War Without Declaration

The town of Kupres fell and RS leader Radovan Karadzic ordered a reorganization of the 2nd Krajina Corps, which also lost some territory around Bihac, Bosanska Krupa and Bosanski Petrovac. The Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) Army used the opportunity to attack Serb positions on the Niksicka plateau (outside of Sarajevo) and advance further south from the city.

The RS reaction to that military defeat, its largest to date, was somewhat confused.

Karadzic comforted his people by saying the defeat "is a result of our weaknesses, not their strength" but that was hardly any comfort to the Serbs who were comforted by the belief that their army was the most powerful in Bosnia, and invincible to boot. It turned out that that army was caught napping on the Grabez heights (near Kupres), that their tanks didn't have enough fuel, that panic was quicker than reason, that intelligence officers and scouts didn't do their job, and that no one wanted to wait to see the whites of the enemy's eyes. Serb civilians understood at once and withdrew to safer places.

No one expected the developments around Kupres that were later dubbed betrayal by one-time allies - the Croat Defence Council (HVO). The Bosnian Muslims played a sly diplomatic game around Kupres; it took the strategic heights overlooking Kupres town and handed them over to the HVO on a silver platter. That undermines the rapprochement between the Herzeg-Bosna (self-proclaimed Croat state in B-H) leaders and Karadzic and forces the Croats to allow many more weapons into Bosnia for the Muslims.

The RS army rallied and launched a counteroffensive, but they were obviously in no hurry. The Krajina Serb army (in Croatia) gave them artillery support from their side of the border in the attack on Bihac. The Serbs also found a use for their hopelessly antiquated SA-2 anti-aircraft missiles (inherited from the former Yugoslav Peoples' Army) - they launched them at Bihac from the surrounding hills. The Krajina air force also pitched in. Reports said they launched strikes against B-H army positions around Bihac. Formally, those are violations of the no-fly zone, but the terrain does not allow the AWACS monitors to spot them as long as they fly low, so they're fairly safe from NATO patrols. An Orao fighter-bomber launched missiles at Bihac on Thursday without even violating Bosnian air space. Those are risky provocations since the latest NATO-UN deal on air strikes over Bosnia (and perhaps the Krajina) can be interpreted in a lot of ways.

The Muslim army hasn't shown any intention of keeping the territories it took in northwestern Bosnia. Kupres was given to the Croats; the Muslim 7th Corps slowly advanced towards Donji Vakuf in what seemed to be an attempt at confusing and slowing down the Bosnian Serbs. All this is part of the strategy that the Muslims are using; their goal isn't to take and keep territory at any cost, but to wear out the Serb army along the front lines which are too long for the Serbs to control fully given their shortage of manpower. The counteroffensive is seen only as an advance from which the Muslims have to retreat on time. The real challenge lies in striking in time and then retreating on time.

Karadzic seems a little worried about whether his parliament will declare a state of war throughout the RS. The state of war was suggested by RS Army chief-of-staff General Manojlo Milovanovic, not by General Mladic, who's keeping quiet again (after calling his adversaries "sly cowards" and threatening "unforeseeable consequences" if he doesn't get everything he wants, in an interview to "Der Spiegel"). The state of war was placed on the parliament's agenda as item 24. Deputies said the state of war should have been declared either in 1992 when the war started or never.

The state of war is obviously something dangerous and uncertain to the RS rulers. Clearly, martial law could easily redefine the ruling structures in the RS. The current elite would be suspended and Mladic and his generals would take over; military tribunals would be imposed, etc.

Karadzic suspects that his top ranking officers dream of a coup because his politics have brought them to a completely unpredictable situation.

So while parliament debated behind closed doors, the RS news agency SRNA reported that the Muslim 5th Corps was being broken and added that the HVO and Croatian regular army were preparing new attacks in Herzegovina along the Neretva river valley.