My recent piece about the Amazing Vanishing Referendm in Republika Srpska was picked up by RFE/RL (in Serbian/Bosnian) and so got a rather wider Balkan readership than it otherwise might have done.

Any normal person reading it might have thought that it (albeit in perhaps a sardonic and annoying way) basically painted a rather convincing picture of RS leader Dodik outfoxing the ‘international community’ and so doing a good job for his RS voters, viz Serbs.

Yet for a reason I find hard to fathom, I have drawn down the ire of assorted Serbs who think that I have shown a typical ‘colonialist’ view of Serbs and Serbian issues.

First a couple of commenters here at the site:

Your text shows again Serbs like trouble makers who drinking and loughing…
I can see arrogant English colonial view on some other nations !

Charles, I thought you are a decent man. But your agenda seems to be: demonization of the Serbs!

It is symptomatic that the High Representative, as well as you Charles, are voicing the gravest possible charges of violations of the Dayton Accords but fails therein to offer a single clear reference to any concrete Annexes of the Accords that have been allegedly violated.

Charles, you are selling your soul, for what?

Maybe it was this paragraph of mine which vexed some Serb readers:

Dodik and the Bosnian Serbs laugh heartily as they swig their rakija, amazed at their own cleverness and already scheming on the next one. The principle of holding a referendum at some point has survived – if anything the Ashton visit has vindicated it.

Well, so what if Mr Dodik likes rakija? I do too. I was using a colourful if trite image to depict him celebrating his wily and clever victory over the weary Europeans.

Anyway, over at a Serb website called Novi Standard (“energy is indestructible”) they have impertinently run the whole article without permission and provoked a load of rude comments. Examples include (for those whose Serbian/Bosnian is not yet quite perfect):

  • English donkey
  • racist pig
  • Serbophobe
  • pure chauvinism
  • British Ambassadorish garbage
  • slimy, insolent, hateful
  • Mister Crawford should be in three parts, just like Bosnia!
  • Old English hatred against Serbs

You get the general idea. I suspect that this trickle of abusive nonsense comes from the disturbed Russophile ‘Radical’ tendency in Serbia/RS who see any Serb other than themselves (including Dodik himself) as puppets, stooges and sellouts. Woe betide any foreigner who dares to offer a view.

Back at the RFE/RL article, the class of commenter is of course far higher and often fair and interesting. I got a line of praise from one Spasoje, who invents a new and excellent word just for the occasion

I’m especially pleased that Crawford well spotted one of the important characteristics by which Tito is remembered: narcissoidism (narcisoidnost). It’s little discussed…

Quite.