Word: serb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...perils are very real. NATO flyers bombing and strafing Serb gun positions could be shot down and killed, or captured and paraded on TV as hostages, a la Iran or Somalia. The air strikes could be ineffective: finding and destroying well-hidden artillery pieces, especially mortars that can be moved quickly, is no cinch. The Serbs could step up their offensives far from Sarajevo, intensifying the killing in other vulnerable towns like Srebrenica and Tuzla. The Serbs could take prisoner or even kill civilian aid workers who distribute food and other humanitarian assistance. Result: whipsawing pressures on Clinton either...
...then, some of the doubters had been brought into line. Britain reluctantly acquiesced on the condition that military action be severely limited. Clinton persuaded Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien to go along despite worries about the safety of 2,000 Canadian peacekeepers. Even Greece, the most pro-Serb of the NATO nations, decided not to vote for the ultimatum, but cast no veto either...
...Serbs have been alternating bluster with hints of cooperation to leave open -- probably up to the expiration of the ultimatum -- whether they will provoke air strikes or not. Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic makes the absurd claim that the Muslims faked the whole market carnage, using mannequins, professional actors to portray the wounded and old corpses provided by obliging Croat forces, who would have had to smuggle them into Sarajevo through Serb lines. Jovan Zametica, spokesman for the self-described Bosnian Serb government, remarks, "If NATO aircraft attack, we'll take them out." Drunken Serb soldiers on a hillside south...
...another hill, Serb troops were uncharacteristically subdued as they awaited the next turn in the war. Their cries of defiance lacked conviction amid a newfound fatalism. "If we pull our artillery out," said Goran Bogic, "the Muslims will overrun us in 10 minutes." In Sarajevo, Serb forces not only held to a cease-fire but also started placing some heavy weapons under U.N. control -- though U.N. troops were not even certain the meager haul of cannon had ever been emplaced around Sarajevo...
...tell the world that we are far from happy and that we are not optimists at all? On the contrary, we're desperate because of the obvious fact that, once again, nothing will be done. Again, the cunning Serb President Slobodan Milosevic, along with Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, will just take advantage of the situation for the umpteenth time to prepare new fortifications. When such powerful TV networks determine that we are pleased and optimistic in Sarajevo, then we simply have to become optimists...