A Little Bombing Is a Dangerous Thing

By Bruce W. Nelan

As each day passed, the designation of Gorazde as a U.N.-sanctioned "safe area" seemed increasingly like a cruel joke. Two rounds of NATO air strikes early in the week had done little to ease the Serbs' tightening vise around the besieged Muslim enclave on the Drina River. By Friday, Serb forces had moved artillery and armored vehicles into the surrounding hills and pounded away at the city of 65,000 civilians with howitzers, mortars and tank cannons. On Saturday afternoon, as Bosnian radio reported fretfully that tanks were rolling through Gorazde and firing into residential areas, NATO dispatched six planes to search for a Serb tank lobbing shells into Gorazde from the city's outskirts. Bad weather forced the planes back, but not before a surface-to-air missile launched by the Serbs downed a British Sea Harrier jet. The pilot parachuted to safety in a Bosnian village, but the episode only escalated the tensions. Would NATO step up air strikes? Would the Serbs make good on their vow to take the city by dusk?

As darkness settled on Gorazde, neither scenario came to pass. Instead, Yasushi Akashi, the U.N.'s chief civilian representative in Bosnia, suddenly announced that he was close to signing a pact with the Serbs. According to Akashi, the U.N. would stop combat air patrols above Gorazde if the Serbs agreed to a cease-fire and released U.N. personnel held across Bosnia beginning last Monday. The Serbs must also withdraw to the outskirts of Gorazde and allow a multinational U.N. protection force to police the front lines around the city. The deal, brokered with the help of Russian mediator Vitali Churkin, offered face-saving possibilities for all parties. But given Serb proclamations just hours earlier that they intended to take Gorazde, and the ease with which cease-fires come and go in Bosnia, hopes were slim that the accord would actually hold.

After two years of anguished but feckless soul searching by NATO about its proper role in the Bosnia mess, the organization's halfhearted display of military muscle in the skies over Gorazde did little to enhance its reputation. On Saturday, before the tentative agreement with the Serbs was announced, six former U.S. officials, among them former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci, blasted Bill Clinton for a "posture of moral and political abdication," and called for further NATO air action. And barely hours before Akashi released word of the accord, he issued a statement calling a halt to the U.N.'s Gorazde venture. "I believe it would be meaningless in present circumstances for ((the U.N. peacekeeping force)) to fulfill its activities in Bosnia and Herzegovina," he said. A U.N. official in Zagreb made the point more forcefully: "Either we close up shop or we come back with a huge army."

The confusion in Bosnia -- on the battlefield as well as in diplomatic quarters -- did little to help the Administration think out an effective policy. After two U.N. peacekeepers were injured on Friday, the U.N. military commander in Bosnia, Lieut. General Sir Michael Rose, suggested further air strikes to enable his military observers to withdraw from the battlefield. But Akashi, who was in the Bosnian Serb headquarters in Pale trying to resuscitate negotiations, was not willing to approve the request. The next day when the Serbs began encircling Gorazde, Rose and Akashi called for "fairly robust air cover," according to a senior White House official. When a Serb tank fired on a hospital, injuring several people, Rose and Akashi upped their request to "close air support." But when NATO aircraft went in search of targets, bad weather forced the planes to fly low, which in turn resulted in the downing of the British jet.

When the Clinton Administration had quietly encouraged limited strikes on the Gorazde perimeter earlier in the week, it had several aims in mind. It was trying to rob the Serbs of another battlefield victory, inject new life into stalled peace negotiations and redeem its own recent bumbling performance, when senior officials publicly contradicted each other about the prospect of air strikes. While the bombings were technically NATO operations in response to a request to protect U.N. peacekeeping troops, in practice the attacks were a U.S. experiment: an attempt to use limited military force to end the fighting in Bosnia. But the result was inconclusive, with the Serbs still in a position to fight on, and Washington appearing unable to punish the Serbs, no matter how blatant the provocation.

Moreover, the long-threatened NATO air strikes had hardly been models of military precision. In misty weather, embattled U.N. peacekeepers called for fighter-bombers to hit Serbian tanks that were firing into Gorazde. Two U.S. Air Force F-16s swept in and dropped three 500-lb. bombs on some tents. The following day, as shells continued to pound Gorazde, two Marine F/A-18s tried to drop four bombs on the Serbs. One bomb remained stuck in its rack; two hit the ground but failed to explode. The planes swooped down in the wake of the bomb that did blow up and strafed Serb positions with cannon fire, wrecking three military vehicles.

In the two-year Bosnian war that has resulted in 200,000 people dead or missing, those four U.S. bombs were a military pinprick. Politically, however, they shook the ground in all directions -- for a few days. As Bosnia lay relatively quiet, Washington took pride in its muscle flexing. "Every time we have been firm," said Clinton, "it has been a winner for the peace process." The Bosnian Serbs, who denounced the strikes as an intervention in support of the Muslims they are trying to crush, broke off contact with the U.N., charging that it had chosen sides.

The Serbs did not immediately retaliate by killing peacekeeping troops, as NATO had feared, but at least two were wounded -- and one subsequently died -- in the continued fighting. Serbs abducted some blue helmets at gunpoint and held hostage more than 200 U.N. soldiers and civilians. They surrounded several artillery depots around Sarajevo and on Saturday reportedly seized heavy weapons sequestered by peacekeepers.

The aerial bombings early in the week also miffed Moscow. "Air strikes," snapped President Boris Yeltsin, "must not be decided without preliminary consultations between the U.S. and Russia." Some of that rhetoric was intended to pacify the nationalists at home who still see the Serbs as Russia's traditional allies. But Moscow surprised many by its willingness to spread some of the blame this time to the Serbs. "They told us that nothing was happening and that they had no military plans involving Gorazde," said Churkin. "We have certain complaints against the Bosnian Serbs." On Saturday, Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, who had been consulting with Secretary of State Warren Christopher, arrived in Belgrade, which no doubt played a hand in the Serbs' sudden willingness to initial the agreement.

The Bosnian government remained wary that the lines of a military standstill might solidify into national boundaries, leaving the Serbs holding the 70% of the country they occupy now. "If we proclaim a cease-fire without time limits," said Mufid Memija, an adviser to Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic, "it is a recognition of occupation." He may be right. "We are going to keep putting pressure on the Bosnian government to agree to a cease- fire in place and say it doesn't determine the final boundaries," a U.S. official admits. "But in effect it probably will."

With reporting by Sally B. Donnelly/Moscow, James L. Graff/Vienna, J.F.O. McAllister/Washington and Chris Stephen/Sarajevo