Bosnians fight back as cease-fire ends Croatia grabs back stolen territory
Socialist Outlook1990sScanned print read by OCR, and not yet proofread: expect run-together words, dropped letters and, where a piece began partway down a page, a few lines of its neighbour. The printed page is the authority.
The partial and much broken ceasefire in Bosnia has ended. tion.
Not only have there been new offensives by the Bosnian army, but the Croatian army has invaded and recovered a segment of the Croatian territory occupied by Serbian forces since 1991.
The motivation of Croatian president Tudjman seems to be two-fold. First he hopes it will help him win in the forthcoming elections, and secondly the exercise will allow him to test out his chances of recovering Serbian occupied territory without the intervention on Milosevic and the Yugoslav army - still the strongest military force in ex-Yugoslavia -and the initiation of a wider Balkan war.
In 1991 Croatia was the first victim of Milosevic's Greater Serbia policy. A third of its territory was invaded by the Yugoslav army, backed up by Serbian irregulars, at a cost of 10,000 lives and the systemauc eunic cleansing to remove the non-Serb popula- гас.
Since then the territory taken has remained under Serb occupation in the form of the self-declared Republic of Krajina. Led by Milan Martic it is in alliance with the Bosnian Serbs and Radovan Karadzic - including a joint military command.
Aggressor
Later on in the Bosnian war Croatia became a joint aggressor for a period of time with the Serbs against Bosnia and carried out its own ethnic cleansing.
This, along with other atrocities committed by the Croatian army were rightly condemned and opposed; but re-equip the BH army. it does not alter the wrongs inflicted against Croatia by Serbia or make the military division of Croatia any more right or acceptable.
The area retaken by Croatian forces is the strategically important pocket of Western Slovonia and the town of PakThis is only a fraction of the territory occupied by Serbian forces but it represents, potentially, a decision by Croatia to reject UN policy -the protection of the status quo-and a military challenge to Martic and Karadzic. weapons and equipment. This However it develops, this has been helped by the shaky military action by the Croa- alliance between the Bosnian tian army against the Croatian government and the Bosnian Serbs is good news for the Croats of Hertzog Bosna, Bosnian government, which which has facilitated a trickle has stepped up its own offen- of light weapons from the sive against the Bosnian coast. Serbs in the past few weeks.
Although the ceasefire has Morale been a sham - Bihac has been shelled by the Serbs almost On top of this there has daily throughout its existence been a transformation of mo- the Bosnian government rale and motivation in the has used it to further train and Bosnian army - particularly in important areas like Despite the arms embargo, Travnik and Tuzla. which continues to deny it This motivation is conheavy weapons, the BH army nected to the Bosnian politihas been transformed in the cal objectives, the liberation past year in terms of light of occupied lands, the return Fighting to push back Serb aggressors: Croatian troops of refugees to their homes, and the reversal of ethnic cleansing.
The Bosnian Serbs, on the other hand, are fighting in defence of their ethnically cleansed state.
This has led the BH army to their biggest military successes of the war - particularly their recent capture of the Valsic mountain range in the Travnik region.
Although, on any rational criteria, the politics of the conflict in ex-Yugoslavia is becoming clearer all the time, this remains lost on most of the left in Britain.
The biggest organisations of the far left, Militant Labour and the SWP, still refuse to recognise Bosnia's national rights, stand aside in the conflict, and still equate the Bosnians with the Serbian regimes as a "warring faction".
Socialist Outlook has always rejected this view and has supported the struggle of the Bosnian people against the occupation and division of their country.
To this end we continue to support International Workers Aid to Bosnia which takes practical aid to the Tuzla Region to back their fight for the defence of a multi-ethnic society.