During early talks of the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ejup Ganić remarked that the Bosniaks "are Islamized Serbs", and should thus join the Serb side, at a time when the SDA shifted in favour of siding with the Serbs and continuing struggling against the Croats.[14] Political analyst Jochen Hippler noted in 1994 that "Muslims are mostly ethnically Serb, a minority Croat, but this did not save them from being slaughtered by their fellow ethnic groups for being different."[15]