Srebrenica Remembered: Peace Keepers or Peacemakers?

"The Smurfs", as Bosnians called the UNPROFOR troops

On 16 April 1993 - twenty years ago this week - the UN Security Council passed Resolution 819, declaring the town of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia a 'Safe Area'.  Just over two years later, in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the enclave, meeting little resistance from the UN Peacekeepers stationed there, and massacred around 7,000 Bosniak men and boys.

Over twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Fukyama’s ‘End of History’ is nowhere in sight.  With nation states still splintering off around the globe, the coming decade is set to see more violent conflicts than ever.  Yet it is unlikely that we will ever see a UN operation the size of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) again.

Despite the Security Council resolution, Srebrenica was anything but safe.  The Bosnian safe areas (Srebrenica was the first of five) were an untested peacekeeping concept, which has never been attempted again.

It seems appropriate, therefore, on this anniversary, to ask whether or not the UN still has a role to play as peacekeepers.  Could and should UN troops be authorised to use force to impose a military solution on conflicts?

Once war broke out in Bosnia-Herzegovina, between the Bosnian Serbs, who wished to remain part of Yugoslavia, the Bosnian Croats, who wished Bosnia to be absorbed into neighbouring Croatia, and the Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks, who wanted independence, Srebrenica’s geographical location, just a few kilometres from the Serbian border, placed it firmly within the territory of the Bosnian Serbs.  Before the war, the Bosniaks had constituted a majority in Srebrenica - around 70 percent of the population - but during the first few weeks of the conflict Bosnian Serb paramilitaries drove the Bosniaks out and took the town.

A series of victories by the Bosnian Government forces (ARBiH) during 1992 recaptured the town, but by March 1993, Srebrenica was once again being heavily shelled, and the town’s population had swelled dramatically with Bosniaks fleeing from the outlying villages as the Serbs advanced.  It was at this critical moment that General Phillipe Morillon, UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, managed to force his way through Serb lines to the besieged town.  He stood on the bonnet of his white UN Jeep in the town centre and declared that the population was “now under the protection of the United Nations.”  (The Death of Yugoslavia, Episode 5, ‘A Safe Area’, (BBC2: 1995-96)).

The UN Security Council had no choice but to respond by passing the Safe Area Resolution.  The resolution was politically expedient – it showed that the international community was doing something to help, whilst at the same time using language so vague that in reality it did little to make Srebrenica truly safe.  The mandate was so ambiguous that the UN troops on the ground were able to interpret it how they saw fit, in most cases tending towards the least risky interpretation.

The member states lacked the political will to follow through on the sentiments invested in the safe area resolutions.  The Security Council required peacekeepers to play a war-fighting role, whilst failing to provide them with the weaponry or manpower to do so.  They assigned UNPROFOR a mandate which, even if only symbolically, aligned them with the Bosnian Government, but expected them to continue to rely on Bosnian Serb consent to deliver humanitarian aid.

The fall of Srebrenica in July 1995 was crucial in bringing about the end of the war in Bosnia.  Without the troublesome pockets in eastern Bosnia, the international community was finally able to force a settlement militarily upon the Bosnian Serbs.

From 1993 onwards, the UN had been authorised to use air strikes in response to BSA attacks, but had chosen not to employ them, due in part to a desire to maintain their neutrality, and partly due to fear of reprisals against civilians and peacekeepers.

Their fears turned out to be well-founded.  When General Rupert Smith, UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia from January 1995 onwards, called in air strikes in response to Bosnian Serb Army (BSA) attacks on Sarajevo, hundreds of UN peacekeepers were taken hostage in retaliation.  Smith then tried a different tack.  His opinion was that  “if you stand in the middle of someone’s fight you must expect to be pushed around; and if you do intervene, decide if you are fighting one or all of the sides and get on with it – and be prepared to risk the forces allocated to achieve the object.” (Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force, (Allen Lane, 2005), p.359) 

After the hostage crisis, the idea of a Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) began to take hold and the decision to deploy it was made in early June 1995, though the guns were not in place until mid-August.  Eventually, due to a combination of ARBiH and RRF offensives, the international forces in Bosnia were in a position to impose a military solution on the conflict.

An attack on a marketplace in Sarajevo allowed Smith to employ the UN’s “dual key” arrangement with NATO.  Operation Deliberate Force was launched on 30 August.  There was no new UN Security Council Resolution passed – UNSCR 836, passed in June 1993, was used.  The BSA surrendered in a matter of weeks.

Without a clear a political aim, military advisors and commanders erred on the side of caution and neutrality.  In response, the warring parties tested the limits of UNPROFOR’s mandate, often using the UN troops as pawns and treating them with little respect.  Knowing that the international community would not risk taking sides, which, as well as being politically contentious, could result in the deaths of their own troops, the ARBiH, BSA and HVO (Bosnian Croat Forces) felt free to continue the war, despite the presence of the blue-helmeted peacekeepers.

It seemed that the international community had learnt it lesson by 1999, when forceful and decisive intervention in Kosovo forced the withdrawal of Serbian forces in less than two months.  There were no international casualties of the fierce bombing campaign.  However, this intervention was by the planes of NATO, and not the ground forces of the UN.

Is it therefore the case that a different approach to UN peacekeeping, or rather peace making is required?

MONUSCO, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, has been authorised to "use all necessary means" to carry out its mandate, but this is qualified by the addition of "within the limits of its capacity".  This is the same vague language used in Srebrenica Safe Area Resolution.  The mission, under its previous guise of MONUC, and in its current guise, has been in the country since November 1999, but its presence has not deterred the warring factions.  Millions have died and there is daily violence.  In South Sudan, 5 UNMISS peacekeepers from India were killed on 9 April whilst escorting a UN convoy.  They were not the first casualties amongst UNMISS troops.

There have been thousands of Srebrenicas since 1993.  There will be thousands more, unless something changes.  It has been demonstrated that when western governments have the political will, military success can be achieved relatively easily, as in Iraq.  What comes next - rebuilding states and shaping democratic futures - is the real challenge.

Graffiti in Sarajevo (2012) 

There are some conflicts in which international military intervention would prevent countless senseless deaths.  It may be that there is a moral necessity for the UN to play the part of peacemakers and send fighting forces into conflicts where human suffering can be alleviated by taking a decisive military stance.

The UN is the only organisation which can claim the legitimate consensus of all nations (with some notable exceptions, of course).  Whilst NATO's member states will inevitably be some of the main force contributors, it is a dangerous precedent for an elite group of nations to play world policeman.

Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first President of Czechoslovakia, once said that "humanity is not pacifism at all costs."  If peacemakers are endowed with meaningful mandates, and careful consideration is given to what happens after the battles are won, it could ensure that the horrors of Srebrenica, and of many more towns like it, will never be seen again.