By Slavko Mihaljcek
After successfully resisting a five-month siege, the Bosnian town of Jajce fell to the Serbo-Yugoslav army on October 29, only after bombing from the air. Of course, Radio Belgrade has denied that the Serb air force took part in the fighting (which would have been contary to the undertakings made by Serb leaders in Geneva to cease using combat planes against Croat and Muslim civilians).
However, speaking on the telephone, inhabitants of Banja Luka, the Serb army's biggest air base inside Bosnia, confirmed that many sorties had taken off from the base in the last days of the seige of Jajce.
The loss of Jajce is a big blow to the Bosnian population. The Red Cross has indicated that tens of thousands of refugees have fled under fire towards Travnik which is already overflowing with some 30,000 previous refugees. If the Serbo-Yugoslav army continues its advance, Travnik's poorly armed self-defence forces will not be able to resist for long. The very survival of some 200-300,000 Muslim and Croat inhabitants of central Bosnia is threatened; their situation is made even more precarious because neighbouring Croatia, where there are already more than 1,800,000 refugees, is refusing to accept more.
The tone of the military communiques coming out of Belgrade is highly disturbing. They talk of the decisive battle with the "Islamic enemy". Serb military officials are no longer even trying to deny the massacres of Muslim civilians denounced by the Mazowiecki Commission. According to Belgrade's official radio, the mass graves, which can be smelt near the besieged towns, do not contain the bodies of civilians executed in cold bloood but "the bodies of hundreds of Islamic fanatics who threw themselves disarmed against Serb fire".
In the background to these battlefield developments is a clash between Milosevic's regime in Belgrade and the prime minister of the rump Yugoslavia, Milan Panic, who is now supported by the Serb democratic opposition and the peace movement. The dictator and his army urgently need to make territorial gains to remain in power. On the other hand, Panic and his supporters want a ceasefire in order to restart negotiations and economic relations in the territory of the former Yugoslavia.
These two orientations cannot be reconciled and a decisive power struggle is now underway in Belgrade. After a sharp 90 votes to 20 defeat in a motion of censure in the federal House of Deputies (dominated by a coalition of Milosevic's part and Seselji's fascists) the federal government would have had to resign if it had gone on to lose a further vote in the upper house, in which an equal number of Serbian and Montenegrin deputies sit.
To general surprise, however, the upper house voted down the censure motion by one vote. This was due to the votes of the Montenegrin deputies, under Russian influence. The previous Sunday evening, the Moscow news agency had warned Milosevic against " an adventure that or the Serb people".
Despite this setback, which may open the way for new elections in Serbia, Milosevic has continued his offensive. His formidable military machine is continuing to lay waste whole areas of Croatia and Bosnia. Over the weekend of October 31-November 1, some regions that have been "cleansed" of their Croat and Muslim inhabitants proclaimed their fusion with the "Serb fatherland".
Milosevic has recently reorganised his police forces with the unconcealed aim of unleashing a massive repression inside Serbia if needed.
The terrible economic and social cost of this ever-spreading war has resulted in deepening social dispair. The violence that this releases has been used by the lumpen Communist regime against Muslims, Croats and Albanians. However, any significant defeat for the Serb army in Bosnia increases the likelihood of a social explosion inside Serbia: a social mobilisation would, in its turn, lead to the disintegration of the army.
That, at least is what was passing through the mind of an army spokesman when he wrote: "How far will the regime go in subordinating caste interests and how would the army react if there were a social explosion?
"When hungry people start attacking supermarkets there will only be two parties left in Serbia: those whao no longer have anything and those who defend their privileges. The outcome of the conflict is completely uncertain."
[From International Viewpoint.]