CAIRO – Why Serbia in particular?

Why Serbia in particular?

By Mohssen Arishie – The Egyptian gazette
Sunday, July 31, 2011 12:59:28 PM

CAIRO – Members of the April 6th Movement have confessed to receiving training in Serbia and this should raise many questions. This Serbian tour opened divisions in the movement and led several of its pioneers to break away in October 2010. 

 

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   In its 69th statement, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces bluntly accused the political movement of trying to drive a wedge between ordinary Egyptian citizens and the Army. 

   The SCAF's statement also accused the movement of receiving money from overseas and training there. 

   The Army's accusations came after young demonstrators left Tahrir Square and marched to el-Abbasiya, northeast of central Cairo, to demonstrate outside the military headquarters. 

   They chanted slogans, which insulted the Egyptian Army and cast doubts on its post-Mubarak loyalties. They went too far when they chanted slogans against Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and members of the SCAF. 

   Whether it was deliberately planned or not, this anti-Army demonstration coincided with the nation's celebrating the Egyptian Revolution of July 23rd 1952, which was sparked by the Army. 

   There have been allegations that the movement's members received 'military' training, to help them overpower riot police during the mass demonstrations. 

   Partially confessing to these accusations, the movement's spokesman, Mohamed Adel, said that he had travelled to Serbia and received training in 'non-violence', the manipulation of the masses and how to mobilise and control them. 

   The instructors in the Serbia-based training camps did a good job. The movement's spokesman proudly attributed their success in leading the mass demonstrations that ousted Mubarak to the instructions and advice they received in Serbia. 

   Adel did not explain how long they had spent in Serbia before graduating and returning home to Egypt to put their 'theoretical studies' into practice in Tahrir Square and other public places across the country. The movement's spokesman strongly denied that they were traitors or agents paid to cause instability in their country. 

   One of the movement's secessionists said that he had declined the invitation to travel to Serbia for training there. 

   Tareq el-Kholi, the coordinator-general of the 6th of April Movement's Democratic Movement (a breakaway movement from the 6th April Movement), also denounced his former colleagues for allowing foreign agencies to grease their palms with US dollars and euros as a reward for their participation in the Serb-based training camp. 

   Serbia has a long way to go before it will be given the ticket to join the European club of democracy-exporting countries. Its hands are stained with the blood of tens of thousands of innocent Muslim women, children and young men in Serbia-controlled areas. 

   Serbia has desperately been trying to remove these big, indelible stains from its history by collaborating with the massive hunt for the perpetrators of this ethnic cleansing of Muslim minorities in the old Yugoslavia in the 1990s. 

   This horrendous genocide has been described as the most brutal since the First World War. Dozens of the Serb leaders of these large-scale massacres went into hiding to avoid the arrest warrants issued by the International Criminal Court in The Hague. 

   The suspects included late Serb President Slobodan Milosevich, who died on March 11 in his prison cell in The Hague. He was charged by the International Criminal Court with Bosnian genocide when he led Bosnian Serb forces in Srebrenica from 1992 to 1995 to massacre Muslims under his army's control. 

   Milosevich was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on Saturday, 31 March 2001 and was sent to The Hague.  

   Charges levelled against Milosevich and his army commanders included the killing of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims, as well as the mass expulsion of another 25,000 or 30,000 Bosnian Muslims, in and around the town of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina, committed by units of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) under the command of General Ratko Mladiv. 

   The ethnic cleansing throughout areas controlled by the Bosnian Serb Army targeted Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. 

   It included unlawful confinement, murder, rape, sexual assault, torture, beating, robbery and inhumane treatment of civilians; the targeting of political leaders, intellectuals and professionals; the unlawful deportation and transfer of civilians; the unlawful shelling of civilians; the unlawful appropriation and plunder of real and personal property; the destruction of homes and businesses; and the destruction of places of worship. 

   How can a country, whose majority are connected, religiously, to the war victims in areas that used to be controlled by Serbian Army, give lessons about the peaceful transfer of power?

   We do not know whether Serb war veterans led the training classes for these young Egyptians. The Serbians should revive at home the nightmarish memory of the young Muslim men, who travelled to Afghanistan to fight the old Soviet Army in this Muslim country. 

   Returning to Egypt after learning the art of war, these young people described themselves as the Mujahidin (Holy Warriors) and formed militant groups, responsible for terrorist attacks in Egypt in the 1980s and the 1990s. 

   The comparison here should ignite fears that, after the war of terror launched by Muslim radicals in September 2001, the world community, including Egypt, could witness a war of terror launched, this time, by Christian radicals. 

   The random killing of young people by an ultra-Christian extremist in Norway should substantiate these fears.

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