What's NATO up to in Bosnia-Hercegovina?

By Jennifer Thompson NATO took control of Western "peacekeeping" operations in Bosnia from the UN on December 20 in Sarajevo. NATO has been charged with enforcing a peace based on the ethnic partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina between the "entities" of the Belgrade-sponsored Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska and the Bosnian-Croat Federation, presently in an uneasy alliance with Croatia. The peace, agreed under US duress in Dayton, Ohio in November and signed in Paris in December, promises little justice for Bosnia, or for the predominantly Bosnian Muslim victims of war atrocities. The Dayton deal achieved what nearly four years of fighting, the establishment of large areas of "ethnic purity" by murder, expulsion and terror, and numerous similar agreements had not — a cessation of hostilities based on awarding 49% of Bosnia to the Bosnian Serbs and 51% to Bosnia's Croatians, ethnic Muslims and other ethnic minorities. NATO's projected 60,000-strong IFOR (Implementation Force) replaced the discredited UN Protection Force, although many of the UN troops simply changed hats. The number of NATO troops and their aggressive new rules of engagement that allow military methods to ensure compliance with the agreement, underscore the reality that the "peace" is reliant on enforcement. IFOR is supposed to ensure the withdrawal of armed forces from areas assigned to the other side in the carve-up and a 4 kilometre zone separating the Bosnian Serb entity and the Bosnian-Croat Federation. They are to patrol the separation zone, remove landmines, operate checkpoints, secure the flow of relief aid and monitor refugee flows. Newsweek reported in November that the US's criteria for withdrawal included the separation of the forces, the holding of national and local elections, and the arming and training of the Bosnian government army to ensure a military balance. The first deadline, for the withdrawal of Bosnian government, Serbian and Croatian forces from the zones of separation, was met by January 19. IFOR commander Admiral Leighton-Smith said there was "substantial compliance" on the military issues of the agreement by all parties. Bosnian Serb forces reportedly pulled their big guns and armour out of Sarajevo suburbs returning to Bosnian government control. Despite the material being in the heavy weapons exclusion zone, an IFOR spokesperson admitted that the British had even supplied the Serbs with fuel. Other snags so far include the presence of around 1400 minefields along the 1000 kilometre-long zones from which the mines have not been removed as is called for by the agreement. The exchange of prisoners — due to be completed by January 19 — is also outstanding, with the Serbs refusing to comply with the Bosnian government's insistence that they account for 1000 missing prisoners and thousands more believed to have been killed. The inability of ethnic division to resolve the ethnic hostilities that years of war have fanned is also highlighted in the hostility between areas of Sarajevo and Mostar held by the Bosnian government, and those held by the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croat militias respectively. The questions raised most recently about NATO/IFOR's role in Bosnia relate more to what they're not going to be doing in relation to helping investigate war crimes. The tribunal has so far indicted 52 people — 45 Serbs and seven Bosnian Croats — for war crimes. Only one, a Bosnian Serb arrested in Germany, has appeared before the court. The discovery of new mass graves in areas formerly and currently under Bosnian Serb control has added to the list of over 200 mass graves already known. It also increases pressure on NATO to help deliver justice to the victims of war crimes. The NATO commander in Bosnia, Admiral Leighton Smith, has said that NATO is "not going to provide specific security, or in other words guarantee security, for teams investigating these grave sites". On a visit to US troops in Tuzla on January 13, US President Bill Clinton told CBS that IFOR should help UN war crimes investigators reach mass grave sites, provided it does not interfere with the soldiers' primary job. After a January 21 high profile visit by US government official John Shattuck to sites of large-scale massacres and graves around Srebrenica, IFOR was forced to adjust its tune. IFOR's position is that it will not carry out such missions on its own but will provide protection for international investigators who request it. After Shattuck's visit, the head of the International Tribunal on War Crimes in former Yugoslavia, Judge Richard Goldstone, met with Leighton Smith. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana reportedly said that IFOR will prevent the destruction of evidence, but he would not say how. No commitment on helping to arrest indicted war criminals was given. While the Dayton agreement emphasised that refugees should be able to return to their homes and established an independent commission and police force to oversee human rights, the very logic of an ethnically based division of Bosnia mitigates against return. Many refugees won't return to an area controlled by a force that drove them out to achieve ethnic purity. Repatriation of the estimated 2.5 million war refugees — the aim of a current UNHCR program — will take years, since many refugees will not be able to return to their home towns — particularly non-Serbs ethnically cleansed from areas remaining under Serb control. Bosnian Serbs killed, imprisoned, or expelled an estimated 95% of all non-Serbs on territory they occupied. The Dayton/NATO approach contrasts unfavourably with that outlined in the 500-strong fourth Assembly of Helsinki Citizens' Forum, a mainly European network of civic and human rights activists in Tuzla in October. A large majority of the participants stressed the importance of continuing to defend the idea of a plural, united Bosnia-Hercegovina, despite the obvious difficulties. They resolved that such a defence should include a right of return for refugees and displaced people (or fair compensation), and the prosecution of war criminals. As well as adopting these principles for a just and durable peace, the Tuzla meeting indicated that in spite of the smothering interests of the West, including its media coverage of Bosnia, there is a democratic movement in Bosnia and Europe to fight for those principles. The agreement at Dayton is moving events in another direction — to a win-win situation for Croatian and Serbian expansionism and a chance for Western imperialism to get its fingers into Bosnian political and economic life at the expense of justice for the Bosnian people and nation.