Ivan Avakumovic, Department of History, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z1

Second Annual Regional Conference on Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, University of Washington, Seattle

Bully

Person who uses his strength or power to frighten or hurt those who are weaker
- Oxford Advanced Leamer's Dictionary of Current English, OUP, 1974, p. 111

A person who is habitually cruel, esp. to smaller and weaker people
- The American Heritage Edition, 2nd college ed., Boston, Haughton Mifflin Co., 1985, p.216

Few events since the Gulf War have attracted as much attention and controversy as the war in the former Yugoslavia (1991-1995).(1) Controversy was noticeable in one area in particular: the role that USA had played and/or should have played in either preventing the outbreak of hostilities or putting an end to the fighting as part of a grand design for a caring, democratic, multiethnic society.

The purpose of this paper is to present evidence that in the former Yugoslavia the USA acted as "the bully on the block." It imposed its own priorities and solutions. It showed little finesse and ignored the history of the area.(2) It preferred instead the use of force rather than negotiation. In the process, the USA managed to antagonize its WWII allies in the East and the West, allies who had to be dragged along to do America's bidding. At the same time, America assumed responsibility for a course of action that shows few signs of durable success.

A closer look at the arguments used to defend American policy in the former Yugoslavia reveals again a crevasse between proclaimed verities and what actually happened.(3) Given the high stakes for the political future of the policy-makers, great care was taken to establish quasi-unanimity among opinion-makers and to ensure that alternative explanations of the causes, course, and nature of the conflict did not reach a public that remembered Vietnam and was fearful of new entanglements in a part of the world of little importance to most Americans. Once again, "political correctness" prevailed with the result that the call for action received the endorsement of people as far apart as the editor of Soldier of Fortune and the president of the AFL/CIO.

Given the focus of the paper, I do not propose to dwell on the numerous American moves that, strictly speaking, do not come under the heading of "bully on the block" behaviour: shelter for many Ustashe, who are fascists of Croat extraction;(4) toleration of Ustashe activity in the American zone in Germany; the impact of American economic policies on Yugoslavia's foreign trade, employment rate and repayment of loans in the 1 980s; failure to realize that the break-up of Yugoslavia was bound to lead to large-scale bloodshed in view of the outlook of the leading advocates of secession in Croatia and Bosnia;(5) the willingness of the US to pay much attention to the foreign policy agenda and desiderata of the German right-wing government in Eastern Europe. Last but not least, the recognition of Croatia and Bosnia as independent states without proper guarantees for the rights of large Serbian minorities who had frighfful memories of what their Croat and Moslem neighbours had done to their parents and grandparents in the heyday of Hitler's New Order (6) provided a recipe for armed conflict.

The fateful steps that the US took make it easier to understand certain moves in the best "bully on the block" tradition. The first example was the American insistence on tough enforcement of economic sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia (Montenegro, Serbia) on the ground that Slobodan Milosevic, the President of Serbia, was supporting the Serb insurgents in Bosnia and Croatia. The sanctions had catastrophic results on the economy, standard of living and public health in Serbia and elsewhere. American sanctions made it very difficult for Serb opponents of Milosevic to rally much support in Serbia, let alone in Bosnia, because US policy and media appeared very one-sided.

Sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia were enforced while the UN, USA, and European Community did not subject Croatia to the same kind of punishment although Croat troops fought in Bosnia (7) and its territory was used for the shipment of most military supplies to the Bosnian Moslems. Nor were sanctions imposed on Germany, a major supplier of arms, many of which came from the stock of the former East German Army.

Although a signatory to UN resolutions prohibiting the export and sale of arms to all the former Yugoslav republics, the USA made no genuine effort to enforce the arms embargo well before the White House announced that it would no longer abide by it in 1994. The US allowed other states to ship arms to Croatia and Bosnia and drop others from the air or disgorge them at Tuzla airfield in spite of the "no-fly zone" over Bosnia. The major exception to this rule occurred when US fighters shot down four Bosnian Serb planes who had just bombed a plant producing heavy guns for the Bosnian Army near Travnik.

More recently, The Los Angeles Times revealed that President Clinton allowed covert Iranian arms shipments into Bosnia-Herzegovina early in 1994, despite a UN arms embargo that the US was pledged to support. Large-scale arms transfers from Iran continued until January 1996.8

To ensure a Moslem-Croat victory over the Serbs, the Clinton administration took several other measures that increased American involvement in the war in Bosnia and Croatia. These measures laid bare the pretence that the USA was committed to a peaceful solution of the problems in the former Yugoslavia. First, senior American officers, including a former NATO commander, went to Bosnia to give advice on military matters to the Bosnian army brass; other were hired to help to train the Croat army before it took offensive army action in May and August 1995.

Then, America provided intelligence to Croat and Bosnian Moslem forces. In the summer of 1995, American planes gave valuable support to the Croat offensive, knocking out Serb rocket and radar installations. The close links between the USA and Croatia were symbolized by Peter Galbraith, the American ambassador in Zagreb, who posed for photos on top of a Croat tank prior to the Croat offensive in West Slavonia in May 1995.(9)

Third, the USA gave a green light to Croatia to attack the Krajina region in Croatia, provoking a new wave of refugees and adding thousands to the long list of missing and murdered Serbs.

Fourth, US warships using Cruise missiles and American planes led the NATO attack on Serb-held territories across Bosnia at the end of August 1995. Almost two weeks of heavy bombing followed, more civilians perished, and the infrastructure of modern society was damaged even further.(10)

In the autumn of 1995, the US-sponsored peace conference at the Dayton Air Base had many similarities with the Diktat to Hungarians and Romanians in the Belvedere palace in Hitler's Vienna. In both 1940 and 19r1g the delegates were sequestered until they signed on the dotted line. In each case they had to accept the borders drawn up by outsiders. At the offficial signing ceremony the godfathers promised an era of peace and good relations to the miffed representatives of southeastern Europe.(11)

***

US strategy and tactics in the former Yugoslavia were defended on several grounds. To begin with, the Serbs were branded as "aggressors"(12) and the Western public was led to believe that Serbs from Serbia had crossed en masse from Serbia into Bosnia to make trouble for the government of Bosnia. What was purposely left unmentioned was the outbreak of a popular insurrection inside Bosnia with the Bosnian Serbs providing the vast majority of fighters across Bosnia. Few volunteers came from Serbia proper and the only foreigners who joined the Bosnian Serbs on the battlefield were two hundred Greeks and a similar number of Russians and Ukrainians. Foreigners fought on the other side as well. The most numerous group consisted of Arabs and Iranians. Their number has been estimated at anything up to 5,000. Small groups of right-wing and neo-nazi Britons, Frenchmen, and Germans also took part in the fighting against Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.

According to the "Authorized Version" fashionable in the USA, Bosnia became a victim of aggression on the very day President Izetbegovic proclaimed its independence and the European Community recognized Bosnia as a sovereign state. Ironically, the right of selfdetermination granted to Croats, Slovenes and the Bosnian Moslems was not extended to the Bosnian Serbs. They had to fight for more than 40 months before the Dayton Peace Accord granted them - with caveats - the possibility of creating their own state.

The American insistence on the preservation of a united Bosnia within the borders drawn up by the victorious Yugoslav Communists in 1945(13) was defended with copious reminders that the Serbs, Croats and Muslims had lived fairly harmoniously for ages. As President Clinton put it on the day he was busy drumming up support for the stationing of American troops in Bosnia, "just a few years ago the mosques and churches of different faiths in Sarajevo were a shining example of multi-ethnic tolerance, that Bosnia once found unity in its diversity."(14)

The tremendous losses that the civilian population had suffered during Bosnia's civil war was another pretext for American military intervention. The figure of 200,000 dead and missing was proclaimed more than once. On the night he urged Americans to support his decision to send troops to Bosnia, President Clinton raised the figure to 250,000 without producing substantiating information.(15) Two days later, the Bosnian Prime Minister contradicted him indirectly when he came to Washington to boost congressional backing for the President's initiative. Speaking on PBS, he mentioned the figure 200,000. When the need to manipulate public opinion on Bosnia was becoming less acute than before, yet another figure became fashionable. Manfred Nowak, the top missing persons expert for the UN Commission on Human Rights, began "his efforts to trace an estimated 27,000 missing people.(16)

It is unlikely that the figure of 27,000 missing persons includes many Bosnian Serbs. Nor does it embrace those whose death has been duly recorded by the Bosnian Moslem authorities. Among them are the inhabitants of Moslem-held parts of Sarajevo killed by Moslem mortars and snipers before the Serbs were blamed for the loss of life. Interviewing General Lewis W. MacKenzie, the first commander of UN forces in Sarajevo, a Canadian journalist wrote that "in New York the consensus was that the Serbs were the malefactors: MacKenzie bluntly stated that the Bosnians were firing on their own people, in an effort to ratchet up UN intervention. 'You weren't very popular when you made statements like that, which contradicted New York,' he grimaced."(17)

The American media regularly accepted the Moslem version of Serb culpability and gave great publicity to it. One of the worst cases of Moslems firing on their own people and attributing the deaths to others occurred on 5 February 1994. Providentially, Peter Jennings, the ABC anchorman, had just arrived in Sarajevo and was able to add his voice to those expressing horror on the spot. Few paid any attention to Serb denials of responsibility and their calls for an international commission to investigate the matter. It took TNYT a year to admit through its correspondent in Sarajevo that "the Bosnian Serbs have repeatedly suggested that the Moslems of Sarajevo were bombing themselves in order to lure NATO into war. At times - as after the mortar attack on the Sarajevo market in which more than 60 people were killed - the United Nations had declined to contradict the Serbs."

The admission was tucked away in "The Living Arts" section of the great American daily.(18)

A similar massacre organized by Moslems took place in the same neighbourhood on the very eve of massive American air raids on the Bosnian Serbs. This time, the number of victims was 37. The Serb reaction was the same as in 1994. It did them no good, since a persuasive pretext was needed to demonize the Serbs prior to hitting them from the air. The decision to bomb them was taken although the Bosnian Serb leadership had already told Richard Holbrook, the American envoy, that they were prepared to accept a new US peace plan as a basis for negotiation.(19) No bully is a true bully unless he knows how to flex his muscles to impress others on the block.

The truth about the massacre in Moslem-held Sarajevo reached the Western public only after the successful end of American military operations. On 1 October 1995, an article in The Sunday Times (London) questioned the official version of the massacre and referred to British ammunition experts serving with the UN in Sarajevo. Their French colleagues confirmed the findings. "They suspected that the perpetrators might easily have been not the Bosnian Serbs, but the Bosnian government army, which had been implicated in other incidents such as a rocket attack on Sarajevo's television station on 29 June, in which five people were killed and 30 others wounded .(20)

Managed news has been one of the main characteristics of the war in Bosnia.(21) Jimmy Carter was one of the few prominent Americans who realized what was happening and said so during his visit to Sarajevo in 1994. His verdict, "the Serb side of this story has not been told," did not endear him in Washington. The State Department was careful not to endorse his peace initiative. Single-handed, without issuing threats or firing a shot, he brought about a radical reduction in the fighting and loss of life.(22)

Large-scale American involvement in Bosnia(23) has also been defended on the ground that the war in that republic could easily spill over across South-East Europe and might even lead to a dangerous confrontation between NATO and Russia. No serious evidence in support of this apocalyptic vision has been produced by those who were busy issuing dire warnings. There is no reason to believe that the states that had the capacity to wage a minor war in the region were eager to profit from the situation. On the contrary they were highly critical of UN sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia because these affected their exports and imports, deprived them of their access to Serbia's energy resources, and interfered with the shipment of goods through Serbia and on the Danube. As a matter of fact, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Romania were so helpful to Serbia that Milosevic was able to survive devastating UN sanctions. Neither Bulgaria nor Hungary used the opportunity to profit from the Serb predicament by acting the way their royal governments had done as Hitler's allies in 1941. Traditional Greek-Serb and Romanian-Serb friendship survived heavy American pressure. The unsettled state of Albanian-Serb relations in the Kosovo region did not lead to a Bosnian-style war(24)- and is unlikely to do so unless the USA provides military assistance to Albania or gives at the very least the kind of go-ahead that Croatia needed before President Tudjman launched his attack on the Serbs in the Krajina in August 1995. The 60,000 Bosnian Serb militiamen and their 25,000 Krajina Serb allies were unable to ward off Moslem and Croat advances on Serb-held territories even before American bombs fell on them. At no time were they capable of either attacking Croatia or starting a general conflagration by marching through Serbia to invade - with or without Milosevic - Albania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Macedonia or Romania.

As a matter of fact, Turkey was in the best position to start a minor war in the region. The Turkish army had shown its mettle during the invasion of Cyprus and in the repression of the Kurdish rebellion. The destruction of almost 1600 Kurd villages and the removal of hundreds of thousands of Kurds from their birthplaces are testimony to the determination and firepower of a most valuable American ally in the Balkans, Middle East, and the Moslem parts of the former USSR. The Bosnian policy of the Turkish government did not stray much from American desiderata. Turkey provided shelter for Mrs Izetbegovic and military training facilities for Bosnian Moslems. By night, Turkish planes supplied Bosnian Moslems with arms and Turkish UN forces on the ground gave valuable assistance to their Bosnian coreligionarie.

In the last resort, the supporters of the bully-boy approach to international politics were left with the argument that American leadership in Europe was at stake. According to them, it depended on what the USA did or failed to do in the former Yugoslavia. The idea that 1,300,000 Bosnian Serbs or 8,600,000 Serbs in the various lands of the former Yugoslavia could change significantly European perceptions of America's might and resolve may flatter the ego of those Serbs who are not overwhelmed by more mundane concerns. It does not reflect reality, no matter how many warnings were issued in the US media or on the floor of the Senate.

The fact that American policy and opinion-makers were forced to dredge the bottom of the barrel in search of a convincing argument in support of US military intervention indicates one of two things. It can be interpreted as yet another example of the weakness of the case for massive US involvement in the Balkans. Alternatively, repeated incantations on the need for "American leadership"(25) raises the question whether American opinion-makers are beginning to realize that "the only superpower" status rests on more fragile foundations than cheerleaders for "America the great" would like to convey to their domestic audience and the international community. If my scepticism merits consideration, we can look forward to more Bosnia-style operations to show to the world that the USA can enforce its stated and unstated objectives. The corollary of such interventions will be more lies, more threats, more loss of life, as well as growing pressure on reluctant allies to toe the line. There is good reason to believe that Washington will expect its allies to provide more cash and troops in the future because the balance of power in the world is shifting away from the USA.

***

Justification seldom replaces explanation. No single factor can provide a convincing reason for US policy in the former Yugoslavia. The role of ethnic politics in the States should not be exaggerated since neither the Croats nor the Moslems present powerful voting blocks. More important is the attitude of the Catholic Church in the United States and elsewhere. For centuries, the Vatican has tried to push eastward the borders of Eastern Christendom. Until late August, the Krajina was the most westward bulge in the Catholic land mass stretching from southern Dalmatia to the triangle where the Hungarian, Romanian, and Yugoslav borders meet. What missionary zeal, local authorities under Habsburg rule, and the Croat fascists in WWII had failed to do, Tudjman accomplished temporarily at least: the line separating Eastern Orthodoxy from Roman Catholicism was pushed several dozen kilometers eastward as Serbs fled or were deported.

The Catholic Church did take a stand in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. The Pope prayed for peace, denounced aggression and expressed great sympathy for the tribulations of the Catholic Croats. Several bishops in the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere went further in public and called for military intervention against "aggressors." Such statements would have aroused less controversy had not the Catholic Primate of Croatia added fuel to the fire by declaring that "only (emphasis added) 40,000" Serbs had been killed in the notorious Jasenovac extermination camp in wartime Croatia.

The military input in favour of an interventionist policy in Bosnia was hardly negligible though tempered, especially in the case of Colin Powell, by an understandable desire to avoid another Vietnam or Somalia. The war in Bosnia gave the armed services another argument in favour of a strong military and a more generous defence budget. In Bosnia itself the military could assess the value of this or that tactic in a low-intensity conflict, test new weapons or try to perfect existing ones. In the process, the Americans delivered a notso-subtle message to the Russian military. The message was duly received: Russian officers on Bosnian Serb territory spent many an hour inspecting the damage that US rockets and bombs had caused and measuring the degree of contamination some of the new weapons had created.

Business interests were not indmerent to the prospect of profits they thought they could make in the former Yugoslavia. The muchlamented Ron Brown was in an excellent position to inspire American commercial initiatives since had had honed some of his undeniable skills in the wheeler-dealer atmosphere of Port-auPrince long before Aristide returned to power. More important was the desire to gain or retain lucrative contracts in the Arab world by taking a stand favourable to fellow-Moslems in Bosnia. Several politicians who had been closely associated with the big Bental firm active in the Arab peninsula were prominent among those who urged military action against the Serbs long before August 1995. The need for relatively cheap Middle Eastern oil and the desire to sell US bonds to investors in oil-rich states became an additional incentive to come out in favour of President Izetbegovic.

The Republican electoral victory in 1994 temporarily reduced President Clinton's radius of action in the former Yugoslavia. He knew how strongly Senator Dole favoured the Bosnian Moslems. The Majority Leader did not preclude the use of US air power to hit the Serbs. The President's lacklustre performance in world affairs and the absence of strong views on anything but his political future were an additional incentive to be seen acting in a resolute way.

There was enough evidence to show that the Senate would pass by a fairly large majority a resolution that would reflect the wishes of Sen. Dole and those Democrats who held similar views for various reasons. The proposed resolution on Bosnia sped up the decision to employ American planes against the Bosnian Serbs. By the summer of 1995, Clinton knew that the Senator would not oppose him and that the Establishment in New York and Washington was broadly sympathetic to robust action as long as there was no risk of significant American casualties. Conditioned by years of crude propaganda, the average person could merely express vague misgivings about the need for such an operation.

Last but not least, the existence of battle-trained mujahadeens, unemployed since the end of the Afghan war, posed a major security risk to traditional rulers in the Middle East, let alone to Israel and the secular government in Ankara. The best way of reducing the potential danger that the guerrillas represented was to induce them to seek eternal glory in fighting the non-Moslem Serbs who lived far away from Saudi oil wells and Israeli kibbutzim. The main prerequisite for the diversion of the mujahadeens' interest was the demonization of the Bosnian Serbs. American diplomats and PR firms did their best to remind the world what was at stake in Bosnia and why concerted action was essential. The American spin-doctors and State Department smoothies were as persuasive as the guerrillas were restless. Iranian and Arab volunteers became the international Brigades in the Bosnian civil war. Resting on their well-earned laurels, many of the Moslem fighters expressed little desire to leave Bosnia under the clauses of the Dayton Peace Accord. Their defiance annoyed those in Washington and elsewhere who thought that the mujahadeen could be as easily manipulated as many an American legislator and newspaper editor.

The problems facing American policy-makers in the Balkans and the Middle East are as insoluble today as they were at the time of the Arafat-Rabin handshake and the Dayton Peace Accord. Such a headache is the inevitable fate of the bully who wants to run the world with a swollen head.

Annex A

Main Characters in the Former Yugoslavia

Abdic, Fikret. Dissident Moslem leader opposed to the Bosnian government in Sarajevo

Izetbegovic, Alija. President of Bosnia

Karadzic, Radovan. Bosnian Serb leader and President fo the Republika Srpska

Milosevic, Slobodan. President of Serbia

Mladic, Ratko. Commander of the Bosnian Serb Army

Tudjman, Franjo. President of Croatia

Annex B

Enemies and Allies on the Battlefields of Bosnia

Serbs versus Moslems

Serbs versus Croats

Serbs and Croats versus Moslems

Serbs and dissident Moslems (Abdic) versus Moslems

Serbs and government Moslems against Croats

Moslems versus dissident Moslems

Croats versus Moslems

Croats and Moslems against Serbs

Endnotes

FA Foreign Affairs, N.Y.

GM The Globe and Mail, Toronto

TNYT The New York Times

Sun The Vancouver Sun

(1) TNYT devoted more inches to the former Yugoslavia than to Russia in 1992-1995

(2) General Charles G. Boyd, Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command, and a visitor to Bosnia, pointed out after his retirement in the summer of 1995 that "conventional wisdom in Washington. . . is stunted by a limited understanding of current events as well as by a tragic ignorance or disregard for history." FA,, September-October 1995, p.23.

(3) "Most damaging of all," wrote General Boyd, "U.S. actions in the Balkans have been in sharp variance with stated U.S. policy." Ibid.

(4) For some of the evidence, see M. Aarons and J. Loftus, Ratlines, London, 1991.

Slobodni Tjednik (17 July 1993) gives a very sympathetic account of an Ustasha who rose high during the war in the former Yugoslavia. Nijaz Batlak, alias Mate Sarlija-Daidza, was an "Ustasha officer during the Second World War." He "returned home with the experience of a mercenary in South America and many years of political emigration in the States." Croatia's Minister of Defence, "Gojko Susak Daidza's friend from the USA, knew what a warrior Croatia was getting." Given Daidza's role in the defence of Dubrovnik, Gorazde, etc., the ex-Ustasha officer was promoted to the "rank of Colonel-General."

(5) Tudjman's contribution to the preservation of a multi-ethnic society in Croatia includes such statements as "I am glad my wife is neither Serb nor Jewish."

Better-known are his views on the subject of Jewish iosses during WWII. He repeatedly refers to estimates no American scholar would accept. Asked by an NYT correspondent "whether he believed six million Jews perished in the war, he replied 'This figure, l mean, all figures when they refer to the casualties of war, in a certain sense, are exaggerated.' He added 'since time immemorial this has always been the case'." 25 October 1995.

Tudjman's long-standing views about Jewish losses did not deny him an invitation to the opening of the Holocaust Memorial at the height of the anti-Serb campaign in Washington. Some booing at the ceremony was the only indication that there were American Jews who felt strongly about him.

Alija Izetbegovic's main opus is Muslimanska Deklaracija, written in 1970 and published in Sarajevo in 1990. A robust critique of Ataturk's efforts to modernize Turkey precedes and accompanies categorical statements of which the most revealing is no doubt that "there is no peace and no co-existence between 'Islamic faith' and non-lslamic social and political institutions" (p.22). Calls for a state based on sheryat law once a majority of the population of Bosnia is Moslem are followed by the promise that in such a state "gambling, night and dance clubs" would be prohibited (p.30). The pages devoted to Israel, Jews and Zionism contain a prediction: "to keep Jerusalem, the Jews would have to defeat Islam and Moslems,and that is, thank God, beyond their power" (p 53). Pakistan, however, is seen in a very positive light. It is "our great hope, full of temptation" (p.46).

The mainstream US media were careful not to tell their readers and listeners the kind of ally that the Americans were expected to support with cash, arms, and troops. It was only on 1 November 1995 that the readers of TNYT learned that the book in question "contains inflammatory passages."

It is only fair to add that Izetbegovic practised what he wrote. His first state visit as the President of a still-peaceful Bosnia was to Qaddafi, the second to Teheran and the third to Dr Waldheim in Vienna. His first private visit to Teheran took place while Ayatollah Khomenei was still in charge.

In both Zagreb and Sarajevo, steps were taken to rehabilitate amhonour some of those who were associated with the worst aspects of Hitler's New Order. A "Mile Budak" street graces Zagreb. The Wall Street Journal and GM, 10 February 1994. As Minister of Education, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador of the Croat Ustasha state to Berlin, Budak met Hitler more than once. According to the dissident Croat essayist, Slavenka Drakulic, the "Con mission for Renaming of Streets" proposed that "one of the most beautiful squares in Zagreb. . . be named after Ante Pavelic," the head of the Croat Ustasha state in 1941-1945. But "someone on the city council - or even much higher up - decided that it would be too overt an act of rehabilitation for the late fascist leader. . . So the change was postponed for better days." The New Republic (N.Y.) February 6, 1995, p. 17. In the same article she refers to the fact that "Croat army brigades are named after Ustashe war criminals."

In Bosnia, rehabilitation centred round the Handzar Division. In an attempt to reduce the threat Serb "bandits" posed to German rule in Bosnia, Himmler raised two Mountain SS divisions (13th "Handzar" and 23rd "Kama"). SS offficers trained the Moslem recruits outside Bosnia. The Great German Reich provided heavy and light weapons and saw to it that the Moslem SS were well supplied with ammunition. Most of the commanding staff consisted of Germans. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem visited Sarajevo to encourage recruitment.

However unsavoury the reputation of these SS units, there were individuals eager to recreate the SS Handzar Division under a slightly different name ("The SS 13th" was unceremoniously dropped) when an organization of the veterans of the WNll Handzar Division was founded in Sarajevo. It seems that the first attempt to recreate a new unit called "Handzar Division" was launched in Sisak, Croatia. According to a laudatory article about the founder of the Division, Ekrem Mandal was "closely connected with pro-Croat financial circles" of Moslems from the Sandzak region in the rump Yugoslavia. SlobodniiTjednik, 17 July 1993.

More recently, a Handzar Division surfaced under the operational control of the Bosnian Government. One of its duties is to protect President Izetbegovic. American journalists have still to ask him who he thinks is the best-known living member of the 13th SS Handzar Division. All in all, the US media have displayed very little interest in exploring the revival of Ustashism in Croatia and the Croat parts of Bosnia. Branding Bosnian Serbs as "fascists" and "extremists" proved intellectually less demanding and less likely to damage the American vision of "good and bad guys" in the former Yugoslavia.

(6) According to the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990), edited by 1. Gutman, bin a brutal terror campaign more than half a million Serbs were killed. . . It is estimated that thirty thousand Jews were murdered in Croatia. . . Many Catholic priests, mainly of the lower rank, took an active part in the murder operations." Pp 323, 328.

(7) As early as May 30, 1992, the Security Council called for the withdrawal of units of the Croat Army from the Republic of Bosnia.

(8) Article published in Sun, 6 April 1996.

Yves Heiler, the Monde correspondent in Sarajevo, wrote on his return to Paris that "American air drops did not serve just humanitarian objectives" (14 November 1994). Other journalists noted the intricate system of US flights from military airfields in Germany and Italy in the middle of the night. As a result, observers on the ground found it more difficult to find out and report exactly to their superiors whether they were dealing with planes enforcing the "no flight zone" over Bosnia or flying supplies to the Moslems.

(9) Photograph in possession of the author.

(10) The military targets included a hospital at Pale, the capital of Serb Bosnia, and the water purification plant in General Mladic's birthplace. NATO claims that its planes bombed only military targets produced the rejoinder of a Serb woman that the Clintons could then safely send Chelsea to live in one of the Serbheld areas of Sarajevo.

(11) The great player absent from the Dayton Peace Accord is Fikret Abdic, a Moslem who was the top votegetter in the elections for the collective Presidency of Bosnia before the outbreak of hostilities. His crime: during much of the Bosnian civil war he sided with the Serbs against the government in Sarajevo. He managed to raise an army of 5000-7000 Moslem soldiers who co-operated with the Serbs and thus provided convincing evidence that Izetbegovic was not the sole representative of the Moslem community. In 1995, Croat and government Moslem forces overran Abdic's Republic of West Bosnia. At one stage of the civil war, almost 30,000 of his followers had to flee for their lives, hotly pursued by fellow-Moslems. The miserly rations that international humanitarian organizations distributed to Abdic's followers and their families were designed to induce them to return to their villages and towns now under Bosnian government control. The plight of these Moslem refugees received scant publicity and even less sympathy in the US media. .

(12) A Serb was the first victim of the civil war in Sarajevo. Sniper fire killed the father of the bridegroom in front of the Serb Orthodox Church in central Sarajevo. The parish priest was wounded and the church flag burned on 1 March 1992. Barricades were built the same evening and in the ensuing fusillade several people were killed.

The first massacre in the Bosnian civil war occurred in the village of Sijekovac in the night of 26/27 March. Fifteen Serbs were killed. Their age ranged from ten to eighty. More than fifty Serb houses were set on fire ten days before Izetbegovic proclaimed the independence of Bosnia and the European Community recognized the new state.

The Commission of Enquiry that investigated the massacre was unable to agree on who was responsible for what had happened. The Serb representative blamed the 108th Brigade of the Croat Army and the local supporters of the ruling Croat and Moslem parties. Names of the suspects were produced and details given about the massacre. The non-Serb members responded by claiming that the Serbs had killed each other.

On 34 April 1992, another massacre involving 55 Serb civilians occurred in the Kupres region, the scene of mass killings of Serbs in 1941.

(13) The borders of Bosnia and the eastern borders of Croatia were redrawn on five separate occasions in the first part of the twentieth century. Those of Dalmatia, now a part of Croatia, were reconfigured six times during the same period.

(14) TNYT, 28 November 1995. Anyone who knows anything about the mistreatment of the Christian churches under Ottoman rule in Bosnia will be as impressed by the President's argument as he would be by neo-Nazis claiming that open synagogues in the Third Reich are indicative of Hitler's treatment of Jews before the Kristallnacht.

(15) TNYT, 28 November 1995. The Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command, in 1992-1995, estimated the number of victims in the range of 70,000 to 100,000. FA, September-October 1995, p 27. He pointed out that "even the rate of violent deaths (in Sarajevo - I.A.) had gone down considerably in 1994 (324 for the year, according the United Nations; the per capita rate was comparable to some North American cities and slightly lower than Washington, D.C.) although press coverage and government statements gave the image of unrelenting siege." FA, September-October 1995, p.28.

(16) GM, 3 February 1996.

(17) Saturday Night, (Toronto), December 1992, p.1 1 1. The Bosnian Moslem authorities took a dim view of the Canadian general. They biked about trying him for war crimes. MacKenzie denied the charge as well as the rumour that his wife was Serb. Ul can understand why they would do something like that. If I had been in their position and found that the peacemaking force was not what i had wanted, l can envision my devious mind working out a story to discredit them." Sun, 13 February 1993. His successor, the French General Morillon, accused the Bosnian government troops of trying to kill him by bombarding his HQ on Christmas day. TNYT, 27 December 1992.

(18) Ibid., 2 February 1995

(19) GM, 30 August 1995.

(20) TNYT, 28 November 1995. What the editors of quality British papers thought would be important to their readers was ignored by President Clinton when he addressed the nation on the subject of Bosnia: "This summer, Bosnian Serb shelling once again turned Bosnia's playgrounds and marketplaces into killing fields." TNYT, 28 November 1995.

(21) The president of Rudder Finn Global Public Affairs, a PR firm representing Croatia and Bosnia, claimed that "in terms of persuading and convincing the UN to take the proper measures, it is even more important" than what is happening on the ground. Sun, 13 February 1993.

A study of American images of Serbs and Serb behaviour remains to be written. It will have to encompass labels that American policy and opinion-makers used in 1991-1995. Much of what they had to say resembled the ruminations of the Vienna press in 1914. However, the Nazis had a very limited vocabulary. Their favourite term for Serbs was "bandits." "Eternal conspirators with a propensity to opposition" was Hitler's characterization of the Serbs in 1942. Two years later, he described them as the "only statesmanlike people in South-East Europe." National Archives, Washington, T-120-30449.

The case of "misplaced" documents dealing with war crimes in Yugoslavia is indicative of the extent to which the cards were stacked against Serbs in the USA. The evidence of crimes against Serbs was "presented once in diplomatic pouch and twice in person to Prof. Bassiouni," the chairman of the Commission of Experts who collected evidence for the International War Crimes Tribunal in Holland. In each case, the documents were "misplaced." The Wall Street Journal, New York, 22 March 1995. W. Dorich's letter to the editor.

For a refutation of some of the charges against Serbs, see Alex N. Dragnich, Yugoslavia's Disintegration and the Struggle for Truth (Boulder, 1995).

(22) Bad weather, in any case, limited military operations during the winter months. After the vigorous Croat and Moslem counter-attacks in 1995, a number of Serbs felt that they had made a mistake in listening to Carter's advice and proposals. Instead, they claimed that they would have done better if Mladic had pursued the Serb offensive in the Bihac region. As a result of Carter's peacemaking efforts, the Moslems had gained a useful respite.

(23) The American Air Force and planes of several other NATO air forces, including the Luftwaffe, flew more combat sorties over Bosnia at the end of August and beginning of September 1995 than did Goering's Luftwaffe during a similar time period in the war against Yugoslavian forces in Bosnia in April 1941.

(24) Bad relations between Belgrade and Tirana did not stop a number of Albanians from smuggling large quantities of oil across the border to Montenegro and Serbia. The Albanians profited and the Bosnian Serbs received much-needed gasoline. After the Dayton Peace Accord, the standard of living dropped in North Albania.

(25) President Clinton used "leadership" nine times in his TV speech justifying the stationing of US troops in Bosnia. TNYT, 28 November 1995.

(26) The fact that most of the other mass killings took place in the non-white parts of the world may explain the lack of profound indignation in Washington and the absence of calls for stiff sanctions and military intervention against perceived villains. Perhaps race does count more in shaping the outlook and the persistent Euro-centrality of opinion and policy-makers than is assumed by students of American foreign policy.

Writing in TNYT (31 January 1996), Thomas L. Friedman declared that "between 1992 and 1994, the renewed conflict killed 1000 Angolese a day." In Indonesia between 100,000 to 500,000 people were killed after an unsuccessful coup inspired by the Communists (Yearbook on Intemational Communist Affairs 1966) (Stanford, 1967) p.359. General Suharto played an important role in the repression of Communists and their families. President Clinton visited him. It is not known whether they discussed the mistreatment of the population of East Timor. The civil war in Liberia has killed 150,000 people, according to a Reuters dispatch published in the GM, 10 April 1996. Africa Watch estimated that during the previous four years, 500,000 had died in the Sudan as a result of the (civil - I.A.) war and the famine created by it. (1991 Britannica Book of the Year) (Chicago). p.397.

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