Darko Gavrilović, Team Leader Charles Ingrao, Team Leader Vlado Azinović Victor Bezruchenko Nejra Čengić Robert Donia Robert
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6 Darko Gavrilović, team leader Charles Ingrao, team leader Vlado Azinović Mark Etherington Lara Nettelfield Victor Bezruchenko Jan Willem Honig Toni Petković nejra čengić Selma Leydesdorff Benjamin Rusek Robert Donia Dubravko Lovrenović Mirsad Tokača Robert DeGraaff Dunja Melčić Tatjana Tubić Raphael Draschtak Cees Wiebes This chapter incorporates numerous interviews conducted by team co- leader Darko Gavrilović and individual research contributed by Robert Donia, Benjamin Rusek, and Cees Wiebes for Sarajevo and Tuzla, Victor Bezruchenko for žepa, and Robert DeGraaf for Srebrenica. Victor Bezru- chenko was recused from further team work after accepting a position with the ICTY. Text regarding mortar attacks in Sarajevo and Tuzla was based in part on Benjamin Rusek and Charles Ingrao, “The ‘Mortar Massacres’ Revisited” that appeared in Nationalities Papers 32/4 (December 2004), which was subsequently republished in Thomas emmert and Charles In- grao, eds., Conflict in Southeastern Europe at the End of the Twentieth Century: A Scholars’ Initiative (new York & london: Routledge, 2006). Dubravko lovrenović worked tirelessly to recruit Bosnian scholars during his tenure as team co-leader (2001-2003). The National Endow- ment for Democracy funded individual research by Darko Gavrilović, Toni Petković, and Mirsad Tokača’s Research & Documentation Center. The team also benefited from counsel and research material data provided by Directors Dr. Paul Richard Blum and the nederlands Instituut voor Oor- logsdocumentatie (nIOD), Dr. Smail čekić and the Institute for the Re- search of Crimes against Humanity & International law, and Dr. Kathryne Bomberger and the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP). We are also grateful to former Republika Srpska President Dragan čavić for making available to Dr. Gavrilović documentary evidence previously furnished to the ICTY. The report was adopted following project-wide review in January-February 2004. SAFE AREAS ◆ Charles Ingrao ◆ 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 con- troversy over the wartime events in and around Bihać, Goražde, Sarajevo, Sre- brenica, Tuzla, and Žepa 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 atroci- ties while claiming that their legitimate military operations not only were re- sisted by the Bosnian military (ARBiH) but were handicapped by one-sided UN resolutions, NATO interventions, and media scrutiny. Moreover, a number of UN officials have accused Bosnian government garrisons of deliberately provoking counterfire from VRS besiegers onto civilian targets in Sarajevo.1 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 dilem- mas 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 like those committed by Serb forces during ethnic cleansing operations in Croatia (1991) and Bosnia (1992) but not by a seri- ous attempt to impose a comprehensive program that would require a sustained investment of UN-mandated military resources. 203 ◆ 204 CHARLES INGRAO I. Origins The safe areas were created in 1993 in response to a humanitarian crisis 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 ci- vilian casualties from hostile fire, starvation, and disease. They were no less ap- prehensive 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 David Owen was not alone in contemplating the advantage of “leveling the playing field” some- what by bombing VRS forces into relaxing or lifting the sieges.2 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 Mladić.3 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; surprised UN officials reluctantly endeav- ored to fulfill the pledge by sending a small detachment of Canadian troops to Srebrenica. Morillon’s démarche seconded efforts by the ICRC’s Cornelio Sommaruga to persuade the UN to create a series of protected zones in default of any in- ternational sentiment to offer Bosnia’s refugees sanctuary abroad.4 The concept received an additional boost from several nonaligned 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 Con- vention against Genocide. Indeed, the text dwelt at length on a string of viola- tions 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 Bihać, Goražde, Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Žepa while demanding that the aforementioned paramilitar- ies cease hostilities and withdraw to a point at which they no longer constituted a menace to civilians.5 ◆ Safe Areas 205 The establishment of the six Bosnian safe areas coincided with other ini- tiatives advocated in the spring of 1993 by Britain, France, Russia, Spain, and the U.S., 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 politi- cal courage of the interpreters.6 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 President George H. W. Bush’s appeal to a New World Order and Presi- dent 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 be- hind the scenes to limit UN intervention, whereas the other European powers had little interest in Bosnia aside from concern for the safety of their soldiers serving with UNPROFOR.7 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 U.S. was unwill- ing to put a single U.S. soldier in harm’s way. In the words of one senior U.S. diplomat, Washington’s policy throughout the Yugoslav conflicts was to “do the least, and hope for the best.”8