BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Washington has stepped up its imperialist assault in
Bosnia on positions held by Serbs loyal to Belgrade. After
two weeks of intense NATO bombing, dozens of warplanes,
mainly from the United States, have flown 3,200 sorties
pounding military targets but also inflicting increased
civilian casualties.
On September 10, U.S. commanders on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt off the coast of Bosnia upped the ante by firing 13 Tomahawk cruise missiles at positions held by the forces of chauvinist Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic. The sea-based missiles were used for the first time since Washington's slaughter against the people of Iraq in 1991. NATO officials now want to use U.S. Air Force F-117 radar-evading aircraft in Bosnia. The F- 117 stealth bombers were also used in the Persian Gulf war.
As it did during the U.S.-led war against Iraq, Washington is posing as a defender of democracy by pointing the finger to a regime in Belgrade and its allies in Bosnia that many working people around the world identify as the main culprit for "ethnic cleansing" and other atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. But the U.S.-spearheaded bombing is nothing but naked military intervention to impose the partition of Bosnia and extend Washington's influence to the detriment of its imperialist rivals. Many Serbian people are paying dearly with their blood for this assault.
Civilian casualties are mounting. An artillery shell fired by the UN Rapid Reaction Force September 9 killed 10 people at a hospital in Ilidza, a suburb of Sarajevo controlled by Mladic's army. The medical director of the hospital said a baby needing advance medical care died September 9, when NATO forces destroyed a bridge to the only road leading to a larger hospital in Belgrade. NATO planes have rendered extensive damage to apartment buildings in the area.
The U.S.-led pounding of the Bosnian Serb positions has deepened rifts among the imperialist powers and sparked howling from Moscow.
Russian officials attempted unsuccessfully September 12 to get the UN Security Council to call for an immediate end to the NATO bombing. The Russian foreign ministry issued a statement that day charging NATO forces with killing "innocent civilians, including the most defenseless of them all, the children." Moscow declared that "the very survival of the current generation of Bosnian Serbs, who are actually facing genocide, is called into question."
The Russian State Duma passed a nonbinding resolution demanding that Moscow suspend its Partnership for Peace program with NATO and break the UN embargo imposed on Serbia and Montenegro. Russian president Boris Yeltsin stated that the NATO bombing campaign was on a road to "conflagration of war throughout Europe, for sure."
The Clinton administration decided September 11 to send deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott to Moscow to try to soothe the Kremlin's anger over the continued bombing.
The governments of France and Italy, concerned that the bombing escalation could widen the war in Europe, expressed hesitations at using the Tomahawk missiles, which delayed the September 10 missile strike by 24 hours.
Washington's imperialist partners in Rome are balking at allowing the F-117 stealth bombers to be deployed at air bases in Italy, which are being used for the bombing raids. The capitalist rulers of Italy, who want a piece of the action, are miffed at being excluded from the negotiations on the partitioning of Bosnia.
In an attempt to smooth ruffled feathers, White House press secretary Michael McCurry told the Washington Post that the Clinton administration urged that the "Contact Group" - made up of government officials from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and Russia - be broadened to include the governments of Italy, Canada, and the Netherlands. The contact group organizes negotiations on the U.S.-proposed "peace plan."
Washington engineered a shaky agreement in Geneva September 8 that included foreign ministers from Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia. The pact would divide Bosnia and Herzegovina into two roughly equal regions.
There are no indications, however, that any of the regimes in the three warring Yugoslav republics are ready to put aside differences, sign a cease fire, and implement the U.S. plan. In fact, detachments of the Bosnian army and Croatian troops, taking advantage of the NATO bombing, widened their military operations and regained several towns in western Bosnia.
At the same time, Mladic's troops are refusing NATO's demands to remove heavy weapons from around Sarajevo.
The recalcitrance of the Serb forces led by Karadzic and Mladic, and the sharpening divisions among the imperialist powers, are causing worries in Washington over the prospects of success for U.S. goals in Bosnia.
Nevertheless, the Clinton administration is for the moment determined to press its military campaign. In an interview on PBS's "Mac-Neil Lehrer Newshour," defense secretary William Perry said the aerial assaults could continue "for weeks."