Conspiracy

JFK was killed by the CIA, Olaf Palme was killed because of his opposition against the Apartheidsregime, the landing on the moon was staged in order to win a battle in the Cold War. All of them are conspiracy theories, and aal are great scripts for movies.

Bosnians believe in conspiracies too, especially regarding the war. They know this, and once every know and then a conversation starts with "I know that this sounds like a conspiracy, but it is true that...", and my attention is grasped. I love those theories- they seem to made up by John Le Carre. Some of them are absurd, others are just funny, and most of them are urban legends, spoofed of actual happenings. Usually I do not take them very seriously, but I am more than willing to listen to them. They are often entertaining.
However, it might be time to do start taking the whole conspiracy thinking seriously.

A common conspiracy is that 'Srebrenica' was a trade off between the Bosniaks, the Serbs and the international community. It was a trade for Eastern Sarajevo, and also a needed excuse for the international community to interfere in the war. I used to dismiss those ideas as at best uncoof, at worst blatendly stupid. However, this article made me think differently. I do not know the credibility of the Green Left Weekly, but I do know the credibility of Paris-Match, and there seems to be no reason for them to misquote Mr. Holbrooke. Apparently the idea of a trade off was not conspiracy thinking, it was true.

I am a Realpolitiker. And I am a cynic. However, I am first and foremost naive. Because I wanted to believe that 'Srebrenica' was black-and-white. But I should and could have known better- I could have seen the signs on the wall- Urban legends come from somewhere. Well, you live, you learn....