Amid hopeful signs, the toughest issues remain unresolved
by Robin Knight, Tim Zimmermann, Bruce B. Auster, Douglas Stanglin
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When two American F-16 pilots received the go-ahead from NATO early last week to shoot down four Serb-piloted Galeb jets that were bombing a Muslim-run munitions factory, the 23-month war in Bosnia-Herzegovina finally moved to the center of the world stage. Now, the fate of Bosnia is hostage to evolving Russian-American relations, to U.S. and European willingness to commit enough ground troops to Bosnia to make a peace settlement stick and to the increasingly urgent need to stave off a wider war in the Balkans.
Last week, there were some hopeful signs. The Clinton administration brokered the outline of a deal between Croats and Muslims to end 11 months of fighting and create a single political entity in parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina in economic union with Croatia. Visiting Moscow, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic accepted a Russian plan to reopen Serb-besieged Tuzla airport to humanitarian aid flights. And in Belgrade, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic's regime, desperate to have economic sanctions on Serbia lifted, distanced itself from the more extreme Serbian criticisms of the Croat-Muslim agreement. With shaky cease-fires in Sarajevo and Mostar, war weariness widespread, Serbia on its knees economically and Croatia's leaders apparently backing away from their vision of a Greater Croatia, a lasting peace, if not a just one, finally seems possible in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
But the shape of a settlement is as murky as ever. Four questions now confront the would-be peacemakers in former Yugoslavia:
Can the shotgun Muslim-Croat rapprochement brokered by Washington hold, or will it be destroyed by hard-liners on both sides? Can Russia force the Bosnian Serbs to surrender enough of the Muslim and Croatian territory they have seized since April 1992? Will a peace plan simply reward Serb aggression and legitimize the creation of a Greater Serbia? And how far will the West, primarily the United States, Britain and France, go to underwrite a settlement?
On each count, events following the Washington announcement of a Croat-Muslim deal underscore the long distance that remains to be traveled before peace in Bosnia is assured.
The parochial nature of the Bosnian conflict is one warning of difficulties ahead. At Zepce, in northern Bosnia, Serbs and Croats are allied against Muslims. In the Bihac enclave, Muslims cooperate with Serbs. In central Bosnia, thousands of Croat refugees want to return to homes destroyed by Muslims. Around Mostar in Herzegovina, the roles are reversed. Meanwhile, Croat forces near the Muslim-held town of Maglaj continue to back an 18-month Serb siege. And few local commanders are ready to forgive and forget (box, Page 28). A guide to the players:
BOSNIA. Conflicting pressures are at work on the Bosnian Muslims. Compromising with the Croats could shut down one front of a multifront war and offera chance at a more viable rump state. Accepting a compromise with the Bosnian Serbs will be harder: Towns suchas Prijedor, Foca and Visegrad in northern and eastern Bosnia, ruthlessly "cleansed" of Muslims by the Serbs, cannot be recovered. Two million refugees anxious to return remain a potent political factor. And the military momentum Muslim commanders feel they have achieved will now stall.
CROATIA. In Zagreb, President Franjo Tudjman, who is facing a similar dilemma, has made his support for compromise conditional on America's helping his country recover the one third of its territory lost to the Serbs during fighting in 1991. Tudjman is under pressure from hard-liners suspicious of any dilution of the Greater Croatia ideal, and no priority is higher for him than recovering Serb-held Krajina. That means no settlement in Bosnia is likely to take hold unless the Krajina question is settled, too.
Tudjman is counting on the West to help push Serbia's Milosevic toward a compromise on Krajina, but Croatia is hedging its bets by continuing its military buildup. Yet it may be hard for the West to reward Serbian flexibility in Bosnia, for example by easing economic sanctions, without weakening its ability to pressure Milosevic into concessions on Krajina. Given the tightrope Tudjman is on, the details of the Croat-Muslim deal could decide the issue.
SERBIA. Serbian intentions remain unclear. "The basic incentive for the Serbs is to see [the Croat-Muslim deal] as an opportunity for peace," says a senior U.S. official. But, if so, the Serbs will drive a very hard bargain. In Moscow, Bosnian Serb leader Karadzic said his forces, which now control 72 percent of Bosnia, want "54 or 55 percent" of the republic. According to Russian sources, Karadzic also said he would support an interim period of Croatian sovereignty over Serbs in the Krajina region if the Croats will support the right of Serbs in Bosnia eventually to choose to form their own state or to merge with Serbia.
Bosnian Serb leaders rejected two previous opportunities for peace because both would have required them to surrender some of the land they have seized. This time, they may sense a chance for peace on their terms. "With this agreement, America has given up on the unchangeability of borders," says Predrag Simic, director of Belgrade's Institute for International Affairs. "The unification of the Serb state is inevitable."
RUSSIA. If anyone can persuade the Serbs to relinquish some of Greater Serbia, it is their longtime allies in Russia. The Russians "can twist the Serbs when the Serbs want to be twisted," says James Gow of King's College, London. "The real test is whether they will pressure Karadzic and his backers in Belgrade to pull back from Sarajevo and to give up land in eastern Bosnia."
Despite its recent burst of Balkan diplomacy, Moscow's intentions are ambivalent and Russia does not wield the military and political clout of the old Soviet Union. As a Foreign Ministry official puts it: "Russia cannot play a superpower role. It is only symbolic." Supporters of Boris Yeltsin praise the Serbs and criticize them in the same breath; Russian officials say they oppose any plan that isolates the Serbs.
THE UNITED STATES AND THE WEST. The first order of business is shoring up the shaky cease-fires on the ground. Last week, Lt. Gen. Michael Rose, the U.N. force commander in Bosnia, publicly appealed for 4,600 extra troops to police the truce around Sarajevo. The U.N. also requested some 6,000 additional troops to monitor the Croat-Muslim cease-fire elsewhere in Bosnia.
General Rose found no volunteers in Washington, London or Paris. The British government, with 2,400 troops already in Bosnia, first turned down a plea from its defense chiefs to send a 600-man reinforcement battalion, then said it might help if other nations did, too.
The response from Washington was even more tepid. U.N. officials say an American presence would ease the Bosnian government's discomfort over Russia's growing military role. And some State Department experts argue that by refusing to send U.S. troops without an overall settlement, the Clinton administration is jeopardizing the progress it has made. But with the Pentagon adamantly opposed and the White House unprepared to make the case to a skeptical Congress, no change of course is likely. American policy, says French Gen. Jean Cot, the military head of the U.N. mission in the former Yugoslavia, is "not very courageous."
Washington is not off the hook yet. A lasting peace agreement, if one can be negotiated, would be a feather in Clinton's cap. But it would also force the president to accept many of the Bosnian Serbs' territorial gains and ultimately to send up to 25,000 American ground troops to help monitor an open-ended deal.
That means accepting the creation of a Greater Serbia that is already taking shape as the breakaway Serb regimes in Croatia and Bosnia adopt the Serbian currency and merge
