No Malta

They say, that once, a long time ago, the Sultan sent the Turkish fleet to Malta to destroy the English ships. When he saw the size of the English fleet, the Turkish Admiral wisely decided to turn back before they noticed him. He sent the Sultan a brief message: ``No Malta,'' pretending that he couldn`t find the island. The United Nations and the Genevabased conference on the former Yugoslavia have played a game called ``No Malta'' from the start of the war in Bosnia. Since the summer of 1992, everybody in BosniaHerzegovina knew that regular Croatian troops were present in the republic. Journalists and nongovernment organization observers talked to young Croatian soldiers, saw their double documents (original Croatian Army ones and false Croatian Defence Council ones) and heard that the boys came from cities such as Zagreb, Varazdin, and Rijeka. However, the high representatives of the socalled international community sitting at the green table in Geneva managed not to notice the Croatian troops in Bosnia. This became something of a habit, they got so used to the fact that there was ``no Malta,'' that legendary HVO political commissar Drago Krpina said blandly last week, that there ``wasn't a single unit or Croatian Army soldier'' in BH. Brigadier Krpina felt encouraged by the usual statements made by top UN officials who denied the existence of Croatian and Yugoslav troop movements in BH. His Excellency Karel Kovanda, the Czech Ambassador, who is also President of the UN Security Council, said on January 28 that UNPROFOR didn't have any information on new troop movements, and so on. The State Department added that it didn't know anything either. Drago Krpina managed to shoot himself in the foot for the umpteenth time. More and more welldocumented reports from the field have substantiated Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's threat that Croatia would become ``militarily involved'' in Bosnia if the BH Army persisted in pursuing its successful offensive in the Lasvan valley and elsewhere.

NO CROATS: Soon after Kovanda had said that he knew nothing of Croatian troops in Bosnia, the UN military spokesman in Sarajevo Major Idesbald von Bizenbruk said that he had heard some rumors, but that he didn't have any proof of the Croatian Army's presence in Bosnia, and didn't believe that UN military formations would not be aware of the fact (January 28). It turned out that the UN were very much aware of the situation. Someone leaked a confidential UNPROFOR report dated January 23, 1994 which said that there is more proof of Croatian Army involvement in BH, but that it is confined to troops and vehicles (our italics). On January 29, the ``Washington Post'' said that President Tudjman had sent several thousand regular Croatian troops to Bosnia, and quoted a top UNPROFOR official in Zagreb, who said that Croatia was now more openly involved in the Bosnian war than Serbia. The Post asked if this confirmation will lead to sanctions being imposed against Croatia and recalled a warning made to Tudjman by US Ambassador Madeleine Allbright.

In the last days of January, several reputable press reports said that there were around 12,000 regular Croatian army troops in Bosnia. The State Department strarted to ease up. Spokesman Michael Mac Curry admitted on January 31 that the US had important information concerning the presence of regular Croatian (and Yugoslav) troops in Bosnia. With regard to the Yugoslav troops, he said that they hadn't noticed ``a dramatic escalation''compared to the kind of penetration that had been noticed earlier. Only German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel still heroically sticks to his guns and claims that there is ``no proof,'' but then, he might not be very well informed.

The dams have started to burst. On Wednesday, February 2, Mac Curry spoke of ``a mass presence of regular Croatian troops in Bosnia,'' and the long shadow of sanctions has started to close in on Croatia. The Danish Foreign Minister, relying on reports sent by the Norwegian battalion which supervises critical areas in Bosnia, joined those favoring the idea of sanctions. UN bureaucrats Boutros Boutros Ghali, the Security Council Secretariat, Chief of Military Operations Sashi Tarur and their regional offices are in trouble. Namely, the main source of information concerning the presence of Croatian and Yugoslav regular troops in BH, are UNPROFOR officers in the field, who have lost all patience with the official lies disseminated by their superiors. This can be proved by the following example.

NO SERBS: The late (may it rest in peace) Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) split in Bosnia on May 19, 1992 into two parts the Yugoslav army and the army of the Serb Republic in BH. Time proved that the Serb Republic army could not do anything without the expert help of the Yugoslav army, and that it lacked men (this is the reason for the latest massive mobilization of Bosnian Serbs women included both within the Serb Republic of BH and Yugoslavia).

From the beginning, reports on the brotherhood in arms between the two former halves of the JNA flowed continuously. It started with occasional military experts linked to maintenance, and with special task units, while later (end of 1992 and early 1993, especially during the Srebrenica operation) elite units helped out at critical spots (the Jezero elevation is the most painful example) which the Bosnian Serb forces were not able to defend or take. The Military Hospital in Belgrade was full of wounded men who did not hide where they'd been; the relatives of dead soldiers talked; veterans of the Bosnian battlefields said where they'd fought and how they'd fared. The whole story reached a critical point in early March 1993, over the violations of nofly zones in Eastern Bosnia. After that, matters settled down a bit.

In the meantime, sanctions were exhausting Yugoslavia and its Army, so that the Bosnian Serb army led by Ratko Mladic found itself in an increasingly difficult situation. The initial advantage in men and technology started melting away. The men were fleeing and the Army was running out of spare parts and ammunition. This resulted in increased activities by several specialized Yugoslav Army units, in late 1993, and ended with a scandal.

On December 27, 1993 several men from the Special Units Command had a particularly bad time in the Sarajevo suburb of Vogosca. Their comrades said that the families were told not to put obituaries in the papers, or to say that the men had died in traffic accidents. We don't know if this is true, but we do know that Captain Goran Galjak's family said all they knew in the orbituary in the Belgrade daily ``Politika'' on January 18. From the point of international politics, it was all too late. Around Christmas, stories of the Yugoslav army's greater involvement in Bosnia had started to build up. The main sources of information were once again UNPROFOR field officers, as well as Yugoslav army officers, civilians, observers, journalists of all kinds, and so. The ``Los Angeles Times'' published a statement by UNPROFOR Norwegian Captain Janture Strandas who said that Yugoslav Army parachute troops were routinely engaged in combat activities in Bosnia. The ``Times'' described the statement as an illustration of the United Nation's increasing complaints that the international community was doing far too little in stopping the war which was devastating Bosnia and endangering the foreign troops charged with maintaining peace. Captain Strandas was very specific. He told the ``Times'' journalist in Pancevo, that all one had to do was to stop at Zvornik and watch the Yugoslav Army crossing the Bosnian border. Captain Strandas later specified that these facts had been confirmed by Yugoslav officers and soldiers with whom UNPROFOR shared the same laundry in Pancevo. The men had talked openly of their experiences in Bosnia, not hiding anything. In midJanuary military sources confirmed this information off the record, but hurried to make public denials. During all this time, official UN sources pretended that they didn't know anything. Ambassador Kovanda said that the Secretariat had not reported anything. At the White House, spokeswoman Dee Dee Mayers said on January 27 that the reports were being studied, but that nothing pointed to an escalation in Bosnia. Michael Mac Curry said the same day that there were no significantly escalated activities. Things accelerated in late January. On January 28, the State Department (spokeswoman Christine Shelley) expressed concern over a stepup in Yugoslavia's direct aid to the Bosnian Serb militias. Shelley added that individual advisors and small combat units, some in Serbian Army (probably meaning Yugoslav) fatigues had been operating in Bosnia for some time. On the same day, Boutros BoutrosGhali surprised everybody and said that he had to consult with the Security Council over the latest reports he had received on troop movements. Unaware of this, UNPROFOR representatives in the field continued to claim that they didn't know anything, only to remember later that they had left their reports somewhere in Kiseljak, and hadn't reached them. Something was obviously very wrong.

NO BOSNIA: What is the political context of the situation in the Balkans in January 1994? The naming of Haris Silajdzic, a cold political realist, to the post of BH Prime Minister, brought a new element to the story. Silajdzic started by installing some order in the BH Army and then encouraged an offensive against the weakest side (Croats in Central Bosnia). Then he formulated his future doctrine. Before leaving for Brussels, in a speech to BH Army officers in Sarajevo, he told them not to worry over a Western military intervention or air strikes. He said that this was just a lot of hot air, and that they were to rely on themselves and their army. That is our only hope, he said. BH Army Commander Rasim Delic and other top officers have used more or less the same words. The romantic doctrine of an innocent victim supported for years by BH President Alija Izetbegovic is no more. The new Bosnian strategywe will not play the Geneva game anymorehas led to the current confusion. Lord Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg are horrified. What will they do now that the Bosnians do not wish to sign anything, not even things they never even intended to observe later? The Geneva conference and the U.N. must, according to bureaucratic logic, produce some signed papers from time to time. Now the crazy Bosnians don't want to sign anything, because they say it's all the same to them. On January 31, Stoltenberg said that everything got stuck over a few percent of territory. However, the whole story of percentages and maps seems to be finished. British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd pretended to have finally understood things in Washington last week, when he said that he ``no longer believed that peace could be imposed on the Bosnian Moslems.''

And what is left? Things are changing quickly, as can be seen from the changed stands described above and the narrowed down options. The policy of denial (No Malta), was aimed at making the Bosnians play the game in which they had been the losers so far. The message was: either you continue haggling with us over the percentages, and let the shop in Geneva remain open, or we will let Croatian and Yugoslav troops in, then see what you'll do about it...

There is a new rule in the Bosnian war. The Bosnians are playing va banque, using their biggest trump card. They are playing against the increasingly obvious weaknesses of all three sides. The Serbs lack men and arms to retain the territory they have captured (general Mladic agrees). The Croats have gone too far in their Bosnian adventure (no more aid). The so called international community estimated badly when it laid its bets on the strongest player (time has shown that this particular player is not the strongest one). It is too late to let the Bosnians die of hunger and shelling now. The Serbs would be insane to capture Tuzla and its surroundings (who can feed hundreds of thousands of hungry people; who can kill them?). There are not many Bosnians left, but there are too many of them for the options proposed so far. It's no use pretending any longer that there is no Bosnia.