War In Bosnia

Washington -- Every time the war in Bosnia falls from public view, it invariably comes back to dominate the headlines and nightly news.And each new crisis adds another layer of complexity to an already confusing situation.Here, then, is a basic guide to the conflict.The backgroundFrom the end of World War II through 1990, Yugoslavia was a patchwork of nationalities and religions held together by a Communist dictatorship. At the end of the Cold War, the federation pulled apart as tensions dating from the Middle Ages flared up.War broke out first in Croatia, between the new Croatian government and minority Serbs allied with the republic of Serbia.

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.

CAPLJINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Ask Tomislav Pervan how he enjoys his job and he refers to his work manual, the Bible. "Christ said, 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' " he grins ruefully. "I hope he still thinks that when I eventually meet him, because no one else around here seems to agree."As the head of the Franciscan order of monks in western Herzegovina -- an area of Bosnia that saw some of the worst "ethnic cleansing" of the Yugoslav conflict -- Pervan knows more about the horrors of war than most.

WASHINGTON - With all the enthusiasm of a teen-ager getting out of bed on a school day, American liberals are beginning to line up for war against Iraq. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's masterful presentation to the Security Council on Wednesday seemed to nudge a number of fence-sitters. "I'm convinced," read the headline of Mary McGrory's column. But reluctance is the order of the day. As recently as Jan. 24, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts said: "The American people don't want this war. Our global allies don't want this war. So why is President Bush stampeding down the warpath, and not working toward a real solution to disarm Saddam?"

Ukraine will give up 1,800 nuclear warheads if Russia promises to give up Ukraine.John and Lorena Bobbitt do deserve to get rich from their alleged crimes. They have entertained the nation.There is no assurance that if the Atlantic Alliance goes to war in Bosnia, it will be on the same side.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Zeljko Raznatovic, a Serbian paramilitary leader known as Arkan who was wanted on war crimes charges in the Bosnian and Croatian wars, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel. Raznatovic, who was shot in the left eye at 5: 15 p.m., was taken to the main emergency hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6: 40 p.m., Studio B, the Belgrade television station, reported. A witness at the Intercontinental, where blood could be seen at the entrance an hour after the shooting, said a bodyguard, whose name was reported to be Momcilo Mandic, had also been killed.

The United Nations said a cease-fire in SREBRENICA was stable even though it conceded that Muslims had surrendered few weapons, an apparent violation of the truce. The U.N. force's commander, Gen. Lars-Eric Wahlgren, said 150 Canadian peacekeepers in Srebrenica would use force to defend it if Serbs attacked. Serb militiamen turned back Canadian reinforcements.Despite two cease-fire agreements in as many days by Muslim and Croatian leaders, U.N. officials reported more fighting around VITEZ in central Bosnia.

CAJNICE, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Western powers are worrying about becoming entangled in a Lebanon-style civil war in Bosnia. But Serbs in this frontier town about six miles from embattled Gorazde say it'll be their Vietnam.Others have found this land an unconquerable place, they say."I don't expect the Americans to bomb us from the air," said a local commander known as Gypsy, a bearded young man in his late twenties, ignoring bursts of machine-gun fire that punctuated the stifling summer air. "But if they want to do it, let them come."

Gorazde. -- The first snow will fall in the Balkans in seven or eight weeks, heralding a winter that will kill far more people in Bosnia than the summer's massacres. And still they hesitate.They -- the United Nations, NATO, and above all the great powers -- didn't wait when Iraq invaded Kuwait two years ago. They aren't waiting now with their plans for a ''no-fly'' zone in southern Iraq to hinder Saddam Hussein's offensive against Shiite rebels.So why didn't they declare a ''no-fly'' zone over all of Bosnia months ago, to stop the Serbian air force from bombing Muslim towns and villages?

Budapest. -- It is simple but catastrophic in implication to deal with Yugoslavia in terms of ''the Serbs,'' ''the Croatians,'' and ''the Muslims.'' That plays the game of ethnic politics, the logic of which leads to genocide.''The Serbs'' did not invade Croatia and Bosnia to create Serbian homelands and expel their Croatian and Bosnian inhabitants. The Yugoslav National Army did that under the instructions of the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic. The war in Bosnia now is carried on by a regime and army composed mostly of Serbs native to Bosnia, supported and directed by the Milosevic authorities in Serbia.

LONDON - NATO gave notice yesterday to the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, the most wanted man in the Balkans: His life on the run is about to become ever more perilous. For the first time yesterday, NATO-led peacekeepers conducted an intensive and public operation directed at rooting out Karadzic, who has lived for years apparently just out of sight of international forces. The troops set off explosives, lifted carpets and even searched behind a church altar, but failed to find him. Wearing black masks and armed with assault rifles, they swept through a hamlet near Celebici in a remote corner of eastern Bosnia, seizing three caches of weapons.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- Zeljko Raznatovic, a Serbian paramilitary leader known as Arkan who was wanted on war crimes charges in the Bosnian and Croatian wars, was shot and killed yesterday in the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel. Raznatovic, who was shot in the left eye at 5: 15 p.m., was taken to the main emergency hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6: 40 p.m., Studio B, the Belgrade television station, reported. A witness at the Intercontinental, where blood could be seen at the entrance an hour after the shooting, said a bodyguard, whose name was reported to be Momcilo Mandic, had also been killed.

Albanian refugees fresh from the crime scene of Kosovo have documented the world's case against Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.By bearing witness to the brutal campaign of expulsion and massacre carried out by his army and police force, they brought on the May 27 indictment of Milosevic by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in The Hague, Netherlands.But the tribunal's investigators, an idealistic bunch with an eye on the bigger picture, are working an even bigger case, one that has yet to yield results.

WASHINGTON -- As refugees flee Kosovo with accounts of rape by Serbian police and paramilitary forces, diplomatic officials vowed yesterday to prosecute those cases as war crimes and to hold Yugoslav leaders personally responsible for instances of rape by their troops.Meanwhile, investigators for the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague have arrived in Albania to gather evidence of war crimes.The tribunal is building a case for indicting top-level Yugoslav officials, including President Slobodan Milosevic, for war crimes stemming from the "ethnic cleansing" campaign in Kosovo.

CAPLJINA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- Ask Tomislav Pervan how he enjoys his job and he refers to his work manual, the Bible. "Christ said, 'Blessed are the peacemakers,' " he grins ruefully. "I hope he still thinks that when I eventually meet him, because no one else around here seems to agree."As the head of the Franciscan order of monks in western Herzegovina -- an area of Bosnia that saw some of the worst "ethnic cleansing" of the Yugoslav conflict -- Pervan knows more about the horrors of war than most.

"Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia," by Chuck Sudetic. W.W. Norton. 400 pages. $29.95. The physical mechanisms of genocide have never been much of a mystery. Line up the unfortunates and open fire. Shove the bodies into a ditch. The Nazis industrialized the process, but the results were the same.It is the mental mechanisms that remain indecipherable, or else genocide would not keep recurring throughout the world. In "Blood and Vengeance," Chuck Sudetic comes about as close as possible to reaching the heart of the matter.

"Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia," by Chuck Sudetic. W.W. Norton. 400 pages. $29.95. The physical mechanisms of genocide have never been much of a mystery. Line up the unfortunates and open fire. Shove the bodies into a ditch. The Nazis industrialized the process, but the results were the same.It is the mental mechanisms that remain indecipherable, or else genocide would not keep recurring throughout the world. In "Blood and Vengeance," Chuck Sudetic comes about as close as possible to reaching the heart of the matter.

A Carroll County resident was a behind-the-scenes participant in the Bosnia rescue operation of Air Force Capt. Scott F. O'Grady.David R. Jordan of Linwood is a Navy airman who works with Marine helicopters aboard the USS Kearsarge, the amphibious assault ship that launched the rescue team. The Kearsarge, commissioned in 1993, carries a crew of 1,000 sailors.Airman Jordan, 21, joined the Navy in August and left Norfolk, Va., for duty in the Mediterranean Sea in April.His last letter said he was in the Adriatic," said Janet Long, his mother.

Wanted, for genocide and crimes against humanity: Zeljko Meakic.Recognize the name? Probably not, even though he ran a concentration camp in Bosnia and is alleged to be among Europe's most notorious band of outlaws since the Nazis. He is also still at large. In fact, he's reportedly employed as a policeman in Bosnia's Serbian Republic.The name of Dario Kordic probably doesn't ring a bell, either, although war crimes investigators say he helped orchestrate, among other crimes, the massacre of more than 100 unarmed Muslim civilians in a pre-dawn raid on a mountain village.

LONDON -- After a difficult and slow start, the United Nations war-crimes tribunals are hitting their stride.The new U.N. secretary general, Kofi Annan, has purged the incompetents at the Arusha, Tanzania, tribunal and we can expect it now to move more rapidly in bringing to trial the suspects it has in detention, accused mass-murderers from Rwanda.In The Hague this week began the trials of three Muslims and a Croat accused of war crimes against Serbs at a prison camp in 1992.In all, 74 men have been indicted, most of them Serbs.