Talk:Sarajevo wedding attack/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: --3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Assessment

The article is reasonably well written, stable and free of tagged images, but seems to have some problems with neutrality and broadness of the topic. I will address these issues bellow.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 09:23, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

• Name of the article: Just a suggestion, but would "1992 Sarajevo wedding attack" sound better? This would narrow the event.

• This would appear to be the only wedding attack in Sarajevo that merits its own article.

• Background: no mention of SDS proclaiming the Republic of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina, declaring it part of Yugoslavia. Nor is there any mention of the RAM Plan or rise of Slobodan Milosevic to power during the era, nor the wars in Slovenia and Croatia. This expands the context of the era.

• All good suggestions. I've expanded the Background section with them in mind.

• Responsibility: "Delalić led a Bosnian Muslim paramilitary unit that terrorized the Sarajevan Serb population". The source is a book, which in turns offers only a snippet view, which I cannot access. Is there a reliable source, that can be seen, which confirms this?

• Not sure why you're unable to view Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies. The link provided in the article offers a full view of page 209. The relevant passage reads as follows: "...The same logic may have persuaded government officials who successfully resisted the president's objections to entrusting Bosniak criminal gangs with defending Sarajevo during the first year of the war, even after they had singled out ethnic Serbs for punishment. Izetbegović was only able to neutralize the two most notorious gang leaders, Ramiz "Ćelo" Delalić and Mušan Caco Topalović, in the summer of 1993 after they began preying on the general population. By then, the gangs may have accounted for a majority of all murders of Serb and Muslim civilians committed by Sarajevo's ARBiH defenders."

• In any event, Delalić's role in war crimes against Serbs and Muslims deemed disloyal to the state is rather well documented. See, for example, this 1997 article from the Independent and this 2007 Reuters article .

Maybe instead of "terrorized", use such sentences as "attacked and murdered Serb and Muslim civilians".--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 07:22, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

That works also. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 14:19, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• Legacy: "Nikola Gardović is often regarded as the first casualty of the Bosnian War". Several sources reject this hypothesis. For instance, this book regards two women (Suada Dilberovic and Olga Sucic) shot on 6 April 1992 during the demonstrations in Sarajevo as the first casualties of the war. Moreover, Croatian sources even consider Niko Brajic, killed in Ravno in October 1991, as the first casualty in Bosnia.

• The sources cited in the article say precisely this:

• "Mr Gardovic’s death is regarded by many as the first of the Bosnian war." (The Economist, 14 May 2013)

• "A Serb, Nikola Gardović, had been shot during a wedding in the baščaršija on 2 March 1992 at the time of the referendum and is often considered the first casualty of the Bosnian War." (Carmichael 2015, 139)

• There are two or three other academic texts that mention Gardović as the first casualty of the war, but I didn't include them for brevity's sake. Per NBC News Bosniaks tend to consider the two women the first casualties, but not the two other ethnic groups. If you insist, I would be willing to alter the text to "Most Bosnian Serbs consider...", with the two other incidents mentioned in the footnotes, although there had been several massacres on both sides prior to 6 April.

Yes, that would do. The problem is that there is no exact date when the start of the Bosnian War is considered to have started. Wikipedia's own article agreed upon April 1992, one month after this incident. But you need to mention that Serbs consider Nikola Gardovic as the first casualty, while other sources consider the two women the first offical casualties of the war.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 07:22, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

The alteration has been made, 3E1I5S8B9RF7. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 14:19, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

• "The ensuing Bosnian War left 100,000 dead; an additional two million were displaced." ICTY verdicts against Karadzic and Mladic should be mentioned, who were found guilty of persecution of Bosniaks and genocide. Actually, the verdict confirms that their joint criminal enterprise existed already from October 1991. Also, it should be mentioned that the Serb proopaganda exploited the incident for its own agenda.

• Excellent point vis-a-vis Karadžić, since he appears multiple times in the article, but Mladić isn't mentioned once in it and his inclusion would likely throw casual readers a curve.

• The exploitation of this tragedy by the Serbian media is tackled in the Response section, with the daily Poltikia essentially blaming all Muslims for the shooting and the bishop eulogizing at Gardović's funeral rejecting the good faith apologies of the Muslim leaders, deriding them as "unintelligent". The Muslim assertion that the wedding procession was some sort of deliberate provocation also got thrown in for balance.

Thanks for taking this review, 3E1I5S8B9RF7! I hope my responses were helpful. Amanuensis Balkanicus (talk) 20:16, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Conclusion

I think the article now meets the GA criteria. I am promoting it, accordingly.--3E1I5S8B9RF7 (talk) 14:33, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed