EDITORIAL: Bosnia’s Bitter Truths

The bloodshed in Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia has been stopped for several months now. The cost of conflict has been horrific, with an estimated 250,000 people killed and 3 million made refugees since 1991.

Indescribable brutality, torture, and killing of unarmed civilians; concentration camps, mass rapes, ethnic cleansing; the destruction of entire towns and villages; spiteful disruption of agreed upon cease-fires; taking hostage the United Nations’ peacekeepers and obstructing humanitarian relief is a minimal and totally inadequate catalogue of intolerable crimes, which were tolerated by the international community. There is no completely innocent side in this conflict. In addition to Serb atrocities, Bosnian Muslims and Croats have also practiced ethnic cleansing. Nevertheless, the factions are not equally guilty.

As an evangelical church leader in Croatia, I have witnessed the sickening cost of bloody warfare. It is clear to me that Bosnians would have continued to bleed to death were it not for the U.S.-led NATO bombing of the Serbian military positions and the ensuing aggressive pursuit of peace. It was the unique American combination of military muscle and robust diplomacy that finally brought peace to Bosnia.

There is a place for the unfortunate necessity of military action in the face of aggression. In 1992, at the European Youth Congress in Utrecht, the Netherlands, I did in fact suggest that the only way to stop Serbian aggression in Bosnia was through resolute military action. “A Croatian theologian asks for military intervention!” the headlines screamed, confusing my pacifist friends and angering Serbian nationalists and a few of my ministerial colleagues. At the time, I argued that the only language these powerful and ruthless aggressors understand is the language of greater power.

During several years of desperation, the victimized Bosnians were asking the unanswered question: Where are the Americans? Why don’t they help us? I will never forget the question of a Sarajevo intellectual and agnostic humanist, a question I was not able to answer: “When will the Christian conscience of the most moral nation of the world awaken and make them come to our rescue?” he asked.

Well, thankfully, American troops have arrived, and in their wake come dozens of Christian international relief groups, determined to shoulder part of the burden. While the world’s eyes have been focused on the peacekeeping force, we Christians must acknowledge that we also have an essential mission in the former Yugoslavia that no military force can accomplish.

Peace may return to the former Yugoslavia, but the difficulties should not be underestimated. Commonly heard statements like “Those people have been fighting for centuries and nobody can stop them” are simply not true. Different ethnic groups have peacefully coexisted in Bosnia for ages, and those of us who lived for a while in prewar Sarajevo remember it as a beautiful place of multiethnic civility.

Bosnia presents a distinctive challenge to American Christians. Christian believers are working at all levels, through government efforts, nonprofit organizations, and in local churches. Rebuilding a peaceful society in the former Yugoslavia would be severely set back if Christians withdrew their efforts in the peace process.

Looking at the Christian mission in Bosnia, there should be one common denominator and one sure foundation for all activity, regardless of whether it is concerned with food, housing, human rights, or resettling refugees. We need to be creative, resourceful instruments of reconciliation, demonstrating in humble service our love for all persons as our neighbors. And above all, we need to be compassionate evangelizers, bringing the Good News of Jesus Christ into the bloody situations, as the only living and lasting hope for Bosnia and all people.

By Peter Kuzmic, professor of World Missions and European Studies, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and chairman of the Theological Commission of World Evangelical Fellowship.