politicians-from-bosnia-and-herzegovina

"I believe that China will successfully hold a simple, safe and wonderful Winter Olympic Games."

"I must say, that I enjoyed it, I must say that. Because those who killed so many defenseless people, those who aimed baby hospitals, those who aimed children while playing, could finally feel what it means to be targeted, to be defenseless... and they deserved it."

"The Allies did not bomb the railway tracks leading to Auschwitz, because they feared it would arouse the wrath of the Nazis; six million people died. In our case, an arms embargo led to "only" a quarter of a million deaths - an embargo that penalized only the victims, for the aggressors already had more arms than they could handle."

"The origins of this horrific human tragedy lay not in Bosnia itself, but in the policies conducted by demagogues in her neighboring countries, especially the Milošević regime in Belgrade - policies that led to the violent dissolution of former Yugoslavia and the near-destruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina, its most plural republic."

"If you kill one person, you're prosecuted. If you kill ten people, you're famous; if you kill a quarter-of-a-million people, you're invited to a peace conference."

"The state cannot block the entity, but the entity can block the state."

"Most American officials viewed Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic as the Bosnia leader with the broadest vision - an eloquent advocate of a multiethnic state. But his power struggles with Izetbegović and Sacirbey and other members of the Bosnian government often isolated him. His colleagues complained that he was difficult to work with. He carried a serious additional burden: Tudjman and Milošević distrusted him. Nevertheless, Silajdzic was one of the two most popular Muslim politicians in Bosnia, along with Izetbegovic. My own feelings about Silajdzic shifted frequently. There was something touching about his intensity and energy, and his constant desire to improve himself intellectually. Although always busy, he seemed alone - his wife and son lived in Turkey. Silajdzic was the only Bosnian official who seemed genuinely to care about economic reconstruction of his ravaged land. His unpredictable moods worried us, but his support would be essential for any peace agreement."

"This, what you are doing, is not good. This is the path that you want to take Bosnia and Herzegovina on, the same highway of hell and death that Slovenia and Croatia went on. Don't think that you won't take Bosnia and Herzegovina into hell, and the Muslim people maybe into extinction. Because the Muslim people cannot defend themselves if there is war here."

"There is no doubt that the United States and Germany had their own interests in igniting wars in Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia."

"Who are they for a whole nation to suffer for them, both in the Republika Srpska and in Serbia, because a certain Mladic has decided that he does not want to surrender and go to court? Or Karadzic? And then they say: "I love the Serbian people." The hell they love us. They are pushing us into ever deeper problems."

"In one of his many public statements, the leader of the Bosnian Serbs, Montenegrin Radovan Karadžić, said the Serbs in the past period, when everyone was on their side, had been subjected to "genocidal extermination" whereas now, over the last year, when so many are against them, they are suffering the least. Of all the innumerable absurdities and untruths that have been uttered, this statement truly takes the cake. For more than forty years Bosnia was inhabited by Bosnians, and we did not distinguish between Serbs, Muslim, and Croats, or at least such distinctions were not paramount in their mutual relations. Throughout that period, to the best of the Yugoslav and world public's knowledge, there were no detention camps for Serbs in Bosnia, no brothels for Serbs women, no Serbian children had their throat cut. (...) But according to Karadzic, the Serbs were somehow unhappy then. And now, in war, with so many dead, (...) now, according to their leader, the time has come when they are suffering the least. (...) Ethnically pure states are an impossibility in today's world, and it is ridiculous to try to create and maintain such a state, even when there is just one nation."

"People are not little stones, or keys in someone's pocket, that can be moved from one place to another just like that.... Therefore, we cannot precisely arrange for only Serbs to stay in one part of the country while removing others painlessly. I do not know how Mr. Krajišnik and Mr. Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide."

"Setting his goal as the creation of a ‘Greater Serbia’, Milošević deployed the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) — then the fourth largest army in Europe — against would-be secessionist republics. Meanwhile, Serb separatist forces within such republics were encouraged to rise up. Lacking a large Serb population, Slovenia was allowed by Milosevic, after a ‘ten-day war’, to go its own way after declaring independence in June 1991. Not so with Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina: he was determined that their sizeable Serb minority populations would remain within Yugoslavia. Milosevic loyalists helped carve out Serb autonomous enclaves in each: first Milan Babic in the Serb-dominated Krajina region of Croatia, and then General Ratko Mladić and the psychiatrist-turned-demagogue Radovan Karadžić, within Bosnia. Paramilitary gangs bearing outlandish names — Arkan’s Tigers, the White Eagles, the Chetniks — rampaged through Serb-run Croatia and Bosnia, bringing death and destruction wherever they went. In the process they endowed the lexicon of conflict with a new term, ethnicko cis cenje terena — literally the ‘ethnic cleansing of the earth’, or simply ethnic cleansing."

"In addition to the ICC, various other bodies have been involved in the hunt for and prosecution of war criminals. The best-known of these is the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established in 1993 to bring to justice those responsible for crimes during the Balkan Wars of the early 1990s. In 1996 a Bosnian Serb, Dusan Tadic, became the first man to be convicted by the tribunal when he was found guilty of murder and torture. Other prosecutions have followed, most notably that of Slobodan Milošević — the first ever sitting head of state to be indicted for war crimes (see main text). Having evaded capture for more than a decade — despite an international warrant for his arrest — Milošević's Bosnian Serb proxy Radovan Karadžić was finally run to earth in July 2008 in Belgrade, where he had been working under a new identity as a New Age healer. Ratko Mladić, who with Karadžić was responsible for events on the ground in Bosnia, remains at large at the time of this writing. The fate of Milošević stands as a clear message to them and others like them: for the perpetrators of the most terrible crimes, there is no escape from justice."

"When considering these matters, the dilemma inevitably arises - albeit only for a moment - that a shorter way to the Islamic order would be by taking power... This is mere temptation. History does not relate any true revolution which came from power. All began with education and meant in essence a moral summons."

"Islam is the best, but we Muslims are not the best. The West is neither corrupted nor degenerate. It is strong, well-educated, and organized. Their schools are better than ours. Their cities are cleaner than ours. The level of respect for human rights in the West is higher, and the care for the poor and less capable is better organized. Westerners are usually responsible and accurate in their words. Instead of hating the West, let us proclaim cooperation instead of confrontation."

"To further weaken Pale, I proposed that the Dayton agreement include a provision moving the Bosnian Serb capital to Banja Luka. Milošević seemed interested in this proposal but, to my surprise, Izetbegović demurred. Even though he hated the leadership in Pale, he seemed to think he could work with them, especially his old associate from the Bosnian Assembly, Momčilo Krajišnik. Izetbegovic also saw value in keeping the capitals of the two entities close to each other so that Sarajevo remained the only important political center in Bosnia. He may also have feared that if the Bosnian Serb capital moved to Banja Luka, which is closer to Zagreb than Sarajevo, it would accelerate the permanent division of the country and strengthen Tuđman. Whatever Izetbegović's reasons for not wanting to close Pale, it was a mistake. The mountain town was solely a wartime capital, established by an indicted war criminal and his henchmen. It was the living symbol - and headquarter - of his organization. We should have pushed Izetbegović harder to agree to establish the Serb capital at Banja Luka. It would have made a big difference in the effort to implement the Dayton agreements."

"We did not always agree, but I know that he was committed to the peaceful reconstruction of a Bosnia-Herzegovina which could be part of Europe and in which all its citizens could feel at home. He was tough, scholarly and serious. He lived a simple life and he had little of the opportunistic charm or coarse joviality that are hallmarks of political operators in the Balkans and elsewhere... History will no doubt say that not all his decisions were right, but more than anybody else he was responsible for the fact that Bosnia-Herzegovina survived."

"Narode, spavaj mirno, rata neće biti."

"Bosnia should be a secular state. A non-secular Bosnia would be terror."

"This may not be a just peace, but it is more just than the continuation of war."

"Do we want the Muslim peoples to break out of the cycle of dependence, backwardness and poverty?... Then we can clearly show the way which leads to this goal: the generating of Islam in all areas of personal individual life, in the family and society, through the renewal of Islamic religious thought and the creation of a unified Islamic community from Morocco to Indonesia."

"The idea of Islamic renewal, which understands Islam as capable not only of educating human beings but also of ordering the world, will always have two types of people as its opponents: conservatives who want the old forms, and modernists who want someone else's forms."

"The briefest definition of the Islamic order defines it as a unity of religion and law, upbringing and power, ideal and interest, the spiritual community and the state, willingness and force... An Islamic society without an Islamic authority is incomplete and without power; Islamic government without Islamic society is either utopia or violence. Generally speaking, a Muslim does not exist as a sole individual. If he wishes to live and survive as a Muslim, he must create an environment, a community, a system."

"There is no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions. The failure of these institutions to function and the instability of these regimes in Muslim countries, manifest in frequent changes and coups d'état, is most often the consequence of their a priori opposition to Islam, as the fundamental and foremost feeling of the people in those countries. Claiming its right to order its own world alone, Islam clearly rules out the right and the possibility of the application of any foreign ideology in its own region. there is, therefore, no lay principle, and the state ought to be a reflection of and to support the moral concepts of the religion."

"There are immutable Islamic principles which order relations between people, but there is no Islamic economic, social or political structure which cannot be changed... Nothing which can make the world a better place can be rejected out of hand as non-Islamic... In order to be Islamic, a solution must fulfill two conditions: it must be maximally efficient and maximally humane."

"Islam contains the principle of the umma, i.e. a tendency towards the unification of all Muslims in a single community - religious, cultural and political. Islam is not a nationality, but it is the supranationality of this community."

"The upbringing of the people, and particularly means of mass influence - the press, radio, television, and film - should be in the hands of people whose good Islamic moral and intellectual authority is indisputable."

"Islam must take the initiative of recognizing motherhood as a social function. Harems must be abolished. No one has the right to refer to Islam as a reason to keep women disenfranchised: abuse of this kind must be brought to an end. Such attitudes do not represent a Western feminism, which has displayed a tendency to impose the measures, whims and mastery of a depraved element among the female sex. Neither is this equality in the European sense. It is an underlining of the equal value of men and women, together with the underlining of the differences between them, which should be preserved."

"In the struggles for the Islamic order, all means are permissible except one: crime. No one has the right to defile the good name of Islam by the uncontrolled and superfluous use of force. The Islamic community should once more confirm that justice is one of its keystones... Formula: the aim justifies the means has become the cause of numberless crimes. A noble aim cannot command unworthy means."

"The Islamic order can only be established in countries where Muslims represent the majority of the population. If this is not the case, the Islamic order is reduced to mere power (as the other element - an Islamic society - is missing) and may turn to violence. The non-Muslim minorities within an Islamic state, on condition that they are loyal, enjoy religious freedom and all protection."