Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 14:52 - Apr 6 with 753 views | Steve_M | Those from Syria this week will have a similar resonance in 20 or 30 years time. And the same questions about why people were happy to ignore or excuse it will be asked. | |
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 14:55 - Apr 6 with 743 views | Mullet | One of the best countries and people I've ever visited. You don't need long, but the locals are amazing people. The place is beautiful if a little rough around the edges, but it's somewhere different. Everyone I met had a story worth hearing. Such a shame it'll never fully recover most likely. | |
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 15:48 - Apr 6 with 690 views | Guthrum |
Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 14:52 - Apr 6 by Steve_M | Those from Syria this week will have a similar resonance in 20 or 30 years time. And the same questions about why people were happy to ignore or excuse it will be asked. |
Like a lot of the situation in the Middle East (and many others worldwide), the break-up of Yugoslavia was part of a process which had already been going on for hundreds of years, sometimes active, sometimes in abeyance. To say it came as a surprise (as the journalist seems to) is very blinkered, even if the degree of savagery was perhaps unforseen in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. | |
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 15:54 - Apr 6 with 682 views | BlueBadger | Mate of mine was in a Royal Engineers task force sent over there. what he saw over there was a catalyst to him not signing on again after completing 5 years' service. [Post edited 6 Apr 2017 15:54]
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:02 - Apr 6 with 657 views | factual_blue |
Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 15:48 - Apr 6 by Guthrum | Like a lot of the situation in the Middle East (and many others worldwide), the break-up of Yugoslavia was part of a process which had already been going on for hundreds of years, sometimes active, sometimes in abeyance. To say it came as a surprise (as the journalist seems to) is very blinkered, even if the degree of savagery was perhaps unforseen in the late 20th/early 21st centuries. |
Perhaps it's hindsight, but the fact that the Balkans is riven with clan and family feuds that date - or so it's said - from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 probably goes a long way to explain the savagery. | |
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:03 - Apr 6 with 656 views | factual_blue |
Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 15:54 - Apr 6 by BlueBadger | Mate of mine was in a Royal Engineers task force sent over there. what he saw over there was a catalyst to him not signing on again after completing 5 years' service. [Post edited 6 Apr 2017 15:54]
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Let's not forget James Blunt stopped WW3 when he was serving in the Balkans, although he doesn't like to mention it often. | |
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:10 - Apr 6 with 645 views | WeWereZombies |
Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:02 - Apr 6 by factual_blue | Perhaps it's hindsight, but the fact that the Balkans is riven with clan and family feuds that date - or so it's said - from the Battle of Kosovo in 1389 probably goes a long way to explain the savagery. |
But there are clans and family feuds all over Europe. From the fall of the Berlin Wall through the drift from Soviet influence to European integration of the former East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia conditions seemed tense but improving. Then Yugoslavia fell apart. Perhaps the pressure to stabilise those areas of former Soviet influence that were moving towards EU accession just made the blindsiding of the circumstances leading up to the Balkans War worse. | |
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:57 - Apr 6 with 604 views | Guthrum |
Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:10 - Apr 6 by WeWereZombies | But there are clans and family feuds all over Europe. From the fall of the Berlin Wall through the drift from Soviet influence to European integration of the former East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia conditions seemed tense but improving. Then Yugoslavia fell apart. Perhaps the pressure to stabilise those areas of former Soviet influence that were moving towards EU accession just made the blindsiding of the circumstances leading up to the Balkans War worse. |
Related to what Factual and Steve said, the Balkans are on a series of fracture lines and crossroads in European geoplitics - dating much further back than even the 14th century. It was the crucible for the emergence of Philip and Alexander's Macedonian Empire in the 4th century BC. Brennos and his Celts came that way to invade Greece in the following century. The Danube frontier was a flashpoint during the Roman Empire, featuring a number of wars with the Dacians and the Sarmatians. The Huns and the Goths crashed into Roman territory through there. Then it was the Bugars, Pechenegs and so on coming against the northern edge of Byzantine territory in the 9th century. The Mongols came that way. The Ottomans came round that way to cut off and finally conquer Constantinople in 1453, beating up the Serbs (The Battle of Kossovo) and a number of European armies (e.g. Battle of Nicopolis) in the process. Then there was a long series of wars as that empire expended and contracted in the face of challenges from a number of European and Slavic powers. As an interface between the Austrian and Russian spheres it provided the flashpoint which ignited World War One. In WWII, the Croats and Bosniaks backed the Germans against the dominant Serbs. Tito kept a lid on things with considerable skill, but once he died, in 1980, there was always a danger that things would begin to crumble again. [Post edited 6 Apr 2017 17:12]
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Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 17:17 - Apr 6 with 571 views | WeWereZombies |
Photos still have the power to shock - Bosnian war remembered on 16:57 - Apr 6 by Guthrum | Related to what Factual and Steve said, the Balkans are on a series of fracture lines and crossroads in European geoplitics - dating much further back than even the 14th century. It was the crucible for the emergence of Philip and Alexander's Macedonian Empire in the 4th century BC. Brennos and his Celts came that way to invade Greece in the following century. The Danube frontier was a flashpoint during the Roman Empire, featuring a number of wars with the Dacians and the Sarmatians. The Huns and the Goths crashed into Roman territory through there. Then it was the Bugars, Pechenegs and so on coming against the northern edge of Byzantine territory in the 9th century. The Mongols came that way. The Ottomans came round that way to cut off and finally conquer Constantinople in 1453, beating up the Serbs (The Battle of Kossovo) and a number of European armies (e.g. Battle of Nicopolis) in the process. Then there was a long series of wars as that empire expended and contracted in the face of challenges from a number of European and Slavic powers. As an interface between the Austrian and Russian spheres it provided the flashpoint which ignited World War One. In WWII, the Croats and Bosniaks backed the Germans against the dominant Serbs. Tito kept a lid on things with considerable skill, but once he died, in 1980, there was always a danger that things would begin to crumble again. [Post edited 6 Apr 2017 17:12]
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Whether Tito kept a lid on things with considerable skill or considerable brutality is a moot point, and World War Two was a bitter affair in the Balkans with especially entrenched partisan loyalties. However, the same could be said for Italy. The conflict in World War Two seemed to split along ideological lines with some ethnic adherence to those ideologies - Croats to fascism, Serbs to communism - very broadly speaking. After Tito the religious differences appeared to come to the fore much more, or were they just used as an excuse for a land grab? I have to admit my knowledge of the area is a bit stale, I think I read something about the area by James Joll (historian and ex.SOE) when I was in my teens, I certainly read his book 'The Anarchists' but I thought a book I read called 'Partisans' was also by him, cannot see it on his wikipedia page. All typical spotty teenage boy stuff to soak in like a sponge. As an aside, my Dad moved the family to Spain in the early 1960s (yeah, just great seeing Franco's Guardia Civil beat up tramps when you are seven) and had a bunch of American cafe friends who all claimed to be working for the CIA. One of them insisted that the Balkans were the safest place in the event of nuclear war... | |
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