[Socialism Today, No 3, November 1995, p. 5]
There is a cynical fiction at the heart of the US plan for a political settlement in Bosnia: that Bosnia-Herzegovina will continue as a sovereign entity, with a constitutional structure which will reconcile and balance the interests of Muslims, Croats and Serbs. In reality, there will be de facto partition, with the acceptance of three ‘ethnically cleansed’ zones: a Greater Croatia, a Greater Serbia, and an autonomous Bosnia rump – a Muslim-dominated statelet which will in fact be more or less an appendage of Croatia. An elaborate tripartite structure, even if it could be agreed under US pressure, would have no more chance of surviving than that of Lebanon, which was blown apart in the Maronite Christian-Arab/Palestinian civil war in the late 1970s. And its half-life would be much shorter.
Only the Bosnian Muslim leadership of Izetbegović has any real interest in such a structure, hoping that it might provide some status or prestige. Both Tudjman’s Croatian regime and the Milošević-Mladić-Karadžić Serbian axis would continue to consolidate partition.
The current uneasy ceasefire is only possible because none of the warring parties believes it can make substantial gains through continued fighting. Although while the US tries to tidy up the map at the negotiating table, the murderous sectarian para-militaries – Croatian, Serbian and Muslim – will continue to savagely ‘tidy up’ remaining minorities in their areas.
As a result of recent fighting in western Bosnia, the area controlled by Serbs has been reduced from 70% to something nearer the 49% share proposed by the Western Contact group. Milošević and Mladić fear that they could lose even more ground in further fighting, while the Croatian-Bosnian forces have been stretched to the limit and Tudjman probably fears that further fighting could jeopardize their recent gains.
Over 200,000 people have been slaughtered in Bosnia in 42 months of war and 1.8m displaced, about 400,000 in the last three months alone. The future of Muslim enclaves like Goražde, of Croatia’s Eastern Slavonia which remains under Serbian control, the fate of stranded minorities and of legions of imprisoned or ‘disappeared’ young men, remains in doubt. Unfortunately, a settlement will not mean the end of the suffering. The US-brokered deal will not remove historic grievances, restore people to the towns and land from which they have been expelled, or provide solutions for burning economic and social problems.
The reputation of the UN, which has now been marginalised, has been shattered. The UN proved totally ineffective as a humanitarian aid organisation, and worse than useless as a peace-keeping force. The US, with the eager support of German capitalism, has now cast the UN aside, covertly arming the Croatian forces (contrary to UN sanctions policy), and has deployed NATO forces to try to impose their favoured settlement.
President Clinton has been spurred on by the need to chalk up foreign policy successes in the eyes of US voters in a pre-election year. At the same time, US imperialism is eager to build up a Croatian-Bosnian Federation (in reality a client of the US) as a bulwark against Serbia, which Washington views as a frontline representative of an expansionist Russia attempting to establish its sphere of influence in the Balkans. The Western powers’ plan to police a settlement with NATO forces brings the prospect of open conflict with Russia, which will not agree to its forces being placed under NATO, in reality, US-command.
In these manoeuvres we see the prefiguration of a new East-West conflict between US imperialism and an emergent Russian capitalism seeking to establish itself as a regional power.
Lynn Walsh
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