the writing I promised to post

[Wetzelbill]

This is my essay regarding the Balkan Conflicts. Last night I posted the poem I wrote, anyway, here is the rest.

BOSNIA: AN EXERCISE IN MORAL AUTHORITY

PREFACE: TWO JOURNEYS
June-July 1993
July 1995

The Woods To Tuzla

On the soccer field they lay
we imagine counting clouds
laughter smiling their sunny eyes

We are in the woods to Tuzla
our brothers and fathers left behind
to sleep where games are played

We are thousands all alone
silent cries in the Balkan wind
tinged crimson by restless ghosts

- Bill Wetzel


Fear is exquisite. Sometimes it grips you inside. Compels you to ignore everything else. In June 1993, I was chosen to represent the state of Montana on an all-star cultural exchange wrestling team that would compete in Bulgaria. The anxiety of competition is exhilarating. I always thrived on it. However, traveling from Frankfurt, Germany to Sofia, Bulgaria, in what amounted to little more than a flying lawnmower holds a certain kind of trepidation that a farm kid from Montana is not used to dealing with. Rather than sit, white-knuckles clasped to my arm rests, I chose to relish my fear, to revel in it, because as any combat athlete can tell you, consternation is a tool. One that can be beneficial, as long as you do not let the demons overcome you.

You can even learn to relax in their midst.

So I was tranquil, mid-way through the flight when the pilot of one of Balkan Air’s finest soaring lawnmowers banked off into a different direction. Initially, I was curious at this. Why couldn’t we continue our trip in a straight line? However, the riddle escaped my mind when we landed in Sofia and began the whirlwind that accompanies a destination’s arrival. Money exchange. Hotel room check in. Unpacking. Dinner. Only later did I find out that our plane had to change course so we did not invade the airspace of the former Yugoslavia.

A country which had been destroying itself for the better part of two years.

While I was overseas, I never gave much thought to Bosnia, Serbia or Croatia. Nor did I hear much about it, even though at times my team was only a few hundred miles from some of the fighting. To us, the Balkan conflict still seemed as if it were on the other side of the world. Far away from sharp, snow-capped mountains and sprouting wheat fields. From dusty pick up trucks and musty, sweaty gyms. At the time, I only knew what existed in my life. I only knew about rodeos, wrestling tournaments, small towns and Indian reservations. My home, my dreams and my goals. And, in early July, as I escaped back to Montana, fresh full of stories and experiences from the other side of the world, I never gave the Balkan turmoil any more thought than I had while I was there. But I should have. Because the conflict there continued to escalate and a few years after I had left that part of the world, tragedy would strike.

The worst genocide the world had seen since World War Two.

On July 6th, 1995, the Bosnian Serb forces, under the direction of General Ratko Mladic, began shelling the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. Within four days the Bosnian Serbs had taken the city and held around 400 Dutch peacekeepers hostage. Over the course of the next week, the world stood by as Mladic’s forces murdered thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Rounding the people up in buses, herding the men onto a soccer field and slaughtering them in massive numbers. The woods on the way to the city of Tuzla were filled with thousands of desperate men trying to reach safety.

Desperate to survive.

I am haunted by the thought of those men in those woods. Having lost everything. Family. Friends. Loved ones. Their ancestral homes. Running from a monolithic enemy bent on eradicating them from the face of the earth. I wonder what it was like for the people of Srebrenica as this was going on? What was their fear it like? Hiding in those woods, frightened beyond words. Perhaps overcome with grief. Gripped by fear. Did it compel them to ignore everything else? To relish the thought of survival. Those times when consternation is a driving force, when they know they must go on, because there are demons marching behind them. Demons that will stop at nothing to overcome them.

And, they cannot relax while in their midst.
_____________
FAILURE TO ACT
1991-94

From 1992 to 1993, the former Yugoslavia destroyed itself. A country which proudly hosted the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarejevo had been reduced to a shell of its former self. The death of Communist strongman, Josip Broz Tito, and the waning of the Cold War gave rise to several different leaders within Yugoslavia, however by 1989, the 600 year anniversary of the Battle of Kosovo Field, a Serbian Nationalist named Slobodan Milosevic had begun to garner power.

The Battle of Kosovo Field, in which the Serbs were defeated by the Turks in 1389, was shamelessly and maliciously exploited by Milosevic, who gathered several hundred thousand Serbs at the battlefield site for the anniversary. His nationalist rhetoric gave him unchallengeable standing in Serbia and this strength appeared ready to either break Yugoslavia apart or to make Serbs the dominant force in the country. Yet, in Croatia, a budding Croat nationalist and Yugoslav Army General, Franjo Tudjman was on the rise, and his movement had aspirations of independence, which they eventually declared in 1991.

Facing the threats of both Serb and Croat nationalism, Bosnian Muslims, and their leader Alija Izetbegovic, fomented their own form of nationalism, which gave emphasis to the religious element. Eventually these actions devolved into full scale war, and by the time Bosnia was recognized as an independent state in April 1992, the new country had already been under attack for a month by Serbian forces. The siege of Bosnian towns by Serbian forces, including paramilitary, continued over the course of the next year, with little resistance and maladroit attempts at outside intervention by Western countries. By the end of 1993, Bosnia had been destroyed, as they also had fought against Croat forces who were looking to annex part of Bosnia for their own long-term interests.

During this timeframe, specifically at the beginning of 1992, former U.S. Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance, was able to get an agreement to stop the fighting in Croatia, and had secured the deployment of 12,500 peacekeepers, however the U.N. presence was passive in these territories and did little to prevent atrocities from being committed. Serbian forces often defied and intimidated peacekeepers, and it wasn’t until the massacre at Srebrenica before the world’s supreme superpower, the United States, which had been reluctant up until this point, could no longer avoid involvement.

So how did the situation in the Balkans become so desperate in the first place? What allowed the type of tensions to escalate and to level of destruction that occurred? In his diplomatic memoir, “To End A War” former U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the chief architect of the Dayton Peace Agreement, outlines 5 reasons why the West allowed Yugoslavia to devolve into the level of chaos and destruction that it did. The factors he outlines are: a misinterpretation of Balkan history, inadequate American response to the conflict, the internal conflicts of the Yugoslav political leaders, end of the Cold War, and the mistaken notion that the Europeans could handle the challenge by themselves.

With the misinterpretation of Balkan history, the predominant Western view was the former Yugoslavia was destined to fall into chaos due to ancient hatreds between ethnic and religious groups. The deft exploitation of nationalism by especially Milosevic, but also Tudjman and Izetbegovic, only served to perpetuate this concept. In particular, U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell, was quite successful in convincing President Bill Clinton that it was pointless to become involved in the Balkan conflicts. However, this misreading of history, is an oversimplification of the many forces that tore the country apart. It wasn’t until President Clinton had concluded that other political factors, mainly the exploitation of nationalistic anger, were among the reasons for the violence that U.S. involvement became inevitable. No doubt some groups in the former Yugoslavia harbored deep seated anger and resentment toward each other, but not to the extent that was wrongly accepted as fact. Since 1389, the groups, who have no noticeable physical differences, had lived together and widely intermarried. Until the political leadership exploited nationalism and the republic was broken up, many did not even know the religion or ethnicity of their friends and neighbors.

At the time that the Balkan conflicts were becoming serious, in the spring of 1991, the U.S. had just defeated Iraq in the first Gulf War and had been dealing with the collapse of the Soviet Union. The George H.W. Bush administration was also divided on this issue. Secretary of State, James Baker didn’t believe the U.S. could produce a serious dialogue between the Yugoslav parties at the time, and later he would famously take a realpolitik stance stating: “We don’t have a dog in this fight.” The Bush Administration, weary and possibly hurting from problems on the domestic front, refused to commit American power early on in the crisis. This would prove to be an egregious error which wasted an opportunity for peace and a chance to save lives. The Bush administration, as exemplified by Baker, saw no advantage in an American intervention, which, in turn, made the human rights aspect even more dangerous. From that point on, several more wars occurred in the Balkans, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost and two million more were displaced.

The Yugoslav leaders themselves were products of their time and place in history. In 1980, after the death of Tito, the autocratic leader, this country of 6 republics, 5 nations, 4 languages, and 3 religions, did not have a strong, designated successor. Instead, the central presidency was rotated every year within the 6 republics and, for a while, the region of Kosovo. Amidst a variety of domestic problems, deft leaders, most prominently Milosevic, were able to rally people with extreme nationalistic rhetoric. And, other leaders followed suit, at least to a certain degree. So as the U.S. and Europe remained disengaged, Milosevic was able to gather power and exploit the political situation. Those who wanted Yugoslavia to remain a multiethnic state or work out some other peaceful arrangement were run off or silenced. This situation escalated into a full blown crisis before any of the Western powers knew what was going on.

Further complicating the matter, was the end of the Cold War. As Yugoslavia faced serious crises, much of it was masked to rest of the world. Against this backdrop, the Berlin Wall was torn down and Germany became unified. The United States repelled Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the Soviet Union split up into various republics and Communism was choking out it’s last gasps of air in Central Europe. As the world was preparing for a new post-Cold War order, the Balkan conflicts were largely neglected.
The last factor that Holbrooke outlined was the attempt of Europe to handle their first major post-Cold War problem on their own. The United States handed the security issue solely over to the Europeans. The Bush Sr. Administration, stellar in most post-Cold War foreign policy challenges, again made a major error in giving Europe so much responsibility. Without American leadership, Europe was rudderless and unable to act like a unified power. NATO, the most important Atlantic institution, should have handled the Balkan crisis, yet with it’s most important member disengaged, the post-Cold War purpose of the institution, which was to end the type of conflict that Yugoslavia had become, was severely undermined. Europe, believing they could resolve the situation on their own, was completely ineffective. Any attempts at diplomacy and subsequent agreements made the situation even more volatile. Eventually in December 1991, Germany recognized Croatia as an independent nation. This created a situation in which Bosnia would have to follow suit and declare independence as well. Which they, of course, did. This led to a chain of events that hastened the war in Bosnia. Soon after came the Vance agreement and the feeble U.N. peacekeeping mission that proved unable to stop some of the worst atrocities of the entire conflict.

NATO ACTION, DAYTON AND THE AFTERMATH
July 11, 1995 -Present

On the day that Srebrenica fell, NATO planes were finally given permission to strike, however after hitting two Serb tanks they were forced to pull back as Mladic’s forces threatened to kill the Dutch peacekeeping soldiers. Srebrenica was a dark day for the United Nations, one of the blackest moments in their history, as the institution failed to perform properly in a major crisis. 11 days after the massacre, the presidents of Bosnia and Croatia met and signed on agreement for military cooperation. Soon the Croatians mounted a well-planned and executed offensive, taking back the entire Croatian Krajina region from the Serbs. This devastated Serb morale in Bosnia; emboldened by the dramatic turn of events, Western governments began preparing for a new diplomatic initiative. Finally, after a Serb mortar attack on Sarejevo on August 28, the U.N. and NATO issued an ultimatum to Mladic; he was to remove his artillery from the Sarajevo “exclusion zone” or face the consequences. When he refused, NATO deployed a Reaction force equipped with artillery on Mt. Igman outside Sarejevo and conducted bombing raids for two weeks, with only one brief cessation. While this was going on Bosnian and Croatian forces combined to make dramatic military gains in northwestern Bosnia.

This possibility of a Serbian military defeat led to an American-led diplomatic initiative. This initiative concluded with a 3-week long session conducted at a U.S. Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio. Finally after intense negotiations, a general agreement was announced in Dayton on November, 21 1995. This was later formalized and signed as a treaty in December. The Dayton Accord amounted to what historian Noel Malcolm called a “de facto partition,” which led to the secession of the Serb Republic. The general agreement also consisted of a new constitution, various mechanisms to protect human rights, return of refugees, economic rebuilding, and a deployment of 60,000 troops, under NATO authority to ensure the quelling of hostilities.

For the United States, the implementation of the Dayton Accord, would prove to be unpopular domestically. While the public cheered the diplomatic effort, polls showed that 70 percent opposed deployment of American troops. In fact, this proved to be the most unpopular decision of President Bill Clinton’s first term. Congress itself, always ambivalent to action in Bosnia had mixed results after Dayton as well. While Clinton was committed to deploy 20,000 American troops, which he would do whether Congress approved or not, some members of Congress played both sides of the issue pledging to oppose the action, but support the troops. In this fashion, troop deployment received tacit approval from Congress.

Europe, on the other hand was mixed, too. Pleased that progress had been made and a cease to hostilities had occurred, Europe was still taken aback by the events. Europeans offered gratefulness for U.S. leadership, yet some officials were also embarrassed that they could not handle the challenge on their own. Moreover, lead negotiator Richard Holbrooke, dubbed the “Quentin Tarantino of diplomacy” rubbed some European colleagues the wrong way with his pushy image and bulldozer style. And, indeed, it appears in many ways that the United States, because of it’s hegemony and institutional power, is still more of a European power than Europe itself. Yet Bosnia, also gives credence to the argument that we do not live in a unilateral world, as NATO’s role in the effort was essential, especially in the deployment of two-thirds of the troops agreed upon under the Dayton Accord.

In the summer of 2005, ten years after the massacre at Srebrenica, 4,000 Muslims have returned to the city and over one-third of about 12,000 Serbs have left. Bosnia has not been carved up into two countries and economic and political ties between ethnic groups are strengthening. Bosnia appears to have become a place where peace has taken hold, not just an enforced cease fire. Although, it still is probably too early to tell for sure. Bosnia probably cannot become a multiethnic society as long as Ratko Mladic is on the loose, or Radovan Karadzic, another Serb War Criminal. The NATO mission is now predominantly a European Union one, with fewer than 200 American troops deployed. However, when American troops were initially deployed after Dayton, they were widely expected to take casualties, and, remarkably, in the ten years since not one American has been killed in Bosnia.

FINAL THOUGHTS
A foreign policy Realist, such as Henry Kissinger, might look at the Bosnian crisis and think that only an Idealist would get involved. There is no obvious power play in doing so. At first glance, there are no security issues. But, I am of the notion that humanitarian interventions are valid aspects of foreign policy. I believe that decisive action in the Darfur region of Sudan would save tens of thousands of lives. Human rights have a place in foreign policy as the moral equivalent of pure unadulterated power. Nothing is more powerful than human life. And, if we had acted sooner in Bosnia we could have saved hundreds of thousands. If not for our actions, belated as they were, two million refugees would be wondering aimlessly, hundreds of thousands of more lives would have been lost, and Al-Qaeda, which our troop presence removed from Bosnia, would have set up roots in the Balkans.

The United States is still the most respected power in the Balkans, and with our continued involvement there we can ensure peace in the region. However, the job isn’t finished. What happens when peacekeepers leave? Will the tensions arise again? Will nationalism be exploited. Nobody truly knows the answer to these questions. Not until the time comes for troops to leave the Balkans to themselves. Only history will be the judge of that. In the meantime, the U.S. cannot shy away from it’s own moral authority. Early outside action will be needed to stop other challenges. More genocide will occur. More pain. More death. The world is an untidy place, one full of difficulties. Of course, there will be another Bosnia. There will also be another chance to stop it too.

And, for this, American leadership will always be required.
________________________________________________________________________
Bill Wetzel is a Creative Writing/Political Science major
Sources: “To End A War” by Richard Holbrooke (Novel)
“Bosnia: A Short History” by Noel Malcolm (Novel)
“The Clinton Wars” by Sidney Blumenthal (Novel)
“Was Bosnia Worth It” by Richard Holbrooke (WA Post op-ed, July 19, 2005)
“Bill and Jim On Bosnia” an e-mail conversation between myself and military historian, Dr. James Dixon, a former Marine and member of Veterans For Peace

[enigmatic]

1. Fantastic essay

Seriously, well done, bro:)

[Wetzelbill]

3. glad you liked it

I feel it was pretty rushed. I wrote it in one night, so, I can find lots of stuff I would change, but it was a lot of fun to do. I enjoyed it. :)

[CaliforniaPeggy]

2. Hi there, Bill.....

I've just printed this essay of yours, since reading it off a computer screen is difficult.

It looks fantastic.......even though I am too sleepy to give it a fair reading right now!

Thank you for your hard work, Bill....I wish you ALL success!

[Wetzelbill]

4. thank you and you're welcome

I hope you enjoy it. :)

[Dangerously Amused]

5. Wow. Very, very nice. Beautiful segue. Ya got some talent there, son.

I think you have a poli-sci major, yes?

Please tell me you are also considering a career in journalism.

Series.