ABSTRACT
Roy Gutman, the Newsday reporter who broke the story of Serbian ethnic cleansing, describes prewar Bosnia-Herzegovina as a "genuine melting pot" characterized by "an atmosphere of secular tolerance"; he speaks, for example, of "Sarajevo, with its skyline of minarets, church steeples and synagogues" as "testimony to centuries of civilized multiethnic coexistence." Independent observers generally agree, however, that Bosnian Serbs bear responsibility for the overwhelming preponderance of rapes and other war crimes. The Bosnian Serbs wanted reports of their brutal methods to spread among the non-Serb population in order to induce people to flee their homes. A common Western perspective on the Bosnia conflict portrays it as the consequence of inscrutable and very ancient animosities. The war in Bosnia started when Bosnian Serbs refused to accept the multiethnic, mostly Muslim Bosnian government. The leaders of the militias in Bosnia deserve clear and direct blame for inciting many war crimes.
