In Bosnia Dispute, All Parties Are Not Equal

By Richard H. Curtiss

In seeking to settle the three-and-a-half-year-old war in Bosnia, the worst thing the mediators can do is treat all parties to the war equally. A review of its history shows clearly that there are aggressors, the Serbs of Serbia and Bosnia, who seized land that belonged to others and resorted to officially sanctioned genocide to keep it. And there are victims, the Muslims of Bosnia and the multi-sectarian Bosnian government who, despite the fact that their land was stolen, have not resorted to atrocities when they have retrieved it. And, finally, there are parties, the Croats of both Croatia and Bosnia, whose conduct falls somewhere in between.

The fighting in former Yugoslavia began in 1991 and 1992 when, with the breakup of former Yugoslavia, four of its six constituent republics elected to go their own ways. Two of them, Slovenia and Macedonia, got off nearly scot-free. Croatia, with a very large Serb minority, broke away too, but only after a war in the summer and fall of 1991, in which 10,000 people were killed. Croatia's opponent was the army of former Yugoslavia, which by then had been reduced to Serbia and heavily Serb Montenegro. Until the Croat occupation this year of Krajina, one-third of Croatia remained under Serb control, and even now the former Yugoslav army occupies part of Eastern Slavonia, an area bordering Serbia which had a Croatian majority but a large minority of some 110,000 Serbs.

During the initial fighting in Croatia, the mixed population of Bosnia-Herzegovina stayed aloof. Theirs is a largely mountainous country that is geographically distinct from the Adriatic coastal plains and mountains of Croatia and the wide interior plateau of Serbia.

Ethnically most of the 4.5 million people of Bosnia-Herzegovina are similar. They are Southern Slavs who speak the Serbo- Croatian language. Religiously, Bosnia-Herzegovina is a hodgepodge. Forty-four percent of the inhabitants were Muslims, concentrated in the cities and larger towns. Thirty-two percent were Orthodox Christian Serbs, living mostly in agricultural towns and villages scattered throughout the country. Seventeen percent of the Bosnians were Roman Catholic Croats, living largely in the west, near Croatia. There also were Jews, Gypsies, Hungarians and others, virtually all of them in the capital, Sarajevo, or other major towns. Unlike most of the Balkans, intermarriage among all of the constituent groups in Bosnia was commonplace, particularly in Sarajevo and the other cities.

The sectarian patchwork quilt of former Yugoslavia was the product of centuries of struggle over the area between the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Serbian dynasties out of whose defeats and displacements had grown a nationalistic mystique of victimization in which military defeats turned into heroic epics of steadfastness and martyrdom.

During the Nazi German occupation in World War II, the martyrdom of the Serbs was no legend. Hundreds of thousands died, mostly at the hands of collaborators serving a Croatian puppet regime. The largely urban Muslims generally stood aside from the Croat-Serb bloodbath. But some joined the ranks of Croat units enrolled by the Nazis to fight on the Russian front. Others joined the communist partisans, drawn from all of the ethnic and religious groups and led in the fight against the Germans by Josip Broz Tito, who was said to be of mixed Serb and Croat ancestry.

Few of the Serbs, who had been on the side of the allies in World War I as well, collaborated with the Germans. Many enrolled in the guerrilla units led by Serbian Royalist Gen. Draza Mihailovic, which initially were made up of soldiers from the army of the defeated Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Other Serbs joined Tito's partisans.

At first the allies airdropped guns, ammunition and supplies to both resistance groups. Later they concluded that the Royalists were devoting most of their resources to fighting the Partisans, not the Germans, and Britain and the U.S. channeled the bulk of their support to Tito. It was from his partisan guerrillas, many fighting from the mountains of Bosnia, that the post-war government and army of Yugoslavia evolved. For two generations, while it pursued non-alignment in the Cold War that cut Europe in half, Tito's communist dictatorship smothered the religious animosities that still smoldered in the ashes of the kingdoms and empires that had preceded it.

When the end of the Cold War provided the catalyst for the breakup of Yugoslavia's communist government, foreign observers warned that while the secessions of Slovenia, Croatia and Macedonia had gone relatively smoothly, such a clean separation from the Serbian heartland might be impossible for Bosnia, where people of different religions lived not only in the same villages and towns, but on the same streets and in the same apartment buildings. Many Bosnians turned the argument around, saying that for such a varied population in a tiny country where intermarriage was common, the only solution was to separate from all of their exclusivist neighbors and set up a multi-sectarian state of their own.

After the fighting in Croatia had ended in the establishment of an independent Croatian republic, Bosnians voted for independence in a national referendum held in April 1992. Multi-sectarian government institutions were founded in which the presidency rotated among Muslims, Serbs and Croats and the high command of the incipient army included representatives of all three groups. The U.S., Germany and others recognized the new state, and it was admitted to the United Nations.

Separation from Yugoslavia was accepted by some but by no means all of Bosnia's Serbs. Instead, many were swayed by the demagoguery of Slobodan Milosevic, a former communist strongman who held the leadership of Serbia by preaching a nationalist ideology of "Greater Serbia," uniting all of the Serbs scattered throughout former Yugoslavia.

More important, however, was the fact that this time the former Yugoslav army, from which Croats and Muslims already had departed, was ready. At Milosevic's direction, regular army units composed largely of Bosnian Serbs rolled over the border from Serbia into Bosnia to challenge secession. The invasion force was supported by regular army heavy artillery, engineers, and special forces, and Yugoslav air force fighter-bombers.

The Bosnians, who were still organizing a government, were totally unprepared for the Serb onslaught, which occupied 70 percent of the country within weeks. The attack finally was halted largely through the efforts of Bosnian Croat militia units that had been organized the previous year to fight in Croatia against regular army units from Serbia. Bosnian Muslims flocked to join the Croat HVO militia, since there were no other units organized to receive them. A Bosnian Muslim gangster was credited with organizing a stopgap defense that turned back the first Serb attack on Sarajevo, using his own armed followers and men drafted at gunpoint from the streets and cafés of the capital city.

While what was left of their country was defended by such improvised units, the newly-created Bosnian government proceeded to organize an army of its own commanded by Bosnian Muslim, Croat and Serb veterans of the former Yugoslav army.

It was from this point on that the tactical differences between the contending armies, and populations, began to emerge—revealing that this was no civil war, but a well organized, planned invasion. The Bosnian- Serb-commanded units of the regular Yugoslav army were rapidly expanded with Serb volunteers and draftees from the occupied areas.

At the same time the Serbs began their systematic policy of ethnic cleansing within all of the occupied areas. Croats were routed out of their houses and trucked, bused or driven to the front lines and forced to cross them into Croat territory. Muslims were dealt with more cruelly. Men of military age, from late teens to early 60s, were herded into concentration camps where they were systematically starved and beaten and a great many executed. Old women and women with small children were driven to the front lines and forced to walk across. Young women were held in the infamous "rape camps" where most remained until they became pregnant and then longer until abortion became impossible. The Bosnian government is holding captured Serb soldiers prepared to testify before an international war crimes tribunal that they were encouraged by their commanders not only to rape the women but to kill them afterwards, and that many did so.

As a result of these systematic genocidal policies, which United Nations war crimes investigators have concluded originated with Serbian President Milosevic and were carried out by Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, some 200,000 Bosnians, nearly all of them Muslims, are missing and presumed dead, according to the Bosnian government. Additional hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats who were driven from their towns and villages are refugees in Croatia, Germany and, in smaller numbers, nearly every country of northern Europe.

By far the largest number of Serb atrocities took place in the first five months of the Bosnian war, before journalists discovered both the death camps and the rape camps. After the survivors were pushed across Bosnian and Croatian lines, however, the cruelties continued as Serbs laid siege to Sarajevo, Srebrenica and other cities, six of which finally were designated as United Nations-protected safe areas.

War Within a War

It was at this time that a war within a war began when Croats suddenly turned on their Muslim allies. The thousands of Muslims who were serving in Bosnian Croat HVO militia units were herded into Croat prison camps. There the Muslims were starved and beaten, but there were no reports of mass executions.

The fighting was every bit as cruel, however, as anything that had preceded it. In an isolated part of the picturesque old city of Mostar, Muslim soldiers and civilians alike were pinned down by Croat artillery. No prisoners were taken, and civilians who tried to flee across bridges connecting the besieged area with the more defensible eastern portion of the city were mercilessly gunned down by snipers. Croat artillery finally destroyed all of the bridges, one of them more than 400 years old, linking the two portions of the city, leaving Muslims trapped in western Mostar to starve.

Astute American diplomacy backed up by promises of generous German and U.S. aid ended the Croat-Muslim war after a year. The settlement represented a triumph for Croatian arms, however, because under its terms Bosnian Muslims and Croats were to combine into an entity that in turn would federate with Croatia.

This period dramatically demonstrated the unfairness of the United Nations embargo on arms to all of former Yugoslavia. It had been imposed in 1991 before Bosnia seceded. The Serbs, who manufacture both arms and ammunition, also had access to arms illegally smuggled in via airports, river barges and roads from many countries of Eastern Europe and beyond, including Greece and Israel.

Similarly Croatia, with an extensive coastline, many airfields, and direct road connections with Western Europe, seemed able to get all the arms it needed to build up a highly competent, well-armed, professional army. The embargo was effective only against land-locked Bosnia, which had no major airport that was not under Serb guns. Even when shipments from Muslim countries were slipped through the United Nations blockade to the ports of Croatia for transhipment by road to Bosnia, the Croats took half of each shipment as their fee for ensuring delivery.

Yet this fundamentally ineffective and unfair embargo that hurts only the mostly Muslim victims of Serb aggression continues to this day, despite an outpouring of world sympathy for the Bosnians. These included a U.S. decision not to use American military units to enforce the embargo and, this summer, congressional resolutions to lift it. Principal supporters of the embargo have been Britain and France, both motivated apparently by latent sympathy for the Serbs, their allies in two world wars, and an inclination to listen to the Serb claim that a Muslim-led Bosnian state would provide "a foothold in Europe for Islamic terrorists."

Throughout the more than three years of Serb siege of Bosnia's towns and cities, European Union and United Nations negotiators have advanced a number of peace plans. Most, regardless of changes on the accompanying maps, allotted 49 percent of Bosnia to the 32 percent of the population who are Serbs, and 51 percent of Bosnia to the 61 percent of the population who are Muslim or Croat.

The Bosnian government has accepted each of the plans, and the Bosnian Serbs have rejected them. Who could blame the Serb negotiators, since each time they defied the negotiators, instead of U.N.-ordered military action to lift the sieges, a new peace plan would arrive, giving them more desirable portions of Bosnia, even though the percentages of land allocated to each group didn't change.

This summer the situation on the ground did finally change. To prevent threatened U.N. airstrikes to halt their attacks on "safe areas," Serbs took a number of U.N. peacekeepers hostage, in some cases leaving them bound hand and foot on airport runways to keep NATO forces from bombing the airfields. More U.N. peacekeepers were taken prisoner at the "safe areas" of Srebrenica and Zepa, both of which were overrun by the Serbs.

At Srebrenica Serbs herded at least 2,000 Muslim men into a stadium, where they were observed from U.S. military satellites. But then the men disappeared and two large bulldozed areas were photographed from above. An American correspondent who was able to slip into and out of the area unobserved saw signs of mass executions in the stadium area, and clothing and body parts protruding from what obviously are mass graves.

The Muslim men who surrendered at Zepa, or were captured fleeing through the surrounding woods, were simply killed by the Serbs on the spot. As before, many of the Muslim women were raped and some disappeared as the civilian population was transported to Muslim lines and ordered to walk out of Serb-held territory.

With the Serbs resuming their shelling of Sarajevo and Tuzla and obviously preparing to overrun all of the remaining safe areas, one by one, the U.S. finally acted, and Britain and France followed. Two weeks, with interruptions, of NATO airstrikes followed.

In Croatia the government used the opportunity not only to seize all of Serb-held Krajina, but also to link up with Bosnian Croats. Together they reoccupied large areas near Bosnia's borders with Croatia, forcing Serb refugees from Krajina to flee deep into Bosnia or all the way across Bosnia into Serbia itself.

In that operation, and steadily ever since, Croats have done some "ethnic cleansing" of their own. Although they have announced that the Serbs are welcome to return, many of those who remained behind have been killed and the military changes effected by Croat forces before they withdrew from Bosnia have made such a return extremely difficult.

Tallying the Score

The score, therefore, is tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Muslim prisoners killed by Serbs, and some hundreds of Muslim prisoners killed by Croats. There also have been reports of perhaps as many as one or two thousand Serbs killed by Croats. To date, although there have been reports of individual killings of Serb prisoners or civilians by Muslims, the victims number by even the highest estimate no more than one or two hundred.

Negotiators and U.S. members of Congress should keep the tally sheets in mind: Serbs have committed somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 murders. Croats have committed perhaps between 1,000 and 2,000 murders. Muslims have committed, at most, between 100 and 200 murders.

That's important because, thanks to the NATO airstrikes and the sudden eruption of regular Croat army units into the war, it is the Serbs who are clamoring for a cease-fire.

This is because the Muslims and Croats now occupy roughly 51 percent of Bosnia, solving the most difficult problem of the negotiators, which was to get the Serbs to withdraw from the 72 percent of the land they controlled at the time the tide turned. So if the Muslims now are reluctant to agree to a cease-fire before all the terms of a peace agreement have been negotiated, is that so bad?

What if they should retake Banja Luka, for example? It was an overwhelmingly Muslim city until the Serbs occupied it, bulldozed its 16 mosques, expelled all of the Muslims and Croats, and started building a Serbian Orthodox church there.

If the Bosnian government forces end up in possession of more than 51 percent of the land it strengthens their hands for swaps that could make Sarajevo an undivided city again, linked securely to the Bosnian hinterland. This would make it possible to resume its former status as a truly multi-cultural city whose people lived in a tolerant atmosphere that was as close as any city in the Balkans has come to the ethnic melting pot exemplified by the United States.

The U.S. and the European Union seemed remarkably complacent so long as the military situation on the ground favored the Serbs. Similar forbearance while the Muslim-led government recovers more of its land therefore does not seem out of order. The United Nations refused to recognize that its peacekeepers were there to discourage acts of aggression, not just observe them. The peacekeeping mission was a failure.

In the renewed U.S.-led NATO initiative in Bosnia, peace will be far better served if the peacemakers remember that the contending sides cannot be equated. The Serbs have seized territory that is not theirs and pursued genocidal policies to hold it. On a much smaller scale the Croats, too, have committed atrocities to prevent their Serb minority from returning to land on which it has lived for 400 years. If they get away with that, they will be tempted to hold the parts of Bosnia they already have occupied, and on which Bosnian Croats have lived for generations.

The Muslim-led Bosnian government forces have committed no such atrocities, occupied no one else's land, and contemplate no such seizures. Yet they continue to be penalized with a U.N. embargo that for three years crippled their ability to defend their own people.

In the current peace negotiations, they deserve better than to be equated with the genocidal aggressors they face across the table. If they are, it will be increasingly difficult for the U.S.-led international community to set in place a secure and lasting peace within Bosnia's borders.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report.