UN Peacekeeping: Bosnia 1992-5

The 1992-1995 Bosnian War was initiated after the breakup of Yugoslavia. The Slovenian and Croatians seceded from Yugoslavia in 1991 and the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina also tried to pass a referendum for independence but was rejected (boycotted) by the Bosnian Serbs who desired their own republic. They received support from the Serbian government of Slobodan Milosevic and the Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) and the sporadic fighting then turned into an all out war, crossing the newly created international borders. Bosnia has long been a multi ethnic territory, inhabited by Muslims (44%), Orthodox Serbs (31%) and Catholic Croats (17%). The conflict could be described as a territorial conflict but is was largely an ethnic cleansing forcing all non-Serb, mostly Muslim, populations out of Bosnia. The human rights abuses were many including ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass rape and psychological oppression. The most recent research places the number of people killed in the Bosnian War at around 100,000–110,000 and the number of people displaced at over 2.2 million. This makes the Bosnian War the most devastating conflict in Europe since WW2. Estimates of the numbers raped range from 20,000 to 50,000 and for the first time in history, sexual violence, on its own, was not just considered a crime against humanity but led to its first conviction. Understanding the UN’s role in the Bosnian conflict necessitates the context of the peacekeeping missions that came before, most notably in Somalia and Rwanda. I highly suggest you read the previous posts about those conflicts before reading on.

Many blamed the UN and specifically the DPKO for the failures. Kofi Annan however, says to the contrary, “The limits on our resources, the extreme reluctance of troop contributors to take risks with their troops, and, above all, the profound division over policy and strategic direction that often existed among members of the Security Council were often conveniently forgotten when apportioning responsibility for what was routinely referred to in those years as the ‘crisis in UN peacekeeping’” (60). Understanding the climate of international governance and how Rwanda and Somalia shaped UN peacekeeping efforts is critical to understand the evolution of UN involvement in Bosnia.

In February 1992, after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, at the end of the Cold War, the Security Council approved the deployment of UN peacekeeping troops (UNPROFOR) to oversee the confrontation between Serbian and Croatian forces. After full-scale war broke out in April 1992, the conflictt proved to be largely one sided. Serb militias and paramilitary forces, with help from the Yugoslav army, displaced around 1 million people from their homes. All non-Serbs were forcibly removed even from areas where they constituted a majority population. Pressure slowly began to build on the international community to “do something.” Boutrous-Ghali however was quite reluctant to add another peacekeeping mission in the Balkan territories. In May of 1992, Marrack Goulding was sent on a fact-finding mission to better assess the escalating situation. Goulding reported on the conflict and noted that they were attempting to create “ethnically pure” regions through any means necessary. Although, he ultimately concluded, “in its present phase this conflict is not susceptible to UN peacekeeping treatment” (62). As time went on, the barbarity and human rights violations continued without any international witness. Nonetheless, reporting on the conflict eventually began to reach the community of nations. The images evoked familiar sentiments to the WW2 era, further adding to the pressure for the international community to “do something.”

In June 1992, UNPROFOR assumed control of the Sarajevo airport and used it as a hub for humanitarian assistance to the population. Later that year, in September, the Security Council approved an increase to UNPROFORs strength in order to protect convoys delivering humanitarian aid. However, “doing something” at this stage still did not involve engaging in combat. Many, including the US and Germany, began to debate the validity of the traditional nonconfrontational peacekeeping norm. Many began to call for engaging in combat through air power, which would keep risks for troops on the ground at a minimum. Although there were around 40,00 troops across Bosnia, they were lightly equipped, widely dispersed, vulnerable and still reliant on the consent of all involved parties to carry out their tasks.

There were three major purposes of the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia. First, deliver food and medicine, which involved protection of other humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross as well as protection for convoys. Second, to “contain the conflict and mitigate its consequences as far as possible, making sure it did not spread…” (64). This also involved enacting various constraints such as no-fly zones and weapon-exclusion zones. Third, attempt to reach a peaceful settlement to the conflict including local cease-fire agreements. Annan says, “while these were all important goals, they did not constitute a clear political objective for the UN mission” (65). The peacekeepers were simply not there to end the war.

In 1993, the city of Srebrenica was filled with upwards of sixty thousand Muslim refugees. Bosnian Serb forces targeted the town and began to lay siege with daily bombardments. This action necessitated a strict reaction from the UN.  In response the Security Council demanded that Srebrenica be considered a “safe zone” as well as other threatened towns such as Zepa, Gorazde, Bihac, Tuzla and Sarajevo. However, this did no more than provide a temporary respite. UN forces, already stretched thin, were beginning to be widely recognized as grossly inadequate and Kofi Annan knew that the attainment of more troops would be near impossible. No cosponsors, including the US, France, the UK, Russia and Spain, were willing to increase their troop presence. Nor were they willing to even redeploy existing troops to the newly established safe areas for their protection. General Maurice Baril then gave a presentation to the Council calling for an additional 32,000 troops to implement the safe areas concept. Cosponsors reacted with anger accusing the DPKO of “incompetence” and “failing to properly conduct their duties.” Their preference was still the “light and minimum” option drawn up by France that called for a force of only 5,000 troops.  

These deep divisions in the Security Council outlined not just the differences in opinion on the nature of the conflict but also the means of appropriate action. The main area of disagreement was in the use of air power to engage militarily. By spring of 1995, cease-fires were failing and the conflict was intensifying. The need for more direct intervention in the conflict began to be more widely acknowledged. NATO forces began performing targeted air strikes around Sarajevo but in retaliation, Serb forces illustrated the vulnerability of UN troops by capturing and holding hostage 400 UN personnel. Their tactic worked and air strikes immediately ceased.

After three years of UNPROFOR presence, the conflict not only continued but also worsened. UN forces were continuously “obstructed, targeted, denied resupply, and restricted in our movements” (70). In July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica. Thousands of Muslim Bosnian men and boys were immediately executed. The exact figure of the murdered is still unknown. As a reaction, UN forces began to solidify their positions with concentrated troop density and better-defended positions. The Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) was created with seven thousand British, French and Dutch troops and heavy artillery. NATO air power was again authorized and threats were given to the Serbs that if they attacked safe zones there would be continued NATO air strikes. The Serbs saw this as a bluff. And continued to operate on the assumption that if attacked, the UN presence would wilt and withdraw.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was a mortar strike on Sarajevo in August. It targeted one of the cities main markets, where people were lined up for bread. Thirty-nine people were killed. On the first night alone, over one hundred aircrafts from the US, the UK, France, Spain and the Netherlands destroyed 24 targets, including strikes near the Serb headquarters in Pale. Jets were attacking “arms depots, command and control centers, artillery positions and surface-to-air missile batteries” (72). But most importantly, UN troops were now in well-defended and concentrated positions preventing fear of reprisal and hostage taking. This was called Operations Deliberate Force and it broke the hold of the Bosnian Serbs. This action required the Security Council to take sides, to actively embrace war over peacekeeping. The Serbs who once controlled in between 70-80% of the territory were forced to negotiate. The Dayton Accords were born and they effectively ended the war in Bosnia. The peace has continued to hold.

After these three failures of Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia, it was clear that reform to the UN peacekeeping process was needed. Kofi Annan wanted to acknowledge, with complete honesty, the recent history of failure. Any successful reform he said, needed to come from such honesty. The Brahimi Report released in August 2000 was his contribution. The report needed to address the inherent shortcomings in UN peacekeeping, particularly in civil war scenarios, as they are the most common form of conflict in the world today. As Annan said, “Almost all peacekeeping operations since 1992 have been deployed to conflicts that cannot be readily categorized as between countries, and there are now, at the time of writing, almost 100 thousand uniformed personnel serving on sixteen such operations” (78).

Nonetheless, the consent of belligerent parties, impartiality and the use of force only in self-defense had to remain the “bedrock of peacekeeping.” Annan suggested however, that peacekeepers needed more viable means for self-defense, that any self-sustaining peace must to be continued through long-term development efforts. The bureaucracy of the Secretariat, Security Council and troop-contributing governments needed significant improvement: clearer communication and cohesive coordination with decision-making. Most importantly, Annan says, member states could no longer use the deployment of forces as a “fig leaf designed to conceal their unwillingness to intervene with the true commitment necessary, as a means of appeasing demands for forceful humanitarian intervention” (77).

The Brahimi Report, perhaps more importantly, outlines a larger issue, which Annan calls “complicity with evil.” How can the UN, mandated with peacekeeping and the protection of civilians, merely watch the murder, rape and brutalization of civilians without taking any action? Annan’s intent is to show that UN peacekeepers, when they witness such violence against civilians, must have the authority to stop it. He elaborates,

Evil in civil war zones occurs due to the will of the conflict protagonists, which must be rounded upon, confronted, and stopped – through force if necessary. But while I was serving as secretary general, there were many in the international community, in diplomatic missions, and in capitol cities around the world, who clung to a vision of the UN Charter that, in their view, said that the use of such force was unacceptable…this left me with what would become my greatest challenge as secretary general: creating a new understanding of the legitimacy, and necessity, of intervention in the face of gross violations of human rights” (78-9).

In the next few blog posts I will discuss Annan’s views on sovereignty and human rights, focusing on East Timor, Kosovo and Darfur. 

UN Peacekeeping: Rwanda 1994

Prior to the 1994 genocide, Rwanda has had ethnic power struggles for some time, between the Tutsi minority (who occupied a privileged position in the colonial administration before independence) and the Hutu majority. The former Tutsi dominance of the colonial era gave way to Hutu dominance through a violent power struggle following independence from Belgium in 1962. After independence many remained fearful of a Tutsi return to power. 

In 1990 the predominantly Tutsi Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF) launched an assault from Uganda against the Hutu dominated government of President Juvenal Habyarimana. In February 1993, the RPF launched its largest offensive and came within 15 miles of Kigali, the Rwandan capital city. Under pressure from France, Belgium and the US, the RPF and the Rwandan government entered negotiations to end the conflict. This resulted in the Arusha Accords, signed in August of 1993. The accords established a power sharing democratic government that represented both sides and a unified army composed of both sides. As part of this agreement, a neutral UN force was to be deployed to uphold the deal.

Although there was much resistance to sending a peacekeeping force to Rwanda, the UN Assistance Mission in Rwanda was created (UNAMIR). The vote to approve UNAMIR happened just days after the Somalian catastrophe. The US was insistent on rejecting any situation that might put their troops in a potentially forceful situation. Domestically, the US also had an agenda for reducing the budget for UN peacekeeping missions. In 1994, the US rejected a proposed peacekeeping contingency fund that would allow for the US to provide emergency financing for rapid peacekeeping efforts. The US was becoming more and more isolationist in its foreign policy altogether. They still owed around “$900 million in unpaid contributions to the regular UN budget and its peacekeeping expenses” (50). Congress had “refused to approve [these contributions] despite the legal obligation as a UN member state” (50). However, this is another topic that I’ll hopefully write about in another post. As a result, the US first argued to send only 100 troops for UNAMIR. 8,000 were requested, with a 5,000 troop minimum requirement. The US sent 2,500.

The international community was somewhat ignorant of Rwanda and its history. There was awareness of a history of ethnic conflict and also in neighboring Burundi. However, UNAMIR was cast off with an air of optimism. It seemed like much safer ground than Somalia. However, the UN troop deployment got off to a rocky start. By December 1993, it was clear that the forces were “totally inadequate.” No troop contributing country had been willing to supply a self-contained 800-man infantry battalion. This was considered an essential force for the capital city of Kigali. Instead two battalions were given, one from Belgium consisting of 398 men and the other from Bangladesh consisting of 370 men (of which only 266 arrived). UNAMIR was meant to have 22 armored personnel carriers and eight helicopters yet no country was willing to provide them, which meant a lack of deterrent capability, and a reserve mobile force. Engineers and logisticians were reassigned as infantry due to this lack. The carrier vehicles that were provided were completely “dilapidated”, and only five were serviceable. They often broke down and had to be towed by other carriers. This was an embarrassment. The potential for a disaster started to become much clearer and fear grew of a repeat of Somalia but with a considerably smaller military presence, and without “any possibility of reinforcement” (53).

Romeo Dallaire, the force commander of UNAMIR, in January of 1994 wrote to the DPKO detailing the growing crisis. Later in April, from his car, he witnessed two Belgian peacekeeping troops being held and beaten. He could do nothing but negotiate. He said, “I just can’t get those guys out of there. I just don’t have the forces.” In response, the DPKO told Dallaire to pressure President Habyarimana, that if violence did occur that the Security Council would take action. This was meant to convey the impression that powerful nations could bring serious repercussions upon Rwanda.

In April 1994, a plane with President Habyarimana and President Cyprien Ntaryamire of Burundi was shot down. Everyone was killed. The Hutu government initiated violence. They blamed the RPF and the Tutsis for the attack. The following day, the ten Belgian troops assigned to protect the Prime Minister of Rwanda were captured. They were ordered to lay down their weapons and not engage in combat by their commander Luc Marchal. The prime minister was then assassinated and the troops murdered and mutilated. Massacres began to spread beyond the capitol. Civilians were being killed in the open by government troops, militias and bands of Hutu civilians.

Any collapse on the Arusha Accords would result in the termination of UNAMIR, and the Rwandan government knew this. Shortly after the violence began, a senior Rwandan official spoke of a plan to kill the Belgian peacekeepers. He said, “We watch CNN too, you know,” This was referring to the Somalian crisis. He knew that if UN troops were attacked and killed, the troop-contributing countries would pull the rest of their forces out. He was correct. Five days later the Belgian government pulled its troops out of Rwanda. This was the core fighting force of UNAMIR. It effectively gutted UNAMIR of any clout. By April 27^th 1994, the Security Council voted to bring the UNAMIR force down to only 270 troops. There was simply no interest in becoming involved. Bob Dole effectively portrayed this perspective saying, “I don’t think we have any national interest here. I hope we don’t get involved…the Americans (US citizens in Rwanda) are out. As far as I’m concerned, in Rwanda that ought to be the end of it” (58).

Secretary General Boutros-Ghali pushed for a major military intervention but it was unanimously rejected. The Security Council took no responsibility for the worsening situation in Rwanda and continuously denied the fact that it was genocide. At this point an estimated 200,000 people had been killed. 250,000 more people had escaped into Tanzania, the largest mass exodus of refugees ever witnessed by the UN. Eventually, on May 17^th, the council reestablished UNAMIR calling it UNAMIR II and called for a force of 5,500. However, once again, no one was willing to provide these troops. Annan said,

At DPKO, we spent endless days frantically lobbying more than a hundred governments around the world for troops. I called dozens myself, and the responses were all the same. We did not receive a single serious offer. It was one of the most shocking and deeply formative experiences of my entire career, laying bare the disjuncture between the public statement of alarm and concern for the suffering of other people on the one hand, and, on the other, the unwillingness to commit any of the necessary resources to take action. The world knew the scale of the killing in Rwanda, and yet we could not get anyone, from governments across the world, to do anything serious to help (59).

The genocide eventually ended due to the victory of the RPF. They overthrew the government in July but not before 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu’s had been murdered. 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in 100 days. A new government was established, and after this, troops were finally sent to UNAMIR II, well after the genocide and civil war was over. The lesson here, Annan says, is that the genocide and protection of citizens could have happened if there was the military capacity and political will. However, in 1994 “there was simply no culture or precedent in the international system of UN intervention in an internal conflict to use military force decisively to protect citizens” (59). Combined with the impact of Somalia, the result was inaction. 

How Islamist Are They?

I recently read an article called "How Islamist Are They?" in the Christian Science Monitor Weekly about the emerging constitutions in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia. It was written by Kristen Chick and John Thorne for the August 20-27 Edition. Here is a summary of their article:

Egypt, Tunisia and Libya are all in transition, writing new constitutions. All three countries are coming out of dictatorships that more often than not oppressed Muslims. These new constitutions will usher in a new era that will answer many questions about the role Islam will play in the governance of these countries, and for the region as a whole. Many are watching with a close eye to how these new governance structures will deal with civil rights, women’s rights and free speech. 

Balancing tradition Muslim values and western culture is not going to be an easy task in any of these countries. While in Tunisia, western culture may be more prominent due to their French roots, even those who call for an absence of Islam in their constitutions shy away from the term secular as it connotes a godlessness that is not easily embraced anywhere in the region. Many call for a strict interpretation of sharia and would seek to impose restrictions on a wide variety of behaviors such as drinking alcohol in public, outlawing offense to religion and gender segregation. Others call for a more liberal undertaking. Sharia not only means “Islamic Law” but is also a guide for personal life and behavior. There are many different interpretations on what it means and calls for, let alone how it should be incorporated into law and policy. So when groups say they will use it as a basis for lawmaking, it is difficult to say exactly what this means.

Tunisia:

The moderate Islamist party that leads the coalition government has explicitly stated that it will not cite sharia in its new constitution. This party, called Al Nahda, took 89 of 217 seats in parliament. The coalition government is power-sharing government, with two other non-Islamist parties. While Tunisia, in comparison to both Egypt and Libya seems to exhibit a more mild approach to the incorporation of Sharia into governance, there are still calls for its influence. For example, Al Nahda proposed a law that would “criminalize any offense toward core elements of Abrahamic faiths including God, the prophet Muhammed, and holy books.”

There have been several riots the past few years centered on art and films that were deemed blasphemous. Free speech is a new commodity in Tunisia. After five decades of religiously oppressive dictatorship, many are worried that a religiously driven government will erode this newly enjoyed enterprise of free speech.

Egypt:

There are two main parties in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) and the Nour Party. Nour came in second in the elections and was formed by the Salafis, the most conservative of Egypt’s Muslims. They call for similar policies to those of Saudi Arabia, such as strict gender segregation. The Nour Party has also called for harsh punishments such as chopping off the hands of thieves, and the banning of alcohol. However, there have been other, more liberal, proposals such as an attempt to make it easier for women to divorce. The FJP won nearly half of all parliament seats and are calling for a slow, gradual increase of the influence of Islam in society and in governance. FJP member Muhammed Morsi won the presidency and he has repeatedly stated he will implement sharia. The FJP even said that women and Christians couldn’t hold the office of president. They have also called for the creation of a council of clerics that will interpret whether or not a given law conforms to sharia. But which version of sharia is the question, and that will remain to be seen. Egypt, however, is the likely candidate for the nation that will have the most influence of Islam in government.

Libya:

Following suit with Egypt, Libya has agreed that, “sharia should be the basis for lawmaking.” However, despite their conservative leanings, the National Forces Coalition won the majority of votes in July’s elections. They have rejected both Islamist and secular labels and call for “problem solving over ideology.” Nonetheless, having Islam inform lawmaking is still considered natural. Chick and Thorne say, “The question is not whether to apply Islam in governance, but how.” Those who desire for Islam to be kept out of politics altogether are certainly the minority.

In all three countries, these new constitutions will open a dialog that will give the people the ability to experiment and evolve a governance structure of their own. We will eagerly keep watch and see how this pans out.