The suspects for the terrorist attack that happened on Bondi Beach in Sydney had memberships in the Serbian hunting club, reports the newspaper Danas.
This was confirmed by Nina Marković-Khaze, Vice President of the Serbian Council of Australia, during the Serbian public broadcaster RTS morning program.
She underlines that it is disturbing for the Serbian community in Australia that the suspects in the attack “had the license of the Serbian (hunting) club”. The hunting association in question is Zastava Hunting Association Inc.
Some people might find that odd, considering the violent history of the Yugoslav Wars and the perceived social and ideological distance between a group of emigre Serbs and emigre Muslims.
But it actually makes sense along the lines of Serbian transactional mentality, if they were a member, as long as they paid their fees, and didn’t cause any hassle or trouble with the law, no one would give a damn about their religious affiliation in a foreign country.
“Čist račun, duga ljubav“, as the Serbian saying goes. “Paid dues, long-lasting love“.
Plenty of such examples of frenemies and tolerance of convenience among many ethnic, religious, and political groups that the conventional wisdom considers mortal enemies.
There were even examples of fruitful Muslim-Serbian cooperation during the war in Bosnia.
Between 1993 and 1995, a region in Bosnia called the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, run by Fikret Abdić, a Bosniak politician and businessman who was opposed to the government of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was allied with the Army of Republika Srpska.
He was aided by the Red Beret paramilitary arm unit of Serbia’s State Security directorate and Serbian paramilitaries such as the Scorpions, who participated in the Srebrenica genocide. Their motivation for this cooperation? Mr. Abdić’s lucrative war-profiteering smuggling operations spanned Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia, and everyone got a cut.
In 2002, he was sentenced by a Croatian court to 20 years in prison for war crimes committed in the area of the “Bihać pocket”. In 2005, the Croatian Supreme Court reduced the sentence to 15 years.
“Paid dues, long-lasting love”, that makes not-so-strange bedfellows.
Serbianism 