Bosnia's unsafe havens

To admit that Srebrenica had been lost to a deliberate, prepared Serb assault would be to expose the sham of UN protection so glaringly that it would be impossible to stay on. Explaining it away as a lucky break could paper over the whole thing as some mistake that nobody, except perhaps for a few rogue Serb field commanders, intended. This "mistake" could resist the conclusion that the rebels were not playing fair, and keep the UN mission in place for one more day, or at least until the next mistake occurs.

That upcoming mistake might well be the fall of Sarajevo. When the Bosnian capital is defeated, the UN could have lost its last mirage of peacekeeping authority in the Balkans, if not the rest of the world. Nobody would respect the UN's ability to keep the peace, since its troops cannot be relied on to protect themselves and their mandates from being both a stooge and a pawn.

-- New Sunday Times, Kuala Lumpur