Comment by Michael Karadjis
Two million Bosnians have been driven from their homes, and hundreds of thousands are dead. Ninety per cent of Bosnia is under occupation by militias sponsored by Serbia and Croatia which openly aim to split the republic between them. Yet the western powers continue an arms blockade against the Bosnian government.
Western governments are still pushing various apartheid schemes to split the republic on ethnic lines. Following the collapse of the Vance-Owen plan to split Bosnia into ethnic cantons, the western powers concluded that even more extravagantly pro-
Serbian schemes were necessary.
The first was the idea to allow the Serbian and Croatian chauvinist militias to keep all the land they had conquered, while Bosnia's Muslims, around half the population, would gain UN "protection" in "safe havens" in a number of isolated, bombed out, besieged, overcrowded cities.
These "safe havens" then underwent weeks of further siege, bombardment and strangulation by Serbian Chetniks while the UN sat and watched.
The de facto alliance between the Serbian and Croatian militias came out into the open, with a western-backed initiative by these forces in mid June to split Bosnia into three ethnic states.
Bosnian President Izetbegovic refused to attend a partition conference in Geneva organised by Serbia, Croatia, their local thugs in Bosnia and the European Community. Chief negotiator Lord Owen and other European leaders pressured the Bosnian government to "accept reality" and agree to the partition of the country.
Bosnia's various communities are scattered in every part of the republic. The Bosnian government is completely correct to claim that the borders of such ethnic states would be "drawn in blood" and that ethnic cleansing would be stepped up.
Sarajevo professor Naza Tanovich-Miller wrote in a recent letter to US President Clinton: "Divide what Mr President? Divide houses and apartment buildings, divide streets and villages, divide towns and cities, divide homes and bedrooms? By the 1990 census 25% of Bosnian marriages are mixed, i.e. 1.2 million people are families of mixed faiths. Where should they live Mr President?"
According to Ilhana Nurkic from the Australian Bosnian and Herzegovinan Community Association, even the talk of three states is a farce. She points out that Serbian and Croatian nationalists have launched joint operations and captured a number of towns in the very heart of Bosnia, such as Zepce and Maglaj, which were never in any Serbian or Croatian zone on any of the partition maps.
US and Europe
Two years ago, the UN Security Council banned arms sales to all sides in the Yugoslav conflict. This affected everyone except Serbia, which produces its own weapons. Factories in Serbia and Serbian-occupied Bosnia are still pumping out arms and ammunition.
When Germany, which has a special economic relationship with Croatia and Slovenia, broke US-
European ranks and recognised these two republics, the US was opposed, seeing a strong Serbia as a counterweight to German-influenced Croatia.
Britain and France were also wary of German ambitions. Hence it is hardly surprising that these two governments have maintained the most steadfastly pro-
Serbian policy. An indication of the rivalry was a major article in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine early this year, which revealed that before the war in Bosnia began, "Great Britain and France had notified Serbia that they would not intervene".
Meanwhile, a number of well-publicised "secret" meetings between the Serbian and Croatian governments and their militias in Bosnia produced a deal to partition Bosnia between them. While this did not have explicit European approval, it was in the same spirit as the European insistence that Bosnia be divided into ethnic cantons.
This inter-European dealing was increasingly leaving the US out of the picture. A further blow occurred with the announcement by Germany and France of plans for a 35,000 strong "Eurocorps", a European army independent of NATO. A change in the US position, with a new anti-Serbian rhetoric, began straight after this announcement.
US policy then underwent about a dozen policy shifts — as one European UN diplomat put it, "US policy on Bosnia consists of a perpetual policy review."
Before coming to power, Clinton criticised Bush for not taking action on Bosnia, and then proceeded to take an even softer approach for several months. Suddenly in April, he again upped the rhetoric, pushing for air strikes and, for the first time, the lifting of the arms blockade against the Bosnian government. Both were opposed by the European states, who were trying to push through the Vance-Owen plan.
Since when, however, does the US need European permission to do anything?
Arms blockade
The arms blockade, preventing the besieged victims from defending their own cities, has been the most consistent form of US-European intervention in the Yugoslav conflict for the last two years.
According to Ilhana Nurkic, Bosnia could easily raise an army of 200,000, the only problem being lack of weapons. Discouraging any influx of volunteer fighters from the Islamic world, Miles Ragnz, an adviser to Bosnia's UN mission, declared, "We certainly don't want any foreign force to come into our country and fight, because we are ready to fight for ourselves. In Sarajevo alone we have 200,000 ready and able men and only 3000 rifles."
By contrast, according to Ian Traynor in the Guardian, "the Bosnian Serb army is about 70,000 strong, with 300 tanks, 180 armoured vehicles and up to 40 combat aircraft and helicopters. It has a vast array of heavy artillery and weapons ... If it runs short, there are abundant supplies in Serbia." As for the Bosnian Croat militia, Traynor
estimates they have "some 50,000 troops, amply supplied with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons, a few dozen tanks, at least two aircraft, and some heavy guns. Zagreb keeps the Bosnian Croat forces well-
stocked with modern machine guns and ammunition."
Even these figures for the sizes of the nationalist militias include large numbers of fighters from Serbia and Croatia. If Bosnia's borders with Serbia and Croatia were sealed, and the arms blockade on Bosnia were lifted, it would easily be able to deal with the nationalist militias.
For the big media, there is no Bosnian government, merely "Muslim forces" and a "Muslim-led government." Yet according to Nurkic, Serbs still make up 17% of the Bosnian army, and estimates range up to 30% (and 15% Croats).
As Nurkic points out, it is hard to make such estimates because most people call themselves Bosnian, whether their religion is Orthodox, Catholic, Muslim or whatever.
Right-wing militias
Likewise, the forces fighting against the Bosnian government are not merely "Serbs" and "Croats" but rather militias based on extreme right-wing political parties. The Serbian Democratic Party, whose fighters call themselves Chetniks after the fascist forces who fought against the partisans in World war II, is the main force responsible for the genocide in Bosnia. Its constant shelling of Sarajevo and other cities kills Serbs as well as Muslims and Croats.
In Serbia itself, young people are no more interested in fighting for the Chetniks than are most of the Bosnian Serbs. Despite the atmosphere of repression and hysteria, only 24% of young men obeyed conscription orders in 1992 — only 12% in Belgrade.
The policies of the Croatian Democratic Forum (HVO), linked to the Tudjman regime in Croatia, in joining the Chetniks to carve up Bosnia, are a stab in the back of the thousands of Croats ethnically cleansed by the Chetniks — but then the HVO has been
responsible for similar cleansing against both Serbs and Muslims.
After declaring its own "state" in Bosnia last year, the HVO rapidly moved to ethnically cleanse Muslims in western Hercegovina and central Bosnia, as it tried to wrest control of these regions from the Bosnian army. Three thousand Muslims were expelled from the town of Prozor. A more concerted wave of HVO ethnic cleansing was launched in early May, with thousands of Muslims being expelled from Mostar and Novi Travnik.
While the Bosnian government has rejected all attempts to split Bosnia along ethnic lines, it is hardly surprising that some Muslim-dominated Â鶹´«Ã½ of the army have sometimes responded with their own ethnic cleansing. Aside from the desire for revenge, thousands of Muslim refugees have created a pressure to gain as much territory as possible before any "peace" is imposed over their heads.
In response to HVO ethnic cleansing, a unit of the Bosnian army recently launched an ethnic cleansing operation against Croatian villages around Travnik in central Bosnia, leaving many dead and forcing thousands to flee. While this gained prominent coverage, Nurkic reports that Bosnian President Izetbegovic called on the army to punish those responsible for any attacks on Croats, and called on the villagers to return. None of this was reported in the media.
Professor Naza Tanovich-Miller lays the blame for the situation squarely where it belongs: "By not lifting the arms embargo and by supporting apartheid [the plans to split Bosnia ethnically] ... by calling all sides equally guilty, [the western governments'] guilt is as great as the aggressor's."