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Date:         Thu, 10 Sep 1992 09:23:19 -0500
From:         "VALENTINE M. SMITH" <CDELL@UMKCVAX1.BITNET>
Subject:      "On Bosnia, Another Set of Thoughts" (#769)
Comments: To: val-l@ucf1vm.BITNET, jwales@iubvm.BITNET, olsenj@stolaf.edu,
              shlyakhter@huhepl.harvard.edu, kousen@rayleigh.res.utc.com,
              christic@igc.org, blank@physics.ucla.edu,
              76701.103@compuserve.com, anthlal@umnacvx.BITNET

On Bosnia, Another Set of Thoughts

Yesterday, two Frenchman in a UN escort team were killed by "hostile
fire" in the vicinity of Sarajevo, inspiring the French government to
call the incident an "act of war," and demanding that the killers be
punished. Last night, US Acting Secretary of State Eagleburger
claimed that the killings had probably been done by Bosnian Muslim
forces, blaming other than the Serbs for a change.

Today, NPR reports that fighting has resumed in the apparently doomed
city of Sarajevo, where now a week has gone by without relief
flights, thereby tightening the noose around an already beleaguered
city and its roughly 350,000 people. The Bosnians have now been
formally condemned by the UN Security Council. Lord Owen and Special
Envoy Cyrus Vance are in Sarajevo, and either will go on to Zagreb,
or to Belgrade. The two are supposed to meet with "Yugoslav" leaders
while in-country, though it is totally unclear what they can
accomplish given the general intransigence of ALL the sides.

Today is the last day before the UN-imposed "deadline" on the
bringing of heavy weapons under UN supervision comes into play. The
Bosnians claim that the Serbs are hiding their heavy artillery, no
reports on whether Bosnian artillery is included in the Un
supervision plan. Also remaining "hidden" is what the UN plans to do
about non-compliance.

Sarajevo is in desperate straits. Very short on food, devoid of
running water, no electricity, typhus cases now being reported, total
lack of medicines or decent mdical care, hundreds of wounded people
getting crappy care, and the Serb stranglehold on the city would not
appear to have abated at all.

I heard yesterday that the largely ineffectual CSCE is sending
observers to Kosovo and Macedonia in hopes of "forestalling" possible
Serb actions in these areas, though none have yet occurred. There are
no such observers in the fighting areas.

Bosnia is where some REAL resolution has to occur - a decisive
resolution of that fighting and that attempted land grab or partition
(I've heard it called both) would go a long way, it would seem, to
heading off Serb behaviors of a similar nature in Kosovo or
Macedonia. It would seem that if military action occurred in either
place, that the charge of aggression now being levied against the
Serbs would have even more veracity in the minds of many.

UN Secretary General Boutros-Gahli is to ask for an expansion of the
peace-keeping role of the UN in Bosnia later today. Does that engage
France or Germany with force on the ground? Will that mean US air
action? Will such a move expand the fighting? It seems clear to me
that no party involved in the "war" is interested in peace at all,
only engaging in jostling and fighting for advantage for their
"side." Again I say that unless Karadzic, Izetbegovic, Tudjman, and
Milosevic are willing to agree to restored borders, recognition of
sovereignty, withdrawal of hostile forces, repatriation of detainees,
return to their homes for all refugees, and cessation of the fighting
that no peace is possible, nor apparently wanted.

Peace is only possible if all that could do something do, and those
who have interests are willing to negotiate rather than fight. One
suspects the fighting, and the dying, will continue. Are we to watch
the death of Sarajevo, and all those trapped there? What will THAT
say about the use of the UN, and the effacy of modern peacekeeping?
The process has failed, and more must be done. The "Big Five" needs
to convene a conference in Europe, and summon all these leaders to
it, and demand genuine negotiation and a real cessation of the
fighting. Winter is coming, and so might soon come the "death" of
Sarajevo. What a waste if that death comes, because it could have
been stopped. But it appears that the world does not care - whether
it be the immoral trash-dumping by Europeans in Somalia, the bitter
fratricide in "Yugoslavia," the deterioration of Albania, Tajikistan
and other wobbly regimes just getting off the ground, or the
murderous clan and tribal fighting between factions in South Africa.
We live in a time of indifference, are we ready for the consequences?
I think we do not understand what to do, and the world's faltering
and fumbling towards solutions amazingly scanty considering how
sophisticated we are as a species in some ways. The bill for all this
inaction is coming due, are Earth's peoples ready to pay it? VMS
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