Politics Bosnia War "sniper tourist" claims

[colin traveller]

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Why are they being labelled Sniper Tourists ( must be a liberal media thing ) and Not Mercs ..is what i would define them as

I can't see any side paying out a fortune to joe bloggs , I never once seen any article , or news report of any such , nor have i seen any forum post back then validating the above claims in segment ..

 

[muck]

"Tourism" or "human safari" seems like a more fitting moniker for what's alleged to have happened there.

Good Lord, if this is actually true, then it's a pity that Italy doesn't have the death penalty any more.

Such utter degeneracy.

 

[TheKiwi]

I'd be highly skeptical of the claims.

From the BBC report on this:

However, members of the British forces who served in Sarajevo in the 1990s have told the BBC that they never heard of any so-called "sniper tourism" during the Bosnian conflict.

They indicated that any attempts to bring in people from third countries who had paid to shoot at civilians in Sarajevo would have been "logistically difficult to accomplish", due to the proliferation of checkpoints.

British forces served both inside Sarajevo and in the areas surrounding the city, where Serb forces were stationed and they saw nothing at the time to suggest that "sniper tourism" was taking place.

One soldier described the allegations that foreigners had paid to shoot at civilians as an "urban myth".

It all sounds very difficult to organise from a logistical point of view. And then the claims of different rates to shoot men/women/children indicates you'd have grumpy "clients" if the right target was unkind enough not to show themselves.

 

[muck]

They indicated that any attempts to bring in people from third countries who had paid to shoot at civilians in Sarajevo would have been "logistically difficult to accomplish", due to the proliferation of checkpoints.

With all due respect to the British troops who served there, but this is just nonsense. Both sides employed foreign fighters during the Siege of Sarajevo. And some time into the siege, the Bosnians built a fairly large tunnel allowing ingress and egress to the city.

If e.g. Italian citizens of Albanian descent managed to get into Sarajevo to fight for the Bosnians there, why shouldn't some Italian businessman from Milan be able to do the same.

 

[TheKiwi]

I'll stick to my main point, it sounds very difficult to organise logistically speaking. And it only takes one thing to go wrong in the chain for it to be exposed and (more importantly) your apparently very rich clients to be subject to inconvenience, wounding or death.

And that's not even beginning to take into account just how hard it would be to spread the word around to rich potential clients in the US and elsewhere since we're talking pre-internet days.

 

[Ivan le Fou]

Though, in and of itself, the claim isn't that wild, what is strange is the fact this is the first time we hear of them.

There also is a huge difference between "war tourism" and "merc". Foreign fighters joining a war is a thing, that always existed and that mercs presumably took part in the war in Bosnia isn't that far fetched.

A merc gets paid for his "services", he is "employed", he is there to "be useful". "War tourism" and "human safari" on the other hand, is pretty much the opposite. It is just about a wealthy individual in search for a trophy, or dubious thrills; he is there to have fun.

Anyway, aside from the differences between the two, it is really strange that none of this got ever mentioned up until now; especially considering the amount of investigation that war went through.

 

[Chomiq]

Why are they being labelled Sniper Tourists ( must be a liberal media thing ) and Not Mercs ..is what i would define them as

Merc is paid to do the killing.
Safari sniper pays to do the killing.
Notice the difference?