UN troops (UNPROFOR), tasked with protecting aid delivery since 1992, were increasingly blocked. The victims of the international arms embargo on Yugoslavia were the very people it had been designed to protect. Landlocked Bosnia could not acquire weapons, while its belligerent neighbors did so with impunity.

The sight of Europeans in concentration camps, fifty years after the defeat of Nazism, brought new urgency to the issue of ethnic cleansing, and in May 1993 the UN established a war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The case for humanitarian intervention was beginning to become compelling.

In April 1993, the UN Security Council adapted the “Safe Area” formula used in the Gulf War for Iraq’s Kurd areas, and declared Srebrenica a safe area. In May, the number of safe areas was expanded to include the other two eastern Muslim enclaves, Zepa and Gorazde, and the besieged cities of Sarajevo, Tuzla, and Bihac.

The safe areas were intended to ensure the uninterrupted flow of aid, through the withdrawal of Serbian forces and heavy weapons to a safe distance, and an expanded role for the UN protection forces.

But in most instances Serbian paramilitary leaders used these conditions to maximize their own positions. In Srebrenica, they demanded that the Muslim militia disarm and disband before Serbian forces withdrew to a 10-kilometer perimeter around the enclave. This left the small contingent of UN troops dependent on Serb forces to let aid through, and the humanitarian crisis continued.

Zepa was similarly “demilitarized” by the UN, but Gorazde was not. Gorazde was the largest of the eastern Muslim enclaves, and the closest to Sarajevo. With the example of Srebrenica’s vulnerability before them, the U.S. administration was concerned that the safe areas could become giant refugee camps. Moreover, Gorazde had successfully resisted the Serbian forces. Srebrenica and Zepa, on the other hand, were on the verge of falling to Serbian forces when the UN declared them safe areas.

Despite this ground reality, U.S. and European hopes were still pinned on negotiating an overall settlement, and in December 1993 they prepared another proposal for a loose ethnic federation, this time in the form of a union of three republics. The Serbian republic would have 49% of the territory of Bosnia & Herzegovina, the Muslim republic 33.5%, including an expanded corridor to link the eastern enclaves, and the Croatian republic 17.5%, including a corridor to link its western and central enclaves.

Map B.15: Union of Three Republics Peace Plan Compared to Ethnic Composition of Bosnia & Herzegovina, 1990 (click to enlarge)

For the cities, the safe areas’ declaration did not go beyond paper. The siege of Sarajevo was finally partially lifted in February 1994, following a series of violent attacks of which the most significant was the Sarajevo marketplace bombing that killed 49 and wounded 200.

Following the markeyplace bombing, NATO threatened air strikes if Serbian forces did not withdraw to a 20-kilometer “exclusion zone” from Sarajevo, and place their heavy weapons under the control of UN troops. At Russia’s request, the Bosnian Serb leadership agreed to fulfill these conditions if the UN contingent was made up of Russian troops.

The Serbian withdrawal provided Sarajevo with relief from constant shelling and allowed a more regular supply of aid, but it did not succeed in fully removing the blockade of the city. Sarajevans still had no freedom of movement, and Russian troops now policed the division of the city.

In the east, Serbian forces started to shell Gorazde in early April 1994, violating the safe area agreement. Though the UN Security Council demanded a halt and NATO threatened air strikes, the attacks continued. NATO did launch air strikes after a week of shelling, but they were so limited as to be counterproductive. In all six bombs were dropped, most of them failing to inflict significant loss, and NATO began to acquire the reputation of a paper tiger.

Serbian forces retaliated by taking 150 French peacekeepers hostage in the weapons’ exclusion zone around Sarajevo, and in mid-April entered Gorazde and occupied the right bank of the river Drina. (No Serbian army had crossed the Drina before). The small number of British and Ukrainian peacekeepers in Gorazde administered an agreement along the lines of the Srebrenica agreement: they demilitarized the enclave, and interposed themselves between the Serbian front line and the town.

The safe areas received their final blow in July 1995, when Serbian forces gave up the pretence of observing the exclusion zones, and moved to take Srebrenica. Despite desperate pleas by the Bosnian government, the UN did not order air strikes to defend the enclave. On entering the enclave, Serbian forces took its Dutch peacekeepers hostage, and the Dutch government asked the UN and NATO to hold off air strikes.

Srebrenica fell in four days. While Dutch peacekeepers stood helplessly by, Serbian forces separated Srebrenica’s men from its women and led the former away to be massacred. It is estimated that 6,000 Muslims died in the massacre.

The UN Commissioner for Human Rights, Poland’s former Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, resigned in protest at the failure to save Srebrenica and Zepa (which fell in late July). Soon after, the International War Crimes Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, established in 1994, indicted Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic for the crimes committed in Srebrenica.

Humanitarian intervention was still a new idea for the international community, and its brief and sorry application in Bosnia added to the cynicism that had been bred by Kurd vulnerability under a safe area during the Gulf War, and the failed humanitarian mission in Somalia. But the failures of peacekeeping and protection in Bosnia had a greater impact than the failures in Iraq or Somalia, not to mention Rwanda. They led to introspection and reform within the UN, and many of their lessons were remembered when it came to intervention in Kosovo.

Back to Top 

Chapter Contents
			The Balkans Conflict
		·	The Rise of Nationalism
		·	Secession and War
		·	Bosnia's Ethnic Cleansing
		·	Humanitarian Intervention
		·	A Shaky Peace
		·	Crisis in Kosovo
		·	Macedonia's Albanians

Related Texts
·	U.N. Safe Areas Resolutions
·	War Crimes Indictments for the Former Yugoslavia
·	UN Srebrenica Report
·	Dutch Report on Srebenica

Related Articles
·	Alton Frye: “Humanitarian Intervention: Creating a Workable Doctrine”
·	Michael O’Hanlon: “Doing It Right: The Future of Humanitarian Intervention”
·	David Rieff: “Intervention Has a Price,” New York Times, November 14,1996