By Mary Mostert, Editor, Michael Reagan MONTHLY MONITOR
February 28, 1996
In December, as the first NATO troops began to trickle into Bosnia, UN officials reported that Bosnian Croats were continuing to implement a scorched earth policy on Land in Central Bosnia they were required to turn over to the Bosnian Serbs. .Serbs were beginning their exodus from areas of Sarajevo and it's suburbs which they were required to turn over to the Bosnian government, under the Dayton Accord.
In the Gorazde area, after a Bosnian Croat campaign burned 40% of the Serbian houses and factories, the Serbs began burning Croat houses. NATO worried that all sides "will pursue a scorched earth policy in areas that are to be handed over."
UN spokesman Alex Ivanko warned, back in December 1995, only two months ago, "We see at least half a dozen to a dozen houses being burned and looted every day. We have protested to the Croatian authorities locally, but nothing is being done, though we were promised these actions would cease immediately."
In 1991 the population of Sarajevo was 525,980 . It was 49% Muslim, 29.9% Serb, 6.6 Croats and 14.2 other. More than 155,000 Serbs and 262,000 Muslims lived in Sarajevo and its suburbs before the war. Today, the Associated Press reports, "only about 30,000 Serbs in a population of "300,000 remaining" inhabitants." -It would seem that most of the 262,000 Muslims are still there, and 125,000 of the 155,000 Serbs are missing.
"Kris Janowski, a spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, expressed dismay at the NATO-led peace implementation force's decision to allow Bosnian Serb military trucks into the districts of Vogosca, Ilijas and Rajlovac to pick up refugees and their belongings. Officials of the force said they did not want the Serbs to go, but that they were facing reality. Most Serbs preferred leaving to submitting to the rule of Bosnia's Muslim-led government."
"UN and NATO officials are anxious to avoid presiding over the destruction of significant amounts of the Bosnian Capital," the Voice of America reported in December. "including dozens of tall apartment buildings and factories, but there seems to be little that can be done...After three and a half years of bitter war, it seems that the new (NATO) soldiers will have to enforce an equally bitter peace."
Nearly 150,000 Serbs that were in Sarajevo four years ago are gone. Yet, the Associated Press report today left the impression that the fleeing Serbs were "fleeing because they are ashamed of what they did" and because they were "in a Muslim house, so I dare not stay."
Where are the missing 150,000 Serbs? That's rather a large number of people to disappear out of a city of a half million people without the world noticing what became of them. It would appear that, by the time the NATO troops leave, Bosnia will be swept clean of any multi-ethnicity in its various "sections."