Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia

[Carvill John]

Regarding the myth of 'ancient hatreds', Douglas 'Un-even killing field' Hurd, and Britain's non-interventionist role in Bosnia, try this vintage review of Brandan Simms's great, angry-making book 'Unfinest Hour: Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia. 
 
There is even dark humour in among the sick-making behaviour of Britain's morally aloof COnservative politicians, particularly Malcolm 'Human Weasel' Rifkind pontificating about the realities of war:
 
"The conviction that Britain had a superior knowledge of the futility of reforming a wicked world pushed Whitehall into a kind of madness. Only the possession of an unhinged mind can explain how Malcolm Rifkind, a Defence Secretary who had never seen combat, could bellow 'you Americans don't know the horrors of war' at Senator Bob Dole, who lost an arm in World War II. 'Your guys were usually so refined,' an American diplomat said of the Washington Embassy. 'But they were going crazy on this.'
 
Rifkind's ravings - Senator John McCain came close to slapping him at one meeting - will surprise readers in a Britain where snobbery gives an unwarranted benefit of the doubt to patrician conservatives.
 
The politicians who dealt with Bosnia were gentlemen of moderate temperament; sophisticates with breeding and manners, who were a cut above the rabble-rousing Thatcherites. Yet Hurd out-Thatchered Thatcher, who honourably opposed Serb aggression, when he declared that 'there is no such thing as the international community'.
 
He then sank to a depth I can't remember Thatch reaching when he effectively closed Britain's borders to Bosnian refugees. 'The civilians have an effect on the combatants,' he explained. 'Their interests put pressure on the warring factions to treat for peace.' You have to read this disgraceful passage several times before you realise that Hurd was denying sanctuary to the victims of the Serbs (and of his diplomacy) so he could use their misery to force Bosnia to cut a deal with the ethnic cleansers."
 
 
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/nov/04/politicalnews.politics
 
 
A-and, not a bad summary of the Serb role:
 
"The wars of the former Yugoslavia had one cause: irredentist Serbs, who combined nationalism and socialism in a faintly familiar mixture. They didn't merely want power, but to guarantee that only Serbs lived in Serb-occupied territory. Thus, while the Bosnian government retained Serb and Croat backing, every mosque in the lands Milosevic's supporters held was levelled."
 
 
Can't recommend Sims's book highly enough, for anyone genuinely interested:
 
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Unfinest-Hour-Britain-Destruction-Bosnia/dp/0140289836
 
As one amazon reviewer says, "Professor Simms has produced a compelling dissection of one of the most shameful episodes in European history, when the Western powers stood aside and knowingly allowed a multi-cultural, democratic, independent European state to be dismembered, during a prolonged period of ethnic cleansing and genocide. In doing so, he ruthlessly pins a great deal of the blame upon those British politicians who not only allowed this to happen but who by their actions, inactions and mis-placed words actually encouraged Serb aggression and racial hatred."
 
 
Right. Enough from me on the matter for now. 
 
 
 
 
 
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