Facing the Ugly Facts in Bosnia : Amid West’s inaction, dismemberment of a state lies ahead--and worse

The formal dismemberment of Bosnia-Herzegovina is now all but assured. Lord Owen, the former British foreign secretary who has represented the European Community in talks to end the 14-month-old conflict, in effect has conceded the failure of the international effort and, implicitly, the inability of the United Nations or the Western alliance or the concerned countries of Europe to prevent the triumph of aggression.

President Clinton, whose occasional tough talk about intervening in the struggle won little support from the allies and little credence in Bosnia, continues to voice a preference for a multiethnic Bosnian state, while signaling that Washington won’t stand in the way of partition if that’s what the parties to the conflict want. Clearly it’s what Bosnia’s Serbians and Croats, and even more significantly their neighboring protectors, do want. Clearly it is what Bosnia’s Muslims, all but abandoned by the international community, will now be compelled to accept.

There is no way to put a pretty face on what is happening in Bosnia. It would be obscene even to try. The brutal policy of “ethnic cleansing” has won. The terrorism spread by mass killings and mass rapes is achieving its political purpose. Out of one state soon will come three, two of them probably destined to become parts of Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia, the third--the shrunken enclave left to the Muslim population--facing problematic survival. U.N. Security Council resolutions that have talked so high-mindedly about the inadmissibility of acquiring territory by force will be forgotten. So will the solemn threats to place on trial those known to be responsible for committing war crimes.

Partition would involve mass transfers of populations, no doubt accompanied by still more suffering, as those who become minorities in jurisdictions reconfigured along ethnic lines seek safer environments. The international community, found to be so impotent in the face of aggression, had thus better ready itself to mount a major new humanitarian relief effort. Certainly one is going to be needed.