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February/March 1994, Pages 7-8 Special Report
U.S.-U.N. Moment of Truth Arrives With Overt Invasion of Bosnia
By Richard H. Curtiss"A Serb mortar shell pounded into the middle of a group of children playing in the snow today, killing six and seriously injuring two others. A blood-soaked sled, swaths of red snow, and pieces of clothing, flesh and brains marked the spot of the explosion. Witnesses said the children had gathered around the sled at the top of a hill near their apartment building when the mortar round hit. Shrapnel from the blast decapitated 5-year-old Jasmina Brkovic and ripped through the chest and stomach of her 11-year-old sister, Indira, killing them both instantly. . . In the morgue at [Sarajevo'sl Kosovo hospital, five little bodies lay covered in stained blankets. . .A sixth child died on the operating table. . . The skin of Admir Subasic, 9, was strangely pink. His eyes were still open. He lost a leg and died from loss of blood. Shrapnel ripped the face off 8-year-old Mirza Dedovic next to him. . .Nermin Rizvanovic, the eldest of the group at 12, lost his life because of massive wounds to his internal organs and heart, doctors said. 'He was in a lot of pain in the ambulance. It's better that he died so quickly, 'said Redzo Grabovice, a hospital worker. On the far left, Jasmina Brkovic and her sister, Indira, lay wearing matching purple suits. '' —Correspondent John Pomfret, Washington Post, article datelined Jan. 22, 1994 Listening to intellectuals of former Yugoslavia explain the background of the Bosnian conflict is like hearing the annotated oral history of hell. Hearing international peace makers, relief workers and diplomats interpret current events there is like a chamber-by-chamber tour of the Tower of Babel. And watching world leaders explain why "never again'' applies to all times in history and all places in the world except contemporary Bosnia is as sickening as a visit to a Sarajevo morgue. Perhaps that's why in December, 20 months after the April 1992 outbreak of fighting in Bosnia, the United Nations General Assembly adopted, by a 109-to-0 vote with 57 abstentions, a resolution calling upon the Security Council to lift the arms embargo that is preventing the Republic of Bosnia, a member of the United Nations, from getting the arms it needs to defend its U.N.-recognized borders. But the Security Council, whose resolutions are binding, ignored the will of the overwhelming majority of nations and did not comply. Perhaps that's also what prompted the U.S. Senate on Jan. 27 to vote 87 to 9 to urge President Bill Clinton to press for an end to the U. N. arms embargo and to provide "appropriate military assistance" if so requested by the Bosnian government, with which the U. S. has diplomatic relations. In fact, public opinion has been ahead of the politicians both in the United States and in Europe. The difference is that while both the American public and its leaders favor lifting the embargo, and many would support air strikes as well against Serbs shelling civilians and blocking relief supplies, in some European countries, notably France and Britain, the public favors the Bosnian victims while the leaders now are seeking to impose a peace that, in effect, supports the Serbs. For most Americans, the merits of the Bosnian case no longer need explaining. Debate centers only around whether a U. S. -led international effort should be limited to passive measures, like lifting the arms embargo, or also include active measures, like air strikes. There is no serious consideration of sending in American ground troops, since the Bosnians need arms, not soldiers, and have asked for none. What needs explaining, however, is why the European powers are so far unwilling to agree on any plan of action to halt the Serb conquest other than a peace that permanently dismembers the country, even as events on the ground make some action in the name of the United Nations, the European Community, or NATO not only necessary but almost inevitable.
As Bosnians Retake Their Lands, Serbia and Croatia Intervene Openly"The regimes of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and his
Croatian counterpart, Franjo Tudjman, signed an accord last week
in Geneva that is likely to bring a fundamental shift in the dynamics
of the bloody Yugoslav crisis. . . The accord freezes the Serb-Croat
feud over the KraLina region of Croatia, conquered by the Yugoslav
Army-backed rebels in 1991, and allows them and their proxies to
concentrate on their battles with the Muslim-led Bosnian government.
" The 1991 breakup of Yugoslavia triggered hostilities between Serbs fighting in the name of Yugoslavia and the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia. Although they were unable to halt either of the predominantly Catholic republics from seceding, Serb regular army forces and indigenous Serbs had occupied large portions of Croatia by the end of a bloody one-year war that could resume at any time. When the Republic of Bosnia, with a population that was 44 percent Sunni Muslim, 31 percent Christian Orthodox Serb, 17 percent Catholic Croat, and the remainder Jews, Hungarians, and other minorities, also seceded from Yugoslavia, 80,000 ethnic Serbs from Bosnia serving in the former Yugoslav army were released into special units to launch an April 1992 invasion backed up by the heavy artillery and military aircraft of the former Yugoslav army, one of the largest in Europe. The HVO militia of the Bosnian Croats already were organized because of the earlier fighting with Serbs. It welcomed Bosnian Muslims into its ranks. Together with hastily organized multi-sectarian Bosnian government forces wearing blue jeans and leather jackets with paper chevrons of rank pasted on them and carrying hunting rifles, they halted the Serbian advance. By that time, however, the Serbs had occupied 70 percent of Bosnia. As the battle lines stabilized, reports of "ethnic cleansing" began to seep out of the Serb-occupied areas. Serbs murdered and raped, and then burned and bulldozed away all traces of the Muslim population, and terrorized Croats into fleeing the captured areas as well. During this period the Serbs rejected international peace plans accepted by Croats and Muslims that would have turned Bosnia into a loose confederation of 10 ethnic cantons. The plans would have forced the Serbs to surrender control of nearly half of the area they had seized. A year and a half after the Bosnian fighting began, the Croats concluded that the United Nations did not have the will to force the Serbs out of the captured Muslim and Croat areas. Determined not to be left out of the land grab, and fearing the inevitability of a renewed Serb-Croat war after Bosnia had been carved up, the Croats turned on their Bosnian government allies. Initially they sought to drive Muslims out of the mixed Muslim-Croat city of Mostar, turning that picturesque town into the capital of a Croat entity in Bosnia, while seizing as much additional land as they could, just as the Serbs had done. By late 1993, however, the Bosnian army had expanded to a force of some 200,000 soldiers. Although initially crippled by the fact that the Croats had disarmed and imprisoned the thousands of Muslims serving in HVO militia units, the Bosnian army continued to improve its discipline and morale and maintained its reputation as the only truly multi-sectarian army in the war. When units run by pre-war Muslim gangsters, who were credited with saving Sarajevo in the first days of the war, began seizing Serb and Croat civilians on Sarajevo streets to dig trenches at the front, the Bosnian government disarmed the hoodlum units in a one-day coup that cost 200 lives. From that point on, Bosnian civilians of any religion had little to fear from their own army, but much to fear from the savage "ethnic cleansing" of the Serbs, and similar though smaller and more isolated actions by local Croat militias. As the European Community peace negotiator, former British Foreign Minister David Owen, and U.N. negotiator Thorvald Stoltenberg of Norway produced new plans increasingly weighted in favor of obdurate Serbia, the tide of battle began to turn. Under a Muslim-led government that still includes Serbs and Croats, the Bosnian army has held its positions in Sarajevo and Mostar while surrounding and occupying Croat-captured roads and towns in the central highlands, to link what once were besieged Muslim enclaves into a self-sufficient heartland lacking only a seaport. With the last Croat strongholds in Bosnia's central highlands surrendering, the Bosnian army increasingly looked ready to hold its own, if not actually begin rolling back the Serb occupiers of formerly Muslim towns. Thoroughly alarmed by mid-January, Franjo Tudjman, the former communist turned extreme nationalist Croatian leader, and Slobodan Milosevic, the former communist turned extreme nationalist Serb leader, put their own skirmishing on hold and abandoned pretenses that the Serb and Croat units in Bosnia consist solely of local militias. Serb army regulars, who used to remove their unit patches and be recorded as "on leave" while serving in Bosnia, and whose deaths were reported in Belgrade obituary pages as resulting from "traffic accidents," have been reported by New York Times correspondent John Kifner entering and leaving Bosnia as intact Serbian army special forces units using their own military vehicles. In the last half of January, Croatian army units also openly entered the fighting in Bosnia. All are testing the waters. If there is no response to this overt invasion from the fully armed NATO aircraft constantly patrolling overhead, there is little doubt that the Serb and Croat armies will launch a joint offensive to throttle the infant Bosnian republic once and for all, and divide its territories between the Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and the Republic of Croatia, driving the Muslims from both.
Bosnians: No Choice but to Fight"This act humiliates the international community, mocks the
dignity of the United Nations and renders senseless all our efforts
to reach peace through negotiations . . . How many times has it
been said that the United Nations will not allow Sarajevo to be
strangled ? These children, Mr. Ghali, were playing in a United
Nations 'safe zone'...only 200 meters from the main Sarajevo headquarters
of the United Nations military force. " Speaking to journalists as he dispatched an open letter to the U.N. secretary-general, Bosnian Prime Minister Silajdzic, who had just returned from another unsuccessful round of peace talks in Geneva, explained his country's position: "The Europeans and Americans say we are opting for war by not accepting a peace agreement. But if they killed your children like this, what would you do? Would you sign an agreement with the people who did this to you?" In fact the Bosnians believe they have no choice but to fight on. The agreements offered by Owen and Stoltenberg offer 33 percent of the land to the 44 percent of the population who are Muslim. But unless it includes access to an Adriatic port, and connects the capital at Sarajevo by a defensible road to the once predominantly Muslim towns that the Serbs have "ethnically cleansed" and refuse to evacuate, the 33 percent will not be militarily defensible or politically and economically viable. As for the large numbers of Croats and Serbs who have stuck with the Bosnian government, they would have to share the tiny, landlocked enclave with their Muslim fellow Bosnian citizens or go live in the Serb or Croat territories under militia leaders against whom they have fought for nearly two bloody, hate-filled years. In the words of Washington, DC physician Dr. Nedzib Sacirbey, father of Bosnia's ambassador to the United Nations, "We have no choice but to fight on. Although many of us may die, our country will live. But if we sign this non-viable 'peace,' our country will die and so, eventually, will all of us who refuse to leave."
The United States: Right Choice by Weak Leaders''I believe we should have surgical air strikes. No doubt about it. It's embarrassing and dangerous to allow the U. S. to turn its back on Bosnia and the problems of Central Europe. '' —Republican presidential candidate Jack Kemp on "Meet the Press," Jan. 3O, 1994 ''We have to keep [the air strike/ option open and we have to talk to our allies about what kinds of targets we are willing to hit. And we have to have the understanding that we are not talking about a few artillery tubes. " —Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-GA) on "Meet the Press," Jan. 30, 1994 It was unfortunate for the Bosnians that they were invaded in a U.S. election year. Less than two years earlier, President George Bush had organized and led the international coalition that turned back the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. But then he had resolute British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher egging him on, and could plead "U.S. national interest" in restoring sovereign borders and stability to an area that contains perhaps 70 percent of the world's proven petroleum reserves. After the Serb invasion, Bush sent his deputy secretary of state, former U.S. Ambassador to Belgrade Lawrence Eagleburger, to sound out European allies on another coalition effort to halt the Serb invasion of Bosnia. Eagleburger was personally cool to the idea, and Margaret Thatcher had been replaced by her protege, John Major, neither a bold nor commanding figure. Eagleburger returned empty-handed and, after losing the election, a lame-duck Bush chose to send U.S. forces on a non-controversial mission to halt starvation in Somalia rather than a more daring mission to halt the brushfire war in Bosnia before it could become a conflagration that eventually could split Europe and Asia just as deeply as did the Cold War. However, the U.S. sent American military aircraft as part of an international airlift to transport food and medicine to the airport of besieged Sarajevo, and later from U.S. bases in Germany to parachute relief supplies into besieged Bosnian enclaves. The airdrops were strongly opposed by France, but proved so successful that they have been augmented by German military aircraft. Now, in President Bill Clinton's words, they have become the "longest humanitarian airlift in history." A United Nations economic embargo against Serbia and Montenegro also began to bite over a year ago, sending both unemployment and inflation soaring. However, Serbia's communist-turned-fascist president merely turned up the volume on the state-run radio and television, calling upon Serbs to redouble their battlefield efforts to turn his dream of "Greater Serbia" into reality. Only four months after assuming office, President Clinton sent Secretary of State Warren Christopher to European capitals to sound out support for lifting the arms embargo; for U.S.-led NATO air strikes against the Serbian roadblocks halting the delivery of relief supplies to Muslim areas and against Serbian artillery shelling Sarajevo and other besieged Bosnian cities; and, if necessary, against Serbian military installations from which the war was being conducted, and the bridges over which Serbian munitions were flowing into Bosnia. Christopher announced, however, that he was in "listening mode." The NATO allies, especially those with troops in the U.N. peacekeeping force, obliged him with such a welter of conflicting advice that he returned almost as empty-handed as had Eagleburger a year earlier. The French inveighed against air strikes, saying they would endanger the 6,000 French troops that are the largest contingent among 26,000 U.N. troops in Bosnia trying to protect relief convoys and the disarmed Bosnian civilians in "safe areas" under U.N. protection. The British, with 2,500 troops in Bosnia, threatened to veto in the Security Council any U.S. resolution to lift the arms embargo. President Clinton tried bluffing, publicly moving U.S. aircraft carriers into the Adriatic, shifting U.S. attack bombers into a forward base in Italy, and inviting the world press to meet the pilots, who described how simple it would be to inflict the same problems on Serbia that Belgrade was inflicting on Bosnia. U.S. and other NATO aircraft also began patrolling Bosnian skies to turn it into a no-fly zone for Serbian aircraft. But the roadblocks and shelling continued, and Serb military aircraft have over-flown Bosnia more than 1,000 times. Because there have been no air strikes and no Serbian military aircraft shot down, now Serbian soldiers don't even look up as NATO aircraft roar overhead. In January, when talk at a NATO meeting turned again to air strikes, the U.S. president warned against further reiteration of empty threats. "We have the will," he said, noting that he saw no evidence of matching will among America's European allies.
Reluctant Britain and Flexible France''In arguing that Washington had to pressure the [Bosnian] Government to accept partition, [French Foreign Minister Alain] Juppe pointed out that the Bosnian army was gaining territory and implied that Muslims were the aggressors, senior State Department officials said. 'That's a strange compass you are working with, Alain,' Mr. Christopher is said to have replied. 'They are not trying to gain territory. They are trying to regain territory taken away from them by force. "' —Correspondent Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, Jan. 28, 1994 Ever since the Marquis de Lafayette joined American colonists throwing off British rule more than 200 years ago, Americans have idealized France, although few took the trouble to learn its language. American affection remains unrequited by the French, however, who blame Americans for displacing their language, debasing their culture, destabilizing their overseas empire and disrupting their overseas markets. It's convenient to blame Americans for whatever goes wrong in Europe and chic to oppose whatever it does abroad. Serbians and the French have been allies in two World Wars, and the French government has no intention of abandoning that relationship. In 1993, France headed off U.S.-led air strikes, which might have put the evil genie of Serb fascism back into its box, by insisting that U.S. troops join French peacekeepers among the Serbs on the ground while U. S. planes attacked Serb positions from the air. While thus assuring that there would be no U.S. action at all, the French government did not count upon the rise of public concern in France, where the diary of an 11-year-old Sarajevo girl, Zlata Filipovic, currently heads the best-seller list. To appease public demand to stop the Bosnian slaughter, the French government in December called upon the U.S. to discuss air strikes again at the upcoming NATO summit meeting. This prompted Clinton's challenge that the U.S. has the will to act if the Europeans do. When the French in early January then pressed the U.S. to pressure the Bosnians into signing a peace tantamount to surrender, State Department spokesman Michael McCurry said bluntly of the French government, "We have no idea what their current thinking is on Bosnia." What the French in fact are thinking about is how not to take the blame for thwarting the Serb dream of greater Serbia while also not taking the blame for condoning the massacres and displacement of Muslims it entails. Americans nostalgically declare that if Maggie Thatcher were prime minister, the bridges over which Serbian artillery rolls into Bosnia would be only a memory by now. However, British policy under John Major resembles that of France. The British public supports the Bosnians. But the British government would like to see a strong Serbia as a counterbalance to a strong Croatia, because the Croats have traditional ties to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and German-speaking Europe. Maddening though the cynicism of both governments may be to Americans, neither would defy public opinion at home by refusing to join a concerted U.S. plan to rescue the Bosnians. Nor would either defy threats of economic boycott of French or British products by the oil-rich Muslim countries. So far, however, Clinton and Christopher have seemed unsure and faltering, and most Islamic governments have been too timid or slow to act, though such actions would be immensely popular with the Muslim public from Morocco to Indonesia. The Saudis have been generous in supporting the Bosnian government financially. And so long as the Bosnian Croats and Muslims were allies, large shipments of Pakistani arms reached the Croatian coast, to be divided between the Bosnian Croat militias and Bosnian government forces. With Croatian closure of the coastal routes, however, lifting the embargo has become considerably more urgent if the Muslim forces are to retain their ability to hold their positions or even begin to turn the tide.
Bosnia Provides an Opportunity to Restore U.N. Credibility"Bosnia's government appealed to the United Nations Security Council today to take action against neighboring Croatia, accusing it of mounting an invasion. A confidential United Nations report appeared to support the Bosnian contention... Chapter 7 allows the Council to call for the use of force to defend a United Nations member state. Bosnia and Herzegovina was admitted to the United Nations in 1992." —Correspondent Chuck Sudetic, New York Times, Jan. 29, 1994 The number of European soldiers and civilians who have died in the U.N. effort to feed, warm, medicate and sometimes defend Bosnians under siege from Mostar to Srebrenica has passed 200. Without denigrating the immense efforts to ameliorate Bosnian suffering by providing humanitarian relief despite extraordinary obstacles raised first by Serbs and now by Croats as well, a much smaller investment in proactive military action might ultimately prove more effective in halting the suffering and bloodshed. Even the efforts focused on keeping beleaguered civilians from starving to death have yielded maddening results. On Jan. 27, Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic reported and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Sarajevo spokesman Kris Janowski confirmed that civilians in Croat-controlled Bosnian territory received 9.61 kilos (21.1 pounds) of food per capita in December, civilians in Serb-controlled Bosnia received 4.31 kilos (9.61 pounds), and civilians in Bosnian-government territories received 2.89 kilos (6.4 pounds) of food per capita. Janowski explained to journalists in Sarajevo that the disparity in treatment arose because the U.N. delivers humanitarian relief where it can, and is blocked by both Serbs and Croats from reaching many Muslim-held areas. Bosnian officials charge, and some U.S. officials suspect, however, that the discrepancies arise because the ubiquitous Lord Owen is seeking to keep the pressure on Bosnian leaders to sign his peace agreement. This suspicion played a role in the January vote by the European Parliament calling upon the EC to fire its peace negotiator. European Parliament resolutions, however, like U.N. General Assembly resolutions, are non-binding, and therefore serve as little more than barometers of international opinion. Nevertheless, indignation is growing to the point where actions that once might have been considered hard to sell to the general public are becoming increasingly likely. Before statistics confirmed the unfair distribution of humanitarian relief, much of it supplied by the United States, an unnamed State Department official complained to journalists that, because militiamen manning the roadblocks in Bosnia generally demand a cut of any cargo's in the U.N. trucks they let pass, "the Serbian army is dining at the expense of American taxpayers." Although U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali has sometimes seemed even more adept at rationalizing inaction than any Western European leader, nevertheless the pressure upon him is growing. General Jean Cot, the French commander of U.N. forces in the Balkans, demanded that the secretary-general either authorize local U.N. commanders to order air strikes against forces threatening their commands, or delegate that authority to U.N. officials in Zagreb to shorten the reaction time to half an hour or less. At Boutros-Ghali's insistence, General Cot has been recalled to France, but the U.N. secretary-general now has delegated authority to authorize air strikes to his newly arrived representative at U.N. headquarters in Zagreb, Yashushi Akashi. Early in January, in one of his last interviews before relinquishing command of U.N. military forces in Bosnia, Belgian Gen. Francis Briquemont expressed shock that the U.N. had not yet imposed sanctions on Croatia for the open intervention of its army in Bosnia, and for blocking convoys bearing humanitarian relief for Muslims surrounded in Mostar. The general was granted reassignment because "I cannot stand this lack of reaction." His outrage at passivity in the face of genocide echoed that of five U.S. diplomats who have resigned in protest over U.S. inaction in Bosnia under both the Bush and Clinton administrations. Prior to the latest Croatian incursion, Boutros Ghali had come closest to threatening air strikes while demanding Serbian assent to opening the airfield at Tuzla in northern Bosnia to relief flights and to rotating a Dutch battalion into the Muslim "safe area" at Srebrenica to relieve a Canadian detachment. Although Boutros-Ghali warned the Serbs that he would call upon NATO aircraft to bomb them if they attacked U.N. troops carrying out either operation, it quickly became clear that there would be no NATO air strikes in support of U.N. troops on the spot without strong U.S. leadership. The call for a Security Council resolution to penalize Croatia for its blatant intervention only makes it more likely that the Serbs will continue to block U.N. operations in Tuzla and Srebrenica. After months of bluffing and conflicting diplomacy by the U. S. and its allies, diplomatic threats have lost all meaning. Unfortunately, only actual air strikes, or the downing of Serbian military aircraft over Bosnia, with all the attendant risks of "collateral" damage to civilians, will convince either Serbs or Croats that when the music of diplomacy stops, the genocidal party is over. Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. |