Quotes About Bosnia

Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those 'others'. Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that.

The European powers make it clear that they do not want a Muslim state, Turkey, in the European Union and are not happy about having a second Muslim state, Bosnia, on the European continent.

It was only in the 1990s, in Bosnia, that "the Che Guevara of Islam"43 really came into his own, developing al-Qa'ida into the flexible, well-funded multinational jihadi organization it became. It was the Bosnian civil war that transformed bin Laden and his cadres into the backbone of the mujahidin worldwide.

The SDA's vision of an Islamic mini-state carved from central Bosnia bore strong resemblance to the plans of Bosnian Islamists during World War II, who desired satellite status under the Third Reich; the later concept was much the same but under American protection: a Balkan Islamistan subject to Holbrooke rather than Himmler.

The bitter irony of the story told here is that in 1990, no Islamic society on earth was better positioned to reject jihad and realize a modern, reformed version of Islam than Bosnia.

I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.

We can work together to produce better footballers for both FK Sarajevo and maybe Cardiff City and maybe even to play for other clubs. We hope this will be well received by everybody and enhance good relations between Malaysia and Bosnia.

Let's make a deal with the Serbs. Neither history nor emotion in the Balkans will permit multinationalism. We have to give up on the illusion of the last eight years... Dayton isn't working. Nobody - except diplomats and petty officials - believes in a sovereign Bosnia and the Dayton accords.

To be honest, I don't feel like I am able to say that I had a childhood, not in a way normal kids my age had. I had something that was specific to Bosnia in '90s, something I call a period of survival.

I am hopeful that no one will forget what happened in Bosnia.

I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.

The Kosovars were granted autonomy at the end of World War II, but then aspiring president Milosevic had the autonomy revoked in 1989, and the Dayton Accords of 1995, which ended the recent war in Bosnia and Croatia, failed to address the issue of Kosovo's status.

The claim most often repeated by Karadzic - that people of different nationalities couldn't live together in Bosnia - was simply a euphemism for racism. The truth was quite the opposite: peoples of different cultures had lived together for so long in Bosnia, and the ethnic mix was so deep, that any separation could only be accomplished through extreme violence and enormous bloodshed.

I never wanted an independent Bosnia. I wanted Yugoslavia. That is my country.

In Bosnia, the case was there were white, blond-haired, blue-eyed Muslims who were being slaughtered and identified as Muslims. That really touched me.

If Israel does not find the way to disengage from the Palestinians, its future might resemble the experience of Belfast or Bosnia - two communities bleeding each other to death for generations.

For me the much more significant question is what did the Americans do, if anything, to help the Croatian army, because they are the ones that changed fundamentally the map of Bosnia, not the Bosnian army.

You should give no indication that we wish the three-way division of Bosnia.

We Bosniaks would for sure fight for integrity of Bosnia.

Bosnia is under my skin. It's the place you cannot leave behind. I was obsessed by the nightmare of it all; there was this sense of guilt, and an anger that has become something much deeper over these last years.

In Bosnia, there are no 35mm cameras. There are no film labs.

The Wahhabi movement is a form of radical Islam that people here say did not exist before in Bosnia, where Islam had co-existed with other major religions and was much softer and more liberal.

When I went to Bosnia, I was there to tell someone else's story and I was more methodical.

In the case of Bosnia, studies showed that turning to religion was a consequence of post-war depression and dissatisfaction.