The Wave Of Hate

The UN Security Council has adopted a presidential resolution (September 2) in which the Bosnian Serbs are required to immediately cease ethnic cleansing operations in the Bijeljina region.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have also accused the Serb Republic (RS) government of wanting to realize a program of complete ethnic cleansing in areas of eastern and western Bosnia under their control.

As reported in Sarajevo, two thousand Muslims from the Banja Luka area and over one thousand from the Bijeljina area were expelled during August. UNHCR spokesman Peter Kessler announced that the expulsions were "accompanied by ethnic terrorism" - there were a few cases of rape, and jewelry and money were systematically taken from those driven from their homes.

According to him, the expulsions are "part of a state terrorism" with the goal of "creating a pure Serbian state". ICRC spokeswoman Liza Johns confirmed that ethnic cleansing continues and that the Serbian authorities were aware of what was happening, but "did nothing to prevent it".

In addition, other sources claim that the annnouncement of the Contact-Group plan was followed by a new wave of expulsions of non-Serbs from the RS:

One of them is the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Fund's report, "The Expulsion of Local Minorities (Banja Luka and Bijeljina), published in VREME.

The question that is now being asked is why the practice of ethnic cleansing, which, after its largest manifestations in 1992, was generally confined to isolated incidents, has reappeared.

There are no clear answers, just as it is also hard to find out what the leaders of the RS are momentarily counting on in their political moves.

Therefore, suppositions remain.

First of all, since we are not talking about deportations from the territories which the Bosnian Serbs would have to give up according to the Contact-Group map, some see in this the creation of material bases for those Serbs who would eventually leave their homes if the peace plan were accepted.

It is stressed that the RS is under pressure from a large number of refugees who have no place to live and that we are simply talking about a population "exchange", which the Sarajevo government is manipulating in order to score as many points as possible on the international political scene.

However, those familiar with the circumstances emphasize that, because the Bosnian Serbs hold much more territory than they can settle, they already have more housing than they need.

They say that a completely different issue is that a good proportion of those houses is destroyed (actually demolished - roofing, windows, flooring, electrical and plumbing installations stolen) and the refugees do not have the money necessary for their repair.

The second supposition sees ethnic cleansing as the best way to ensure national homogenization, especially important after the termination of relations between Belgrade and Pale.

Ignoring the consequences of the events of 1992 [Namely, after the infamous events such as those in Prijedor and Visegrad (see insert), few Serbs are prepared for the return of their neighbors and, despite a lack of personal guilt or participation in these crimes, the majority of the Serb population is now compelled to radicalism], the Serb population is now cynically and skillfully manipulated by ideas such as: "How can we feed our enemies when we are already suffering under all imaginable sanctions?"

When things are put that way, no one can offer protection to others without ending up being labelled a traitor.

Who knows, perhaps Radovan Karadzic is building the loyalty of his subjects precisely upon that.

Finally, a third supposition is that all of this is the result of the arrogance of the Pale leadership, who want to show Slobodan Milosevic and the entire world that they do whatever they like and that no one can stop them.

The Pope's cancellation of his trip to Sarajevo after Dr. Karadzic's refusal to guarantee his safety says enough. The goal is to show that others must yield rather than the Bosnian Serbs: the Muslim-Croat federation, the international community, and Serbia.

Meanwhile, as a form of blackmail to ensure that the others give in, it is made clear that all kinds of things can happen unless this is the case.