Game Around Banja Luka

On Thursday afternoon, the situation was as follows: the army of the Republika Srpska held Mrkonjic Grad, Sanski Most and Prijedor - three of northwest Bosnia's major towns. By that time, the Serbs had lost Sipovo, Donji Vakuf, Jajce, Bosanski Petrovac, Bosanska Krupa and Bosanski Novi. The fate of Bosanska Dubica and Bosanska Kostajnica was uncertain, except for confirmed reports about strong Croatian artillery attacks and the evacuation of civilians from the area. The Croatian army, after forcing the Una and Sava rivers at several locations, was advancing from the northwest towards Prijedor, but after Granic's promises to halt the offensive, Croatian troops partly retreated. According to some Western sources, the Croatian army had suffered considerable losses in the area and received the order to stop the offensive with relief. Workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Prijedor said that artillery fire could be heard distinctly inside the town.

On the Ozren-Vozuca front, the Serbs lost Vozuca; somewhat more than a year ago, on St. Vitus Day, Karadzic stated: "If Vozuca falls, Moscow falls as well." According to the latest reports, heavy fighting is raging on Mount Ozren and around Doboj. Serb sources and the UN reported attacks by two divisions of the BiH army in the area, but said that it was quiet in other parts of the front.

DOMINO PIECES ARE FALLING: A matrix of refugees' routes has become one of the best indicators of the military and political situation in the area held by the Serbs on the west bank of the Drina. No one can know an army better than its own people, or as Nikola Koljevic explained in implictly in a statement to FoNet, Serb troops began to retreat after the Croatian artillery pounded villages behind the defence line, fearing for the fate of their families. The same happened during the fall of Bosansko Grahovo and Glamoc, and especially during the fall of Krajina: troops were fighting back until the civilians evacuated the attacked area and then laid their arms and ran after their families.

Some analysts have recently come out with a theory that the Bosnian Serbs are deliberately ceding the territories which will eventually be given to the other side under the Contact Group's or any other's maps. But this theory can hardly withstand the following arguments: the Serbs have never ceded anything deliberately, because in the long run that would mean suicide. Furthermore, if rumors about such a deal supposedly spread among the people, every next attack would trigger a massive movement of civilians from the attacked area since no one know what the alleged maps include. The advocates of this theory must also bear in mind that the theory of international complot against the Serbs is the main political philosophy of the Republika Srpska. The latest developments were rather caused by a psychological factor: the awareness that the national project of a Greater Serbia has failed and that the time has come to pay the bills.

OTHER SIDE: NATO air strikes on Bosnian Serbs have heavily damaged their telecommunications, logistic and traffic capacities. Rule number one of modern warfare, the command-communications-control coordination, was degraded to World War I level, and only mobile radio links (which are very easy to monitor) remained opened. The Bosnians and Croats naturally assessed that this was the right time to launch an offensive. Their offensive was relatively successful, but - as so many times before - it showed the need to redefine the relationship between the two mutually suspicious partners: the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

That this is not an easy job became clear during a meeting between Tudjman and Izetbegovic last week. The meeting produced no concrete results, but a statement released after the talks said the problem of "liberated" territories would be solved in political talks, regardless of what territory was captured by whose troops.

What are Croatia's options at the moment? There is reason to believe that Croatia's ruling HDZ has seriously divided over the Bosnian issue - the traditional nationalists who have aspirations on the whole of Bosnia (as far east as to the Drina, which they call the "flower of the Croatian people") on one side, and the revisionists (Tudjman and Herzegovinians) who envision the division of Bosnia with the Serbs (Karadjordjevo, etc.) on the other side.

The first faction is willing to negotiate with Zagreb on all forms of confederation and federation, trying to buy the time until they can have the entire Bosnia. The other faction is relying on the recent and ongoing military victories, which will make it easier to divide Bosnia into a sparrow in the hand (Branko Tudjan, the "royal" commentator in Vecernji list explained that "borders are drawn by troops") and a pigeon on the tree in which they have no interest. Sarajevo has been aware of this and Gen. Jovan Divjak, assistant commander of the BiH army, warned of this threat shortly after the fall of Glamoc and Bosansko Grahovo. Minister Sacirbey said the government in Sarajevo was ready for a dialogue "with competent officials in the Banja Luka region, to make it possible for the local population to stay in their homes and to avert a possible fighting in the area." He did not name the "competent officials," but said they "are not war criminals or people who do not accept the territorial integrity of BiH." The calls to Banja Luka to negotiate with Sarajevo (through the mediation of Britain, whose foreign secretary Malcolm Rifkind offered to find a Serb negotitor for a "political dialogue of such crucial an importance") is another illustration of the Bosnians's anxiety that the Croatian military help could undermine their efforts to preserve the integrity of Bosnia.

Banja Luka's leader, Predrag Radic, refused the offer for talks, and chief-of-staff of the BSA, Gen. Manojlo Milovanovic, ordered his troops to fight until the last man and urged the population to ignore various rumors. He said that no deal had been made and that the enemy would be defeated in the Bosnian Krajina. Radovan Karadzic kept silent from Tuesday to Thursday, and BSA commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic, was hospitalised. Parliament speaker, Momcilo Krajisnik, said he did "not understand Izetbegovic's statements that he will not accept a division of Bosnia." Meanwhile, Milosevic was negotiating with Holbrooke on behalf of the entire Serb nation, and his people reacted calmly to the crisis in Banja Luka.

In brief, Bosnia was on the fronts divided into portions that do not correspond to the Contact Group map. The warring parties now hold about 50% of Bosnia each, but with their key communications routes and corridors opened they are holding knives under each other's throats. On the other hand, this could be the basis for a future hypothetical peace agreement. The only question is whether this agreement will include Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and their teams in Pale.