Global Policy Forum

By John Keegan

The West needs all the help it can get in the world's trouble spots. The task is difficult enough even when it has a clear role, a strong chain of command from a single-minded authority and ready access to superior firepower, as the American and British troops do in Afghanistan. Without those things, playing policeman may turn from a thankless game into a tragedy. That is the story of Srebrenica.

Srebrenica is the Bosnian town where in July, 1995, the Muslim male population, swollen by refugees from outlying districts, was massacred by the Bosnian Serb army. About 7,000 were killed. The killings took place despite the presence of a Dutch battalion of UNPROFOR, the UN peacekeeping force. The massacre outraged Western opinion and horrified the Dutch population. With great honesty, the Dutch defence ministry has just published the report of an exhaustive inquiry into how and why the atrocity happened. Srebrenica became a refuge for Muslims early in the Bosnian war, but the descent into tragedy began in March, 1993, with a visit by the UN commander, the French General Morillon. He was effectively taken hostage by the inhabitants and, to secure his release, announced that Srebrenica would become a safe area under UN protection. This was an unwise move, since the town had recently been evacuated by the UN Canadian battalion on the ground that it was indefensible.

The Dutch government put itself in the forefront of the protest that resulted and, when no other state would provide a stop-gap force, was obliged, in the words of the report, to practise what it preached. A battalion of the Dutch air portable brigade was sent, to be relieved by another and then a third, Dutchbat III, which was holding the fort in 1995.

The fort was not strongly held. For one thing, the Bosnian Muslim army continued to operate around Srebrenica, to the Serbs' fury. Second, Dutchbat III was a battalion only in name, deploying no more than 200 men. Inexplicably, the Dutch government and army also refused to make use of surveillance equipment offered by the Americans or properly to debrief the Canadians.

Dutchbat III operated, moreover, on the principle that its presence alone was enough to deter trouble. It had apparently no detailed plan to protect the population, certainly not to fight or to invoke outside military assistance, such as air cover.

In May, 1995, the situation around Srebrenica deteriorated sharply. The Serbs, under General Ratko Mladic, decided to reduce the size of the safe area. By early July, they were in a position to capture it, and did so. Dutchbat III found itself cut off from the rest of UNPROFOR and was confined to a compound in a village outside Srebrenica.

When Mladic sent buses to evacuate the population, Dutchbat III did not interfere, even when the Serbs began to separate the men from the women and children, a well known preliminary to killings. The Dutch commander accepted Mladic's explanation that he was screening the captives for war criminals, while the Dutch soldiers had become fearful for their own safety. In Zagreb, UNPROFOR headquarters, the French General Janvier shrank from ordering air strikes.

In the next few days, the Muslim male population disappeared. It is not true that large-scale killings took place under Dutch eyes. Nevertheless, the Serb army went systematically about the business of massacre. There was evidence of a gathering atrocity had the Dutch looked for it.

When word of the atrocity emerged, as it shortly did, the credibility of the UN's efforts to keep the peace in former Yugoslavia virtually collapsed. In Holland, the inactivity of Dutchbat III caused a national scandal. The army had been anxious to deploy Dutchbat to demonstrate the success of its current reorganization program. Srebrenica demonstrated exactly the opposite.

What should be learnt from this? It is important not to heap blame on the Dutch. The Dutch government, army and Dutchbat itself do deserve a measure of blame, but culpability spreads wider. The UN was hampered by a disagreement at the highest level between participating governments. America was committed to a policy of "lift and strike." It wished to lift an embargo on supplying arms to the Muslims, whom it favoured, and was keen to use air power against the Serbs.

For reasons still understandable, other governments thought that feeding arms into the country would only intensify the conflict, while they would not support air strikes against the Serbs alone. In the end, by supplying arms and training to the Croats, the Americans got the better of the Serbs. Much later, by bombing Serbia during the Kosovo war, they broke Serbian power altogether.

The process, we can now see, took much too long. With hindsight, Srebrenica could have been avoided had Dutchbat been made larger, given heavier equipment and guaranteed air support and, above all, instructed to fight in prosecution of its mission.

Successful peacekeeping requires a mixture of force and diplomacy, in carefully regulated proportions. Some armies know the technique. Others do not. The Dutch report is a warning against ever repeating the UN experiment in former Yugoslavia. The UN made every mistake. It had no clear mission, except the vague belief "deterrence by presence." It had no unified political direction. It had no clear chain of command. It employed too many contingents, of quality varying from excellent to execrable, from too many armies. It ultimately shrank from the use of force, in the face of peace-breakers who used force freely and criminally. Peacekeepers have to be tough and efficient, as well as high-minded: that is the ultimate lesson of Srebrenica.