"Tankey/Leppy" and I have been sparring on the "U.N. is Among the Greatest Organizations Ever. Amazing Accomplishments." thread -- specifically about the UN involvement in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
I thought I would share my latest response:
Tankey –
At the onset of the wars in former Yugoslavia, the peace process was undertaken by the European Commission (known as the EC and was the predecessor to the European Union or EU). From September 1991-January 1992, Lord Peter Carrington spearheaded the EC’s efforts and developed a seven-page proposal entitled
Arrangements for a General Settlement – this became known as the Carrington Plan. The UN involvement began—after great dissatisfaction with the Lord Carrington’s lack of progress—when, in November 1991, UN Security General Javier Perez de Cueliar appointed Cyrus Vance, a former US Secretary of State, to work with Lord Carrington on the peace process [1].
Cyrus Vance formally recommended the deployment of 12,000 UN peace-keepers to the UN Security Council on February 12, 1992 [2]. These peacekeepers were to be deployed to the three areas designated as “United Nations Protected Areas” (UNPAs) within Croatia [3].
The UN Security Council passed UN Resolution 743 endorsing the proposal to send the second-largest international peace-keeping force deployed; the initial deployment period was to be a year [4]. The deployment period and mandate would change during the course of the Balkan Wars until the end of the mission in March 1995.
This force was known as United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) and was deployed on March 8, 1992 under the command of General Satish Nambiar of India who established his headquarters in Sarajevo [5]. UNPROFOR was restructured on March 31, 1995 and remained in place until it was re-flagged as the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) on December 20, 1995 [6].
If you recall, it was in July 1995 when the tragic debacle of Srebrenica occurred. Srebrenica, and a thirty-square-mile area surrounding it, had been declared the world’s first UN “safe area” on April 16, 1993 after a divided UN Security Council passed Resolution 819 [7]. At the end of July, 1995, a Serbian flag flew over the city of Srebrenica and 7,079 Muslim men were missing [8]. The tragedy of Srebrenica became a major embarrassment for both the UN and the Dutch government.
One source has UNPROFOR fatalities at 350 [9] while another source has the fatalities at 167 [10].
It was in the aftermath of the mortar attack which occurred in the Sarajevo market place on February 5, 1995 when strong voices within the US called for NATO intervention. The massacre in the Sarajevo market place was the seminal event which caused the international community to say “Enough” [11].
The article included in your posting concerned me as the present-tense verbiage gave suspicion as to the date the briefing was authored. Was the briefing authored during the time of the Balkan Wars, perhaps as late as early to mid-1995 or even sometime in 1996? I could not reference any date whatsoever.
In an effort to establish a date of authorship, I went to the webpage of the source you provided and my suspicion grew further when I discovered the report was issued as part of the Economic Conversion Project (ECP) which is part of the Peace and Security Program of the Institute for Policy Studies – the site also uses National Commission for Economic Conversion and Disarmament without any other reference to that title [12].
From that website:
“The Peace and Security Program of the Institute for Policy Studies includes the Economic Coversion Project (ECP) dedicated to educating the public on the need and the means for an orderly transfer of military resources to civilian use.”
“The end of the Cold War gives us an unprecedented opportunity to reverse the arms race, build a new foundation for international security, and reorient billions of dollars in the defense budget to our neglected domestic needs.”
Given the above quotes, I must conclude that this organization (with no government affiliation) has a definitive agenda; therefore, I have great difficulty in accepting its credibility in re-enforcing your position of:
“Here is a good overview of the U.N.'s peacekeeping issues and realities, and how the U.N. is not to blame.”The report included in your posting is the result of a search using Google and search string of “un in bosnia” as evidenced by the highlighted markings and “This is G o o g l e's cache of
www.webcom.com/ncecd/remakingun.html as retrieved on Jan 31, 2006 22:36:31 GMT.” [13]
Since the end of the wars in former Yugoslavia, a wide range studies, books, articles, et cetera have been made concerning the Balkan Wars covering almost all aspects of the conflicts, parties involved, and the aftermath. I have read many of these studies, books, and articles plus I have had the additional advantage of living in Bosnia-Herzegovina for three years with the ability to travel throughout the country, meeting the people and listening to their accounts and opinions.
It is through the knowledge I have gained and my personal experiences upon which I base my conclusions to the ineffectiveness of the UN’s mission—both humanitarian and peace-keeping—in Bosnian-Herzegovina from 1992-2003.
[1]
Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation by Laura Silber and Allan Little, c. 14, pp. 190-204
[2] ibid
[3]
www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unprof_p.htm[4]
Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation by Laura Silber and Allan Little, c. 14, p. 204
[5] ibid
[6]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNPROFOR[7]
End Game: The Betrayal and Fall of Srebrenica: Europe’s Worst Massacre Since World War II by David Rohde, preface, pp. xv-xvi
[8] ibid
[9]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNPROFOR[10]
www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/unprof_p.htm[11]
Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation by Laura Silber and Allan Little, c. 24, p. 311
[12]
www.webcom.com/ncecd/index.htm[13]
72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:rHJLCijhQi0J:www.webcom.com/ncecd/remakingun.html+%22U.N.+in+Bosnia%22+-sex&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=15I have already "blasted" her about Somalia and Rwanda; perhaps this will have the same effect concerning Bosnia. Given some of her responses (she seems to be backtracking and contradicting herself), maybe she is getting the hint that she is way out of her league when attempting to debate these issues with me.
We'll just have to wait and see.
