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Intelligence and The War in Bosnia 1992 - 1995
Intelligence and The War in Bosnia 1992 - 1995
Overview of report
Main report: Srebrenica, a 'safe’ area. Reconstruction, background, consequences
and analyses of the fall of a Safe Area (11 July 1995) (NIOD) ISBN 90 5342 716 8
Background report: Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992-1995. The role of the
intelligence services (C. Wiebes) ISBN 90 5352 742 7
Background report: Western perceptions and Balkan realities (B. Naarden) ISBN 90
5352 743 5
Background report: History, memory and politics in Eastern Bosnia (G. Duijzings)
ISBN 90 5352 744 3
Background report: Dutchbat III and the population: medical issues / Resupply by air
(D.C.L. Schoonoord) ISBN 90 5352 790 7
Set of main report + 4 background reports including CD-ROM with extra background
reports ISBN 90 5352 745 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored digitally or made
public in any way whatsoever, either digitally mechanically, via photocopies,
recordings or any other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Consulted Archives
References: books & articles
Index
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Acknowledgements
My thanks go first of all to the entire Srebrenica team, the members of which were
prepared to read the text contributions critically and to provide them with commentary. I
would particularly like to thank my intelligence ‘buddy’ Dr Bob de Graaff for this. My
gratitude is primarily directed, however, to my colleague and fellow Tuzlak, Dr Dick
Schoonoord, with whom I have undertaken many journeys and whose definitive texts for
the Srebrenica report constitute such a rich and valuable source. His contributions to Part
III of the main Srebrenica report were absolutely indispensable to this study.
Due to the specialist nature of this research and the imposed confidentiality, there
was very little opportunity to exchange ideas with civil servants, other researchers and
authors. I thus valued even more highly the trust shown to me by Matthew Aid, Richard
Aldrich, Mats Berdal, Richard Connaughton, Timothy Crawford, Volker Foertsch, Nik
Gowing, Alf Jacobson, Jan Kleffel, John Morrison, Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, Lord
David Owen, Jeffrey Richelson, Tim Ripley, Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, Katherine
Schwering, Michael Smith, Milos Stankovic, Jan-Inge Svensson, Renaud Theunens,
Mark Urban, Pasi Välimäki and James Woolsey. In particular I would like to
acknowledge Ric Morgan. My thankfulness to him is enormous.
My thanks also go to Michael Herman, who organized a ‘Under Chatham House
Rules’ seminar at St. Anthony’s College in Oxford specially for this research project. I
must also thank Ted Kelly, the archivist at the Canadian Foreign Ministry in Ottawa and
the Department of Peacekeeping of the Ministry of Defence.
Finally, I extend many thanks to all the officers who work or worked for
domestic and foreign intelligence and security services and who were prepared to talk to
me on a confidential basis. These persons have supported the Srebrenica project in its
attempts to track down and clarify vague indications or unclear formulated questions.
This applies particularly to the many members of the Netherlands Military Intelligence
Service. Without the help of the Dutch and the international intelligence communities
this book would not have been written.
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Introduction
On 3 March 1994, 570 Dutch peacekeepers formally relieved the Canadian soldiers
who had been stationed in Srebrenica since 1993. Within the framework of the United
Nations peace mission in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the Dutch unit arrived there as part of
the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). The Dutch battalion (Dutchbat)
was placed in a small town located in East Bosnia in a deep valley with steep
mountainsides, close to the river Drina. Except for a couple of days in April 1992, the
Bosnian Muslim Army, the Armija Bosne i Hercegovine (ABiH), had control of the
town – which was declared a Safe Area by the UN Security Council on 6 May 1993 –
for three years of the war. However, Srebrenica was never completely demilitarized
and small-scale confrontations around the enclave would continue to take place for
more than two years. A Bosnian-Serb attack on Srebrenica started on 6 July 1995. The
ABiH was not in a position to defend the enclave, and the Dutch soldiers had neither
the resources nor the mandate for the purpose.
When on 11 July the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica was captured by the
Bosnian Serb Army, the Vojska Republika Srpska (VRS), under the leadership of
General Ratko Mladic, an ethnic cleansing operation began in which a large
proportion of the Muslim men would be executed. Between 6 and 20 July, the Bosnian
Serbs gained control of ‘the safe areas’ Srebrenica and Zepa, and drove out tens of
thousands of Bosnian Muslims. Under the eyes of Dutchbat, the women, children and
elderly were deported to Bosnian territory. Out of view of the Dutch peacekeepers,
more than 10,000 men and boys, walking in a long line, tried to get from Srebrenica to
the area around Tuzla, which was under the control of the Bosnian government.
Several thousands became the victim of encounters with the Bosnian Serbs or fell into
the hands of the VRS during that journey. They were killed in a horrifying way.
This study is an appendix to the Srebrenica report by the Netherlands Institute
for War Documentation (NIOD). A central position in the study is occupied by the
1
'Sarajevo zat vol spionnen in oorlog' ('Sarajevo was full of spies during war'), Het Parool, 24/04/98.
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role of national and international intelligence and security services in the war in
Bosnia in general and Srebrenica in particular.
From the outset, much remained unclear regarding the fall of the enclave,
something, which was also considered on 18 August 1995 in the Dutch Ministerial
Council. A minister was of the opinion that more information should be made
available about the events before and after the fall of Srebrenica. According to this
minister, this also applied to the role of the Western intelligence services prior to the
attack on Srebrenica.2
This investigation sets out to satisfy this wish. The study has three objectives.
Firstly, it is the intention to present in as much detail as possible the information
position of the most important Western intelligence and security services during the
war in Bosnia. The relevant question is what opportunities these services had for
following the developments in East Bosnia. Secondly, this study sets out to examine
whether these services were used in the armed conflict around Srebrenica. Finally, an
objective of this investigation is to establish the information position of the Dutch
intelligence and security services: were these services in a position to support the
Dutch peacekeepers in Bosnia satisfactorily?
These three objectives lead to the question: did the Western intelligence
services have prior knowledge of the Bosnian Serb attack on Srebrenica? If the answer
is no, the next question is why not? Was it an intelligence failure? However, if there
was prior knowledge, the question then is what was done with this information, and
whether that intelligence could not have prevented the attack on Srebrenica and the
subsequent executions.
It was no simple matter to try to obtain answers to the above questions and to
satisfy the above objectives. Foreign intelligence and security services were not
prepared to provide the NIOD investigators with direct access to the intelligence they
had gathered. Fortunately, some services were prepared to provide some degree of
insight into their information position through confidential briefings or background
discussions. For the Srebrenica report by the Netherlands Institute for War
Documentation (NIOD) more than 900 persons were interviewed. Ultimately, as
regards this study off-the-record discussions were held with one hundred people in the
Netherlands and other countries: many were officers who were involved in intelligence
2
Objectivized summary of the minutes of the Ministerial Council meeting of 18/08/95, prepared for the
purposes of the present NIOD study.
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work in Bosnia. This involved not only many former or still active staff of intelligence
and security services, but also responsible ministers, politicians, diplomats and officials
that acted as recipients of intelligence products concerning Bosnia.
Inevitably, these one hundred off-the-record interviews did have consequences
for the references of this study. This is why in the acknowledgement of sources, this
study regularly has to resort to references such as 'Confidential interview'.3 Staff of
foreign intelligence and security services were prepared to speak to the NIOD on
condition that their identities were protected in view of privacy considerations,
because disclosure of their names and identities could considerably impede their work
as analysts or operators in the future, or make it completely impossible, or because the
prevailing legislation in their country did not permit it. Anonymity was promised by
the NIOD to a large number of current and former staff of services in the Netherlands
and other countries for reasons of their own. It was therefore necessary to opt for the
footnote form that has been used. The most important consideration in making this
choice was that the main issue was to reconstruct a general picture and not to establish
the specific influence of individual people on the course of events.
Moreover, there will be regular references to ‘Confidential information’. In
general, these are written sources that the archive controller still considers to be
confidential, or documents that have been passed to the NIOD privately, but which are
still classified as ‘secret’ in the country concerned. It goes without saying that every
effort has been made to verify the statements by means of supplementary interviews,
background briefings or archival research whenever this was permissible.
History is a discussion without end. This is all the more true for the history of
intelligence and security services, the archive material of which is subject to far longer
terms than other government archive material before disclosure is permitted. Researchers
are generally not given access to catalogues, but have to ask for relevant documents more
or less in the dark. Also because of confidentiality agreements imposed on staff does
information on intelligence and security services reach researchers, and consequently the
public, and then after a much longer period than in other cases. Whereas, with history of
other kinds, the picture of the subject generally changes in the course of time only as a
result of new points of view. In the case of the history of intelligence and security
services, new information can continue to lead to an adjustment of the picture for far
longer.
3
The number in brackets after the Confidential interview note refers to the interviewee concerned.
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Fortunately this was not the case in the research for this study where Dutch
archives were concerned.4 Generous access was given to the archives by the
Netherlands intelligence and security services, especially the Military Intelligence
Service (MIS), where the author was able to make independent selections. In a number
of cases, more detailed agreements had to be made for specific sources. These cases
were concerned with the unity of the Crown, the private lives of those involved and
the Netherlands national security and security of the state. The latter point was
especially relevant to sources for the activities of Dutch and other intelligence and
security services. In particular, the identity of informants, the origin of information
that was gathered by these services and the relationship of trust with foreign
counterpart services had to be protected. An additional study of related archives was
also carried out in the Netherlands, for example at the Cabinet Office, Foreign Affairs,
Defence, and Justice. Comprehensive research in the archives of the United Nations in
Geneva and New York sometimes yielded additional background material.
It was also possible to speak freely with a large number of staff of the MIS and
the Netherlands National Security Service (BVD). In addition to the usual privacy
considerations, the fact that disclosure of their names and identities would impede or
make impossible their future work as analysts or operators with intelligence and
security services it was necessary to opt for referring to these more than thirty
interviews as ‘confidential interviews’.
Finally, we must not omit to mention that much information for this study was
obtained from open sources. Historical research is usually based on all available
literature on the events to be studied. At the start of this investigation, it was expected
that a large number of publications would not be relevant. However, it turned out that
articles in daily and weekly newspapers and some books actually contained more
information than originally thought. This concerned the history of the Balkans in
general and how this was represented, as well as the history of the conflict in
Yugoslavia. Some of those involved wrote memoirs. In addition, private and
government archive collections in Canada, the United States and several Western
European countries were studied. Against this background it is only possible to state that
the author has attempted in all good faith to verify the data issued to the institute. The
possibility of errors cannot be ruled out. But this should not discourage anyone from
writing about the role of intelligence and security services.
4
De Graaff & Wiebes, Villa Maarheeze, pp. 9 - 25.
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