The New York Times

Tuesday, September 14, 1999

Battles After the War

By RICHARD HOLBROOKE

Standing on the banks of the Neretva River, you can look up 200 feet at the cliffs that divide Mostar -- the most broken city on the European continent -- into Muslim and Croat sections and see an important symbolic step toward reconciliation in Bosnia.

The ancient, world-famous bridge, which was brutally destroyed simply for sport by the Croats in 1993 (while the world stood by), is finally being rebuilt, and the first restored stones are reaching out tentatively toward each other high above the raging river. But the work -- with some of the stones retrieved from the water and others paid for by the international community -- has just begun.

For Bosnia and Kosovo, the symbolism of the old bridge could hardly be more precise. Real progress is being made, but tremendous problems remain. The wounds of war are just now beginning to heal in Bosnia, while Kosovo, three years behind Bosnia in the timelines of history and reconstruction, still lives in the heady but confusing aftermath of the war and liberation from oppression.

Compared with the healing process after other wars, the status of Bosnia and Kosovo -- whose military struggles are most properly considered as a single historical event divided into two theaters of operations -- should be neither surprising nor discouraging. What war destroys in an instant takes years to rebuild.

But the task is critical; Europe cannot be peaceful and secure so long as war, ethnic hatred and conflict exist within its common space. The patience and resources of the international community will be sorely tested. But our continued involvement is essential for success. Meanwhile, many of the forces of darkness -- separatists, racists, war criminals and crooks -- are still there, continuing their efforts to keep the people in the Dark Ages.

There have been significant improvements in Bosnia since I last visited the country two years ago. A few members of a new, postwar generation of leaders are emerging, publicly committed to the central principle of the 1995 Dayton peace agreement: a single, multiethnic country. Symbolizing this, the three-person joint presidency announced recently that they had unanimously chosen Nov. 21, the anniversary of the Dayton agreement, as the National Day of Bosnia.

Another hopeful sign: the brave and dedicated members of the international humanitarian community, usually the best informed and most skeptical of outside observers, told our delegation earlier this month that, for the first time, there were significant returns by refugees to certain areas in which their ethnic group was a minority. But the actual numbers are still only a trickle, and, upon closer analysis, the "minority returnees" are primarily Serbs returning to Muslim and Croat areas. The Serbs themselves continue to block or intimidate most Muslims trying to return to their homes.

The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo will not resume if the international community, led by the United States, continues to provide the security environment so that the political process can solidify the position of a postwar generation of leaders. In Bosnia, this new generation will have to build genuine multiethnic parties. The first of these already exist and have seats in the National Assembly. They will surely grow in numbers with each election, provided the pressure is kept on the extremists.

But two major political parties in the Serb part of Bosnia continue to preach ethnic hatred and attack the very foundations of the Dayton agreement: the war criminal Radovan Karadzic's Serbian Democratic Party, or S.D.S., and Vojislav Seselj's racist, fascistic Serbian Radical Party. These two parties should be disestablished by international order (as Dayton authorized the High Representative to do), just as the Nazis were outlawed in Germany after World War II. This long-overdue action, especially if accompanied by the capture of more senior war criminals, could cut substantially the time required for our troops to stay in Bosnia.

Simple justice demands that the effort to apprehend senior war criminals continue; their freedom makes it more difficult to draw down our NATO and American military forces. The NATO forces can continue a carefully planned drawdown, but it should be combined with a counterbalancing buildup of an internationally supported civil police authority.

In Kosovo, it is too early to forecast the shape or timing of the outcome. The remarkable collaboration of the United Nations and NATO faces the twin challenges of maintaining a secure environment and then creating viable and enduring political structures. Outsiders can hardly grasp the dimensions of the task, which is far greater than it was in Bosnia. To put it simply, there is no government left in Kosovo except the United Nations, which has an authority and a challenge without parallel in its history.

A people that have known nothing but various forms of oppression since at least 1912 have emerged into the harsh light of the modern world. The internal Kosovo political scene is understandably chaotic, and will take time to sort out.

The immensity of the challenge is daunting, as is its cost. But by defying the critics and winning the war, the leaders of the effort against Slobodan Milosevic cannot turn their backs on what they have started. Whatever the outcome of the struggle for power in Belgrade -- and let it be clearly stated that a change in regime there is absolutely essential for success in both Bosnia and Kosovo -- the international community has an irreplaceable role to play in setting Kosovo on the road to democratic self-governance.

The futures of both NATO and the United Nations depend on the outcome in Bosnia and Kosovo. Failure in either is unthinkable, since it would only pull us back into another protracted and costly mess.

Having started the job, we must continue to lead the effort to finish it successfully.

Richard Holbrooke is the United States representative to the United Nations. He has just returned from a trip to the Balkans.