THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES (74 page)

In September the European Community sponsored a peace conference at The Hague. Lord Carrington was appointed by the European Union (as the E.C. became in November 1993), and in October he began efforts at mediation. This greatly respected figure saw the conflict as a reprise of the World War II Serb-Croat fighting. Both sides were equally culpable, and the trick was to contain the bloodshed through partition. That same month, Britain suggested to Serbia that it seek an arms embargo covering all the states of Yugoslavia. Perhaps it was thought in London that by this means any illusions about breaking away from Yugoslavia would be stilled in Bosnia, or at least that the parties would quickly come to terms with Serbia because without arms it would be futile to oppose the well-equipped JNA. In any event, in September the United Nations Security Council duly imposed an arms embargo against all the states of the former Yugoslavia.

In January 1992 the U.N. envoy Cyrus Vance achieved a negotiated cease-fire, and U.N. peacekeepers were stationed in Croatia to monitor compliance with the agreement. In accordance with the U.N. cease-fire, the JNA withdrew from Croatia. It proceeded to turn over its weapons
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to the Bosnian Serbs, and Serbian/JNA heavy artillery took up positions around the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo. The former states of Yugoslavia now braced for the third Yugoslav war—in Bosnia, where the Serbs now had a
monopoly on heavy and advanced weaponry, while the Bosnian government was constrained from obtaining arms by the international embargo.

Near the end of the previous year, Bosnia had been forced to confront the possibility that it would have to withdraw from the Yugoslav federation. The Bosnian president, the former anti-Communist dissident Izetbe-govic, had traveled to Ljubljana and Zagreb on countless missions desperately trying to get the Slovenes and Croats to stay in the federation. The last thing the Bosnian leadership wanted was to face new independent states in Serbia and Croatia that could carry their war into Bosnia in order to incorporate areas with substantial Croat and Serb populations. The multicultural state of Bosnia could only survive within the umbrella of the Yugoslav federation. Milosevic, however, had methodically destroyed this option. The Hague peace conference had given an offer of E.C. recognition to any republic that met certain criteria for statehood; when Croatia and Slovenia prepared for independence, the Bosnians realized they could not remain in a federation virtually alone with Milosevic. Bosnia could not risk becoming the Kosovo or Vojvodina of the 1990s.

In January 1992 the E.C., after considerable debate and over Carrington's objections, recognized Croatian and Slovenian independence. The E.C. deferred action on Bosnia pending a referendum. Bosnia then held a referendum on independence in March. In an election boycotted by the Bosnian Serbs, 65 percent voted for statehood.

By April, there were reports of widespread shootings and bombings in Banja Luka and Mostar by Serb irregulars.
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The JNA announced it was necessary to intervene in Bosnia to protect Serbs. In the first six weeks of the Bosnian war that ensued, Serb forces, using the JNA command structure and weapons, seized about 60 percent of Bosnia. Bosnian Croats took another 15 percent. The Bosnian army itself was without JNA weapons and, in an absurd gesture aimed at reducing tensions, had voluntarily given up its territorial arms.

On April 27, Milosevic declared a new Yugoslav state composed of Serbia and Montenegro. On May 22, Bosnia was admitted to the U.N. as a member state along with Yugoslavia, Slovenia, and Croatia. Milosevic declared that all federal troops had been withdrawn from Bosnia; in June a report of the Secretary General of the U.N. also claimed that there were no Serbian soldiers in Bosnia. While this may have been formally true—JNA soldiers were “released” to join the Bosnian Serb army—it was not the reality. Indeed as James Gow noted:

In 1992, the Bosnian Serbs set up a gulag of prison camps and detention facilities holding tens of thousands of Muslims and Croats. International investigators were denied access, though escapees described atrocities that they claimed were perpetrated in these camps. In the summer of 1992, an intrepid
Newsday
reporter penetrated one of the Serbian concentration camps, verifying these claims and exposing horrors that Europe had not seen since 1945. These exposés prompted Governor Bill Clinton to say on August 5, during his campaign for the presidency, “If the horrors of the Holocaust taught us anything, it is the high cost of remaining silent and paralyzed in the face of ethnic cleansing.” The next day, asked what he proposed, he stated, “We cannot afford to ignore what appears to be a deliberate and systematic extermination of human beings based on their ethnic origin; I would start with air power against the Serbs.”
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In response to mounting public outcry, the United Nations Security Council voted to send U.N. peacekeepers to Bosnia. Although it was estimated that 35,000 troops would be required for this mission, less than 7,000 were sent, largely drawn from British, French, Canadian, and Dutch forces. The arrival of U.N. troops was greeted with euphoria in Bosnia. Serb forces halted their attacks for a time in order to determine what effect the U.N. presence in Bosnia would have. These forces proved, along with the U.N. arms embargo, to be a fatal addition to the Bosnian equation. Now the Europeans—particularly the British—would be able to veto any actions against the Serbs on the grounds that U.N. or NATO armed action exposed their peacekeepers to reprisals.

In October 1992 Cyrus Vance, representing the U.N., and David Owen, who had replaced Lord Carrington for the E.C., proposed a new peace-keeping plan. It effectively recognized the ground gains by the Serbian forces and carved up Bosnia into various enclaves. The U.S. ceased supporting the no-fly zone which the British in December had argued against enforcing in any case—and which, though adopted by the Security Council in October 1992, would not actually be enforced until April 1993 by NATO—and began looking to the Vance-Owen Plan as offering a way out. Milosevic urged the Bosnian Serbs to accept the Vance-Owen Plan, and the United States strongly advised the Bosnian Muslims to agree, despite some misgivings over the Plan's apparent validation of Serbian territorial aggression.

In February 1993 the new American secretary of state, Warren Christopher, said that the “full weight of American diplomacy [would be brought] to bear” to win acceptance of the Vance-Owen peace plan that left the Bosnians only a fraction of their national territory. When the Bosnians were eventually coerced by the Americans into agreeing to the plan, the
Bosnian Serbs rejected it. The Serbs saw no reason to give up any of their gains. Indeed, now the killing began in earnest as Serbs tried to garner new territory that might be converted at the diplomatic table into legitimate possession by another international peace plan. A new term had entered the world's lexicon: “ethnic cleansing.” This phrase was applied to the Serbian strategy of terrorizing the countryside in order to drive Muslims into surrounded and shelled cities. In this they were inadvertently encouraged by the United States, which had pressed for acceptance of a plan that ratified Serbian ground gains.

In May 1993, Christopher began referring to the conflict as a Yugoslav civil war, despite the fact that Bosnia had been a member of the U.N. for more than a year by that time. The U.S., downplaying allegations of Serbian atrocities, now said that all parties shared responsibility for human rights violations. The
New York Times
noted in April 1993 that the Clinton administration had “begun to talk about Bosnia differently, to cast the problem there less as a moral tragedy which would make American inaction immoral—and more as a tribal feud that no outsider could hope to settle.” The president explained the difficulty of getting agreement on a peace plan by observing that “I would think these fights between the Serbs and the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats go back so many centuries, they have such powerful roots that it may be that it's more difficult for the people to make a change than for their leaders.”

In May the Contact Group—formed by the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Russia—proposed a plan of safe areas into which the fleeing Muslims could go for protection, and in June the Security Council agreed to secure these areas by “all necessary measures,” including military force. The six “safe areas” announced by the U.N. Security Council were Sarajevo, Zepa, Bihac, Srebrenica, Tuzla, and Gorazde. Phillippe Morillon, the U.N. commander, negotiated an accord by which the Muslim defenders of Srebrenica handed over their weapons. He proclaimed that “an attack on Srebrenica now would be an attack on the whole world” and stated, “I will never leave you.” For a brief period, attacks on Srebrenica, swollen with refugees driven into the town by Serb offensives in the countryside, halted. But on May 14, 1993, President Clinton stated that “[o]ur interest is in seeing, in my view at least, that the U.N. does not foreordain the outcome of a civil war,” and Morillon withdrew to Sarajevo, where he was removed by the U.N. secretary-general, and was ultimately replaced by the more tractable British general, Michael Rose.

These events had the effect of encouraging the Serb forces in Bosnia to step up the violence and press their claims more aggressively, which puzzled and bewildered the rest of the world, including the United States. Although the Serbs seemed so unreasonable, in fact they were simply responding to the incentives offered by peace plans that recognized whatever
they could take on the ground. No one seemed to appreciate that such encouragement was precisely what at least one state, the United Kingdom, actually had in mind because it believed that further resistance by the Bosnians was doomed and that the sooner the war was over and Bosnia partitioned along lines that recognized the military realities, the better for all concerned. Only the Americans appeared to have clung to the illusion that the Serbs would come around to the Vance-Owen Plan, or something like it, because the international community was united in proposing it and because the Serbs would not wish to defy the great powers indefinitely.

In one day in July 1993, 3,777 artillery shells fell on Sarajevo, a U.N.designated “safe area” and part of the “heavy weapons exclusion zone” announced by the Contact Group.
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President Clinton, in Asia for an economic summit, was enraged and asked his national security advisor to submit a plan to break the siege. But the Pentagon plan that resulted called for 80,000 troops, and this was thought politically unsupportable; the president had hoped perhaps 10,000 would be enough, and he dropped the idea. Then on October 20, 1993, he announced that “the conflict in Bosnia is ultimately for the parties to resolve” and repeated this later, saying: “Until these folks get tired of killing each other… bad things will continue to happen.”

On February 4, 1994, a mortar attack on a Sarajevo market killed sixty-eight and injured another two hundred. Again public opinion was outraged by events—Sarajevo had been under siege for almost two years at this point—and again a weapons exclusion zone around Sarajevo was proclaimed. A small number of NATO air strikes occurred, and the Serbs actually turned over heavy weapons within the zone. For a period, the daily bombardment of Sarajevo ceased. Citizens of the besieged town could walk rather than run across streets raked by sniper fire. The Serbs regrouped to determine how to continue their siege without their heavy weapons. But the U.N. troops, lightly armed and dispersed, were effectively captives of the Serbs, and the U.N. commander, General Rose, could not bring himself to call on NATO for further support that might risk retaliation against his troops. U.S. proposals for the use of force against the Serbs were repeatedly vetoed by the U.N. Political Counselor, who reported to the U.N. Secretary-General, and the weapons turned over during this period were later simply reclaimed by the Serbs. In April, only two months later, Rose sent troops to Gorazde, one of the six safe areas, but was compelled to allow them to be disarmed by the Serbs. On April 23,
President Clinton demanded that the Serbs cease shelling Gorazde, stating that if this did not happen, NATO would conduct “massive air strikes,” including “strategic targets.”
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The Serbs appear to have learned not to credit such threats and replied by taking U.N. peacekeepers hostage; when this occurred, NATO action was canceled. In May, Tuzla, another safe area, was shelled, killing seventy in a single day. On May 3, 1994, the President stated, obviously disheartened, and unable despite repeated efforts to move his allies, “I did the best I could. I moved as quickly as I could. I think we have shown a good deal of resolve.”
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In the ensuing year, safe areas at Gorazde, Zepa, and Srebrenica were all isolated, bombarded, and put under siege, and a fourth safe area, Tuzla, was also again attacked. On June 5, 1995, an anguished president said, “It's tragic, it's terrible. But these enmities go back five hundred years. Do we have the capacity to impose a settlement on people who want to continue fighting? We cannot do that. So I believe we're doing the right thing.” Then on July 11, 1995, 400 Dutch peacekeepers watched as Srebrenica, one of the “safe areas,” was overrun and “sanitized” by occupying Serbs. Approximately 8,200 men and an undetermined number of women were trucked out by the Serbs and murdered, many within the hearing of the Dutch forces allegedly deployed to protect them. This left Sarajevo itself, Gorazde (which was now cut off from the outside), Bihac, and Zepa surrounded.

Finally in August of 1995 another mortar attack on the Sarajevo market galvanized public opinion. Seven shells fell within ten minutes, killing 37 persons and wounding 84. The next day U.N. peacekeepers deserted Gorazde, which ironically was a necessary step to true protection of the safe area. Rose's successor as commander, General Rupert Smith, asked for NATO air strikes, and following a two-week series of air and artillery strikes on Serb positions, the Serb campaign against Gorazde was halted and the siege of Sarajevo was finally lifted. Croatian forces entered the war in September and relieved the safe area at Bihac, driving about 100,000 civilian Serbs out of Croatia in a Croatian variant of ethnic cleansing. An agreement was forced upon the parties by the United States at an air force base in Dayton, Ohio. The agreement was subject to all the vagaries of hostilities in Bosnia and politics in the United States, but it soon became clear that the killing of Muslims had almost completely stopped as a result of the combined efforts of NATO Rapid Reaction Force shelling, the Croatian offensive, and U.S. air intervention. Despite some constitutional legerdemain on the part of U.S. negotiators, the country was effectively partitioned, owing to the unwillingness of the West to enforce the guarantees of the agreement that provide for repatriation of those systematically
driven from their homes. The hardest days, diplomatically, lay ahead over communities like Brcko that link disparate enclaves of Serbs, and complications arising from the U.S.-contrived Croatian-Muslim federation. The murder of Muslim civilians with JNA heavy weapons, however, had been stopped by air and artillery strikes that took only about fourteen days and incurred not a single American casualty.