From: rnewman@bbn.com (Ron Newman)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.croatia,soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: Aryeh Neier in _The Nation_, 2/8/93
Date: 28 Jan 1993 02:07:34 GMT
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN)
Distribution: world
NNTP-Posting-Host: spcsun25.bbn.com

[Note:  I'm not sure whether I agree with this article or not,
 but I think it should be of interest to all of you. 

 _The Nation_ is a weekly US political magazine; it is probably
 the most left-leaning of all nationally circulated US journals,
 and it's usually almost reflexively against US military 
 intervention of any kind.

 Aryeh Neier's ~Watching Rights" column appears periodically
 and covers human rights issues throughout the world.]

	"Watching Rights", by Aryeh Neier
         from _The Nation_, February 8, 1993

    Perhaps the most persuasive argument against sending US
military forces to Somalia is that the use of troops for
humanitarian purposes will legitimize armed intervention in
other circumstatnces where the purposes and effects are less
benign.  Without belittling it, I think this concern was out-
weighed by the urgency of alleviating the suffering in Somalia
and of preventing additional deaths from starvation.  Unfortunately,
there is similar urgency elsewhere.

    A brief visit to the besieged city of Sarajevo in early
January made clear to me the need to use military force to deliver
humanitarian relief to its citizens.  It was -16 degrees centigrade
when I arrived.  Virtually every building I saw had been damaged
by the shelling or was pockmarked by bullets;  harldy a pane of
glass was intact; there was no electricity, no heat, no running
water.   The last trees were being cut down for firewood, and
people foraging for food and water were required to carry what
they could find for miles through the snow- and ice-covered 
streets.  Indoors, it felt colder than it did outside.  UN food
deliveries were providing the 300,000 or so remaining residents
of the city with an average of 600 calories a day, less than 
a third of what is required in that climate.  In combination,
cold, hunger, and disease are threatening the survival of the
entire population.

    In Sarajevo the purpose of using military force is not only
to save the lives of an endangered population.  Sarajevans are
victims of the great crime of our time: ethnic cleansing.  Their
cosmopolitan city has long represented just the opposite: the
harmonious interchange of Muslims, Serbs, Croats, Jews, and those
of mixed heritage.  Hakija Turajlic, the Deputy Prime Minister
of Bosnia who was murdered by Serbian soldiers four days after I 
visited him in my office, told me that at least 35,000 Serbs have
remained in the city to share its hardships and dangers.  What
impressed me most about the city was the extraordinary dignity
with which its citizens continue to carry themselves.  It is too
late for Sarajevans to save most of the physical structures of
their city;  for many, it is too late to save their lives and
limbs.  What the survivors seem determined to preserve, however,
is what Sarajevo stands for.   I can imagine no argument 
against a humanitarian military intervention that could outweigh
the right of Sarajevans to live and to maintain their ideal.
.....

-- 
Ron Newman		rnewman@bbn.com
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