ANATOMY OF DECEIT
Copyright© 1997 by Jerry Blaskovich. Electronic edition by Studia Croatica, by permission
of the author
Chapter 13:
Bleeding Bosnia
Bosnia-Herzegovina
exemplified the Yugoslav ideal more than any of the former republics. Its
government's cabinet reflected the diverse makeup of its citizenry: eight
Muslims, six Serbs, and six Croats. The legally elected government was
committed to pluralism and the right of all citizens, irrespective of
ethnicity, to live where they chose. But an ethnocentric, expansionist,
chauvinistic neighbor opposed these concepts with a verve.
Several months
before the Croatian election in the early spring of 1990, the Yugoslav Army
began quietly arming the Serbian minority in Croatia. When the democratically
elected government was installed, the local Serbs, who held all the weapons,
initiated hostilities. At the same time these events were taking place in
Croatia, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic had blindly cooperated with the
JNA and ordered weapons held by local territorial defense units to be turned
over to the Serbian-controlled Yugoslav Army. But the Croats in Bosnia were
acutely aware of the Serbs' true intentions and refused to hand over their
arms.
The ethnic
makeup of the Yugoslav Army demonstrates how the Serbs dominated Yugoslavia.
Out of 16 JNA generals stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina before the war, 16 were Serbs, one was Muslim, one Montenegrin, and one Croatian.
The Serbs
initiated their ethnic cleansing program almost immediately when they rejected
the legitimacy of the voting in the same areas of Bosnia where the Chetniks had
at the start of World War II.
According to
Noel Malcolm, 8.1% of the Bosnian-Muslim population perished during World War
II, mostly at the hands of the Chetniks. No other ethnic group in Yugoslavia
lost such a high percentage of its people. The disappearance of hundreds of
thousands of Muslims from the Foca, Zvornik, and Bijeljina areas received no
notice during the World War II and the recent crisis because the ethnic
cleansing campaigns occurred out of the media's sight. Even after Serbian
paramilitary forces, like the notorious White Eagles, massacred several
thousand Muslims in Bijeljina, President Izetbegovic publicly said that he
doubted that Serbs were perpetrating such crimes.
The fact that
the Roman Catholics in Bosnia fared much worse than the Muslims during the
recent conflict has received scant public or media notice. The United States
Information Agency reported in December, 1995, that the Bosnian-Croats had
suffered the highest rate of injury during the conflict. In fighting across
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 42% of Croats received injuries, in contrast to 15% of
Bosnian-Muslims and 13% of Bosnian-Serbs. These appalling statistics were
calculated prior to a sharp recrudescence of ethnic cleansing in Banja Luka.
Despite the report's credible source, the media made no mention of the
statistics. According to Cardinal Vinko Puljic, the Archbishop of Sarajevo,
half of the 830,000 Croatian Catholics who lived in Bosnia-Herzegovina before
the conflict were ethnically cleansed. For example, in the diocese of Banja
Luka most of the 120,000 Catholics were purged or killed. The area was home to 47
parishes in 1991; only 3 remain today.
The
non-Serbian survivors of ethnic cleansing in the Banja Luka area, as well as
those from other areas under Serbian control, suffered in silence without the
protection of any Bosnian, Croatian, or international body.
Because all
medical facilities in Banja Luka were closed to non-Serbs, the only organized
institution that could help the survivors was the Catholic church.
Catholic relief organization Caritas set up a center that provided health care
for anybody in need, regardless of ethnicity. According to the Croatian Medical
Journal, the center was staffed by 19 physicians, 22 nurses, and 3 other
workers. All were volunteers who had been dismissed from state institutions
because of their ethnic origins. Because the Serbian authorities didn't provide
any assistance, the health center had to rely on donations.
The ethnic
cleansing program continued without abatement, but markedly intensified during
the first two weeks of May, 1995, when Seselj's Serbian Radical Party (SRA)
called upon Serbs to expel Croats and Muslims "immediately and without
delay" from Banja Luka. Following Seselj's command, Serbian forces broke
into a Roman Catholic church rectory (possibly in
retaliation for the Croats' recapture of Western Slavonia). The Serbs murdered
a priest and a nun, doused their bodies and the rectory with gasoline, and set
them on fire. The Serbs blew up the church next door while the rectory and its
inhabitants burned.
Approximately
25 nuns and 25 priests, including Bishop Franjo Komarica of Banja Luka, remain
in the Banja Luka diocese. With only three churches left, Bishop Komarica said,
"We perhaps fared somewhat better than our neighbor Muslims. Not a single
mosque remains in the Banja Luka area." By the same token, not a single
Orthodox church has been damaged.
During the
early stages of the conflict, I asked Mustafa Ceric, Imam for the Bosnian
Islamic community, if genocide was too strong a word to describe the Serbian
actions. After a long thoughtful pause he defined genocide: "One group
destroying another group's culture, traditions, and institutions--but most
importantly, their lives. The term genocide is not harsh enough." He
coined the term "humanocide" instead because "the Serbs do not
differentiate between anyone who stands in the way of their ethnic cleansing
program, be they Muslim, Croat or even Serb." "Humanocide" may
well become the buzz word that best describes Serbian actions in Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina.
Despite highly
credible international wire service reports that Serbian paramilitary units had
destroyed five Roman Catholic churches, demolished a monastery, expelled nuns
from two convents and killed a priest and nun in Banja Luka during a ten day
period in May 1995, only one newspaper, Newsday, deemed the stories newsworthy
enough to publish. According to spokesman for the U.N. High Commission for
Refugees Chris Janewski, the Bosnian-Serb army took over the convents and used
the facilities as its headquarters. Most of the media ignored these incidents,
yet eagerly reported unsubstantiated allegations made by British U.N. delegates
that the Serbs in Western Slavonia had been treated unmercifully by the Croats
after they had liberated the area.
To their
credit, the media, NGOs, and other international bodies working in the area
contradicted the British allegations a few days later when they reported that
Croatian treatment of Serbs in Western Slavonia was beyond reproach.
After the
Croatian military liberated the Krajina in August, 1995, the Serbs intensified
their ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. In less than three days, 15,000 Croatian
Catholics were expelled from the Banja Luka area.
Although CNN
had been in the vanguard of reporting the orderly Serbian exodus from the Krajina,
the news service neither mentioned that the mass migration was voluntary, nor
covered the plight of Croats from Banja Luka. No news agency bothered to
contrast the emaciated Croats who fled from Banja Luka with only the shirts on
their backs, with the well nourished Serbs who left the Krajina in cars,
trucks, and tractors loaded with goods.
Much as they
had in Croatia, the Serbs rationalized their genocidal acts in Bosnia by
conjuring up paranoid myths and prejudices. In Croatia, they had claimed to fear
the certain return of the World War II era Ustashe puppet state. In Bosnia,
they demanded revenge for a Muslim victory over the Serbs that took place 600
years ago.
The Serbs have
committed genocide, yet Western governments were reluctant to use the term.
Yugoslavia was
a signatory to the International Genocide Treaty of 1951 that provides for
trying individuals for crimes of genocide within the state they occurred. If a
government accused Yugoslavia of genocide, that government would be obliged to
indict Yugoslavia. Given the West's complicity with the Belgrade regime, no
Western government wanted to utter the term publicly.
The Western
governments propagated Serbian paranoia and mythology. But beyond that
ideological support, the EC made a major mistake by negotiating with local
self-appointed Serbian, Muslim and Croatian renegade leaders instead of the
legitimate governments.
The Bosnian
government wasn't a faction, but a duly elected government with full rights
associated with sovereignty. Those serving in the government were elected by an
absolute majority of Bosnian citizens, and although most Bosnian politicians
were Muslim, their government was inclusive. The conflict wasn't a civil war,
but a war of territorial expansion by another state--Serbia.
The West's
see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach to Serbian crimes found a
champion in Los Angeles Times opinion writer Walter Russell Mead. The Serbs
themselves had proudly coined the term "ethnic cleansing," but Mead
went to great lengths to downgrade and sanitize their program by calling it
"forcible relocation." Mead recklessly suggested that a Bosnian-Muslim surrender would be the best thing that
could happen to Bosnia in the long run because prosperity might follow as it
had in Germany and Japan after their World War II defeats. His point carefully
ignored 250,000 dead, 25,000 rape victims, and countless refugees. In a
February 13, 1994, Op-Ed piece, Mead compared ethnic cleansing to a divorce.
In the same
article, Mead lauded the Clinton administration for finally agreeing to support
the European peace plan it had once condemned and the end of sanctions against
Serbia. He cited these changes in policy as a defeat of the "idealistic
and fuzzy minded members of Clinton's foreign policy team."
Long aware of
the existence and conditions of Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia, Western
governments remained silent until Roy Gutman broke the story in Newsday. In the
February 28, 1994, issue of Insight, R. Rubenstein reported that U.N. officials
admitted that they had been aware of the camps at least one month before the
story broke, but didn't believe the camps were important enough to warrant
publicity. When pictures of the inmates appeared on television, the shocked
public, unable to stomach the horrors, rapidly switched TV channels to the safe
cocoon of the Wheel of Fortune.
At first the
Serbs denied the existence of the camps. Later they said the camps were housing
prisoners of war. But when representatives from the International Committee of
the Red Cross interviewed all 3,640 prisoners at a camp in Manjaca, the ICRC
found that only four were soldiers. The remaining 3,636 prisoners were
civilians taken from their homes in the ethnically cleansed area of Kozara.
Governments respond
to moral dilemmas according to their own national interests. The well-meaning,
post-World War II slogan "Never again" has proven to be as empty as
George Bush's "new world order." Had the media captured the crimes of
Treblinka or Auschwitz on camera, the Western governments of that time would've
responded just as they did to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, with little more than
teeth gnashing and hand wringing. The Allies knew of the concentration camps
and Jewish deaths in the hundreds of thousands much earlier than the initial
London Times, Manchester Guardian, and New York Times reports. Those papers
gave exact names and locations of death camps, but the Allies refused to act.
Apparently civilian deaths, although regrettable, weren't militarily relevant.
The same attitude prevailed regarding Croatia and Bosnia. Although comparing
one horror to another is an odious exercise, the similarities between the
silences and inaction during World War II and the Balkan crisis is sadly
telling.
A religious
summit that was chaired by Rabbi Arthur Schneier, whose participants included
Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle and the heads of the Muslim and Roman Catholic
communities of Bosnia-Herzegovina, concluded that the war's cause wasn't rooted
in religious differences and that "crime in the name of religion is the
greatest crime against religion." Yet one of Serbia's rationales for the
Bosnian conflict was the need to save Europe from Muslim fundamentalism. The
Serbs forever quoted out of context from Izetbegovic's 1970 "Islamic
Declaration" to prove of his fundamentalist tendencies. "There can be
no peace or coexistence between Islamic Faith and non-Islamic social and
political institutions; further, the Islamic movement must and can take power
as soon as it is morally and numerically strong enough, not only to destroy the
existing non-Islamic power but to build up a new Islamic order."
Izetbegovic wrote his declaration during one of Tito's intensive anti-religious
campaigns. He was jailed for his statements.
No crime has
been perpetrated against the Bosnian-Serbs that could justify their rape of
Bosnia.
President Bush
dismissed the crisis in Bosnia as a "mere hiccup" in July, 1992, one month after the UNHCR had said that the conflict
had created 2.2 million refugees. Bush's cynical quote ranks with one of
Clinton's from early 1993 regarding Bosnia: "I don't have to spend one
more minute on that than I have to."
The Western
powers sanctimoniously responded to the carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina by
refusing to defend the Muslims or arm them for self-defense. The West banned
Serbian air flights over Bosnia, but didn't enforce the ban during crucial
moments. The West would neither offer asylum, nor establish safe havens for
refugees. The powers placed sanctions on Serbia, yet wouldn't enforce them. The
Croats and Muslims did their best not to be mislead by
the West's pattern of contradictory measures and actions. They were defending
their homes and couldn't afford to be discouraged by inconsistency.
The Croats were
initially unable to defend themselves and lost one-third of their country. When
the they finally stemmed further Serbian advances, the
conflict spilled over into Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Bosnian government rolled
over and played dead. Had the Bosnian-Croats not fought back against the Serbs,
all of Bosnia, instead of just two-thirds of its land mass, would've ended up
in Serbian hands.
The leaders of
the Bosnian-Croat communities pleaded with Izetbegovic to take a firm stand
against the JNA and Serbian irregular attacks on Croatian towns in the region
of Herzegovina. Izetbegovic ignored their pleas and opted, instead, to placate
the JNA by dismissing the attacks as isolated examples of Serbian and Croatian
extremism. Even after he understood that the Serbs were perpetrating aggressive
acts against his constituents, Izetbegovic refused to enter into a loose
confederation with Croatia that would've legitimized and facilitated military
cooperation against the aggressors. Izetbegovic didn't want to anger the Serbs,
so he actively negotiated with the JNA to assume a military role in
Bosnia-Herzegovina. When Izetbegovic realized that the JNA's interests lay with
Serbia and not with the Bosnian government, he inexplicably appointed high
ranking JNA officers to the high command in the Bosnian Army. Naming former JNA
officers such as Sefer Hailovic and Refik Lendo, who had committed atrocities
against Croats in Vukovar and elsewhere, was an obvious slap in the face to
Izetbegovic's Croatian constituency.
Izetbegovic's
actions made the Bosnian-Croats feel insecure about their status under his
government and suspicious about his intentions. The alliance between the
Bosnian-Croats and Muslims had been fragile at best.
But all
cooperation fell apart when the Vance-Owen proposal to partition Bosnia along
ethnic lines was accepted by the Croats. Most Croats had never dreamed that
they might receive their own part of Bosnia. So the Croats signed the agreement
without hesitation when the U.N. offered them independent territory. The
Bosnian-Croats then set about expelling Muslims, often brutally, from villages
that were suddenly living on U.N.-mandated Croatian property. Muslims in other
parts of Bosnia grew angry and responded by expelling Croats from their
regions.
After losing
every military encounter with the Serbs, the Bosnian government forces
retreated from the battle lines along with great numbers of Muslim refugees.
Because his relationship with the Croats had completely broken down,
Izetbegovic turned his defeated army toward easier pickings than the Serbs:
poorly armed Bosnian-Croat civilians. Izetbegovic had been close to signing the
U. N. peace agreements that divided up Bosnia, but once his troops had scored
unexpected successes against the Croats, he stonewalled the U.N. proposals.
Although both sides had a paucity of weapons, the weapons in government forces'
hands far exceeded those in the possession of the Croats. As a consequence, the
Muslims captured 3,647 square kilometers of territory previously held by the
Bosnian-Croats and wanted more. In another of the dichotomies that
characterized this conflict, both Croats and Muslims used Serbian firepower
against each other whenever they thought it militarily advantageous. The Serbs'
rent-an-artillery did not discriminate and charged either side 2,000
German marks
per hour.
The media
focused all its attention on the Muslims' plight in Sarajevo, Zepa, Srebrenica,
and Gorazde, but rarely mentioned the Bosnian-Croat towns of Konjic, Jablanica,
Travnik, Bugojno, and Gornji Vakuf where Bosnian forces had perpetrated the
same sort of atrocities that the Muslims had been subjected to by the Serbs.
The highest
percentage of casualties from fighting in Bosnia-Herzegovina belongs to the
Croats. Almost half became refugees or displaced persons. But most of the
casualties came after April 16, 1993, when the Muslims launched their attack on
the Bosnian-Croats. By November, 1993, the Muslims ethnically cleansed 156
Bosnian-Croat towns and villages. The huge influx of Muslim refugees into what
had been predominantly Croatian areas severely changed the demographics. These
great shifts of populations have become the seminal cause of animosity between
Croats and Muslims, particularly in Mostar.
Although weak
at first, the Bosnian government eventually redeemed itself militarily. Their
defenses stiffened significantly enough to forestall a complete Serbian
takeover. Once their military forces became coordinated and obtained
desperately needed weapons, the Bosnian Army retook a great deal of territory.
Most of their progress came while allied with the Croatian Army.
When Western
realpolitik goals changed from a just settlement to just any settlement, the
Bosnian demoralization was complete. The Western powers accepted the concept of
partitioning Bosnia-Herzegovina along ethnic lines despite their recognition of
Bosnia's sovereignty. The U.N.-created Muslim safe havens in Gorazde,
Srebrenica, Zepa, and Bihac weren't safe at all because the cities were
completely surrounded by Serbian forces. After the Serbs blockaded the supply
routes, the inhabitants of the safe areas began to starve.
Despite having
created these ghettos, the U.N. felt no moral obligation to protect them and
remained inert. The U.S. overruled its allies and unilaterally decided to
provide food and medical air drops. But reports from Zepa and Gorazde indicated
that most of the parachuted supplies had landed in either the Drina River or
Serbian held territory.
Despite
Belgrade's shallow pretense to the contrary, the JNA had complete control over
the Bosnian-Serb aggression. Only an intact and functioning JNA command
structure with its high level of logistic support could've coordinated the
Bosnian-Serb artillery and aircraft attacks. The millions of refugees and at
least 250,000 dead are testimony to the efficiency of Serbian attacks.
As early as
October 28, 1992, U.N. Human Rights Investigator Tadeusz Mazowiecki said,
"Serbian ethnic cleansing did not appear to be the consequence of the war
but rather its goal, to a large extent already achieved." Mazowiecki's
investigations, which most often incriminated the Serbs, were exercises in
futility. So when his reports of "horrible crimes and barbarism"
committed by Bosnian-Serbs after the fall of Srebrenica and Zepa went for
naught, he resigned in protest. Mazowiecki had unimpeachable credentials. But
he beat his head against the wall trying to move the U.N. out of its inertia
regarding war crimes. His resignation statement best summarized the failed U.N.
policy in Bosnia: "I cannot continue to participate in the pretense of the
protection of human rights." The Serbs also ethnically cleansed Vojvodina
of Hungarians and Kosovo of Albanians with minimum publicity.
The Bosnians
gave up waiting for Clinton to fulfill his inaugural promise to use military
force in Bosnia when "the will and conscience of the international
community is defied." Apparently Clinton didn't consider the Serbian
defiance severe enough until 3 1/2 years later when he ordered air attacks on
Serbian positions.
According to a
March, 1994, UNHCR report, an estimated 4.3 million people throughout former
Yugoslavia were in need of relief assistance. Of this total, 3.5 million were
classified as refugees or displaced persons: 2.74 million in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 690,000 in Croatia, 406,000 in Serbia, 110,000 in U.N.
Protected Areas (UNPA), 62,000 in Montenegro, 30,000 in Slovenia, and 22,000 in
Macedonia.
Of the 690,000
displaced persons who found refuge in Croatia, 280,000 were Bosnian-Muslims.
U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith tried to put the amount of Muslim
refugees in Croatia into proper perspective in a November 8, 1993, Matica
interview. He said the situation would be the equivalent of the U.S. taking in
30,000,000 refugees.
To salve its
conscience, the U.N. instituted a humanitarian aid program so the Muslims could
die with full bellies. This change in policy came relatively late and only in
response to NGO pressure. NGOs were the humanitarian organizations that
supplied and delivered medicines and food to disaster areas, often at great
bodily risk. The U.N. underplayed the plight of the Muslims who had been herded
into ghettos and placed almost insurmountable barriers on the NGOs that wanted
to provide a modicum of comfort. Because Serbian barricades made bringing
supplies by land difficult, the NGOs requested air drops. Their requests fell
on deaf ears until their tenaciousness eventually willed out.
Most donations
came from individuals or organizations that were moved by the sorry plight of
the victims. Reports from the UNHCR clearly revealed that the Muslim ghettos
received the least amount of that donated aid. The lion's share had to be given
to Serbian forces as tribute for allowing the delivery. Almost from the very
onset of humanitarian deliveries to Sarajevo, more than one-half was taken by
the Serbs. Even more was stolen through distribution channels. Prior to the
Dayton Accords, only about 30% of the aid made it to the Sarajevans. The
confiscated food relief was sold on the black market for foreign currency. And
almost invariably U.N. forces were involved in this illegal trade.
In what may
have simply been a Freudian slip by the humanitarians, or a jaded twist on
ethnic cleansing, a relief plane with a cargo hold full of condoms landed at
Sarajevo's airport at a time when no bread was available.
Many reports complained about medications that were long outdated. Medications
in one shipment meant for the mosque in Zagreb had an expiration date of 1947.
Most of the
Bosnian aid was delivered to the Serbian-conquered, ethnically cleansed
territories. A comparison between the Muslim enclave of Bihac and
Serb-controlled Banja Luka typifies the way the U.N. dispensed humanitarian
aid. Carole Hodge reported in a January, 1994, New Republic article that the
UNHCR documented an actual delivery of 2,527 metric tons of food to Banja Luka,
a city whose pre-war Muslim population had been ethnically cleansed. But the
targeted delivery for Banja Luka had only been 2,075 tons. The protected Muslim
enclave of Bihac had received just 126 metric tons out of its 1,936 allotment
during the same period.
As part of a
major Serbian offensive, planes from the Serb-held Croatian airfield in Udbina
struck Bihac. The U.N. acquiesced to international pressure and ordered NATO to
launch a massive air attack by 39 aircraft. The West then went on a
self-aggrandizement binge. But its euphoria died when the media later reported
that the raid only resulted in five, easily repairable craters. Ammunition
dumps and fuel stores that the Serbs would continue to use against Bihac were
left intact.
When U.N.
officials were confronted about why the raid was so indecisive, the officials
answered that they had only intended to send a message to the Serbs. Just what
message they wished to convey was unclear.
Enes Kisevic's
poem, "Hava's Plea," metaphorically epitomizes the abject appeals of
the Bosnian nation.
Hava's Plea
That night
when the seven of them
raped me at the camp,
I prayed for you to spit
from my womb the seed of that dog's sort,
why did you not heed my prayers, oh Lord,
when I have done you no wrong?
I prayed to You
to free me, if but an instant,
from the vigil of my captors,
so that with my fingernails
I could scrape out of my womb,
Why did you not heed my prayers, oh Lord,
when I have done you no wrong?
I turned my head from water,
I turned my head from bread,
if only death would heed my prayers,
but how could death take mercy on me
when everything rests in your hand, Almighty.
I begged those who raped me,
the ones who set my house afire,
I swore to them in Your name
that I would forgive them for all they had done
if only they would kill me,
if they would draw and quarter me;
They did not heed my plea, oh Lord,
giving me instead an apple,
feeling day and night
how their brood grew.
That morning,
when the unborn child first kicked inside,
I prayed to You
that my man Alija
not return from the battlefield;
You heeded me not, Oh Lord,
instead You had
the Militia set me free,
instead they took me to the hospital,
where four doctors held me
by my legs and my arms
so that I could not smother this child
with my thighs
whom more than the sun longed to see,
stillborn
or that it should set eyes on its
mother, dead.
Why did You heed my prayer,
Good Lord,
when this innocent nubbin,
and I,
have done you no wrong?
Give me strength,
on Dear God,
to raise this male child,
whom no one but You
would spare,
and grace the boy with the mercy
to live among people and with
their truth,
so pleads with You his wretched
mother Hava.
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