Syria Intervention Drive Mirrors Bosnia’s History
Cold-blooded sniper killings, indiscriminate shelling, surgery by flashlight, death, fear and hunger in a darkened city under the ruthless hammer of a superior force.
In its random cruelty, the conflict in Syria starts to resemble the war in Bosnia 20 years ago, when Serb, Muslim and Croat forces tore the Balkan country apart and the besieged people of Sarajevo buried thousands of dead in sports fields.
Bosnia’s carnage was broadcast globally month after month by 24-hour satellite television news then in its early days. The slaughter in the Syrian city of Homs has been playing out to the world almost hourly on mobile phone and amateur video.
Images of dead babies, severed limbs, blood running in the gutters and people driven mad by grief provoke horror, followed by demands for armed foreign intervention.
Intervention did come to Bosnia, but so hesitantly that the agony of its people went on for nearly 4 years, in which tens of thousands were killed and a million lost their homes.
Western powers who finally stopped the slaughter say they have no intention of going into Syria, a move that would have incalculable consequences in a volatile region.
Bosnia was a small republic of Yugoslavia, a European crisis on NATO’s doorstep. Syria is a major Arab republic with powerful friends in Russia and Iran, situated on a strategic crossroads.
The most readily recognisable common denominator between them is the Soviet-era T-72 tank. It has smashed its way into cities to crush lightly-armed rebels and civilians alike in 11 months of suppression by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
There is an air of deja vu about these scenes and the “humanitarian” remedies now being demanded, aid missions which in Bosnia led inexorably to armed intervention.
“The Bosnian War and the conflict in Syria are different in nature,” say Soner Cagaptay and Andrew Tabler of The Washington Institute. But “any international groups looking to provide humanitarian intervention to protect vulnerable civilians in enclaves ‘liberated’ by the opposition (in Syria) should draw on lessons from Bosnia in the 1990s”.
Those lessons show it would require an international force protected by air power and with a mandate to shoot back. It would likely be NATO-led, headed by a Muslim general from NATO member Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbour, and including Arab units.