Understanding Peacekeeping. Alex J. Bellamy

the perpetrators. In one hundred days, approximately 1 million Tutsi and Hutu moderates were slaughtered – a rate of killing higher than that of the Nazi Holocaust.

Things did not go well in Bosnia either. UNPROFOR was one of the UN’s largest and most complicated missions, not least because, as Yugoslavia dissolved, it had to straddle several newly recognized states (Koops et al. 2015: ch. 30). In February 1992, UNPROFOR peacekeepers were initially mandated to monitor a ceasefire agreement between Croatia and Serbia, which saw the creation of UN protected areas (UNPAs) in the Serb-held regions. The UNPAs were to be free from armed attack by the Croats but were also to be demilitarized by the Serbs. UNPROFOR was positioned between the armies to supervise compliance with the ceasefire agreement while political leaders sought a lasting settlement. Within six months, however, the UN confronted a humanitarian catastrophe in Bosnia because the Bosnian Serb strategy of ethnic cleansing created approximately 1.5 million refugees and would result in around 250,000 deaths. UNPROFOR was extended into Bosnia and tasked with assisting the delivery of humanitarian aid. The basic problem was that all the belligerents – but the Bosnian Serbs in particular – attempted to control the flow of aid around the country. Roadblocks often obstructed aid convoys, and international lorries carrying aid became prime targets for looting and destruction. However, UNPROFOR lacked both the means and the mandate to enforce aid delivery. Its mandate stipulated that peacekeepers could use force only in self-defence, and even if a commander decided to interpret this broadly – as several contingents tended to do – the UN lacked the resources to follow through on such a policy. UNPROFOR was confronted with a Faustian dilemma: bargain with the warlords and deliver some aid or refuse to bargain and deliver much less. Most UNPROFOR commanders chose the first option.

      Map 4.1 Bosnia and Herzegovina

      As disquiet began to grow in the Western media and among peacekeepers about the UN’s failure to halt the bloodshed, questions were raised about giving UNPROFOR a mandate to use force, and the Security Council gradually expanded the mission’s mandate still further (see table 4.2). In spring 1993, UNPROFOR entered a crucial new phase when the Security Council created ‘safe areas’ in Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Goražde, Žepa, Tuzla and Bihać. The safe areas were all major towns or cities held by the Bosnian government but besieged by Bosnian Serb forces, which systematically targeted civilians with shells and sniper fire. The Security Council demanded that civilians be ‘free from armed attack’ and authorized UNPROFOR to deter such attacks. Importantly, the UN Secretary-General advised that the safe areas policy would need UNPROFOR to be reinforced by 34,000 additional troops. However, the Security Council opted for a ‘light option’ and authorized only 7,600 additional soldiers (UN 1994: 2). As a result, the Secretary-General noted, ‘the effective implementation of the safe-area concept depends on the degree of consent by the parties on the ground’ (ibid.: 3). In other words, the success of the safe areas policy depended upon the Bosnian Serbs.

      Nor was UNPROFOR authorized to use force to ensure delivery of humanitarian supplies. Besieged towns such as Srebrenica were therefore dependent for supplies on (scant) Bosnian Serb goodwill. Malnutrition and disease set in. A by-product of creating so-called safe areas was that most of Bosnia became a hostile region in which UN peacekeepers had very little power. When, in summer 1995, the Bosnian Serbs decided to overrun the safe areas, UNPROFOR had neither the capability nor the mandate to prevent them from doing so. In July 1995, Bosnian Serbs seized the safe area of Srebrenica from a small contingent of Dutch peacekeepers, massacring more than 7,500 civilians as they did so (Honig and Both 1996). The Dutch commander in Srebrenica, General Herrimans, requested air strikes to repel the Serbs – as he was entitled to do under Resolution 836 (4 June 1993), which permitted UNPROFOR to ‘deter attacks against the safe areas’. But UNPROFOR’s commander, General Joulwan, and the SRSG, Yasushi Akashi, feared that substantial air strikes would take UNPROFOR across the ‘Mogadishu line’ into peace enforcement and so blocked the demand. The Bosnian Serbs seized the safe area and massacred its male inhabitants virtually unimpeded by the UN.

Table 4.2 UNPROFOR’s changing mandate

Council Resolution	Date	Purpose
713	25 Sept 1991	Arms embargo against former Yugoslavia
743	21 Feb 1992	Establishes UNPROFOR to monitor a ceasefire in the UNPAs in Croatia
757	30 May 1992	Imposes sanctions on Serbia and Montenegro
758	8 June 1992	Increases UNPROFOR mandate to include Bosnia and the safe delivery of humanitarian supplies
764	13 July 1992	Empowers UNPROFOR to secure Sarajevo airport and its environs
770	13 Aug 1992	Demands access to all refugee and prisoner of war camps
776	14 Sept 1992	Enlarges UNPROFOR mandate to include the protection of convoys
781	9 Oct 1992	Creates a no-fly zone over Bosnia
787	16 Oct 1992	Deployment of observers to Bosnia’s borders to enforce compliance with sanctions
816	31 Mar 1993	Gives members the right to enforce the no-fly zone
819	16 April 1993	Designates Srebrenica a ‘safe area’ which should be ‘free from armed attack’
824	6 May 1993	Designates Sarajevo, Tuzla, Žepa, Goražde and Bihać as ‘safe areas’ and authorizes the strengthening of UNPROFOR by fifty military observers
827	25 May 1993	Creates the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY)
836	4 June 1993	Gives UNPROFOR the task of ‘deterring’ attacks on the safe areas including the use of air strikes
913	22 April 1994	Gives UNPROFOR responsibility for collecting and storing belligerents’ heavy weapons around Goražde
998	16 June 1995	Welcomes the creation and deployment of the NATO Rapid Reaction Force
1035	21 Dec 1995	Authorizes the deployment of IFOR

The fall of Srebrenica was followed by the fall of Žepa and the near collapse of Goražde and Bihać. Srebrenica was Europe’s worst massacre since the Second World War, and it stimulated a dramatic rethink of Western policy towards Bosnia. The result was a shift to peace enforcement led by a NATO air campaign (Operation Deliberate