Extinction of Serbian Independence

The Rise and Fall of the Serbian Empire and the Extinction of Serbian Independence, 1168-1496

Neville Forbes, Oxford University

This is chapter 15 of the famous work, The Balkans, written by several famous authors, including Arnold Toynbee, and was released in 1915. It is not copyrighted. It provides an excellent background to Serbian medieval history and provides a great degree of light onto Serbian history, so distorted by establishment historians and journalistic whores–MRJ

From 1168 the power of the Serbs, or rather of the central Serb state of Raska, and the extent of its territory gradually but steadily increased. This was outwardly expressed in the firm establishment on the throne of the national Nemanja dynasty, which can claim the credit of having by its energy, skill, and good fortune fashioned the most imposing and formidable state the Serb race has ever known. This dynasty ruled the country uninterruptedly, but not without many quarrels, feuds, and rivalries amongst its various members, from 1168 until 1371, when it became extinct.

There were several external factors which at this time favoured the rise of the Serbian state. Byzantium and the Greek Empire, to which the Emperor Manuel Comnenus had by 1168 restored some measure of its former greatness and splendour, regaining temporary control, after a long war with Hungary, even over Dalmatia, Croatia, and Bosnia, after this date began definitively to decline, and after the troublous times of the fourth crusade (1204), when for sixty years a Latin empire was established on the Bosphorus, never again recovered as a Christian state the position in the Balkan peninsula which it had so long enjoyed. Bulgaria, too, after the meteoric glory of its second empire under the Asen dynasty (1186-1258), quite went to pieces, the eastern and northern parts falling under Tartar, the southern under Greek influence, while the western districts fell to Serbia. In the north, on the other hand, Hungary was becoming a dangerous and ambitious neighbour. During the thirteenth century, it is true, the attention of the Magyars was diverted by the irruption into and devastation of their country by their unwelcome kinsmen from Asia, the Tartars, who wrought great havoc and even penetrated as far as the Adriatic coast. Nevertheless Hungary was always a menace to Serbia; Croatia, Slavonia, and the interior of Dalmatia, all purely Serb territories, belonged to the Hungarian crown, and Bosnia was under the supremacy of the Magyars, though nominally independent.

The objects of the Magyars were twofold--to attain the hegemony of the Balkan peninsula by conquering all the still independent Serb territories, and to bring the peninsula within the pale of Rome. They were not successful in either of these objects, partly because their wars with the Serbian rulers always failed to reach a decision, partly because their plans conflicted with those of the powerful Venetian republic. The relations between Venice and Serbia were always most cordial, as their ambitions did not clash; those of Venice were not continental, while those of Serbia were never maritime. The semi-independent Slavonic city-republic of Ragusa (called Dubrovnik in Serbian) played a very important part throughout this period. It was under Venetian supremacy, but was self-governing and had a large fleet of its own. It was the great place of exchange between Serbia and western Europe, and was really the meeting-place of East and West. Its relations with Serbia were by no means always peaceful; it was a Naboth's vineyard for the rulers and people of the inland kingdom, and it was never incorporated within their dominions. Ragusa and the other cities of the Dalmatian coast were the home during the Middle Ages of a flourishing school of Serbian literature, which was inspired by that of Italy. The influence of Italian civilization and of the Italian Church was naturally strong in the Serb province, much of which was under Venetian rule; the reason for this was that communication by sea with Italy was easier and safer than that by land with Serbia. The long, formidable ranges of limestone mountains which divide the Serbian interior from the Adriatic in almost unbroken and parallel lines have always been a barrier to the extension of Serb power to the coast, and an obstacle to free commercial intercourse. Nevertheless Ragusa was a great trade centre, and one of the factors which most contributed to the economic strength of the Serbian Empire.

The first of the Nemanja dynasty was Stephen, whose title was still only Veliki Zupan; he extended Serb territory southwards at the expense of the Greeks, especially after the death of Manuel Comnenus in 1180. He also persecuted the Bogomils, who took refuge in large numbers in the adjacent Serb state of Bosnia. Like many other Serbian rulers, he abdicated in later life in favour of his younger son, Stephen, called Nemanjié (= Nemanya's son), and himself became a monk (1196), travelling for this purpose to Mount Athos, the great monastic centre and home of theological learning of the Eastern Church. There he saw his youngest son, who some years previously had also journeyed thither and entered a monastery, taking the name of Sava.

It was the custom for every Serbian ruler to found a sort of memorial church, for the welfare of his own soul, before his death, and to decorate and endow it lavishly. Stephen and his son together superintended the erection in this sense of the church and monastery of Hilandar on Mount Athos, which became a famous centre of Serbian church life. Stephen died shortly after the completion of the building in 1199, and was buried in it, but in 1207 he was reinterred in the monastery of Studenica, in Serbia, also founded by him.

The reign of Stephen Nernanji['c] (1196-1223) opened with a quarrel between him and his elder brother, who not unnaturally felt he ought to have succeeded his father; the Bulgarians profited by this and seized a large part of eastern Serbia, including Belgrade, Nish, Prizren, and Skoplje. This, together with the fall of Constantinople and the establishment of the Latin Empire in 1204, alarmed the Serbs and brought about a reconciliation between the brothers, and in 1207 Sava returned to Serbia to organise the Church on national lines. In 1219 he journeyed to Nicaea and extracted from the Emperor Theodore Lascaris, who had fallen on evil days, the concession for the establishment of an autonomous national Serbian Church, independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Sava himself was at the head of the new institution. In 1220 he solemnly crowned his brother King (Kralj) of Serbia, the natural consequence of his activities in the previous year. For this reason Stephen Nemanji['c] is called 'The First-Crowned'. He was succeeded in 1223 by his son Stephen Radoslav, and he in turn was deposed by his brother Stephen Vladislav in 1233. Both these were crowned by Sava, and Vladislav married the daughter of Tsar John Asen II, under whom Bulgaria was then at the height of her power. Sava journeyed to Palestine, and on his return paid a visit to the Bulgarian court at Tirnovo, where he died in 1236. His body was brought to Serbia and buried in the monastery of Milesevo, built by Vladislav. This extremely able churchman and politician, who did a great deal for the peaceful development of his country, was canonized and is regarded as the patron saint of Serbia.

The reign of Vladislav's son and successor, Stephen Uros I (1242-76), was characterized by economic development and the strengthening of the internal administration. In external affairs he made no conquests, but defeated a combination of the Bulgarians with Ragusa against him, and after the war the Bulgarian ruler married his daughter. In his wars against Hungary he was unsuccessful, and the Magyars remained in possession of a large part of northern Serbia. In 1276 he was deposed by his son, Stephen Dragutin, who in his turn, after an unsuccessful war against the Greeks, again masters of Constantinople since 1261, was deposed and succeeded by his brother, Stephen Uros II, named Milutin, in 1282. This king ruled from 1282 till 1321, and during his reign the country made very great material progress; its mineral wealth especially, which included gold and silver mines, began to be exploited. He extended the boundaries of his kingdom in the north, making the Danube and the Save the frontier. The usual revolt against paternal authority was made by his son Stephen, but was unsuccessful, and the rebel was banished to Constantinople.

It was the custom of the Serbian kings to give appanages to their sons, and the inevitable consequence of this system was the series of provincial rebellions which occurred in almost every reign. When the revolt succeeded, the father (or brother) was granted in his turn a small appanage. In this case it was the son who was exiled, but he was recalled in 1319 and a reconciliation took place. Milutin died in 1321 and was succeeded by his son, Stephen Uros III, who reigned till 1331. He is known as Stephen Decanski, after the memorial church which he built at De[)c]ani in western Serbia. His reign was signalized by a great defeat of the combined Bulgarians and Greeks at Kustendil in Macedonia in 1330. The following year his son, Stephen Dusan, rebelled against him and deposed him. Stephen Dusan, who reigned from 1331 till 1355, was Serbia's greatest ruler, and under him the country reached its utmost limits. Provincial and family revolts and petty local disputes with such places as Ragusa became a thing of the past, and he undertook conquest on a grand scale. Between 1331 and 1344 he subjected all Macedonia, Albania, Thessaly, and Epirus. He was careful to keep on good terms with Ragusa and with Hungary, then under Charles Robert. He married the sister of the Bulgarian ruler, and during his reign Bulgaria was completely under Serbian supremacy. The anarchy and civil war which had become perennial at Constantinople, and the weakening of the Greek Empire in face of the growing power of the Turks, no doubt to some extent explain the facility and rapidity of his conquests; nevertheless his power was very formidable, and his success inspired considerable alarm in western Europe. This was increased when, in 1345, he proclaimed his country an empire. He first called together a special Church council, at which the Serbian Church, an archbishopric, whose centre was then at Pe['c] (in Montenegro, Ipek in Turkish), was proclaimed a Patriarchate, with Archbishop Joannice as Patriarch; then this prelate, together with the Bulgarian Patriarch, Simeon, and Nicholas, Archbishop of Okhrida, crowned Stephen Tsar of the Serbs, Bulgars, and Greeks. Upon this the Patriarch of Constantinople gave himself the vain satisfaction of anathematizing the whole of Serbia, as a punishment for this insubordination.

In 1353 the Pope, Innocent VI, persuaded King Louis of Hungary to undertake a crusade against Serbia in the name of Catholicism, but Stephen defeated him and re-established his frontier along the Save and Danube. Later he conquered the southern half of Dalmatia, and extended his empire as far north as the river Cetina. In 1354 Stephen Dusan himself approached the Pope, offering to acknowledge his spiritual supremacy, if he would support him against the Hungarians and the Turks. The Pope sent him an embassy, but eventually Stephen could not agree to the papal conditions, and concluded an alliance, of greater practical utility, with the Venetians. In 1355, however, he suddenly died, at the age of forty-six, and thus the further development and aggrandisement of his country was prematurely arrested.

Stephen Dusan made a great impression on his contemporaries, both by his imposing personal appearance and by his undoubted wisdom and ability. He was especially a great legislator, and his remarkable code of laws, compiled in 1349 and enlarged in 1354, is, outside his own country, his greatest title to fame. During Stephen Dusan's reign the political centre of Serbia, which had for many years gradually tended to shift southwards towards Macedonia, was at Skoplje (Üsküb in Turkish), which he made his capital. Stephen Dusan's empire extended from the Adriatic in the west to the river Maritsa in the east, from the Save and Danube in the north to the Aegean; it included all the modern kingdoms of Serbia, Montenegro, Albania, and most of Greece, Dalmatia as far north as the river Cetina, as well as the fertile Morava valley, with Nish and Belgrade--the whole eastern part of Serbia, which had for long been under either Bulgar or Magyar control. It did not include the cities of Salonika or Ragusa, nor any considerable part of the modern kingdom of Bulgaria, nor Bosnia, Croatia, North Dalmatia, nor Slavonia (between the Save and Drave), ethnologically all purely Serb lands. From the point of view of nationality, therefore, its boundaries were far from ideal.

Stephen Dusan was succeeded by his son, known as Tsar Uros, but he was as weak as his father had been strong. Almost as soon as he succeeded to the throne, disorders, rebellions, and dissensions broke out and the empire rapidly fell to pieces. With Serbia, as with Bulgaria, the empire entirely hinged on the personality of one man, and when he was gone chaos returned. Such an event for Serbia at this juncture was fatal, as a far more formidable foe than the ruler's rebellious relations was advancing against it. The Turkish conquests were proceeding apace; they had taken Gallipoli in 1354 and Demotika and Adrianople in 1361. The Serbs, who had already had an unsuccessful brush with the advance guard of the new invaders near Demotika in 1351, met them again on the Maritsa river in 1371, and were completely defeated. Several of the upstart princes who had been pulling Stephen Dusan's empire to pieces perished, and Tsar Uros only survived the battle of the Maritsa two months; he was unmarried, and with him died the Nemanja dynasty and the Serbian Empire.

After this disaster the unity of the Serbian state was completely destroyed, and it has never since been restored in the same measure.

That part of the country to the south of Skoplje fell completely under Turkish control; it was here that the famous national hero, Marko Kraljevi['c] (or King's son), renowned for his prowess, ruled as a vassal prince and mercenary soldier of the Turks; his father was one of the rebel princes who fell at the battle of the river Maritsa in 1371. North of Skoplje, Serbia, with Krusevac as a new political centre, continued to lead an independent but precarious existence, much reduced in size and glory, under a native ruler, Prince Lazar; all the conquests of Stephen Dusan were lost, and the important coastal province of Zeta, which later developed into Montenegro, had broken away and proclaimed its autonomy directly after the death of Tsar Uros.

In 1375 a formal reconciliation was effected with the Patriarch of Constantinople; the ban placed on the Serbian Church in 1352 was removed and the independence of the Serbian Patriarchate of Pe['c] (Ipek) recognised. Meanwhile neither Greeks, Bulgars, nor Serbs were allowed any peace by the Turks.

In 1389 was fought the great battle of Kosovo Polje, or the Field of Blackbirds, a large plain in Old Serbia, at the southern end of which is Skoplje. At this battle Serbian armies from all the Serb lands, including Bosnia, joined together in defence of their country for the last time. The issue of the battle was for some time in doubt, but was decided by the treachery and flight at the critical moment of one of the Serb leaders, Vuk Brankovi['c], son-in-law of Prince Lazar, with a large number of troops. Another dramatic incident was the murder of Sultan Murad in his tent by another Serbian leader, Milo[s] Obili['c], who, accused of treachery by his own countrymen, vowed he would prove his good faith, went over to the Turks and, pretending to be a traitor, gained admission to the Sultan's presence and proved his patriotism by killing him. The momentary dismay was put an end to by the energetic conduct of Bayezid, son of Murad, who rallied the Turkish troops and ultimately inflicted total defeat on the Serbians. From the effects of this battle Serbia never recovered; Prince Lazar was captured and executed; his wife, Princess Milica, had to give her daughter to Bayezid in marriage, whose son thus ultimately claimed possession of Serbia by right of inheritance. Princess Milica and her son Stephen continued to live at Krusevac, but Serbia was already a tributary of Turkey. In the north, Hungary profited by the course of events and occupied Belgrade and all northern Serbia, but in 1396 the Turks defeated the Magyars severely at the battle of Nikopolis, on the Danube, making the Serbs under Stephen fight on the Turkish side. Stephen also had to help Sultan Bajazet against the Tartars, and fought at the battle of Angora, in 1402, when Tamerlane captured Bayezid.

After Stephen returned to Serbia he made an alliance with Hungary, which gave him back Belgrade and northern Serbia; it was at this time (1403) that Belgrade first became the capital, the political centre having in the course of fifty years moved from the Vardar to the Danube. The disorders which followed the defeat of Bayezid gave some respite to the Serbs, but Sultan Murad II (1421-51) again took up arms against him, and invaded Serbia as far as Krusevac.

At the death of Stephen (Lazarevi['c]), in 1427, he was succeeded as _Despot_ by his nephew, George Brankovi['c]; but the Sultan, claiming Serbia as his own, immediately declared war on him. The Serbian ruler had to abandon Belgrade to the Magyars, and Nish and Krusevac to the Turks. He then built and fortified the town of Smederevo (or Semendria) lower down on the Danube, in 1428, and made this his capital. He gave his daughter in marriage to the Sultan, but in spite of this war soon broke out again, and in 1441 the Turks were masters of nearly the whole of Serbia. Later George Brankovi['c] made another alliance with Hungary, and in 1444, with the help of John Hunyadi, defeated the Turks and liberated the whole of Serbia as far as the Adriatic, though he remained a tributary of the Sultan. The same year, however, the Magyars broke the treaty of peace just concluded with the Turks, and marched against them under their Polish king, Ladislas; this ended in the disastrous battle of Varna, on the Black Sea, where the king lost his life. In 1451 Sultan Murad II died and was succeeded by the Sultan Mohammed. In 1453 this sultan captured Constantinople (Adrianople had until then been the Turkish capital); in 1456 his armies were besieging Belgrade, but were defeated by John Hunyadi, who, unfortunately for the Serbs, died of the plague shortly afterwards. George Brankovi['c] died the same year, and at his death general disorder spread over the country. The Turks profited by this, overran the whole of Serbia, and in 1459 captured Smederevo, the last Serbian stronghold.

Meanwhile Bosnia had been for nearly a hundred years enjoying a false security as an independent Serb kingdom. Its rulers had hitherto been known by the title of Ban, and were all vassals of the King of Hungary; but in 1377 Ban Tvrtko profited by the embarrassments of his suzerain in Poland and proclaimed himself king, the neighbouring kingdom of Serbia having, after 1371, ceased to exist, and was duly crowned in Saint Sava's monastery of Milesevo. The internal history of the kingdom was even more turbulent than had been that of Serbia. To the endemic troubles of succession and alternating alliances and wars with foreign powers were added those of confession. Bosnia was always a no man's land as regards religion; it was where the Eastern and Western Churches met, and consequently the rivalry between them there was always, as it is now, intense and bitter. The Bogomil heresy, too, early took root in Bosnia and became extremely popular; it was the obvious refuge for those who did not care to become involved in the strife of the Churches. One of the kings of Bosnia, Stephen Thomas, who reigned from 1444 till 1461, was himself a Bogomil, and when at the insistence of the Pope and of the King of Hungary, whose friendship he was anxious to retain, he renounced his heresy, became ostensibly a Roman Catholic, and began to persecute the Bogomils, he brought about a revolution. The rebels fled to the south of Bosnia, to the lands of one Stephen, who sheltered them, proclaimed his independence of Bosnia, and on the strength of the fact that Saint Sava's monastery of Milesevo was in his territory, announced himself Herzog, or Duke (in Serbian Herceg, though the real Serb equivalent is Vojvoda) of Saint Sava, ever since when (1448) that territory has been called Hercegovina. In spite of many promises, neither the Pope nor the King of Hungary did anything to help Bosnia when the Turks began to invade the country after their final subjection of Serbia in 1459. In 1463 they invaded Bosnia and pursued, captured, and slew the last king; their conquest of the country was complete and rapid. A great exodus of the Serb population took place to the south, west, and north; but large numbers, especially of the landowning class, embraced the faith of their conquerors in order to retain possession of their property. In 1482 a similar fate befell Hercegovina. Albania had already been conquered after stubborn resistance in 1478. There remained only the mountainous coastal province of Zeta, which had been an independent principality ever since 1371. Just as inland Serbia had perished between the Turkish hammer and the Hungarian anvil, so maritime Serbia was crushed between Turkey and Venice, only its insignificance and inaccessibility giving it a longer lease of independent life. Ivan Crnojevi['c], one of the last independent rulers of Zeta, who had to fly to Italy in 1480, abandoning his capital, [Z]abljak, to the Turks, returned in 1481, when the death of Sultan Mohammed temporarily raised the hopes of the mountaineers, and founded Cetinje and made it his capital. His son George, who succeeded him and ruled from 1490 till 1496, is famous as having set up the first Serbian printing-press there. Its activities were naturally not encouraged by the Turkish conquest, but it was of great importance to the national Serbian Church, for which books were printed with it.

In 1496, Venice having wisely made peace with the Sultan some years previously, this last independent scrap of Serb territory was finally incorporated in the Turkish dominions. At the end of the fifteenth century the Turks were masters of all the Serb lands except Croatia, Slavonia, and parts of Dalmatia, which belonged to Hungary, and the Dalmatian coast and islands, which were Venetian. The Turkish conquest of Serbia, which began in 1371 at the battle of the Maritsa, and was rendered inevitable by the battle of Kosovo Polje, in 1389, thus took a hundred and twenty-five years to complete.

A Serbian Film & The Art of Hate

A Serbian Film & The Art of Hate


http://grayfalcon.blogspot.com/2010/04/art-of-hate.html

Harry Knowles, the premier movie geek of Ain't It Cool News, says "Serbian Film" (Srpski film) is "brilliant", "tremendous" and "extreme", and has to be seen to be believed.

It is also a story about the sickest, most depraved dark corners of the underground porn industry. We're talking things that are illegal for a reason. But, you see, what first-time director/producer Srdjan Spasojevic set out to do was not make just a snuff or exploitation movie (which this most assuredly is). Oh no, his intent was to make a metaphor for Serbia itself.

That is why it's called "Serbian Film" and not, for example, "Snuff". All the sick depravity in it is supposed to represent the country, the society, the people of Serbia. In the words of reviewer Todd Brown, "This is a film meant to punish, not to entertain, and it succeeds absolutely. It is genuinely sickening and that is entirely the point."

"Serbian Film" is actually an anti-Serbian film.

Spasojevic, the director, doesn't deny his film is meant to be a metaphorical representation of Serbia. He claims that the film was entirely financed "privately, with donations and contributions from friends." Donations from whom? What sort of "friends"? This kind of money doesn't grow on trees, least of all in Serbia - where the only people with money are crooks and politicians (or is that redundant?). And oh yes, foreigners. Could it be that the "Serbian Film" was funded by the same people who fund Natasa Kandic, Sonja Biserko and other "NGO" vampires, whose only job for the past two decades has been to denigrate, defame and destroy everything Serbian? This is mere speculation on my part, mind you, but I would not be shocked if it ends up being true.

At least we know that Spasojevic didn't get a penny from the government; that's sort of surprising, given that official Belgrade shares his Serbophobia and automasochism. In fact, Spasojevic complains about the lack of official support, arguing that "This is a matter of culture, that represents Serbia in the world." (see interview in Serbian, here)

He has a point, in a way; a horrific, self-hating botched WW1 epic ("St. George Slays the Dragon") got copious government funding, even though its levels of Serb-hate and defamation are child's play compared to "Serbian Film". If one can't get paid for Serb-hating in today's Serbia, what can one get paid for?

That even the government is drawing the line at Spasojevic's magnum opus speaks volumes about its depravity.

The damage is already done, of course. Spasojevic's cinematic equivalent of "Piss Christ" is already touring the festivals in the US and elsewhere, "representing Serbia" to people already all to willing to see it as demonic, depraved and deserving of destruction. In the words of one reviewer,

Never again will you be able to hear or read the innocent phrase "a Serbian film" without a reflexive awakening of the searing images that Aleksandar Radivojevic (screenplay) and Srdjan Spasojevic (co-writer and director) have put on screen.

I just hope Spasojevic gets the reward he so richly deserves for this immense contribution to his nation's culture and history.

Anti-Serbian film, made to prolong and perpetuate stereotypes of demonized Balkan people, title says it all

http://www.imdb.com/user/ur23559949/comments

I am writing this for fairness and justice without any other motivation:

This is a politically motivated film. Why? One or two decades ago, several powerful countries needed to tailor public opinion into an intervention in Balkan conflict. They did so by demonizing the people and completely distorting the line of events, an approach/version followed religiously to present day. Nowadays, when some elements of real truth start coming out, changing perceptions and many take notions that not everyone from Balkans has a villain tag on his forehead - the establishment comes up with this stereotypical unfounded and "politically correct" story reiterating every single bit of media madness of the 90s - sick aggressive and deranged Balkan male always willing to settle any issue by rape, murder, torture, people of mythical mindset living in the past and taking revenge on the world for not having everything the way they want to. The fact that director is Serbian as well as actors does not disapprove my point. I do not care if some director makes an exploitation movie or a movie with sick themes. That movie could be called "slashing movie", "chopping and raping movie", however when you call it "serbian movie" this gets clear political motivation.

Being from the Balkans, I have seen many Serbian movies, authentic movies, ones with real local spirit and humor, those that reflect local culture. And, I can tell you, that authentic Balkan movie is not a hollywoodized, 100% westernized broth. Therefore it is obvious that this movie is not made for local audience: it was made for some other audiences or purposes. Now, this is not the place for me to prove Serbian people are totally unlike this; I know they are. Nevertheless, in spite of perhaps being done well, this movie will always remain a crime towards truth and humanity, just as if you watch "The hurt locker" you will believe all Iraquis/Arabs are evil terrorists who live on killing friendly Americans. Same goes for some movies about Viet Nam, and you can also believe that Serbs are "a bunch of illiterates, degenerates, baby killers, butchers and rapists". Is it really a coincidence that this movie resembles previously quoted words of Joe Biden uttered on Larry King show during 1999 intervention in Serbia? In case you love exploitation and Hollywood(-style) movies are a place where you compensate for your geographic and cultural ignorance, you may as well believe Joe.

Ever-Growing List Of Anti-Serbian Movies

Updated 2/1/2013

Behind Enemy Lines (2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159273/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behind_Enemy_Lines_(film)

The film's fictional plot is centered on a story of uncovering a massacre in the Bosnian War of 1992-1995 by an American naval aviator.

Admiral Leslie Reigart's (Gene Hackman) carrier battle group is in the final stages of a NATO peace keeping deployment when the F/A-18F Super Hornet of Chris Burnett, the aircraft's Weapons System Officer (Owen Wilson) and his pilot Jeremy Stackhouse (Gabriel Macht), launched from the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson is shot down by a SA-13 SAM controlled by renegade Serbian forces led by General Miroslav Lokar (Olek Krupa) and his second in command Colonel Viktor Bazda. Lokar is committing a secret genocidal campaign against the Bosniak people in a no-fly zone that the NATO plane violates and photographs; wanting to avoid being discovered, Lokar has the plane shot down and executes Stackhouse while Burnett escapes to the countryside.

From then on Burnett is on the run, narrowly escaping from the Serb attack time after time. All the while he maintains contact with his Admiral, to lead him to a safe point for a rescue attempt. The resulting attempt to rescue the downed aviator are complicated by political considerations which are enforced on Reigart by his NATO commanding officer Admiral Juan Miguel

Piquet (Joaquim de Almeida), including using his own team for the extraction rather than the team that Reigart put together.

Burnett is chased by Sasha (Vladimir Mashkov), a Serbian sniper and right hand man to Bazda. He escapes death after he slides off a dam while being shot at by Sasha. In another gruesome scene he falls into a mass grave and hides under dead bodies. He makes his way to Hac, a small town in Bosnia on the back of a pickup with a group of fighters. The entire town is at an all out war. When Serbian forces attack the mall he and the fighters are hiding in, he manages to flee by disguising himself in a Serb militant outfit after dressing up a dead Serb militant with his pilot suit. He loses his radio in the attack. Bazda and Sasha pursue Burnett in the forest as Burnett attempts to make it to the safe zone where he will be rescued by helicopter.

In the pursuit, Bazda steps on a mine and his ally Sasha leaves him to die. The situation intensifies when Serbs claim that the downed aviator was shot dead by Bosnian guerrillas, after they find their dead soldier in the pilot suit. The rescue attempt is called off as Burnett sees the helicopter fly away.

Diplomatic Siege (1999)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0171227/

A bomb expert (Peter Weller) is sent to the US embassy in Bucharest to defuse an old cold war bomb that is stored in the basement. Unexpectedly, a group of terrorists representing the "Serbian Liberation Front" raid the embassy, killing a number of people and taking 37 hostage. The special mission operative must save his son and an old flame (Daryl Hannah).

Meanwhile an anti-terrorist squad is sent on the rescue mission. The squad leader (Tom Berenger) turns out to be old friends with the head terrorist (Adrian Pintea).

Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness (2003) (TV)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365651/

Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison's investigation of the murder of a Bosnian refugee leads her to one, or possibly two, Serbian war criminals determined to silence the last witness to a massacre a decade before.

The Fourth Angel (2001)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0254334/

Jack Elgin is the European editor of The Economist, which is based in London, England. Jack has a wife named Maria and three

kids named Joanne, Julia, and Andrew. Jack subtly changes the family vacation from a lazy week of Mediterranean fun and sun in Corfu, Greece, to a tour of India, because of a story he has to cover. Maria is not as impressed by this as the kids are. Jack himself envisioned a chance to simultaneously work an easy reporting assignment and spend a little quality time with his family. But on the way to India, the airplane, a 747 owned by AM Air, an American airline, makes an unscheduled stopover in

Limassol Cyprus, because of a mechanical problem. After a while of waiting inside the Limassol airport, everyone gets back on the plane -- which is then hijacked by a group of terrorists known as the August 15th Movement, led by a Serbian man named Ivanic Loyvek and his right-hand man Karadan Maldic. And they are demanding $50,000,000 from the US State Department in one hour, or everyone on the airplane will die. The demand is met, and Loyvek and Maldic start releasing the women and children, with the men to go last. But as soon as a front passenger door is opened, a local police team gunning for the terrorists opens fire. The flight attendants frantically open the rest of the airplane's doors and start getting passengers out, but the terrorists start killing passengers, leading to an explosion. Maria, Joanne, and Julia get out of the airplane, and then Jack, holding Andrew, gets out -- only to watch Maria, Joanne, and Julia get shot by the terrorists. Jack tries to hide Andrew's face so he can't see it. Maria and Joanne are dead, and Julia is still alive -- but Julia burns to death while crying for help. Jack and

Andrew survive. In all, a total of 15 passengers die, and Loyvek and Maldic, the surviving terrorists, escape, knowing that they now have the $50,000,000. The hijacking would never have ended this way if the police team had waited until after the passengers were released from the airplane before getting trigger happy. Back in London, an absolutely devastated Jack is told that the terrorists were captured, but they were released and deported secretly, with no charges and no arrest, the result of some awfully compromised politics. Jack is understandably enraged that Loyvek and Maldic got off scout-free. While helping

Andrew cope, Jack tries all the legal ways to ensure justice for his family, but to no avail. Jack even pays a visit to Henry Davidson, a CIA agent who works at the American Embassy in London. Davidson tells Jack that there's little that can be done.

Obviously, the American and British governments are completely impotent when it comes to going after Loyvek and Maldic, so Jack has absolutely no choice in the matter. He must do it himself. With the help of his ex-intelligence operative friend Kate

Stockton, who is well-schooled in the finer points of international intelligence, Jack becomes a one-man anti-terrorist squadron, searching for Loyvek and Maldich. Dogging Jack's trail is FBI agent Jules Bernard, who's cooperating with Scotland Yard on anti-terrorist activities, and who suspects that Jack is the man who has been killing anyone involved in the hijacking. But as it turns out, Jules is on Jack's side, and he's willing to help Jack make those responsible pay for the deaths of his family and the other people who died in Cyprus.

Extreme Ops (2002)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283160/

When an extreme-sports filmmaking team sets out to make a commercial featuring a gold-medal skier outrunning an avalanche, they run afoul of a Serbian war criminal hiding out in a mountain resort. So it's snowboards vs. bullets on steep slopes of snow--and if that's your thing, Extreme Ops is for you. film crew travels to the Austrian Alps near the (former) Yugoslav border to film three extreme sports enthusiasts being chased down by an avalanche for a commercial. What they don't know, however, is that they're filming near the secret hideout of Slobodan Pavle , a Serbian war criminal. Accidentally catching him on film, they become locked in a life-or-death chase through the mountains that includes skiing, snowboarding, sky diving, white water rafting, helicopters, motorcycles, and base jumping.

Sniper 2 (2002) (TV)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338450/

A former Marine sniper is lured back in on a top-secret mission to take out a Serbian general who is committing atrocities on the Muslim population.

The Hunted (2003)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0269347/combined

The move opens with some of the most brutal and vile carnage ever seen on screen. In Kosovo during the Bosnian war, a Serbian commander is killing every non-Serb thing that breathes. Men. Women. Children. It didn't matter. US Special Services Operations specialist, Aaron Hallam (Benicio Del Toro) is assigned to kill the Serbian commander. With skill and cunning, Hallam dispatches the Serb commander in a bloodbath in the commander's own blood. That is what he was trained to do. As an assassin.

The Rock (1996)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0117500/

The FBI’s top chemical weapons specialist, a geek named Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage, in his first role since winning an Academy Award for Leaving Las Vegas) saves his co-workers from a Serbian sarin gas booby trap, The FBI Director (John Spencer) wants Goodspeed to accompany the SEAL incursion into Alcatraz and disarm the missiles.

Hunt for Justice (2005)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449588/
http://www.reel.com/movie.asp?MID=142751

Hunt for Justice chronicles the heroic struggle of Louise Arbour, the Canadian Chief War Crimes Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, to indict Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity.

The Hunting Party (2007)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455782/

After years of covering one war after another, journalist Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) loses his composure during a live broadcast covering the Bosnian War. While his career spirals downhill, that of his long-time camera man Duck (Terrence Howard) goes in the opposite direction. Duck gets a cushy job at the network, while Hunt is left following war after war, unemployed, in an attempt to get back on top.

Years later, Duck returns to Bosnia to shoot a "puff piece" of the network anchor Franklin Harris (James Brolin) covering a peace treaty, along with fresh young journalist (and son of the network vice-president) Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg). Duck runs into Simon--by this point, a desperate, cynical freelancer who needs a story big enough to propel him back to the realm of credibility. He tells Duck that he has the location, through a source, of Through a tip, he has located Radoslav Bogdanovic--known as "The Fox"--who is a wanted Serbian war criminal with a $5 million bounty on his head. Convinced by Simon, Duck comes along to shoot the interview, with Benjamin in tow. On the way, Simon confesses his plan to capture the Fox--something

Duck and Benjamin consider insane to even think of. Along the way, the group is mistaken for a CIA hit squad by several groups, including the United Nations police force and the Serbians themselves. It quickly becomes evident that there are people in the international community who don't wish for the Fox to be captured, and Simon, Duck, and Benjamin find themselves in well over their head.

The Peacemaker (1997)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119874/

Before Nicole Kidman could have a tragic love affair in Moulin Rouge, she first had to save Manhattan – with George Clooney's help – from a Serb with a backpack nuke in Peacemaker (1997). The villain was no less than a member of the Bosnian Serb parliament, who first killed a colleague to ensure he'd have a spot on the New York-bound delegation. His motive?

Vengeance on the UN, because snipers killed his family and the peacekeepers had done nothing to help.

Force 10 from Navarone (1978)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077572/

Some time after the successful Navarone mission, Mallory (Robert Shaw) and Miller (Edward Fox) are summoned by Cmdr.Jensen (Philip Latham) and charged with identifying and killing a spy known as "Nicolai", who appeared briefly in The Guns of Navarone. (In the film The Guns of Navarone, Nicolai was the identity of the laundry boy who was suspected to be listening in on private conversations and almost killed for it). "Nicolai" is now thought to be disguised among the Yugoslav Partisans, under the guise of a Capt. Lescovar (Franco Nero).

To get to Yugoslavia the two men are paired up with "Force 10", a sabotage unit led by Lt. Colonel Barnsby (Harrison Ford), whose target is a key bridge in Bosnia. Barnsby considers having the two older men forced upon him as an unnecessary added risk to an already dangerous mission. In order to ensure absolute secrecy, they are ordered to steal an Allied plane from an airfield in Termoli so that no information about their flight to Yugoslavia can be leaked out. However, while breaching the perimeter fence they are discovered by US M.P.'s who are escorting Sgt. Weaver (Carl Weathers) to captivity. A brawl ensues which ends with the M.P.'s overpowered and Weaver forcing his way onto the plane. After crossing the Yugoslavian coast, the plane is attacked by German night fighters, at which point most of Barnsby's team are killed, and the survivors have to bail out of the stricken aircraft.

Once on the ground the remainder of the team attempts to link up with the the communist Yugoslav Partisans (who were part of the Allied forces) and believe they have run across a group of such led by a Capt.Drazak (Richard Kiel). However, once at their camp they soon discover that these are not Partisans but a group of collaborationist Chetniks (nationalist Serb guerillas). Finding themselves in German hands, they attempt to convince the commander, Maj.Schroeder (Michael Byrne), that they are black marketeers who have escaped from Allied captivity with a valuable stash of a new wonder drug called Penicillin.

The Filthy War (2008)
http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809765472/info
http://www.aceshowbiz.com/movie/filthy_war_the/

A group of young volunteers create an international platoon to defend a village against ethnic-cleansing Serbs in Croatia at the beginning of the Yugoslav civil war.

Storm (2009)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0768239/

Storm features an international cast pair of female leads in Kerry Fox (who we most recently seen in Bright Star and might remember all the way back to Shallow Grave) and one of my favorite Eastern European discoveries in Anamaria Marinca (4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days). Schmid's Storm sees Hannah Maynard (Fox), prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, is leading a trial against a former commander of the Yugoslavian National Army who is accused of the deportation and later killing of dozens of Bosnian-Muslim civilians. When a key witness commits suicide, it looks like the case will unravel, however Hannah refuses to give in. Hoping to uncover new findings.

Albanian's kidnap and rape Serb girl in Gračanica.

Another Serb, who was with her, was severely beaten and robbed, Kosovo Police Service (KPS) representatives told the agency Tuesday.

KPS regional spokesman Agron Borovci said the incident occurred in Gračanica at around 9 p.m. yesterday, and that police were in active search of the perpetrators.

“An Opel Vectra automobile blocked the road ahead of the victims and then three persons dragged the young man out of his vehicle, beat him up and closed him in the trunk, from where he was released after the girl had been raped,” Borovci specified, speaking on the basis of the testimonies of the two victims.

The BMW in which the boy and girl had been driving was then stolen, as well as their personal belongings, Borovci said, and the two of them were released near Ajvalija.

Beta reported the village in question was Albanian, as well as that the victims then walked to a hospital in Gračanica to get help.

According to an announcement by the Gračanica Press Center, the victims of this attack are S.Đ. of Gračanica and I.K. of Mladenovac, in Serbia proper.

Both received treatment last night at the Simonida Hospital in Gračanica, where the staff reported the incident to the police.

The incident occurred near the newly-built kindergarten in Gračanica, where another Serb boy and girl were kidnapped in the same way five months ago, and subsequently released, Tanjug reported.

Kosovo: The Brave Tribes Are Doomed

FRESNO, CALIFORNIA — Hey, you want to hear the New World whining at Old Europe? Here it is, from a press conference Condi Rice gave about Kosovo: "I mean after all, we're talking about something from 1389. 1389! It's time to move forward. And Serbia needs to move forward. Kosovo needs to move forward.

Well, I think we can all agree that 1389 was a while back, and that all things considered, "forward" is generally a good way to go. And not just for Serbia. No, Ma’am. It applies just as much to Kosovo.

"But hold on, Gary," you may be yelling at your computer, "what’s all this about 1389 anyway?" Well, as historical expert types like me and Condi know, that happens to be the date of one of the coolest battles in history. And since it happened in Kosovo, they decided to call it the Battle of Kosovo.

I’ll get to the battle in a minute--it’s a glorious battle and deserves retelling--but first I want to talk about Condi’s tantrum over people caring about stuff that happened long ago. I’ve heard this a lot: "Can’t they just get over it?" There’s some rule in California, it’s like a misdemeanor to care about anything that happened more than a week ago. And Condi, the all-American spinster, picked up that notion and ran with it, because as we all know Condi had to be twice as dull as her rivals. So here’s Condi solving the problems of Balkan history in a mall-girl whine: "I mean come ON! 1389? I wasn’t even BORN then!"

Serbs just can't "get over it."

Well, Condi, have a seat on that mall ottoman, the one between the American Eagle store and the foodcourt, and let Uncle Gary tell you something very important: You see, L’il Condi, some people actually care about stuff that happened a long time ago. Yeah, seriously. Like, for example, me. I care more about one particular day in 1779 than I do about my whole sophomore year in high school. Because on September 23, 1779 a Scottish-American rebel privateer named John Paul Jones maneuvered his soggy old raider, the Bon Homme Richard, next to a much bigger British warship, the Serapis, and lashed the ships together to make sure no quarter could be asked or given. And even though the Brits blew his little ship apart right under him, Jones refused to surrender and scared his Brit counterparts into surrendering themselves.

That day gave me a reason to live. All my sophomore year gave me was the strong impression that people were stupid and nasty. So excuse me, Condi, I’ll take 1779. A lot of people will take any year in the past over a lot of years in the present.

And the year 1389, the one you want the Serbs to get over? Well, 1389 means even more to the Serbs than Jones’ victory means to me. The battle they fought against the Turks that year is the main plotline in every song and story the Serbs tell to this day. It taught generations of Serb boys what was expected of them, how honorable warriors are supposed to act.

I suspect Condi’s other, deeper problem with the Serbs’ 1389-ophilia is that the Serbs didn’t even win that day. Talk about un-American! They hang around dreaming of this old battle, and it was a defeat? Gawd, get a life!

Well, not everybody wants a life, Condi. There’s a lot to be said for glorious death instead. Ever read the Bible, for example? Not that you have to. A lot of the great old European warrior stories are about defeats. The Anglo-Saxons sang about getting stomped by the Vikings at Maldon, and the Franks just couldn’t get enough of the Song of Roland, which is a whole epic poem about how Roland, Charlemagne’s Custer, lost his whole command. They should do a poster of that battle, with Roland as this Conan-the-Barbarian hero battling to the end, surrounded by hacked Saracens, wearing a t-shirt that says, "It’s a Euro thing, you wouldn’t understand."

But if you really try, you can see the appeal yourself. I mean, take Custer. If he’d won, wiped out the Sioux at the Little Big Horn, would anybody remember him now? It’d be kind of a bummer, actually. Much cooler to die fighting, like those old paintings show him, hat off and hair flying in the wind, drawing scalp-hunters from all over the Plains.

If you think about how cool Custer’s defeat was, it’s easier to understand the Shia, who whip themselves every year to get into the spirit of Hussein’s all-time one-sided defeat at Karbala ("Anguish"), where he charged the Caliph’s entire army with 30 companions. Makes the charge of the Light Brigade look like a game of touch football at the Kennedy compound.

Nope, there’s no doubt about it: defeat is sweeter than victory any day, unless it actually happens to you. Once you’re safely under the sod and the battle is in the hands of the tribal bards, defeat is the best material around. Poets love defeat, which makes sense if you remember the kind of people who wrote poetry at school.

The Serbs were a major power in 14th-century Europe. People forget how much pure geographical luck, good or bad, makes or breaks countries. Without the good luck of having the English Channel for a front lawn, Britain would have been toast a dozen times over. And if the poor Hungarians hadn’t been stuck guarding Europe’s back door when the Mongols came calling, they might have ended up the dominant power on the Continent.

Serbia was another up-and-comer until it had the bad luck to run into the Turkish offensive line. The Serbs were always the best warriors in the Balkans, and under King Dusan the Great, they smashed their way down into Albania, Macedonia and Northern Greece. Belgrade, their capital today, was back then at the northern edge of Serbia. The real heartland of Serbia was--you guessed it--Kosovo.

The Turks were on a tear of their own. They still hadn’t taken Constantinople, and wouldn’t for another 60-odd years, but they’d long since bypassed it to establish a foothold in Europe, from which they pushed further, year by year, doing deals when it suited them, or just plain crushing anybody who wasn’t open to negotiating the Turkish way.

The battle of Kosovo was one of those classic match-ups: Serbs pushing south and east meet Turks pushing north and west.

The Turks were some of your more interesting conquerors: goofy, ruthless and sly. You never knew which kind of Turk you were going to meet on a given day, the kind who were totally willing to take in a Christian vassal state and offer a friendly exchange of harem boys to seal the deal, or the kind who liked to sit on big pillows and think of new ways to make infidels die more slowly and painfully than any have died before.

The Serb legends say that the Serbs’ King Lazar could have made a deal with the Turkish sultan Murad I, but Lazar had some wacko dream where the angels told him to take the kingdom in heaven over one on earth. Like a bad contestant on Let’s Make A Deal, the idiot chose the kingdom in heaven--at least, that’s the way the Serbs tell it. I just wish the angels would offer me a deal like that, just once. You’d see me sign on the dotted line for the earthly kingdom offered to me so fast you’d hardly have time to pack before my goon squads arrived to throw you in the dungeons. And my dungeons--let’s just say they’d be very special dungeons, dungeons I’ve been planning in my head since well before sophomore year.

Okay, enough daydreaming. Lazar probably wasn’t the brightest king on the block. He should have taken the deal. But if you look at the paintings of him he looks like one of these ruddy stocky type-A guys with high blood pressure who wake up angry and stay that way all day. Well, the Turks cured that blood pressure problem in one day.

The reason Lazar should have taken the deal was because the Sultan had a huge army, at least 40,000 men, a massive number for pre-antibiotic days. And maybe 4,000 of those were the Janissaries, Christian boys grabbed from their mommies as a kind of infidel tax, taken to Istanbul to be brainwashed into Muslim fanatics and turned loose on the Sultan’s enemies. You have to admire that, taking the little infidel kiddies and turning them into Muzzie stormtroopers. I mean, just because you’re a world conqueror doesn’t mean you can’t have a sense of humor.

Lazar’s Serbs had a pretty good force of their own, maybe 20,000 men--including a few Croats, which is really amazing because if you know anything about the Balkans you know Croats go completely apeshit with hatred when you even mention Serbs, like that big jock in the movie who used to sniff the air and go, "NERDS!" when some math geek was in smell range.

But the Croats could see the Turks coming their way, and had the sense to fight with the Serbs to try to stop them before they reached Croat-land. It’s actually pretty classic gang-war logic: the 12th Street boys may love to fight the 14th Street kids, but if some gang from out of town shows up, they’re going to unite against it. Or pretend to. Because that’s the other classic element here, treachery: one of the Turks’ big assets was a traitor Serb noble, Dejanovic, who knew the territory and acted like their Indian scout, hoping to share the spoils.


Serbs having a hard time "getting over" the loss of Kosovo

The Serbs were fighting on their home field, but the Turks were professionals, vets with dozens of battles all over the Balkans to their credit. The Turks also had clear superiority in armor and weapons over the Serbs, who had panic-mustered every stable boy and dirt farmer they could find, even if they had no armor or proper weapons. One of the coolest features of the Serb force is that they had what European armies never seemed to have: mounted archers. Even so, most accounts of the battle spend a lot of time talking about the powerful volley of Turkish arrows that started the battle, so reading between the lines--which you absolutely have to do to make any sense of these old ballads--it seems like Kosovo started out as the classic encounter between European tactics, shield wall and heavy cavalry, vs. Steppe warfare: long-range arrow bombardment and maneuver.

The Serbs did what European armies always did best: they charged, and smashed right into the Ottoman force. Eastern armies were always impressed with what those white boys on their big plow horses could do on a flat field, with room to get up speed. There’s an Arab saying that dates from the Crusades: "The charge of a Frank (European) could knock down the walls of Babylon."

But there’s another truism about cavalry charges: unless they were supported by infantry, cavalry battles usually dissolved into "melees," meaning a bunch of individual duels between sweaty grunting tired guys on sweaty grunting tired horses. A few bold horsemen can make a big dent in the enemy line, but if the enemy has the discipline to stay in formation and the numbers to plug the dent, then eventually numbers will tell.

That’s what happened at Kosovo, as the day wore on and everybody’s hacking arms got tired: the Serb charge was absorbed, stopped and finally reversed as the Turks committed more troops to battle.

There are times in war when courage is a bad idea. After Stalingrad the Germans should probably have surrendered on the Western Front, applied for admission as the 51st State and hoped for the best. All they got for the long years of hopeless fighting after that defeat was a few million casualties and a badass rep that got their logo put on a lot of bikers’ helmets. Not much of a return on investment.

And when you’ve lost the battle, like the Serbs had at Kosovo by that point, then the idea of doing the noble thing, sticking around to get wiped out, isn’t a very good idea. Unless you’re thinking about all the art that it’ll inspire: you know, sad songs, sad paintings, sad stories. The Serbs have lots of those, all about Kosovo, and all about how they got wiped out as the afternoon wore on. There’s a famous painting of a dead Serb warrior with this medieval hippie Serb girl weeping over him that kind of sums up the whole necrophilia thing here. I can see the appeal of it, probably way more than most Americans can, but I have to be honest: if it came to lying dead there and getting a kiss vs. having a Corvette and driving to Malibu with her—you know, both of us alive and all—I’ll take the Malibu option. (But since Malibu ain’t an option for me and for just about everyone else, all we’ve got is the 1389 option.)

What’s cooler are the funny lines the Serbs have their heroes saying to each other as they get slaughtered, like: "If every one of us turned into a grain of salt, we wouldn’t be enough to salt the Sultan’s dinner!" Ho-ho-ho, and now let’s politely get hacked to death.

The consolation prize in Kosovo was a kiss and a drink

But for a really pro-active, mentally healthy response to defeat, give me my all-time favorite Serb: Milos Obilic. Milos, a Serb warrior who saw his comrades slaughtered at Kosovo, didn’t just moan and groan in defeat. No, he took action. What happened was, when the Sultan, Murad came out of his pavilion to wander over the battlefield and gloat over all the dead Christians, Milos played dead. When the Sultan got within stabbin’ range, Milos jumped up and gave Murad the biggest, and last, surprise of his life. Yes, thanks to a Serb, Murad the First became the first and last Ottoman sultan to die on the battlefield. Sultans didn’t specialize in leading from the front.

What the Sultans did best, you can see from what happened when the Sultan’s son Bayezid heard that Daddy had been sliced ’n diced by a bad sport from the losing team. Bayezid, a born executive—God, I love this bit—Bayezid called his brother Yakub who was leading the other wing of the Ottoman Army: "Oh Yak-ky! Yak-ky little brother, palsy-walsy…could you just come on over here for a sec? Dad left me a message for you!"

Yakub came galloping over and Bayezid gave him the message: "The Sultan’s throne isn’t big enough for the two of us, so… Die you bastard, so I can be Sultan!" Of course Bayezid didn’t do the killing himself; Sultans don’t lower themselves to manual labor. He had some eunuch strangle his little bro. Killing your brothers; one of the seven habits of successful sultans, an Ottoman business management best seller.

The Serbs lost a huge number of men that day. So did the Ottomans, but they had a much bigger population to draw from. That allowed them to keep sending out more and bigger invasion forces. Even though the Serb nobles cut a deal at last, and stayed in power for another couple of generations, the whole of Serbia was inevitably absorbed into the Ottoman empire just around the time that the Turks finally took Constantinople.

By this time, the Austrians were terrified, and for good reason. One-hundred-and-fifty years later, the Ottoman armies surged all the way to the walls of Vienna. So the Austrians, like the cunning little cowards they’ve always been, established a couple of Serb preserves, like Roosevelt did with the buffalo, to make sure the Serbs didn’t go extinct… Real reason: so the Serbs could be their human buffer against an Ottoman attack.

You may have heard of the names of those Serb enclaves from the 1990s Balkan wars: Vojvodina and Krajina. Krajina, a long swathe of ethnic Serb territory within current-day Croatia, was eventually ethnically cleansed by the Croats: thousands of Serbs killed and the rest, hundreds of thousands, burned out of their houses, thanks to a huge dose of U.S. military aid to the Croats, along with NATO jets and intelligence. All this came after the Serbs beat the shit out of the Croats in their first fair fight in history.

And that’s the lesson of Kosovo for the Serbs: we always fight better than our miserable enemies, and yet every time we get screwed. Whether it’s by the Ottomans in medieval times, or the Clintons in the 1990s, the basic blueprint was set right there on that one day in 1389, all those years ago. Just look what happened to Kosovo in 2008, the wonderful Declaration of Independence that Condi Rice was gushing about. Kosovo is now a fully independent "country" run by a cowardly Albanian mafia that lasted about five minutes in combat against middle-aged Serb militia units, then hid in the bushes until NATO bombed Serbia into submission, and rode back into power as victors all because the gullible Americans used their Air Force to bomb the Serbs into "getting over it" once and for all.

And now Condi just can’t understand how the Serbs have the nerve to be unhappy, just because their ancient homeland has been overrun with Albanians, whose main exports are popping out Muslim babies and running every mafia operation in Southern Europe. Why don’t the Serbs just deal, huh? Why don’t they get a life, get over it, already?

By Gary Brecher aka THE WAR NERD