The United Nations Security Council and War:The Evolution of Thought and Practice since 1945 (161 page)

⁵³
The ICRC began active involvement in the former Yugoslav theatre in November 1991; the death of a team member on 18 May led to this pull-out, but they returned to Bosnia again on 7 July and played an indispensable role during the war.

⁵⁴
In particular the report of 12 May 1992 (UN doc. S/23900).

⁵⁵
Goulding describes these trips in
Peacemonger
, 311–13, and the prior trip in November together on 294–305, providing useful background.

⁵⁶
See for example SC Res. 749 of 7 Apr. 1992, and the presidential statements of 10 and 24 Apr. 1992.

⁵⁷
SC Res. 752.

⁵⁸
SC Res. 757 of 30 May 1992. As with the arms embargo in SC Res. 713, this simply universalized the authority of sanctions which the EC and US imposed in mid-April; it also marked the first shift by the Security Council to the EC position of May/June 1991, pushed repeatedly by the US representative, to a political position on responsibility for the war, namely, that of the Serbian leadership in Belgrade (and by 17 Apr. 1993, with much harsher sanctions in SC Res. 820, also the Bosnian Serbs).

⁵⁹
SC Res. 758 of 8 June 1992.

⁶⁰
SC Res. 760.

⁶¹
SC Res. 761 of 29 June and 764 of 13 July French pressure included a dramatic flight into Sarajevo airport on 28 June by French president Mitterrand to demonstrate it could be done.

⁶²
SC Res. 780 of 6 Oct. 1992 requested the SG to establish a Commission of Experts to report on violations of the Geneva Conventions and other humanitarian law, warnings were issued to the parties in two presidential statements (30 Oct. 1992 and 25 Jan. 1993), and on 22 Feb. 1993 Resolution 808 created an international tribunal ‘for the prosecution of persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991’. The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) remains in session in mid-2007 and became the precedent for similar tribunals for Rwanda, Sierra Leone, and Liberia.

⁶³
According to Goulding, at the time USG for Peace-keeping, however, this idea originated with Boutros-Ghali, which he proposed to PM Major in London in July
(Peacemonger
, 316).

⁶⁴
See Goulding,
Peacemonger
, 317; and Woodward,
Balkan Tragedy, n.
37, 498–9. Although the result on 17 July was only a presidential statement welcoming the agreement, in the end Boutros-Ghali lost this battle. His growing concern over the financial implications of these Council resolutions, at a time when the US was insisting on these mandates (and efficiency-oriented reforms in the Secretariat) while refusing to pay back dues and when many other countries outside Europe were in greater need of UN assistance due to violence and humanitarian crises, was overshadowed by the growing quarrel over the willingness of the Council to authorize sufficient troops and enforcement powers, and by European, American, and Bosnian anger at his public choice of words such as ‘white Muslims’ and ‘rich Europeans’ who could afford to take responsibility. On this growing financial constraint and the many in arrears at the time, see Higgins, ‘The New United Nations’, 475–9.

⁶⁵
In early 1994, when US actions threatened their marginalization entirely, the co-chairs proposed a different strategy, to hand the task over to a Contact Group of representatives from the US, UK, France, Germany, and Russia so as to prevent the same fate that befell the Hague conference in 1991 and the Lisbon negotiations in 1992. Italy was added later, and ICFY focused on the remaining issues.

⁶⁶
SC Res. 776 of 14 Sep. 1992.

⁶⁷
SC Res. 781 of 9 Oct. 1992; SC Res. 786 of 10 Nov. 1992; SC Res. 816 of 13 Mar. 1993.

⁶⁸
SC Res. 787 of 16 Nov. 1992.

⁶⁹
Such experience is documented in manifold participants’ reports; see, for a particularly detailed example, Lt. Col. J. P. Riley, ‘The 1st Battalion on UN Operations in the Balkans, 1995’,
Regimental Records of the Royal Welch Fusiliers
, vol. VI, ch. XLII, on its deployment Feb. 1995–28 Aug. 1995 in Goražde.

⁷⁰
See, for example, General Bertrand de Lapresle, ‘Principles to be Observed for the Use of Military Forces Aimed at De-escalation and Resolution of Conflict’, in Wolfgang Biermann and Martin Vadset (eds.),
UN Peacekeeping in Trouble: Lessons Learned from the Former Yugoslavia: Peacekeepers’ Views on the Limits and Possibilities of the United Nations in a Civil War-like Conflict
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 137–8 and 143.

⁷¹
UNPROFOR was comprised of three commands – Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia. Until the Croatian and Macedonian commands were given separate names on 31 Mar. 1995, leaving UNPROFOR for Bosnia only, the three were distinguished with roman numerals, as UNPROFOR I, II, and III (for Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Macedonia). The number of troop-contributing countries varied from thirty-one at the start to thirty-nine in Mar. 1995. In March/April 1992, it comprised 13,240 troops including military observers (UNMOs); by Mar. 1994, it was at 30,655;and by Nov. 1994, there were 38,130 troops (including 680 UNMOs). These numbers do not count civilian police (between 543 and 727) or civilian staff (by Mar. 1995, 2,017 international and 2,615 local). The cost of the mission, from 12 Jan. 1992 to 31 Mar. 1996, was more than US $4 billion (US $4,616,725,556) and 213 dead.

⁷²
UN doc. S/1994/291 of 11 Mar. 1994. These figures can be found in all Secretary-General’s Reports after June 1993, however.

⁷³
This shift is most noticeable with SC Res. 816 of 31 Mar. 1993 and SC Res. 820 of 17 Apr. 1993; its primary manifestation in 1994 and 1995 is the sanctions of SC Res. 913 of 22 Apr. 1994 and SC Res. 914, 942, and 943, all of 23 Sep. 1994, followed by four from 12 Jan. to 15 Sep. 1995.

⁷⁴
This US strategy did not, in fact, have consensus within the Clinton Administration which was waging it. It remained divided throughout the two-year-plus period in which it operated, and many on the professional diplomatic side, in particular, worked tirelessly to obtain a political solution in order to stop the war earlier and interrupt this military strategy. They did not succeed, however, some tragically (e.g. Robert Frasure), nor did they have influence at the level of the Security Council.

⁷⁵
As Mats Berdal reveals in ‘Lessons Not Learned: The Use of Force in “Peace Operations” in the 1990s’,
International Peacekeeping
7, no. 4 (Winter 2000), 55, the result by 1994 is what then head of Bosnia command, General Rupert Smith, neatly concludes about the use of force in intervention operations after the Cold War: ‘we had been unclear as to what it is we expect the use of force or forces to
achieve
as opposed to do.’

⁷⁶
GA Res. 46/242 of 25 Aug. 1992, proposed by the Islamic Conference Organization (which Turkey and Iran initiated), endorsed the use of force to end the war.

⁷⁷
The extraordinary session of the UN Human Rights Commission on 13–14 August 1992 was particularly influential as were subsequent reports by its special envoy, Tadeusz Mazowiecki; see Human Rights Watch,
The Lost Agenda: Human Rights and UN Field Operations
(New York: HRW 1993), 99–100.

⁷⁸
‘United Nations Peacekeeping in Europe’,
Survival
37, no. 2 (Summer 1995), 129 (written, however, in Nov. 1994).

⁷⁹
Such as problems with the weather, lack of targets, guerrilla-style warfare, and complex lines of communication between the UN and NATO, but that is a larger discussion.

⁸⁰
Covert deliveries of weapons during 1994 and communications equipment in February 1995 were largely made in Tuzla.

⁸¹
Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both,
Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime
(London: Penguin, 1996), 71–98.

⁸²
SC Res. 824.

⁸³
Useful beginnings in this huge literature are Honig and Both,
Srebrenica
, 99–117 and Lars-Eric Wahlgren, ‘Start and End of Srebrenica’, in Biermann and Vadset (eds.),
UN Peacekeeping in Trouble
, 168–85. The uproar over the Bosnian Serb massacre of Srebrenica’s male citizens eventually provoked the DPKO to commission an internal report written by David Harland, UN doc. A/54/549 of 15 Nov. 1999, and the Dutch government, whose troops were accused of primary responsibility, to commission a massive, independent investigation by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation,
Srebrenica, A ‘Safe’ Area – Reconstruction, Background, Consequences and Analyses of the Fall of a Safe Area
, (Amsterdam: NIOD, 20 April 2002).

⁸⁴
The most recent confirmed death toll of the Srebrenica massacre, according to the
Bosnian Book of the Dead
database compiled by the Research and Documentation Centre (RDC), Sarajevo, is 6,882 (July 2007).

⁸⁵
SC Res. 970 of 12 Jan. 1995, SC Res. 988 of 21 Apr. 1995, SC Res. 1003 of 5 July 1995, and SC Res. 1015 of 15 Sep. 1995.

⁸⁶
SC Res. 998 of 16 June 1995.

⁸⁷
In commenting on the declining credibility of the Security Council because it issued so many resolutions and presidential statements with little relation to ‘realities on the ground’ (‘the parties routinely ignored them’ and even UNPROFOR military officers read them less and less), Yasushi Akashi, UNPROFOR SRSG, illustrates the absurdities with SC Res. 1004 of 12 July 1995: ‘The Council, acting under
Chapter VII
, demanded [unanimously] that the Bosnian Serbs “respect fully the status of the Safe Area”, “withdraw from the Safe Area”, ensure the complete freedom of movement of UNPROFOR, and requested “the Secretary-General to use all resources available to him to restore the status … of the Safe Area … and calls on the parties to cooperate”,’ in ‘Managing United Nations Peacekeeping: The Role of the Security Council vs. the Role of the Secretary-General’, in Biermann and Vadset,
UN Peacekeeping in Trouble
, 135.

⁸⁸
On Washington’s role in the fall of Srebrenica, including its refusal to support the diplomatic agreement made by its own envoy, Robert Frasure, with Slobodan Miloševi
on 18 May, one would do well to start with chs. 7 and 8 and the post mortem (139–86) of Honig and Both,
Srebrenica.

⁸⁹
Elaboration of this argument is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is critical because of the lessons that the US drew from Bosnia.

⁹⁰
SC Res. 1031 of 15 Dec. 1995; and SC Res. 1035 of 21 Dec. 1995.

⁹¹
Rhiannon Vickers, ‘Blair’s Kosovo Campaign: Political Communications, the Battle for Public Opinion and Foreign Policy’,
Civil Wars
3, no. 1 (2000), 55–70, dissects an important role the UK prime minister now played.

⁹²
SC Res. 1199.

⁹³
Sc Res. 1203 of 24 Oct. 1998.

⁹⁴
Paul Heinbecker, Canadian permanent representative at the time, argues that this decision was based on the assumption that Russia would veto any Council authorization of the use of force, though this was never tested, and that to avoid being in this position, Russia ‘could accept the Council’s being bypassed’. He also adds that ‘the same approach’ was proposed to the US by the French ambassador to Washington, Jean-David Levitte (whose prior posting was to the UN), in Mar. 2003 for Iraq (p. 540 in his detailed account of 1998–9, ‘Kosovo’, in Malone, (ed.),
The UN Security Council
, 537–50).

⁹⁵
Heinbecker, ‘Kosovo’, 542.

⁹⁶
See, for example, Adam Roberts, ‘NATO’s “Humanitarian War” over Kosovo’,
Survival
41, no. 3 (Autumn 1999), 102–23; and Albrecht Schnabel and Ramesh Thakur (eds.),
Kosovo and the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention: Selective Indignation, Collective Action, and International Citizenship
(New York and Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2000).

⁹⁷
Sir Jeremy Greenstock, as quoted by Heinbecker, ‘Kosovo’, 542. This argumentation is rather disingenuous, given the order of events and its humanitarian consequences, but its importance remains, including its repeat in relation to Iraq in early 2003.

⁹⁸
SC Res. 1239 of 14 May 1999. Heinbecker describes in detail the G8 role, sought explicitly to avoid the publicness and formality of the Security Council, i.e. have no press, no voting, no veto, in ‘Kosovo’, 543–7.

⁹⁹
The reason is generally assumed to be the threat to regional stability that a rampage of Albanian violence against minority Serbs in Mar. 2004 revived (although low-intensity violence was a feature of daily life throughout the 1999–2004 period) and the view that this was a consequence of growing Albanian frustration with UNMIK and impatience which would only intensify over coming years. In fact, the reason was the impending economic crisis predicted in 2004 for 2005, its threat to peace, declining donor interest, and the alternative solution to which (foreign finance) required resolution of Kosovo’s status. See Susan L. Woodward, ‘Does Kosovo’s Status Matter? On the International Management of Statehood’,
Südosteuropa
55, no. 1 (Spring 2007), 1–25.