Just before dawn last Saturday, a convoy of three buses and an ambulance rumbled out of Bosnia and into the Serbian university town of Novi Sad. Out climbed 121 U.N. soldiers -- mostly Canadian, British and French -- who had been held hostage by Bosnian Serbs for six days. They were tired and grimy but in good shape, except for six who had been injured in a road accident. Sitting on a bed in a hotel in Belgrade, a 21-year-old from the Royal Welch Fusiliers said, "All I want now is sex, but I can't say that, can I? Just say I want to see my girlfriend." The men reported they had been treated well. "By the end of the week, they couldn't do enough for us," said the fusilier.
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic promptly took credit for the release, announcing that the Bosnian Serbs had accepted his appeal as a sign of readiness to start "resolving the crisis." But the crisis was far from over. On Friday a U.S. Air Force F-16 had been shot down over the Bosnian Serb stronghold of Banja Luka. Serb commander Ratko Mladic reportedly claimed to have found the pilot, but there was no immediate confirmation. A senior official in Washington said Saturday he hoped that it was true and that the Serbs would release him promptly.
Even as some hostages were being freed, 19 others were seized. About 250 U.N. peacekeepers, many of them soldiers from NATO countries, were still captives of the Bosnian Serbs, taken in retaliation for NATO air strikes on Serb ammunition dumps two weeks ago. Fighting was under way in several parts of Bosnia; Sarajevo remained without water and electricity. Relief deliveries through Serb-held territories were halted. Atop the rubble, the unpredictable Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs, was proclaiming that all U.N. resolutions and nato mandates were void. He was, in effect, declaring war on the world.
For three years, the West has sought a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Bosnia while sending in U.N. peacekeepers to shuttle around a war zone and provide humanitarian aid. By the end of last week, that policy was in tatters, and the situation presented unavoidable choices. The peacekeepers could be removed and the Bosnians left to fight it out in what would be a bloody denouement at best, and at worst a prelude to a wider Balkan war. A withdrawal would also require a large number of troops and lots of money, and it would dishonor every country and organization involved, particularly if they left hostages behind. A second option would involve NATO's getting tougher with the genocidal, hostage-taking Serbs, but that might lead down a path of commitment for which no Western government has the stomach. Or NATO and the U.N. could simply soldier on, hoping for a diplomatic settlement but perhaps only buying some time until the next crisis.