By Kate Shannon
As the Bosnians in Sarajevo bury their dead from the recent massacre by Serb gunners, NATO has called on the Bosnian army within the besieged city to lay down its heavy weapons along with the Serbs surrounding the city. Both sides are threatened with bombing if they do not comply by February 21.
For months now the horror of the war in Bosnia has been watched on the nightly news in the West. John Pilger commented in New Statesman and Society, "Having been made witnesses to genocide, perhaps for the first time, people want it stopped.
"My city is living — and dying — under triple death sentence", writes Kemal Kurspahic, editor of the Bosnian daily Oslobodjenje. "First, by Serbian gunners aiming and hitting civilian neighbourhoods, marketplaces, hospitals, and massacring helpless citizens. Second, by humanitarian misery: Sarajevo is a windowless and heatless city in the midst of the second winter of terror — without food, water, electricity or gas supply.
"Third, by international ignorance, because there is that civilised world just watching us being exterminated with no will to protect us and even imposing an arms embargo depriving us of the right to self-defence. ... The arms embargo — preventing the victim defending itself — is the only international resolution implemented in Bosnia."
Western intervention has weakened the ability of Bosnia to defend itself and has thus been instrumental in the continuation of the war for the last 22 months. While imposing an arms embargo denying the Bosnian people the right to defend multi-ethnic Bosnia, the West has tried to force Bosnians to accept the carve-up of their county along ethnic lines — which means handing over areas "ethnically cleansed" by the Serbian army.
"What is happening to Sarajevo and Bosnia is not civil war. It is more war against the civilisation of living together in a multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multicultural society of tolerance", explains Kurspahic. "By besieging and massacring Sarajevo, Karadzic's Serbs are killing that civilisation and those values."
Historically Bosnia has been an example, in a region fraught with national tensions, of how a multi-ethnic community can live in peace. It is for that reason that an ethnically divided Bosnia will never be at peace. The March 1992 referendum showed a widespread desire to maintain Bosnia as a multi-ethnic independent state.
The three Bosnian communities, despite different traditions, have a shared language and history. Many Bosnian families have intermarried, so to be "Bosnian" is not synonymous with being "Muslim", an impression conveyed by the media. Urban Serbs and Croats, unlike their rural counterparts, call themselves Bosnian.
"The Serb aggression is against the multi-ethnic culture and heritage of Bosnia", Dr Muris Cicic, a lecturer at Wollongong University, told Green Left Weekly. The attackers have destroyed libraries, cultural buildings and monuments.
"Ethnic cleansing must be reverted, not rewarded", points out Cicic.
Given the history of United Nations interventions in the Gulf War and Somalia, even limited air strikes would only be on UN or NATO terms, not Bosnian. Their price is the demand that Bosnian forces in Sarajevo lay down their heavy weapons (which are few anyway) and that the government accept the carve-up of Bosnia along ethnic lines.
Arming the Bosnian resistance is urgent, for a Serb announcement of a general mobilisation on January 31 suggests preparation for a major offensive. The Serb army now controls around 75% of Bosnian territory. It is heavily armed but is running short of foot soldiers.
Both the Serb and Croatian governments are forcing refugees to return to Bosnia in their respective armies, in defiance of international law. Hundreds of Serb refugees have reported for medical tests or registration, only to find buses waiting to take them to the front.
The armies of both Croatia and Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) are involved in the aggression. The UN estimates Croatia has sent 5000 troops to Bosnia, despite the Croatian government's denial.
There is also evidence that the Serb and Croat forces are working together against the Bosnian resistance. Nikola Koljevic, the Bosnian Serb vice-president, in an interview in a Croatian weekly, Globus, recalls cases of Croats fleeing from the Bosnian Army across Serb territory. "We regard this as humanitarian cooperation, but if you prefer to call it military cooperation, then you can say that Serbs and Croats in Bosnia have formed a military alliance."
How much damage has already been done to the multi-ethnic character of Bosnia, Cicic says it is hard to know. "There is a very strong spirit in Sarajevo, Tuzla and the cities which are free. There is a very strong spirit of common lives. The position of the Bosnian president, the Bosnian constitution and the Bosnian parliament is that Bosnia can be only a multi-ethnic, multinational secular state. What will be the real character within it, I don't know. I hope we will be able to preserve the previous nature of our country."