factfinder

The situation in BH was more complicated that the public relations expert want us to believe but mayn journalists and politicians have made their careers out of making the Bosnia war politically correct ... The US approach to the Bwar was torn by contradictions - publicly its aim was to end the war through a negotiated settlement but actually it did its best to influence the outcome in favour of the Muslims ... Generals Phillip Morillon, Lewis MacKenzie and Boyd which often criticised Serbs for their use of heavy weaponry around Sarajevo wrote that Izertbegovic from the very outset wanted only one thing - the NATO forces intervention , that´s why he was never inclined to engage in talks ... while the Serbs with initial superiority in hevay arms gained control of the substantial territory and wanted to end the war trading the territory ...
BBC reporter Misha Glenny observed that "the Bosnian g. was quick to understand that the most of the world viewed it as innocent victims and used this perception to portray themselves as victims throughout the war .."
This strategy of Izetbegovic was invented and aided substantially by US Secretary of State James Baker who instructed his Press Secretary Margaret Tutwiler to help Bosnian Mnister of Foreign Affairs Haris Silazdzic utilize western mass media for the Bosnian cause .JB writes :" I also had her talk with four V networks, the Washington Post and New York Times and George Kenny,serving on the State deptt.´s Yugoslavia desk helped to gin up public opinion to be vafourable for the Bosnian g. and drafted material for Margaret T. who was always looking for "something inflammatory" ...
Their efforts of joint press releases on events in Bosna were highly successful, e.g. the misuse of the casualty figures by the mainstream media ... In the bloodiest year of the conflict in 1992 the Bosniang. said there had been 17.000 casualties but two months later in the dead winter when fighting in the mountainous terrain nearly came to a stop, the B. g. abruptly began using the figure of 200.000 killed or missing which was used obligingly by John Burns of the New York Times and John Pomfret of the Washington Post ...Shortly the word "missing" was dropped ... Similarly Silaidzic made headlines around the world on NBC Today Show in December 92,claiming that up to 40.000 Muslim women were being held in camps and raped but the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that the number of prisoners ,overhelmingly male,held by the BSerbs, was under 10.000
... Jerome Bony for the French programme Envoye Special reported his experience in tracking the Rape Story:" When I was 50kms from Tuzla I was told of 4.000 raped women - at 20 kms the figure dropped to 400 and at 10 kms only 40 were left ... By 1994 , following the official investigation, the number of rape victims by ALL THREE sides was revised to 2.400. by then,however public impression had been made and corrective news accounts
were given little attention ...
Another element of propaganda onslaught meant to obfuscate the prewar situation involved legitimate ownership of land (!)The BS Army could never have " overrun,seized or captured" 70% of the country as it did not possess the military manpower to do so but it controlled 70% of territory due to the fact that the Serbs led agrarian way of life and formed a plurality in 64% of the territory at the beginning of war while the more urban Muslims bussines-
oriented people resided in cities ... The ruling Muslim dominated Bosnian g. controlled less than 40% of the territory at the time of recognition. George kenney of the US State Deptt. acknowledged "the US intelligence agencies were unanimous in telling us that if we recognize Bosna we will blow it up .."
EU mediator Lord Peter Carrington and Portuguese FM José Cutillero tried to reach an agreement between all the 3 parties -the Lisbon A. was signed on march 20 but two days later US Ambassador to YU Warren Zimmerman encouraged Izetbegovic to disavow his signature on the treaty (!) Two weeks later the war broke ... Roger Cohen of the New York Times noted that the international recognition under these circumstances was "as close to criminal negligence as a diplomatic act can be.. " (!) The int. recognition and the outbreak of the war was simultaneous ... (David Owen Balkan Odyssey, 92/93 the Vance-Owen and Owen-Stoltenberg peace plans) US recognition for the Muslim prs. of Bosna Izetbegovic was accompanied by an aggressive media roulette that targeted the BSerbs as the aggressor although the first attacks
took place on March 26,92 when Croatian forces crossed the Sava River from Croatia and attacked the Serb village of Sijekovac near Bosanski brod in Northern Bosna.The village was burned and five Serbian families slaughtered - the first killing in Sarajevo took place on march 1,92,a month before the official start of the war when two Muslims and a Croat gunmen at a Serbian wedding killed Father of the bridegroom...