SAGINAW GENEALOGICAL SOCIETYFROM SHARED KNOWLEDGE
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MONTH: MARCHThe name March is ultimately derived from the Latin word Martius (Mar-tee-os) Which was named after Mars, the Roman god of war. Martius was the name of the first month in the original Roman calendar. Along with January, May, and June, March is one of several months named after a Roman god.
DID YOU KNOW:
March was the start of the year for the Romans. It was also the beginning of spring, which was the time when everyone could go out and start fighting each other, (good grief) so the month was named after Mars – the Roman god of war. Mars, son of Jupiter and Juno, was the most important god in the Roman pantheon because he was father of Romulus, Rome's founder. As the god of war, red, the color of blood, was his color, and the wolf, the symbol of Rome, his animal
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SPEAKER INFO:
Why Y?
A Closer Look at Y-DNA Testing Ginger Ogilvie is passionate about helping people connect to their roots. She is trained as an historian, has excellent writing skills, research experience, careful eye for detail, and most of all, compassion for the human experience. As a descendant of Utah pioneers, she has studied several Westward migration patterns, and has researched families in all regions of the continental United States, Nova Scotia, Ontario, and Scotland. She lives in close proximity to the Library and Archives of Michigan in Lansing, the University Archives of Michigan State University in East Lansing, as well as Ingham County records in Mason, Michigan, and other mid-Michigan repositories. She also travels regularly to the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Allen County Public Library Genealogy Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Want to learn more? Come listen to her either on ZOOM or at the LDS church in Saginaw, where we will broadcast our ZOOM meeting from.
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SGS MEETING RECAPMEETING IN: February
We heard from BOB SZCZYPKA and KAREN REYNOLDS, who presented a program on
'EVERYTHING ABOUT PHOTOS'. SURE HOPE YOU DIDN'T MISS IT...but I did...I heard it was really good, but I was not feeling well and went home early...did you see it? Did you like it? (Go to the facebook page and let us know!!) For those who either missed the February presentation or wanted the links, here are the videos Karen Reynolds showed at the Tuesday meeting: (JUST CLICK ON THE GREY WEBLINK AND IT WILL TAKE YOU THERE) Scanning and Organizing Old Family Photos - Today is the Day! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67TJZ70CEJY How to Analyze Your Cabinet Cards https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM0HmMi5gx4 (A WEBSITE/NOT A VIDEO) Where to Search For Photographs of Your Ancestors https://familytreemagazine.com/photos/websites-for-old-family-photos/ (wasn't shown, but it is good.) Interpreting Family History Through Vintage Photographs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo8653tJUi0 THE IRISH SAY A LITTLE BULL
IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL! PRE-REGISTERALL VISITORS OR NEW MEMBERS
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SQUARE IS HERE!Pay your SGS membership
or donate, with just a few clicks. SQUARE is EASY, SAFE, AND NO HASSLE! (click the SQUARE icon above to pay) A PLACE TO ASK QUESTIONSThis guide shows you how to find billions of free birth, death, marriage and census records.
Oral histories are a valuable genealogical resource. This is what you need to know about the value of oral histories, where to find them, and how to do them yourself with your own relatives.
(Click below to learn.) Want to know more about indexing?
Check out this YOU TUBE VIDEO, A SELF HELP TUTORIAL ... Enjoy :) ROOTSTECH VIDEOS...
We will keep most of the classes and keynotes from RootsTech up for approximately three years. Most classes from 2021 will be available until the 2024 conference and 2022 classes until 2025. Where do I go to watch them? Check it out below. There is ONE FREE safe place to store all your photos and stories... FOREVER!Safely stored 600 ft. underground. And also
duplicated inside YET another mountain. Yeah...We got you covered! FamilySearch.org is non-profit and totally FREE! MILITARY SERVICE: CIVIL WARSix Steps To Find Your Civil War Veterans and Their Regiments
To get the most out of Civil War Stories, you need to know who in your tree might have a story! We show you how in just 6 steps to find those people. YOUR GENEALOGY NEEDS MET AT THE LOCAL FSC!WE are NOW the FamilySearch Center, sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, an international organization dedicated to helping all people worldwide discover their family story.
ARE you looking for help in your a Family tree? HERE, you will be shown how to begin a free tree that will be placed online for any of your family members to share more information about your deceased ancestors. That will enable family around the world to easily retrieve and use this information in search of their family members. FOR over twenty years FamilySearch.org has helped millions of families gather their ancestors. Since it's inception, on May 24, 1999. There are now over 7 million page views each day on FamilySearch.org. YOU can contribute towards finding your family by starting an online tree and gathering and documenting your family for your loved ones. ALWAYS, at FamilySearch we believe connections to our family members-past-present-and future-can be a source of great joy that helps us to understand our own personal identity and may even help us overcome some of our own challenges in life. WE WANT TO HELP YOU save and share your family’s memories before it’s too late, and they disappear, never to be found again. IT'S FREE, IT'S EASY AS... 1,2,3 ! OR CALL FOR ONLINE HELP AT:
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FOOD & FAMILYDid you know...family recipes are a tradition!?!
GO AHEAD...Make it with family! What food is most popular in MARCH?
Well, that would be anything associated with SPRING SEASON! EVER TRIED CHALLAH BREAD?
I never knew that my family was part Jewish, yet many of the foods here were common every year at my Grandmothers house! (Go ahead...get some phlegm in the back of your throat and then say the 'ch' like a soft k) WHAT IS PURIM?
It's a lesser known Jewish festival held in the spring each year, (on the 14th or 15th day of Adar) to commemorate the defeat of Haman's plot to massacre the Jews as recorded in the book of Esther. And my grandmother would make make 3 cornered cookies filled with fruit jam called Hamantaschen. (NOPE...I DIDNT KNOW THAT EITHER) GENEALOGY THOUGHTSMILITARYONE MORE WWI-II STORYIt used to run from New Buffalo, Michigan to Detroit, Michigan
MICHIGAN’S RED ARROW HIGHWAY EXPLAINED
What's the story behind southwest Michigan's Iconic "Red Arrow Highway"? THE ROAD now runs only between New Buffalo and Kalamazoo, mostly bypassed nowadays by travelers on Interstate 94. Ever heard of it? Ever wonder about its history and how it got its name? THE PATH dates back to the earliest trails in Michigan, the St Joseph Trail, and a trace from Lake Michigan to Detroit roughly parallel to the Territorial Road. With the advent of the US Highway system, US 12 was the number given to the roadway from New Buffalo to Detroit via St Joseph, Kalamazoo, Battle Creek, Albion and Jackson. IN THE EARLY 1950'S, a proposal was floated to name this "main street of Michigan" to honor soldiers from World War I, the Red Arrow Division, officially the 32nd Infantry, made up of National Guard members from Michigan and Wisconsin. (Only Berrien and Van Buren counties took up the Red Arrow moniker which is why the roadway changes names at the Kalamazoo County line to Stadium Drive) THE UNITED STATES 32nd Infantry Division was formed from Army National Guard units from Wisconsin and Michigan and fought primarily during World War I and World War II. With roots as the Iron Brigade in the American Civil War, the division's ancestral units came to be referred to as the Iron Jaw Division. During tough combat in France in World War I, it soon acquired from the French the nickname Les Terribles, referring to its fortitude in advancing over terrain, others could not. It was the first allied division to pierce the German Hindenburg Line of defense, and the 32nd then adopted its shoulder patch; a line shot through with a red arrow, to signify its tenacity in piercing the enemy line. It then became known as the Red Arrow Division. RED ARROW HIGHWAY today runs from New Buffalo to Mattawan at the Kalamazoo/Van Buren county line. It is now a discontinuous route with a chunk closed to traffic in Benton Harbor after an expansion project at the Southwest Michigan Regional airport closed Red Arrow at Crystal Avenue. RED ARROW HIGHWAY takes on a few different names in the communities it passes through: Lakeshore Drive in St Joseph; in Coloma, Watervliet and Lawrence it's St Joseph Street; Main Street in Hartford and Michigan Avenue in Paw Paw and that's the name that is used most of the way to Detroit when it was changed in 1922. As it wound its way east it was alsochanged to Hwy 17, then to N. Hamilton Rd, then to Hwy 112, and then back to E Michigan Ave. and then finally it ends at Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit, at the circle at Campus Maritus Park. Michigan's Red Arrow Highway is not the only one that honors the World War II 32nd Infantry. Wisconsin's State Route 32 bears two tiny red arrows on every guide sign along that highway's 325 mile run across the Badger State. Original Article : https://k1025.com/red-arrow-highway/ This month we look into the Bosnian War, how it both started... and ended.
For over four years following the breakup of Yugoslavia and the onset of war, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, the United States refused to take the lead in trying to end the violence and conflict. While many have written eloquently and passionately to explain Washington’s—and the West’s—failure to stop the ethnic cleansing, the concentration camps, and the massacres of hundreds of thousands of civilians, few have examined why, in the summer of 1995, the United States finally did take on a leadership role to end the war in Bosnia.
One notable exception is Richard Holbrooke, who recounts his own crucial contribution to the negotiation of the Dayton Peace Accords in his book To End a War. But Holbrooke’s account leaves unclear what, in addition to his own brokering role, accounts for the turnaround in U.S. policy, including the critical decision to take a leadership role in trying to end the war. It was on the basis of that decision that Holbrooke subsequently undertook his negotiating effort. What, then, explains the Clinton administration’s decision in August 1995 at long last to intervene decisively in Bosnia? Why, when numerous previous attempts to get involved in Bosnia were half-hearted in execution and ended in failure? The answer is complex: involving explanations at two different levels. First, at the policy level, the day-to-day crisis management approach that had characterized the Clinton administration’s Bosnia strategy had lost virtually all credibility. It was clear that events on the ground and decisions in allied capitals as well as on the Capitol Hill were forcing the administration to seek an alternative to muddling through. Second, at the level of the policy-making process, the president encouraged his national security adviser and staff to develop a far-reaching and integrated strategy for Bosnia that abandoned the incremental approach of past efforts. This process produced agreement on a bold new strategy designed to bring the Bosnia issue to a head in 1995, before presidential election politics would have a chance to intervene. COMMENTARY: Decision to Intervene: How the War in Bosnia Ended Ivo H. Daalder December 1, 1998 and instill a tendency to avoid the kind of risk-taking behavior necessary to resolve the Bosnia issue. The Breaking Point Although the evolution of America’s Bosnia policy, including the predicament of the Clinton administration in the summer of 1995, is relatively well known, the details of the administration’s policy-making process during this period are not. Based on new extensive research, including numerous interviews with key participants, it is now possible to begin filling in some of the critical details on how the administration arrived at its decision in August 1995. Though few realized it at the beginning of the year, 1995 would prove to be the decisive year for Bosnia’s future. That shift stemmed from a decision, reached by the Bosnian Serb leadership in early March, that the fourth year of the war would be its last. The Bosnian Serb objective was clear: to conclude the war before the onset of the next winter. The strategy was simple, even if its execution was brazen. First, a large-scale attack on the three eastern Muslim enclaves of Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde—each an international ‘safe’ area lightly protected by a token U.N. presence—would swiftly capture these Muslim outposts in Serb-controlled Bosnian territory. Next, attention would shift to Bihac—a fourth, isolated enclave in north-western Bosnia—which would be taken over with assistance from Croatian Serb forces. Finally, with the Muslims on the run, Sarajevo would become the grand prize, and its capture by the fall, would effectively conclude the war. Betrayal in Srebrenica As the Bosnian Serb strategy unfolded through the spring and into summer, the 20,000-strong U.N. Protection Force in Bosnia confronted a fateful dilemma. UNPROFOR could actively oppose the Bosnian Serb effort and side with the Muslim victims of the war. But this would entail sacrificing the evenhandedness that is the hallmark of U.N. peacekeeping. Alternatively, UNPROFOR could preserve its much vaunted neutrality and limit its role to protecting humanitarian relief supplies and agencies. But this would effectively leave the Muslims to face the Bosnian Serb assault virtually unprotected. Washington’s preference was clear: It repeatedly demanded that the U.N. forces either stop the latest Bosnian Serb assault or, at the very least, agree to NATO air strikes to punish the Serb forces and protect the “safe” areas. Most European allies had a different view. Unlike the United States, many Europeans had placed their troops at risks by participating in the U.N. operation on the understanding that their involvement would be limited to a strictly humanitarian mandate. When limited air strikes in late May 1995 resulted in nearly 400 peacekeepers being taken hostage, a consensus quickly emerged within the U.N. and among the troop-contributing countries that, however limited, NATO air strikes would do more harm than good. The United Nations force would return to “traditional peacekeeping principles”. This sent the not-so-subtle message to the Bosnian Serbs that they were now free to pursue their preferred strategy. That strategy, called “ethnic cleansing,” involved using murder, rape, expulsion and imprisonment on a large scale to drive Muslims and Croats from territory the Bosnian Serbs wished to claim. The Bosnian Serbs implemented their strategy with horrifying results: In July, Serb forces turned their focus to Srebrenica, a small village near the eastern border with Serbia swollen with some 60,000 Muslim refugees. It was there that the then-U.N. commander, French General Philippe Morillon, had two years earlier made the U.N.’s final stance, declaring at the time: “You are now under U.N. protection of the United Nations…. I will never abandon you.” Despite the U.N. flag flying over the enclave, the Bosnian Serb assault in July 1995 met no U.N. resistance either on the ground or from the air. Within 10 days, tens of thousands of Muslim refugees streamed into the Muslim-controlled city of Tuzla. Missing from the stream of refugees were more than 7,000 men of all ages, who had been executed in cold blood – mass murder on a scale not witnessed in Europe since the end of World War II. “No More Pinpricks” Srebrenica was the West’s greatest shame, with each of the 7,079 lives lost underscoring the failure to act in time to avert this single most genocidal act of the Bosnian war. Guilt led senior representatives of the United States and its key allies to agree in London a few days later that NATO would make a strong stand at Gorazde by defending the town’s civilian population. (This decision was later extended to the three other remaining ‘safe’ areas of Bihac, Sarajevo, and Tuzla; Zepa had earlier fallen to the Bosnian Serbs). The allies agreed that an attack on, or even a threat to, Gorazde would be met with a “substantial and decisive” air campaign. “There’ll be no more “pinprick” strikes,” Secretary of State Warren Christopher declared. A few days later, the North Atlantic Council worked out the final operational details of the air campaign and passed the decision to NATO’s military commanders on when to conduct the strikes. Breaking Out of the Box: By the end of July the United States and its allies confronted a situation that required concerted action. The strategy of muddling through that had characterized U.S. policy since the beginning of the conflict clearly was no longer viable. The president made clear to his senior advisers that he wanted to get out of the box in which U.S. policy found itself. This box had been created by an unworkable diplomatic strategy of offering ever greater concessions to Serb President Slobodan Milosevic just to get the Bosnian Serbs to the table; by the long-standing refusal to put U.S. troops on the ground; by allied resistance to using force as long as their troops could be taken hostage; by a U.N. command that insisted on “traditional peacekeeping principles” even though a war was raging; and by a U.S. Congress bent on taking the moral high ground by unilaterally lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government without, however, taking responsibility for the consequences of doing so. Yet, the Clinton administration had been here before. In early 1993 it rejected the Vance-Owen Peace Plan; in May 1993 it tried to sell a policy to lift the arms embargo and conduct air strikes while the Muslims were being armed; and in 1994 it had sought repeatedly to convince the allies to support strategic air strikes. Each time, the new policy was rejected or shelved, and an incremental, crisis management approach was once again substituted for a viable approach to end the war. Why was the summer of 1995 any different? Why the emergence of a firm consensus on a concerted strategy now when it had eluded the Clinton administration for over two years? The answer, in part, lies in the horrors witnessed by Srebrenica—a sense that this time the Bosnian Serbs had gone too far. That certainly proved to be the case in the Pentagon, where Defense Secretary William Perry and JCS Chairman John Shalikashvili took the lead in pushing for the kind of vigorous air campaign that was finally agreed to in London. The real reason, however, was the palpable sense that Bosnia was the cancer eating away at American foreign policy, in the words of Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security adviser. U.S. credibility abroad was being undermined perceptibly by what was happening in Bosnia, and by the American’s and NATO’s failure to end it. With presidential elections a little over a year away, the White House in particular felt the need to find a way out. It was a way out that the president demanded from his foreign policy team in June 1995. Spearheaded by the National Security Council staff and strongly supported by Madeleine Albright (then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), America’s first coherent Bosnia strategy was developed. This strategy for the first time matched force and diplomacy in a way that would break the policy impasse that had strangled Washington for so long. It was a debate by the president and his senior advisers over the course of three days in August and, when accepted by Clinton, became the basis for the diplomatic triumph in Dayton three months later. Lake Pushes the Process: Given the worsening atrocities in Bosnia and the growing discontent with U.S. policy, how did the administration move from its paralysis of 1994 to its constructive role in late 1995? In May ’95, Tony Lake first began to consider how U.S. policy toward Bosnia might be changed in a more productive direction. He began to meet informally with key people on his NSC staff (including his deputy, Sandy Berger, and his chief Bosnia aides Sandy Vershbow and Nelson Drew) to consider how the United States could help to change the tide of war. It had long been clear that progress toward a negotiated settlement was possible only if the Bosnian Serbs understood that not achieving a diplomatic solution would cost them dearly. For nearly a year, the United States and its Contact Group partners (Britain, France, Germany, and Russia) had sought to pressure the Bosnian Serb leadership headquartered in Pale into agreeing to commence serious negotiations by convincing Milosevic to cut off economic and, especially, military assistance to the Bosnian Serbs. Despite being offered various incentives (including direct negotiations with the United States and the suspension of U.N. economic sanctions), Milosevic never followed through. This left military pressure—the threat or actual use of force against the Bosnian Serbs —as the only real lever to convince Pale that a diplomatic solution was in its interests. Yet, more than two years of trying to convince the NATO allies of this fact had led nowhere. At each and every turn, London, Paris, and other allies had resisted the kind of forceful measures that were required to make a real impact on the Bosnian Serb leadership. In their informal discussions, Vershbow and Drew suggested that the only way to overcome this resistance was to equalize the risks between the United States on the one hand and those allies with troops on the ground on the other. This could be achieved either by deploying U.S. forces alongside European troops or forcing the withdrawal of the U.N. force. Since the president had consistently ruled out deploying American ground forces to Bosnia except to help enforce a peace agreement, the only way significant military pressure could be brought to bear on the Bosnian Serbs would be after UNPROFOR had been withdrawn. Lake agreed with this assessment and proposed that his staff begin to work on a “post-withdrawal” strategy—the steps that the U.S. should take once UNPROFOR was gone. UNPROFOR as Obstacle: The NSC’s conclusion that the U.N. force was part of the problem in Bosnia rather than part of the solution was shared by Madeleine Albright, along with the Clinton administration’s chief hawk on Bosnia. In June 1995, she once again made her case, presenting Clinton with a passionately argued memorandum urging a new push for air strikes in order to get the Bosnian Serbs to the table. Albright’s memo noted that if air strikes required the withdrawal of UNPROFOR, then so be it. The president agreed with the thrust of her argument, having himself come to see UNPROFOR as posing an obstacle to a solution for Bosnia. As Clinton well knew, the U.N. force accounted for allied opposition not only to air strikes but also to lifting the arms embargo on Bosnia that had effectively deprived the government of exerting its right to self-defense. However, just as the White House and Albright reached the conclusion that UNPROFOR might have to go sooner rather than later, senior officials in the State and Defense Departments became increasingly worried about the consequences of a U.N. withdrawal from Bosnia. Specifically, they were concerned that UNPROFOR’s departure would require the deployment of up to 25,000 American troops to assist in the withdrawal—as the administration had committed in December 1994. Holbrooke recounts that he was “stunned” and that Christopher was “amazed” by the degree to which the U.S. appeared to be committed to this “bold and dangerous” plan. Rather than focusing on how the situation in Bosnia could be resolved, State and Defense urged the United States to do nothing that would force the allies to decide that the time for UNPROFOR’s departure had come. Instead, the emphasis should be on keeping the U.N. force in place, even if that meant acceding to allied wishes not to conduct any further air strikes in order to halt Bosnian Serb military advances or to offer further concessions to Milosevic in a piecemeal effort to get Pale to the negotiating table. The Endgame Strategy: Given the State and Defense Departments’ position on this issue, Anthony Lake faced a critical choice. He could accept that there was no consensus for anything beyond continuing a policy of muddling through, or he could forge a new strategy and get the president to support a concerted effort seriously to tackle the Bosnia issue once and for all. Having for over two years accepted the need for consensus as the basis of policy and, as a consequence, failed to move the ball forward, Lake now decided that the time had come to forge his own policy initiative. He was strengthened in this determination by the president’s evident desire for a new direction. On a Saturday morning in late June, Lake and his chief NSC aides gathered in his West Wing office for an intensive, four-hour long discussion on what to do in Bosnia. A consensus soon emerged on 3 key aspects of a workable strategy. First, UNPROFOR would have to go. In its stead would come either a new NATO force deployed to enforce the terms of a peace agreement or the kind of concerted military action by the United States and NATO that the U.N.’s presence had so far prevented. Second, if a deal was to be struck between the parties, it was clear that such an agreement could not fulfill all demands for justice. A diplomatic solution that reversed every Bosnian Serb gain simply was not possible. Third, the success of a last-ditch effort to get a political deal would depend crucially on bringing the threat of significant force to bear on the parties. The last three years had demonstrated that without the prospect of the decisive use of force, the parties would remain intransigent and their demands maximalist. Lake asked Vershbow to draft a strategy paper on the basis of this discussion. The national security adviser also told the president about the direction of his thinking. He specifically asked Clinton whether he should proceed along this path with the knowledge that in a presidential election year the United States would have to commit significant military force either to enforce an agreement or to bring about a change in the military balance of power on the ground. Clinton told Lake to go ahead, indicating that the status quo was no longer acceptable. Vershbow’s paper set forth an “endgame strategy” for Bosnia—thus emphasizing both its comprehensive nature and its goal of ending the policy impasse in Washington. The strategy proposed a last-ditch effort to reach a political solution acceptable to the parties. The outlines of such a solution, which was based on the Contact Group plan of 1994, included: recognition of Bosnia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its existing borders; division of Bosnia into two entities—a Bosnian Serb entity and a Muslim-Croat federation; entity borders would be drawn in a compact and defensible manner, with the federation territory accounting for at least 51 percent of the total; and acceptance of special parallel relationships between the entities and neighboring states including the possibility of conducting a future referendum on the possibility of secession. In order to provide the parties an incentive to accept this deal, the strategy also argued for placing American military power (preferably alongside allied power, but if necessary alone) in the service of the diplomatic effort. In presenting the parties with the outlines of a possible diplomatic deal, the Unites States would make clear what price each side would have to pay if negotiations failed. If the Pale Serbs rejected an agreement, then the United States would, in the aftermath of UNPROFOR’s withdrawal, insist on lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government, provide arms and training to federation forces, and conduct air strikes for a transition period in order to enable the federation to take control of and defend the 51 percent of Bosnia’s territory that it was allocated under the peace plan. Conversely, if the Muslims rejected an agreement, the United States would adopt a policy of “lift and leave”—lifting the arms embargo but otherwise leaving the federation to its own devices. The Road to Dayton: Despite considerable opposition to the endgame strategy from the State Department (with Secretary of State Warren Christopher worrying that neither Congress nor the allies would accept the military track) and the Pentagon, (where many officials believed that Bosnia’s partition would prove the only viable solution), the president decided in early August to support the NSC’s position. He sent his National Security Council adviser to persuade key European allies as well as Moscow that the new U.S. strategy was their best bet to resolve the Bosnian imbroglio. The president told Lake to make clear to the allies that he was committed to this course of action—including the military track— even if the United States was forced to implement it on its own. Lake’s message was well received in allied capitals. For the first time, the United States had demonstrated leadership on this issue, and while many had their doubts about the wisdom of the military track, all supported the strategy in its totality as the last best hope to bring the war in Bosnia to an end. Lake’s successful meetings in Europe laid the foundation for Richard Holbrooke’s subsequent efforts to forge a peace agreement. In this, Holbrooke succeeded brilliantly. Aided by a very successful Croatian-Bosnian offensive (which reversed Serb territorial gains from the 70 percent Pale had held since 1992 to less than 50 percent within a matter of weeks) and a prolonged NATO bombing campaign that followed the Serb shelling of the Sarajevo marketplace in late August, the U.S. negotiating team skillfully exploited the changing military balance of power to conclude the Dayton Peace Accords on November 21. By the end of 1995, U.S. leadership had transformed Bosnia into a country at relative peace—a peace enforced by 60,000 U.S. and NATO forces. (Remarkably, the problem that had stymied NATO decision-makers for so long —the vulnerability of UNPROFOR troops—was resolved with relative ease. In December 1995, when implementation of Dayton began, most of the UNPROFOR troops changed helmets, and were instantly transformed into IFOR (Implementation Force) soldiers. Those who didn’t, departed Bosnia unopposed with NATO’s assistance. Lessons for Kosovo: When the crisis in the Serb province of Kosovo erupted in early 1998, senior U.S. officials from Madeleine Albright and Richard Holbrooke on down looked to the success in Bosnia for lessons on how to deal with this new problem. Arguing that the mistakes of Bosnia would not be repeated, they called for an early response by the international community to the latest atrocities in the Balkans, vigorous U.S. leadership from the get-go, and a credible threat to back up diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis. Each of these were important elements in finally helping to resolve the Bosnian conundrum in the summer of 1995. But as the case of Kosovo demonstrated, they were not sufficient. For apart from concerted U.S. leadership and linking force and diplomacy in mutually supportive ways, success in Bosnia required a clear sense of how the conflict would have to be resolved as well as a willingness to impose this vision on the parties. The endgame strategy provided the vision; Holbrooke’s diplomatic efforts produced an agreement based on that strategy. Here is where Kosovo differs from Bosnia. While U.S. leadership and the threat of significant force have marked international efforts to resolve this conflict, there has been no clear vision of how the conflict could be ended nor any willingness to impose that vision if necessary. For months, U.S. diplomats have sought to develop an interim agreement for the province’s future status, one that would grant substantial autonomy to Kosovo but would postpone a decision on its final status for three years. In essence, this kicks the fundamental issue of Kosovo’s possible independence down the road. Moreover, Washington has given no indication that it is willing to impose its preferred solution nor that it would ensure that any agreement that might emerge from negotiations would be implemented by deploying the necessary NATO firepower on the ground. Without a clear plan for Kosovo’s future status and a visible willingness to make it stick, policy toward Kosovo is likely to be little more than the status quo "muddling-through" approach that characterized America’s Bosnia policy in its least effective period. The Brookings Institution From war-torn Bosnia to Operation Inherent Resolve
Published March 28, 2016 By Maj. Angela Webb 379th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar (AFNS) -- (This feature is part of the "Through Airmen's Eyes" series. These stories focus on individual Airmen, highlighting their Air Force story.) Just shy of her third birthday, an international conflict broke out between Bosnia and Serbia. Today, at the age of 26, conflict continues to be part of 1st Lt. Amela Kamencic’s daily life. Kamencic, a former Bosnian refugee and the 379th Expeditionary Civil Engineer Squadron operations engineering officer-in-charge, recalls when “everything changed” as the U.S. Air Force deployed to assist in Operation Deny Flight. Showing deep gratitude for those who helped during that mission, she later joined and now does her part in Operation Inherent Resolve. I remember, “Before the U.S. arrived, Bosnian men left to fight and there was no way of knowing if they were coming back,” Kamencic said. “This left many women, children and the elderly behind.” Living close to the Bosnian and Serbian border, those in her village learned to fend for themselves. Many were hungry and needed medical care. “Neighboring countries would provide some humanitarian aid,” she said. “I remember waiting in long lines for stale bread with my mom, which was our food for the day.” As Serbian troops moved into Bosnia, various concentration camps were built, which contained thousands of Bosnian men. Kamencic compared the concentration camps, massive graves and land mines to a scene from “Behind Enemy Lines,” which is a movie based on the Bosnian War. “My uncle was captured and sent to a concentration camp,” she said. “He was released a few months later when the camp was liberated, and sent to Croatia to be nursed back to health before moving to America.” In November 1996, Kamencic’s family landed in America. Along with her mom, dad and sister, they first arrived in Washington, D.C., and ultimately settled down in Austin, Texas. Excited to live with unfamiliar freedoms and opportunities of the “American Dream,” the lieutenant soon realized her childhood was very different from others. “I was in the school lunch line, and I had money in my pocket to pay for it; we had been in Texas for almost nine months and we weren’t moving around anymore” she said. Growing up, part of Kamencic’s “American Dream” was to join the Air Force. “I remember seeing A-10 (Thunderbolt IIs) and F-15 (Eagles) flying to establish a no-fly zone in Bosnia and it restored hope to become its own country. To this day they are my favorite airframes,” she said. The idea of serving in the military stuck with her all those years and it became a reality in December 2012. Kamencic was commissioned as a second lieutenant through the Air Force ROTC at the University of Texas. “I knew that the Air Force is where I belonged,” she said. “I can never thank the (Air Force) enough for saving my life and my service to our great nation is a way of expressing my gratitude. Home is now where the (Air Force) sends me.” In January, Kamencic deployed to Al Udeid Air Base, Qatar, in support of OIR. She took a long journey once again, but this time departing where her U.S. journey first began -- Washington, D.C. She will redeploy to Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, in July and plans to marry a fellow Air Force officer in the fall. 20 years later... Nebraska National Guard reflects on peacekeeping mission into Bosnia
By Aaron Bonderson, Report for America Reporter/Producer Nebraska Public Media July 20, 2023 LT Kyle Hidebrant spoke with reporter Aaron Bonderson
The Bosnian War
— one of the most brutal wars in Europe since WWII — ended with a peace treaty in 1995. By 2003, the fighting calmed down but NATO wanted to completely end the conflict. That’s where the Nebraska National Guard stepped in. “Taskforce Huskers,” as the mission was called, included 400 Nebraska Army National Guard soldiers on the ground. It was unlike any mission for the National Guard at the time. Robert Ford, a former Public Affairs Officer for the Nebraska National Guard, said the Army would normally handle a mission like that but those troops were busy in Afghanistan. “We relieved those units from having to take care of that peacekeeping operation,” Ford said. HERE IS HIS STORY AND OTHERS IN THEIR OWN WORDS... click below to listen... ITS NOT LONG, BUT ITS WORTH LISTENING TO. MONTH BY MONTHBeyond St. Patrick's Day, March is full of creative holidays to lift you out of the cold weather blues. As nature begins to bloom again, environment enthusiasts can celebrate with holidays like National Plant a Flower Day, National Agriculture Day, International Day of Forests, and National Learn About Butterflies Day!
CHECK OUT THIS MONTH'S DAILY CELEBRATIONS BELOW! WAR...WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?Tyra's father, Almir Bosnic, as a child in the former Yugoslavia
[Photo courtesy of Tyra Bosnic] stories: A Bosnian-American retraces her father’s footsteps
A daughter pieces together the details of her father’s escape from war in Bosnia, and finds a tunnel between them. By Tyra Bosnic Published On 1 Mar 2020 No matter how much my father tries to hide his accent, he still trips over the “th” sound. “They”, “them” and “there” become “dey”, “dem” and “dere” when he speaks. But his mouth has committed the rest of the English language to memory. He has learned how to weave local phrases and American slang into his near-perfect English to disguise the remaining traces of his mother tongue. As if to combat the natural, open sounds of the Slavic vowels he grew up speaking, my father pronounces his letters with an exaggerated, nasal tone. That, combined with the way he unironically says “Da Bears”, tricks most people into thinking he grew up in Chicago. His impediment has turned him into a caricature, the poster boy for the Chicago family man. Except my father is a 'Sarajlija' – someone born in Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He spent 17 years of his life walking, talking and surviving like a Bosnian until the war forced him to flee. In September 1995, he arrived in the United States on a refugee visa. By 2000, he would be married, have a child and have become a citizen. My father escaped the war and devoted the rest of his life to forgetting it. War lives on... But war does not end just because the guns are put down. War lives on, passed down to future generations and disseminated around the world. About 40,000 Bosnian refugees came to Chicago between 1992 and 1995, each carrying a war story with them. Some of them had kids, and they became the next chapter in a story that is still unfolding. I had no choice but to become part of a war story. In the US my father married my mother, an American-born Kosovar Albanian, now his ex-wife, in the same year that the Dayton Accords were signed, 1995. Thanks to ethnic tensions, their marriage was – and still is – considered controversial. Violence was simmering in Kosovo in 1995; it would erupt into full-blown armed conflict in 1998, when my mother was pregnant with me. The wars would haunt all of us, even after the bombing of Serbia in 1999, which ended three days before my first birthday. Sometimes, Balkan politics seeped into my parents’ arguments, and marital affairs became another unintended consequence of the war. One less witness For a long time, I refused to be part of any collective narrative. I was not religious, and I did not feel enough of a connection with my family’s culture to identify with it. I thought it did not matter, anyway. Not in the US, thousands of miles away from the tumult in the Balkans. In my native Chicago, I could live without ever having to acknowledge that part of me. The more American my father became, the easier it was to forget that I was Bosnian. When I was little, he still held Old World sensibilities, distinctly Bosnian mannerisms and a heavy accent. I was well into elementary school when English began to dominate our conversations, both in public and at home. The Bosnian language slowly faded from us both. When I was in college, I noticed one day that my father’s accent was gone! When I tried to conjure up a sentence in Bosnian after years of neglecting it, I could not. Suddenly, years of words, stories and jokes I had grown up with, were gone, swept away to the inner corners of my mind where memories go to die. I had hung up my war-torn background to be an assimilated American. I was one less witness, if we were to ever disappear. I had become better at killing off my culture than any war criminal, simply by not caring about it. A Bosniak in America That was when the panic set in. I became obsessed with the war. I would go on drawn-out ramblings about the Balkan conflict and my identity in front of my friends. It was a bid to make someone else care, because I did not trust myself to be responsible for OUR mark on history. But the message would not land the way I wanted it to. It is hard to get people to care about a war that ended decades ago, in a far-away place, that started because of convoluted notions of identity that do not translate in American terms. War cannot live on where most of the people have no stake in it. I was 18 when my obsession first took hold. The same age my father had been when he resettled in America. For the first time, I asked him directly about it. We were in the kitchen of the suburban home he now shares with my stepmother. My half-siblings, (a product of my dad’s marriage to a Catholic-raised Michigander whose family arrived on the Mayflower, who do not know Bosnian.) Thirteen years younger than me, they are set to grow up as American as apple pie, with no memories of saying goofy things to our father in a foreign language, just because they can. My father did not hesitate. “We would’ve been seen as criminals if we stayed,” he said to me. I could tell my father wanted to give me answers but something stopped him from being able to delve directly into the truth. It seemed like the only way he could think about the war was in short bursts that flashed by quickly enough to repress any emotions they might stir. I watched the facade slowly chip away around him so that I could finally see through the stoic, self-made man – who had juggled multiple warehouse jobs to keep up with the American Dream, moving up in position despite barely having a high school education – to the traumatized refugee beneath. It was then that I knew I had to go back to Sarajevo to try to put the pieces together myself. I would have to retrace my father’s footsteps through the city, with whatever clues I could gather about his life. The Past that Tied us Together In Sarajevo, my relatives were ready to give me more, to regale me with their war stories. My cousin took me to a mall, the basement of which had served as her classroom during the siege. Over Turkish coffee, my grandma told me about dodging grenades on her way to work. My grandpa lounged in his chair as he showed me the scar on his arm from a piece of shrapnel. It was from the same explosive that had killed one of my father's friends. It happened in front of the apartment building my grandparents still live in today. My grandpa heard the sound of approaching shelling, as my 16 year old father and his friend, Haris, took turns riding on a bicycle on the street below. War stories tumbled out of them. .... Here were my 'comrades in suffering'. But the Bosnians I thought I had a shared history with, including my family, did not see me as part of their war story. My grandpa barreled out of the building to tell my father to come inside, and Haris turned to flee. Haris only made it about 10 meters before the shells made impact. It happened so quickly that my grandpa and father were not yet inside. Three or four people died along with Haris in front of their building that day, my grandparents told me. War stories just tumbled out of them. It would start with one, and soon they would be caught in a time loop, reliving the worst years of their lives. As much as it turned my stomach, hearing my family’s memories from the siege, it sated a desire that had been gnawing at me. This was the source of the pain that had been echoing inside me, ever since I realized I had given up on Bosnia. My angst in America was not for nothing. Here were my comrades in suffering. But the Bosnians I thought I had a shared history with, including my family, did not see me as part of their war story. After my relatives told me their anecdotes from the siege, they would abruptly sever the connection we shared with: “You couldn’t understand how bad it was.” To them, I was not a Bosnian. I was an American with a Bosnian father. My family told me their stories because they wanted to educate me. In their eyes, I was shrouded in American ignorance, my place of birth negating the past that tied us together. Tunnel of Hope That is why my grandma drove me to Butmir, a nearby suburb of Sarajevo and the site of the 'Tunnel of Hope'. The tunnel was used to bring aid to the city during the siege and as a means of escape. Hundreds of thousands of Sarajevan's fled through this tunnel, including my father. In February 1995, when he was 17, my father hitched a ride in a truck delivering furniture to Croatia with a driver named Zenga after traversing the tunnel to Dobrinja. The truck sped up the narrow roads on the Igman mountain as my father watched the tires teeter over the edge of the cliffs from the passenger window. Serb forces were stationed on the opposite peaks, ready to shoot at passing vehicles. As they drove dangerously close to Serb territory, Zenga blew the truck’s horn and screamed curse words at the soldiers. My father told me he was sure he was going to die before reaching the border, but he was lucky. Death was omnipresent in Bosnia in the 1990s, but it spared my father every time they met. Zenga took him to the Croatian border, unscathed. My father hid in an armoire in the back of the furniture van as border police searched the truck. He heard the heavy footsteps of the officers as they investigated the trailer and slowly moved closer to the armoire. Then the footsteps trailed away. Zenga drove off, and my father would start the slow march towards normality in a new country, starting with his application for refugee status. He had to hide his Bosniak identity in Croatia while he waited for his application to be approved. He wanted to resettle in Germany so it would be easier to return to Bosnia once the war was over, but the only choice he was given was to leave for the United States. I was standing in the exact spot that journey began at the entrance to the tunnel. Most of the tunnel is now condemned, but visitors can still walk 20 meters of it and experience what leaving home might have been like for the one million or so Bosnians who escaped through it. Looking around at the other people snapping photos of the displays, I noticed that most of them were not Bosnian. Locals do not need to visit a museum to know what happened during the war, my grandma told me. That is probably why a museum worker was pleasantly surprised when, after telling us the admission prices in English, my grandma said in their native tongue: “I’m a Sarajlija. You don’t have to talk like that with me.” He followed us into the open courtyard that led to the tunnel entrance, exchanging war stories with my grandma. “My granddaughter was born in America,” she told him. “But her father went through this tunnel, and she needs to know what we went through.” Rooted in the Soil In most encounters with strangers when I was in Bosnia, my grandma took the lead, speaking for me. After just a few weeks surrounded by the language, muscle memory kicked in. I had regained near fluency in understanding Bosnian, but I was still hopelessly confused about grammar and sentence structure when I had to form the words myself. That is my only “tell” in Bosnia. If I do not speak, or if I limit my responses to short, easy-to-assemble sentences, I blend in. But my language skills were still poor, so my grandma talked to the employees, as I wandered around the courtyard. I could hear the guides leading tour groups, speaking in heavily accented English, unwittingly downplaying the severity of the war because they just could not find the right adjectives to describe it. “Many people suffered during war,” one guide said. “I, too, suffered. My grandfather, father, brother, and cousin died. It was very bad.” We eventually made it to the entrance of the tunnel, hidden inside a bullet-ridden house. A mortar shell was still lodged in the floor. The only way to enter the passage was through a set of rickety wooden steps leading into a musty, earthen tunnel that seemed to go nowhere. Signs warned visitors to be careful because of the cramped, still-decrepit state of the tunnel. The visitors in front of us held on to the walls for support and slowly walked over the uneven ground. I moved just as slowly, savoring every sensation. The cool, moist, underground air was a drastic change from the hot August day. I ran my hands along the wooden beams supporting the structure and slid my feet against the boards that formed the walkway. There were still cigarette butts crushed into the packed dirt. I followed the trail of orange lights above my head, imagining them lighting the way to Dobrinja. I wondered if my father passed through the tunnel feeling what I felt then, this wad of emotions too tangled and compact to comprehend. This regret for a war that was not my fault. This fear of what was beyond the tunnel. Before descending into the darkness, did he take in one last glimpse of the city he was leaving? Did he watch his step or barrel ahead? Did he ever look back? This was the passage between his old life and the one he was forced to create from scratch. A part of him was left here, rooted into the soil along with the stomped-out cigarette butts. He was thousands of miles away back in America, and I was closer to understanding him than I ever was in Chicago. He and I had danced around each other as if we were cordial strangers for most of my life. After my parents divorced when I was nine, I saw him at most, two or three days a week. We knew enough about each other to feign understanding, but never ventured to know more. I never told him about my obsession with Bosnia – not outright, at least. It felt too intimate to admit that I missed speaking his native language and that it felt like it was the only secret we had with each other. To tell him the hours I devoted to researching the war would reveal too much about what my heart aches for. But I learned to ask more from my father when I was in Bosnia, to know his history in order to know my own. Tyra’s father’s first Chicago apartment, taken a few months after he resettled in America [Photo courtesy of Tyra Bosnic]
My Sarajevo Father
My family in Sarajevo coped with what the war did to them by making every wound visible, impossible to forget. My father buried the war deep down, only letting it bubble to the surface when he could not hold it back. The way he talks about the war is similar to how his English evolved. For the most part, traces of any other life he had lived outside of America were scrubbed away. But sometimes he gives clues and hints to his past, knowingly or not. Even though my father did not talk about the siege much, he made me watch movies about it. Under the thunderous surround-sound of sniper fire blasting from the television speakers, he would murmur: “I remember when that building was bombed.” Or, when a missile shot through an apartment building on screen, he would say: “Once that happened to our neighbors.” Most of the time he would come up with a joke or a sarcastic commentary – something about the set design being all wrong or the actors not being native speakers because they had butchered a line in Bosnian. It was during one of those hour-long phone conversations that he told me, with sadness creeping into his voice: “I can officially say I never want to move back. It’s just too depressing there.” As far as we physically were from each other, those were some of the most candid talks I ever had with my father. He told me he had not planned to leave Bosnia forever. He was just planting roots in America, but still believed that one day he could go home. Except that home does not exist anymore. He could not stand how different Sarajevo was from his memories. And it is not just that the country has changed. He has changed, too. Now in his 40s, my father has lived in America longer than he ever lived in Bosnia. He admits he has trouble speaking Bosnian now. Native speakers use countless words he was never exposed to, because he was only 17 when he left. The Sarajlija in him never got a chance to grow up. He was a Bosnian child who had no choice but to become an American adult. Now our family in Sarajevo, thinks he does not understand them, either. “You’re different. You’re an American now,” is what our relatives tell him. They forget that he was born there, raised by them, and that the war affected him, too. I could not help but laugh when he told me how hard it was for him to speak to our relatives now. Both of us are 'stunted'. I admitted to him, "We are too Bosnian for America, too American for Bosnia." “Exactly! You get it. They don’t understand us,” my father said. We are 'in-betweeners', caught between one world and the next. I did not have to fight to survive as he did, but I am proof that he made it. I carry parts of him, even the pieces he thought he had to leave behind. To be part of a 'diaspora' is to be homesick no matter where we are in the world, but at least we can be lonely together. This was our secret, a truth only people like us have the language for. Still gripping the support beams, I had to will myself to exit that tunnel. I was not ready to part with the place where my past and my father’s future converged. This was a ruin left over from one of history’s darkest moments, but it has not yet caved in. It is still a symbol of hope. Ascending from the darkness, blinking back the sunlight that made the mountains surrounding the city, glimmer in green and gold. I hoped my father and I could build something that sturdy together, one day soon. DISPORA: the dispersion or spread of a people from their original homeland. |
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