History's Most Dangerous Safe Area

There are certain place names that have become synonymous with the appalling events that occurred there: Auschwitz, Amritsar – Srebrenica.  On 7 July 1995 – twenty years ago this week – the Bosnian Serb Army overran the town of Srebrenica in Eastern Bosnia and proceeded over the following days to massacre over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys.  The town and its surrounding areas had been declared a United Nations Safe Area back in April 1993.  It was anything but.

The trapped and half-starved population were protected by a small Dutch UN battalion armed only with light weapons and a few APCs.  When the first shells landed within the Srebrenica Safe Area on 6 July 1995, nobody was surprised. For the past two years the Bosnian Serb forces had kept the enclave encircled, shelling and sniping sporadically at the civilian population and the Dutchbat troops, waiting for the international community to tire of their effort to keep the enclaves on life support. The Serbs had been waiting for their moment, and everyone knew it. The fall of Srebrenica had been almost inevitable from the moment it was first declared a Safe Area.

Recovered bodies awaiting re-burial in 2010

The events are as controversial today as they were then.  A UK-sponsored attempt to pass a UN Security Council resolution officially defining the massacre as genocide has caused outcry amongst Bosnian Serbs.  Srebrenica is now situated in the state-within-a-state of Republika Srpska and despite being the only town in the region with a Bosniak mayor, barely masks still-simmering ethnic tensions.  Some Bosnian Serbs are angry that their own war dead are not commemorated in the same way; others deny that the massacre even took place.  7,132 bodies have been recovered from mass graves and reburied; over a thousand are still missing, causing unendurable agony for their surviving relatives.  Despite a court ruling absolving the Dutch troops of any blame for the massacre, many still hold them to account for allowing the Bosnian Serb forces to take the Safe Area and for failing to protect the Bosniak population.

So why, exactly, did a supposed Safe Area end up as the scene of the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War?

Simply put, the Safe Areas should never have been created in the first place. When the Serbs had the town surrounded in March 1993 they offered to let the Muslims go to the relatively safe, government held city of Tuzla and General Phillipe Morillon, Commander of the UN Forces in Bosnia at that time, began to make plans for such an evacuation. However, both the Bosnian government and UN Security Council refused. The Bosnian government objected to the planned evacuation because it believed Srebrenica could later be exchanged for Serb-held suburbs of Sarajevo. The international community, on the other hand, opposed the scheme because the Vance-Owen Peace Plan placed Srebrenica in a Muslim canton, and to allow the Serbs to take the town would be, as they saw it, to acquiesce to ethnic cleansing. The outrage of an anti-Serb press shamed the Security Council into passing an essentially meaningless resolution – Resolution 836 - which did little to make Srebrenica a safe area because 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 Muslims, but expected them to continue to rely on Bosnian Serb consent to deliver humanitarian aid. Not only did the Safe Area resolutions conflict with previous resolutions, they also contradicted themselves, leading to widely different interpretations.  Resolution 836 did not clearly state when air support could be called in, and the use of the word ‘deter’ instead of ‘defend’ left the Safe Areas semantically unprotected. Both the UNPROFOR command and the Dutchbat soldiers within the Srebrenica enclave were left confused as to what they were expected to do.

Once the Safe Areas were created, however, it was only a matter of time before the

Serbs decided to attack. Srebrenica was not betrayed by any formal agreement, but merely by a failure to make any real effort to stop the Serb offensive.  Despite a number of deals to sacrifice Srebrenica being considered by the Bosnian government, there is no evidence that any took place.  There is also no concrete evidence of a deal over the use of air power that UNPROFOR Commander Lieutenant-General Bernard Janvier was rumoured to have made with Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić.

Srebrenica fell because of a lack of will to fight for it on the part of the Bosnian government and the ARBiH, and because UNPROFOR had neither the manpower nor the mandate to defend it. It is possible that earlier use of Close Air Support could have saved the enclave (bungled complications with faxes lead to farcical delays in the arrival of UN planes), but ultimately the UN did not want to provoke the Serbs for fear of reprisals against Dutch hostages taken earlier by Bosnian Serb forces.  Taking UN hostages had been a tactic favoured by the BSA throughout the war, used to humiliate the international community as well as a bargaining chip against greater military reprisals.

Srebrenica was one of three eastern Bosnian towns declared UN Safe Areas.  After Srebrenica fell, the towns of Goražde and Žepa suffered the same fate shortly after.  The problem of the eastern enclaves – pockets of Bosnian Muslims amongst Serb-held territory - had been plaguing peace negotiations for months.  Their fall simplified the political map and made a territorial settlement possible.  If the horrendous massacre had not followed, the fall of Srebrenica would probably have been viewed as an ill-advised mandate leading to a military disaster, and not the terrible catastrophe it ultimately became.  Tragically for Srebrenica and its inhabitants, it was politically expedient to allow the Safe Area to fall.

Refugees from Srebrenica arrive in Tuzla in 1995

Could those Dutch soldiers have ever imagined what would happen next?  There is no doubt, from their testimonies and records, that many of them have been psychologically scarred by it.  As the Bosnian Serb forces closed in on the town, the population fled to nearby Potočari, where the UN battalion had its headquarters.  They were denied entry to the UN compound.  Instead they were handed over to Ratko Mladić and his troops, who promised them safe passage to government-held territory.  Subsequently, the men – including the very elderly and adolescent boys – were separated from the women and children.  Many men and boys attempted to flee to safety through the mountains, but they were malnourished from two years of siege and safe territory was many miles away.  Few made it.  Those who did not were rounded up along with the others and shot, and their bodies bulldozed into mass graves.

The Srebrenica Memoial Centre at Potočari, opened in 2003

There is little wonder that the horrific events of those days in July still stir passions in a country that remains divided by memories of a war that irreparably destroyed communities.  It is unclear whether the relatives of the victims will ever find closure, even if all the missing bodies are found and Mladić, currently awaiting trial in The Hague, is finally convicted for the crime.  Any such closure, however, is unlikely to be reached until there is acceptance on all sides that the massacre did happen, that it was awful, and that reconciliation is possible.  Twenty years on, there is a new generation of Bosnians coming of age who were born after the war ended.  They are the country’s best chance of fighting the tired propaganda, shaking off the divisions of the past and looking towards a more hopeful future.

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.