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The Bosnia situation – Race against time

A couple of years ago, the Bosnian Foreign Minister (now PM) Haris Siladgzic, requested the Pakistani Prime Minister that while they were very grateful for the money being given as aid, they would rather have arms so that they (the Bosnians) “could at least die with honour”. The Paris Peace Agreement provides for a NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) to oversee the fragile peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina, using force where necessary to do so. The Bosnian Muslims have a temporary reprieve at least for a year (the mandate period given to IFOR), one in which they can arm and train so as to be able to defend themselves. Given that the mandate is unlikely to be extended, it will be a race against time for the Muslims to be able to reach some level of credible deterrence.

The Peace Agreement amounts to swallowing “bitter medicine” (as per a direct quote of Bosnian President Izetbegovic) but it is a much-needed and welcome respite crafted for the Muslims by the US. The Accord essentially gives the Muslim-Croat Federation geographically 51% of the former territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Bosnian Serbs 49%. While American public opinion has been overwhelmingly supportive of the long suffering Muslim population at the hands of the Serbs (and periodically the Croats), it has been decidedly wary about putting the lives of US soldiers on the line to remedy the situation. In the words of South Carolina Republican Rep Bob Iglis, “the best way to support (US) troops is to keep them out of harm’s way”.

For the past three years, Bosnian Muslims have been waging an unequal battle in their fight for survival. While the world imposed a total blockade on arms to any side in the conflict, the Bosnian Serbs have been getting constant aid from their Serbian allies of former Yugoslavia, particularly tanks, heavy weapons, munitions and fuel. The Bosnian Muslims are mostly infantry with light arms interspersed with a few captured tanks and artillery pieces. The Bosnian Serbs were officered and manned for the most part by regular soldiers from the Serb Republic rotating “on leave”. Ratko Mladic, the Butcher of Bosnia and an indicted war criminal, is a serving Serb Army general sent by Milosevic. The fact that President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia signed the peace accord on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs should clear any doubts as to the direct involvement. As regards Croatia, having suffered sharp setbacks at the beginning of the conflict, Croatian President Tudjman was content to abandon considerable Croat territory to the Bosnian Serbs, confining himself to low-level material help to the Bosnian-Croats and grudging material support to the Bosnian Muslims while his army re-armed and trained, waiting for a better day to fight, at a time and place of their choosing.

The Muslims have been on the receiving end for most of the war, mainly from the Bosnian Serbs but occasionally by their Croat Allies, even being subjected to repeated aerial attacks in defiance of the no-fly ban supposedly enforced by the UN. To drive unrelenting terror into the hearts of the Muslim population, systematic loot and rape unheard of in recent European times have been indulged in by the Bosnian Serbs (and even the Croats) in addition to widespread arson and murder, the Serbs have revelled with sadistic pride and glee at their reputation. In the final analysis, “ethnic cleansing” of entire areas has been carried out, driving the remaining Muslim population out of their centuries – old havens into a few confined so-called “safe” areas. A pre-dominant number of the dead have been Muslims, an inordinate majority of the rape victims have been Muslim women. US Satellite photos have revealed mass graves of Muslims who were held by the Bosnian Serbs after the fall of Serbrenica, their summary execution ostensibly ordered by Serb Gen Ratko Mladic, and Radovan Karadzic, the self-styled President of the rebel Bosnian Serbs with HQs at Pale.

Hardly had the horror of Serbrenica fully sunk in, when the Bosnian Serbs carried out another devastating mortar attack on Sarajevo. Finally losing their patience, NATO gave a warning through the UN to the Bosnian Serbs to pull back their heavy weapons to a safe distance from the urban population. Used to such empty threats in the past, the Bosnian Serbs virtually laughed in NATO faces as they replied with more shelling. Armed with the UN go-ahead, NATO air power carried out widespread and sustained aerial raids targeting Bosnian Serb radar positions, artillery and tank emplacements, communications centers and munition dumps. In keeping with the psychology of bullies through the ages, once the Bosnian Serbs were on the receiving end, the bluster lasted only for a few days before they fell over themselves trying to comply with the UN demands. However, the Croat Republic had other ideas. Having armed and trained for nearly 2 years, mostly by US military training teams in the form of private companies, the Croats were waiting for such a moment, launching a lightning offensive that took back virtually all their lost territories. With the pressure on the Bihac Enclave thus relieved, the Bosnian Army launched a major infantry-led offensive that had the Bosnian Serbs, already reeling, on the run. Within days the much-vaunted Serb military prowess was found to be fake, a psychological sleight of hand. They had been propounding their military might on the basis of their sheer brute force and a lop-sided advantage in military armaments and supplies but in the face of determined onslaught by the predominantly Muslim Bosnian Army, the Serbs crumpled in spectacular fashion. Facing military defeat on the battlefield in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a ruinous economic blockade of mainland Serbia and perhaps a greater Balkan war, Serb President Milosevic welcomed the proposals of US negotiator Holbrooke towards a lasting peace. This led to literally quarantining of the leaders (in conflict) of former Yugoslavia at a US Air Force Base at Dayton, Ohio till the white smoke signalled an agreement. Needless to say, much arm-twisting and cajoling by the US went into this effort before the enemies sat down to ink their reluctant accord to the Accord.

At the end of the Krajina onslaught that saw him emerge as a military power of some note in the Balkans, Croat President Tudjman visited London. At a dinner, he sketched out on a napkin for his admiring hosts the map of the border as he envisaged the future between the Serb Republic and Croatia, effectively carving up the Muslim heartland between the Serbs and the Croats. This is a damning piece of evidence as to the real Serb and Croat feeling. It is pertinent to note that the Muslims are his nominal allies in the on-going war and Tudjman has supposedly given cast-iron guarantees to safeguard this arrangement to remain allies. Of such perfidy has been the Bosnian-Muslim misery born! Fighting against the Bosnian Serbs, in harness with an unreliable Croat ally who has his own designs on their territory, bereft of all international help for its defence because of an unequal ban on military supplies that only affects them, the Bosnian Muslims have been waging one of history’s greatest wars for survival. For years former British Parliamentarian, Lord David Owen ensured that the Muslims would remain defenceless while he deliberately dawdled over so-called peace negotiations in a successful ploy to keep the rest of the world complacent about any urgency in the impossible and deteriorating situation for the Muslims. This Owen-act was one of deliberate betrayal that tilted the balance to the Bosnian Serbs, for their misplaced trust in the peace process the Bosnian Muslims got a wrenching knife in the back by this so-called gentleman who should be indicted as an accessory to the Serb war crimes.

The way the Paris Peace Accord is structured and the involvement of US troops, a necessary pre-requisite for NATO’s European partners, makes the Accord a potent candidate for Murphy’s Law, a disaster waiting to happen. The sight of US soldiers returning from Lebanon and Somalia in body-bags on prime time TV has brought down the threshold of pain acceptable to the US public from the tens of thousands of lives lost in Vietnam to single-digit figures. With US public opinion thus already anxious, there is very little margin for error. Armed with this knowledge, the Bosnian Serbs have already started to drag their feet and give out warning signals despite the US resolve to react swiftly and in an overwhelming manner. The Bosnian Serb’s so-called Parliament in Pale has already voted against the Accord. The Serbs know very well that they only have to focus their gun-sights on US soldiers to ensure that US domestic resolve collapses in a hurry. Some trigger-happy blood-thirsty contingent may already have been earmarked by Gen Mladic to carry out such an outrage. The resultant furore in the States for the troops to come home, could well make the US contingent fight their way out of the Bosnia cauldron, leaving the poor Muslims once again in an untenable position. In a sense where the Bosnian Serbs used to hold a number of individual UN hostages tied to ammunition bunkers they have got the whole US contingent as hostage to vent their atrocities on. The nucleus of Pakistani support is already in Bosnia in the form of a Brigade combat Group that must be expanded to provide adequate cover if the US ground troops should decide on a quick exit from Bosnia.

The best solution would have been to (1) let the Bosnian Muslims defend themselves as well as they have been doing for the past 3 years (2) keep NATO troops out of Bosnia (3) keep NATO air-strikes going against the Serbs (4) lift the ban on weapons to the Bosnian Muslims (5) train them to use the military hardware and (6) to establish proper communications and logistics facilities to ensure that supplies of all kind could be maintained by a safe land-route during hostilities. One of the major lessons of the past few months is that both the Serb military as well as the civil population cannot bear the brunt of military action on the level and type they have been doling out to the Muslims. In short the best deterrence against continuing Balkan conflict is to upgrade the quality of the Bosnian military machine in the same manner as for the Croatian Republic. After all, MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) is the US philosophy that kept the major Superpowers from engaging in a nuclear war for the past three decades or so. The level of deterrence must ensure Bosnian Muslims should be able to fight a two-front campaign, against the Serbs as well as the Croats, if required.

There is no shortage of brave men among the Bosnian Muslims, three years of battle has seen the emergence of a battle-hardened military leadership at all levels. However these are mostly infantry-heavy without the specialised skills of Armour, Artillery, Engineers, Signals, etc as well as the basic tenets of modern warfare. Today, if Jaffna Town has been taken by the Sri Lankan Armed Forces after a methodical but tough campaign with great fanfare, much has been left unsaid about the training imparted to hundreds of Sri Lankans in Pakistani Armed Forces Basic and Specialised Schools of Training over the past decade. Almost 100% of the young Sri Lankan officers from Lieutenants to Majors have had the advantage of our fine training standards, both as cadets and officers. Pakistan could give the same facility to our Bosnian brethren even as the US pours in heavy military arms and equipment to offset the present uneven balance. Furthermore our medical facilities can be made available in the form of field hospitals on a more organised basis. All this will be a race against time, the only sure guarantee of peace in the Balkans is the Muslims having credible military potential as assured deterrence.

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