And no shortage of ammo. When the Balkan mobs were not plundering, they were firing weapons. Everywhere I looked in the forward battle area there were fat stacks of ammunition. Recently an Iranian 747 delivering “relief supplies” to the Bosnians was found to be loaded with weapons and more than a million rounds of ammo, enough stuff to outfit a Bosnian regiment. One military source in Italy told me he is convinced that the missile that shot down an Italian plane carrying food and medicine near Sarajevo was a U.S. heat-seeking Stinger supplied to the Bosnians by the Iranians, who “probably bought it from Afghanistani merchants.”
“The blockade leaks like a sieve-it’s a joke,” one top NATO plans officer told me. With the cold war over, 50 years’ worth of war surplus is on the world market. The combatants in the ruins of Yugoslavia have become big-time buyers. A U.S. naval officer told me that no one is searching ships entering Dalmatian coast ports. He said patrols just radio from the bridge “What are you carrying?” and wave new arrivals through. “What skipper smuggling in weapons is going to blow the whistle on himself?” he asked with a shrug. He also reported that small barges “loaded to the gills” and bound for Serbia are now crowding the Danube “bumper to bumper.”
Through the sieve, the Croatian army has obtained a deadly antitank weapon that has “made Serbian tankers pray all day.” The boast was offered by Major “Davida,” a Croatian antitank expert. (“Davida” is an alias; he has family ,living in Serbian-controlled Croatian territory.) I told Davida that the Croatian defense chief, Gen. Anton Tus, had claimed that his forces had killed 600 Serbian tanks and captured 220 others. I suspected the good general was giving me a Westmoreland-style body count. But Davida told me the figures were dead right. He pulled out a worn notebook which showed chapter and verse. In the previous two days, Davida’s hunter-killer teams had “killed 8 tanks.” One team alone “killed 32.” During the past 30 days, on this front, his teams “killed 45” Serbian armored vehicles.
Davida’s notes said that the first eight missiles fired by hastily assembled crews knocked out “two T-72 tanks, 1 Praga track vehicle … and five T-55 tanks, with no friends hit.” The report went on: “average kill range was 1,500 meters [and] 95 percent of the kills” were “first round hits.” It took no more than “six days” to train a volunteer team. The secret weapon, Davida went on, “is a top-secret antitank missile that creates a radical pressure change inside the struck tank.” He wouldn’t say where it came from, but he did say it was a fire-and-forget system that had a tandem warhead.
The shelling slowed down and I told Davida that I wanted to see the hard evidence. He drove down those shell-blistered roads like an Indy 500 driver to a position that was under fire. Two of his gunners had just been hit. But, out front, there was a T-55 tank, still smoking. I also looked at three more tanks that had been knocked out earlier. Each had been killed by a missile that burned a hole about the same size a standard pencil would make when pushed through paper. I had seen similar telltale puncture holes in Iraqi tanks reportedly killed by the world’s best antitank weapon, the French-made Milan.
The tank-rebuild factory was no more than five miles behind the lines. Davida’s kills were towed there, refitted and returned to the front within 24 hours, flying Croatian colors. I saw more than two dozen Serbian tanks being repaired. Most bore the telltale missile hole. The man who ran the place was not happy with our visit, but after a glass or two of wine he confirmed that the missile was the French Milan. Gunrunners from South Africa who “hated the Serbs” and “enjoyed profit” were slipping the Milans through the weapons embargo.
Now many “experts”-and some U.S. lawmakers-want the arms embargo lifted from Croatia and Bosnia so these underdogs can develop the military muscle Serbia has. But the truth is, more arms would have no short-term effect on their combat efficiency. Both the Croats and the Bosnians are light-years away from being anything other than a ragtag citizens’ army. The way to ratchet down the violence is to stop the killing stuff from coming in. The United Nations must seriously block every port of entry, every road and every airstrip. Every crate, every package must be opened and checked-even if it means squatting a U.N. unit on every road and trail on every border crossing. George Bush’s proposed ban on Serbian aircraft over Bosnia won’t do much since fighter planes are just one of dozens of killing systems. Mortars and AK-47s do more damage.
While the leaks are being plugged up, the Serbians must be made to feel the pain of the war that they started. Oil tankers bringing in winter fuel must be stopped and the lights must be shut off in Belgrade. Those who propose lifting the embargo on heating fuel are shortsighted. If all Serbia freezes, the fighting might stop. What is needed is to close down factories, cripple distribution, drive up an already runaway inflation (3,000 percent in the last year) and cause the jobless to tell the government, as the American people finally did over the Vietnam War, that enough is enough.
Instead, everyone now seems focused on how long Sarajevo can hold out. The city sits dead center in a valley. Serb gunners occupy the high ground all around. Their targets in the cities and villages below are like goldfish in a fishbowl with a drunken lout shooting at them with a BB gun. The Serbs outnumber the Bosnian defenders with larger, better trained and equipped battalions. They also have tanks, artillery, combat aircraft and mountains of ammunition. To take the valley, all they have to do is line up their tanks, mass their overwhelming firepower and blast ill-equipped and badly trained Muslim defenders.
My experience with Muslim units tells me that they are bigger talkers than fighters. In the face of a concerted Serbian offensive, their light infantry would melt away. If I’m wrong, and they stood and fought, it could be a bloodbath for both sides. Street fighting-house by bloody house-is the costliest form of conventional warfare. A few well-concealed snipers can inflict dozens of casualties on the offense picking its way through the rubble. But if the Serbs do it the right way, with their tanks well forward, acting as terrifying bulldozers crushing everything in their path, taking out Sarajevo would be easier than sliding down a greased pole. The Serbian army in Bosnia is reported to have more than 300 main battle tanks. The Bosnians have two.
Still, the Serbs would be fools to launch a full-scale attack. They’re winning militarily without wasting a grunt. Winter with its freezing conditions is on the way. Those who have survived the high-explosive slaughter will turn into a block of ice. There is no winter fuel. Most ofthe local wood has been burned to heat water and food. The snowfall is five to six meters even in a gentle winter; the forecast for this year is worse. I noticed that the shelling had blown away Sarajevo’s fleet of snowplows. Snow, ice and fog will close down the airport and roads. The United Nations will find it far harder to distribute relief. If the siege continues into winter, Sarajevo will be a repeat of Stalingrad in 1942 where Russians and Germans froze to death by the tens of thousands.
The answer is simple: the United Nations should tell Belgrade that Sarajevo is a no-fire zone. And the United States, France and Great Britain should back the U.N. stand with the same kind of resolve they applied against Baghdad.
