All things Srebrenica (merged multi-thread)

[George Wallace]

Or they've finally learned from their mistakes - if they say they're there to protect someone, maybe they're finally willing to back that up?

But you're right - they are out of sight and mind there in Congo right now.

MM

And let the African Union handle their own affairs.

 

[medicineman]

And let the African Union handle their own affairs.

Amen to that.

 

[pbi]

I think that the issue lies with the lack of testicular fortitude on the part of UN to give (and back up) robust ROE to actually enforce the mandates of UNPROFOR such as they were.  The constraints put on units to ensure they didn't have a lot of teeth so as not to look like an invading/occupying force hamstrung any unit that might be forced to lock horns with any of the factions of bad guys out there for longer than about 30 seconds.  I know that when I was in Croatia, we were told we'd have to be prepared to defend the Zone of Separation we were supposed to patrol - a section house had an APC with .50 cal,  a C6 with SF kit , a Carl G, a 60mm mortar and a section complement of C7's and 9's.  Each dude had (IIRC) about 300 rounds for a C7 or 2 boxes for a C-9, the .50 had 2-300 rounds, the C6 500 rounds, 6 WP rounds for the mortar and 4 RAP rounds for the Carl G and a couple of M72's - most guys figured the bad guys would make contact, duke it out until rounds stopped and then carry on through about a minute or two after it all started, since they'd be done.  If our TUA's got in on it, might last a few more minutes.  The Dutchies in Srebrenica were light infantry IIRC with little or no anti-armour capabilities - the Serbs had tanks and APC's and a lot more men than the Dutch had ammo in all likelihood.

The UN is all about optics - the asshats in NYC don't give a flying rat's arse about the people at the pointy end of things on UN ops.  My ROE for UNPROFOR fan folded out to about 8 x 4" and was double sided - imagine trying to run through your what if's with BS like that.  By the time you get past "Stop or I'll say Stop Again" and "Stop or I'll have to consider cocking my weapon in a menacing manner", you could only hope the bad guy/s have died of laughter, because you'd be a dead man if they didn't.  Give poorly equipped troops, that are not well led or disciplined, a mission with muddy mandates and piss poor ROE that are utterly confusing to an educated person, I'd say they're most likely to hunker down and look out for number one and let the baddies drive on by and do what baddies do.

I glumly note that the UN weren't held responsible - when in fact, it was their mandates and over the top ROE, along with underwhelming rules regarding weapons, that failed those soldiers and ultimately, the citizens of Srebrenica. 

My somewhat myopic/bitter :2c: for what it's worth.

MM

Medman: I was in Croatia in 94: your description of the situation is very familiar. I was OC C Coy/1PP, responsible for the ZOS from  Zemunik Crossing in the NW to Pristeg in the SE. Our direction from the UN was clear: we were to defend the ZOS (and UNPA)  from a military incursion. Although the UN didn't name a side as being the one we were "protecting" against, the military reality on the ground was quite clear that the threat was the Croatian HV, not the raggedy-ass SVK. And, as events proved with OP STORM the following year, this was true.

Although we had pretty liberal ROE for the time and place (we didn't have to wait to be shot at, nor did we have to fire warning shots if lives were in danger), we realized two things pretty early on. First,  Canada violently disagreed with the UN mission statement (no doubt fearing another Medak...) and made this very clear to the CO after we did OP SAMSON, a  show of force op directed at the Croats. In other words,  if we followed UN direction we might not be backed up by our own Govt and legal system.

Second, we realized that even though we were by far the best -armed, -equipped and -trained UN contingent in Croatia, there was a severe limit to how long we could hold out against a concerted Croat offensive. Although we had 81mm mors, TUA and .50 cals, we had no artillery, no tanks and no air. We had no dedicated medical support beyond the UMS and no Cdn CASEVAC lift. We were dispersed along nearly 70km of line in section-size OPs that in some cases couldn't see each other. The Bn reserve was a partial rifle coy in old M113s: it would have taken ages for it to get anywhere.

After quite a bit of to-ing and fro-ing both within the Bn leadership and with NDHQ, we adopted the limited self defence stance that, AFAIK, prevailed right up until OP STORM in 1995 which effectively ended the UN mission by force. But, even with that limitation, we protected Serb farmers working in the ZOS by putting our patrols in between them and the HV/HVO positions, and explaining to the Croats that if they fired on the farmers, we would take that as an attack on us and react in self defence with all available weapon systems (which was within our ROE to do: we were not restricted to personal weapons).

My feeling from the soldiers in C Coy was that while they were always willing to take reasonable risks (and they did, often...), they were not prepared to take near-suicidal risks in a poorly conceived and unsupported UN operation. The change to a more restrained Use of Force policy was, I thought, well received.

So, I guess all this is a round about way to say a couple of things:

-you are ultimately bound by your national ROE, not by the UN ROE. You are under Canadian FULCOM, but at best only under UN OPCON (IIRC). Just blaming the UN may not be the answer in the Srebenica case: what were the NL ROE?; and

-you may take risk on UN missions, but you still have to think about your troops. Who is coming to pull you out if you get into the sh*t with a small, lightly armed force? Yes, if it had been 1 PPCLI at Srebenica, with all our kit and our stronger ROE, the result might have been different.

I know that these two points seem to conflict with each other, but I guess I'm trying to point out that these UN missions can present commanders with hellish dilemmas between what the UN says, what your government says, and what you believe is right. My own gut feeling is that it can never be wrong to stop the slaughter of unarmed and non-combatant people when it is happening right in front of your position, if you have a chance to do it. That is what Jim Calvin did at Medak.

 

[Cloud Cover]

So, I guess all this is a round about way to say a couple of things:

-you are ultimately bound by your national ROE, not by the UN ROE. You are under Canadian FULCOM, but at best only under UN OPCON (IIRC). Just blaming the UN may not be the answer in the Srebenica case: what were the NL ROE?; and

-you may take risk on UN missions, but you still have to think about your troops. Who is coming to pull you out if you get into the **** with a small, lightly armed force? Yes, if it had been 1 PPCLI at Srebenica, with all our kit and our stronger ROE, the result might have been different.

"might" is the correct word indeed, and maybe it was lucky that the PP didn't have it's Jim Calvin moment in that particular spot. We will never know, because the Canadians were elsewhere at the time.  Adding to the above about limited quantities of ammunition, the Serbs and the Croats had access to UN radio frequencies, positions, maps, everything was pretty much compromised.  And, the Serbs had tanks, artillery, infiltrators in the town, and were not burdened with concern for civilians or the rules on engagement.     

 

[pbi]

"might" is the correct word indeed, and maybe it was lucky that the PP didn't have it's Jim Calvin moment in that particular spot. We will never know, because the Canadians were elsewhere at the time.  Adding to the above about limited quantities of ammunition, the Serbs and the Croats had access to UN radio frequencies, positions, maps, everything was pretty much compromised.  And, the Serbs had tanks, artillery, infiltrators in the town, and were not burdened with concern for civilians or the rules on engagement.   

I used "might" advisedly.

I'm also aware that Canada's track record in FRY had some blemishes on it, so we can't claim perfection.  My real point, I think, is that without knowing all the facts, it's hard to judge. It's fairly easy to say "what I would have done". A few questions that might be worth knowing the answers to would include:

-what was the morale situation in the NL unit?

-what was the leadership climate? Discipline level?; and

-how well trained were the troops, and what was their experience level?

Based on probabilities and common sense, I would expect a well-trained unit of long service professionals, armed and equipped to fight if needed, with a strong leadership framework of officers and veteran professional WOs/NCOs,  with more liberal ROE, to be more likely to have intervened. But, that is only an educated guess.

 

[Old Sweat]

Speaking with the double-based wisdom of hindsight and not having served in the FRY, perhaps the UN's most powerful weapon was the international media. Live world wide coverage from the area may well have deterred the Serbs from carrying out the massacre, but then maybe not.

 

[pbi]

Speaking with the double-based wisdom of hindsight and not having served in the FRY, perhaps the UN's most powerful weapon was the international media. Live world wide coverage from the area may well have deterred the Serbs from carrying out the massacre, but then maybe not.

One of the important things that Jim Calvin did at Medak was to quickly enlist the power of the media. He knew that the Croats, being very image-aware and far more media-savvy than the Serbs, would immediately feel pressure.

Canadian BGen Alain Forand, when he was the last commander of UN Sector South during the Croatian OP STORM offensive in 1995, asked in his after action report just where the world media was when the Croats were committing war crimes in the Krijena. He understood that if CNN had been there, some things might not have happened the way they did.

I'm not 100% sure that the "threat" of world media attention would have had the same effect on the Serbs. My dealings with Serb leadership in the Krijena in 1994 suggested to me that they were extremely suspicious of Western media, and didn't really understand how to use it. This was probably a reflection of two things: a very old-fashioned Communist view of Western media, and a paranoia caused by media coverage of the various atrocities that Serbs had in fact committed earlier in the war.

That said, probably better to have media there than not.

 

[daftandbarmy]

When Mujo Hrustanovic was transferred in 1997 to the Jezevac refugee camp in Bosnia, he thought he would stay for just a few months. That was what the government had told him. But more than two decades on, he is still there.

The 75-year-old shares a 30 sq metre apartment with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and their two children in one of the 50 white homes in in the camp built by international organisations near the city of Tuzla. Such apartments, intended as a temporary solution, have instead become a permanent home for hundreds of survivors of the genocide in Srebrenica, Europe’s worst atrocity since the second world war.

“They’ve abandoned us,” said Hrustanovic’s son Avdo, 25, who was only a few months old when his parents were forced to leave Srebrenica. “These people have shared with the international community all of their pain, and what have they received in return? A dilapidated home, forgotten by everyone and everything.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/17/theyve-abandoned-us-srebenica-survivors-still-living-in-camps

 

[Colin Parkinson]

They should claim that they are Palestinians.

 

[The Bread Guy]

PM apologizes for treatment during and after the mission - good to see (but not until after the courts said NLD was partly on the hook and a study telling the NLD govt they could have done a lot better on the file) -- from the NLD PM's speech (archived link)....

... Even 27 years later, some words have yet to be uttered. It is an oft-noted fact that the Srebrenica mission took place under a UN mandate. But that does not alter the Dutch state’s special responsibility for the circumstances in which you were deployed, the way you were treated upon your return and the lack of support given to Dutchbat III when it was wrongly subjected to so much public criticism. Today I apologise on behalf of the Dutch government to all the women and men of Dutchbat III. To all of you here and to those who are not with us today. With the greatest possible appreciation and respect for the way in which Dutchbat III kept on trying to do the right thing, under very difficult circumstances, even when that was really no longer possible ...

... and various MSM takes

Dutch government apologizes to Srebrenica peacekeepers | DW | 18.06.2022

During the 1992-95 Bosnia war, Dutch soldiers were sent to defend the enclave of Srebrenica. Many refugees were turned away from their base, and Bosnian Serb forces went on to massacre 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

www.dw.com

Dutch PM Apologizes To Srebrenica Veterans And 'People Who Can't Be Here Today'

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has apologized formally for the Netherlands' treatment of hundreds of its troops who served the Dutchbat III peacekeeping unit that failed to protect thousands of lives in the Bosniak enclave of Srebrenica 27 years ago.

www.rferl.org

Dutch government apologises to Srebrenica veterans

PM Mark Rutte said soldiers were underequipped to stop the murder of over 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

www.bbc.com

Dutch prime minister apologizes to Srebrenica peacekeepers

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch government formally apologized Saturday to soldiers who were sent as U.N. peacekeepers to defend the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica with insufficient firepower and manpower to keep the peace.

apnews.com

 

[Kat Stevens]

Nice sentiment, but a day late and a dollar short, IMO. I wonder how many self terminations can be laid at the feet of the Dutch gov for the treatment they received?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Necrothread bumped with the latest: about f@#$%^&*ng time, no?

UN approves resolution to commemorate the 1995 Srebrenica genocide annually over Serb opposition

The United Nations has approved a resolution establishing an annual day to commemorate the 1995 genocide of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs.

apnews.com

UN Recognition to Mark the Srebrenica Genocide Is Only the Beginning

Public and formal education will be needed to fulfill the resolution's purpose of ending genocide denial and preventing future atrocities.

www.justsecurity.org

UN designates annual day to commemorate Srebrenica genocide

Bosnian Serbs and Serbia intensely lobbied against the resolution

www.voanews.com

The UN info-machine's version

UN establishes International Day of reflection for Srebrenica genocide

The UN General Assembly on Thursday designated 11 July as the International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide in Srebrenica, in which at least 8,372 people were killed, thousands displaced and whole communities destroyed.

news.un.org

https://twitter.com/x/status/1793664738460860594