"Kupres is liberated!" Last week, newspapers across Croatia and Bosnia could finally banner that headline. In a 10-day sweep, a heretofore shaky Muslim-Croat alliance gobbled up 130 square miles of ground near Bihac in northwestern Bosnia, near Sarajevo in the center and in and around Kupres in the west. "The myth of the Bosnian Serbs as the invincible aggressor army has crumbled," declared an elated Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic.
The Bosnian Army, using tactics coined by communist guerrillas in World War II, capitalized on its newly fortified weapons stocks at a time when the Serbs were running short on fuel and morale. The West hopes that Bosnian Serbs, with their first big defeat, will now be more inclined to talk peace. But Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who still controls two thirds of the country, is donning camouflage army garb and ordering a general mobilization. His Serbs, he vows, will "break the spine of the Muslim army."
Few believe the tide has irrevocably turned. "Now we have the land," one Bosnian official told U.S. News. "The trick is to figure out how to hold it." Thirty-one months of war have yielded a crop of experienced Muslim fighters. It will take more than 10 days to produce a crew of experienced victors.
