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West Must Live Up to Dayton Accord
if Lasting Peace is Expected in Bosnia

By Zlatica Hoke, Voice of America

Five months after the signing of the Dayton accords, the NATO implementation force — IFOR — has achieved most of its strictly military objectives in Bosnia. But analysts say little progress has been made in creating conditions for the return of refugees to their homes, and for the conduct of free and fair elections. They also feel not enough is being done to apprehend suspected war criminals and to gather vital evidence for the U.N. war crimes tribunal.

Several prominent American and European experts participating in a recent Balkan Policy Review Conference in Washington, said the United States is, in effect, counting the days until it can withdraw from Bosnia — even though the Bosnian government cannot yet defend itself. The experts agreed that self-defense and the ability to maintain law and order are among the most important requirements for a lasting peace.

U.S. Training of Bosnian Army Essential
Balkan Institute member, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, noted the United States had made a verbal commitment to train and equip the Bosnian federation forces, but so far has not taken a step in that direction. In fact, he said, Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic signed the Dayton agreement only after the United States promised to help develop the Bosnian army.

"That was then, this is now," says Perle, "and so far not a single bullet is moved from the United States to the arsenals of the Federation or Bosnian forces. As far as I know, not a dime has been raised to finance arming and equipping of the Bosnian forces and the American commitment expressed so unambiguously at Dayton has now been re-written. It is now a commitment not to arm and equip, not to arm and train the Bosnian forces, or the federation forces, but rather to lead an effort to accomplish that goal. This consists of the U.S. making thus far ineffective appeals to other governments to do what the U.S. pledged at Dayton it would do itself."

Perle says turning away from this pledge shows a lack of leadership by the United States which may encourage a renewal of fighting in Bosnia once the IFOR withdraws. Panelists at the Balkan Policy Review Conference who have recently visited Bosnia said that members of the large US force deployed in the Tuzla area are largely bored because of inactivity. Their responsibilities consist of little more than keeping the warring parties separated — the task earlier performed, with little success, by United Nations peacekeepers.

Criticze IFOR's 'Cementing of Ethnic Cleansing'
Oxford University lecturer Mark Almond, author of the book, "Europe’s Backyard War", was critical of the IFOR role in Bosnia. He said while the NATO force has succeeded in establishing and maintaining the cease-fire, it has also facilitated and cemented the ethnic cleansing that resulted from the war.

"Not only has IFOR failed to restore both freedom of movement between the two or three parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, it has failed in fact to dismantle many of the checkpoints and to guarantee freedom of movement," says Almond. "It certainly has also not only failed to ensure that people can return to their homes, that they feel safe and protected to do so, it has actually facilitated the further ethnic cleansing of people."

Mr. Almond also said the United States and NATO forces must take measures to guarantee open political campaigning for Bosnia’s upcoming elections and to defend other provisions of the Dayton agreement. Otherwise, he said the IFOR troops themselves will become targets of attack as the time for their withdrawal approaches. In which case, he adds, come November, those people who have most wanted to avoid a military involvement in Bosnia will find it very difficult to get out easily.

Refugee Problem is Unresolved
German panelist Tilman Zulch, the president of the Society for Threatened People, pointed to the lingering Bosnia refugee problem. He said Germany accepted about 320,000 refugees from the war in former Yugoslavia, but now would like to send them back because of the financial burden they have created. But, he notes, many of the refugees have no homes to return to and conditions for their return are far from safe.

"Eighty percent of these refugees (in Germany), like the Bosnian refugees from other European countries, are from Serbian-controlled areas, five to ten percent from Croatian controlled areas. Unfortunately, we still have to state that the regime which was responsible for their becoming refugees, that was responsible for the genocide of perhaps 200,000 civilians, is in the Serbian-controlled areas still in power. As for the Croatian-controlled area, German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel called the leadership there ‘political Mafia.’"

Zulch says the Zenica Center for Documentation of Genocide has a list of about 1,350 suspected Serbian war criminals who continue to pose a threat. The Society for Threatened People estimates that at least 3,000 people known to have taken part in the ethnic killing are now employed by the local councils and police in the zones under Serbian control.

Also, it was noted that the two top Bosnian Serb leaders accused of inciting the genocide policy in Bosnia — Radovan Karadzic and general Ratko Mladic — are still in power and there has been no attempt by the NATO forces to bring them before the international war crimes tribunal. Mr. Zilch says under the present circumstances, the repatriation of refugees would amount to deportation.

Fundamental Flaw in Bosnian Policy
British political analyst Noel Malcolm, author of "Bosnia: A Short History", says Western policy in the Balkans continues to fail primarily because it is based on the fundamentally wrong premise that the war was caused by ancient ethnic hatreds. Thus, in Mr. Malcom’s words, the war has been approached with the doctrine of equivalence and the sense that all sides are equally responsible for it. He says the West has looked for a solution to the Balkan conflict in terms of "damping down" and "containing," as if it were a forest fire. As a result, the ethnic partition, which he says is part of the Dayton plan, is being accepted as a desirable solution.

"This is, and will be, the fundamental mistake of our policy from now on," says Malcom. "If we think that separating these populations and leaving half the populations living in tents and refugee camps for the foreseeable future, if we think that that is part of the solution, then I am afraid we are getting things exactly the wrong way around. If you regard this war as pursued for war aims, for political purposes, above all territory and power, then you can see that ethnic separation and the creation of a Serb entity that has some long-term possibility of secession from Bosnia, that this is in fact a way of helping those war aims to reach achievement."

Noel Malcolm says the creation of a Serb entity in Bosnia would lead to much greater long-term instability. So, he says, it is very wrong to assume that past analytical mistakes are now history and that only today’s practical problems have to be dealt with.

Conference Calls for Urgent Action by U.S.
Participants of the Balkan Policy Review Conference called for urgent U.S. action to enforce all the provisions of the Dayton accords. They asked, among other things, that the United States follow through on its pledge to help train and equip the Bosnian Army, and to create conditions for the safe return of refugees and the conduct of free elections. Unless these critical conditions are fulfilled before the NATO implementation forces leave Bosnia at the end of the year, analysts predict the present peace implementation efforts in the Balkans will be just another failure.



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