Nothing New in Bosnia

On Wednesday night the tension culminated: pagers beeped across Belgrade, diplomats got up from their suppers to run for their embassies and read confidential messages and come back unhappy; reporters phoned in to their news desks to hear the latest rumors and were disappointed. The only real news was the vote in the US Senate; over two thirds voted for the Dole-Liberman resolution calling the President to unilaterally lift the arms embargo for the Bosnian Moslem government. That night a combined Croatian Army (HV) Croat Defence Force (HVO) offensive broke through the Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) defence lines north of Livno endangering Grahovo and Glamoc; on Thursday they were eight kilometers from Grahovo and four kilometers from Glamoc and all traffic stopped along the Knin-Grahovo road across Strmica. That was the end of another relatively predictable week in Bosnia.

The week began with a visit by three very important generals (US, French and British) who met with General Ratko Mladic in Dobanovci. There they said a few things which boil down to: "Please, general, watch what you're doing or things will get bad". Then Mladic gave his guests a history lesson for about an hour. The three generals left confused and Mladic went back to Pale; they must have broken his heart and he spent the night crying.

On Monday, reporters in Pale heard a loud explosion to the south; a plane was flying over Pale at the time. The authorities wouldn't let anyone near the site. NATO said they had no idea what happened and that none of their aircraft was there. There was speculation of a plane breaking the sound barrier, of BiH army mortar and artillery fire (the BiH have the habit of lobbing 120 mm mortar and 155 mm artillery shells). Then Paris daily Liberasion said a French plane launched a guided 1,000 kilo bomb at the "home of a Karadzic aide". The daily said an unannounced Mirage 2000D flew close to a registered surveillance aircraft and the AWACS did not notice it. The French authorities denied the report half-heartedly before US intelligence sources told the NY Times that an analysis of AWACS records showed Liberasion was right; three Mirages were there flying a retaliation mission for the deaths of two French soldiers on Igman two days earlier. The Americans said a high ranking French officer informed his BSA counterpart that the mission was just a sample of what would happen if another French soldier dies. The Bosnian Serb authorities said nothing by Thursday.

Meanwhile, 300 British artillerymen brought their white howitzers to Igman and 500 French legionnaires and engineers drove in their armored cars. The French responded fiercely at one moment, firing 80 mortar and artillery shells after a Serb attack against their convoy and started mining the area around the Igman road, the only supply route into Sarajevo.

Since the Serbian police handed over several thousand new soldiers, the Krajina (RSK) army and BSA started out for Bihac again. That offensive looked like all offensives so far at first. The new element was the meeting of the Bosnian and Croatian presidents in Split where they signed a military assistance pact. A Bosnian official said the Split meeting was an event that "produced more concrete results than all the conferences and UN resolutions put together". The Bosnian government strategy to draw Croat forces into its fight against the Serbs seems to have paid off. When the Serb offensive provided its first results (advances towards Cazin and Bihac; 5th Corps commander Atif Dudakovic admitting his defenses were partly broken), combined HV and HVO forces launched assaults on Grahovo and Glamoc from the south; they already held Mt. Sator which lies between the two towns. That offensive makes the RS and RSK armies choose between continuing their pressure on Bihac and risking losing the Knin-Strumica-Grahovo road or regrouping their forces to suppress the Croat offensive.

General Mladic said Gorazde would not be attacked but later corrected himself and said Gorazde would not be attacked if the BiH troops in that safe area laid down their arms. After Srebrenica and allegations of prisoners being killed, the BiH in Gorazde have no intention of doing that but BSA sources said there will be no Gorazde attack until the Fall (late September), until everything so far is forgotten and the tension drops.

The transfer of the dual command key for air strikes to French and British officers (Janvier approves Smith's requests) means the European allies have taken a step forward in response to the American threat to lift the arms embargo. The rhetoric is clear: if the Americans lift the embargo, UNPROFOR leaves Bosnia and vice versa. On the ground however, the lifting of the embargo is not as simple as it seems, nor is the withdrawal of the peacekeepers.

Practically, those two things are not mutually exclusive on the ground; they even intertwine starting from the moment UNPROFOR decides to withdraw. NATO plans to help the withdrawal envisage a force of at least another 40,000 troops; the Clinton administration will have a hard time resisting the temptation to send its troops to help and he'll be stuck with the Europeans again. To get the US Senate resolution implemented, the Americans need either a Bosnian government request for help or the withdrawal of UNPROFOR or a UN decision to that effect. That decision is almost unimaginable which leaves the Bosnian government holding the trigger to the embargo resolution and that's like holding a live grenade, if they pull the pin they've got 12 weeks to throw it and in the meantime...

Meanwhile, BiH troops pulled back from Zepa to the north into hills and forests leaving 12-17,000 civilians behind who were transported by Mladic's buses to Kladanj. Witnesses said the departure of the troops was inevitable after reports from Srebrenica and Bratunac, alleging killings. The latest reports said the BSA transported civilians to BiH territory without harassment and in the presence of UN personnel. Zepa, the mountain village with a population of 460 before the war, got it's total 17,000 residents when Moslems gathered in the eastern Bosnia enclaves. So if Srebrenica with its population of 42,000 wasn't worth defending, neither was Zepa. The military consequences of the fall of Zepa stand equal for both the BSA and BiH; they both got troops for other operations.

The latest political gossip in Belgrade is that Kozyrev, Zotov and Churkin came back to see Milosevic.

Street wisdom says Milosevic will give the Russians what he didn't want to give to the younger Carl Bildt; recognition of Bosnia, a step that won't change anything on the ground there and Serbia will have the sanctions lifted, at least temporarily.