From: de2j@poe.acc
Subject: Toronto Sun
Organization: UVa
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 13:08:01 GMT

The Toronto Sun, Thursday, October 1, 1992

Bosnia thrown to the wolves

By Eric Margolis

Washington - If winter isn't too harsh, this year in the rugged Balkan
mountains, says a recent CIA report, only 147,000 Bosnian refugees
will die from cold, disease and exposure.  That's the good news.
   The bad news: If an unusually rough winter comes, as predicted, the
CIA warned the White House up to 400,000 Bosnian Muslim refugees may
die.  But neither the Bush administration nor Western Europe seems to
be paying the least heed to these terrible predictions.  The agony of
Bosnia has become back page news.
   The western democracies have shamefully turned a blind eye to the
genocide in ex-Yugoslavia.  Talk and more talk, along with a trickle
of relief supplies, is all the West is prepared to offer.  Meanwhile,
Serbian forces continue their relentless "ethnic cleansing" behind a
smoke screen of phoney peace negotiations.  By latest estimates,
40,000 - 50,000 civilians have been killed and two million displaced
by the fighting in ex-Yugoslavia.
   Bosnia, though in the heard of Eastern Europe, has been relegated
to the status of Third World permanent disaster area, like Somalia or
Sudan - remote places whose people are routinely expected to starve or
slaughter one another.  Too bad, shrugs the West, which rushed 670,000
troops all the way to the Gulf to save the disco-dancing oil sheiks of
Kuwait, there's nothing we can do about Bosnia.
   Listening to such stomach-churning hypocrisy, one can't but wonder
if the U.S. and its European allies are now tacitly supporting
Serbia's campaign to exterminate the independent state of Bosnia and
its Muslim majority.  Why?  Because the West, under prodding from
Serbia and a powerful pro-Serb faction in the Bush administration, may
have swallowed the ridiculous claim that tiny Bosnia represents an
Islamic menace to Europe.
  Serbian propagandists have been busy spreading the canard that a
vast Islamic fundamentalist conspiracy threatens the Balkans.  They
say Bosnia's Muslims, backed by Turkey and Iran, are about to join
co-religionists in Kosova and Albania to create an Islamic state in
Eastern Europe.  This is arrant nonsense, but lots of credulous people
in Europe and the U.S. believe it.
   Feeble, sporadic efforts by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran to get some
weapons and supplies through to the beleaguered Bosnians - who are
under and outrageously unfair western arms embargo - are being held up
as proof of the Islamic conspiracy.  The Pentagon, eager to find new
enemies, has jumped at this crazy notion.
  Just whispering the word "Iran" here in Washington sets off alarm
bells, making generals and defence contractors slaver with war hunger.
   At the same time, Orthodox Serbian churchmen have been shipping
their flocks into murderous zeal by dire warnings of a purported
Islamic plan, backed by the Vatican, to destroy Orthodoxy.  As a
result, the war in ex-Yugoslavia is increasingly becoming a savage,
medieval religious conflict between Muslims and Catholics on one hand,
and Orthodox Serbs on the other.
   Ironically, this campaign of lies may end up producing a backlash of
Islamic extremism where none now exists.  And if Serbian forces keep
on slaughtering Muslims, driving them to fight, or penning them into
concentration camps, eventually Turkey or even Iran will reluctantly
get involved.
  Meanwhile, Serbia need only maintain its siege of Muslim towns and
continue discreet ethnic cleansing out of sight of the international
news media.  General winter will then sweep in across the Balkan
mountains to finish the job.  Why should the Serbs even waste
expensive shells on Bosnians when their allies, cold and snow, will
kill refugees, who have no heat or food, just as effectively.  Stalin,
that always-thrifty mass murdered, would have applauded.  One way or
another, Bosnia's Muslims face genocide.
   Albanians in Serbian-ruled Kosova are next.
   The West, having salved its conscience by sending packets of
do-nothing "peacekeepers" and morsels of food to Bosnia, observes
Serbia final solution with polite unconcern.  The Muslims are
potential troublemakers who really shouldn't be there in the first
place.  Don't call us until they're all dead or gone.

Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia