From: wmuhanna@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Waleed A Muhanna)
Subject: Re: Kosovo: The Next Battle Front in the Balkan
Organization: The Ohio State University
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 1992 22:17:17 GMT

In article <1992Sep27.183512.20135@samba.oit.unc.edu> Bruce.Scott@bbs.oit.unc.edu (Bruce Scott) writes:
>Kutluk writes:
>
>"[...]Such serious is the West's commitment to the survival of Bosnians."
>
>You shouldn't interpret this as lack of concern.

Perhaps you care to tell us how it should be interpreted.

>But please do tell me
>why countries such as the US or Germany should order their boys into
>life-risking situations which neither they or their countries caused.

Recent reports (see items below) reveal horrendous episodes unseen 
since the Nazi era: concentration camps, mass murder, and crematoria.
Do you think that this provides enough justification?

The US and NATO are the ones who have the military assets and capability
to put an end to this mass slaughter.   Where is the UN Security council?
Why hasn't the use of force been authorized?  Why hasn't a multi-national 
force been organized?  Why is this aggression allowed to stand?  Why is 
the genocide in B-H allowed to continue?  Do you think if the people being 
victimized were Christians or Jews instead of Muslims, that the reaction 
would have been a bit different perhaps?

How is it possible to square the hand wringing, spinlessness,
and shameless abdication of responsibility by western powers in 
the face of unbridled genocide, on the one hand, with the gung-ho 
west and the all out war in reaction to Iraq's occupation of Kuwait?
I guess the difference simply boils down to one thing: OIL.   
Not aggression, not human lives.

>Hey, where is all this rhetoric anymore about the evil US trying to be
>the world's policeman?

As someone mentioned here before, the only people who come out of this 
tragedy looking like the real hypocritical shits many of us have long 
suspected them of being, are the self-righteous, oh-so-pious, holier-
than-thou governments, leaders, and some individuals of what is called
the civilized world.


	LOS ANGELES (UPI) -- Serbian nationalists systematically massacred
about 3,000 Muslims in two Bosnian detention camps, secretly cremating
and disposing of the bodies in a rendering plant, the Los Angeles Times
reported Sunday.
	The newspaper said the State Department now deems credible eyewitness
reports of the mass killings last May, according to senior U.S.
officials.
	``This could have been happening in other places too,'' one State
Department official said, although he doubted that such killings were
taking place today ``given the exposure that has taken place since
August.''
	The State Department reports, obtained by American diplomats,
generally confirm and amplify eyewitness accounts of the killings
published last August in New York Newsday.
	Officials said the State Departement last week obtained graphic,
first-person accounts of the killings at two Serbian detentian camps
operated at a brick factory and a pig farm near the Bosnian town of
Brcko, about 75 miles north of Sarajevo.
	The Brcko killings were carried out under the direction of an
ultranationalist Serb leader known as Vojislav Seselj and one who goes
by the single name Arkan.
	Based on the reports, a senior State Department official told the
Times, acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger urged the United
Nations last week to establish a commission to investigate the war
crimes in Bosnia.
	A State Department official said American diplomats interviewed a
number of former prisoners of the camps at Brcko.
	``Many people were killed, in groups of up to 50 at a time,'' the
State Department official said. ``A total of about 3,000 people -- men,
women and children -- were killed in the camps at Brcko.''
	The official said at least some of the prisoners were beaten and
tortured before they were killed.
	One of the former prisoners at the camp told U.S. diplomats that ``he
several times had to transfer dead people to an animal rendering plant,
where they secretly cremated bodies at night to evade detection,'' the
senior State Department official said.
	The two worst detention camps were reported to be a brick factory and
a pig farm in the Brcko area.
	After the reports last August, Serbian officials in Bosnia denied any
wrongdoing and escorted Western reporters on a tour of Brcko, insisting
there were no detention camps in or near the city.
	But some Serbian officials later acknowledged that thousands of
prisoners were shuttled from one place in Bosnia to another in an effort
to prevent Western human rights officials and journalists from finding
the camps.



	SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Hercegovina (UPI) -- Peace envoys Cyrus Vance and
Lord David Owen said Saturday that witnesses had painted a ``shattering
picture'' of so-called ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces in the ex-
Yugoslav republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina.
	Meanwhile, sporadic shelling around the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo
Saturday morning followed a night of fierce clashes across the republic
which left 54 people dead and 285 wounded, Health Ministry officials
said.
	In Sarajevo alone, at least 21 people were killed and 104 wounded in
a 24-hour period ending at 1 p.m. Saturday, the ministry said.
	Owen and Vance, co-chairmen of an ongoing Yugoslav peace conference,
visited the Serbian-held town of Banja Luka Friday in response to U.N.
reports of rising ethnic tensions in the city. The men later left the
region via Croatia, another former Yugoslav republic.
	``We were very troubled by what we saw in Banja Luka,'' Owen told
reporters at the airport in the Croatian capital Zagreb before leaving
for Geneva, Switzerland. ``We heard concrete evidence of ethnic
cleansing.''
	During their visit, Owen and Vance met with Catholic, Muslim and
Serbian religious leaders who confirmed people were leaving en masse
last week from the towns of Bosanski Petrovac and Kljuc, about 25 miles
west of Banja Luka in northwestern Bosnia-Hercegovina.
	Owen added the reports were later independently confirmed by other
witnesses.
	He said several witnesses confirmed accounts of an incident in
Travnik in central Bosnia where 3,000-4,000 people attempted to cross
through the front lines to safety.
	``We are only just seeing the full story and it's a shattering one,''
Owen said.
	Owen and Vance went to Banja Luka after U.N. officials reported 
``nasty harassment'' of non-Serbs by Serbian irregulars had escalated
there.
	According to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees spokesman Michael
Keats, non-Serbs in Banja Luka were losing their jobs and being arrested
for no reason. Owen and Vance said they saw evidence of harassment by
Muslims and Croats as well, but on a much smaller scale.
	U.N. officials estimate thousands of refugees have been forced to
leave their homes by Serb militia since the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina
began in April, when Serbian forces launched an attack to pre-empt
international recognition of the former Yugoslav republic.
	In an effort to carve a Serbian state from the republic and join it
to a truncated Yugoslavia made up of Serbia and Montenegro, Serbian
guerrillas have captured about 70 percent of the republic's territory.
	Bosnian forces opposing the Serbs are mostly comprised of Muslim
Slavs with a smaller number of Croats and moderate Serbs.
	In Banja Luka before the war, approximately 68,000 Muslims and Croats
coexisted with the Serb majority in the city of 195,000. Recent
estimates now put the number of Muslims and Croats at between 30,000 and
40,000.
	Owen said while the situation in Banja Luka was ``tense,'' he was
optimistic the situation would not get out of control.
	In Sarajevo, heavy overnight fighting eased by Saturday morning, with
Sarajevo police reporting relative calm in the predominantly Muslim Slav
city under a Serbian siege for six months.
	``There was intermittent shelling coming from Serbian positions and
Serbian snipers continued their activities,'' a Sarajevo police
spokesman said.
	Government-run Sarajevo radio accused Serbian forces of using jet
fighters to support infantry assaults on the Muslim Slav-held towns of
Jajce, Maglaj. Gradacac, Doboj and Tuzla.
	The radio said Serbian forces stepped up the number of combat flights
from Banja Luka, which is major military base of the Serb-led Yugoslav
army.
	It said Serbian jet fighters rocketed and and bombarded with cluster
bombs the central Bosnian town of Jajce, 80 miles northwest of Sarajevo.
The town of Maglaj, about 50 miles southwest of Banja Luka, came under
fire from jetfighters at about 7 a.m. as well as from tank, howitzer and
mortar rounds.
	Sarajevo radio reported heavy clashes in the northern town of
Gradacac but gave no details of the fighting.
	The combat flights flew from their base in Banja Luka just one day
after Vance and Owen were in the city.
	Meanwhile, Sarajevo, Jajce, Gradacac, and Maglaj were running short
of medical supplies, food as well as electricity and fresh drinking
water, the radio said.
	An international humanitarian airlift to Sarajevo has been suspended
since Sept. 3, when an Italian cargo plane was shot down over Bosnia-
Hercegovina.
	Both Owen and Vance said they would urge nations participating in the
now scaled down humanitarian airlift to Sarajevo to resume flights as
soon as possible.
	The U.N. Protection Force has been flying in two test flights a day,
down from the dozens of aid flights to the besieged city earlier this
month.
	``With winter coming on, it is simply vital we get people flying the
airlift again,'' Vance said.
	Vance and Owen said they had confirmation of a bomb attack on the
road from Split to Dubrovnik in southern Croatia which they said was
designed to delay humanitarian aid convoys destined for Bosnia-
Hercegovina.
	Owen said the attack ``could have little other purpose than to delay
the humanitarian aid process.
	``We are facing a very large deterioration in the humanitarian
situation and we will both take it up to the highest level in the hope
that we can sort this matter and get something done about it,'' he said.

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