more—were committed by the Croats,rnthe MusHms, and the Albanians 50 andrn80 years ago, in World Wars I and II.rnThe 1914 mass hangings of Serb womenrnin Austro-Hungarian-occupied SerbrnMacva can hardly be explained away as arnSerb invention, since photographs, takenrnby the Croat, German, and Magyarrnexecutioners themselves, still exist, and arnWar Crimes tribunal that wants to setrnthe record straight can examine this evidencernbefore proceeding to the next setrnof anti-Serb massacres, those occurringrnin Worid War II.rn”On the night of September 3/4,rn1942, 700 arrested hostages were shotrnin Hrvatska Mitrovica. It was notedrnthat, after exiting them from the jailhouse,rnthe Serb hostages were made tornpass through an Ustashi gauntlet in orderrnto reach a waiting bus. As they werernpassing, the Ustashi administered blowsrnto them with wooden clubs. At the siternof the execution, besides shooting, therernalso occurred throat-slitting and otherrnsadistic excesses. Among those was therncutting off of female breasts. . . .” Thisrnis from the official report of the GermanrnLegation at Zagreb to the Ministryrnof the Foreign Affairs of the Reich, onrnSeptember 11, 1942.rn”On the occasion of his promotion tornthe rank of an Ustasha captain,” goesrnanother such report of November 21,rn1942, “the senior police commissioner,rnTomic, arranged a dissolute party. Afterrndinner, heavy drinking ensued. Whenrnall present were totally intoxicated, Tomicrncommenced to shoot with his pistol.rnThe valuable oil paintings and crystalrnserved him as targets. Around midnight,rnseveral Ustashe were ordered tornbring in a few Serbs who had been keptrnin jail. These Serbs were knifed torndeath, and the Ustashe sucked bloodrnfrom their wounds.”rnA memorandum by a German officerrnwho was sent to prevent Croat massacresrnof the Serb population of EasternrnBosnia (the site of present dayrn”humanitarian aid” to the Muslims)rnduring August 1941 states: “While wernwere traveling in the direction of thernJaver Mill, near Srebrenica and Ozren,rnwe found all Serb villages along the wayrncompletely abandoned. However, in thernhouses we often discovered entire familiesrnbutchered. We even found barrelsrnfull of blood. In villages betweenrnVlasenica and Kladanj, we found impaledrnchildren, their tiny members contortedrnin pain, as if they were insects.rnpinned down with needles.” Perhapsrnsuch German reports of their Croat allies’rnbehavior explain why today’s Bosniarnhas an inverted proportion of Serbs tornMuslims, when compared to Austro-rnHungarian, and even Ottoman, times.rnDuring my 1993 stay in Kraina—as arnvolunteer—and in 1992 in Bosnia, as arnwar reporter, I have heard of Serbsrnkilling Moslems, but not Croats. Itrnshould be remembered, however, thatrneven in this war, it was the Muslims whornfirst shot at a Serb wedding party inrnSarajevo, in the summer of 1992, murderingrnthe father of the groom. Thisrntriggered the Bosnian carnage. It wasrnSaban Muratovic, at Visegrad in Bosnia,rnwho over the Yugoslav airwaves threatenedrnto blow up the Visegrad dam andrnobliterate everything and everybodyrndown the Drina and the Sava river valleys.rnIt was Alija Izetbegovic, the MuslimrnPresident of Bosnia and Herzegovina,rnwho over those same airwaves publiclyrnadmonished the frantic Muratovicrnnot to proceed with his plan. This wasrnall before any Serb retaliatory actions,rnat the very outset of the 1992 Bosnianrnexplosion. Personally, in Belgrade, Irnhave talked to a father whose son—arnSerb volunteer on the Croatian front—rnwas butchered like a hog at the beginningrnof the Serbo-Croatian war, in 1991,rnand then portrayed first on Croatian TVrnand later on German TV as a Croat victimrnof the Satanic Serbs!rnIt was Alija Izetbegovic who in thernI970’s, in his Islamic Declaration, calledrnon Muslims to take over power in Bosniarnonce their number surpassesd 51 percentrnof the population. According tornIzetbegovic’s book, it is also the BosnianrnMuslims’ obligation to institute the rulernof Shari’ah, or Islamic Law, in Bosniarnand to turn it, perhaps, into somethingrnlike the United Arab Emirates, where itrnis a capital crime to convert a Muslim.rnNobody in the West paid any attentionrnto Izetbegovic then, except for AmnestyrnInternational, which defended him as arnprisoner of conscience.rnCroatia, on the other hand, is governedrnby one of Tito’s communist generals,rnFranjo Tudjman, who publicly saidrnin 1991 that he was glad he was “neitherrnSerb, nor Jewish.” In his book HistoricrnDead Ends, published much afterrnIzetbegovic’s, Tudjman belittled thernnumber of Serbs killed in World WarrnII, claiming only 30,000 Serbs died inrnthe Jasenovac camp, “mostly anti-fascistrnCroats” at that. To the chagrin of manyrnJewish groups and lobbies, Tudjman alsorndenies the existence of Nazi exterminationrncamps and has allowed WoddrnWar II war criminals to return to Croatia,rnwhere many of them have beenrnpublicly honored for their “contributionsrnto the Motherland.”rnWar in former Yugoslavia cannot bernregarded piecemeal: what happens inrnKraina is an outcome of what goes onrnin Bosnia, and both depend on what hasrnhappened, and is still happening, inrnCroatia. Nothing in former Yugoslaviarncan be understood without a knowledgernof the past, which for most former Yugoslavsrnis still the living present.rnHad there been no Ottoman invasionrnof the Balkans, in all probability Balkanrnhistory would have been as uneventfulrnas Dutch or Danish history. But thern1389 Kosovo defeat pushed the Serbsrnnorthward into what was Hungary andrnCroatia, while the 1526 Hungarian defeatrnat Mohacs emptied Croatia of mostrnof its Croat population, which escapedrn(sometimes) as far north as Austria. Inrnthe 17th century, the Albanians came,rnas Turkish troops, into the Serbian heartlandrnof Kosovo. A parallel is oftenrndrawn between the Kosovo and Krainarncases, but there is a crucial difference:rnSerbs came into a largely vacated Kraina,rninvited there by its Hungarian, thenrnVenetian, masters, to defend the regionrnfrom the conquering Ottomans, whilernthe Albanians descended upon Kosovornas part of an Asiatic occupying force andrndisplaced—often brutally—a numerousrnand established Serbian population.rnBut history happened, and Serbs,rnCroats, and Albanians became inextricablyrnmixed. The best solution wouldrnhave been a Yugoslavia, provided therernwas a consensus on its institution amongrnthe constituent nations. Unfortunately,rnthere never was a consensus: Serbs wantedrna Yugoslavia, as did the Slovenes andrnthe Croats initially (so long as theyrncould dominate it), whereas the Muslimsrnand the Albanians had no use for arnplan that abrogated their overlord status,rnderived from their privileged positionrnas Muslims within the Turkish Empire.rnDuring the course of a February 1993rnnight, as I stood watch over our positionrnabove the Croatian coastal town ofrnSkradin (a town with many Serb monumentsrnas well, including a 14th-centuryrnchurch) and wondered when the realrnshooting would start, history, ignoredrnby the foreign meddlers in the Yugoslavrn40/CHRONICLESrnrnrn