So why don’t the Gis go get the suspect? Under terms of the U.S. brokered Balkans peace deal, it’s not their job. IFOR, the 60,000-member NATO force, is under orders only to safeguard a “secure environment”–by keeping the adversaries apart. The Serbs, Croats and Muslims all pledged to aid the war-crimes tribunal; a new police force is supposed to help them to do that. But NATO’s month-old deployment already has brought an outpouring of attention-grabbing new atrocity tales. Peace also makes it feasible, for the first time in many places, to fully investigate war crimes and to pursue the criminals. Plans for the new police force are lagging, and NATO’s mandate expires in a year. The result is a collision between the demands of justice and of realpolitik. As the moralists gain ground in a play for NATO activism on human rights, the military shudders over the prospect of Somalia-style “mission creep.”
The disastrous U.S. hunt for a Somali warlord was exhibit A when top NATO planners met at the State Department before the Dayton talks. “They decided unanimously that [troops] won’t go out and search and capture–ever,” said one participant. But the White House wasn’t nearly so categorical. And as the deployment went quietly forward, press reports that Serbs were destroying evidence of genocide took center stage. Near their stronghold of Banja Luka, the Serbs were said to be exhuming bodies from mass graves, grinding them up with mine machinery and obliterating the evidence under tons of rock.
The fresh allegations gave Richard Goldstone, head of The Hague tribunal, a boost in his campaign to have NATO troops guard evidence and protect his staff. In the Clinton administration, national-security adviser Anthony Lake and U.N. representative Madeleine Albright also pushed hard for activism. European diplomats say President Clinton now is convinced of the need for a successful hunt for war criminals. They say it’s an attempt to salvage honor from a peace settlement that amounts to partition, an outcome Clinton resisted for three years. The top U.S. human-rights official, John Shattuck, visiting some of the alleged execution sites last week, argued that bringing Balkan war criminals to justice is “an essential part of the peace process,” necessary to “lift the burden of collective guilt.” Shattuck toured under the protection of State Department security officers and Serb police–because Adm. Leighton Smith, the theater commander, had declined his request for a NATO escort.
The message to troops in the field is unmistakable. “We’ve got far more important things to do,” said British Maj. Robert Polly of the British Light Dragoons, asked about allegations that Muslim dead lie in strip mines near Banja Luka. But the growing pressures on NATO to change that tune may well prove irresistible. “Smith says he won’t protect sites, even if evidence is being destroyed–but he has to,” says one senior Clinton administration official. Each time a mass grave or war criminal is found under the noses of NATO troops the heat will increase. Unless there are U.S. casualties, “mission creep” won’t be an issue. “Smith worries about the risks of trying to do too much,” says the official. “In fact, he runs the risk of doing too little.” Smith’s toughest battle in Bosnia may turn out to be a rearguard action.
