Bosnia

OMARSKA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- The vast mining complex here, with its open pits and ore processing system, looks like anything but a concentration camp.The nondescript buildings in their barren frontier landscape have been cleaned up, and there is no trace of the blood reputedly spilled here.But during the last month, dozens of eyewitnesses have provided compelling evidence of murder and torture on a wide scale at this complex, where the Serbs who conquered much of Bosnia brought several thousand Muslims and Croats.

For Capt. Martin Noorsalu, deploying to Afghanistan with the Maryland National Guard last year was an unusual opportunity. Noorsalu is one of only a dozen helicopter pilots in the Estonian Air Force. The sole air defense service of the former Soviet republic numbers some 400 personnel. They fly four helicopters. But from September to December, Noorsalu and fellow Estonian Air Force Capt. Rene Kallis flew medical evacuation missions in Afghanistan with Maryland National Guard members in the 1st General Support Aviation Battalion of the 169th Aviation Regiment.

I am very pleased to share my thoughts on the special relationship between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the state of Maryland. This relationship began in 2003 under the official auspices of the National Guard State Partnership Program with the Maryland National Guard and is now developing into a multidimensional, whole-of-government partnership supported by both the office of Gov. Martin O'Malley and the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On March 22-24 I will be heading an official delegation to Maryland for the upcoming U.S.-Balkans Business Summit at the University of Baltimore.

The report from the State Department was brief: Thomas M. Jennings Jr., a federal worker from Burtonsville on a temporary assignment with NATO peacekeepers, had died in a car crash in Southern Bosnia. Fifteen years later, it turns out that was only part of the story. Unknown to neighbors and friends, Jennings was working for the CIA, the agency acknowledged last week. A veteran covert officer — he told acquaintances he worked for the State Department — he volunteered to go to Sarajevo after the Bosnian war as a U.S.-led force worked to maintain peace.

Recent developments:1. Croat forces from Bosnia and Croatia lauched an offensive against the Serb-held Posavina corridor. The Croat-held town of Orasje is under heavy Serbian shelling.2. Serbs are shelling Sarajevo and threaten any civilian vehicle attempting to reach the airport.

AFTER THE Bosnian Serbs took Prijedor in May and June of 1992, Muslim men were herded into camps, where up to 7,000 were executed by guards.Some of the 77 suspects indicted as war criminals by the U.N. Bosnian war crimes tribunal have been living openly in Bosnia. Now, British troops have arrested one accused of the Prijedor crimes and killed another who fired at them.The raid came after President Clinton demanded a more aggressive policy of arrests. It suggests that the world community may be serious about the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

President Clinton is pushing the United States ever closer to involvement in conflict on the ground in Bosnia even while denying he is doing so. By declaring he is willing to contemplate the "temporary use" of American forces to assist the United Nations command in "a reconfiguration and a strengthening of its forces," Mr. Clinton is going way beyond his previous pledges to get involved only to facilitate the evacuation of U.N. peace keepers. But in a typical attempt to have it both ways, he told Air Force Academy graduates that "we have made the right decision in not commiting our forces to become embroiled in this conflict in Europe."

Having blundered into a new Bosnian crisis though bombing raids that exposed United Nations peacekeeping forces to humiliation and hostage-taking, the U.S. must do what is necessary to extract these soldiers from danger. This includes the psychological warfare now going on as 2,000 Marines deploy off the Yugoslav coast. It could very well escalate into a major military operation, with 25,000 U.S. troops on the ground to facilitate the evacuation of the entire U.N. contingent.If this sounds like a defeat for the international community, and such organizations as the U.N., NATO and the European Union, that's exactly what it is. If it appears that the United States is now ready to use sufficient force to change the power balance among the various participants in the Yugoslav civil war, that's exactly what it is not.President Clinton has stated repeatedly that American forces will be put on the ground only to bring peacekeepers from 16 separate nations (not including the U.S.)

Although Bosnia is the newest member of the United Nations, it has as great a right to live in peace as any of the original nations that gathered in San Francisco in 1945. Its dismemberment, its absorption by a more powerful neighbor, its "ethnic cleansing" would be an affront to humanity reminiscent of what happened to Czechoslovakia and Poland more than a half-century ago.Just as Kuwait had claims on the protections of the U.N. Charter after it was occupied by Iraq, so Bosnia deserves wholehearted support from the world organization as it struggles to preserve its territorial integrity and independence.

As Serbian forces close in on embattled Sarajevo, ethnic partitioning of Bosnia-Herzegovina appears more and more to be the only practical way to end the civil war. The partitioning may come under the political cover of a very weak confederal government structure -- this to satisfy the rhetorical pretensions of outside powers that dared not intervene -- but it will be partitioning nonetheless.The idea of Serbs, Croats and Muslins once again living in comparative harmony is sheer fantasy. The more realistic goal, elusive as it may be, is to end the bloodshed somehow, let the three warring tribes regroup in three ethnically cleansed enclaves, prevent another Serbian-Croatian war and take international action to prevent the spread of conflict elsewhere in the Balkans.

I am very pleased to share my thoughts on the special relationship between Bosnia and Herzegovina and the state of Maryland. This relationship began in 2003 under the official auspices of the National Guard State Partnership Program with the Maryland National Guard and is now developing into a multidimensional, whole-of-government partnership supported by both the office of Gov. Martin O'Malley and the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On March 22-24 I will be heading an official delegation to Maryland for the upcoming U.S.-Balkans Business Summit at the University of Baltimore.

When Amina Jugo moved with her family to the United States from Mostar, Bosnia, seven years ago, she met another Bosnian youngster, Azra Hosic, who talked her into playing club volleyball. Now Jugo, 5 feet 7, is a strong outside hitter for the Bluebirds. A 17-year-old senior, she is enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program at Kenwood and has a 3.6 grade-point average. She is active in the National Honor Society and has been involved with the literary magazine and the Model United Nations.

Nature center moving to Owings Mills The Irvine Nature Center will close its building on the grounds of St. Timothy's School in Stevenson as of tomorrow to prepare to move to a new facility in Owings Mills. The new building, at 11201 Garrison Forest Road, is scheduled to open to the public Aug. 23. A grand opening gala for adults only will be held at 6 p.m. Sept. 12 at the new center, featuring the Jody Westerlund Band, food and a look at the facility. Tickets are $100 and reservations are required.

TUZLA, Bosnia -- It begins with the translation of the doctor's introductory query: "How may I help you today?" What follows are the typical answers and explanations, and more questions. Not much different from a visit to the family physician - except the translator is a Serbian army officer, the patient is an elderly Muslim woman, and the doctor is an internist from Baltimore, a member of the Maryland Air National Guard who recognizes the patient's achy knees and back as the pain of arthritis.

R. Nicholas Burns, undersecretary of state for political affairs, recently put Balkan issues back on the front burner when he pressured Bosnia's Serb, Muslim and Croat leaders to replace the country's three-person, multiethnic presidency with a single president. That step is needed, he said, to create a stronger, more cohesive state. He added that there should be a firm commitment to such reforms by the time Balkan leaders visit Washington this month to mark the 10th anniversary of the Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian civil war. Dayton, Mr. Burns intoned, has served its purpose and now needs to "evolve."

WASHINGTON - The London bombings and the anniversary of the massacre in Srebrenica, the Bosnian town where nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered, were two seemingly unrelated stories that occurred within five days of each other this month. Though separated by 10 years and 1,000 miles, the two are actually rather closely linked. The war in Bosnia, particularly the arms embargo imposed on the Muslim population while the Serbs were massacring them, became the major turning point for the global Muslim consciousness.

It is time to exempt the government of Bosnia from the United Nations arms embargo on Yugoslavia. One must resist the temptation to say Muslims of Bosnia, because the defenders of Sarajevo and the Bosnian state have always included ethnic Serbs and Croatians. Reginald Bartholomew, the Clinton administration's special envoy to the region, is already talking of arms for Bosnia.It is time to consider bombing Serbian artillery positions, particularly around Srebrenica and Sarajevo, which are slaughtering civilians.

Because of Bosnia, Yugoslavia was invented. To insure the death of Yugoslavia, Bosnia must be destroyed.To backtrack: Yugoslavs or most of them are one ethnicity if you go back far enough. Serbs, Croats and Bosnian Muslims speak one language. They use different alphabets and have different religions because for centuries they had different rulers and histories.There really was a Bosnia once, as much as there was a Slovenia or Croatia. There was a kingdom of Bosnia in the 12th century. In the 14th century it acquired Herzegovina to the south from Serbia, and the two have usually been united since.

The Rev. Charles Leger has made community outreach one of his priorities since coming last year to Jennings Chapel United Methodist Church in Woodbine. But this summer, Leger and his wife will take that goal to a higher level. The Legers, Methodist ministers who live in Howard County, will be in Bosnia from July 15 to 31 to work in the Volunteer in Mission Program of the United Methodist Church. They will head to the town of Mostar. The couple will spend much of their time with the Muslim community, whose infrastructure was destroyed after the country's civil war, which ended in 1995.

Alija Izetbegovic, a devout Muslim whose religion and politics landed him in Yugoslav jails but who went on to lead the Bosnian people through a cataclysmic war and eventually into independence, died yesterday in a Sarajevo hospital. He was 78. Izetbegovic, who suffered from chronic heart disease, was admitted to the hospital Sept. 10 with broken bones and bruises from a fall. His condition became critical Friday, when doctors were unable to stop bleeding in his left lung, the hospital said.