Arms embargo in rump Yugoslavia debated

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): The U.S. Congress appears intent on its foolhardy campaign to have the arms embargo on the Bosnian Moslems lifted. For the cynic it is only the final push in a policy of wink and nod that has kept the illegal traffic in guns to the ex- Yugoslavian combatants running, according to Jane's Sentinel, at a value of US$1.5 to $2 billion between the fall of 1991 and the fall of 1993. But it would be enough to transform what has become a war-weary low intensity conflict into a war of quite major proportions.

Arms embargoes are supposed to be the post Cold War "weapon of choice." Even non-East/West events during the Cold War, coups in Liberia and Haiti or the Iraqi invasion of Iran in 1980, failed to elicit an arms embargo. But since 1990 the UN Security Council has imposed mandatory arms embargoes on six member states, the former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Somalia, Liberia, Libya, Haiti and, also on one non-state group, one of the two warring factions in Angola, UNITA.

They appear to work, at least at the level of heavy weaponry. They may not stop the enormous traffic in AK47s and portable bazookas, but they do put a reasonably firm lid on tanks, heavy guns and aircraft.

For some reason, best known to the inner consciousness of arm chair strategists, there has been a tendency to rubbish the embargo weapon. Nevertheless, it is often the workhorse of modern diplomacy. It certainly has done more to persuade Saddam Hussein to get rid of his chemical, biological and nuclear weapon establishments than Desert Storm was able to accomplish. Last week it persuaded UNITA to accept the UN Security Council proposals on national reconciliation in Angola. And it seems to have brought the greatest present day war criminal of them all, Slobodan Milosevic, to the point where he is, albeit indirectly, suing for peace. Surely his decision to seal his border with Serbian-controlled Bosnia is nothing less than this.

In Bosnia's case, on balance, the embargo weapon has served the Moslem cause reasonably well. It may have appeared to keep the Moslems at a military disadvantage, given that the Serbians inherited all the old heavy weaponry of the old Yugoslavian armed forces, but in fact it has kept the battlefield on a tight rein.

The Serbs, embargo or no embargo, would always be able to match and surpass whatever the Moslems were able to field. It has been for the better that this inevitable superiority be achieved at a lower level of military sophistication. Easing the embargo on the Moslems would merely result in ratcheting up the state of fighting and the level of destruction without in any significant way altering the military balance, or rather imbalance.

However much one may, often justifiably, jibe at the incapacity of both the Europeans and the Americans to do anything useful to bring this war to a quicker end the fact that they have, more or less, for the most part tried to make the arms embargo on heavy weapons work in an even handed way and have kept the economic embargo reasonably tight on Serbia has earned them a basic respect from the combatants. Tempted to become more partisan to the beleaguered Moslems they have, until now, refrained from being sucked in, despite the overt partisanship of much western reporting that has preferred to play down such momentous events as the Moslem agent-provocateur bombing of the market place in Sarajevo last year or the Moslem leadership's decision, when Lord Carrington was the European Community's mediator, to refuse a deal on cantonization, an accord far better than the partition they recently agreed to and which would probably have avoided two and a half years of war.

One hundred thousand bodies later the war is now at a crucial turning point and outsiders need every bit of their subtlety and guile to steer it in the right direction. The Moslems are prepared to settle for only 49 percent of Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs are refusing 51 percent but Milosevic, apparently using all his muscle, is pushing them to agree. Judging from the impact of previous embargoes it does not seem ridiculous to suggest that with this correlation of forces it's only a matter of time before something gives on the Bosnian Serb side. Perhaps initially embargoes do solidify opinion behind the leadership but over time they appear to breed more resentment than support.

It would be the height of foolhardiness to disrupt the smooth course of one embargo by tampering with another. But that surely would be the outcome. By clamping down on Serbian Bosnia Milosevic is taking a gamble with both his military and his rank and file support among the electorate. If in the next couple of months the only clear result of his new tough line was the re- arming of the Bosnian Moslems one can be sure his policy would not survive for an hour longer.

The U.S. Congress needs to think hard before its self-imposed deadline of Oct. 15. It is, by all appearances, the most counterproductive move America could make. It could be the snatching of war out of the jaws of success.