Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, August 26, 1993 TAG: 9311240266
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
That would mean, in the first place, finally meaning it when the United States and its allies issue threats and ultimatums to the Serbs who continuously mock international law and human decency.
It would mean, in the second place, being more frank with the Bosnian victims of ethnic cleansing, as to what hopes they might place in prospects for outside help.
Remember the grandly declared no-flyover zone, the safe havens, the cease-fires? The sneering Serbs have defied every one of these pronouncements with utter impunity. What can they infer except the truth - Europeans' spineless immobility in the face of war crimes in their midst?
The fact of the matter is that the international community is not prepared to make Bosnia whole again or to reverse the results of Serb and Croat aggression. The precedents at this point are unavoidable and already established: Ethnic cleansing works. Aggression is rewarded. International boundaries, even within Europe, may be changed by force.
Yet even this reality - as awful as it is - does not prevent the United Nations, with U.S. and NATO back-up, from doing essentially what it has done in Somalia: provide humanitarian relief to civilian victims, and if anyone shoots at the aid providers, shoot back.
Another fact is that, as a conscience-easing gesture at this late date, sending in NATO aircraft to bomb a few targets is unlikely to alter the course of the war, much less dissuade the Serbs from consolidating the victory they've won by force of arms, not to mention raping, burning, shelling and scattering civilians.
Yet this general acquiescence to aggression does not prevent the United States from making clear - or asking our European allies also to make clear - that Sarajevo and other so-called havens must become havens in fact, with cease-fires around them taken seriously.
If those who would shell civilian populations are bombed - not threatened with bombing, but really bombed - the diplomats' now airy exhortations might gain a little weight.
To the Bosnian Muslims, the West also owes sincerity, though of a different sort.
Actually, it's ironic even to call the victims Muslims, for what is at stake in Sarajevo and Bosnia is not by any means an Islamic state. This is, in fact, the only republic in the region that isn't seeking an ethnic-religious monopoly state.
The frail hope of a partition plan is that some safe, if small, place for a multi-ethnic tolerant state, including Bosnian Muslims, can be kept from the Serbs' and Croats' carving knives. That means, at the least, that Sarajevo must remain intact.
The United Nations, Europe and the United States must see to that, and they must exert every possible pressure - including tightening the screws on economic sanctions against Serbia, long-term international isolation, and moving with due deliberation toward war-crimes trials - to increase the war victims' leverage at the bargaining table.
Beyond that, the West must make clear to the Muslims that they're not going to get help of a sort to reverse defeat. Partition is inevitable; the point for Bosnians now is to retrieve what they can, and save lives.
No one should hold out hope of any intervention, of any kind, symbolic or sustained, without serious intent to stand by the commitment.
Bosnian Muslims deserved more help than they've gotten; they certainly deserve more honesty. The victims, just as much as the aggressors, need to know we mean what we say.
by CNB