The Other War

By JAMES L. GRAFF ZAGREB

This is the other war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For a while, the country's Croats and Muslims appeared to have settled on a nervous truce that, though punctuated with sporadic violence, could practically qualify as peace in the Balkans. The focus was on ethnic Serbs battering ethnic Muslims. No longer. Muslim residents of Mostar, the capital of Herzegovina, are not preoccupied with Serb attempts to seize the eastern part of the once graceful city. Brutal street battles now flare as the Croats rain artillery fire on the Muslim districts, killing scores of residents and forcing thousands of others to flee for their lives.

Disturbing stories have been trickling out of Mostar and its surrounding region. International aid officials reported that 1,500 Muslims were being detained under what one U.N. official called "atrocious" conditions in a former military base outside the city. Many were wearing the nightgowns and pajamas they had on when Croat troops ordered them out of their homes into the night; some reported receiving only four biscuits and a glass of water as their daily ration. An infamous Balkan strategy is being utilized once again -- with a new practitioner. "The Bosnian Croats don't want Muslims in their areas -- they want them ethnically clean," said a U.N. analyst.

The specter of a Greater Serbia emanating from Belgrade now seems challenged by Croatian designs on Herzegovina. And as these shadows benight Bosnia, the threat of wider conflict looms. Last week one Belgrade official blustered, "The Croats will move against the ((Bosnian)) Serbs, Serbia will have to protect them, and we'll have global war in the Balkans again."

For the West, the Croat-Muslim escalation makes a paralyzing dilemma even worse. Having rejected the notion of military intervention when there was perceived to be only one guilty party in Bosnia -- the Serbs -- the divided allies now may be even less likely to act.