Sir, - Kevin Myers is right (An Irishman's Diary, April 29th). An understanding of the Kosovo crisis is impossible without consideration of the disastrous Bosnian war that preceded it. What caused this war and the other wars that began with the break-up of Tito's Yugoslavia? John de Courcy Ireland (April 23rd) may be correct when he says the West (presumably including Ireland) did not do enough to preserve Yugoslavia, but this is not the prime reason for the break-up. We must instead look to the ruthlessness of Milosovic, who jumped on the bandwagon of Serb nationalism to bring him (and keep him) in power.
It was Milosevic who unleashed the Yugoslav army (now the Serb army) into Bosnia and Croatia in pursuit of a "Greater Serbia". It was Milosevic who first gave us "ethnic cleansing" through his surrogates Karadzic and Mladic. Those Serbs who now suffer under NATO bombardment would do well to remember the people of Vukovar, Sarajevo, Srebenica and other cities and towns ruthlessly bombarded and pillaged by Serb troops and paramilitaries. Where were their voices of protest then? Where was their protest against the notorious rape-camps? Where, indeed, was the voice of John de Courcy Ireland, our foremost maritime historian, when the Serbs bombarded old Dubrovnik, the perfectly preserved (until then!) historic port of Ragusa?
The pusillanimous role of the UN, NATO and the EU (including Ireland) must be understood. The EU weakly allowed its own Vance-Owen Peace plan (1992) to be sabotaged by Bill Clinton, who encouraged the Bosnians to believe that they would get US aid. Instead, the Bosnians were betrayed, until the US sponsored its Dayton Plan, a Vance-Owen for slow learners. UN peacekeepers were hostages for the good behaviour of NATO. When air strikes were threatened, the Serbs handcuffed UN peacekeepers to their guns. Nothing but contempt was shown for the well-meaning blundering of the UN, as was proved by the Serb capture of so-called "safe havens" in 1994, followed by the murder of over 7,000 Bosnian prisoners of war. Of course the Serbs will agree to a UN force in Kosovo! With the Serb army in place, these troops will just be hostages against air strikes. The Irish Government (any government) would be crassly stupid to send our army on such a perilous mission.
There have been no heroes in this war, certainly not in the governments of East and West. Towards the end of the Bosnian War, the US and NATO connived at the Croatian conquest of the Krajina region and the ethnic cleansing of the Serbs. A horrible act but, like the "ethnic cleansing" of Germans from Poland and Czechoslovakia in 1945, protest seems ineffectual after such horrors as the Serbs had visited on their neighbours.
At least these are signs that NATO has learned some lessons from the Bosnian war. Ethnic cleansing was Milosevic's plan as soon as he began to move his army back into Kosovo last December. According to Tim Judah (New York Review of Books, October 8th, 1998), over 250,000 Kosovars, mostly Albanian, had already been driven from their homes by last September, and their villages burned. This was to be Bosnia Mark II: i.e., use civilians and UN observers as hostages to the good behaviour of NATO, meanwhile let systematic cleansing of Kosovars continue. Milosevic could rely on the old platitude (heard repeatedly during the Bosnian war) - "It's a civil war, so we should not interfere"- to muddy the waters. NATO is doing what it has to do. The real tragedy is that it is about seven years too late. - Yours, etc.,
Toby Joyce, Carrogh Hill, Galway.