User Panel
Posted: 12/20/2005 10:42:15 AM EDT
He walked into my dorm room one day looking for my roommate and noticed I had an empty AK mag laying down on top of my monitor, and asked me if I had an AK. I said no, but I would soon. Turns out he is a real collector of AKs and SKS rifles. He told me he grew up in the region during the Civil war when things were getting hairy. He does not like Romanian AKs at all, for some weird reason. I asked him why, and he said that the Croats used them. He said they always ran no matter what, but he liked the Yugoslavian AKs more than the romanians because the friendlies used them almost exclusively (And the thicker receiver..)
I've also got some pics from Iraq of captured AKs I'll post later. Ahh yes, I talked him into purchasing a new Yugoslavian SKS . His first one, BTW. |
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A family on my block is Bosnian Muslim, but yeah, most liekly Serb, especially if he likes the Yugo stuff.
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No clue, but he's Christian and opposed to the Croats. |
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Serb. |
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Good friend fought thier for 4 years, he is Croat. He said the Croats and Muslims played nice till the Mujahadeen showed up and began killing anyone wearing a cross. The war largely ended he said as the Serbs were being pushed out with enemies on opposite sides of them moving to center. He said he killed a few muslims but mostly Serbs alot of Serbs and get this a few Russians too. Turns out those high profile incidents of snipers shooting wemon and children were the work of "weekend warriors" from Russia brought in by the Serbs. He told me what they did to the first few they caught, not for the squeamish. Long story short this sniper who could not speak the native languages but spoke Russian survived just long enough to be seen by a CNN camera crew and be returned sans hands and a few other parts. CNN would not aire it but incidents stopped after a few were caught.
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There was a Croat-Muslim alliance. It was the old "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" story. Seems like Tito was the only one who knew how to keep the peace. |
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Is there a reliable account of what happened in that region? I haven't found much info, but the bits and pieces I find are so biased that I have no idea of truthfulenss. |
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I would imagine that all sides were guilty and none were innocent. |
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What I've been able to put together is this: Under Tito's iron grip all the locals were forced to get along, more or less. After Tito was gone, all the pent up ethnic hatred blew out of control and all hell broke loose. Does that sound more or less correct? |
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Yep, not many saints in that war. Civil wars always tend to be so. Shame they fell apart after Tito. |
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pretty much.
I dated a Bosnian Catholic in HS. She lived in a village outside Serevo, and there was a muslim village adjacent to hers. She said growing up, everyone played with everyone else (muslims/catholics), the war started (started by Serbia invading) and everyone started killing each other, literally that's how she described it. She blamed Milosovic completely for every aspect of the war, even though part of her family was killed fighting with the muslims. |
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It's my understanding that as far as communist dictators went, Tito was probably the best one. My Romanian friends said that they viewed escaping to Yugoslavia from Romania as freedom. Yugoslavs had far more freedoms than people in other communist countries had as long as you didn't say bad shit about Tito. |
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Most do not talk about it, I personally do not judge him or his actions he seems a moral guy. Look into his eyes and you don't doubt he has seen some horrible things. As to CNN they as anyone here can attests to are far from a bastion of truth and unbiased journalism, my friend gets irritable at the mention of CNN. He was Croat special forces, he has shown and told me some very handy tricks too. |
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Tito was actually genuinely popular among his people, not one of the say good things on camera or be shot dictators. Also I was told by those I know from thier they were Socialists not communists. |
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Learned something interesting on the History Channel a few weeks ago (assuming they got it right). There was a documentary about some Serb known as "the Tiger" who was invading muslim neighboring regions. The UN passed an arms embargo on the area to try and end the fighting.
The result was that the locals were unable to arm/defend themselves, and the invading Serbs, who already had established their own supply lines, stayed well armed. This reminds me that I need to keep stocked up on arms and ammo. |
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That would be Arkan the Tiger. He was assassinated in 2000 by a former member of his own militia in Belgrade. |
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Yes, that was Arkon allright. Was the sweetheart that carried out Serbenicia (or however you spell it). Most think Milosevic had him killed because he had become so famous and powerful after he returned to Serbia. Yes, thanks to the UN, the Bosnians were not able to defend themselves in the same manner the Serbs were, and you have the end result. Gun control at its finest. |
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Well, I guess I will throw a little in too.
The UN did pass an arms embargo(on paper). Needless to say, the Clinton admin. was busy getting weapons smuggled to the Bosnian muslims and letting thousand of mujahadeen fighters 'train' and fight there. Alot of the same shitbagss our soldiers are bravely fighting in Iraq. Now we have Bosnia and Kosovo, the later, 'smuggling central' of terrorists, narcotics, sex slaves, and weapons into Western Europe. One day, that region will blow up again, but next time it will be even messier and more costly to clean up. IMHO we bombed the most politically incorrect of the combatants, the Serbs. However, all of them are equally dirty. Big picture: There are a lot of natural resources ie. minerals in dem der hills. Geopolitics works in some strange ways. Just my .02. -vato |
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These mujahadeen shitbags were also supplied arms and training by the Reagan Admin during the Soviet war in Afghanistan. |
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Reminds me of an important lesson: Today's friends could be tomorrow's enemies. |
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Start thinking Pakistan and China then. |
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China +10000, makes me wonder why we aren't doing something about it now... Pakistan will be a problem when the current prime minister is gone. |
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Agreed, both sides of the political spectrum are guilty of this. |
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A few years back I was on Recruiting duty. There was a bar next door that had a restaurant/ grill. The guy that ran the restuarant was an old man about the same age as Moses. We got to know him and it turns out that he was a Croat immigrant and had served in a Waffen SS foreign division. The evil old bastard was totally unapologetic and would even defend the Holocaust. The ancient fuck was pretty charismatic but he was totally unrepentant, he may have been bullshitting us but he was very convincing with his knowledge of the war. Imagine the life history that takes you from fighting Russians on the eastern front in WWII to grilling mushroom cheeseburgers in America decades later.
edited to add: if your friend ID'd himself as a Yugoslavian he was almost certainly a Serb. |
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That old SS fuck probably took part in the killing of the Serbs during WWII.
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I'm not too worried about China. Most of the populace would probably rather side with the U.S. and lead a counter-communist movement. Lots of Chinese moving to the U.S., and not many moving back. We have several programmers from China at my job. I don't think any of them have expressed the desire to go back to China for any reason. |
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Caveat: I spent a long time there and have friends on all sides of the conflict. The ex-Yugos are like Italian Slavs, charismatic and it is easy to get sucked in.
It's very important for the Serbs to mythologize what happened to them in WW2 in order to justify their doing the same from 1991- 99 in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. The massacres are well-documented. Serbian self-image as victims goes back to their epic poetry, actually - sacrifice at Kosovo Polje for a "heavenly kingdom." Of course, the 7th Muslim (forget if it was brigade or division) in Bosnia was quite active in beheading prisoners. Commanding officers are at the Hague now. Actual number (and impact) of foreign fighters in Bosnia was small - but tons of postwar money has poured in, in an attempt to Islamicize the country. The cosmopolitan, worldly people are now in Germany or the U.S. and the semi-literate villagers are in Sarajevo these days, sadly. Amazing girls in that town. At their worst: Serbs are dumb and nasty, Bosnians weak and nasty, Croats mean and nasty. All are unreliable reporters; first rule of the Balkans: "Everyone lies. They'll lie when they are looking you in the eye and drinking with you." (BG Fitzroy MacLean, briefing in 1991). They're also sweet, hospitable, fun to drink with and good basketball players ;) I would like to recommend two books - first, for the WW2 story, Fitzroy Maclean's (various titled) "Eastern Approaches" or "Escape to Adventure" - parachuted into Yugoslavia to meet the then-unknown Tito. FM was a founding member of the SAS. I believe that the best book is Silber & Little's "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation" - with an associated TV series. You read/watch the economy fall apart and people start seeking opportunities for power after Tito died. He held it together, but didn't provide an alternative, like our founding fathers did. Anyway, this is the least partisan (no pun intended) book on the topic, best-researched, etc. I'll add a third. Rebecca West's "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon." She romanticized the Serbs (which is easy to do, they are colorful people) but it is an accurate cultural portrait of some of the flaws and foibles of the peoples of the region, good and bad. Also she's a brilliant writer. There's a book by Misha Glenny that's also worth your time. |
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I served in bosnia in 2000- 2001.
one of our duties was to inspec serb weapon storage site's. i was amazed at the wide array of weapons the serbs had. i mean they had everything. both nato and warsaw pac small arms, and heavy weapons. alot of homes in our area of operation were still ruined from the war. almost every house had been a last stand. it was seeing what ak's had did to those buildings that gave me great respect for the 7.62 ~39mm in urban fighting. 1-179th inf 45th bde{oklahoma national guard} 7th inf div |
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OODA_Loop,
I just want to thank you for all that information. |
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Were you at camp Dobol, by chance? I had a guy try to trade me a Thompson submachine gun for a pair of boots that I was wearing. Looked new, US marked. I would have done it, but I didn't know the officers I was with . |
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+1, a big reason why the serbs wanted to get even. |
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yep i was one of the last American troops to leave dobol was at dobol same time 3rd ID was there . 1-64 armor i think was the unit with us. |
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Well, they should've gotten even by going after the old SS fuck like the one mentioned instead of becoming the same genocidal monsters that they wanted to get even with. |
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Funny this came up..I ordered two DVD's from a member on Ebay should be here tomorrow..One is Arkan's Tiger's, it's footage actually shot by camera crews with the Serb's in action. And the other is Otpor Bosnia real war footage supposed to be brutal as hell, just the cover of Otpor would make some squirm..The guy E mailed me and told me that both were very violent and completely uncensored and hoped I could stomach it..
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