IN BOSNIA: Waiting for The War Next Time

The Washington Post
Sunday, June 1, 1997;
Page C02
By John Pomfret

For fair use only
Published under the provision of
U.S. Code, Title 17, section 107.

Last Nov. 21, I awoke early in Sarajevo and drove four hours through an untimely snowstorm down to the port of Ploce in Croatia. I wanted to see a bit of history. When the next war in the Balkans erupts, I want to be able to say that I was there where it all began.

I found what I was looking for in Ploce's harbor: a black freighter called the American Condor, whose decks brimmed with an imposing array of 80 dark green, U.S.-made M-113 armored personnel carriers, 45 M-60A3 tanks, ammunition, communications gear, light weapons, utility helicopters. The equipment is part of a $300 million program, led by the United States, to train Bosnia's army and right a skewed balance of power -- between poorly armed and trained Muslims (sic!) and their on-again, off-again Croat allies on one side, and the once formidably armed Serbs on the other.

While this is the intention of the program, I believe that the Muslims -- with some Croat backing -- plan instead to attack the Serbs, if and when American troops leave Bosnia as they are scheduled to do by June 1998. In November 1995, when the program was announced, it was supposed to be carried out simultaneous with the implementation of the Dayton peace plan for Bosnia. But the Dayton plan is not being implemented in Bosnia. So instead of bringing a balance of firepower to the region, the United States is just bringing more firepower. While the United States says the weapons are purely for defense, Bosnian officers say they are just what they need for an attack.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visits the region this weekend, and those on all sides will scrutinize her words and deeds to divine U.S. intentions, just as they did when Secretary of Defense William Cohen visited in March and gave what several senior Muslim officials interpreted as an "amber light" for an invasion. He said that whether Bosnia's factions went "back to slaughtering each other" after U.S. soldiers leave would be "up to them." In the past few weeks, Albright has contradicted Cohen's laissez-faire attitude, claiming several times that the United States would not permit a resurgence of ethnic fighting. But short of appointing another ambassador, this one for the prosecution of war crimes, Albright has unveiled no new policies.

U.S. officers on the ground there say they know a relatively simple plan for success: a straightforward implementation of the Dayton deal, which means a return of refugees and moves to weaken the power of ultra-nationalist leaders on all three sides of Bosnia's divide. These men -- Muslims, Croats and Serbs -- brought war to Bosnia, and only when they are out of power will there be a possibility for long-term peace. The alternative, the troops know, is that when they leave a war will erupt.

There are abundant signs that the Bosnians are preparing for war. Before I left the region in December, I heard this story from a lawyer with the International Committee of the Red Cross: His job is to teach Bosnia's Muslims, Croats and Serbs to adhere to the Geneva Convention and International Humanitarian Law, guidelines that were horrifically violated during ex-Yugoslavia's fourth war this century which lasted from 1991 to 1995. He accompanied a Bosnian Muslim brigade as they staged a mock attack on a village.

The brigade conducted itself with professional military restraint. But the lawyer realized that more was going on: the unit was training for a real attack. From corporals to platoon leaders to the general in command -- all of them said the same thing: When we attack the Serbs, we will respect them. Not if, when.

The desires of Bosnia's Muslim fighting men mean a lot. Soldier-politicians dominate the upper reaches of the Party of Democratic Action, run by Bosnia's president, Alija Izetbegovic. Several senior officers are members of Bosnia's parliament despite a law banning soldiers from holding political office. The mayor of the northwestern frontline town of Sanski Most, Mehmed Alagic, who commanded one of the Muslim army's seven corps during the war, made a grand show of leaving the military when he took over city hall. Then he moved his whole headquarters into the office next to him. He still commands training exercises and openly acknowledges the government's plan to take back (sic!) Serb-held territory. [S-M note: The Islam fundamentalists will "take back" the territory the Serbs "took" when they settled in Bosnia in seventh century?!!!]

Indeed, in preparation for war, the Muslim government is placing military officers in key civilian positions in several strategic frontline areas. It is also giving them the cannon fodder for battles to come. As European countries have begun to forcibly repatriate the 1 million Muslim refugees..., the Muslim government is packing them into areas along the border of Serbian territory. They are enlisting them in the army and telling them that they will soon be returning to take back their original homes in Serb-held territory. The Dayton deal calls for them to reclaim those homes -- but not by force.

In charge of these refugees is a hard-line security official, Hasan Cengic. Widely considered one of the most influential of Bosnia's Muslim officials, Cengic had been the Muslim defense minister until the United States forced him to leave his job because of his links to the radical Islamic regime in Iran.

Cengic has been quite blunt about his desire for a new war with the Serbs to extend the reaches of Bosnia's Muslim authority to the Drina River, the historical boundary between Serbia and Bosnia. Izetbegovic has warned of the same thing. In March, he came to Washington and stated bluntly that unless refugees are allowed to return to their homes and indicted war criminals arrested, then "tremors will be inevitable and a new war very certain."

We've come to this situation in large part because the Western powers, specifically the United States, have been unable to make hard decisions, or take reasonable chances...

...

Under the scheme U.S., German and local officials would sit on a panel empowered to oust mayors, police chiefs and provincial bosses who opposed Dayton. But the United States blocked the plan because, as an administration official told me, it didn't want to become a viceroy in Bosnia. The problem is that the United States already is a viceroy in Bosnia. It should accept that responsibility and get on with bringing peace.

...

The United States even fails to take advantage of tools it already has in place. I remember being taken on a tour by a U.S. Army colonel and a Navy commander to NATO's radio station in Sarajevo. The officers were from the Navy's psychological warfare center -- said to be one of the best in the business. Given that ethnically biased news reports had done so much to fuel the earlier war, I wondered what the United States would do to counter a new wave of vitriol and distortion in the local media.

Would the station run news bulletins to contradict the garbage pumped out by Serb, Croat and Muslim stations? A clear interpretation of the Dayton plan? Information about war crimes? No, the officers replied. The station will put out an anti-mine awareness campaign and "good old American rock-and-roll." Said the colonel: "We don't get involved in politics."

...People I talked to from all sides told me they expected NATO's radio stations and civil affairs troops would put out a new message: that peace was possible. But that was never done.

Among the American soldiers, I found a deep sadness at the inability of the United States to make a difference. "We had all the tools," wrote a major who spent a year there, in a recent letter from Germany. "We just never used them."

"Bosnia is a place where we really could have made a difference," said one U.S. general who worked in the area for six months. "We chose not to. I believe our embrace of the minimalist option -- both here and elsewhere -- could mark a great decline in our power as a nation."

Two weeks ago, Ambassador James Pardew, the coordinator of the U.S. training program, announced that the United States was sending the Bosnian Muslims and Croats a substantial extra shipment of firepower: 116 155mm artillery weapons. The Serbs, for their part, are doubling the size of their police force to 50,000 officers -- a move clearly intended to circumvent demilitarization agreements. Perhaps they know something we don't.

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John Pomfret recently completed a four-year reporting tour of the Balkans for The Washington Post.