The shabbiest performance by a government minister this
week – and, like most weeks recently, it has been filled with shabby
performances – was provided by Malcolm Rifkind, the Defence Secretary, on
television last Sunday.
Questioned by Brian Walden about the government's policy on
Bosnia, he accepted that the war there was the worst thing to have happened in
Europe since the Nazi Holocaust. But, he opined blithely, there really was no
point in trying to do anything serious about it. Military intervention to
support "safe havens" for the besieged Bosnians like those provided for
the Iraqi Kurds was out of the question.
On one hand, the situation in former Yugoslavia was a "civil
war” and there was no precedent for United Nations military intervention in
civil wars. On the other, any military intervention would involve the
"probability, if not the certainty, of very large casualties".
"We might very well be there for many years," he said. "I do not
think it would bring the fighting to an end."
Mr Rifkind, in other words, has no regrets about the
obvious failure of the west's Bosnia policy in the past year and the government
has no intention of changing tack now. The desperate plight of the Bosnian
Muslims as winter takes its grip, the rising tide of refugees and the
unchanging Serb policy of territorial aggrandisement and ethnic cleansing nuke
not a blind bit of difference. All we can do is give a little protection to humanitarian
relief convoys, maintain ineffectual sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro
– and wring our hands.
The message is one that will confirm the Bosnians’ sense of
hopelessness and isolation while giving the Serbian aggressors yet another
fillip as they pursue their bloody goal. What Bosnia needs, what Bosnia has
always needed, is the means to loosen the aggressors' stranglehold.
Militarily enforced "safe havens" at this stage are not
as good as international military guarantees of Bosnian borders would have been
six or nine months ago. But they are the least that the international community
should be insisting upon. Not to insist upon them (as a minimum measure) is to
give up on Bosnia. That would be disastrous for the Bosnians, disastrous for
the Kosovans and Macedonians who are next in line for Serbian ethnic cleansing
and disastrous for the principle of self-determination of sovereign peoples, a
cornerstone of democracy.
With notable exceptions, Labour has unfortunately still not
recognised this. After a summer when the front bench wittered on about the
complexity of the situation when it should have been pressing for military
intervention, it has treated the war as little more than a refugee issue.
Of course, the refugees are important, and the government's
refusal to take in more is despicable. But the refugee crisis will not be
solved unless Serbian aggression is stopped. Unless the world acts now it will
be too late. Labour should come out now both for the United Nations to create adequately
defended safe havens in Bosnia and for an end to the arms embargo against
Bosnia. If that means more deployments of troops and air power, so be it: the
alternative is too horrible to contemplate.
