ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220118
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KEMAL KURSPAHIC
THE FIRST American troops are leaving Bosnia after almost a year-long peacekeeping mission. They are entitled to take pride in some impressive success in implementing military aspects of the Dayton agreement: separation of forces, withdrawal of troops into assigned barracks, movement of heavy artillery into assigned warehouses.
Nevertheless, as these Americans begin to pull out, there is a strong feeling - expressed in some of their interviews on the departure - that they are leaving behind an unfinished job.
In fact, it is the consensus in all international quarters except Washington - since President Clinton has promised a strictly limited one-year engagement - that for peace to hold in Bosnia, the international military presence must be extended.
That is the price that has to be paid for the West's lack of willingness to use the mandate for a 60,000-strong American-led NATO force to implement not only military but - equally important - civilian aspects of the peace agreement as well.
By implementing only military provisions of the Dayton accords, with a zone of separation as its major achievement, IFOR (the implementation force) has strengthened partition instead of helping the reintegration of Bosnia.
Without freedom of movement in the country, without security for more than 2 million Bosnians even to visit their homes and towns from which they were expelled, with indicted war criminals enjoying protection and even influence in Serb- and Croat-controlled territories, with the same nationalistic parties that started the war now strengthened by elections marked by fraud and intimidation - with all these problems still festering, it is clear that the troops departing Bosnia are leaving behind a peace that cannot last.
For peace to take hold and for the Bosnian people to start rebuilding their lives, there is a need for at least two more years of international military, political and economic support. Now that military provisions of the Dayton agreement have been successfully implemented, all efforts should be focused on carrying out the civilian side of the accords. Any follow-on NATO-led force in Bosnia faces three major tasks:
* Freedom of movement.
Instead of enforcing the zone of separation, which is the most dangerous border in Europe, international troops should be used to supervise and protect the freedom of Bosnians to travel, visit, trade and communicate across the country.
* Right of return of refugees and displaced persons.
Ultranationalists, and especially Serbian and Croat extremists who still want to annex territories they occupied during the war to ``Greater Serbia'' or ``Greater Croatia,'' must be forced to grant those expelled in genocidal campaigns of ``ethnic cleansing'' the right to reclaim their homes and property and to return to their towns.
Present partition in three para-states affects more then 2 million Bosnians of all three ethnic groups: In addition to the more than 1 million Bosnian Muslims who can't go back to their homes in Serb-controlled eastern Bosnia or Croat-controlled towns in Herzegovina, several hundred thousand Bosnian Serbs were forced by their leadership to flee Sarajevo or by Croatian forces to escape from Drvar, Grahovo and Glamoc, and several hundred thousand Croats lost their homes to Serbs in Bosanska Posavina or to Muslims in central Bosnia.
Right of return is the best way to preserve hope for a multiethnic Bosnia. Before ``ethnic cleansing'' took place no towns or regions could be claimed to be Serb, Croat or Muslim only. People lived together throughout the country.
* Extradition of war criminals to the tribunal at the Hague.
To deliver those responsible for genocidal crimes - Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and others on the Serb side; Dario Kordic and some others on the Croat side - to the trials would serve not only basic justice and morality but also strengthen the prospects for long-term reconciliation and cohabitation in multiethnic, multi-religious, multicultural Bosnia-Herzegovina.
All of this would help create conditions for free and fair elections in 1998 and for gradual permanent withdrawal of international forces from the country.
Kemal Kurspahic is former editor in chief of the Bosnian daily Oslobodjenje.
The Washington Post
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