War Luck

If the present situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina continues, a foreign military intervention may turn out to be superfluous. General Stevanovic, Air Force Commander-in-Chief, was right a month ago when he warned of the bad shape the remaining JNA in B&H was in: resigned, feeling abandoned and betrayed, lacking a high quality commanding staff, lacking discipline, frustrated due to constant failure of wrongly conceived plans, feeling the destructive influence of an extremist ideology and a loss of political authority in general - which turned the potentially mighty Armed Forces of the "Serbian Republic of B&H" into a "paper tiger". Karadzic's cabinet strategy and his mentors were anachronous from the start: it is questionable whether it would have brought results a hundred and fifty years ago. Their obsession with the nation and territories - just another mental disease - has led them to total moral bankruptcy; from that position military victory is impossible. The tactically unnecessary destruction of Sarajevo and Mostar, the bloody ethnic purging of eastern Bosnia, war crimes and policy of resettling the population have turned their war luck: the enemy's morale has strengthened because it had no other choice left; the morale of the other side has been undermined to a critical level.

Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims and Croats have just one option: to fight to the last man and the last bullet: the savage ideology of Karadzic's forces and their Chetnik image from bad domestic war movies waived any thought of surrender. The current offensive of the Croatian Defense Council and the B&H Territorial Defense are a logical consequence of a war based on erroneous political hypotheses.

The officials of the Serbian Autonomous Region of Herzegovina's TD are complaining that everything went wrong after the Army left. More and more Croatian forces have been arriving from Dalmatia in the past ten days, and these troops are said to be disciplined and well equipped. News came from Germany on fresh arms shipments to Croatia. According to our correspondents, the HVO is planning to advance to the Montenegrin border, but not further than that; to unblock Dubrovnik and perhaps launch a great battle for the Prevlaka isthmus (between Montenegro and Croatia), but that is not certain; after the pacification of Eastern Herzegovina, they are planning to advance to Kupres in order to cut the connections between the Kninska and Bosanska Krajinas and isolate Knin, which they are already shelling - for the first time. The HVO and TD of the B&H forces left Mostar, heading down the Neretva river valley in the direction of Konjic; they took Bradina and Ivan-Sedlo and descended into the Zujevina Valley, through which the road leads straight to Sarajevo. If in Hadzic they meet the forces advancing from Zenica and Visoko, Karadzic's siege of Sarajevo is over. The way to eastern Bosnia would be open from that direction as well, which would make operative the strategy of breaking the strongholds of the Serbian Armed Forces in B&H, destroying communication between them and creating small isolated "islands", which seems to be the idea precisely.

A wave of refugees has flooded Montenegro. Vucurevic's (president of the SAO Eastern Herzegovina) units left their positions, people are fleeing, the Montenegrin police until recently had been catching and sending back the territorials fit for battle. Vucurevic's government even threatened execution for deserters, which is a sign of great concern. Such threats don't seem to have scared the Herzegovinians in Montenegro, and the police is no longer willing to hand them over to Vucurevic. However, they are not allowed to carry arms while on Montenegrin territory, following a number of incidents involving drunk Herzegovinian soldiers, when a couple of civilians were killed.

The people in Sarajevo are estimating the war damage, which can be a sign of their rising self-confidence. Fikret Abdic (B&H Presidency member) says that the material damage resulting from this war is 50 times higher than the damage done in World War II, and that much more people were killed than was thought. Over 1,300,000 people had to leave their homes. Martin Raguz, Labor and Welfare Minister in B&H Government, says that around 100 thousand people are in Karadzic's concentration camps. The number of refugees is increasing constantly (11 thousand in Zenica alone), and basic hygiene and health care are becoming more difficult to maintain. All kinds of dinars are being used - the Bosnian dinar will be joining the club soon - not to mention hard currencies. According to "BH Press Agency", Serbs have been dismantling ant removing machines from Bosnian plants, with the systematic plundering of apartments in the "liberated" parts of Sarajevo going strong. Political analysts from Sarajevo are optimistic, but they fear the future. Namely, the legal B&H authorities have been forced into an alliance with Croatia not so much because they desired it as for pure necessity and they now have to think about the consequences.

How will Tudjman try to charge his military assistance to the B&H government? We'll know that soon enough, the moment the HVO forces arrive at Sarajevo's gates: will they start breaking the siege right away, or will they wait for Karadzic's amateurs to raze the city to the ground? Will the Republic of Croatia stand by its recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina's sovereignty and territorial integrity? The deal between Karadzic and Boban (leader of HDZ /Croatian Democratic Union/ in Bosnia) is clear: Karadzic wants 65% of Bosnian territory; his best friend Boban wants 36%; it makes 101%, leaving that 1% negotiable. What will be the Bosnians' answer to Tudjman's reminder: "We liberated you"? They already have bad experience with independent Croatian states. What could help Bosnia keep its sovereignty and territorial integrity between two strong neighbors obsessed by territorial expansion? Our Muslims don't have a "spare country". Handing Bosnia over to Croatia suits both Karadzic and Milosevic, since their false prophecy about a "Communist jihad from the Vatican" is acquiring the semblance of truth; that would also suit Tudjman, who needs a victory and some spare territories on the eve of the hurriedly scheduled early elections.

Writing these lines, news are pouring in of the Sixth Fleet being put on red alert, and a U.S. airborne division in Germany as well. At the same time, the British Prime Minister claims consistently that a real military intervention is out of question. The present military situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina is one that would permit the inflow of Western in food, arms and drugs through the port of Ploce (Croatia); the railway and the route to Sarajevo could be made operational relatively quickly, and the siege is about to fall apart. It all depends on the readiness of the West to really support the sovereignty and integrity of B&H. Well informed sources close to the (still functioning) federal administration say that the Yugoslav Army has no intention whatsoever of resisting any form of the West's military operation outside the borders of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.