If Europe Won’t Defend Them

More Muslims are dying of starvation in Somalia than are dying of Serbian “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia, but they are not dying because they are Muslims, and that makes all the difference to world Islam.

Earlier this week, Croatia intercepted a shipment of arms from Iran to Bosnia. Iran, even as it lamely denies its own action, insists that if a peaceful solution cannot be found, shipping arms to Bosnian Muslims for their self-defense is reasonable.

Margaret Thatcher, among others, agrees. The U.N. arms embargo applies to all of the former Yugoslavia, but Serbia has inherited the arsenal of the former federation’s army.

Thatcher, former British prime minister, and Hashemi Rafsanjani, Iran’s president, are the unlikeliest of allies, but they are correct in calling for an end to the embargo on shipment of arms to the Bosnians. If Europe won’t defend them, then let them at least defend themselves.

In its broadest terms, U.S. policy toward the slaughter in Bosnia has been that it is a European problem. But the Iranian episode is a reminder that this European problem could easily become something much worse: a flash point between Europe and world Islam, not excluding the substantial Muslim minorities in Western Europe.

The policy of acting U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, according to George D. Kenney, former deputy chief of Yugoslav affairs at the State Department, is to wait until armed Serbia and unarmed Bosnia “exhaust themselves (from fighting) and then move in.” Kenney recently resigned in protest, appalled at, among other features of this grossly misconceived policy, a systematic watering down of field reports of what he said fully deserved to be called genocide.

Astoundingly, Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia still enjoys most-favored-nation trading status. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.) has introduced legislation to withdraw that status, and the symbolism, even during an embargo, is important.

Friday a senior Bush Administration official reported that the United States and its allies are seriously considering imposition of a “no fly” zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina like the ones successfully imposed on Iraq.

We welcome these signs that a failed policy whose costs and implications are ceasing to be merely regional is coming, however belatedly, under review.