Bosnian bid to break out of Sarajevo 'concentration camp'
Socialist Outlook1990sScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
The Bosnian Government has ordered the BH army to break the seige of Sarajevo.
It is impossible to tell how likely they are to succeed, but it is clear that they are not prepared to sit back and do nothing and watch the city face its fourth winter as a ghetto cut off from the outside world.
Explaining the offensive, Bosnia's foreign minister insisted that "We are not prepared to see Sarajevo institutionalised as a concentration camp".
Things are certainly much worse in the city now than they have been for the past three years. There is no water, gas or electricity, the airport is shut, and the supply routes are blocked, and food is about to run out. The city is on the verge of a public health catastrophe and the coming winter may not be short and mild as, by Balkan standards, the last two have been.
The other factor is the improved capability of the BH army itself. When 70% of the country was occupied by Serbian forces three years ago, Bosnia had no army or weaponry at all. Everything was with the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army, which went with the Serbians.
Bosnia had only a few light weapons from the police force. Even 18 months ago when the first International Workers Aid convoy got through to Tuzla and was taken to the front line by the miners' brigade, soldiers were facing Serb positions with just six rounds of ammunition each.
All that has changed. A combination of surreptitious procurement and domestic manufacture has produced an army which is well equipped with light weaponry as well as being highly motivated for the liberation of the occupied lands and the defence of a multi-ethnic life.
The discrepancy of heavy weaponry, which had been maintained by the arms embargo, however, remains enormous. Serbia itself is stacked out with such weapons and remains the strongest military force in ex-Yugoslavia (including an airforce) and Karadzic's Bosnian Serb forces have a share of this hardware - as their ability to shoot down NATO aircraft has demonstrated.
At the same time shaky federation that the Bosnians have forged with the Croats is reaping some military rewards, with Croatian units engaging Serbian forces over occupied Croatian territory, stretching Serb forces to the maximum.
Doubts
There are now doubts that Slobodan Milosevic will aid his Bosnian Serb proteges if they come under extreme pressure. He will certainly help them in the clandestine way he has since he "split" with them ir, an effort to get the sanctions against Serbia lifted.
But whether he will send in the regular army is a mage open question - the Bosnian government is clearly gambling that he will not.
The exact aim of the Bosnian offensive is unclear, since there are a number of objectives which could improve their situation short of the complete relief of the city. They may cut vital supply lines between Serbian controlled sectors or open up a relief route into the city itself.
A part of their calculation is their assessment of the role of the UN and Western forces.
Their efforts to pressurise the west to intervene on their behalf have patently failed and they see the new "rapid reaction force", if it eventually materialises as more a means to protect the UN forces themselves than a new determination to open supply routes.
As we have argued many times, in the end the only people who are going to effectively defend the Bosnians and their national rights will be war. the Bosnians themselves.
The UN has its own agenda, which has been and is to enforce a settlement based on the status quo -in other words the very institutionalisation of Sarajevo as a ghetto which the Bosnians find unacceptable.
Whether the BH army has the military strength, with the arms embargo still in place, effectively to lift the seige is another matter.
Western policy is in complete disarray with the failure of air strikes and the hostage crisis, and if the war project. escalates further an actual withStepping up the solidarity effort: International Workers • Aid drawal of UN forces is not impossible - even at the risk of widening the Since it is hard to see how the arms embargo could be sustained without the UN - they run it and function the sanctions committees -the sooner they go, and take the embargo with them, the better. • International Workers Aid is stepping up its aid programme to the trade unions in the Tuzla region. Donation to IWA can be sent to PO Box 1109 London N4, which will be sent directly to this