SERBIA SET TO EXPLOIT MORE EFFICIENT ‘FINAL SOLUTION’: NATURE’S FREEZER CHEAPER THAN HITLER’S CREMATORIA

(Washington, D.C.): The
“civilized” world has been
fairly warned. George Kenney — the
Foreign Service Officer who recently
resigned to protest the Bush
Administration’s indifferent and
ineffectual response to Serbia’s
aggression in Bosnia and Croatia —
immolated his government career in the
hope of drawing international attention
to the still worse tragedy about
to befall the victims of that aggression:
genocide on an epic scale as the
Balkan winter sets in.

In the absence of immediate planning
and swift intervention on several levels
by the West, the Serbian campaign
of “ethnic cleansing” will
shortly become vastly
more efficient as freezing cold and mass
starvation further attrit hold-out
populations in Bosnia and
Croatia. This point was vividly
borne out by a report filed by the Washington
Post’s able correspondent in
Sarajevo, Blaine Harden, published on 28
August:

“While it is uncomfortably
hot under a cloudless sky now,
many relief officials fear they
will not be able to prepare an
all-weather relief pipeline
before winter sets in. Repairs
have yet to begin on two bridges
that were blown up by Serb forces
in April on the main all-weather
highway from Sarajevo to the
Croatian port of Split. Trucks
now must negotiate a gravel
mountain track that will become
impassable when autumn rains
start, about seven weeks from
now.” (Emphasis added.)

Faced with the relentless destruction of
its houses, public buildings and
infrastructure and the lack of
electricity and running water, it is a
matter of time before Sarajevo and other
communities under Serbian attack succumb
to the effects of winter weather.
Refugees who have fled their homes at
gunpoint to eke out subsistence
existences in temporary shelters in
Croatia are scarcely less at risk of
death on a massive scale.

What
is Being Done to Avert Catastrophe?

Unfortunately, there is, as
yet, no sign that Mr. Kenney’s warning
has been heard; neither
the requisite planning nor the necessary
intervention seems in prospect following
the latest peace conference in London.
Instead, there are more agreements going
unfulfilled on the ground, more
commitments to further negotiations and
more deferrals of Western actions that
might end Serbia’s genocidal campaign —
or at least reduce the likelihood of its
success. As a result, no program has been
put into place to provide sturdy,
insulated shelter, warm clothing, food or
emergency medical supplies on anything
like the scale needed to avoid a
catastrophe in Bosnia and Croatia this
winter.

Ironically, this inaction comes at
precisely the moment when the costs of
delay in providing such assistance are
vividly on display in Somalia. Had the
West planned and undertaken an airlift
like that now underway as recently as
three months ago, the sort of
national cataclysm now confronting the
skeletal people of that country might
have been avoided. The same fate almost
surely awaits the weakened, destitute
victims of Belgrade’s campaign for a
“Greater Serbia” who face in
addition a force unknown in Somalia —
freezing cold.

What is Needed

Clearly, the
Baker-Eagleburger-Scowcroft approach to
“managing” the crisis in Bosnia
and Croatia — which has vacillated
between ignoring it, wishing it away and
hoping that Serbia’s lust for violent
conquest will be sated before the
West is obliged to act — is a
formula for compounding the present
disaster in the former Yugoslavia. The
Center for Security Policy believes
accordingly that the following
initiatives must be set in train
immediately:

• The convening of an
  emergency session of the G-7
  leaders to finally bring
  a halt to Serbian aggression —
  including the establishment of
  “no-fly zones” and the
  other military actions long
  advocated by the Center — and to
  energize a truly massive program
  of humanitarian relief and
  housing construction to alleviate
  the effects of the disastrous
  winter months ahead.
• A formal and urgent G-7
  mandate to the World
  Bank, the Organization of
  Economic Development and
  Cooperation, NATO, the European
  Bank for Reconstruction and
  Development, other appropriate
  multilateral institutions and
  bilateral aid programs (including
  the Japanese Overseas Development
  Assistance Program) to develop
  and implement on a crash
  basis the positioning of
  necessary supplies, services and
  housing required.
• Toward this end, Congress should
  authorize a substantial emergency
  budget allocation (e.g., $350-500
  million) to underwrite the costs
  of the U.S. share of such a vital
  humanitarian initiative.
• Congress should also pass a joint
  resolution immediately signaling
  America’s allies in no
  uncertain terms that major
  financial and logistic
  burden-sharing will be required
  in this undertaking. Countries
  that fail to respond should be
  advised that they will face harsh
  retaliatory measures, including
  restricted entry into the United
  States of selected goods or,
  where appropriate, sharp cutbacks
  in U.S.-supported bilateral
  programs.
• A new ad hoc committee
  should be formed under G-7
  sponsorship to serve as
  a conduit for organizing and
  effecting these various
  assistance flows to Bosnia and
  Croatia. Such a new arrangement
  seems both necessary and
  desirable in light of the dismal
  record to date of U.N. and EC
  initiatives.
• The precedent — if one were
  needed — for separate, ad
  hoc treatment of the former
  Yugoslavia was established in the
  early 1980’s when Yugoslav debt
  was rescheduled and new financing
  syndicated for Belgrade by the
  “Friends of Yugoslavia”
  (comprised of a number of OECD
  countries) rather than through
  the normal method of arranging
  such initiatives (i.e., under the
  auspices of the Paris Club of
  official creditors).
• Legitimate private relief
  organizations should likewise be
  encouraged — and assisted
  — in extending
  assistance to Bosnia and
  Croatia from American, European,
  Japanese and others’ citizenry in
  the form of canned foods,
  clothing and other necessities
  for Serbia’s victims.
  Governmental support should be
  provided to assure that such help
  is promptly delivered where it is
  most needed.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy
believes that a massive campaign along
the foregoing lines can dramatically
alleviate what will otherwise be a
devastating winter for people in Bosnia
and Croatia who have, to the lasting
shame of the West, already suffered too
much. Toward this end, the
“civilized” world should set a
minimum goal for such a globally
syndicated emergency aid and
infrastructure fund in the range of $2-5
billion, over and above the costs of
protecting aid deliveries or implementing
the long-overdue military actions
required to halt Serbian aggression. Should
Western nations fail to undertake such
steps, they will, as a
practical matter, become — along with
Old Man Winter — accomplices to
Serbia’s escalating campaign of
genocide.