How the War Started

Too many people in the U.S. are now shouting out their general disapproval
for U.S. President Bill Clinton by attacking the NATO mission in
Bosnia-Herzogovina.  They have a right to their opinion, but I'm afraid they
are more influenced by right-wing and consertative media and radio hosts than
a throughtful analysis of the true flaws of the agreement and mission, or the
culpability and responsibility of the Western nations and in particular, the
United Nations Security Council has in the present state of the conflict.

I think that it's useful to have a simple overview of how this war was
started so that the debate include an understanding of the facist forces that
began the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.  Without this basic knowledge, it is
impossible to argue whether the U.S. brokered partition plan is good for the
People or not.

Here is an essay from Alan Fogelquist's book, The Break-up of Yugoslavia,
published in 1993.  For more information on this book, call the Lasiewicz
Foundation at 213/668-1811, Los Angeles, CA.  If you are involved in other
internet discussion boards, please feel free to share this posting.

Submitted by Nalini Lasiewicz
==================================

   "The current war in Bosnia-Herzogovina is essentially a war of aggression
from the outside, even though it has internal ethnic dimensions. The conflict
is a continuation of the war of aggression against Slovenia and Croatia,
which temporarily subsided in those countries, (but has reignited in Croatia.
in 1995). If the Serbian war machine is not stopped, the war can only spread
to new areas and is likely to result in a confrontation of continental
proportions. In the meantime, Milosevic's allies in Bosnia have been carrying
out step-by-step destruction of most of the country.
  In the name of protecting Serbs, no one has done more to endanger the lives
of innocent Serbian people than Milosevic and his political allies. If
inter-communal violence and 'ethnic hatred' have emerged in what was once
regarded as a model multi-ethnic or multi-national federation, it is an
ethnic violence Milosevic and the federal army have manufactured, stimulated,
and perpetuated in their last-ditch effort to hold power in an era of
democratic and nationalist revolutions. It was his chauvinistic policies
which culminated in the arbitrary abolition in March 1989 of the autonomous
status of the provinces of both Kosovo and Vojvodina which had been
guarenteed by the Federal Constitution of the Yugoslav Federation.

ELECTIONS AND INDEPENDENCE.  In March and April of 1990, Slovenia and Croatia
held their first multi-party elections in almost fifty years. The Communist
reformers lost the elections to parties favoring national sovereignty within
a reorganized Yugoslav confederation. In November and early December 1990,
similar non-Communist democratic nationalist coalitions emerged victorious in
multi-party elections in Macedonia and Bosnia-Hercegovina as well. Throughout
the first half of 1991, Bosnia's Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic and
Macedonia's president Kiro Gligorov desperately sought to find a democratic
solution which would allow the Slovenians and Croatians to remain within a
decentralized and reorganized union of sovereign Yugoslav states but
announced their desire to leave the Yugoslav federation should the Slovenes
and Croats refuse to remain. Izetbegovic and Gligorov feared that if the
Croatians and Slovenians left, Bosnia and Macedonia would be left to the
mercy of Milosevic and other intransigent Serbian leaders.
   Milosevic and the federal military leadership flatly rejected joint
Slovenian and Croatian proposals for a looser federation or union of
sovereign Yugoslav states. Serbian leaders appointed puppet representatives
to the presidency from the no-longer existent autonomous provinces of Kosovo
and Vojvodina whose automy had already been arbitrarily and
unconstitutionally abolished by the Serbian parliament.  The last straw for
the Slovenians and Croatians came when the Serbs and Montenegrins, together
with these bogus representatives of no longer existent Kosovo and Vojvodina,
blocked the confirmation of the very moderate, rational, and conciliatory
Croatian Stipe Mesic as chairman of the federal presidency. According to the
post-Tito constitutional arrangement, the chairmenship of the federal
presidency, the highest executive body in the country, was to pass each year
to the representative of a different republic who was to be chosed by his
republic's parliament. It was Croatia's turn to select the federal president
and Stipe Mesic was the first non-Communist ever to be nominated to head the
federal presidency. The Croatians responded to Serbian stonewalling and
provocations with a plebiscite in which the vast majority voted to authorize
the Croatian parliment, 'Sabor' to declare independence at the end of June
1991 in the event that the coming weeks' negotiations proved futile.

CONSTITUTION AND CIVIL LIBERTIES  In December 1990, the Croatian parliament,
or Sabor, passed a democratic  constitution which guarantees the civil
liberties of all of its citizens and provides for cultural and educational
autonomy for the Serbs and other national minorities in Croatia. Under this
constitution, Serbs and representatives of smaller minorities are given the
right to have their own schools and to use their own language and alphabet as
the official language and alphabet of districts where they form a majority.
In May 1992, urged by the United Nations and European community, the Croatian
government went even further, passing a law guaranteeing self-government and
political autonomy to districts where Serbs make up a majority of the
population. Because of these conciliatory measures taken by the Croatian
government, it seems clear that the legitimate goals and concerns of the
Serbian minority could have been addressed through negotiation and
comprimise, and that there was no need whatsoever for an armed rebellion.

INSURGENTS IN CROATIA.  In the fall and winter of 1990, Serbian insurgents
centered in Knin organized autonomous districts with their own army and
police forces in the Krajina. During the spring of 1991, while negotiations
were taking place between the republican governments over the future of
Yugoslavia, armed guerrillas and agitators, with help from Milosevic,
"Yugoslav" army leaders, and Serbian officials, infiltrated village after
village, town after town and district after district in the Serbian populated
areas of Croatia. These agitators brought large quantities of weapons
provided by the Serbian police, the federal army, and state weapons factories
and literally thrust them upon the Serbian villagers in these areas. The
Yugoslav federal army, led by an officer corps that was eighty percent
Serbian, then entered the rebellious districts under the pretext of
preventing ethnic violence. Long before the Croatians made their final and
irrevocable declaration of independence from Yugoslavia, the "federal" army
had completed the occupation of as much as one quarter of Croatian territory.

RECOGNITION.  Despite all the evidence, the American, British, and French
governments continued to harbor the notion that a unified Yugoslavia had to
be preserved and that Croatia and Slovenia should be pressured into remaining
in the Yugoslav federation. Ignoring the months of fruitless negotiotions
deliberately sabotoged by the Serbian and federal army leadership, in the
final week before the Slovenian and Croatian independence proclamations,
American Secretary of State James Baker and Under Secretary Lawrence
Eagleburger publicly opposed the Croatians' and Slovenians' moves towards
independence. The German government, which ahd followed event much more
closely and carefully, rightly advocate immediate recognition of the
independence of Croatia and Slovenia and an unambiguous policy against
Serbian or "federal" military intervention to prevent the indepence of these
republics. Had the Germans been heeded, much bloodshed probably could have
been prevented. At times European and American diplomats seemed strangely
oblivious of the human suffering caused by Milosevic's war of aggression.

SEIZURE AND DESTRUCTION OF TERRITORY.  In the course of their war against
Croatia, Serbian and "federal" armed forces not merely entered
Serbian-populated areas to "protect" Serbs but seized wide stretches of
territory where Croatians formed an overwhelming majority.  In such regions,
they embarked on a systematic effort to terrorize and expel the Croatian
population. This has been well documented by international human rights
organizations. The same pattern was introduced simultaneously in Vojvodina
against local Hungarians, Croatians, and other non-Serbs. Whole sections of
Croatia and now Bosnia have been converted into a wasteland of rubble and
charred rafters. Factories and buildings, capital accumulated through decades
of toil and investment, have been totally destroyed. Hundreds of Serbian
civilians have been killed by the indiscriminate bombardment of villages of
mixed nationality and cities like Vukovar and Sarajevo, where a substantial
part of the population is Serbian. Hundreds of naive Serbian army recruits
have also been killed in the senseless and wanton assaults on Croatia and
Bosnia-Hercegovina.  The destruction and killing perpetrated first against
innocent Croats and Bosnian as well as Serbs by the Serbian and "federal"
forces has been, nevertheless, of a far greater magnitude and is the result
of conscious governmentally sponsored policy rather than spontaneous
outbursts of "ethnic hatred."

PEACE ATTEMPTS.  For a short while in the first months of 1992, it appeared
that the Yugoslav crises might, indeed, finally be settled peacefully.
Representatives of the European Community and later the United Nations had
spent many months trying to find a solution acceptable to Milosevic. Cyrus
Vance, the chief United Nations negotiator, after months of foot dragging by
Milosevic and the federal army, appeared to have convinced the Serbian and
"federal" military leadership to agree to withdraw federal forces from
Croatia.
   But peace was not to be, and what followed cast grave doubt that Milosevic
and the federal military leadership had any intention of respecting UN or
European Community-sponsored agreements. After considerable delay, the United
Nations sent peace-keeping forces into the designated areas of Croatia, but
none to Bosnia. The "Federal" and Serbian military and civilian leaders have
blocked the repatriation of thousands of Croatians who were driven out of
their homes and are claiming the right to determine which Croatians will be
allowed into the areas they control. The federal army handed much of its
heavy weaponry over to local Serbian militias in Croatia, who have put on the
uniforms of local police forces allowed by the peace agreement. Efforts by
UNPROFOR to collect weapons from Serbian forces in Croatia have been
ineffectual and are hopelessly behind schedule. Because of the UN failure,
the Croatian government has now launched military action to reestablish
control over part of the occupied areas. The United Nations has been
unsuccessful in overseeing the return of any but a small handful of Croatian
refugees all of whom face dangerous and uncertain conditions. In the meantime
the Belgrade regime and its allies in Bosnia-Hercegovina have launched a new
war of aggression.

THE WAR IN BOSNIA.  Hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats were driven
from their homes by the Serbian forces in a deliberate campaign of
territorial conquest and ethnic purification. At the last count, the number
of refugees from the Serbian war of destruction and extermination in Bosnia
was approaching two million.  [note: updated to 3.5 million by October 1995.]
 The "federal" military in Bosnia joined the fight on the side of the Serbian
new-fascist legions and added its weaponry for the step-by-step destruction
of Sarajevo.
   Whenever Bosnians and Croatians have been able to organize defense forces
to resist the Serbian attacks, the systematic mass killing and ethnic
cleansing of these two peoples have been prevented. In areas where the
Bosnians handed over their weapons to the Yugoslav army or Serbian militias,
the local non-Serbian population have been totally defenseless and has
suffered mass atrocities. Areas which were well defended by local Bosnian
Muslim and Croatian militias were spared this fate. Bosnian Muslim and
Croatian forces have generally defended only areas where members of these
nationalities are in a majority. They have not engaged in systematic ehtnic
cleansing, and their actions have been largely defensive.

RESPONSE OF THE WORLD TO AGGRESSION.  The response of the United States and
Western European governments, Russia, United Nations officialdom and the
European Community to what is clearly a Serbian-Montenegrin or "Yugoslav" war
of aggression against the now internationally recognized independent and
sovereign nations of Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina has been irresponsible
with appallingly destructive consequences. The United States, France, England
and Russia failed to intervene in an effective and constructive way to
mediate a democratic and peaceful disassociation of former Yugoslav republics
from the Yugoslav federation after its viability had been destroyed by a
series of arbitray actions of Milosevic's Serbian government and the
Serbian-dominated federal army leadership. The United States, France and
England - by initially publicly opposing the democratic decision of the
Slovenian and Croatian peoples when they declared independence after months
of Serbian and Montenegrin sabataged negotiations - gave the "Yugoslav"
military an open invitation to intervene militarily to prevent the
independence of these republics and to seize territory for Greater Serbia
alias Yugoslavvia.
   By imposing an arms embargo on all of former Yugoslavia by Resolution 713
on September 25, 1991, the United Nations Security Council effectively
granted a monopoly on heavy weaponry and air power to the aggressors in the
conflict, the "Yugoslav National Army" and the various Serbian and
Montenegrin paramilitary forces supported by the army leadership.

HUMAN RIGHTS.  Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia were the only republics of
former Yugoslavia to meet the human rights criteria set by the European
Community in December of 1991 as a condition for recognition. President
Izetbegovic had already shown himself to be a democrat and advocate of human
rights for all citizens regardless of religion or nationality. The only
sensible choice was for the international community backed up by the military
power of NATO and the United Nations to assist Bosnia-Hercegovina to achieve
a democratic and peaceful transition to independence and to provide
reasonable guarentees to the Serbian minority by sending a clear message to
Serbia/Yugoslavia and its Serbian Bosnian clients that they accept such a
peaceful and democratic solution and the democratically elected governments
of Bosnian-Hercegovina and Croatia.

SANCTIONS AND AID.  The United Nations has failed to provide effective
support for a just and democratic resolution of the crisis and has passed a
number of ineffectual resolutions all of which have done nothing to stop the
continued onslaught of Serbian military forces. On May 31, 1992, the United
Nations imposed economic sanctions on the rump Yugoslavia or Serbia and
Montenegro. This resolution for the first time singled out Yugoslavia or
Serbia and the aggressor in the Bosnian conflict. The sanctions have created
considerable economic discomfort in Serbia and Montegegro but have had little
effect on Serbia's policy towards Bosnia-Hercegovina or the behavior of the
Serbian forces in Bosnia. In summer of 1992, the United Nations belatedly
began providing food and medical supplies to the hungry, sick and blockaded
citizens of Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities. The aid mission has done
nothing to address the fundamental cause of hunger, disease, injury and
death, which is the war itself. The United Nations forces sent to deliver
humanitarian aid and monitor cease fire agreements have become virtual
hostages.
   For months after the outbreak of the conflict United Nations officials
failed to heed the many reports of ethnic cleansing, rape and mass killing
being carried out by Serbian forces on a massive scale. In a similar fashion,
the Bush administration for months suppressed daily reports of atrocities in
Bosnia which were reaching the United States Embassy in Belgrade. Only after
television news reporters showed the world public video footage of the
appalling treatment of prisoners at Serbian run camps did United Nations
officialdom or leaders of major world powers take notice of the problem. The
arrival of Red Cross monitors and United Nations special missions have done
little to change the situation. While some prisoners were released from the
most notorious camps, many others were merely transferred to unknown
locations or perhaps killed.

VANCE-OWEN PEACE PLAN.  According to the version of the plan which Vance and
Owen submitted in January 1993, the Bosnian Muslims who made up 44 percent of
the population in Bosnia-Hercegovina before the war began are to receive 29
percent of the land in the republic for their three cantons, the Croatians
who made up 17 percent of the population 25 percent and the Serbs who made up
31 percent of the population 42 percent. This arrangement leaves
approximately 44 percent of the Muslims living outside the cantons where they
are in the majority, 37 percent of Croatians outside the Croatian controlled
cantons and 48 percent of the Serbs outside the Serbian controlled cantons.
Nobody but the Tudjman government, the Boban wing of the Croatian Democratic
Union of Herceg-Bosna, and some Croatians living inside the proposed Croatian
controlled canton are satisfied with the Vance Owen Plan. In Izetbegovic's
view, Bosnian unity can be maintained only if Bosnia is organized as a
democratic and secular state which stresses the human and political rights of
all individuals rather than the rights of national or confessional groups,
and only a united Bosnia can be economically viable. If the plan were
actually implemented, the Bosnian government and Bosnian Muslims would
receive the least and give up the most. Bosnian Serb forces led by Karadzic
and General Mladic would be required to relinquish about one third of the
territory they have conquered and ethnically cleansed while keeping two
thirds.

This essay is from a book by Alan Fogelquist and was reprinted with
permission.