Research Team 6 : the Safe Areas
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Research Team 6 : The Safe Areas Charles Ingrao, team leader Darko Gavrilović, team leader Vlado Azinoviƒ Raphael Draschtak Dunja Mel…iƒ Victor Bezrouchenko Mark Etherington Lara Nettelfield Nejra „engiƒ Jan Willem Honig Toni Petkoviƒ Nerzuk „urak Nataša Kandiƒ Benjamin Rusek Robert Donia Selma Leydesdorff Mirsad Tokača Robert DeGraaff Dubravko Lovrenoviƒ Tatjana Tubiƒ Cees Wiebes The Safe Areas Charles Ingrao1 The battle lines between the Bosnian Serbs and their opponents have not changed much since the creation of the six “Safe Areas” in the spring of 1993. The controversy over the wartime events in and around Bihaƒ, Gorañde, Sarajevo, Srebrenica, Tuzla and ðepa still divides the Bosnian-Serbs and their supporters from those of the Bosnian government and the bulk of the international community -- except, perhaps, that it is the Bosnian-Serbs who are on the defensive, whether in the accounts of scholars and journalists, or in testimony given at The Hague Tribunal. Then as now, the prevailing discourse represents the Safe Areas’ civilian populations as victims of the international community’s lack of political will as they were subjected to a succession of barbaric acts that culminated in the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres. For their part, the Bosnian-Serb military (VRS) and its apologists have generally denied the worst and most politically pivotal atrocities, while claiming that their legitimate military operations were not only resisted by the Bosnian military (ARBiH), but were handicapped by one-sided UN resolutions, NATO interventions, and media scrutiny. Moreover, a number of credible UN officials have accused Bosnian government garrisons of deliberately provoking counterfire from VRS besiegers onto civilian targets in Sarajevo.2 The VRS saw its offensives as a justified response to the general security problems in their rear caused by the significant ARBiH presence in the Safe Areas. It is in this vein that this report will endeavor to be sensitive to the tactical dilemmas that the international community’s actions presented to the Serb forces, even as it identifies crimes that they committed, oftentimes out of all proportion to the initial provocation and in disregard of the rules of war. At the same time, the evidence suggests that UN Security Council “unilateralism” -- however ineffective it may have been in protecting the Safe Areas -- was dictated by fear of a repetition of massive human rights violations 1 This report incorporates several interviews conducted by co-leader Darko Gavriloviƒ, and individual research contributed by Robert Donia, Benjamin Rusek and Cees Wiebes for Sarajevo, Victor Bezrouchenko for ðepa, and Robert DeGraaf for Srebrenica. 2 Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (London, 1996), 136. Most recently, former UN Civil an Political Office David Harland, “UN Official Says Serbian Support Made Sarajevo Siege Possible,” ICTY: MiloÓeviƒ Trial, 5 November 2003. Council for International Justice <www.cij.org>." Harland also characterized Sir Michael Rose's claim that the ARBiH fired a mortar from near Sarajevo’s KoÓevo Hospital as "an accurate statement of what was going on." 2 like those committed by Serb forces during ethnic cleansing operations in Croatia (1991) and Bosnia (1992), but not by a serious attempt to impose a comprehensive program that would require a sustained investment of UN-mandated military resources. I. ORIGINS The Safe Areas were created in 1993 in response to a humanitarian crises that attended the siege of each city as its indigenous population was multiplied by thousands of refugees who had fled or been expelled by advancing VRS and other Serb forces. International observers within the besieged cities feared massive civilian casualties from hostile fire, starvation and disease. They were no less apprehensive at the prospect that the fall of one or more cities would repeat on an even larger scale the resort to “ethnic cleansing” that had attended Serb advances elsewhere in Bosnia. Under the intense glare of media publicity, there prevailed a widespread feeling among foreign leaders and their UN representatives that the international community needed to at least appear to “do something” to ward off the impending human catastrophe. By the spring of 1993 Lord Owen was not alone in contemplating the advantage of “leveling the playing field” somewhat by bombing VRS forces into relaxing or lifting the sieges.3 A less intrusive solution surfaced in March 1993, following UN General Philippe Morillon’s visit to Srebrenica. In an attempt to reassure the mass of residents and refugees who had blocked his departure from the city, he first pledged not to leave the city until humanitarian aid had been delivered, then negotiated a cease-fire with VRS commander Ratko Mladiƒ.4 As an additional guarantee to the city’s estimated 35,000 residents and refugees, he announced that he was placing them under UN protection, an unauthorized pledge that surprised UN officials, which they reluctantly endeavored to fulfill by sending a small detachment of Canadian troops to Srebrenica. Morillon’s demarche seconded efforts by the ICRC’s Cornelio Sommaruga to persuade the UN to create a series of “protected zones” in default of any international sentiment to offer Bosnia’s refugees sanctuary abroad.5 The concept received an additional boost from several “non-aligned” UN member states, most notably Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock, and Venezuela’s Security Council representative, Diego Arria, who visited Srebrenica a few weeks later. By 16 April, with the town’s fall seemingly imminent, UNSC Resolution 819 affirmed Srebrenica’s status as a UN- protected Safe Area, which it based on the 1948 Convention against Genocide. Indeed, the text dwelt at length on a string of violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) by Serb “paramilitaries” which it accused of attacking and forcibly expelling “innocent civilian populations”, while harassing and interdicting UN humanitarian relief efforts. Three weeks later UNSC Resolution 824 (6 May 1993) extended UN protection to Bihaƒ, Gorañde, Sarajevo, Tuzla and ðepa while demanding that the aforementioned “paramilitaries” cease hostilities and withdraw to a point at which they no longer 6 constituted a “menace” to civilians. 3 Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 141. 4Honig & Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime, 86, 91-92. 5 Ibid., 99; Owen, Balkan Odyssey (New York, 1995), 68. 6 Daniel Bethlehem and Mark Weller, eds., The “Yugoslav” Crisis in International Law: General Issues [Cambridge International Documents Series, 5 (Cambridge, 1997)], 35-36, 40-1. 3 The establishment of the six Bosnian Safe Areas coincided with other initiatives advocated in the spring of 1993 by Britain, France, Russia, Spain and the USA, whose “Joint Action Program” led to the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, or ICTY (25 May) and the passage of UNSC Resolution 836 (4 June) authorizing the use of armed force to protect the Safe Areas. Significantly, the resolution characterized Bosnian-Serb “military attacks” as a violation of Bosnia’s sovereignty, thereby implying that this was not a domestic conflict or “civil war” being waged solely by indigenous “paramilitaries” but an international one that afforded greater protection, both to UN member Bosnia against foreign attack (whether from Rump Yugoslavia or Croatia) and to its civilian population, who would now be covered by the broader umbrella of the 1977 Additional Protocol I for International Humanitarian Law (IHL); less clear was the authorization for UNProFor to “deter” and “respond” to attacks on the Safe Areas, which was left open to various interpretations that reflected the political courage of the interpreters.7 From the beginning, the five-power Joint Action Program and the UNSC Resolutions manifested a lack of political will that seriously degraded the Safe Areas as an effective instrument for the protection of Bosnia’s civilian population. Despite the President George H.W. Bush’s appeal to a New World Order and President Clinton’s own rhetoric of universalism, the fact remained that at least four of the Security Council’s permanent members were primarily motivated by their perception of what best served their national interest. Russia and its people were openly sympathetic to the militarily ascendant Bosnian Serbs and worked behind the scenes to limit UN intervention, while the other European powers had little interest in Bosnia aside from concern for the safety of their soldiers serving with UNProFor.8 Despite its strident rhetoric in support of Bosnia’s civilian population and its repeated calls for robust military countermeasures -- preferably delivered from 35,000 feet (most notably “Lift and Strike”) -- the USA was unwilling to put a single US soldier in harm’s way. In the words of one senior US diplomat, Washington’s policy throughout the Yugoslav conflicts was to “do the least, and hope for the best.”9 Venezuela’s Diego Arria put it best by concluding that “we see that one country can indeed abuse another so long as it is careful not to threaten or jeopardize the strategic interests of the international community.” Indeed, it was no coincidence that the non-aligned, non-permanent members of the Security Council pushed the hardest to guarantee that the besieged cities would truly become “protected areas” and were critical of the Safe Area resolutions because they did not go far enough to guarantee a solution to the unfolding humanitarian crisis and would, at best, confirm the fait accompli of “ethnic cleansing”.10 After all, countries like Cape Verde, Djibouti, Morocco, New Zealand, Pakistan and Venezuela had nothing at stake in Bosnia, which afforded them the luxury of basing their positions primarily on humanitarian considerations 7 Such as NATO’s Atlantic Council (which authorized responses only to attacks on UNProFor, but not civilians), UNProFor Gen. Michael Rose (who deemed “deter” insufficient to justify retaliation), and his successor Gen. Rupert Smith (who authorized retaliation for attacks on civilians as well as UN Personnel).