Bosnian Serb Forces Turn UN Safe Havens into Prison Camps
Day 206
Thursday, 26 June, 2003
Bosnian Serb Forces Turn UN Safe Havens into Prison Camps
Day 206
Thursday, 26 June, 2003
To receive protected status, the safe havens had to be demilitarized. The theory was that the UN would then provide protection. In fact, not all arms were turned over, UN forces were wholly inadequate to protect anyone, including themselves, their mission was unclear, and Bosnian Serb forces blocked access to the enclaves while routinely shelling safe havens like Sarajevo and Gorazde.
Dr. Michael Williams opened the subject of the safe havens before the Court in the Milosevic trial. Dr. Williams was Director of Information for Yasushi Akashi, the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative to the former Yugoslavia, from February 1994 to April 1995. He testified that the Bosnian Serb forces practiced siege warfare against the enclaves, a military strategy hardly seen since the end of WWII. It involves surrounding a civilian population, preventing access to them and for them to the outside. The intentional targeting of civilian populations is a clear violation of international humanitarian law. Yet the Bosnian Serb leadership was unapologetic about it.
Dr. Williams testified that the Bosnian Serb forces obstructed and even attacked UN convoys attempting to bring humanitarian aid into the safe havens of Sarajevo, Gorazde and Tuzla. They shot at UN aircraft and even deliberately shot at the UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) Commander. A British soldier was killed, in addition to an unknown number of civilians. As a result of the siege, situations in the enclaves were dire. Civilians lacked food, medical supplies and other necessities. According to Dr. Williams, this was all part of official Bosniain Serb policy. Together with Mr. Akashi, he met often with the Bosnian Serb leadership. At almost every meeting, he said, Radovan Karadzic, President of the Republika Srpska, openly referred to interdiction of humanitarian deliveries, disruption of utilities and denial of medical facilities as legitimate acts of war. He apparently justified his position by the fact that the UN introduced economic sanctions against the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and the FRY later imposed sanctions against the RS for failing to accept a proposed peace plan. In a speech to the Bosnian Serb National Assembly in Pale, Karadzic threatened to cut off supplies to the civilian population of Sarajevo: “Even a bird will not fly through to them until the world lifts economic sanctions against the Serbs.”
Dr. Williams described the Bosnian Serb’s siege warfare as “quite exceptional” in the “brutality and rigor” by which it was implemented. The Bosnian Serb forces were not content to starve the enclaves, they carried on a campaign of shelling and sniping at civilians within the enclaves. While on a visit to Sarajevo, Dr. Williams witnessed a young girl shot by a sniper in what came to be known as “Sniper’s Alley.” It was determined that the shot came from a Serb-occupied building. When Dr. Williams met with General Ratko Mladic, head of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), to protest, Mladic replied, “We will always send two shells for every shell fired by the Muslims.”
Shortly after Dr. Williams arrived in Bosnia, in March 1994, the VRS attacked the safe haven of Gorazde. “I recall the events because I was closely involved in them in a fairly dramatic way,” he told the Court. “Serb tanks and artillery were firing directly into the safe area at civilian targets and at the building where UN officials were trying to take shelter.” In this instance, UN and NATO officials uncharacteristically authorized “close air support” and destroyed the Serbian command and control position.
The attack on Gorazde followed a ceasefire agreement between Croatia and Bosnia. In an April 13, 1994 cable to Kofi Annan, then head of the UN’s Peacekeeping office in New York, Dr. Williams’ boss, Mr. Akashi reported that he had confronted Milosevic about the attack on Gorazde, pointing out there was no evidence of a Muslim offensive that could have provoked the attack. Milosevic claimed that the Bosnian Serb attack was their response to the Washington/Croat/Muslim accord. Attacking civilians seemed to be the Bosnian Serbs’ favorite method of revenge.
As the attack continued, the UN Secretary General asked NATO to consider, as a matter of urgency, looking at the possibility of air strikes in any and all areas where Bosnian Serbs were involved in attacks on civilians. Around the same time, Kofi Annan cabled Mr. Akashi that Milosevic had instructed Mladic to stop the attacks. Milosevic reportedly did so after a meeting with the Russian Ambassador, who passed on the assurances to the UN. Dr. Williams told the Court, “There was no evidence that such instructions were given. The attack actually increased in ferocity in the coming days.”
The report apparently influenced Akashi’s position, however, as did the Secretary General’s attempt to involve NATO. The witness said Akashi feared NATO involvement would escalate and broaden the conflict, possibly bringing Serbia into it. In a meeting with his senior staff, Akashi announced his intention to fly to Belgrade to ask Milosevic to force the Bosnian Serbs into a ceasefire. Unusually, Dr. Williams testified, a number of the staff “contested his view,” because prior ceasefires had only resulted in more intensive assaults. In the end, Akashi held his position and Dr. Williams and other staff accompanied him to Belgrade.
They met in Milosevic’s office with 10 or 12 of the Bosnian Serb leaders. Milosevic, who presided over the meeting, acknowledged the seriousness of the situation, while Akashi kept it focused on the need for a ceasefire in Gorazde. After two days, a six point agreement was reached, including withdrawal of Serb forces to an exclusion zone. The ink couldn’t have been dry before the agreement was broken by the Bosnian Serbs. Within three days of their withdrawal, they were back attacking the civilians in Gorazde by demolishing their water filtration plant. According to Dr. Williams, “that was not untypical of Bosnian Serb military behavior.”
When Akashi complained by letter to Mladic about violation of the agreement, he received a peremptory response from a staff member. The only relevant part ‘explained’ that uniformed men seen in the exclusion zone had been demobilized but they just didn’t have any civilian clothes to put on. The safe haven of Gorazde continued to be shelled and humanitarian supplies interdicted well into 1995, as reported by Dr. Williams’ assistant. The rationale, he was told, was, “You squeeze Serbia. Serbia squeezes us. We squeeze you.”
Dr. Williams’s testimony also further implicated Serbia in the war in Bosnia. The Bosnian Serb and Croatian Serb armies grew out of the JNA (Yugoslav People’s Army) in 1992 when it demobilized and left equipment and personnel in Bosnia, according to the witness. Nor was there any indication that the JNA, later VJ, “relinquished its parenting role,” as there was a continuing rotation of VJ officers through the VJ, the VRS and the Bosnian Croat Army. Reports of VJ soldiers among VRS troops in Bjeljina, Zvornik, and other parts of Bosnia reached UN authorities, according to cables introduced into evidence.
Despite FRY’s sanctions against the RS, Dr. Williams testified that military equipment and supplies continued to move from Serbia into the RS. Frequent nighttime helicopter flights between the two entities were traced by radar, between five to fifteen helicopters at a time. In addition, the RS greatly improved its air defense system around Sarajevo and in Northwestern Bosnia. In November 1994 the VRS attack on the Bihac pocket required significant fuel and ammunition. The equipment, fuel and ammunition had to come from somewhere as the RS couldn’t produce it. Dr. Williams said he and his colleagues concluded the source was the FRY.
An incident involving a Russian UNPROFOR battalion provided additional evidence of Serbian support to Serbian forces outside Serbia, in this case the Krajina Serbs. The Russian battalion asked the Belgian forces not to interfere with the transport of military equipment coming from Serbia into Eastern Slavonia. As a result of one incident, a Russian General was withdrawn from the territory.
There is no argument that Milosevic was a primary figure in negotiations between the Bosnian Serbs and the international community. Members of the UN mission, including Dr. Williams, met on a number of occasions with Milosevic who appeared well informed of events in the RS. He also appeared to have significant influence, if not control, over the highest Bosnian Serb authorities. At one meeting, for example, where UN officials complained that a UN aid convoy on its way to Gorazde had been held up by the VRS for several days, Milosevic “got ill-tempered with Karadzic and told him to instruct his people in Rogatica to remove the obstacles as soon as possible,” Dr. Williams testified. When Prosecutor Dermot Groome asked, “Did he?” the witness answered simply, “Yes, he did.”
Dr. Williams’ testimony also threw light on Milosevic’s relationship with Karadzic and Mladic, as well as suggesting that the FRY split with the RS wasn’t as deep as it appeared. The civilian RS leadership, according to Dr. Williams, was difficult to deal with, often indecisive and disagreeing among themselves, while the military leadership, under General Mladic, was disciplined. He gave an example of a meeting in Geneva where UN authorities complained that RS forces remained in Gorazde in violation of the April 1994 agreement. Karadzic did nothing, merely blaming it on the Muslims. Mladic intervened and said, “leave this to me.” Within 24 hours the RS forces left the enclave.
There was a rift between the RS military and political leadership, Dr. Williams said, and Milosevic appeared to side with the military, i.e. with Mladic. He spoke of a meeting between Milosevic and Mladic without Karadzic’s knowledge. Despite the FRY’s embargo against the RS, Mladic was a frequent visitor to Belgrade. “No matter what the political tensions were . . . it didn’t affect individually his [Mladic’s] comings and goings.” Asked about Milosevic's apparent preference for Mladic, the witness speculated it was because they had common origins in the League of Communists going back to university days, while Karadzic was 'thrown up in the tempest of war.' Dr. Williams said that the continuing contacts between RS officials and Belgrade following Belgrade’s imposition of sanctions was confusing to UN personnel. It evidenced a different public and private position. Both sides (Serbia and the RS), he said, were “eager that the break not go too far.”
What stands out about the RS leadership is that they lacked Milosevic's guile. Therein lie the seeds of their ultimate downfall, as they readily admitted to targeting civilians, destroying cultural and religious monuments, preventing humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, from reaching the people, and disrupting electricity, heat and water in the enclaves. For his part, Milosevic perhaps unintentionally reveals his agreement with this approach when he equates Serb attacks on Muslim civilians with Muslim attacks on Serb soldiers, as if both are criminal.
Dr. Williams’ experience with Bosnia’s safe havens, indeed the UN’s and the international community’s experience with them, should have provided ample warning of what happened in Srebrenica. During the April 1994 Gorazde crisis, Dr. Williams described UN mission members “great misgivings and fears” of what might happen if Gorazde fell to the Serbs. “That substantial civilian population would be at the mercy of forces that had an appalling record of brutality of dealing with civilians under their control.” It was what prompted the Secretary General to ask NATO to consider air strikes if the VRS attacked any of the safe areas.
At the end of direct examination, Mr. Groome asked Dr. Williams: “Were there tangible signs that if Srebrenica were to fall that a humanitarian crisis on a grand scale would have followed?” Dr. Williams replied, “Yes. I think there was.” In particular he cited the Bosnian Serbs’ practice of deliberately targeting civilians, and the fears of those familiar with their record. “Aside from numbers,” Mr. Groome continued, “could anyone with an intimate knowledge of events in Yugoslavia have been reasonably surprised that military age men were killed?” Dr. Williams recalled that everyone up to Mr. Akashi “was very fearful of what would happen” if Bosnian Serb forces entered Gorazde. “We concluded there would be civilian casualties, very serious gross violations of human rights. It was only a question of the extent and degree.” In light of this, the subsequent actions and inactions of the UN in Srebrenica, including Mr. Akashi's prominent role, are all the more difficult to understand.
