THE AFTERMATH

The last week of fighting has displaced tens of thousands in Bosnia. More than 40,000 Serbs fled the Muslim-Croat advance in the northwest. Meanwhile, Bosnian Serbs responded with the forced expulsions of an estimated 9,000 Muslims and Croats. "In the final days before the cease-fire Serbs unleashed an ethnic cleansing campaign in the northwest border areas that is shocking even by Balkan standards," reports Edward Barnes. "Those who survived the week said Serb police and army units systematically broke into virtually all the Croat and Muslim homes in a wide swath from Sanski Most to Banja Luka. Most people were given ten minutes to leave their homes in what soldiers told them was the final cleansing. Once the process began, there was utter chaos. Soldiers, they say, went on a looting spree, stealing everything they could carry, engaging in indiscriminate beatings, raping dozens of women, holding children at knife point until mothers bought back their lives with hidden Deutch Marks and, finally, separating all men between the ages of 16 and 60 from their families before sending the women, elderly and children through dangerous mountain tracks that claimed the lives of at least 20 refugees."