Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War
If anyone doubts that it is time for a clear and critical look at Western intervention in the Balkans, consider this: The forces that the US supported in Bosnia and Kosovo were and are closely allied with Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
Bin Laden, himself, was a regular visitor in the office of Bosnia’s President Alija Izetbegovic in early 1993, when the US government was touting his commitment to moderation and multi-ethnic cooperation.
Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War makes a compelling case that Western backing of separatist forces led directly to the outbreak of war. "The intelligence agencies were unanimous in stating that if you recognize Bosnia, it will blow up," George Kenney of the State Department reveals.
Why then did the US proceed to do so sparking four years of savage warfare? How did we end up on the same side as Osama-Bin Laden in Bosnia and Kosovo? Newscasters and columnists continue to refer to Kosovo as a victory for the US, but this documentary shows that the region is infinitely more divided and dangerous than it was when NATO bombing commenced in March of 1999.
The region is more unstable and US troops are likely to be stuck in harm’s way much longer than originally anticipated. Also check out The Death of Yugoslavia.
Happy to see a documentary like this. Growing up we were bombarded by mostly Western media which was always biased against the Serbs. As someone who had long held an interest in Yugoslavia and its break-up I have for some time doing my own little research on whatever happened there in the 90's. I am glad to see a documentary which seem to at least shed some light apart from demonizing the Serbs.
Warren Zimmerman, Richard Holbrook, Madeline Albright, William Walker, and that German foreign minister never paid a price for the serious harm they did. And even the ICTY which was formed hastily and comprised of a number of American never seemed to bring the likes of Alia Izetbegovic, Olic, Trudjman to justice.
Glad to see a different perspective after years and years of only seeing Serb bashing all over in the media.
As a Croatian, I do take pride in my nations historical path. I do acknowledge the Ustase genocide that has been mentioned in the documentary and in the comments and in no way do I approve of it.
However, as ignorant as the uninformed people can be, this documentary inspired me to point out couple of facts that were magically ignored, yet had a significant impact on the Balkan situation.
The first thing that fascinated me is that there was not a single word about the war that was fought on the Croatian territory. I am surprised to learn from this particular documentary portrayed Croatian military action “Storm” as Croatian aggression against Serbs. If one was familiar with a 1000 years of the Balkan history, one would know that the city of Knin has been a part of the Croatian territory from the day of the formation of Croatia as a country. Portraying Croatians as aggressors on their own territory logically makes no absolute sense. It is ridiculous how not a single thing was said about bombing of Zagreb, the Vukovar fight, and many more that the Croats were fighting on their territory. Croatians that lived on the territory of Croatia have not stepped across other countries borders, in the same manner the Serbs have done it. It was Croatian Independence War, Croats fighting and defending their own territory.
Secondly, while Croatia was culturally, politically and economically developing throughout the past, Serbia was under the influence of the Ottoman empire which have left them a poor country, barely developed, which can be seen today as well. After the WW1, instead of creating a country of Serbs, Croats and Slovenians, Serbia has loudly and clearly spoken of the creation of the Great Serbia. The idea of Great Serbia has been going on for a long time, and the tensions are still present today. Croatia and Slovenia were economically the most developed and influential countries in the Balkans, yet all the profits from tourism, factories etc. went straight to Belgrade, and were, for sure not distributed equally. That is the fact, because its not only Croatia and Slovenia who suffered but other Yugoslavian countries as well. Being openly Catholic was an issue as well and as the tensions rose, openly Catholic people were fired from their jobs, people went to churches, or better to say, they were sneaking into it because of such a strong opposition to it.
My parents were college students at the time, and I have heard the stories about them leaving for University in Zagreb everyday, hearing bombing and being surrounded by chaos and panic, which was, btw. not mentioned here. hiding in basements, in their own house, killings and bloodshed…that was their reality and that cannot be neglected and it should not be.
Objectively speaking, this was not the Balkan war. This was a classic Western State war over their interests in the Balkans which has been going on for as long as history can take us back. Serbs were obviously supported by the British because British were the ones who accepted Serbian leaders during the WW1 while they escaped the country into the safety.
Germany has always had interest in Croatia, and this still continues. USA generally wants to prove its domination, and thus calculations have provided them with resolutions of promoting Anti-Serb campaigns, would be more beneficial for their policies.
And there will never be an objective documentary or a story of what has happened on the Balkans, because all the world powers have different interests and one side will always be more represented than the other. However, this documentary does not provide a different side. It provides a subjective perspective which strongly favours Serbs, without a single note of what the JNA has done on the Croatian and Bosnian territories, without a single note on Serbia attacking ever.
I am going to say this one again, it is surprising that Serbs never attacked Croatia (according to this documentary) but they have somehow magically appeared on our territory, raping and killing our women and children, killing our men, yet we are the aggressors for protecting our nation and our country.
As I am continuing to explore more about this subject, taking all the sides in perspective, I would strongly advise people to do the same. This way, documentaries like this would be avoided and the world could be introduced to both terrors from Croats and from Serbs, but also the struggles and fights to protect one nations territory from the perspective of both sides.
It seems to me that Yugoslavia was much stronger than having 5 independent separate countries. In Sarajevo it appeared that all the different people were getting along very well, they didn't want to break up Yugoslavia and go to war. It appears that a minority of right wing people (encouraged by the Germans) in each country were the root cause of all the trouble and they were able to stir up enough uneducated people to get things going. All sides did horrible things, they are all guilty, once the killing starts it's hard to stop, everybody wants revenge. Nationalistic uneducated people are easy to manipulate and incite into violence. I hope it doesn't happen (anybody who's seen the kind of uneducated racist people who support Donald Trump and how easy it is make them violent) but there may be some very serious trouble in the United States when he loses the election. They blame Mexicans, Black Americans, reporters, Asians, Muslims, gay people, anyone who has an accent, or isn't white enough, anyone with a college education "elitist" and I'm sure if there were enough Serbs, Croats, Slovenians, and Bosnians, they would blame all of you too, for all their economic problems. You'll notice the one group he doesn't go after is the Jews, that would be the end of him, but groping women is OK. Although I'm sure his "followers" don't like Jewish people anymore than the rest of them.
My point is the economy. When there are bad economic times people start looking for someone to blame, and that blame never goes to the people who are guilty. So how bad was the economy in Yugoslavia before the break up? Who was really causing the bad economy? God? Or was someone inside or outside Yugoslavia or both trying to bring on hard economic times as in the case of Chili in the 1960's? (In that case it was the CIA along with a couple of multinational corporations.) And now is the economy in the separate countries better than before the break up? I just can't help but think that a small group of rich people caused all this to happen and manipulated the people into going to war. Somebody was making money on the weapons, but it's a lot more than that. What happened to Kosovo? Is it a territory of the United States now like Puerto Rico? Who really gained by this war?
As a westerner and someone who has spent a fair bit of time in the Balkans, I do believe the west influenced the outcome for their own ends and I do believe the Serbs have been unfairly demonised for far to long now. My own opinion is that all parties involved committed atrocities and there are truths and lies on all sides. I would say do not let the west continue to devide you, the only way to rise up from these wars is to put them behind you and learn to forgive, you will never forget and neither should you as it should never be repeated. You were once strong and successful because you were united in trade with each other and did not need much from the outside and you could have this again, but your hatred prevents this and you are harming new generations who do not need to live in poverty because there is no forgiveness. Don't make your hatred your children's hatred! The EU is not the answer to your prosperity, you have that in your own hands and yet you all refuse to see it. Turn to each other as independent countries and work together to rebuild your own success, instead of waiting for a miracle from joining the EU, you will be waiting a very long time this!
To say that this documentary is a " Serbian propaganda" is ridiculous! You have testimonies of Lord Peter Carington, Lord David Owen and other top UN representatives who were directly involved in the events that occurred in Yugoslavia in those years. Anyone who thinks that those men are spreading "serbian propaganda" needs to get his head checked. This is a well balanced documentary that puts some light on a "murky affairs" that resulted in a breakup of Yugoslavia and that tragic war!
this sounds absolutely ridiculous !!!!!
The film is pure pro-Serb propoganda, however
some people below say there was no Croatian ethnic cleansing when it is so easy to disprove such revisionist nonsense just by searching on Google:
* Lašva Valley ethnic cleansing
and
* Ahmici Massacre
Let's be clear: ALL sides, Croat, Muslim, and Serbian were involved in atrocities, massacres, and ethnic cleansing
So much false evidence whole film.
Facts:
-war started Yugoslavian national army under control of Miloševi?
-share of Serbian nationality high ranking officers in YNA in 1990. was more then 70%
-Dubrovnik was attacked by YNA and Montenegro army under command of Serbian generals
-Croats never attacked Boka Kotorska
-there was no ethnical cleansing by Croatian army
-and so on and so on
Everything was proven on International courts, not to mention that it is written in historical books.
One more important fact is that nobody wanted war, but Serbians wanted power, money, natural resources, in general everything from all form Yugoslavian states
Please read historycal facts and the truth will come to you.
The description of this documentary is a total joke. To make false claims as such is an insult to everyone intelligence.
It is the wrong claim to say that everyone had weapons. This is not true! At the very beginning of the war the only parties that actually had weapons were Serbs and Sloveniens. This is obvious due to the fact that all the economic and military power was in Belgrade. In difference to Slovenia, UK & other western countries supported them before their altercation began.
Watch both documentaries 'The death of Yugoslavia' and 'Yogoslavia: The avoidable war' to get an idea from all perspectives.
Strange. I didn't find the presentation or style at all confusing. I suspect those who did find it confusing were those who found that it did not fit with their prejudices.
Santa, are you just going to make a big series of meaningless ad hominem posts, or are you going to post some contradictory evidence? How many different ways can you scream, "It's Serbian propaganda!!" before you actually present an intelligent argument?
...and I know plenty of people that have seen this film and changed their mind about how they perceive the wars in the former Yugoslavia. The only people that really hate it are the folks that were allied with Hitler in WW2. That should tell you something about this film's detractors.
Shame !
This was rare place where selection of the films depended on pure reason and intelligence... even in case of those with conspiratorial thematics.
Now, I read intro of this pro-Karadži?/pro-Miloševi?, Serbian whitewashing, apologetic disgusting crap and I find out that Americans and Bin-Laden jointly supported "war criminal" Izetbegovi? in his "jihad" against poor Serbs and west !?
You know that motto from FOX News "Fair and Balanced", well in proved and prosecuted Genocide and war crimes opinion doesn't matter, there is NO balanced view of any war let alone Bosnian - only facts, evidences, proofs, witness testimonies, and judgements !!!
My personal knowledge of the history of the lands is limited entirely to heresay. The heresay of those whom either have an agenda of their own or have been influenced by the agendas of others. To wit I would now include this documentary. It is the same old same old, death and disparity for fleating gains by which one party attempts to obtain a posession of another party, be that power - money - land. Given the history of this area I believe one would be hard pressed to find a legitimate defender, and it seems motivating people to become triger pullers was very easy. Bottom line, I challange anyone to examine Yugoslavia by going at least back to the time when the general populus were given the opportunity to own land and produce a name of a family which lawfully obtained (purchased or awarded, not by ill gotten gains after force such as WWI and WWII, nor by squatters) land and always maintained and still retains that lawful ownership. This region of the world is like a hotel who's owners appeared to abandone and the tennants (past present and future) seem readily willing to entertain the idea they can assume ownership by force against other tennants, ridiculous, although certainly entertaining to some.
Look below for more Croatian Nazi propaganda that is incapable of criticizing this documentary with any specific examples so all it can do is make up a false history without presenting any documentation.
I have never seen this kind of scenario of war in Yugoslvia until now. This documentary is foolish, pathetic and at the momments funny. This documentary is bunch of constructed lies. We Croatians wanted to live out of Yugoslavia (which was dominated by Serbs) wich is natural idea all of nations in the world, just like Slovenians and Albanians and others, but Serbs didnt allow that because of their faschist chetniks plan "Na?ertanije" which present politics of Great Serbia - and Yugoslavia was Great Serbia for them. Has anybody ask himself why Serbs lives in Croatia, Vojvodina, Monte Negro, Kosovo and other republics - it is plan of settleing Serbs since 150 years ago in their neighbourhood and making them dominating in politics, economy and in other sides in that conutries. Croatians, Slovenians and others couldt tolerate this anymore - in Croatia we had referendum of independence - 99% people was for declare themself for freedom - we decided to make anything to make our dream come true - to have own republic. Yugoslav national army was under domination of Serbs and that army desist on Serbs side united with their civil nationals settled in Croatia long time ago exactly because of one reason - making Great Serbia. We broke that faschist ideas and established our free republic. Croatia today rests on the foundations of anti-fascist and has no connection and is firmly committed to an unprecedented anti-fascism.
The criticism of this doc is just pathetic. All I read is "It's Serbian propaganda!" and I couldn't watch more than 15 minutes" and "It's too one sided".... Please please please SOMEBODY point out factual errors. The way I see it, there's just a bunch of decendents of Hitler's allies crying because their BS propaganda war to demonize the Serbian people has been revealed. Sorry. The truth has been revealed.
Just seeing some of these comments makes me want to vomit. Being so closed minded as to believe the mainstream western media painted picture as the only truth and blindly scream "genocide", "war criminal", "mass murder", is just stupid. West needed an unstable region in Europe for their strategic positioning in relation to Soviet Union. They destroyed Yugoslavia trough nazi relics of the WW2- Ustasha (Croats, sucessors of Ante Pavelic), and their collaborators in Bosnia -bosnian Muslims, by promising them their own, ethnically clean countries. The Serbs were in the way, so they must be the bad guys. Yeah, rapists, killers and slaughterers of children. It seems only women and children were on the opposite side. How sad. Boo hoo. Wake the fu++ up and read a book or two, before posting some ignorant, half baked, redneck comment.
American government got away with killing american people on american soil, and invading an innocent country as an reply to the "terrorist threat" they invented in the process. The media made it possible. The same media you get your information about Yugoslavia from. Nothing to worry about there, yep.
I have travelled many times in Yugoslavia and post Yugoslavia as well. I can't still say who is to blame, who is the perpetrator and who is the victim. (Although heroic deeds like Serbian shelling civilians of Dubrovnik or Sarajevo are etched on my retina.) I have known people that were good neighbours but tried to kill each other when the politicians said so. This documentary is very very one sided, almost religiously one sided. See it, but be aware the a lot said here is to cower up and lessen the huge burden/guilt cast on the Serb people.
this documentary looks like it was from before the war LOL
Propaganda has it's uses in war, as it does in it's cradle, politics.
What a mockery of a documentary, full of half truths and one side views. If you really want to learn something about a wars in ex-yugoslavia watch The Death of Yugoslavia. Its full of interviews of all major players of that time and it would give you a fairly good picture how things really happened.
I have stoped to watch this Serbian propagand movie after 15 minutes. They started 4 wars in ex Yugoslavia (In Slovenia, Croatia, BIH, and Kosovo) and each they have lost. Now they blame Germans, typicall Serbian propagande. They have myth of great Serbia, but let them dream.
Also there is one thing it the first 10 minutes of the movie that is truth.It is that Croatia and Slovenia wanted to became indepentent. The consituiton law from 1974 defined them as a Republics and gave them posiblity to become independent, or to become part of confederation of equal partners. But in ex YU, only Serbs had the special rights:for example in the army, police, od other goverment jobs, more than 70% percent of employees were Serbs. In the UDBA, KOS (and other yu KGBs) the % was even bigger. So during the 45 years, Serbs were in the top positions, they made propaganda, they had diplomacy, they could send their children to universities easier than others. Nevertheless, Slovenia and Croatia contributed to the exYU GDP, was the biggest, far more then Serbian and other Republic together. So one reason why Serbs continued 4 wars, was because they felt that they were losing their special position in this artificial country. And to all those that are talking about Croatian as a Nazi supporters, they have to now (they now but they don't talk about), that the best brigades of Partisans were Croatian Parisans brigades. Also Serbs had their Kvislinges like other (Chetniks), but as I mentioned they had propaganda, an they pretend that they are always on the right side. What concerns curently is that they have not changed their politics, they have 2 politics: 1 for outside (propagande for EU etc), and one for inside (you should ask how Hungarian, Croatians or Albanians live in this country). These people didn't forget what receant wars done to them, real sad.
Watch "the weight of chains" (canadian movie, you can find it on torrent)
Watch "srebrenica - a town betrayed" (norweigan movie, youtube)
Watch "sarajevo riccochet" (norwaigan movie, youtube)
Watch "es begann mit einer lüge", eng "it began win a lie" (german movie, youtube)
Watch "la guerra infinita 1&2", eng "infinite war 1&2" (italian movie, youtube)
Watch "file srebrenica - crimes against serbs", aka "srebrenica - what really happened", ger "srebrenica wie es wirklich war" (swiss/serbian movie, yourtube)
Watch "stolen kosovo", cze "uloupené kosovo" (czech movie, youtube)
All of these documentry movies (except "file srebrenica - crimes against serbs" which was made in collaboration with swiss reported and journalist) are made by non-serbs! You think serbian government paid for all those movies?! hahahaha... serbian government would do anything to stop those movies being seen by serbs, they close YT accounts of those people who upload it, they even didnt want to buy a copyright for those movies so they can show it to serbian people as they are pro-usa and pro-eu, they dont give a f*** about serbs and serbia overall, they just want to enter european union no matter what they have to do on that way, even if that means recognition of kosovo independence... ask any serb in serbia how he lives and does he likes president and this government... and some people here saying serbian goverment paid for those movies to be made?!?! dont twist the facts! western propaganda did a job, forbidding all tv stations and tv reporters to tell a truth to german, british, italian, american, canadian, france etc. people... do you know how many nato or UN soldiers left kosovo because of what they saw during their presence there? how many of them couldnt watch horrific albanian terrorist crimes against unarmed serbs and serbian culture which is 10 centuries older than usa when it was discovered in 15th century? how many of those soldiers said "we've bombed the wrong ones"?
All of you who watch BBC, CNN, FOX and tvs like that have no right to speak or tell anything about war in yugoslavia, no matter what side you defend!
just watch movie THE WEIGHT OF CHAINS (movie discovering how war in yugoslavia has began at 1st place, how long it was planned before it actually happened etc) and maybe you will see how stupid you were before