‘IN THE NAME OF GOD, GO’ IN: TIME TO END THE WEST’S ‘KITTY GENOVESE’ SYNDROME ON BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA

(Washington, D.C.): However
inconvenient it may be in light of the
political transition underway at the
moment, the United States can no
longer avoid intervention on behalf of
the victims of Serbian genocide in
Bosnia-Hercegovina. Further
delay in the use of force to punish the
aggressors, to liberate territory they
have wrongly seized and brutally
“ethnically cleansed” and to
create a basis for a just peace will have
absolutely predictable effects:

• There will be a wider
  war in the region, probably
  involving, among others, two U.S.
  allies — Greece and Turkey.
• There will be further,
  wholesale Serbian “crimes
  against humanity.” And,
• The U.S. and other Western
  nations will be
  indictably complicit in such
  atrocities for having knowingly
  permitted them to happen and for
  doing nothing effective to halt
  or suppress them.

The Helsinki Commission
Briefing

The latter point was brought home
powerfully in a briefing yesterday
organized by the congressional Helsinki
Commission co-chaired by Sen. Dennis
DeConcini (D-AZ) and Rep. Steny Hoyer
(D-MD). Following opening statements by
the sponsors which strongly, and
properly, criticized the U.S. and Western
policies to date concerning the crisis in
the former Yugoslavia, three human rights
organizations provided shattering
documentation of the magnitude of the
human dimension of that crisis — and
underscored the legal, moral and
strategic factors impelling a swift and
radical change in those policies.

Representatives of Doctors Without
Borders, Amnesty International and
Helsinki Watch established unmistakably
— on the basis of thorough, first-hand
examinations of the victims of Serbian
prison camps, rape campaigns and other
atrocities — that a basis now exists for
war crimes trials under the Nuremberg
precedent and the Geneva Convention. As
Franoise Saulnier of Doctors Without
Borders put it:

“[Our] new report
demonstrates the working out of a
systematic [Serbian] plan to exterminate
the Bosnian Muslims….The
violence committed by Bosnian
Serbs does not amount to a long
series of war crimes or human
rights violations, but rather to
a crime against humanity,
defined by the Nuremberg tribunal
as: “assassination,
extermination, enslavement,
deportation and other inhuman
acts committed against a civilian
population.”

Simply put, genocide is being
perpetrated by Serbia in a manner totally
at variance with international law and
inconsistent with the governing
principles of any nation which considers
itself “civilized.”

The
Hallmarks of the Kitty Genovese Syndrome

The Center for Security Policy has
believed from the outset of the Yugoslav
crisis that the United States could not
responsibly, morally or strategically
afford to adopt the position of those who
witnessed the brutal 1964 knife murder in
New York of an innocent young woman named
Kitty Genovese. Inaction
justified by not wanting to “get
involved” as people are being hacked
to death — or, for that matter, starved,
tortured, raped, frozen href=”#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
or otherwise abused — is as intolerable
as it is repugnant.

Neither can freedom-loving
countries permit the pursuit of
negotiated peace agreements to continue
to serve as a political cover for — if
not as an instrument of — the
aggressors’ efforts to consolidate and
legitimize their ill-gotten territorial
gains. It is, as Sen. DeConcini
put it yesterday, absolutely
“unbelievable” and enough to
“make you want to regurgitate”
that the international community could be
compelling the elected representatives of
Bosnia-Hercegovina to negotiate in
UN/EC-sponsored “peace talks”
with the same people branded by Secretary
of State Lawrence Eagleburger — among
others — as war criminals.

More to the point, the
proposal for effectively dismantling
Bosnia into ten “autonomous”
provinces drawn along more or less
“ethnically pure” lines — a
proposal that UN envoy Cyrus Vance and EC
delegate David Owens are currently trying
to foist on the Bosnian government — is
a formula for appeasing the
perpetrator of these war crimes.
The Center commends Sen. DeConcini and
Rep. Hoyer for their unequivocal
rejection of this proposal as the basis
for ending the conflict in
Bosnia-Hercegovina. In Sen. DeConcini’s
words:

“I’m very disappointed in
that plan….I find that
repugnant….It’s way too late,
in my judgment, to force — which
I feel is what is happening there
— the Bosnian-Hercegovinan side
to divide up that country. That’s
totally contrary to the UN, CSCE,
and Helsinki agreements on
territories gained through
military action.”

What Must Now Be Done

In light of these latest findings by
independent observers and distinguished
congressional leaders, the Center for
Security Policy believes the United
States has no alternative but to
implement forthwith the following changes
to existing policy:

• Immediately enforce the no-fly
  zone;
• Lift the arms embargo as it
  applies to Bosnia;
• Serve notice that selected air
  strikes will be conducted against
  targets in Serbia if logistical
  support and other assistance to
  irregular forces in Bosnia are
  not terminated at once;
• Intensify Western relief efforts;
• Offer temporary asylum in the
  United States to refugees of the
  Bosnian-Serbian conflict who have
  been victimized through
  incarceration in Serbian prison
  camps, rape centers and other
  detention centers and their
  families; and
• Block any efforts to provide
  amnesty to Serbian war criminals.

The Bottom Line

The United States can no longer wait
upon a multilateral consensus to take
such steps. What is more, by
demonstrating its willingness to act upon
them unilaterally if necessary, the U.S.
will almost certainly catalyze a
desirable multinational effort along
these precise lines.

On the other hand, should it fail to
act, it is entirely possible that
virtually nothing will be done to prevent
the consolidation of Serbia’s aggression
— or to dissuade others from following
suit. On the latter point, Dr. Angelo
Codevilla, a fellow at Stanford
University’s Hoover Institution, observed
what is at stake in a thought-provoking
op.ed. article in today’s Wall Street
Journal.

“Russia’s communist
apparatchiks, who are now
recouping their powers in Moscow
and have already started border
wars in Georgia and Moldova, have
reason to believe [on the basis
of the international community’s
lack of effective action in
Bosnia to date] that the West
would stand by if they tried to
reassert control over Ukraine and
the Baltics, and that afterward
Europe would pay them protection
money.” href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=93-D_01at”>(Full
text is attached.)

In fact, just yesterday, Russian Foreign
Minister Andrei Kozyrev confirmed charges
made recently by the Center for Security
Policy⁽²⁾:
Moscow is actively working to
thwart Western intervention against its
long-time ally, Serbia.
According to today’s Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty Daily Report:

“In an interview with
Russian TV’s ‘Utro’ program on 6
January, Kozyrev said that Russia
had used a ‘covert veto’
on the question of using an
international-sponsored military
force to settle the conflict in
the former Yugoslavia. He said
that Russia had accomplished this
by persistently questioning
Western proposals for military
intervention in Bosnia and by
supporting a continuing process
of negotiation among the
conflicting sides.”

In light of this development, the Center
finds particularly commendable recent
statements made by Sens. DeConcini and
Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Rep. Hoyer
suggesting that, under present
circumstances, the United States
might have to contemplate deploying
ground forces to Bosnia as part of a
multilateral effort. While the
Center remains hopeful that such a step
will not be necessary, it strongly
believes that an express U.S. willingness
to do so is becoming increasingly
necessary to get the Serbs’ attention, to
parry the Russian “covert veto”
and to shame the Europeans into providing
their own sizeable peace-making
forces — before countless thousands more
perish needlessly.

– 30 –

1. The
Center for Security Policy warned early
on of the significant contribution to
Serbia’s campaign of genocide that would
be made by the harsh Balkan winter. See,
for example, the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled, “Serbia Set to
Exploit More Efficient ‘Final Solution’:
Nature’s Freezer Cheaper Than Hitler’s
Crematoria,” href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=92-D_103″>(No. 92-D
103, 31 August 1992).

2. See
Center
Director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.’s column
in the Washington Times entitled
“Moscow Veto Mood Rising?”, 23
December 1992.