Few believe me when I tell them

Few people believe me when I tell them that in Kosovo Muslims and Christians live side by side. They tell me, oh, there must be a conflict, you just don't see it. Bullpoopie. Kosovo is about 80% Muslim majority, and it is in no way a "hell on earth" that one of my blog visitors naively supposed. Now you can add Jews to the mix of people accepted in Kosovo. Read this article by Steven Schwartz - Kosovo Revives Its Jewish Heritage

I finished the book awhile ago

But I couldn't bring myself to write more. The story ended in Switzerland, where the peacemakers were ruling in favor of the thugs while the suffering continued. He felt it was time to get out of Bosnia before he was killed, like some of the other people he knew. I really didn't want to pick the book up again to write about it. I emailed Peter Maass and thanked him for writing such a profound book. He thanked me. I did not, however, ask to put excepts from his book into my blog. I most likely will go back and edit them out.

Looking ahead, I decided to type Sarajevo into Google. I found a website:
Sarajevo Official Web Site

I am almost done with this book

This book is truly a journey into the dark side of humanity, punctuated with the light of the good who struggled to do the right thing. It is an in-depth insight into the complicated enigma of the Balkans. And Peter Maass understands it better than most. I will tell you what it is not. It is not a story about the Arab Muslims. It is not a story about the Islamic terrorists. In order to understand what happened in the Balkans, you need to understand Balkan Muslims.

Emir is a Bosnian Muslim. He doesn't drink alcohol, pray or even go to a mosque. He favorite music is Guns N' Roses, Neil Young, and AC/DC. He reads Mark Twain and speaks English. He said he does not want to live in an Islamic country.
Reference page 242, Love Thy Neighbor, A Story of War by Peter Maass

But the sad truth is that America held back from helping. I can't pretend to know enough about politics and policy to explain why. Peter offers a lot of insight throughout the book. It is not my goal to copy the book into my blog. Peter Maass understood the ordeal of the Bosnian Muslims very well. His ancestors would have liked to consider themselves Germans, or German Jews. But the painful truth was in the end they were only Jews. They had to leave or die.

"Emir had made the same mistake. He thought he was a Bosnian, or a Bosnian Muslim, but in the end he was a Muslim, just a Muslim, and other people, stronger ones, wanted his land and were willing to kill him for it."
Page 239

Peter wrote about Selma, a young schoolteacher. She wore blue jeans and had blond hair and blue eyes. He goes on to describe her job, helping refugees fill out questionnaires about war crimes. On the wall next to her desk was a picture of Ali Khamenei with a 600 word statement in Bosnian assailing Western countries for refusing to lift the arms embargo. It also said that Iran was ready to help.

Peter writes what Selma says, "'We had illusions about American democracy,' Selma said. 'How can we believe your democracy when there are atrocities happening here and you do nothing? When Clinton sends American weapons, then we'll put his picture on the walls.'"
Page 240

Peter questioned Selma about sharia law, asking her if she wanted to wear a chador and loose many freedoms (in line with the strict Arabic Islamic law). She seemed to be in denial, maybe thinking Iranian Muslims were as easy-going as Bosnian Muslims. She was wrong, of course. Within a few months women in her village were wearing scarves.

I thought of the "dammed if we do, damned if we don't situation Hillary Clinton recently got in with Syria. We must have gotten it right before the war moved down to Kosovo, because they love us there.

Christmas in Sarajevo...

Love Thy Neighbour, A STORY OF WAR by Peter Maass

Peter Maass had returned to Sarajevo for Christmas. He was driven in by a veteran war correspondent named David, who was the first to volunteer to run supply missions to Kiseljak. David was driving a Land Rover with the back seat full of cans of gasoline. He was on a fuel run, through checkpoints, past snipers and  remote areas with roving bandits. The last stretch into Sarajevo had to be driven fast to avoid getting shot at. Finally they arrived in Sarajevo and drove down Sniper Alley. In the corner of his eye he noticed a sign on a bullet-pocked wall, "Welcome to Hell". David drove to the Holiday Inn, located along Sniper Alley. The building's south side faced the Serbs, so it was shot up beyond habitation. The northern side was the safest, the rate, $62 per night, including breakfast, lunch and dinner. The power was out, it was bitter cold, the elevators didn't work but the toilet had the infamous white strip of paper that said, "Sanitized for Your Protection". It was the place in town where all the foreign press stayed.

At dinner, Peter met up with another journalist, a Scotsman named Kevin and his interpreter, Dzemal. Peter writes on page 125:

"Dzemal was a classic Bosnian. A Muslim, he had been to many more bars in his lifetime than mosques, and his girlfriend was a Catholic from Croatia."

On page 129 Peter writes:

     "Kevin and I wanted to write a story about a Catholic family's Christmas in Sarajevo, so Dzemal, ever so resourceful, found the Pelzl family and got us invited to their home. Karlo and Janja Pelzl were Croats, members of the Catholic strand of Sarajevo's complex fabric of nationalities and religions, which even included a vibrant Jewish community that settled in the city in the fifteenth century after being expelled from Spain by the Inquisition. If you were a troublemaker who wanted to destroy a city that, more than any in Europe, was a symbol of integration and tolerance, you would do well to pick Sarajevo. You could find, on virtually the same block, a Muslim mosque, Roman Catholic cathedral, Christian Orthodox church and Jewish synagogue. The people of Sarajevo----Muslims, Serbs, Croats, Jews, Albanians, Gypsies and a kaleidoscope of mixtures therein----lived in Europe's truest melting pot.
      There is a tradition in Sarajevo that people of different religions visit one another on religious holidays. On Christmas, the Pelzls' Muslim and Serb friends would come by for a visit. In return, the Pelzls would visit Muslim friends on the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and visit Serb friends on Orthodox Christmas, which falls in January. Kevin, Dzemal and I were part of the parade of visitors who stopped by the Pelzl household on Christmas Day. After shedding our flak jackets at their doorstep, we sat down at their dining table and were served a platter of sweets, which were unimaginable delicacies under the circumstances."

Questions....

I'm going to try to limit writing about the amount of wrenching diabolical torture that was, in some cases, laughingly carried out on unarmed human beings, and include just enough to prove how bad it was. Right now, the question that looms in my mind is this. How can these people, who call themselves Christians, carry out all this torture? Who on earth castrates a man by tying his testicles to a motorcycle with wire and drives off? What human beings can pack unarmed people into a hot shed with no ventilation with no water for 2 days and then shoot at them when they cry out? This was not a hunt for Bin Laden for crying out loud! These people, these UNARMED people who lived in peace with their Serb neighbors, EVEN AS A MAJORITY, were tortured, raped, murdered simply because they were Muslim and the cleansing campaign was perpetrated by spreading LIES through the MEDIA which no one investigated, they just believed it...I mean, the media doesn't lie...right?

So ok, maybe you are saying now...they only called themselves Christians. They weren't REAL Christians. REAL Christians don't do sh*t like that.

Then why don't we believe Muslims when they say the terrorists are NOT REAL MUSLIMS they are living a lie, they have miss-interpreted the Quran?

Is it because, we, us Christians, become afraid to get to know people who are different, we become suspicious, we see a terrorist behind every veil? Can't we understand the difference between a whack-job terrorist and a peaceful human of a different faith? Do we only feed upon misinformation?

Ok off my soapbox for now. I'm sorry but I just needed to vent.

This book is no walk in the park to read

In fact it's quite disturbing. No, the author is not crazy, but he was disturbed by what he saw and by what he heard when he interviews many of the Serbs, both civilian and in the military. My mom always told me there were good Germans in WWII, but that they chose to do nothing. She also told me about McCarthyism, which was so insane in concept I could never quite understand it. Peter Maass came face to face with this reality. It became personal, not only in the stories told to him, but in what actually happened when he witnessed brutality and he had no power to stop it, for fear he would be next.
--------------------
From the book,  pages 19 & 20

      One of the mysteries of Bosnia's war is why so many good people stood by as evil deeds were committed in their name---people like Vladimir, the Serb in Visegrad who cried over what had been done to his neighbors. It is a universal mystery. Why, when the would-be dictators of the world start barking their songs of hate, do so many people sing along rather than stand up and say, simply, "No"? It's a cliche to point to the "good Germans" who followed Hitler into his madness because their duty was not to question but to obey. What about the Americans who buckled to McCarthyism? Or what about joggers in Central Park who fearfully run past someone being mugged?
      I was hardly alone in feeling righteous about Serbs who supported, in their silence, a dirty war. If I was in their shoes, I would speak out. Or so I thought until I was put into their shoes.
      The Serbs led us back to the main road and stopped in front of a run down cafe'. One of them went inside and made a phone call, apparently to their commander. The leader, whose nickname was Voja Chetnik, had gotten out of his car and didn't seem to mind that we had done the same. He wandered onto the cafe' patio and suddenly started shouting at a thin, middle-aged Muslim who was sipping a cup of coffee in the shade. It was one of the odd features of Serb-controlled territory that while Muslims were being tortured at a prison camp a mile down the road, others who had sworn their loyalty to the Serb warlords remained at liberty, though precariously.
     "Ramiz!" Voja roared, "I told you never to come here! Get out of here you filth!"
      Voja grabbed a beer bottle and slammed it against Ramiz's shoulder. Broken glass flew in all directions, dripping bits of blood. The shirtless Ramiz didn't even have a chance to get out of his chair because Voja started punching his head, kicking him, keeping him down. Ramiz tried to raise his hands to protect his face, but it did no good. Voja kept slugging away. When he got tired of that, he slammed the muzzle of his rifle into Ramiz's chest and undid the safety catch. An execution was moments away.
      This was happening 10 yards from me. I did not plead with Voja to spare Ramiz's life. Neither did Jonathan or Vlatka, I don't think any of us considered doing so. We fell silent. Voja was going to do what Voja wanted to do, and anyone who got in the way, especially journalists who were only one order away from their own execution, would likely be shot along side the Muslim.

Love Thy Neighbor A Story of War by Peter Maass
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The story continued on, the Muslim's wife rushed in and threw herself between Voja and her husband. Voja kicked Ramiz some more and then let him "scamper away, like a tormented mouse freed from the claws of a bored cat" (page 21). The journalists were escorted to headquarters, where they were told never to come back again.

Love Thy Neighbour, A STORY OF WAR

I'm reading a book, maybe one of the most profound books that I have read in a long time. I keep stopping, to ponder, to think, and as yet I have only read 97 pages of the 272 pages. Already I have torn my folded paper book mark into several shreds, to mark pages along the way. I wonder, should I post compelling and insightful messages on Facebook? Would anyone care to read them, lost between pictures of abused dogs and cute kittens? That's the thing...we should care. This book should be required reading, at least once in our lifetime.

This is not a religious book. It is written by a war correspondent, and if anyone knows anything about war correspondents, they march into battle in the most dangerous areas for a story, and if they are lucky, they get out with their lives. The good ones become seasoned in survival, and thus bring to light what we, in the comfort of our homes, may or may not wish to see on TV or read about.

So why am I reading a book about war? Why should I care? Why do I think anyone should care? I guess there is no single answer. I grew up listening to my dad tell stories of WWII, as bombardier in a B-17 in the 99th Bomb Group, based in Italy. Years later I got to speak to the co-pilot with whom my dad flew. Joe told the the same stories my dad did, but in even more detail! At 92 Joe had an amazing memory. I believe he is still alive, if so, he should be 94 this April. I really should send him a letter.

So that still doesn't give an answer. My dad and I used to watch WWII movies together, stories of good triumphing over evil, all at great peril. I would watch similar movies with my first husband. I was drawn to action adventure movies, even more so if there was truth behind them. Movies like Pearl Harbor and Iwo-Jima. Not that I watch them all the time! Goodness no! One or two a year, maybe. But why this book?

I had seen a movie, "Behind Enemy Lines" and counted it as one of my favorites. I knew it was about the war in the Balkans, and left it at that. But when I met my to-be husband and he began talking about the war, I made the connection, though the movie is about the war in Bosnia, before it filtered down to Kosovo. We did talk about the war a lot, mostly because he was a witness first hand and had lost an uncle, and also because I have willing ears.

So I wanted to know more about this war. I vaguely remembered seeing things on TV in the 1990's, bodies in a ditch, things like that. Maybe like most Americans I said how sad, how awful, it should be stopped, and then went back to whatever it was I had been doing. But now, suddenly, this became history that was personal to me. I wanted to learn more, and so I have.

I started off with some internet searches. I cried. I also searched Google News for updates on Kosovo, and read the news on Shkabaj news with the aid of Google Translate. That was the extent of it for quite some time. Then I heard about a book, "THE FRACTURE ZONE: A Return to the Balkans" by Simon Winchester. So I ordered it. I also ordered another recommendation, "Love Thy Neighbor A STORY OF WAR" by Peter Maass. I got both books used, for 99 cents each.

Love Thy Neighbor is about the war in Bosnia. The Fracture Zone is about a trip through the Balkans in 1999, in fact Simon was at the border of Kosovo and Macedonia the morning of June 12 right when KFOR was mobilizing to enter Kosovo. The Fracture Zone is an oddly amusing history lesson, laced with shocking truths of the modern-day human atrocities that were going on there. You can click on the links and read the reviews. It's just too much to copy and paste into my blog.

Love Thy Neighbor is an entirely different book to read. I don't think it is possible to read it and not do a lot of thinking and soul searching. I have started taking notes in my own words. And more frightening is the insight into human behavior, and the knowledge that this could and might happen again.

What I am learning from this book, is that in Bosnia, Slavic people, all anciently related, living side by side, working together, going to school together, even inter-marrying, are divided in certain ways. Some are Serbs (Orthodox Christians), some are Croats (Roman Catholic), some are Muslims, but Slavic Muslims, who simply converted to Islam under the rule of the Turks of the Ottoman Empire. And they aren't even "good" Muslims by Arabic standards. They will have a drink, they enjoy music, their kids have the same posters on their walls and listen to the same music as their Serb neighbors, and for that matter, American kids, too. These are neighbors, mind you, as in borrowing a cup of flour neighbors.

Now comes some mad-men, diabolical thinkers, just like Hitler. They are Serbs. They look back in history, and see that in the past, they were oppressed by the Turks. Then as children they suffered under the hands of the Croation Ustashe (WWII pro-Nazi movement that Hitler set up to rid the area of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies). So in an inflammatory burst of neo-Nazi Serb patriotism and a lust for a "Greater Serbia", they rally all the Serbs into supporting ethnic cleansing. Of course they didn't call it that. It was called "Bureau for the Removal of Populations and Exchange of Material Goods".

This is all I'm going to write for now. There is a lot to digest. But I worry, here, now, in America, when people raise the battle cry, go home (fill in blank)! Go back to where you came from! This is a (fill in blank) Nation! There is no room for you here! For God's sake why do we have the Statue of Liberty. We are a nation of IMMIGRANTS. Will the day come when a lunatic with a battle cry comes to power and suddenly one morning people wake up and slaughter their peaceful neighbor in the name of some propaganda? Impossible you say? Wake up. It's happened before, it's happening now in Africa, it can happen here.