Of blood and liar - the legacy of Milosevic

Stefan wrote in my blog questioning my agenda when I posted a WSJ Opinion column on Milosevic's death and implying I am either a propagandist or a sheep "twisting" history.

I made a point to mention Milosevic's death in my blog and how he cheated his victims again when he died before justice is served to him by first hand stories of the bloody attrocities the Serbs led by Milosevic instigated and fueled the Balkan war, and meeting face-to-face with ppl who are victims or have to defend themselves and their families during the war.

Someone I know has his parents forced out of their house and made to walk thru a minefield at midnite, and by the grace of God live to tell, their house plundered and consficated by the Serbs. I also know someone whose house were bombed mercilessly and most of his childhood frens died during the war to defend themselves and their families, while he himself had to fight as a soldier during the war.. all he can show while I was there are the tombs of ppl he knew and love. Listening to Sarajevo inhabitants who were totally helpless when the hills surrounding the city were surrounded by Serb and Yugoslavian armies rolling bombs in used tyres down to a city full of helpless victims.. observing to these first hand stories I find these victims as more forgiving then if these attrocities were to happen to me and my people.

Here I posted an article written by Lord Ashdown published in the Independent, who were there and knew the man and the liar that he was, first hand.

Paddy Ashdown: Bloody legacy of a man whose talent was lying
Published: 13 March 2006

The legacy of Slobodan Milosevic was blood.

Blood and chaos. Most of the blame for the strife and the thousands of deaths that followed the break-up of the former Yugoslavia can be laid at his door, although Franjo Tudjman [the Croatian leader] was also culpable.

Milosevic was an opportunist rather than a nationalist, but he unleashed the forces of Serb nationalism. In Croatia the response was Tudjman. In Bosnia it was genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Milosevic brought shame and disaster on the great Serb people. They are now known in far too much of the world as the people who perpetrated aggression and killing at places such as Srebrenica.

Milosevic started off with a country that included Serbia, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia, and ended with a small Serbia. A joke used to do the rounds that Mira, Milosevic's wife, comes into the bedroom saying : " Sloba, there are troops in the garden." He replies: "Don't worry, they're guarding the borders of Yugoslavia."

In the end the Serbs realised who he was, which is why they got rid of him. But Milosevic fooled too many Western statesmen for too long. The intervention came too late. The scales fell from the eyes of the international community over Kosovo. If they had realised earlier he was not part of the solution but part of the problem, tens of thousands of people would have lived and millions would not have been driven from their homes.

Milosevic was subtle and wily, but also charismatic and charming. His biggest advantage was his ability to lie straight in your face. I spent a day seeing the Kosovan Albanian villages being shelled by Serb artillery. The next day he flatly denied to me it was happening, until I told him I had seen it - and then he made up some excuse.

The people in the Balkans are the world champion conspiracy theorists and will come up with conspiracies about Milosevic's death. But whom does his death serve? It doesn't help the trial at The Hague. He and Tudjman have cheated justice.

His death is a kind of closure of the Balkan wars, but the real closure will not come until his henchmen, Mladic and Karadzic, are brought to justice.

(Lord Ashdown is a former high representative of the international community in Bosnia)