Apply the Right Lessons From Somalia to Genocide in Bosnia

By Richard H. Curtiss

''It was a threat that echoed around the world when President Clinton, in the first warning of possible military action, said he was prepared to lift the arms embargo against the Bosnians and use air strikes against the Serbs if they attempted more aggression in what had been Yugoslavia. But the Europeans said no after a highly publicized May visit by Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Clinton backed down. The echoes of that unsuccessful, first foray into a world trouble spot still shape the image of the administration's policymaking, to the sorrow of the president and his aides and the chagrin of Christopher. ''

—Staff writers Ann Devroy and R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post, Oct. 17, 1993

The inhabitants of devastated Bosnia will suffer even more intensely this winter than last. Hundreds of thousands who have been living as refugees without adequate food, fuel, sanitation or medicine, and under shellfire, again will be coping with months of freezing temperatures in besieged enclaves cut off from all help except what American and other military aircraft drop from the sky.

The television images to come may define for all time the failure of the "new world order" within the first year of the Clinton presidency. Nevertheless there may be less public pressure on the U.S. to do what it can to halt the horrors because of the "lessons of Somalia." If that is the case, however, it will be because Americans have learned the wrong lesson.

The "lesson of Somalia" should be to concentrate American efforts in other trouble spots on things that Americans can do well, and avoid things they cannot. Two of the things Americans do extremely well are exactly the things the Bosnians require in order to defend and feed themselves.

More than a year ago, the U.S. and other cooperating nations made a start by flying some 30 planeloads a day of relief supplies into Sarajevo airport. However, these supplies were not reaching other Bosnian government-controlled enclaves because U.N. peacekeepers were allowing Serb, and later Croat, militias to block the roads leading to them.

The United States then decided to drop food and medical supplies by parachute into the besieged enclaves. This initiative was almost hysterically opposed by America's two traditional NATO allies, France and Britain, with the argument that it would put their peacekeeping forces on the ground in danger.

The U.S. ignored the protests of its allies and went forward with the airdrops. In doing so it enjoyed the cooperation of Germany, which first made its bases available, and subsequently supplemented U.S. drops with airdrops of its own. To date, air supply flights are the only things the U. S. has done to alleviate the suffering of the people of Bosnia, and to help maintain the integrity of their multicultural government, a member of the United Nations formally recognized by the United States. By ignoring the advice of its traditional allies, the U. S. has reaped some measure of acclaim in Europe, and a large measure of gratitude throughout the Islamic world—which would be more than willing, if asked, to pay the bills for any aid to Bosnia.

The lesson of Somalia, and of the first U.S. initiatives in Bosnia as well, is that the U.S. can do some very useful things there. What, therefore, are the motives of "allies" who insist that the U.S. refrain from what it can do and instead do what it demonstrated in Somalia it cannot?

In the case of the French, the motives seem sadly obvious. In both of the two world wars that tore Europe asunder in the first half of this century, Serbs were France's steadfast allies. On a subconscious level, the French favor the Serbs, no matter how badly Serbia's present political leadership behaves.

On a conscious level, the French dislike both Muslims and the United States. They perceive uninvited waves of Muslim immigration from their former North African and sub-Saharan colonies as debasing the quality of life in their cities and towns. They perceive uninvited waves of American "popular culture" as debasing the French "way of life" everywhere. Consciously or unconsciously, they do what they can to hamper U.S. initiatives, whether commercial, political, military or even "humanitarian. "

To state the obvious, peoples with different traditions and different values are good at different things. Americans can lose 2,500 men taking one beach, as at Iwo Jima, and accept it as a sacrifice to shorten a war. But the idea of losing even one soldier removing mines after the war is over, or one helicopter pilot in the aftermath of a "humanitarian" action, is anathema.

"Other Lands, Other Ways"

The French, by contrast, have a foreign legion that does little else but take casualties in obscure wars that no one in France cares about. But there is no outcry. "Other lands, other ways," the Germans would say—about both their French and American allies.

The U.S. Air Force has no peer. Highly mobile U. S. Marines and heavily armored U.S. infantry are extremely good at taking, and holding, ground while suppressing resistance with unparalleled concentrations of firepower. This is partly because American military logisticians have the experience, organization and equipment to make them very effective at their jobs. When the U. S. supplies logistical support in an international operation, its forces and those of all of its allies have adequate food, pure water, and nearby field hospitals. Further, they have all the ammunition they can fire, and all of the airlift, sealift and road and bridge building capacity required to get their tanks, heavy artillery and troops promptly to wherever they are needed.

After successful experience in World War II, Korea and the Gulf war, Americans also are very, very good at operations which involve smash, grab, and smash again, with no political inhibitions. The Vietnam War showed, however, that Americans, for many societal and historical reasons will not tolerate sustained guerrilla war on someone else's turf, or "limited war" anywhere.

Asked to take fire day after day under rules that prohibit firing back unless they judge their lives to be in danger, as French, Ukrainian, Spanish and other troops have been doing month after month in Bosnia, Americans wouldn't—and shouldn't try. Each of the countries named has had at least one catastrophe in Bosnia or Croatia comparable to what happened to the U.S. in Mogadishu on Oct. 3-4. While, as a result, American forces are leaving Somalia within six months, the countries named probably will remain in Bosnia until its government invites them to leave.

Our allies know all this, but they have made it clear that if they are to participate in a Bosnian rescue operation, they expect the U.S. not only to do the things it always does, but also to supply about one-third of the ground troops to patrol the pacified areas. Never mind what would happen to U.S. ground troops patrolling a lonely mountain road after a U.S. airstrike on nearby Serb artillery or tanks. And never mind America's Achilles' heel: 535 congressional would-be commanders-in-chief, the fascination of the world media with U.S. casualties, and the queasiness of the U.S. public about deaths suffered under the political restrictions of undeclared or "limited" war.

Is it possible, then, that America's oldest allies purposely are setting impossible conditions for U.S. participation in Bosnia? In the case of the French, the answer clearly is yes, for the reasons stated. In the case of the British, the answer is the same, although it would be the opposite were Margaret Thatcher rather than John Major Britain's prime minister.

Whether or not they feel residual sympathy for the Serbs, who were their allies, too, in the two world wars, today's British leaders don't plan to send their young men to die for the Croats, who turned their downed aviators over to the Germans in World War II, or for Muslims, whom they find troublesome at home.

Further, they are convinced that some of the arms introduced into Bosnia to help the Muslims supporting their government would find their way into Europe, with the help of people like Libya's Col. Muammar Qaddafi and Iran's Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, to be wielded against British forces by Irish Republicans or Islamic extremists.

No one has asked the Germans how they feel about making their bases available to the U.S. food airlift, and supplementing it with aircraft of their own. In fact, they believe in a new world order, although their private sympathies are with the Croats and Slovenes for historic reasons just as valid as the French preference for Serbs. Nor has anyone asked the Russians, but popular sympathies in all of the Slavic countries are so obviously with the Serbs that the Russian government probably will cooperate in anything anyone suggests to bring the problems in former Yugoslavia to an end before they further complicate Russian domestic politics.

And what about the Muslim countries, so obviously aggrieved by the genocide being committed by Orthodox Christian Serbs and Catholic Christian Croats against Sunni Muslim Bosnians? Iran's "Islamic Revolutionary Government," though Shi'i Muslim, already is making political and propaganda inroads. The arms that keep turning up in relief shipments headed for Bosnia are mostly Iranian-government supplied. In fact, the Iranians probably are not bothered when their shipments are found and publicized rather than getting through to the Muslim international volunteers and Bosnian government forces seeking to defend their multicultural government.

Such discoveries contribute to a sense by Muslims everywhere that only the Iran-backed Islamists are "doing something" about their concerns. Further, eventual defeat of the Bosnian government would add to the sense of disempowerment of Muslims at the hands of the West that underlies so much of the Iran-generated Islamist appeal.

Sunni Muslim countries are torn. Public opinion from royal and presidential palaces right down to vendors in the markets is outraged at European indifference toward the genocide being waged by Christians against Muslims. Arabs and Turks are just as eager as Iranians to see their own clandestine shipments of arms get through to the defenders of Sarajevo and other embattled Bosnian enclaves.

Arab governments are less enthusiastic, however, about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young Egyptians, Algerians, Syrians and, yes, Bahrainis, Saudis and other young idealists and adventurers from one end of the Arab world to the other, who have gone or hope to go to join their embattled co-religionists in Bosnia now, and Kosovo and Albania later.

However those wars turns out, every Arab government knows that when the combat-seasoned volunteers return, whether as winners or losers, some will become the kind of problems represented by some returnees from Afghanistan.

The Lessons in Bosnia

What, then, are the lessons from these "facts on the ground" in Bosnia? First, that leadership to end the genocide and prevent its spread must come from the world's only superpower. It's a lesson Bill Clinton seemed to understand when he assumed the presidency. He still understands it, as his words in an Oct. 15, 1993 interview with The Washington Post show:

"I felt very strongly that the United Nations made a grave error by applying the arms embargo on Yugoslavia to Bosnia after they recognized Bosnia when the only practical impact of the arms embargo was to give a big advantage to the Serbs and a lesser advantage to the Croats. I just couldn't understand it. I still think it was wrong. People who had troops on the ground thought, well, it would put them too much at risk if they lifted the arms embargo, and they felt that the obligation of the U.N. was to end suffering even if the price of ending suffering was destroying a nation that the United Nations itself had just recognized. So we had a big difference of opinion."

There still is a big difference of opinion, but now the other way has been tried, and the suffering continues. Bosnians are dying because they refuse to acquiesce in the death of their nation, founded on the principle that within a population that is 44 percent Muslim, 31 percent Serb and 17 percent Croat, with extensive intermarriage, people can live peacefully together with equal rights for all. It's the principle upon which the U.S. was founded, and whether it's called "democracy," "human rights" or multiculturalism, it's what the United States represents in the world.

If Warren Christopher remains teeing mode" on his next visit to discuss Bosnia with America's NATO allies, it means he is, in fact, incompetent. It's time, instead, for the U.S. to lead. If Britain or France vetoes a lifting of the outrageous U.N. blockade, then at least U.S. forces should no longer participate in enforcing it. In that case world public opinion will support the U.S., and needed arms will reach the Bosnians.

It's time, too, if shells continue to rain down on civilians in Sarajevo and the other Bosnian enclaves, for U.S. aircraft to target the international outlaws who are doing the shelling, their tanks and armored vehicles blocking passage of relief supplies, and the bridges between Serbia and Bosnia over which ammunition, fuel and food reach the besiegers.

If this puts the U.N. peacekeepers in danger, then it's time for them to leave in order to free the Bosnians to defend themselves. It's also time for Bill Clinton to stop referring to "grave errors" by "the United Nations" when he really means obstruction by Britain and France. In short, in Bosnia it's time for Clinton to be Clinton.

At the least, the U. S. can level the playing field. More likely, however, by applying the right lessons from Somalia, the U.S. will halt the fighting that otherwise will continue to spread, like a brushfire, through the Balkans and beyond.

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