The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (53 page)

Subsequently the prime ministers of Turkey and Pakistan made a well-publicized visit to Sarajevo to dramatize Muslim concern, and the OIC again repeated its demands for military assistance to the Bosnians. In the summer of
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1995 the failure of the West to defend the safe areas against Serb attacks led Turkey to approve military aid to Bosnia and to train Bosnian troops, Malaysia to commit itself to selling them arms in violation of the U.N. embargo, and the United Arab Emirates to agree to supply funds for military and humanitarian purposes. In August 1995 the foreign ministers of nine OIC countries declared the U.N. arms embargo invalid, and in September the fifty-two members of the OIC approved arms and economic assistance for the Bosnians.

While no other issue generated more unanimous support throughout Islam, the plight of the Bosnian Muslims had special resonance in Turkey. Bosnia had been part of the Ottoman Empire until 1878 in practice and 1908 in theory, and Bosnian immigrants and refugees make up roughly 5 percent of Turkey’s population. Sympathy for the Bosnian cause and outrage at the perceived failure of the West to protect the Bosnians were pervasive among the Turkish people, and the opposition Islamist Welfare Party exploited this issue against the government. Government officials, in turn, emphasized Turkey’s special responsibilities with respect to all Balkan Muslims, and the government regularly pushed for U.N. military intervention to safeguard the Bosnian Muslims.
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By far the most important help the
ummah
gave the Bosnian Muslims was military assistance: weapons, money to buy weapons, military training, and volunteers. Immediately after the war started the Bosnian government invited in the
mujahedeen,
and the total number of volunteers reportedly came to about 4000, more than the foreigners who fought for either the Serbs or the Croats. They included units from the Iranian Republican Guards and many who had fought in Afghanistan. Among them were natives of Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Sudan, plus Albanian and Turkish guest workers from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Saudi religious organizations sponsored many volunteers; two dozen Saudis were killed in the very early months of the war in 1992; and the World Assembly of Muslim Youth flew wounded fighters back to Jiddah for medical care. In the fall of 1992 guerrillas from the Shi’ite Lebanese Hezbollah arrived to train the Bosnian army, training which was subsequently largely taken over by Iranian Republican Guards. In the spring of 1994 Western intelligence reported that an Iranian Republican Guard unit of 400 men was organizing extremist guerrilla and terrorist units. “The Iranians,” a U.S. official said, “see this as a way to get at the soft underbelly of Europe.” According to the United Nations, the
mujahedeen
trained 3000-5000 Bosnians for special Islamist brigades. The Bosnian government used the
mujahedeen
for “terrorist, illegal, and shocktroop activities,” although these units often harassed the local population and caused other problems for the government. The Dayton agreements required all foreign combatants to leave Bosnia, but the Bosnian government helped some fighters stay by giving them Bosnian citizenship and enrolling the Iranian Republican Guards as relief workers. “The Bosnian Government owes these groups, and especially the Iranians, a lot,” warned an American official in early 1996. “The Government
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has proved incapable of confronting them. In 12 months we will be gone, but the
mujahedeen
intend to remain.”
[49]

The wealthy states of the
ummah,
led by Saudi Arabia and Iran, contributed immense amounts of money to develop Bosnian military strength. In the early months of the war in 1992, Saudi government and private sources provided $150 million in aid to the Bosnians, ostensibly for humanitarian purposes but widely acknowledged to have been used largely for military ones. Reportedly the Bosnians got $160 million worth of weapons during the first two years of the war. During 1993-1995 the Bosnians received an additional $300 million for arms from the Saudis plus $500 million in purportedly humanitarian aid. Iran was also a major source of military assistance, and according to American officials, spent hundreds of millions of dollars a year on arms for the Bosnians. According to another report, 80 percent to 90 percent of a total of $2 billion worth of arms that went into Bosnia during the early years of the fighting went to the Muslims. As a result of this financial aid, the Bosnians were able to buy thousands of tons of weapons. Intercepted shipments included one of 4000 rifles and a million rounds of ammunition, a second of 11,000 rifles, 30 mortars, and 750,000 rounds of ammunition, and a third with surface-to-surface rockets, ammunition, jeeps, and pistols. All these shipments originated in Iran, which was the principal source of arms, but Turkey and Malaysia also were significant suppliers of weapons. Some weapons were flown directly to Bosnia, but most of them came through Croatia, either by air to Zagreb and then overland or by sea to Split or other Croatian ports and then overland. In return for permitting this, the Croatians appropriated a portion, reportedly one-third, of the weapons and, mindful that they could well be fighting Bosnia in the future, prohibited the transport of tanks and heavy artillery through their territory.
[50]

The money, men, training, and weapons from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and other Muslim countries enabled the Bosnians to convert what everyone called a “ragtag” army into a modestly well equipped, competent, military force. By the winter of 1994 outside observers reported dramatic increases in its organizational coherence and military effectiveness.
[51]
Putting their new military strength to work, the Bosnians broke a cease-fire and launched successful offensives first against Croatian militias and then later in the spring against the Serbs. In the fall of 1994 the Bosnian Fifth Corps moved out from the U.N. safe area of Bihac and drove back Serb forces, producing the biggest Bosnian victory up to that time and regaining substantial territory from the Serbs, who were hampered by President Milosevic’s embargo on support for them. In March 1995 the Bosnian army again broke a truce and began a major advance near Tuzla, which was followed by an offensive in June around Sarajevo. The support of their Muslim kin was a necessary and decisive factor enabling the Bosnian government to make these changes in the military balance in Bosnia.

The war in Bosnia was a war of civilizations. The three primary participants came from different civilizations and adhered to different religions. With one
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partial exception, the participation of secondary and tertiary actors exactly followed the civilizational model. Muslim states and organizations universally rallied behind the Bosnian Muslims and opposed the Croats and Serbs. Orthodox countries and organizations universally backed the Serbs and opposed the Croats and Muslims. Western governments and elites backed the Croats, castigated the Serbs, and were generally indifferent to or fearful of the Muslims. As the war continued, the hatreds and cleavages among the groups deepened and their religious and civilizational identities intensified, most notably among the Muslims. Overall the lessons of the Bosnian war are, first, primary participants in fault line wars can count on receiving help, which may be substantial, from their civilizational kin; second, such help can significantly affect the course of the war; and third, governments and people of one civilization do not expend blood or treasure to help people of another civilization fight a fault line war.

The one partial exception to this civilizational pattern was the United States, whose leaders rhetorically favored the Muslims. In practice, however, American support was limited. The Clinton administration approved the use of American air power but not ground troops to protect U.N. safe areas and advocated the end of the arms embargo. It did not seriously pressure its allies to support the latter, but it did condone both Iranian shipments of arms to the Bosnians and Saudi funding of Bosnian arms purchases, and in 1994 it ceased enforcing the embargo.
[52]
By doing these things, the United States antagonized its allies and gave rise to what was widely perceived to be a major crisis in NATO. After the Dayton accords were signed, the United States agreed to cooperate with Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries in training and equipping the Bosnian forces. The question thus is: Why during and after the war was the United States the only country to break the civilizational mold and become the single non-Muslim country promoting the interests of the Bosnian Muslims and working with Muslim countries on their behalf? What explains this American anomaly?

One possibility is that it really was not an anomaly, but rather carefully calculated civilizational realpolitik. By siding with the Bosnians and proposing, unsuccessfully, to end the embargo, the United States was attempting to reduce the influence of fundamentalist Muslim countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia with the previously secular and Europe-oriented Bosnians. If this was the motive, however, why did the United States acquiesce in Iranian and Saudi aid and why did it not push more vigorously to end the embargo which would have legitimized Western aid? Why did not American officials publicly warn of the dangers of Islamist fundamentalism in the Balkans? An alternative explanation for American behavior is that the U.S. government was under pressure from its friends in the Muslim world, most notably Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and acceded to their wishes in order to maintain good relations with them. Those relations, however, are rooted in convergences of interests unrelated to
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Bosnia and were unlikely to be significantly damaged by American failure to help Bosnia. In addition, this explanation would not explain why the United States implicitly approved huge quantities of Iranian arms going into Bosnia at a time when it was regularly challenging Iran on other fronts and Saudi Arabia was competing with Iran for influence in Bosnia.

While considerations of civilizational realpolitik may have played some role in shaping American attitudes, other factors appear to have been more influential. Americans want to identify the forces of good and the forces of evil in any foreign conflict and align themselves with the former. The atrocities of the Serbs early in the war led them to be portrayed as the “bad guys” killing innocents and engaging in genocide, while the Bosnians were able to promote an image of themselves as helpless victims. Throughout the war the American press paid little attention to Croat and Muslim ethnic cleansing and war crimes or the violations of U.N. safe areas and cease-fires by the Bosnian forces. For Americans, the Bosnians became, in Rebecca West’s phrase, their “pet Balkan people established in their hearts as suffering and innocent, eternally the massacree and never the massacrer.”
[53]

American elites also were favorably disposed toward the Bosnians because they liked the idea of a multicultural country, and in the early stages of the war the Bosnian government successfully promoted this image. Throughout the war the American policy remained stubbornly committed to a multiethnic Bosnia despite the fact that the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats overwhelmingly rejected it. Although creation of a multiethnic state was obviously impossible if, as they also believed, one ethnic group was committing genocide against another, American elites combined these contradictory images in their minds to produce widespread sympathy for the Bosnian cause. American idealism, moralism, humanitarian instincts, naivete, and ignorance concerning the Balkans thus led them to be pro-Bosnian and anti-Serb. At the same time the absence of both significant American security interests in Bosnia and any cultural connection gave the U.S. government no reason to do much to help the Bosnians except to allow the Iranians and Saudis to arm them. By refusing to recognize the war for what it was, the American government alienated its allies, prolonged the fighting, and helped to create in the Balkans a Muslim state heavily influenced by Iran. In the end the Bosnians felt deep bitterness toward the United States, which had talked grandly but delivered little, and profound gratitude toward their Muslim kin, who had come through with the money and weapons necessary for them to survive and score military victories.

“Bosnia is our Spain,” observed Bernard-Henri Lévy, and a Saudi editor agreed: “The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina has become the emotional equivalent of the fight against fascism in the Spanish Civil War. Those who died there are regarded as martyrs who tried to save their fellow Muslims.”
[54]
The comparison is apt. In an age of civilizations Bosnia is everyone’s Spain. The Spanish Civil War was a war between political systems and ideologies, the
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Bosnian War a war between civilizations and religions. Democrats, communists, and fascists went to Spain to fight alongside their ideological brethren, and democratic, communist, and, most actively, fascist governments provided aid. The Yugoslav wars saw a similar massive mobilization of outside support by Western Christians, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims on behalf of their civilizational kin. The principal powers of Orthodoxy, Islam, and the West all became deeply involved. After four years the Spanish Civil War came to a definitive end with the victory of the Franco forces. The wars among the religious communities in the Balkans may subside and even halt temporarily but no one is likely to score a decisive victory, and no victory means no end. The Spanish Civil War was a prelude to World War II. The Bosnian War is one more bloody episode in an ongoing clash of civilizations.

“Every war must end.” Such is the conventional wisdom. Is it true of fault line wars? Yes and no. Fault line violence may stop entirely for a period of time, but it rarely ends permanently. Fault line wars are marked by frequent truces, cease-fires, armistices, but not by comprehensive peace treaties that resolve central political issues. They have this off-again-on-again quality because they are rooted in deep fault line conflicts involving sustained antagonistic relations between groups of different civilizations. The conflicts in turn stem from the geographical proximity, different religions and cultures, separate social structures, and historical memories of the two societies. In the course of centuries these may evolve and the underlying conflict may evaporate. Or the conflict may disappear quickly and brutally if one group exterminates the other. If neither of these happens, however, the conflict continues and so do recurring periods of violence. Fault line wars are intermittent; fault line conflicts are interminable.