Next Step : U.N. in Bosnia: The Alternative Would Be Chaos : Holy war, land grab, exodus and genocide are among tragic consequences foreseen.

The battered and bleeding U.N. Protection Force may succumb to the Serb nationalist forces trying to run it out of the Balkans, but Turkey insists that its 2,000 U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia-Herzegovina are there to stay.

Ditto Malaysia, which has 1,500 troops in Bosnia, and Pakistan with 3,000 more. All three are Muslim nations.

Then there is Islamic Iran’s vow to send 10,000 troops to protect Bosnia’s Muslims if U.N. peacekeepers, drawn primarily from the Christian world, concede they have failed.

In the face of the threat of an Islamic army, Russia and Ukraine, with more than 1,000 Bosnia-based U.N. soldiers between them, would be unlikely to abandon the Bosnian Serbs, their Slavic, Orthodox brethren. Even Greece, another Orthodox country ill-disposed toward Muslims of the former Yugoslav federation, might join the Slavic powers to match the rival religion’s forces and protect the military advantages long enjoyed by nationalist Serbs.

If the United Nations’ 23,500 peacekeepers cave in to Serbian pressure for their departure, what sometimes seems a nationalist conflict could devolve into a pitiless holy war.

The Muslims of Bosnia have fought for nearly three years to convince the outside world that the conflict that has taken their homes, land and 200,000 countrymen has virtually nothing to do with religion.

But transformation of a territorial struggle into a proxy battle between Orthodox Slavs and resurgent Islam is only one of the frightening scenarios awaiting Bosnia, and the rest of the world, if the U.N. force pulls out.

A withdrawal would be tantamount to blowing the starting whistle for a final land grab, U.N. officials and Western diplomats warn. Anticipating that an end to the U.N. arms embargo against Muslims would soon follow, the Bosnian Serbs, no longer hindered by the presence of U.N. soldiers, would probably rush to capitalize on their huge artillery advantage and roll over the remaining Muslim-inhabited territories they covet in Bosnia.

Encircled Muslim enclaves in the eastern part of the former Yugoslav republic could be overrun within hours of a pullout, since the U.N. protective deployments have been made on condition that “safe area” militias surrender their guns. Unarmed, the isolated areas would be defenseless.

If the U.N. mission was to abandon its responsibility for protecting the 40,000 residents of Srebrenica or the 25,000 in the Zepa safe area, the peacekeepers would have done the Serbs’ dirty work for them by neutralizing the enclaves’ defenses, then leaving their Muslim inhabitants to the Serbs’ mercy.

Most of the Muslims, dispirited and submissive, would probably be herded like cattle into central Bosnia or Croatia. Anyone daring defiance of the emboldened rebels would face brutal detention if not slaughter, say longtime observers of the Bosnian fighting.

New refugee flows into regions already struggling to support 2 million other homeless would strengthen the hand of Croatian nationalists, who have warned repeatedly that the peaceful diplomacy advocated by the West would lead to disaster.

Croatia’s rightist government could fall to the neo-fascist factions so far kept at bay, and the fragile Bosnian Croat-Muslim federation in central Bosnia would be sure to collapse with the influx of more angry and resentful victims of the Serbian nationalists’ “ethnic cleansing.”

“The suffering of the civilian population, particularly in the enclaves--and let’s include Sarajevo among the enclaves--will be of such tragic proportions that there may be a cry for reintroduction of some kind of international force again,” U.N. mission chief Yasushi Akashi said of the possibility that his peacekeepers might be forced to pull out.

“I think there will be a sharpening of the conflict, that the conflict will become even more unbreachable than now, and with spilling-over effects beyond Bosnia-Herzegovina or southern Croatia,” Akashi predicted in an interview.

“Nobody wins,” he continued, drawing a bleak vision of life after the U.N. force. “If it spreads, it will be a major destabilizing force in Europe, and it will exacerbate the cleavage between the United States and Russia, and trends toward religious intolerance may be enhanced. There would be increased doubts about the United Nations’ ability to cope with this kind of strife, typical of the post-Cold War period. Insecurity will be deepened.”

Eroding security and Serb nationalist dominance in Bosnia are already undermining the manufactured peace imposed nearly three years ago in Croatia. A territorial free-for-all triggered by a U.N. departure would be certain to reopen the unresolved war here.

Both Serbia and Croatia, old enemies, have spent the interval arming for a decisive second round, promising what, as one senior Western diplomat here cautions, would be “a war with all the incivility of Bosnia and many times the weapons.”

The most perilous scenario possible in the wake of a U.N. withdrawal is the risk of a NATO-led evolution of the peacekeeping role into “peace enforcement,” a military euphemism for armed intervention to vanquish the Bosnian Serbs.

U.N. officials warn privately that withdrawal is so fraught with hazards for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that the peacekeepers may be forced to stay. They ask how the Atlantic Alliance could provide aerial cover for commandos trying to evacuate U.N. troops from Serbian-surrounded areas in the face of dozens--some reports claim more than 100--newly positioned surface-to-air missile batteries.

Any NATO attack on the missile sites would set off an even more alarming spate of hostage-taking than occurred after NATO air strikes in November, forcing the alliance to choose between a humiliating backing away or an ever-escalating guerrilla war with the Bosnian Serbs.

Short of a massive ground invasion, U.N. and diplomatic observers ask, how would NATO break through the miles of mountainous Serbian-held territory to liberate peacekeepers from the enclaves and position better-armed NATO forces to take their place?

Yet if the outside world signals it has given up efforts to stop the war in Bosnia, U.N. officials wonder aloud what excuse any major power would have to intervene when and if the conflict spreads to other explosive remains of the former Yugoslav federation.

“It won’t go away,” Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzic warned of the Balkan conflict currently consuming his state. “The international community’s strategy is to contain the fire within Bosnia. But what they don’t realize is that you cannot contain viruses and ideas. The virus of aggressive nationalism is already out.”

Political analysts have repeatedly warned that Western abandonment of Bosnia would leave it easy prey for fundamentalist countries seeking an Islamic foothold in Europe. Ironically, Serbian nationalists in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, have used that threat of Islamic fundamentalism as an excuse for bludgeoning Bosnia’s secular Muslims in a poorly veiled campaign to take their land.

But in an example of the self-fulfilling prophecy that has been a leitmotif of Serbian propaganda, that danger of rising Islamic influence has suddenly become real.

“The word is out that the use of force is OK and that Muslims are not safe in Europe. Those two things put together will cost hundreds of times more in resources and money and men than a solid use of force in Bosnia would have cost,” said Silajdzic, the disillusioned leader who counseled his government and people to heed the advice of Western democracies to take the pacifist high road when the heavily armed nationalists attacked 32 months ago.

Bosnian government officials have appealed to the United Nations to keep its forces in the exposed eastern enclaves, as a minimum, to shield defenseless civilians and to ensure the provision of humanitarian aid.

Although international aid agencies say they intend to stay on in Bosnia to perform humanitarian work as long as possible, their positions could become untenable as the modicum of security maintained by the U.N. presence evaporates amid renewed artillery fire.

“We would still have a job to do, and the need would probably be even greater,” said Peter Kessler, spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees here. “But if there are no new (international) forces coming into these territories after (the U.N. troops), you’re going to see a lot more panic and insecurity.”

Kessler warned that, if rebel Serb gunmen sought to block aid convoys to isolated Muslim communities, those populations would be forced to migrate.

Aside from the dangers and disruptions inflicted on the Bosnian population in the event of renewed all-out war, what little economic sustenance civilians have been getting will disappear.

“About the only people working in Bosnia now are those who work for (the U.N. force) or for relief agencies or for the journalists,” said Ksenija Miladinovic, a Sarajevo mother of two employed by UNICEF. “For every one of us working, we are keeping maybe 10 or 15 people alive. We would be destroyed if the U.N. left.”

By virtue of its 380,000 residents, Sarajevo might survive even a seriously escalated artillery assault by the Serbs long enough for reinforcements to make their way from allied Croatia’s Adriatic Sea coast. If the capital’s defenders were to hold out until the Muslim-Croatian alliance in central Bosnia and the reasonably well-supplied troops in the Tuzla region to the north could come to their rescue, an infusion of heavy weapons and supportive Muslim warriors could turn the war’s tide in the beleaguered government’s favor.

But even the underdog-wins scenario is fraught with perilous consequences for the future.

As one U.N. official here observed with a sigh of hopelessness: “The only thing worse than an undeterred victory for the Serbs might be their defeat, in which case they would have fresh grievances to war over ad infinitum.”

More on Bosnia

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