Sir: Noel Malcolm (Letters, 14 August) cas- tigates Sir Alfred
Sherman for using infor- mation about Bosnia which is nearly 50 years out of date. But although wrongs done 50 years ago cannot excuse wrongs being done today, they do explain the ani- mosity between the three ethnically distinct communities now living in Bosnia.
In 1940, the anti-British Mufti of Jerusalem went to Germany, and later helped to raise an SS Legion of two divi- sions of Muslims, mostly from Bosnia, used to suppress resistance to the occupation of Yugoslavia, which they did with zeal remarkable even by German standards. The Serbian royalist `Chetniks' were responsible for similar atrocities in reply, but they were at least on our side until we abandoned them in favour of Tito's com- munists. Nor were the Croat fascist `Ustashe' much behind in their treatment of the Serbs. Unforgivable things were done at that time on all sides, and the same is now happening in the civil war.
It will therefore be quite impossible for the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats to live peaceably together in Bosnia, which is not and never has been a viable nation state. Most of its present troubles indeed derive from its recognition as such by the United Nations a couple of years ago. The least unsatisfactory solution would be to divide it up between a 'Greater Serbia' and a 'Greater Croatia', with the Muslims in a semi-autonomous province of the latter: until last year they were, after all, allied with the Croats against the Serbs.
There will also have to be large transfers of population in both directions, which will certainly be painful, though no more painful than the present state of affairs. This had to be done in the 1920s after the break-up of the Ottoman Empire, and in Eastern Europe at the end of the last war. So the United Nations ought now to do all it can to get agreement on the fairest fron- tier which can be achieved; and the sooner the better, since only then will the civil war be ended.
C. B. Goodhart
Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge
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