly released book “The Clinton Tapes” it is revealed that major European powers, but most ardently the British and French, wanted to see the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) exterminated.
Here’s an excerpt from the book which discusses the attitude of the British and French governments at the time: “privately, said the president [Clinton], key allies objected that an independent Bosnia would be “unnatural” as the only Muslim nation in Europe. He said they favored the embargo precisely because it locked in Bosnia’s disadvantage”
Another excerpt shows us why the British and French governments chose to aid Milosevic and Karadzic with the extermination of the Bosnian people: “When I expressed shock at such cynicism, reminiscent of the blind-eye diplomacy regarding the plight of Europe’s Jews during World War II, President Clinton only shrugged. He said President François Mitterrand of France had been especially blunt in saying that Bosnia did not belong, and that British officials also spoke of a painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe.”
The simple and painful truth is that the leadership in both Britain and France wanted to see the Bosnian Muslims exterminated (the same way in which the Jews were exterminated during the Holocaust) and they alongside Russia proved themselves to have been Milosevic’s strongest international allies helping him politically behind the scenes.
While the leaders of Britain and France publicly decried the slaughter of Bosnians that was being committed in front of the eyes of the world they privately ensured that the slaughter would continue. They gave the Serbs the political cover that was necessary for them to commit their genocide while the whole world watched without doing anything substantial to stop it.
This inhumane behavior on part of the British political elite has shamed the great British nation and the current aid that Britain is providing to Serbia’s latent fascists today is just as shameful. I sincerely hope that the British people stand up to their government’s craven and immoral behavior regarding the arrest of Dr. Ganic and that they put pressure on their leaders to formally apologize to the Bosnian people for the support they gave to Milosevic which allowed him to commit the most brutal genocide seen in Europe since the dark days of the Holocaust.
newdad
14 Apr 2010, 7:08PM
Excellent piece. The Tories were deeply involved with the Milosevic-Karadzic regime. Jonathan Aitken’s wife is a Serb and Douglas Hurd holds significant amount of Serbian Telecom shares so the author is absolutely right about it.
The Foreign Office was also pro-Serb, at least during the early 90s, the idea of having one strong “partner” rather than several weaker ones in the former Yugoslavia seems to have been cherished.
Luckily all of that changed when Labour came to power in 1997 and Tony Blair said enough is enough. The Serbian genocide against the Bosniaks and subsequent deportation of almost a million Kosovars later on was one reason and well done for it. Sadly he couldn’t stop there and the small blunder of the Iraq war that followed but at least they helped Bosnia and Kosovo in the end. If it was up to the Foreign Office it would be all “don’t dream dreams’, as Lord Owen said in Sarajevo one winter during the siege. Once again well done Adam LeBor. I have the feeling that the Serbian genocide apologists would come out in force on this piece.
DefenderOfTruth
14 Apr 2010, 7:08PM
People need to separate the Serbophile policies of John Major’s administration from the more humane and upright policies of Tony Blair’s administration which did the right thing by intervening in Serbia’s ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians.
John Major’s administration did everything in their power to ensure that the Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) would be exterminated and that the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be destroyed.
It does not take a rocket scientist to realize that a genocide lasting four years and resulting in the death of over 100,000 people (the vast majority of them Bosnian Muslim civilians) in the heart of Europe that was streamed live across the world’s media channels would not have occurred without the European countries turning a blind eye or worse giving indirect support to Milosevic and his genocidal policies.
As was stated in numerous sources (including the Clinton Tapes) the European governments at the time wanted to see the Bosnian Muslims exterminated so that “Christian Europe” could be “preserved”.
What kind of Christianity did Major and Miterand have in mind when they stated that the genocide of an innocent defenseless people was in Europe’s interest? Their behavior went against every true Christian value of protecting the sanctity of life and helping those in need.
It is truly regrettable that both during the Holocaust (in which the European Jews were being exterminated) and the Bosnian Genocide (in which Bosnia’s Muslim population was being exterminated) we see European governments turning a blind eye and giving tacit support to the Christian executioners (Germans and Serbs respectively) for the sake of preserving Europe’s “Christian Character”.
DefenderOfTruth
14 Apr 2010, 7:34PM
Here’s an excellent article detailing how the British government under Major aided Milosevic in his campaign to ethnically cleanse the Croatian Krajina:
British policy against Croatia?s interests
by Davor Ivanovic
http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2702
By looking at various sources detailing the UK’s political aid to the Milosevic regime under the John Major administration it is irrefutable that the British administration was bending over backwards to appease Milosevic and to help him achieve his goals of forming an ethnically cleansed “Greater Serbian” state at the expense of Bosnian and Croatian lands and lives.
The world got lucky when Tony Blair was elected to lead the UK and changed its craven policy of appeasing and tacitly supporting the Milosevic regime and the genocide and ethnic cleansing campaigns that he was directing. Even though the Blair administration made some major mistakes later on it’s actions in the Balkans almost redeemed Britain’s complicity in the genocide that took place. It is the current arrest of Dr. Ganic that puts that redemption at great risk since it seems that Britain is once again siding with and politically supporting those pursuing Milosevic’s ideas.
Milosevic may be dead but his fascist ideas are well and live in Serbia today and are ardently pursued by a small yet potent group of politicians and political organizations. Just as NAZIsm didn’t disappear with Hitler’s death so Serbian Fascism has not gone away with the passing of Milosevic. In both cases it is vital that countries which love freedom and justice stand up to those hateful ideologies and those officials that pursue them or else we could end up having more genocides committed in Europe.
Mohammed Abbasi 
The reason for that is child’s play.