Can’t Anyone Help? : Two years of warfare in the former Yugoslav republics have turned more than 1 million people into refugees, the largest forced migration in Europe since World War II.

To see the fighting as a chronic ethnic conflict, however, is to miss a sudden, horrendous worsening of it. All-out war has raged in the republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina only since March when the Croat and Muslim Slav portions of the Bosnian population voted for independence in an election that the Bosnian Serb minority boycotted. And yet of the million refugees, 70% are now Bosnians. The earlier conflict between Serbs and Croations over Croatia took 10,000 lives, but there are estimates that 1,300 Bosnians have been killed in the last two months alone. The capital, Sarajevo, is under siege.

This is not the profile of chronic ethnic strife but of ruthless, bloody conquest. Sickeningly, a secret Serbo-Croatian agreement has just been struck for a division of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s territory. No comparably cynical agreement has been seen in Europe since Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide Poland. Blitzkrieg followed that infamous treaty. Something like blitzkrieg seems to be following this one.

On May 6, the 52-member Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe declined a pathetic request for armed intervention by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic. Though the obstacles to such intervention may be many, it must be realized that Europe’s passivity before a major neo-fascist atrocity could well exact a terrible price. The world may be witnessing a grim demonstration that, after all, collective security secures nothing.

The nations of the European Community and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are not bound to newborn Bosnia-Herzegovina by any defense treaty. The same, however, was true of all of them and of the United States vis-a-vis Kuwait in August, 1990. But where there is a will--and back then there was a will--there is a way. Via the North Atlantic Cooperation Council, an extension of NATO, a framework for intervention and a role for NATO could be created.

Europe can no more ignore a major war in a European nation than Los Angeles could ignore a major riot in a Los Angeles neighborhood. Something has to be done, and soon.