Why the sudden rush to act, nine long months after the first shells slammed into Sarajevo? The chief reasons are fear of increased violence, the prospect of mass starvation in Bosnia and the danger of new turmoil in Kosovo during the two-month interregnum before Bill Clinton moves into the White House. “If there’s one issue that can blow up in our faces between now and Jan. 20, it’s the situation in the former Yugoslavia,” Acting Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger told President Bush last week. “We have got to get tougher, simply to make sure that they won’t misjudge us during this transition.”
Just how tough are the measures? Not very–not without the threat of force. The naval blockade only hints at coercion. The proposal to shoot down Serbian flights over Bosnia may never come to pass. And the Pentagon’s plan for the defense of Kosovo doesn’t include a commitment of Western troops to engage the Serbs. Even the proposed relief efforts have a bizarre premise: their success depends on cooperation from Bosnia’s enemy. All told, these actions punish and further isolate Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, but they don’t end the pounding of Sarajevo or the hideous “ethnic cleansing.” Following are the proposals–and a few reasons why they fall short:
In an attempt to seal multiple leaks in the international trade embargo against Belgrade, NATO and WEU pledged to contribute up to 14 ships, which will patrol the Adriatic Sea as early as Tuesday. The United States already has three vessels– the Guam, an amphibious assault ship; the Wainwright, a cruiser; and the Halyburton, a guided-missile frigate– off the coast of Yugoslavia; the carrier Kennedy, now in the Mediterranean, could be called in to support the blockade. The ships’ mission includes “stop-and-search actions” and “other” unspecified “actions,” but not the right to fire on vessels that disobey an order to halt. “We never say what the rules of engagement are,” Willem van Eekelen, secretary-general of the WEU, told NEWSWEEK. “But we say we intend the embargo to be as effective as possible.” Choking off oil imports–Serbia’s industrial and military lifeblood–at the Montenegrin port of Bar may not even require bullets.
More troublesome are the highly porous borders to the east and the south. “There’s a big question how well the Danube states can enforce the embargo,” says a U.S. official. “They have the will, but not necessarily the capability.” Monitoring teams, comprising CSCE (Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe) customs officials, are on the ground in Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia. But there’s not much they can do to stop enterprising smugglers. Along the border few customs outposts have typewriters or telephones, much less radios and computers. While U.S. officials have targeted 10 major roads or rail lines along the Romanian border, they expect black marketers to be able to switch to some 35 secondary and tertiary routes within 12 hours. With no customs service or border police, say U.S. officials, Macedonia may quickly become an important conduit for smuggling such goods as chemicals, raw steel, iron ore and textiles.
Facing grim facts–hundreds of thousands of Bosnians running out of food; an overburdened and underequipped Sarajevo airport–the Pentagon in late October sent a small military team to Belgrade to explore a two-pronged relief operation. One leg relies on U.S. and allied ships to deliver supplies to Ploce, a Croatian port some 45 miles up the Dalmatian coast from Dubrovnik and a short drive to Mostar, in Herzegovina, from which there’s a decent road up to Sarajevo. The other part of the plan uses U.S. military aircraft to fly food, blankets and medicine to Belgrade. From there it’s a relatively easy trip by truck to eastern Bosnia, virtually ignored by international relief efforts. Trouble is, Belgrade has no reason to play ball and plenty of incentive to interfere. Lightly guarded U.S. personnel on the ground–managers, air-traffic controllers, logistics specialists–would be no match for Serbian troops. A further wrinkle: Bosnian Muslims have threatened to oppose any aid that passes through Belgrade, which launched the assault on Sarajevo.
Serbia has ignored a toothless U.N. resolution banning flights over Bosnia. It has used fixed-wing aircraft to bomb villages; there are continuing reports of Gazelle helicopters making rocket attacks on Bosnian positions. U.S. diplomats are trying to persuade fellow Security Council members to back a resolution permitting U.S. and allied combat aircraft to shoot down violators of the no-fly zone. So far, they’re not having much luck. That’s because France and Britain fear that enforcement of the ban would invite Serbian reprisal against their highly vulnerable forces on the ground.
Two weeks ago the White House decided that the United States must act to check any Serbian moves against Kosovo, fearing that as many as 1.5 million ethnic Albanians in the province would flee south through Macedonia and into Greece. Athens privately warns it would send troops north into Macedonia to block the flow of refugees–a decision that could trigger militray intervention by Bulgaria, Turkey and Albania. To prevent such a scenario, the administration is considering three kinds of action. One is largely symbolic and involves adding to the CSCE observers already in Kosovo and issuing a stern warning to Milosevic. A second option would be to seal the borders of Serbia and Monetenegro and cut off communications with the outside world. The final possibilities are military and include lifting the arms embargo against Croatia and Bosnia, providing weapons to Albania and, as a last resort, creating a protected zone inside Kosovo, much like the post-gulf-war operation that delivered supplies to the Kurds under the protection of U.S. combat aircraft. But Milosevic still holds the upper hand if he decides to invade Kosovo. In a race against the Yugoslav People’s Army, U.S. forces could do little to prevent the slaughter.
TRYING TO BUST THE BLOCKADE
Smugglers will have a hard time getting past allied ships on the Adriatic coast. But the highly porous eastern and southern borders of Serbia offer plenty of opportunities for sneaking in contraband.
