Subject: Why only Bosnia? - A. M. Rosenthal, N. Y. Times, 30/5/95
Topic: for-papers
From: Iason.Demos@hri.org
 
New York Times
Tuesday, May 30th, 1995
p. A17

WHY ONLY BOSNIA  ?
A. M. Rosenthal

     All over the word, rebel peoples are at war with their internationally
recognized governments. They die to destroy regimes they detest - or just
separate from them.
     But in only one country has the West gone to war to block anti-goverment
forces: in Bosnia, where Serbian Christians seek separation from a Government
they see as created and held by Serbian Muslims.
     Chechens by the thousands have been slaughtered by Russian Government
troops. In Iraq, Turkey, in Sri Lanka, the Sudan, Algeria, Kashmir, Mexico,
people in rebellion kill - and are killed by government forces. For a
half-century Arab Palestinians and Arabs have been at war to separate
Palestinians from Israel, or destroy it.
     In none of those cases did the U.N. use air bombardment to save the rebels
or the government they fought. Tibetans, occupied by Communist China decade
after decade, brutalized day after day, are not even allowed to set foot in
foreign ministries or the halls of the U.N.
     Why only Bosnia ? If that blaze is to be put out or even dampened, the
answers that face us must be acknowledged.
     Serbian Christians in what became the Yugoslav province of Bosnia and
Herzegovina regarded the area as their own ancestral home. So did Serbs of
Bosnia who had become Muslims centuries ago.
     When the Yugoslav federation began to break up in 1990, Serbian Christians
knew they would be a minority of one-third in a new Bosnian nation that they
feared.
     But Western Europeans, led by Germany, were searching for areas of
influence in the Yugoslav breakup - first Croatia and Slovenia, then Bosnia.
Europeans and the U.S. swiftly recognized the new Bosnia.
     Bosnian Christian Serbs fought, with military help from adjoining Serbia.
Muslims got active political backing of the West and later arms from Muslim
countries.
     Both sides sought and profited from aid. But the idea took hold in the
West that Serbian Christians of Bosnia were largely invaders.
     The war was unspeakably vicious. Serbian Christians outdid Serbian Muslims
in atrocity. Serbian Christian murders and ethnic cleansing were fully reported
by the U.N. and foreign correspondents. Muslim murders received less attention
than they deserved. Members of Western governments will acknowledge that, with
off-the-record nods.
     The Clinton Administration faltered and failed on Bosnia. But it did
accomplish one thing. It kept American forces out of the war.
     Late last year, however, Mr. Clinton gave in to pressure to show how tough
he was - by bombing the Serbs from the air. He was egged on by a strange
combination of laptop bombardiers - liberals and conservatives who did not want
a drop of American blood shed on Bosnian ground but were tippy-toe keen to kill
Bosnian Serbian Christians by air.
     We are told that Bosnia is a vital security matter for the West. If so, it
was not until the West intervened to create and preserve a new Bosnian
Government doomed in advance by the furious rejection of more than a third of
its people.
     The idea that the Serbian Christians would surrender under aerial
bombardment was as realistic as the hope the North Vietnamese would do the
same. The Christian Serbs of Bosnia answered the bombing by killing more Muslim
Serbs. They also made the obscene decision to take U.N. soldiers hostage.
     Against Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran the U.S. tried to rescue hostages by
sending in a stale chocolate cake. The British and French may not be so
delictae. Preident Clinton may have to send in troops to help them.
     he and Bosnian Serbs will then have one thing in common - the talent for
self-destruction.
     What to do now ? Recognize the truth of the disastrous Western
intervention. Free the hostages. Stop the bombing. Keep American troops out and
the embargo on - against all parties. Tell Bosnians to deal with their own
fate, asking for Western diplomatic help if they want it. They cannot so much
worse than the West has done for them and to them.
     The only alternative for the U.S. is to send in 100,000 troops or more,
and rule Bosnia for a limited time. That would be, oh, a half-century or so.