Finally the U.S. Takes the Lead in Bosnia

By Richard H. Curtiss

"This time Mr. Lake didn't ask, he informed. An administration official said that in his meetings in Bonn, Paris and London, Mr. Lake declared: 'The president has made the following decisions. We want you to be with us.'"—Staff Writer Stephen Engelberg, New York Times, Aug. 19, 1995.

In the spring of 1993, Secretary of State Warren Christopher set out to visit America's Western European allies. His mission, some four months after President Bill Clinton had taken office, was to put into action the interventionist campaign rhetoric with which Clinton had taunted President George Bush's inaction in the first months after war broke out in Bosnia in April 1992.

Christopher, who announced he was in "listening mode," returned with the message that Britain and France, who had contributed troops to the United Nations peacekeeping force in Bosnia, were not interested in advice from the United States until American troops joined their troops, and growing numbers from other nations, in the UNPROFOR forces on the ground.

Clinton was willing to put U.S. transport and combat aircraft at the service of the U.N. effort, but not to contribute troops on the ground. Therefore, for the following two years Bosnian Serbs, who constituted 31 percent of the pre-independence population of Bosnia but were occupying 70 percent of the land, undertook with impunity vicious and often murderous "ethnic cleansing" measures against Muslims and Croats, who had constituted 44 percent and 17 percent of the population respectively. The Serb measures, which were particularly harsh against the Muslims, obviously aimed to turn their military occupation into a permanent one.

The Bosnian government, a multi-sectarian institution in which Serb and Croat military and civilian officials were represented along with the predominant Muslims, dug in to hold the cities, but remained largely dependent upon United Nations troops to feed the civilian populations and, in the case of six "safe areas" including the capital, Sarajevo, protect them.

Peace plans advanced by United Nations and European Union negotiators called for semi-autonomous cantons within Bosnia that would give Bosnian Serbs control over 49 percent of the land and a combined Muslim and Croat federation control over the rest. The Muslims and Croats accepted the plans, but Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and military commander Ratko Mladic rejected them.

By this spring, rapid changes on the ground had made a bad situation intolerable. Serbs stepped up their indiscriminate shelling of Sarajevo, overran the safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa, apparently killing all Muslim men of military age who fell into their hands, and were closing in on two more isolated safe areas in Gorazde in the east and in Bihacé, an isolated pocket along the Croatian border, in the west.

Islamic countries overcame their chronic divisions sufficiently to announce they would no longer observe the United Nations arms embargo on all of the six republics and two autonomous areas that had constituted former Yugoslavia, but which was preventing only the legitimate, and landlocked, Bosnian government from obtaining arms. France and Britain announced that if the embargo was lifted, they would withdraw their troops, which provided the backbone of UNPROFOR.

Both houses of the U.S. Congress, over President Clinton's objections, voted to drop U.S. observance of the embargo and congressional leaders urged a policy of "lift and strike," meaning lift the embargo and strike, from the air, any Serb forces that tried to take advantage of the U.N. withdrawal before rearmed Bosnian troops were able to defend themselves.

Whether Congress can override a Clinton veto will only become clear when it returns from its August recess.

President Clinton's belated announcement in July to White House National Security Adviser Anthony Lake and other members of his foreign affairs inner circle that "the status quo is not acceptable" was prompted by the congressional vote, reports of the massacres of prisoners in Srebrenica and Zepa, and the increasing realization that, if the problem goes unsolved through another winter, it could be even worse and force involvement of American troops to extricate U.N. forces by the spring of 1996, election year in the United States.

Clinton also was motivated by good news. This included a successful offensive by the Croatian army to wipe out the self-proclaimed "Serbian Republic" that had claimed sovereignty over about a third of Croatian territory. It also included successful joint action to lift the Serb siege of Bihacé by mutually suspicious Bosnian Muslim and Croatian forces, who had fought a year-long war-within-a-war against each other before agreeing to federate.

Not in "Listening Mode"

When Lake arrived in London and Paris in August with a plan to end the war, he was not in "listening mode." Instead he presented an American plan in which the European allies could participate or abstain. German cooperation was expected but, perhaps to Clinton's astonishment, both the British and French seemed to climb aboard, perhaps seeing it as at least a face-saving way of getting their troops out of Bosnia before the United Nations mandate is up for renewal in November. Of the five-nation so-called "contact group," therefore, only the Russians, who have openly supported the Serbs from the beginning, disapproved.

The next step was to present the plan in Belgrade to Slobodan Milosevic, leader of self-styled "former Yugoslavia," who instigated and initially supported the revolt of the Bosnian Serbs, and also of the Croatian Serbs. He had long since urged the Bosnian Serbs to accept the 49 percent plan, and withdrew open support for them when they refused. Similarly, when the Croatian Serbs declined to negotiate with the Croatian government, Milosevic had offered them no support as the Croatian army crushed their rebellion.

When U.S. negotiators set out to present the plan to the warring sides in Bosnia, however, the deterioration of the situation was illustrated dramatically. Bosnian Serb authority was divided between Karadzic, a demagogic orator who had just unsuccessfully tried to strip Mladic of his military command, and Mladic, a sadistic and probably mentally unbalanced commander who was rumored to have personally presided over the execution of some 2,000 of the missing men of Srebrenica. American authorities believe these men are interred in mass graves that have been spotted by satellite and actually visited by a daring Christian Science Monitor correspondent, David Rhode. It is said that the chief U.S. negotiator, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Richard Holbrooke, is seeking not only acceptance of the American plan from the Bosnian Serbs, but also access to the apparent mass grave to verify the fate of the missing Bosnian men.

On Aug. 19, when Holbrooke and the rest of his team sought to reach Sarajevo, whose airport was closed by Serb gunfire last April 15, they had to approach the city over a precipitous mountain road in French-operated armored personnel carriers to protect them from Serb shell and sniper fire. As their convoy tried to make way for a U.N. convoy coming from the other direction, the side of the soggy dirt road collapsed under one of their vehicles, sending it tumbling into a ravine, where it burst into flames.

Killed were a French soldier and three high-ranking Americans: Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Robert C. Frasure, the principal U.S. representative to the "contact group"; Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs Joseph J. Kruzel; and Air Force Col. Samuel Nelson Drew, who had only recently been assigned to Clinton's National Security Council staff. The tragedy highlighted both the urgency of the American initiative and the impossibly dangerous siege conditions which have been imposed, step by step, by the Bosnian Serbs on their Bosnian Muslim victims and anyone who tries to help them.

Under the American proposal Milosevic's Serbia, or "former Yugoslavia," would get relief from United Nations economic sanctions in exchange for recognizing the three breakaway republics of Bosnia, Croatia and Macedonia. (Slovenian independence already has been recognized.) Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation would secure 51 percent of Bosnia and would receive reconstruction aid from the U.S. and other countries that support the plan. Territorial adjustments from the previous plan rejected by the Serbs could be proposed, so long as they do not upset the 51-49 percent ratio.

It is expected that Bosnian Muslims will be urged to give up isolated Gorazde in return for Serb concessions of territory to link Sarajevo to the Bosnian-government-controlled area, but Holbrooke made it clear that no such changes will be imposed. Finally, if the Bosnian Serbs balk, under the plan the West will arm the Bosnian government forces, launch air strikes and permit soldiers from Islamic countries to replace the departing British, French and other Western peacekeepers.

Although the Bosnian Serbs are at the nadir of their power, with their political and military leaders split, new revelations of atrocities about to break, and both Croatian and Bosnian forces moving from defensive to offensive operations against them, it is not sure they will agree to the U.S. plan without first testing U.S. resolve. The speed with which their hostage-taking of U.N. personnel ended previous shows of Western force may tempt them to try it again.

The result will depend, again, on America's irresolute leader, always ready at the first sign of trouble to abandon the advice of one subordinate for that of another. Now, however, things are different. The Europeans are exhausted by their own failures, and eager to pass the burden of leadership, which they never really assumed, to anyone who will take it. This time, it appears, if a U.S. president leads, they will follow.

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