Country Ripped Apart

Those who planned to celebrate the end to the war in Bosnia better do it right away. Just in case. The New York Ministerial Accord at least resembles the beginning of the end and, if you are waiting for the real end, who knows when you'll live to see it and whether anyone will be able to recognize the moment. It is planned that the war ends before the ammo is all used up, before someone completely capitulates, without ultimate victories or defeats. This probably means that the war will be ending for a long time, that we will live to see a few more partial agreements and that the inertia of violence will continue some time after the peace conference.

Someone will somewhere nevertheless fire the last bullet. It is alleged that there is readiness to send tens of thousands of NATO troops to Bosnia, whose presence will necessarily considerably quench anyone's thirst for more playing around. This is also the aim of the promise that the rich world will shower Bosnia with gold, as soon as it stops its great fireworks and calms down to the level which CNN will assess as boring and decide to move on.

The day the world TV cameras and lights finally leave is the best technical description of the end to war, at least to the extent it interests the world. As America has taken over the whole initiative to end the war, as Clinton has already involved himself so deeply in it, obviously deciding Bosnia was his major foreign policy trump card, I believe not too many shots will be heard there soon. And since there is only a year left until the elections, this means that Clinton will not be satisfied with just any truce, but only with a more stable peace which can also be presented as a just one.

It goes without saying that when someone concerns himself with you, you can expect an action or an outcome not to your liking, since it is not primarily aimed at you in the first place. But, when a small and insignificant country manages to interest the US public so much and becomes a subject of its elections, then it should blame itself the most. In this case, however, I still can't see any negative sides to the fact that America has been pinning its little flags throughout the former Yugoslavia and the Balkans. It's true that America treats the local little states, peoples and leaders as objects: it does not care so much about what they want, and insists that they do as they are told. But, what have polite requests and waiting for them to come to their senses amounted to?

The New York agreement on Bosnia's future structure shows that the US strategy is directed at the immediate end to the war, leaving all sides enough perfidious hope that they will derive some profit for themselves later. Although the accord focuses on the institutions of the Bosnian state, it hardly diminishes doubts in its existence. It seems that, while pledging loyalty to Bosnia, the Americans themselves still do not rule out the possibility that it disintegrates. After the US elections, of course, and this is where the greatest danger lies.

Bosnia is actually guaranteed only one year or - to end the war, heal the heaviest wounds and prove it exists. America can not do more than offer it this chance and will definitely not keep it plugged in to the artificial heart and lungs forever. Bosnia needs much more time, but it will now have to get to work and try to achieve this. It would now be much easier for the Serbs, Croats and Moslems to give up and untangle themselves from each other. I believe that all of them share the worst nightmare - the vision of a joint assembly in which the MPs watch each other out of the corner of their eyes and deliberate who had burned whose house, and then vote peacefully and unanimously.

Bosnia will be rebuilt or preserved neither by the Serbs, the Croats, the Moslems nor by the Americans. Only Bosnians can do that; if there is still enough of them on all sides, if they have the power, the will and the time to overcome the huge and horrible war barriers and patch up their ripped up country. They enjoy the support of America and most of the world, but, in Bosnia they are represented by no one, not one government nor leader. They can not overwhelm all three of their nations and faiths, but without them, these nations will be unable to sit down at the same table.

Serbs and Croats largely believe that Bosnia had never existed, which serves as proof that it can never exist. They do not wonder whether there had ever been a Bosnian Serb Republic or the Croatian Herzeg-Bosnia. Moslems are no longer sure they really need all of Bosnia which can not belong to them alone, so they are keeping a little state of their own in reserve. However, neither Sarajevo nor central Bosnia ever belonged only to them. All of them now view Bosnia as somewhat unnatural, while they and their ethnic territories seem ridiculous, absurd, grotesque and a hundred times more unnatural to everyone watching them from the outside.

Milosevic has obviously become the least obstacle standing in the way of the success of Holbrooke's mission. He no longer invests his hopes in the Russians, he is not interested in any special relations with Karadzic's wretched state and he would gladly exchange it for the lifting of the sanctions. The question arises whether these sanctions are still worrying him. He has not appeared in public for so long, he's distanced himself so much that no one knows anymore what he is actually doing. As if only Holbrooke's visits remind him where he's living and what day of the week it is. While Serbia is ruled by our memory of him.

Karadzic also calmed down after hearing NATO's arguments. He is now satisfied because Serbs will be equally treated in Bosnia. He no longer demands 65% of the territories and access to the sea, and he would even take an oath that life together is possible, although, of course, deep inside he hopes this misfortune will somehow be avoided. With a little help of para-psychological espionage, it is easy to conclude that Croats and Moslems now represent Holbrooke's greatest problem. Croatia is unstoppably expanding before Tudjman's eyes, while Izetbegovic is no longer sure who is his greater enemy - the Serbs or the Croats, whether he should continue warring, whether he prefers a larger, secular state or a smaller, but religiously more close-knit one.

It seems that the secret of Holbrooke's hitherto success lies at least partially in the deadly tempo he has imposed on his partners, as if he realizes he must not give them time to think in peace. As soon as he leaves, they begin their analyzing and their morbid calculations, but here he comes again. Just as they began looking for gaps in the agreed-upon principles of Bosnia's structure, he went a step further, talking about territories and demarcation. Everyone agrees that this will be the hardest knot to disentangle. It remains to be seen, but if the resolution of this issue is staved off too much, we can be sure nothing will come out of Bosnia. Maps and demarcations are truly important only in case of a division, and if this possibility is even indirectly incorporated in the plan, it will be implemented in keeping with Murphy's Law, the only law everyone in Bosnia respects.

It seems Americans are investing too much hope in free elections in Bosnia and have not made inquiries enough about who runs the TV there. We here witnessed time and again how TV determined the elections and made the people vote against their deepest interests. The people here are not used to recognizing or caring about their interests and are prone to courageous deeds to their own detriment. That is all that has been done here in the past few years. If that weren't the case, Serbia and Croatia would now both realize that Bosnia's survival would bring precisely the two of them great relief and help them get out of the vicious circle of hatred. Bosnia's survival would be bad, shattering news for Serbian and Croatian Fascism.

As regards Serbia, it is already exhausted and impoverished from paying the price of national dignity, something neither the outside world nor the local national opposition have sufficiently noticed. Nothing has been on sale or had a price here for a long time; everything can now be bought for petty change. As Serbia was not at war, it cannot hope for any aid from the world to rebuild itself; but, since it was at war, it might even be required to pay reparations, if it had something to pay with. This is why someone will undoubtedly come up with the idea to urge Karadzic to hold on to Bosnia firmly, and when the aid arrives, send some brotherly alms across the Drina.