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When the Berlin wall came down, it would have seemed inconceivable that genocide would occur, in the heart of Europe, in front of NATO, the largest military alliance in human history, on the fiftieth anniversary of the holocaust. It is still inconceivable, yet it has happened. And there is danger that it will resume.
For those who follow the Bosnian tragedy through the media, an eerie quiet has descended since last December. With some improvement in Sarajevo and Central Bosnia, many might be lured into thinking that the situation was on its way to a constructive resolution. But the calm is ominous. Throughout the 70% of Bosnia occupied by the Serb army, "ethnic-cleansing" continues. Non-Serbs are rounded up, beaten, stripped of every possession, and, if lucky, dumped across the border into Bosnian territory. Young men are taken to a slave-labor camp at Lopare. Many young women are seized by soldiers and disappear. Last fall the International Red Cross, in a stunning move, appealed to the major Western powers to stop this "ethnic cleansing." The appeal was ignored. The 70% of Bosnia occupied by the Serb army and known as the Republika Srpska is now approaching 100% ethnoreligious "purity."
The Serbian army based in Croatia has occupied part of the Bihac pocket and is backing the Bosnian Serb army and the rebel forces of Fikret Abdic in an assault upon Bosnian forces and civilians. The area around the far Northwestern town of Velika Kladusa has become a headquarters for the occupying Serb army from Croatia. The disregard by the Croatian Serb army for both the internationally recognized border of Bosnia and for the "Safe Area" of Bihac was one of the reasons that the Croatian government decided to ask UNPROFOR forces to leave Croatia by April. The UNPROFOR forces, which were supposed to be overseeing the disarmament of both sides, were in fact protecting the Serb army in Croatia and allowing it to engage in aggression against Bosnia.
This key turning point in the conflict was the legacy of the British UN general Sir Michael Rose. When the Croatian Serb army invaded Bosnia-Herzegovina in late 1994, Rose refused to call in the NATO protection was mandated by numerous UN resolutions. By refusing NATO protection he gave a green light to the invasion. Since that time the Croatian Serb army has shelled UN peacekeepers, killing one Bangladeshi soldier, blockaded the Bihac pocket from UN convoys, and continually shelled civilians areas. Recently, a group of women in Bihac demonstrating, stating that they and their families had not eaten in several days. Meanwhile, according to U.S. sources, the Serbian regime in Belgrade has been sending large helicopter missions to the area around Srebenica, where tens of thousands of Bosnians are confined to a ghetto and surrounded by the Bosnian Serb army.
General Rose's destruction of the NATO-UN protection of "safe areas" and international borders was carried out in response to British policy. Britain and France, having continually thwarted all efforts to put limits on the Milosevic war policy, have paved the way for future conflict. All armies are busy preparing for a resumption of the war this spring. Because of the European backed arms embargo against Bosnia, the Bosnians will again be at a massive military disadvantage.
The declared goal of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic is to annihilate all traces of "Ottoman" culture, that is, to destroy all traces of Bosnian Muslim culture. A second goal is to divide Bosnia with Croatia, placing the Bosnian Muslims and those Bosnians who want a secular, multi-religious state within a tiny ghetto based, in Karadzic's words, "on a few districts around Tuzla."
The policy of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman remains unclear. Will he revert to his stance of 1993 when Croatia and Serbia both attacked Bosnian positions? Or will the federation between Croatia and Bosnia hold? With the European governments, particular Britain and France, continuing their arms embargo against Bosnia, there is a reasonable chance that Tudjman will opt for an partition of Bosnia between Serbia and Croatia. As long as Europe is tying the hands of Bosnia, Tudjman may decide that it will be easier to carve up Bosnia with Milosevic, than to fight the Serbian war machine with an ally whose hands are bound. The human costs of such a partition-policy will be beyond measure. Even if Tudjman avoids the temptation for a deal with Milosevic and the Croat-Bosnian coalition holds, the future may well hold more systematic genocide.
What is the program known as "ethnic cleansing" that is at the heart of Serbian miltitary and political policy in Bosnia-Herzegovina? As defined by the UN convetion of 1948, genocide is the perpetration of acts such as killing, torture, or attacks against civilian populations in order "to destroy, in whole or in part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such." "Ethnic cleansing" is clearly a case of genocide. From April to August of 1992, the Yugoslav Army (JNA), irregular groups of Bosnian Serb soldiers, and irregular militias from Serbia, occupied most of the territory now controlled by the Serb army. Major Muslim-majority cities, that had been centers of Bosnian Muslim culture for 5 centuries, fell into the horror of "ethnic cleansing." The major crimes against humanity was focused in cities such: Zvornik, Vlasenica, Visegrad, Foca, Gacko, Trebinje, Sanski Most, Banja Luka, Prijedor, Doboj, and Brcko. A network of death camps (Omarska, Susica, Keraterm, Brcko) was established, along with a wider network of concentration camps (Manjaca, Trnopolje, and camps in or near all the cities mentioned above). Killing-centers and rape-centers were established in Zvornik, Foca, Rogatica, and Visegrad. Artistic and architectural monuments were systematically annihilated, including two masterworks of South Slav civilization, the Ferhadiyya mosque of Banja Luka and the Colored Mosque (Aladza djamiya) of Foca. All mosques in Zvornik were destroyed and a new Church was dedicated to celebrate Zvornik's status as 100% "ethnically pure." In Sarajevo, the all major museums and libraries were targeted with incendiary and phosphorus grenades, including the library of the Oriental Institute, the largest collection of Hebrew and Islamic manuscripts in S.E. Europe, which was annihilated on May 17, 1992. In August of the same year, the National Library in Sarajevo was destroyed by the Serb army in the largest book-burning in human history. The vast majority of these crimes were known by the French, British, and U.S. government, and by the U.N., but information on the genocide was repressed for four vital months, as diplomats and world leaders continued to talk, misleadlingly, of "civil war." The genocide was revealed only after the accounts of Omarska death camp by Pulitizer Prize winning journalist Roy Gutman forced the issue on the world's attention in August, 1992. That genocide is overwhelming document now in the 8 U.S. State Department Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia and in the two volumes of Helsinki Watch reports on War Crimes in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
If war resumes and the "enclaves" (i.e. ghettos) of Srebenica, Zepa, and Gorazde fall, the events of 1992 leave little doubt as to what will be the fate of the inhabitants. That would happen, as was the case in Zvornik and Foca, away from the media and the TV cameras.
But will Britain and France really allow Sarajevo to fall? As opposed to the rest of Bosnia, what happens in Sarajevo appears on CNN. In pressing the Bosnian government to give up most of Bosnia to the armies of aggression, Britain and France have threatened a UN withdrawal and the fall of Sarajevo, but have been unwilling to carry out their threat, most probably fearing the CNN factor.
The first sign of whether Europe decides to allow Bosnia to be totally extinguished as a culture will occur if and when the press is ordered out of Sarajevo. For the historian looking back upon the history of besieged non-Christian enclaves in Europe since the attacks on the Rhineland Jews during the first Crusade in 1096 through the holocaust, the unthinkable is too close for comfort. After the record of the past two and a half years, little hope can be placed in the politicians and diplomats of the EC or the UN; if Bosnia is to be saved, it will be the common people around the world who will have to raise their voices and demand its rescue.
From: msells@haverford.edu (michael a sells)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Followup-To: soc.culture.bosna-herzgvna
Subject: BiH: Between War and "Final Solution"?
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