Despite strong public pressure which demands the arrest of two bloodiest war criminals after World War II, excuses put forward by the spokespersons from IFOR, UNHCR and ICRC, definitely do not correspond to the military force which the Western world arrogantly demonstrates in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
When Bosnian police arrested two high Serb officers, general Dukic and colonel Krsmanovic, majority of western statesmen hurried to apologize because they had been served with a fait accompli and had to take over persons which had been declared war crimes suspects even by the Hague Tribunal for War Crimes.
Of course this has nothing to do with military incompetence nor military tactics.
Besides the planned total conquest of Bosnia-Hercegovina, one of the most important reasons behind the aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina was to kill and displace as many Bosnian Muslims as possible. So far unseen brutality was displayed in torture and killing of Bosniaks in order to eradicate in the survivors the desire for common living. During the first year of the war Serbs expelled or slaughtered Muslim population in about eighty percent of territory under their control. Also, according to the data of the Bosnian Ministry of Health, out of 148,000 killed and missing persons in Bosnia, 129,000, or 87 percent, perished during the first year of the war!
Bosniaks were expelled from a significant portion of the Bosnian territory, especially from eastern Bosnia, and Bosniaks and Croats from western Bosnia and Posavina. The consequences will be felt in the coming decades.
Chris Janowski, UNHCR spokesman, says that the Serb propaganda calling on the Sarajevo Serbs to relocate is very strong and that the international organizations and their representatives are helpless; he is sympathizing with "poor Serbs who are afraid of living under Muslim authorities and have to leave their homes, leave Sarajevo and travel into unknown."
There are at least four lies and only one truth in this statement: that one truth is that the Serb propaganda is very strong. Everything else is an ordinary lie.
Second: Most of them are not leaving their own homes but Bosniak houses, to which they moved after killing and expelling their Bosniak neighbors at the beginning of the war. Normal persons do not burn their own homes, especially if they have to save up for years in order to build them.
Third: Serb families are not traveling into unknown; they are moving to a known address, a Bosniak house in Vlasenica, Zvornik, Srebrenica, Bratunac, Visegrad, Rogatica and especially Brcko. After receiving a "permit" from the local Serb authorities, they first travel to check if they like the allocated house, the furniture in it, the color of a muslim carpet and after that, if they can find anything better among the looted furniture, they load that on trucks and drive away to the "unknown".
Fourth: there is no fear from the "Muslim" authorities, since they have always lived better with Bosniaks than on their own. Only those who know that one of their victims has escaped and remembered them are afraid. Besides, Serbs are coming back to Sarajevo even today, to apartments that their grandmothers saved for them during the war, without fear from "muslim" authorities: "they were refugees during the war because they couldn't shoot on their people in the hills"; or, because of that, they were shooting from the hills at Sarajevo.
Finally: Those Serbs who are leaving Sarajevo shouldn't be pitied. They are leaving other people's homes and even their own homes in the hicks around Sarajevo suburbs and moving to the cities and houses built by Bosniaks for generations and generations; they are going to Vlasenica in which every apartment has central heating; they are going to Zvornik in which the only destruction was inflicted by them in the first month of war while the Kula-Grad above the city was bravely defending itself; they are going to Srebrenica, to sit on the Bosniak mass graves and sing songs about Arkan, "a great hero"; they are going to the rich Semberija plain [in Northeastern Bosnia] where they earlier learned how to grab land belonging to Muslim feudal Lords.
Because of that Radovan Karadzic is still in Pale. His task is to, before the election, make sure that all Bosniak houses have been filled and to seal the present state of "ethnic purity".
What is the IFOR interest, actually the interest of the international community represented through this military mammoth, in all this? All foreign interests which directed the situation in Bosnia during the war are still present.
Nothing fundamentally new came to Bosnia with IFOR, nor with America. The Bosniaks must not drop their readiness and allow to be fooled by peace or to think that the international community has even slightly better opinion and intentions regarding Bosniaks and Bosnia-Hercegovina. Their interests are still the same. The only changes are visible in their mutual disagreements. Promised "aid for reconstruction" of Bosnia-Hercegovina will be at the level of current humanitarian relief, which is obvious from the results of the aid provided until now; they are negligible although, according to the Brussels conference, the results should have already been significant.
As far as the "ethnic purity" is concerned, it remains one of the most important motives in the future Serb nationalistic program which will be supported by all those who have supported it until now.