The Peacekeepers' Slow, Cold, Perilous Road Home

By Mark Thompson/Washington

While the diplomats talked last week of strengthening the U.N. force in Bosnia, military officers on both sides of the Atlantic were working furiously on plans to pull them out. NATO estimates there is a 1-in-3 chance that the lightly armed peacekeepers will have to withdraw before spring, perhaps under very hostile conditions.

If that is the situation, the rescue army will approach 50,000 troops, twice the size of the force they will be leading to safety. The rescuers -- half of them American -- will muscle into Bosnia with enough weapons and munitions to fight a full-scale war, but not until the U.N. soldiers have gathered at a few central sites. NATO officials are already seeking to pull small units of peacekeepers out of isolated villages. All the U.N. and NATO troops will then drive -- or walk -- out. Only the 1,200 Bangladeshis stationed in Bihac will probably be evacuated by air to warships 50 miles away in the Adriatic. Some of the U.N. troops in eastern Bosnia might depart through Serbia, if Belgrade approves. Most will have to head west, under heavily armed NATO escort, for Adriatic ports.

A major headache could be winter weather. Narrow mountain roads are choked with snow. Foul weather would blind many of NATO's frontline aircraft, taking away NATO's technological superiority. Everything will be complicated by the cold. Troops will have to be clad in "overwhites" for camouflage and will need more food, more unfrozen water, more heating fuel. Miles of white netting will be required to shroud olive-drab military gear. Snow fouls weapons, and cold air produces large clouds of condensation when the weapons are fired, making it easy to pinpoint the shooter. Helicopter rotor blades whip up mini- blizzards that can blind pilots.

But the biggest fear is that the retreating forces will have to fight their way out. Commanders from both Bosnian and Serbian camps crave the U.N.'s light tanks and armored vehicles, which the peacekeepers have vowed to take with them. The Serbs could fire down on the departing columns as they move along the mountain roads. Snipers and artillery could harass convoys ambushed at roadblocks. There are dozens of bridges and tunnels along the way from Sarajevo to the coast, all vulnerable to sabotage. NATO would fight back with armed helicopters, asserting control over localized chunks of the heights while the peacekeepers, protected by NATO tanks and artillery, slowly thread their way toward sanctuary. Mobile units would leapfrog from peak to peak, making for a slow, perilous pullout.