December 15, 1995
Web posted at: 9 p.m. EST (0200 GMT)
From Correspondent Christiane Amanpour
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (CNN) -- When war broke out in the Balkans three and a half years ago, the world began by treating the conflict as a humanitarian disaster. But relief efforts were quickly crippled by what turned out to be Europe's longest, most vicious conflict, with war crimes unparalleled since World War II.
For three and a half years the full diplomatic and military might of the international community was held hostage by an inferior Serb force.
"Bosnia presented a view of the world -- of the chaos and anarchy -- that may ensue if the international community is not able to pull itself together and chart a new course," said Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Salajdzic. "It's now quite clear the international community understands (that) if we want peace and order, we must invest in it and use force if necessary." (136K AIFF sound or 136K WAV sound)
The U.N. mission was purely humanitarian: get food to the people under siege and under fire. But for most of the war, U.N. soldiers were thrown in to keep the peace in the middle of a live war. Bosnians joked that the relief efforts were merely fattening them before the slaughter.
Trying to contain the war, a divided international community made policy based on television pictures of high profile carnage. U.N. Special Representative Kofi Anan said those gruesome television pictures may have caused premature intervention.
"I think when we see the civil war's pictures on television, sometimes governments have to act in order to avoid a public relations uproar," Anan said. "When that happens we are asked to go into situations less than ideal." (179K AIFF sound or 179K WAV sound)
And the shelling never stopped. People were the point of this war: women and children -- civilians were targeted by snipers. Ethnic cleansing was carried on relentlessly by Bosnia's Serbs, determined to carve out their own separate ethnically pure state.
In February 1994, a single shell that killed 68 people and wounded about 200 prompted the first robust action. NATO created an exclusion zone around Sarajevo and forced the Serbs to back off or face bombing.
A year later, the war was raging again, until a series of horrors finally forced the international community into action. In May 1995, Bosnian Serbs took U.N. peacekeepers hostage and publicly humiliated them. Many of the captured peacekeepers were French, enraging their new president Jacques Chirac, who vowed tougher action on Bosnia.
In July, the so-called U.N. safe areas of Srebrenica and Zepa fell to the Serbs, and a slaughter of thousands of unarmed Muslims followed. Human rights officials called it the largest massacre in Europe since World War II. By this time, Serbs had virtually cleansed eastern Bosnia of all its Muslims.
Neighboring Croatia cleansed its occupied territories of all the rebel Serbs, creating a huge exodus into Serb-held areas of Bosnia. An ethnic balance was being struck between Serbia and Croatia, with Bosnia's Muslims in the middle.
Then NATO got the excuse it was looking for to end the Serb reign of terror in Bosnia.
A shell landed in a Sarajevo market place; 37 were killed and dozens more wounded. The U.N. blamed the Serbs, and within 48 hours NATO began the biggest bombing campaign in the history of the organization. By the end of September, Bosnia's Serbs faced NATO, battlefield losses and abandonment by their patron, the president of Serbia.
The Bosnian government faced facts. It had won about as much land and international sympathy as it could. An intensive U.S.-led diplomatic drive hammered out a peace accord. Now the Bosnians expect a U.S.-led NATO coalition to enforce it.
"The international community has put all its credibility and prestige into the implementation of the peace plan," said Silajdzic. "And I hope we will not fail."
Both U.S. and European negotiators also hope for success.
"With military implementation you can achieve a partition," said European peace negotiator Carl Bildt. "With civilian and political organization you can achieve reunification and a real peace."
The peace deal cements the war's ethnic cleansing. But, on paper, it provides for Bosnia to stitch its Muslims, Serbs and Croats together again. Still, it will take more than a year-long NATO mission to make that a reality.
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