Regional Security
| 16 March 2010
The trial of former Bosnian Serb General Zdravko Tolimir started on 26 February 2010. At first, it seemed that the long anticipated trial will be covered with a lot of media attention in Bosnia as well as in the neighbouring countries. Instead, the following events threw Tolimir trial in the shadow as if it were never important.
General Zdravko Tolimir was a former high ranking official of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and was one of seven Assistant Commanders who reported directly to the commander of the General Staff, General Ratko Mladic. According to the indictment, Tolimir is charged with genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war committed between July and November 1995 against Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica and Zepa, eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.
| 26 November 2009
A REFUTATION OF ACCUSATIONS BY MS. LOMIGORA & PARTS OF THE BOSNIAK COMMUNITY AGAINST SWEDISH F. M. CARL BILT
The reactions to the early release of Biljana Plavšić from the Swedish Prison, after serving two-thirds of her ICTY-delivered sentence for war crimes in Bosnia, show that passions in the Balkans have not yet settled and that vengeful feelings arising from the war still fly high. The article by Selma Lomigora, accusing the Swedish Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt, for somehow conniving with Biljana Plavšić to secure her release, shows just how difficult it can be for academics to distance themselves from the passions arising from war-time victimisation.
Biljana Plavšić is an 80-year old woman, who participated in the top echelon of the Bosnian Serbian leadership during the Bosnian civil war 1991-95. As such, she simply had to be counted responsible for the decisions taken by that leadership, regardless of any personal involvement in their execution. Some of the statements she made during the war, in the frenzy of nationalism in the Western Balkans, at least seem to suggest that she condoned the policies that led to crimes committed by the Serbian side in the conflict. For this, she was sentenced, not least leniently, and spent years at this late stage in her life among thieves, robbers and killers, in a cell that only had artificial ventilation, in a prison far away from the family and friends, in Sweden.
| 25 November 2009
The most shocking news in the Western Balkans lately, is the early release of the war crime criminal Biljana Plavsic. Mrs. Plavsic, former president of Republika Srpska, had served two thirds of her sentence in a Swedish prison. The decision was made by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in compliance with Swedish law. The main rule in Swedish law provides that conditional release takes place when the convicted person has served two thirds of the total term of imprisonment. The International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia has in its verdict of 14th September 2009 consented to the conditional release of Mrs. Plavsic in accordance with Swedish law.| 05 November 2009
Serbia has seen a highly decisive set of directions being formulated at the visit of the Russian President Medvedev in October 2009. These included a Serbian commitment to “a new security commitment in the region” that would rule out NATO as the only mechanism of collective security. While the details of the arrangement have not been publicized, it has become known that part of the deal is the establishment of a Russian “intervention” base in the southern Serbian city of Nish.| 28 September 2009
One of the key successes in foreign policy is local knowledge, particularly in areas a state hopes to work in, where they are engaged in war or which they are occupying. Even local knowledge over cultures within one’s own borders is essential if national policies are to be successful.
But the more one looks at the
Cyprus problem, and in particular the north of
Cyprus, which is described as a “subordinate authority” to
Turkey, the more one can observe a certain short-sightedness in Turkish foreign policy.
Over 35 years,
Turkey has transported tens of thousands of its own citizens to the north of
Cyprus believing it would boost the “Cyprus Turkish people”, but has in fact made some spectacular errors of judgment in its policy.