Confronted with superior weaponry, the Bosnian Serbs may collapse quickly. While the risk of retribution against U.N. troops on the ground is real, the West hardly faces an invincible adversary. “There is a tendency to overstate the value of the romantic Serb fighter,” says a Western diplomat in Belgrade. Serb forces in Bosnia are a miscellaneous lot, cobbled up from a 40,000-troop Bosnian Serb army under the command of a renegade general, borrowed Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) conscripts and a cast of irregulars. Their conduct ranges from harassing civilians and blocking humanitarian convoys at checkpoints to the murder, rape and torture of civilians and the burning of their villages in the course of “ethnic cleansing.” By turning artillery against cities and unleashing snipers on civilians, Serb forces have largely achieved their goal of linking Serbia with the regions they control in Bosnia and Croatia-but it isn’t an achievement that reflects particular military prowess.

So far, Serb forces have shown only limited ability to take territory frontally when faced with resistance. Despite their tanks and artillery, they have been unable to conquer the Sarajevo suburb of Dobrinja, defended by ethnically mixed Bosnian forces. The defenders were armed with pistols, gasoline bombs and rifles until they recently started using homemade rockets and armored vehicles. After a punishing battle around the eastern Bosnian city of Srebrenica, Serb forces accepted a negotiated settlement last month, rather than risk further casualties and international scorn, even after the Yugoslav army sent three battalions of reinforcements. Bosnian Serb forces depend upon a tenuous supply line from neighboring Serbia. Each day tanks, fuel, artillery shells and other equipment are trundled across six main bridges over the Drina River between Serbia and Bosnia, sometimes under the noses of U.N. observers. An estimated third of the JNA’s 2,000 heavy artillery pieces have been transported into Bosnia along this route, as well as some 12,000 JNA troops.

Bombing those bridges from the air will hamper the Serbian war machine, but more important, the shock of reprisal could destroy the morale of troops who have become used to their overwhelming advantage. Dedication is already flagging among army troops who are given leaves of absence or offered Deutsche mark bonuses to fight in Bosnia. The Serbian opposition estimates that 400,000 Serbian youths have already fled abroad to avoid duty. Army Lt. Milan Maximovic was sent to Bosnia last fall because, he says, all Serb soldiers who were born in Bosnia are “supposed to defend their homeland.” Now a prisoner of war in Tuzla, he concedes that among his troops, “courage is not so strong as it was before.”

Neither is discipline. Drunkenness is rampant. In the Serbian-controlled hills around Sarajevo, the daily artillery barrage often begins around cocktail hour. By dawn, when many gunners have fallen into a stupor, the firing stops. There is no functioning central command. While the Bosnian Serb army is under the nominal command of Gen. Ratko Mladic and his headquarters in the northern Bosnia city of Banja Luka, Serbian irregulars answer to no one. Many are little more than weekend warriors drawn by the promise of pillage. Witnesses say that ad hoe militias, untrained and roaming at will, are responsible for many of the atrocities committed against civilians. (Because many of the militiamen are illiterate, the Red Cross now distributes illustrated pamphlets explaining which actions are forbidden by the Geneva Convention.) Faced with true danger, the irregulars would be among the first to flee.

As tightened economic sanctions take hold in Belgrade, popular support for the war is waning. Even hardline Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is exasperated with the misdeeds of his allies in Bosnia. Americans may be worrying about the costs of intervening in Bosnia, but it is Milosevic and his troops who have much more to fear.

40,000 from Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA), approx. 50,000 irregulars Muslims: Approx. 50,000 regulars, 100,000 irregulars

20,000-25,000 irregulars, up to 20,000 from Croatian Defense Force

21 warplanes, 30 helicopters

1 warplane, 2 helicopters

None

300 tanks, 200 armored personnel carriers, 500-1,000 artillery pieces and mortars from JNA

Small arms, some tanks

Small arms, mortars, 50 tanks, 100 artillery pieces, mostly from CDF