French-German historian Nicolas Moll, in an interview with BIRN, spoke about his newly-published article, which deals with public perceptions of war crimes against Serbs and the men who committed them. The primary subject of Moll’s work is Musan “Caco” Topalovic, a long-time criminal who commanded the 10th Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army during the “siege of Sarajevo.” Though Caco’s unit is infamous for the killing of Serb civilians, many Bosniaks in Sarajevo remember him as a hero. Moll spoke about the way many people minimize or justify such crimes against Serbs:
Many in Sarajevo don’t want or have difficulties to publicly recognise that crimes have been committed against Serb civilians by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, or they admit it, but immediately continue with a “but…”, for example: “but the Serbs committed much more crimes”, “but Caco defended our city” or “but he killed not only Serbs”, etc. This refusal to acknowledge “our” crimes, or the will to downplay them, reflects a general tendency which we can find all over Bosnia and Herzegovina….
I understand that recognising these crimes is not an easy step, mainly because it collides with the dominating Sarajevo narrative about the heroic defense of the multi-ethnic town where all the perpetrators have been on the other side. Some might also fear that admitting these crimes would only give credit to those Bosnoserb nationalists who try to equalise all crimes. But admitting the crimes against Serbs in Sarajevo does not make the siege of Sarajevo legitimate. And denying or downplaying them will anyway only give arguments to your opponents to say that you want to hide something.
