BosNet Article:remember Bosnia Before Thinking of Stopping Nato
Steve Albert
B o s N e t -May 6, 1999
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The Irish Times
April 14, 1999
Remember Bosnia before you think of stopping NATO
Those voices opposed to the NATO strikes and arguing for compromise have
forgotten the lessons of
Bosnia, argues Vesna Ruzicka-Sehovic
My heart goes out to Serb civilian casualties. After all, we know what it
is like when powerful weaponry pounds your city, your people, family and
friends. We have been there. For 30 months, the capital of
Bosnia-Hercegovina, Sarajevo, was under incessant bombardment. Thirty
months meant 1,000 days. It also meant 12,500 killed, including 1,600
children. Up to 4,000children in Sarajevo were wounded in 1,000 days and
nights. No water, no food, no medicine, no place to hide . . . from what?
From guns perched at the mountain above, a favourite weekend outing spot in
more peaceful times.
For three long years, a European city was under siege by mighty Bosnian
Serb forces, supervised and aided by the J(N)A or Yugoslav (People's) Army.
The political and the military supreme commanders respectively were
Milosevic's men on the ground: Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the
former originally from a mountain village in Montenegro, the latter from a
mountain village near the Bosnian-Serb border.
Both had an overwhelming hatred for the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural
existence that Sarajevo stood for. With troubled family histories
themselves they were perfect candidates for Milosevic's plans to "cleanse"
anything and everything non-Serb. Mladic'sinfamous order to his soldiers
manning the heavy artillery pointed at the city below - "pound them until
you blow their mind" -
stands out as one of the most horrific legacies of this century. Among
others, the main maternity hospital with its delivery roomsand new-born
babies was deliberately shelled by Serbian forces, and is still out of
action today, three years after the peace accord.The main post office was
one of the first buildings to be shelled and burnt down to cut off the city
from the world.
Children playing were taken out by snipers like pigeons. Women and men,
young and old, buying food at the city market wereblown to pieces on clear,
sunny days. From the hillside, targets were being picked out through
binoculars with surgical precision.The going rate or reward for shooting a
Sarajevan dead on his balcony or in the street, was 100 Deutschmarks.
Imagine your life
worth (pounds) 40. But then, sinister cynicism is Milosevic's speciality.
And those were the lucky ones. In Bosnian villages and small towns,
Karadzic's Serbs followed a chilling routine: first they would disarm local
Muslims or Croats of the few weapons they had, round them up, divide men
from women and put them indeserted hangars. Then came the torture and
killing, intimidation and rape. Mercy was not on the agenda.
Horror stories we thought were firmly locked in the past resurfaced again,
for the first time since the second World War. And sodid concentration
camps. Serb guards paraded their deadly guns and threatening looks among
emaciated and tortured, humiliatedvictims. Still, this was labelled a
'civil war' with a keep-off warning. The then British Foreign Minister,
Douglas Hurd, was
especially keen on the word. The third strongest army in Europe, the J(N)A,
waging a war against an unarmed population, andthey called it 'civil'?
Then Srebrenica happened, and Milosevic, Mladic and Karadzic had gone one
step too far. In summer 1995, 7-10,000 men from the supposedly safe area
were brought to execution sites, shot dead and bulldozed over. Some bodies
are being
exhumed, more are rotting in the ground of Republika Srpska. Many may never
be found, their remains decomposed and scattered, their families in a
limbo. I have seen the fields of eastern Bosnia where a skull or an odd
human bone was dug up andthrown aside for a Serb farmer to sow his crops.
And this was barely three years after the men of Srebrenica were shot like
sheep- no resistance, no screams, just deadly silence . . .
Radovan Karadzic and his general have been in hiding since they were
indicted for war crimes by the Hague Tribunal. Their mastermind, president
of Yugoslavia and now of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, continued his crusade
against the non-Serbs and the
disobedient.
He started his campaign on Kosovo 10 years ago, harnessing Serbian national
pride and turning it into rampant nationalisticextremism, without
compromise, without mercy. His army first attacked Slovenia in the north,
gave up and moved down toCroatia causing havoc and destruction, from the
beautiful old town of Vukovar to the gem of Adriatic, Dubrovnik.
A year later, Milosevic took his army to the most vulnerable, central
republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina. It was believed Bosnia would fall
within weeks - God knows how it survived three war years. In 1995, after
250,000 had died, a peace deal was declared and the West wanted Milosevic
to be its guarantor, the "man to do business with". He tricked them into
believingthey could not do without him.
Regrettably, the man's business is not peace but war. Kosovo is just the
latest "pearl" in his necklace, but would not have been thelast. There is
the tiny but proud Montenegro, whose pride Milosevic would like to squash;
then there is a Sandzak triangle betweenBosnia, Serbia and Montenegro with
a Muslim majority, which he would like to cleanse; lastly, there is
Vojvodina in the north,
whose autonomy he stripped away at the same time as Kosovo's. Meanwhile, in
Kosovo, the same old story: streams of refugees,torture, rape, mass
killings, destruction of homes, looting . . . and endless lies to his own
people and to the outside world. In eightyears, Milosevic's policy has
resulted in hundreds of thousands of people of the former Yugoslavia being
made homeless and
dispossessed. But the Serbs stand firmly behind their leader.
There are now voices opposed to NATO strikes, and advocating negotiations
and a political solution instead. I would challengethem that they have not
done their homework: the majority ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo has
pursued and exhausted allavenues of peaceful struggle in the last 10 years.
Living in a European state without freedom of expression, denied the right
to
teach and learn in their own language, dismissed from positions of any
importance and denied all political and human rights, theybecame
increasingly desperate. The prisons of Kosovo were built for ethnic
Albanians. Inside, they were denied justice and left atthe mercy of those
who imprisoned them. Mercy was not on the agenda. Though less than 10 per
cent of the population, the Serbs of Kosovo have been running the show, and
loving every moment.
People usually do not rebel if given their rights and freedom, even under
minority rule. Kosovan Albanians never stood a chance with their Serb
masters. When they did finally rise against them, it was out of despair.
Life is not worth living, we'd rather die than go on like this, they said.
NATO bombardment will cost the Kosovan Albanian population an enormous
price, bothin lives and livelihood. But it is the price they consider worth
paying for their dignity and for their future. And so should we.For, if you
do not halt evil when it is unleashed far away, it may soon come closer to
home.
Vesna Ruzicka-Sehovic is London Correspondent for the main independent
Bosnian daily, Oslobodjenjne
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