Rape babies: what do we know?: Linda Grant examines claims that thousands of Bosnian women have forcibly been made pregnant

'REFUGE for war babies' was the promise in last week's Mail on Sunday: Britain was opening its arms to the poor innocents of the war-torn former Yugoslavia. To childless and desperate British couples the announcement came as a life-line. The Government was promising to cut through all the red tape to bring back war babies as quickly as possible. What appeared to be on offer was a large supply of infants, the offspring of mothers who could not want them: Bosnian women raped by Serbian soldiers. 'This is a humanitarian response to appalling atrocities,' said Junior Health Minister Timothy Yeo.

But agencies specialising in international adoption were puzzled. The announcement did not make clear how many babies were expected, or what deal had been done with the Bosnian authorities. Even more confusing was the circumstances under which these babies were due to be born. The Government was responding to allegations that possibly tens of thousands of women had been not only raped but forcibly been made pregnant by Serbs last summer. Behind the headlines is a fog of confusion about what has really been happening to women in Bosnia.

ASK official agencies like the Red Cross or Save the Children when they first heard stories of the existence of rape camps in Bosnia and they will all tell you around October. However, as far back as November 1991, women's and human rights organisations in the former Yugoslavia had been gathering evidence of rape that had taken place during the war in Croatia. At this stage the extent of the alleged incidents was on a small scale, based on a number of first-person testimonies. Through the spring and summer last year, incidental reports began appearing in British newspapers, mainly citing rape as evidence of the barbarism of the occupying forces.

Then, almost a year after the first reports, on 25 September 1992, the BBC's monitoring station at Caversham picked up a report from Radio Bosnia. Muslim organisations alleged that special concentration camps for women existed in the entire occupied territory of Bosnia in which 10,000 women were said to be held. The camps were said to be located in former hotels and restaurants. The women were alleged in the report to be 'publicly raped in front of everyone's eyes. Then after a certain number of people have been killed, their throats cut or tortured, the womenfolk are taken to an unknown destination.'

Three days later, a feminist group from Zagreb sent an open letter to other women's organisations in Europe and North America, describing a 'stream of survivor testimonies' which had prompted the organisation's investigation into what it called 'the systematic sexual atrocities being committed against women' in occupied Bosnia and Croatia. The letter listed 16 rape camps where women were alleged to be held. No figures for the numbers supposed to be in the camps were included.

In one camp, the letter said, survivors had testified that 'girls of 10 years of age were also raped'. It stated that '12 women who managed to escape the camp are now in advanced stages of pregnancy and awaiting birth in Zagreb hospitals'. The letter appears to have been the first suggestion that the rapes were not just casual acts by out-of-control soldiers, but, it said, 'should be understood as a tactic or strategy of genocide'. This allegation offered the view that the rapes were part of the organised system of ethnic cleansing, impregnating Bosnian women with half- Serbian babies to help destroy the national identity.

In October, women peace activists held a conference in Zagreb which included first-hand testimonies from women who had been raped. The conference seems not to have been reported in the British press but according to Natalie Nenadic, a researcher (of Bosnian extraction) in international law at the University of Michigan, it was the presence of a large German contingent which resulted in the first campaign, outside the former Yugoslavia, to publicise what was happening.

By November, momentum was gathering in Germany and France. Prominent articles appeared in Stern, Der Spiegel and Liberation with testimonies from women who claimed to have been raped. In Germany there were full-page petitions urging government action.

On 3 December an international group of MPs announced that it had received 'credible reports' of the rape and torture of women and girls in Serb- run camps in former Yugoslavia. On the last day of the EC summit in Edinburgh, 11 December, Chancellor Helmut Kohl introduced a resolution asking the EC to act. A four-person EC Mission, led by Dame Anne Warburton - a retired diplomat, now president of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge - was despatched to gather evidence.

In the run-up to Christmas the world seemed to be waking up to the possibility of systematic rape in Bosnia. The UN Security Council unanimously condemned mass rapes of women. The first British report appeared in the Guardian, with eye-witness accounts of mass rape by Serbian soldiers of women in camps. Two days before Christmas, investigators from the World Council of Churches returning from two Croat refugee camps said they had been told about rape camps involving 'many thousands of women', and that they were 'now convinced that there is a policy of systematic rape and that it is a weapon of war, not just a by-product.' Last Wednesday, the Independent reported a leaked interim report from the EC mission. The team estimated that at least 20,000 Muslim women had been subject to organised rape which was being used as a 'weapon of war', but said the charge that Serbian forces were acting on orders from the authorities remains unproven.

Observers, aid agencies and those with expert knowledge of Bosnia agree that all the allegations must be greeted with caution. Before leaving Britain, Anne Warburton was aware that the reported atrocities were 'of a kind you don't readily give credence to.' Maja Somalot, of the BBC's Southern Slovakian serice, which has received regular reports from Bosnian radio of rape, points out that both sides in the conflict have reported sexual assaults. The conflict, she says, is 'a very modern war to the extent that some events seem to have been staged for the media.' The International Red Cross has received no first-hand testimonies of rape camps. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees says that no human rights agency has been able to corroborate the existence of such camps for security reasons, and suggests that 'numerical estimates of any aspect of this issue must treated with caution.' Nevertheless, in spite of the fact that evidence has not yet been collected on any systematic basis, the consensus seems to acknowledge that there has indeed been rape on a massive scale in Bosnia. The UNHCR, together with other UN bodies, will meet tomorrow in Geneva to assess the existing evidence.

RAPE in war is as old as war itself. The UN War Crimes Commission may bring proseuctions against the Serbs for rape. Although rape is mentioned in the small print of the Geneva Convention, it is not necessarily considered grave enough to be a war crime, a point on which women's groups are campaigning.

What remains extremely contentious, however, is the claim made repeatedly over months by the Bosnian side, that the rape of Bosnian women was also part of a deliberate attempt by the Serbs to impregnate them en masse - not only to break down the Bosnian national and cultural identity, but also to create more children of Serbian descent. A number of women who have been raped have said that their attackers told them that they were either obeying orders or were impregnating them as 'revenge'. The hardest evidence seems to come from the EC team itself, whose interim report states that it was shown 'statements and documents from Serbian sources which very clearly put such actions in the context of an expansionist strategy.' The team will return to Bosnia to investigate the reports that the women made pregnant had been held captive to ensure that they gave birth.

It is difficult to establish whether a deliberate policy of raping women to create more members of the conquering race has any historical precedent. Dr Mark Wheeler, a specialist in Balkan history at the London University School of Slavonic Studies, was sceptical. He believes it more likely that the Serbs' intention would be to use rape and enforced pregnancy to humiliate and take revenge on the enemy: 'The idea of nationality in the former Yugoslavia is based on descent and the greatest debasement is to pollute a person's descent,' he says. Such a scheme is biologically feasible: if large numbers of fertile women were raped continously, many would be bound to get get pregnant. But if the rapists genuinely did want to create a new generation of Serbians, they seem oddly uninterested in their future welfare: half-German, half- Polish children born during the Second World War were carefully removed to be reared by German families.

So where are the Bosnian rape victims now? Some have returned to what is left of their communities. Others are in refugee camps. The Department of Health expects the first babies of mothers raped last summer to be born next month. But no-one knows how many women became pregnant (although there are suggestions it could be as many as 30,000), or how many will keep their babies. On the evidence of the Mail on Sunday, some women are indeed abandoning their infants; one girl told doctors to take her new-born baby away. But far from finding a home in the West, it has now been adopted by a Croatian couple. The position of Muslims on abortion is not absolute: it is possible that abortion may be acceptable during the current circumstances.

Meanwhile in Britain, childless couples are hoping to offer a refuge for the babies that the British Government says are on offer. Their expectations may be dashed. A Bosnian official is reported to have told one aid agency that no babies would be allowed to leave the country until the end of the war. On Friday Timothy Yeo admitted to the Independent on Sunday that 'theoretically there could be no babies at all, there may be a handful or there may be a significant figure. I have seen the EC interim report and no one can have a precise knowledge of how many women are pregnant.' The announcement last Sunday, he says, was only a measure to iron out in advance difficulties that might arise if babies were available. At this point it seems likely that Muslim countries would get the first chance to adopt the Bosnian war babies. And a meeting is planned between Yeo and Muslim leaders who claim that babies who arrive in Britain should be adopted by Muslim families. 'That's an interesting one,' Yeo admitted. 'When race and religious factors conflict, our aim is to reach a decision that is in the best interest of the child.' Would adopting parents know that their Bosnian baby was the child of a rape victim. Yes, absolutely, Yeo says.

TO many, it seems as if the sudden concern of the Government for the women of Bosnia and their children is no more than a cynical PR excercise. Jane Luff, who has fought the Government over her and her husband's attempts to adopt a baby from Romania, greeted Tim Yeo's U-turn on international adoption with disbelief: 'The announcement made it sound as if adopting a Bosnian child would be extremely easy. It made it look as if a magic wand was being waved. But it's really just a great publicity stunt. Britain has had an awful lot of bad publicity on its position on refugees and it has to try and fit in with the rest of Europe now.'

Others are beginning to say that Britain is callous to help itself to the fruits of other people's suffering. No refuge is being offered to the mothers of the Bosnian babies. Britain's indifference to the unfolding story of the rape camps, compared with the rest of the European media, says a great deal about our enthusiasm for abandoned babies and our lack of interest in where they come from. When a British women's organisation organised collections of money and goods to send to Bosnia, they requested toothbrushes and shampoo. What they got was baby toothbrushes and baby shampoo. Some people said they would give money only to help children, not adults.

Both the rape victims of Bosnia and the hopeful childless couples of Britain may be feeling now that they are victims of a propaganda war.

(Photograph omitted)