Bosnia Muslims’ New Strategy: Outlast Enemies

In testimony to what Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic calls “courage that comes of having nothing to lose,” outgunned government troops have lately recovered some lost territory, and the leadership has switched to a strategy of staving off capitulation.

President Alija Izetbegovic has agreed to attend a fresh start of U.N.-mediated negotiations in Geneva on Monday, but few in this desperate and snowbound capital believe that their leaders are ready to carve up Bosnia in exchange for peace.

Pressure for a surrender by the Muslim-led government that has been under siege since April, 1992, continues to be applied by the ravages of a second winter and by an international community that seems eager to wash its hands of the bloody Balkans crisis.

In calling for Monday’s Geneva session, European Community mediator Lord Owen conveyed a veiled threat to cut off aid to starving Bosnian civilians by arguing that humanitarian convoys are sustaining all three armed factions.

British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd has added to the diplomatic pressure for a mediated settlement by warning that the West cannot indefinitely feed, clothe and shelter Bosnian war victims if their political leaders show no willingness to make compromises for peace.

Owen and his U.N. partner in the stalled quest for a settlement, Thorvald Stoltenberg, warned the Sarajevo leadership that it was courting disaster when it voted in late September to reject a plan for ethnic partitioning that had been drawn up by Serbian and Croatian nationalists.

But economic chaos in Serbia and military adventurism in Croatia have boosted the prospects for social unrest in both republics, whose nationalist proxies have been seizing Bosnian territory for eventual annexation to expanded Serbian and Croatian states.

Serbia is reeling under U.N. sanctions and hyper-inflation; lately, prices on food and other goods have been seen quadrupling in a single day.

And in Croatia, the Zagreb government has been accused by U.N. peacekeeping troops of committing atrocities against Serbian civilians living in the one-third of Croatia that is under Serbian nationalist control.

Those destabilizing undercurrents have raised hopes among Sarajevo officials that the war may be on the verge of another shift that would divert Serbian and Croatian forces from the Muslim enclaves they are now targeting to venues where the enemies would once again be fighting each other.

Officials concede privately that the government has adopted a strategy of hunkering down militarily and trying to keep people alive through the savage winter.

Silajdzic, in a recent interview, held out little hope for the resurrection of the plan for ethnic partitioning.

“This would be legitimizing genocide. It has nothing to do with justice,” he said of the plan.

Since the Bosnian Parliament rejected a landlocked rump republic in exchange for Serbian and Croatian promises to end the sieges, government forces have gone on the offensive, recapturing a string of strategically located towns and villages.

Some Muslim brigades claiming allegiance to Sarajevo have engaged in repression of Croatian civilians, such as in the offensive earlier this month that restored government control over the town of Vares.

“What I see is that people are accepting the rules of the game,” Silajdzic said of the renegade forces whose activities contradict the government’s stated commitment to an integrated and democratic Bosnia.

“There is a resulting philosophy of ‘Kill so as not to be killed.’ ”

The growing militancy of some government factions has coincided with new frictions between Serbs and Croats, which some Bosnians believe might escalate into another full-scale war between the historic enemies.

And, at least in theory, any resumption of Serb-Croat combat would be likely to divert troops and weapons away from their current Bosnian targets.

Owen and Stoltenberg came closest to compelling Izetbegovic to accept the ethnic division of his country when Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his Croatian nationalist counterpart, Mate Boban, were both attacking the government forces from opposite sides.

After a secret spring meeting between the rival ethnic leaders, Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats stopped fighting each other and turned their sights on the republic’s Muslims, wresting territory and expelling civilians into what was left of government-controlled Bosnia.

But while Serbs and Croats in Bosnia appeared to be cooperating militarily for their own respective gains, the government in Zagreb began launching a series of attacks on Serb-held enclaves in Croatia.

Disastrous economic conditions in both Serbia and Croatia, brought on by more than two years of bankrolling warfare, have also inflicted serious hardships on the populations and undermined support for the expensive fight on behalf of Bosnian Serbs and Croats.

“They are not in any better position than we are,” the Bosnian army’s deputy commander, Jovan Divjak, said of the Serbian and Croatian forces that have conquered more than 80% of this republic. “They face the same hardships we do this winter--too little food, no gasoline and inadequate uniforms.”

Divjak insisted that the Bosnian leadership’s strategy is simply to hold on to the territory it still controls and to ensure that humanitarian aid for needy civilians can move through this republic’s geographic and military obstacle course.

Like other influential figures in the Bosnian government, Divjak has been pressing for Western adherence to commitments made during a Balkan peace conference in London 15 months ago rather than seeking modifications to what he sees as a hopelessly flawed Geneva settlement.

“It was decided at the London conference that the aggressors should withdraw to prewar positions, and it was decided that negotiations should find a solution acceptable to all three parties. There was no talk in London about splitting up Bosnia,” said Divjak, who is a Serb.

All three Bosnian faction leaders--Izetbegovic, Karadzic and Boban--will meet in Geneva to discuss the rejected peace plan. But there have been few signs in recent days that any movement is likely on the prevailing issue of territory.

About 80% of the Bosnian Parliament, claiming to represent the will of the people, voted to reject ethnic partitioning unless Karadzic’s forces ceded several key areas and unless vital access to the Adriatic Sea and Sava River was ensured.

The leader of the self-styled Bosnian Serb Parliament, Momcilo Krajisnik, told a rebel broadcast service that the Geneva talks would be fruitless if the Muslim-led government continued to press for further territorial concessions.

“We demand to discuss in Geneva not quantity of territory but its quality,” Krajisnik said, claiming that Bosnian Serbs had already made too many compromises.

Likewise, the government appears firm in its commitment to resist division.

Although the population is weary of war and fearful of winter, Sarajevo officials seem emboldened by recent successes in quelling Croatian rebellions along key supply routes and in routing war profiteers in a crime sweep in Sarajevo.

Rather than reverse their decision to reject the Geneva plan, they claim to be willing to endure the current standoff and hope that their collaborating enemies again turn on each other.

“We can hold out as long as the aggressor can stand it,” Divjak said, “because for us there is no choice.”