The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.31           September 15, 1997 
 
 
U.S. Troops In Bosnia May Use `Lethal Weapon'  

BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Hundreds of supporters of chauvinist Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic confronted 300 heavily armed U.S. soldiers September 1, throwing rocks and swing clubs. U.S. Apache helicopter gunships with video cameras hovered over the area most of the day. The protesters had gathered near the town of Udrigova to regain control of a television transmitter taken over by the NATO occupation force August 28.

Seizing the transmitter is viewed by Washington as key to waging its propaganda campaign, along with stepped up military aggression. "We will use all means necessary, including lethal means, to protect our forces and to continue our mission," said NATO's new military commander, U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, in a press conference at the Pentagon on September 3. "We will not be deterred by mob violence."

The September 1 incident was the third confrontation between Bosnian Serbs and U.S. troops in five days. It occurred two days after U.S. ambassador Robert Gelbard threatened them to halt resistance to NATO operations or "the consequences will be the most serious imaginable."

Gelbard's comments came the day after hundreds of Karadzic supporters threw rocks at UN officials and an explosion went off near a rail station in the vicinity of Banja Luka, which killed one person and injured two others.

The previous day, August 28, a U.S. helicopter dropped tear gas on 1,000 people in Brcko, who were attempting to wrest control of a police station seized by U.S. troops that day. A 17-year-old Bosnian Serb high school student was injured by a bullet that ricocheted when a U.S. soldier reportedly fired his pistol into the pavement. Another U.S. GI threw a rock wounding a 60-year-old man.

Two U.S. soldiers were also injured in the altercation, a Bradley armored vehicle was hit by a firebomb, and 15 United Nations police vehicles were destroyed. The GIs had taken positions around the police station to prepare for a confrontation. They were backed by dozens of Bradley fighting vehicles. Humvees with mounted machine guns were deployed around the town, while U.S. helicopters hovered overhead.

Escalating military confrontations
Over the past two months, Washington has expanded the scope of the NATO occupation force in Bosnia resulting in an escalation of military confrontations with Bosnian Serbs supporting Karadzic. Some 350 British and Czech soldiers stormed six police stations in Banja Luka on August 20. This assault followed a July 10 coordinated attack in Prijedor, where British troops, backed by NATO warplanes, killed one man and arrested a former police chief who they whisked off to the imperialist war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands. According to the July 19 Washington Post, an unnamed military official said the NATO warplanes were prepared to launch air strikes against a range of targets if they met stiff resistance.

NATO's stepped-up aggression was initiated after U.S. government officials acknowledged they have made little headway toward their goal of reestablishing "market relations" in Bosnia and elsewhere in Yugoslavia. Citing a failure to implement the U.S.-engineered Dayton accords, which codified the partition of Bosnia and paved the way for the NATO invasion, the Clinton administration has thrown its political and military muscle behind Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic. Washington organized a split between her and Karadzic. Plavsic was expelled from the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS) on July 20. SDS is the ruling group in the part of Bosnia under control of pro-Belgrade Serbs. The seizure of the police stations and television transmitters by NATO troops is part of Washington's plans to slice the Bosnian territory held by pro-Belgrade forces into two parts with parallel governments.

Plavsic, who served as one of two vice presidents during the war in Bosnia, was appointed as president of the Bosnian Serb republic by Karadzic, who was forced to step down after being indicted on "war crimes" charges by the tribunal in The Hague.

As the recent protests against the NATO occupation began spreading, the big-business press in the United States and Britain urged Washington to stay the course. An editorial in the August 29 Financial Times of London advised the imperialist occupiers "not to let themselves be intimidated by this sort of `popular resistance.'"

Meanwhile, Plavsic, referred to as a "quisling" by the state-owned radio and television station in territory controlled by pro-Belgrade Serbs, has announced the formation of her own political party, the Serb National Association.

At the same time, the U.S. rulers continue debating the pros and cons of a commando raid to capture Karadzic. Sen. Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee in the U.S. Congress, said that the best way to ensure further progress would be to capture Karadzic and others indicted by the imperialist tribunal, according to the August 31 Washington Post. After visiting Bosnia in late August, the Senator said military commanders told him they are prepared to take this step. Two days earlier, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili told reporters, "I have always maintained that the soldiers that we send to Bosnia are not the proper soldiers to get involved in arresting war criminals."

The U.S. capitalists calculate that the resistance in Bosnia to imposing the Dayton agreement and its "market reforms" would drop sharply if Karadzic would exit the region and leave the leadership to Plavsic. But Plavsic, while condemning Karadzic as corrupt and rallying sentiments against him, has a tiny base of support among Bosnian Serbs.

Resistance to NATO has roots
"No one likes these politicians in Pale," a farmer in the village near Omarska remarked. "We know they are all getting rich. But this does not mean we will support Plavsic selling us out to the West. We know who our real enemies are. Besides do you think she just found out about corruption? She wants power just like the rest of them."

"NATO says it has come here to help us. But none of us trust NATO," said Vlada Stevanic, a 38-year-old Bosnian Serb farmer in Gornja Omarska. "How can we trust anyone who tried to kill us?"

Stevanic was referring to the two-week bombing campaign led by U.S. war planes in August and September of 1995 directed against Karadzic's forces. Up to 1,000 shells a day rained on the city of Sarajevo. A Tomahawk cruise missile landed in Stevanic's cow pasture, blew out the windows in his house, and killed one of his goats.

"We were all in bed when the missile landed," Stevanic stated. He said the NATO assault released radiation into the ground that destroyed crops. "A lot of people have been sick here since the attack," he added.

These previous U.S.-led assaults are the source of the deep mistrust among many Bosnian Serb residents who have begun to confront Washington's stepped-up attempts to impose its domination over them. "There is a feeling among most Serbs that foreigners should not be here telling us how to live our lives," said another farmer in Omarska. "I wish they would leave."  
 
 
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