"The Fall of Yugoslavia" by Misha Glenny [15]

[Apologies for the delay; I did not blog last week, contrary to my expectations. This will be a short post, but I wanted to get back to regular blogging.]

Chapter 5 [continued]

The next six pages of the chapter continue his tour of two very different areas in Bosnia which remain cheerfully optimistic that the impending war will somehow pass them by--Bihac-Cazin, and Sarajevo. Bihac, of course, was the location of Agrokomerc and the stronghold of Fikret Abdic. Glenny mentions that the only peasant uprising in Eastern Europe during the Communist period was carried out here by Serbs, Croats and Muslims. He doesn't dwell on the area much; I must say that the Bihac region, and the Abdic insurgency against Izetbegovic and the SDA, is one aspect of the war I wish I knew more about.

Then he moves on to Sarajevo, where the urbane, mixed population of Sarajlije are hoping against hope that the violence and hatred simply won't be able to find root. Most Serbs are embarrassed by the SDS.

Glenny revisits the issue of Izetbegovic and Islam; he clarifies that while he considers Izetbegovic to have been a fundamentalist of sorts at the time of his original arrest, he is nothing of the sort by this time. He gives the SDA leader credit for being a decent and humane leaders who sincerely wanted to avoid war. Yet he also blames him for organizing politically along ethnic lines (again without consideration of the fate of non-ethnic parties).