WASHINGTON -- As international troops stream into Kosovo, plans are under way to pull thousands of U.S. and allied soldiers out of Bosnia and Herzegovina, prompting fears that a tenuous peace and unfinished business in the former Yugoslav republic may be sacrificed on the altar of a new peacekeeping effort.
About 34,000 NATO-led troops -- including 6,200 Americans -- are patrolling in Bosnia, enforcing the Dayton peace accords that four years ago halted fighting between Serbs, Croats and Muslims that cost 250,000 lives and produced 2.7 million refugees and displaced persons, nearly a million of whom have not returned to their homes.
NATO military planners are looking at "very substantial" reductions in allied troop levels, said a senior Pentagon official, noting that the numbers may be decided by late summer. They will likely be more than the 10 percent reduction last December, officials said.
"It's a drain on our resources and we'd like to reduce as much as we can," said one Defense Department official, pointing to the $2 billion-a-year price tag for the American contingent.
Military officials say it's time for civilian administrators to resolve the refugee problem and encourage the reluctant parties to work harder toward forging a multiethnic society.
When the peace deal was signed in 1995, a 60,000-member peacekeeping force was assembled for Bosnia that included 20,000 U.S. troops. The numbers have been pared down since then.
Said one top Army official, "We've pretty much completed our military mission in Bosnia."
But Balkans experts and some administration officials say it is not the right time to make further cuts in the number of troops.
The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies must redouble their efforts, they argue, concerned that international fatigue and lethargy are hampering efforts in Bosnia as a new mission begins in Kosovo.
Tensions are still running high in Bosnia and fighting could break out in disputed areas, they argue. Troops should assist in helping the nearly 1 million refugees who are afraid to return to their communities where they are a minority. Indicted war criminals remain at large while peacekeepers have done little to apprehend them.
Jim Hooper, executive director of the Balkan Action Council, a nonpartisan education group, said cutting back on the troops "would send the wrong signal." The allies must work harder to get the refugees back home, he said, a point administration officials concede is key to a lasting peace.
While ethnic Kosovar Albanians are returning home in large numbers, the refugee problem in Bosnia "sticks out like a sore thumb," said Hooper.
"People are ignoring Bosnia. Bosnia's been a failure," argues Bill Steubner, a retired U.S. Army major who served in Bosnia and is now at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an independent group financed by Congress to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.
Unkept promises
"We never carried out the real promise of Dayton to get people home again. We never created the security environment they have to have," he said.
Under the accords, Bosnia was divided into two entities, one controlled by the Muslim-Croatian Federation and the other by Republika Srpska (Serb Republic). Bosnia and Herzegovina has a tripartite presidency and a central legislature in which each ethnic group is represented.
Pentagon and State Department officials, while conceding progress has been too slow and much work remains to be done, point to some encouraging developments in Bosnia.
Milorad Dodik, the Serb Republic's new prime minister, is a moderate who has pledged to work with the West to rebuild the economy and create a multiethnic society. He replaced the republic's hard-line president who was fired in March by the senior Western diplomat overseeing the implementation of the accords.
Ante Jelavic, a Croat who last month became chairman of the tripartite presidency of Bosnia, also has promised stronger ties with the West. "Will he take the high road?" wondered a Pentagon official. A few days after he posed that question, Jelavic was denounced by the top Western representative for attending a fund-raiser for Croatians indicted for war crimes.
The allies are also working to create a multiethnic police force and hope to forge a "permanent secretariat" for the Serbian, Croatian and Muslim armed forces for better communications and possible military exercises.
Some minority refugees are returning, said a Pentagon official, noting that Serbs by the hundreds are going back to the Croatian-controlled town of Drvar in southwest Bosnia, though the Pentagon official conceded that the return of the hundreds of thousands of refugees would take time.
"You cannot force refugees back into communities that are extremely hostile to them coming back," said the official, dismissing the suggestion that NATO soldiers could assist in those efforts. "I don't think more troops is the answer. It's a question of will."
As for apprehending indicted war criminals, Pentagon officials and retired officers talk about a reluctance to endanger troops or civilians in pursuit of suspects.
"We always take into account whether we have the right kind of intelligence, the right kind of force, so that they can be apprehended with a reasonable risk to the people in the region as well as to our own forces," Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told reporters recently.
But many of the Bosnian war criminals, including such "big fish" as Gen. Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, were indicted four years ago and remain at large, serving as a roadblock to a multiethnic state and a rallying point for ultranationalist elements, noted a State Department official.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, a Connecticut Democrat and member of the Armed Services Committee and a leading voice on Balkans policy, said he is "not satisfied" with the lack of arrests. "I think we should redouble our efforts," he said.
"We did something fundamentally wrong with the war criminals," argues Ken Allard, a retired U.S. Army colonel and now a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), saying the Pentagon's high concern for troop safety is "contradicting the military ethos."
Partitioning favored
The continuing challenges in Bosnia, four years after the fighting stopped, are causing some observers to argue that the multiethnic state called for in the Dayton accords has proven unworkable. They say the only alternative is to reopen the accords and partition the country along ethnic lines.
"We tried for 3 1/2 years to provide a new leadership," says Ivo H. Daalder, a Balkans expert at the Brookings Institution. "I don't think it's in our interests to expend more resources if they're not willing to go down this path."
The concept of a multiethnic state "is ridiculous," says Allard, of CSIS. "It bears no relation to the situation on the ground," he says. "Every chance they've been given, they've ratified division."
Hooper, of the Balkan Action Council, would also like to see the accords reopened -- not to partition but to strengthen the central government and abandon a tripartite presidency that doesn't work. Each of the three ethnic groups is "acting as if they're a separate country," he said, creating a "de facto partition."
But few think there is the political will or interest to reopen the Dayton accords. Administration officials believe a more concerted effort is needed to create a multiethnic state. "We're only four years out at this point," said a State Department official.
'Not going to leave'
A Pentagon official said that while troop reductions will occur this summer, "We're not going to leave."
Lieberman said that as the West focuses on Kosovo, attention must also be paid to the stability of Bosnia. "It's time for the Congress, the Pentagon and NATO to stop and take a look at where we are in Bosnia and where we want to go," the senator said.
Retired U.S. Army Gen. George A. Joulwan, who oversaw the implementation of the Dayton accords as NATO's supreme commander, said it's time to "put some heat" on civilian administrators to get the refugees home and build a civil society.
While acknowledging the slow process in Bosnia, Joulwan dismissed the idea of abandoning the accords in favor of partition.
"The easy way is to say partition and let's get the hell out of here," he said. But the allies must work to "break the cycle of violence" in the Balkans, and partitioning would only play into the hands of ultranationalism and religious hatred, he said. "That's unacceptable in the Europe of the 21st century," he said.
Jakob Finci, head of the Soros Foundation's Open Society Fund, which is promoting democracy and civil institutions in Bosnia, agreed with Joulwan that partitioning the country is not the answer and more time is needed.
"Just four years is not enough," he said. Part of the problem is the lumbering bureaucracy of the myriad international organizations involved in the country, from the European Union to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to the Office of High Representative.
But Finci praised the work of the NATO forces and said U.S. troops are vital to maintaining peace.
Finci says the three ethnic groups in the country are like the yeast, flour and water that are needed to make bread.
Pub Date: 7/06/99