Despite U.S.-European Sellout, Republic of Bosnia Refuses to Die

By Richard H. Curtiss

"The administration has turned confusion into a foreign-policy art form: Clinton's battle is not with Congress but with himself. Put the same policy question to Warren Christopher, Les Aspin and Madeleine Albright, and you '11 get six different answers. Put the question to Clinton and you'll still get six different answers. The president has doubled back on himself so frequently, both in rhetoric and in action, that his words simply have no meaning any longer. ''

—Former Congressman Mickey Edwards (R-OK), Los Angeles Times, Oct. 19, 1993.

Wherever you go in the Middle East these days, whether to a glossy air-conditioned shopping mall in Jeddah or a sprawling open-air market in Cairo, booths marked by large banners and surrounded by transfixed onlookers obstruct the flow of shoppers. Each booth is manned by one, two or half a dozen bearded students who pass out Islamic literature to those who ask for it.

What stop and hold the crowds are shocking videos from Bosnia. Men, women and children stare incredulously at filmed scenes of almost inconceivable horrors being inflicted upon their co-religionists, right now, in central Europe. They see the blood-spattered playgrounds upon which Serb mortar shells have fallen. They hear interviews with expressionless, vacant-eyed Muslim women who have been imprisoned in rape camps and then, if they were lucky enough not to be killed, released to bear half-Serb children. The crowds also hear emaciated survivors describe prisons hidden in factory basements, abandoned mineshafts, closed schools and farm outbuildings where Muslim men are starved or beaten to death. They hear eyewitness accounts of massacres where Muslim men and women were herded at gunpoint to the edges of open pits, steep ravines or rushing rivers and shot or stabbed to death.

No matter how close the friendship between Western countries and the Middle Eastern, South Asian and Far Eastern countries where the booths have been erected, day and night the videocassettes reveal the horrifying details of sickening violence committed by Serbian ''Christians" against Slavic Muslims.

The narrators are harshly anti-Western, and make no distinction between the Western European countries that tolerate or have secretly encouraged it, and the impotent United States that drops food by air to the victims of the terror, but refuses to use its overwhelming air power to stop it.

Islamic states know the booths spreading the horrifying news from Bosnia are recruiting grounds for future Islamist opponents of their own governments. But what government would dare to defy the white-hot anger generated at all levels of society by these scenes of the most primitive barbarism against Muslims in the ''civilized" West?

Sustained Viciousness

Such sustained viciousness is alien to contemporary Islamic societies. Even in the government-orchestrated 444-day ordeal of American Embassy employees in Tehran, not a single American hostage was killed or seriously injured. The anger and resentment generated throughout much of Africa and Asia by the genocide of an entire Muslim people in Bosnia, if not eventually assuaged or contained, can set present relatively harmonious relations between "East and West" back a century to the era of rampant Western colonialism, or a millennium to the bigotry and massacres of the Crusades.

Muslim astonishment at Western lionization of Salman Rushdie, the opportunistic and irresponsible pornographer of Islam, and Muslim suspicion of the current anachronistic replay of 19th century "Western imperialism" in Palestine are dwarfed by the indignation generated by the atrocities in Bosnia, where an estimated 200,000 are dead and nearly half of the country's 4.4 million inhabitants displaced.

Yet, while the Islamic world seethes; the United Nations writes the epitaph of the Republic of Bosnia-Henegovina; and their Serbian and Croatian neighbors offer Bosnian Muslims a stark choice between physical or cultural extinction–something totally unexpected is occurring. Bosnia's Muslims, and some die-hard idealistic Serbs and Croats who have stuck by the Bosnian government and the multicultural dream it represents, refuse to die.

In fact, they are beginning to win the cruel war launched against them. Not "win" in the sense that they are chasing Serbian tanks back to Belgrade. And not "win" as in making more than piecemeal gains against the demoralized militias of their on-again off-again Croat enemies/allies–who only want to be on the winning side. But "win" in the sense of refusing to surrender and being willing to suffer a lot more hardship to save their homes and towns than are their Serbian and Croatian tormentors, who have homes of their own elsewhere, and would just as soon be in them during the hard Balkan winter.

If reports of the Republic of Bosnia/Herzegovina's demise turn out to be premature, its brave and battered people are going to have a lot of scores to settle. First, with their neighbors, Serbian savages and Croatian turncoats. Second, with some Muslim states and individuals who have provided more moral support than tangible help considering the financial and trained manpower resources at their disposal. Third, with all of the European nations who have conspired to destroy them. And, finally, with the United States–which in December doubled its relief flights to 10 a day to Sarajevo airport, and 12 a night to drop food to beleaguered Muslim towns, but has yet to mount a combat air strike against the Serb artillery, tanks and roadblocks that keep food, fuel and medicines from being delivered by road, and turn the towns and villages of Bosnia into a living hell for their Muslim inhabitants.

''At a time when a museum to Holocaust victims was opening in Washington to great fanfare," writes American Enterprise Institute scholar Patrick Glynn in the Oct. 25, 1993 New Republic, "history will record that two [U.S.] administrations refrained, in the face of overwhelming evidence, from countering a blatant program of genocide in Bosnia whose scope and nature they fully understood."

It's not as if the facts are unclear. The problem began with the collapse of the Soviet Union, fear of which had forged the bonds holding together the six republics and two autonomous regions of the former Yugoslavia. Some European countries encouraged the breakup, or considered it unavoidable. The U.S. feared and sought to prevent it, correctly foreseeing the bloody consequences of trying to create sectarian and ethnic national enclaves out of the Balkan patchwork quilt.

In former Yugoslavia those enclaves remain from centuries of rivalry between Serbs with close ties to Russia and the Orthodox Christian world, Croats and other Roman Catholics with ties to the former Austro-Hungarian Empire and present-day Germany, and Muslims, some of Albanian stock, some with Ottoman Turkish antecedents and some Slavic descendants of Eastern European Christians (the Bogomils) who converted en masse to Islam under Ottoman protection centuries ago.

Pressure toward the breakup was augmented by the strongly nationalistic leaders ruling today. They include Slobodan Milosevic, a communist strongman turned Serbian fascist who put at the disposal of his dream of "a smaller Yugoslavia or a greater Serbia" the heavy equipment of the former Yugoslav Army; Franjo Tudiman, a Croatian fascist who, even while his armies fought the Serbs to a draw in Croatia plotted with the Serbs to divide Bosnia between them; and Alija Izetbegovic, a Slavic Muslim who had the wisdom to retreat from his own Islamic nationalist platform and take refuge in "multiculturalism" when he belatedly realized that his neighbors were plotting to destroy the Bosnian government in which the presidency, army command and other key offices rotate among leaders representing Bosnia's population of 44 percent Slavic Muslims, 31 percent Serbs, and 17 percent Croats.

When, after their unfinished war with the Croats, the Serbs used their aircraft, tanks and heavy artillery to attack Bosnia in April 1992, much of the initial resistance came from the Bosnian Croat HVO militia, organized originally to protect their co-religionists in Croatia from flanking attacks by the Serbs.

Since the urban and cosmopolitan Slavic Muslims were slow to organize, many had to join the Croat forces in order to defend their new republic. Most enlisted in the loosely organized "Patriot League," which owes its evolution into the Bosnian army to a Bosnian Croat, Stjepan Siber, who remains a deputy commander in that multicultural army. Volunteers in the Bosnian army initially went into battle with paper chevrons of rank pinned to jumpsuits, sweatshirts, and leather jackets, and carrying hunting rifles inherited from their fathers or grandfathers.

The Saving of Sarajevo

It is said that Sarajevo was saved only because a Muslim former gangster and his henchmen hijacked a truckload of Serbian arms and, with them, stopped the tank-led Serbian army invaders in their tracks. (The gangsters continued to serve as Bosnian shock troops for months but, after slipping back into their former ways, were purged, with the loss of 100 lives, by regular Bosnian forces in the fall of 1993.)

Although the death toll in the initial weeks of the Serb invasion was horrendous, where the improvised Bosnian forces and their Croat militia allies set up defense lines, the lines held. Within weeks, however, reports began to filter out from behind Serb lines of the "rape camps" and "death camps" set up to depopulate the Muslim areas seized at the beginning of the invasion.

The Serbs have eschewed frontal attacks and instead have done their fighting from mountain emplacements with heavy artillery that destroys cities and towns in the valleys, building by building. They also have lowered the muzzles of rapid-firing anti-aircraft guns and aimed them at the streets, houses and shops of Sarajevo and other Bosnian towns. Only the steel-reinforced concrete walls of modern office buildings can repel the streams of heavy caliber shells, mortars and high-velocity bullets that reduce other buildings to rubble, and keep civilians off open streets during daylight hours.

Although the artillery inflicts a steady toll of dead and wounded on each town's defenders and their families, the Serbs have depended upon cold, disease and starvation to reduce the besieged towns, one by one. Each time the U.N. steps in to stop the slaughter by designating a battered Muslim town a "safe area," the defenders are disarmed, freeing up the Serbs to depart to put another Muslim-held town under siege.

With the U.N. troops thus becoming unwitting accomplices to the conquest of Bosnia, various groupings of European countries have negotiated plan after plan to formalize Bosnia's demise. The first, accepted by the Croats and the Muslim-led Bosnian government but rejected by the Serbs, would have broken Bosnia into nine cantons, three with Serbian, three with Croatian, and three with Muslim majorities, plus Sarajevo.

Last September, with Serbia holding about 70 percent of Bosnia and the Croats and the government forces holding about 15 percent each, European Community negotiator David Owen, a former British foreign minister, and U.N. negotiator Thorwald Stoltenberg of Norway offered a plan which would have abolished the multicultural composition of the Bosnian government once and for all, giving Bosnia's Serbs 51 percent of the land, Bosnian Croats 18 percent and the Muslims 31 percent. The Bosnian government rejected the plan, particularly after hearing Bosnian Serbs boast that, regardless of agreements, they would not give up "one centimeter" of the land they had seized.

After further negotiations the 12-nation European Community adopted a French/German plan calling for a step-by-step phase-out of economic sanctions on Serbia in return for Belgrade's return of an additional three percent of Bosnian territory; restoration of Croatian sovereignty over Serb-held territory in Croatia; and Serbian passage of relief supplies to Bosnian Muslims.

The Bosnians countered at an EC-sponsored November meeting in Geneva with demands for an additional four percent of their Serbian-occupied land in order to link up the predominantly Muslim towns of Tuzla, Zvornik, Srebrenica and Zepa, and for the return by Croats of the Bosnian port of Neum on the Dalmatian coast, and a corridor of Croat-occupied Bosnian territory to link Neum to Sarajevo. Neither Serbia nor Croatia agreed, obviously hoping that, with negotiations stalemated, cold weather, starvation and daily shellfire would end Bosnian resistance.

Now British negotiator Owen has suggested that a cutoff of relief supplies to the Muslims would speed the process of surrender. At that, however, the U.S. has bridled. In November, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) called upon the General Accounting Office to investigate charges that Owen already has funneled humanitarian relief, much of which is paid for by the U.S., to a Muslim renegade in order to put pressure on the Bosnian government; that Serbs have been demanding 33 percent of all humanitarian aid going to Bosnia; and that this winter Serbs are demanding 50 percent.

"It's crazy," a U.S. State Department official told the Christian Science Monitor. "Serbian troops eat breakfast, lunch and dinner on the American taxpayer."

In refusing the latest Owen gambit, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher said: "I do not believe that humanitarian aid should be used as a lever. . . on the Bosnian government . . . I have never felt that the way to achieve a result was to exert pressure on the Bosnian government."

The question, of course, is why the U.S., after so many post-World War II protestations of "never again," does not turn its avowed disapproval of the European attempt to sweep the Bosnian tragedy under the rug into concrete actions. The Bosnians have not asked for ground troops, or even American weapons. All they ask is that the U.N. embargo be lifted so that sympathetic powers (and there are plenty of those in the Islamic world) can send them weapons and ammunition to level the killing ground.

Even at this late date, with adequate weaponry they might not only hold their ground, but deny the Serbs the fruits of their aggression. At present, according to Gen. Jovan Diviak, a Serb deputy commander for operations of Bosnia's multicultural army, the Bosnian government has 200,000 men under arms, 70,000 of them defending Sarajevo.

By contrast, the Bosnian Serbs have 80,000 men and can call upon another 40,000 to 50,000 from Serbia and Montenegro if needed. The thoroughly demoralized Bosnian Croats have 30,000 men under arms, and can look to Croatia for another 5,000 if needed. Just allowing in more weapons, some of which already are reaching Bosnian forces from Muslim countries despite the embargo, might turn the tide.

Whatever their original motives, the countries of Western Europe have created such a mess that, if Bosnia doesn't fall soon, Western leaders may fall instead. It is the extremely unpopular British government of John Major that is threatening to veto in the U.N. Security Council any U. S. motion to lift the arms embargo.

It is the anti-American, anti-Muslim, and traditionally pro-Serbian French government that vehemently opposes the launching of U.S. or NATO air strikes against Serbs blocking U.N. food convoys and besieging Bosnian cities. Oddly, policies of the two governments do not reflect either British or French public opinion.

"The specter of tens of thousands of Bosnian civilians dying this winter broadcast live on Western television causes panic among Europe's leaders," wrote President Max Primorac of the Croatian Democracy Project in the Dec. 6 Washington Times. "Last spring, the public outcry over daily images of rape and concentration camps, a besieged Sarajevo and large-scale slaughter, revealed Europe's and Washington's political paralysis. In their minds, Bosnia undermined the Maastricht Treaty for European unity and strained the Atlantic Alliance. The last thing they want is Bosnia to 'spoil' next month's NATO summit and upcoming elections."

Whatever the Western countries do, the Muslim powers should be using their extraordinary financial power to get more arms and ammunition as well as food into Bosnian hands. What's to prevent Turkish planes from joining the airlift, with or without an invitation, to drop food paid for by petroleum-producing Arab countries? And what's to prevent even larger-scale smuggling of arms into Bosnia along the lines of the giant clandestine arms lift from Catholic countries of Europe that has turned Croatia into an armed camp?

Some arms already are reaching the Bosnian Muslims, but the impression is that they come mostly from Iran, reinforcing fundamentalist appeals throughout the Islamic world. If the Turks, Saudis, Egyptians, Malaysians and others are sending arms, as they surely must be, it behooves them to say so. Certainly by this time no U.S. ships or NATO planes are going take elaborate measures against such actions.

As to what the U.S. should be doing, the answer is all of the above. While a British veto might prevent the lifting of the arms embargo, the only way to find out is to bring it to a vote in the Security Council. And, with or without French approval, no further authorization is required for U.S. air strikes on Bosnian Serb militiamen impeding the delivery of food convoys to which the Serbian government has formally agreed.

In the absence of American action, if Bosnia disappears, peace will not be preserved. It will be a blow to the democratic opposition in both Serbia and Croatia who oppose their cynical expansionist leaders. It will enable a vindicated Milosevic either to resume Serbia's territorial war with Croatia or, more likely, begin the "ethnic cleansing" of the former autonomous area of Kosovo. Kosovo's population consists of 10 percent Serbs and 90 percent Albanian Muslims. Any attempt to "transfer" the latter will ignite a war that will spread rapidly to Macedonia and bring in Greece to support the Serbs, and Turkey and Albania to oppose them.

It will be open season for big ethnic fish to prey on small ethnic fish, in a chain reaction spreading further into the Balkans and beyond to the former Soviet republics so long as the Clinton administration, and therefore the European community, do nothing to stop it.

With or without U.S. action, the legitimate government of Bosnia and its battered, brave defenders will not lie down and die. Instead, the images of people starving and freezing and being shot to death in Europe in 1992, 1993 and 1994, while Americans who could have stopped it did nothing, will be burned by the pitiless videotapes into minds and memories all over the world.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.