321 CHRONICLESnWherever the Bosnian Serbs went, the Bosnian Croats andnthe Bosnian Moslems went the other way. Fascism, communism,ndemocracy, even Christianity and Islam were justnnames. Balkan ethnic identity—tenuous, often imaginarynand hence imperishable — was all.nIn Hercegovina, families like the Sokolovici had split intonSerbs, Croats, and Moslems, depending upon when certainnrelatives had changed their faith. Initially Serb, many hadnbecome Moslem or Roman Catholic in Ottoman Turkey, tonbetter their lot. In Austria-Hungary, further thousands ofnSerbs became Catholic.n”With a stick the Turk [Bosnian Moslem] beat andnpushed the old Christian [Bosnian Serb], as if the wretchnwere a pig, while the poor man just begged for mercy. Inleapt forth to intervene, but two Bosnians [Serbs] grabbednme and pulled me back, whispering, with indescribablenhatred, ‘These are the Turks!'” wrote Sir Arthur Evans,nafter his 1875 trip through Bosnia. In the grip of anneverlasting bronze age, Bosnia needed no excavating —nwild, wooded, hilly, Bogomil of memory and sadness, itnyielded everything to sight, readily.nMaybe that is why eyes were such a prized trophy,nbetween 1941 and 1945.nFew Bosnians, Catholic or Orthodox, least of all thenMoslems, had read the Book of Revelahons. For them,nreligion was identity, to be fully affirmed only by thensacrament of murder. The Apocalypse, after all, was thenfavorite part of the Bogomil Bible, coming right after thenGospels.nWhen Communists appeared in the Kingdom of thenSerbs, Croats and Slovenes, Bosnian ethnic politics enteredna new stage. (“These wretched fragments or ruins of formernnations — Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks, and other robber riffraffnwho begrudge each other even the air they breathe,nought to cut each other’s throats,” prescribed FriedrichnEngels.) Under Stalin — one-time Soviet Minister fornnnNahonalities — the Comintern dealt in incitement to genocide;nin 1932, the Yugoslav Communist newspaper, Proleter,npraised the Ustashe for their Velebit Uprising.nOn July 22, 1941, Mile Budak, Ustasha Minister ofnEducation and Cults, shouted to the crowd, “For thenminorities — Serbs, Jews, and Gypsies — we have threenmillion bullets. We shall kill one part of the Serbs. We shallntransport another, and the rest of them will embrace thenRoman Catholic religion.”nMile Budak was a novelist from the Croatian MilitarynFrontier—like his Irish counterparts, he kissed the Crossnand kept his powder dry. In their stony, dirt-poor hamlets,nhis countrymen cried in the night, their eyes glistening likenthe clear drops of their brandy.n”There are no Serbs,” Croat ideologue Ante Starcevicnhad written in the 1890’s. “There are only Croats, ofnRoman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox faith!”nWhen World War I began, Croatian and Bosnian regimentsn(both Moslem and Serb) were thrown against Serbia.nAt Cer alone, 20,000 of Franz Josef’s soldiers died. Theirnbodies rotted in heaps, too big to bury.nIn retaliation, General Potiorek’s “Punitive Expedition”nbutchered thousands of noncombatants in occupied SerbiannMacva, bordering upon Bosnian Posavina. Further thousandsnwere killed by the Moslems along the Drina border.nToday, stone sarcophagi of the Bogomils dot Hercegovina.nCrudely chiseled in bas-relief, warriors peacefully holdntheir right hands up. According to their creed, the world ofnthe flesh and things was made by Satan; even havingnchildren was a sin. The Bosnian Manicheans fought offncrusade after Hungarian crusade; when Sultan Mehmed IIncame, they stepped forth from behind the white walls ofntheir cities and converted into Islam, en masse.nIn 1941-1945, they formed three SS legionary divisions:nthe “Handschar,” the “Kama” (“Knife”), and the “Devil’snDivision.”nThen, to preserve the “brotherhood,” the “unity,” andnthe “equality” of Yugoslavia, the Communists let thenBosnian Moslems build 700 new mosques after the war,nmostly with Libyan money. But the burnt and pillagednOrthodox churches in Banja Luka, Mostar, Gacko, andncountless Bosnian Serb villages were never renewed, eithernfor the lack of money, or permit.nSerbs, who had made up most of Tito’s army, werenphased out of the new government and party posts, andnreplaced in Bosnia with Moslems. As an overall Yugoslavnmajority, the Serbs could not be manipulated — post-warnpolitics called for quotas, named “The Key” in Yugoslavia.nAlmost two thirds of Bosnia’s population during the Ottomans,nBosnian Serbs have been turned by war and socialistnpeace into a minority. What the agas could not accomplish,nby bedecking their towers with Serb heads, today’s MoslemnCommunist cadres could, and did.nIn Serbian Kosovo, once the part of the Ottoman Vilayetnof Bosnia, ethnic Albanians, aware of propitious omens, arenmoving to create a Greater Albania. Like pre-1914 Serbs,nthey hope to dismantle an existing European state andncreate a new, juster reality.nThough neither the Soviets nor the Americans want anBalkan boil, Albanian youths who are raping their Serbnneighbors’ daughters, mothers, and grandmothers do notn