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203 Safe areaS ◆ Charles Ingrao ◆ The battle lines between the Bosnian Serbs and their opponents have not changed much since the creation of the six “safe areas” in the spring of 1993. The controversy over the wartime events in and around Bihać, Goražde, Sarajevo, Srebrenica , Tuzla, and Žepa still divides the Bosnian Serbs and their supporters from those of the Bosnian government and the bulk of the international community— except, perhaps, that it is the Bosnian Serbs who are on the defensive, whether in the accounts of scholars and journalists or in testimony given at The Hague Tribunal. Then as now, the prevailing discourse represents the safe areas’ civilian populations as victims of the international community’s lack of political will as they were subjected to a succession of barbaric acts that culminated in the July 1995 Srebrenica massacres. For their part, the Bosnian Serb military (VRS) and its apologists have generally denied the worst and most politically pivotal atrocities while claiming that their legitimate military operations not only were resisted by the Bosnian military (ARBiH) but were handicapped by one-sided UN resolutions, NATO interventions, and media scrutiny. Moreover, a number of UN officials have accused Bosnian government garrisons of deliberately provoking counterfire from VRS besiegers onto civilian targets in Sarajevo.1 The VRS saw its offensives as a justified response to the general security problems in their rear caused by the significant ARBiH presence in the safe areas. It is in this vein that this report will endeavor to be sensitive to the tactical dilemmas that the international community’s actions presented to the Serb forces, even as it identifies crimes that they committed, oftentimes out of all proportion to the initial provocation and in disregard of the rules of war. At the same time, the evidence suggests that UN Security Council unilateralism—however ineffective it may have been in protecting the safe areas—was dictated by fear of a repetition of massive human rights violations like those committed by Serb forces during ethnic cleansing operations in Croatia (1991) and Bosnia (1992) but not by a serious attempt to impose a comprehensive program that would require a sustained investment of UN-mandated military resources. 204 ◆ CHARLES INGRAO I. Origins The safe areas were created in 1993 in response to a humanitarian crisis that attended the siege of each city as its indigenous population was multiplied by thousands of refugees who had fled or been expelled by advancing VRS and other Serb forces. International observers within the besieged cities feared massive civilian casualties from hostile fire, starvation, and disease. They were no less apprehensive at the prospect that the fall of one or more cities would repeat on an even larger scale the resort to ethnic cleansing that had attended Serb advances elsewhere in Bosnia. Under the intense glare of media publicity, there prevailed a widespread feeling among foreign leaders and their UN representatives that the international community needed to at least appear to “do something” to ward off the impending human catastrophe. By the spring of 1993 Lord David Owen was not alone in contemplating the advantage of “leveling the playing field” somewhat by bombing VRS forces into relaxing or lifting the sieges.2 A less intrusive solution surfaced in March 1993, following UN General Philippe Morillon’s visit to Srebrenica. In an attempt to reassure the mass of residents and refugees who had blocked his departure from the city, he first pledged not to leave the city until humanitarian aid had been delivered, then negotiated a cease-fire with VRS commander Ratko Mladić.3 As an additional guarantee to the city’s estimated 35,000 residents and refugees, he announced that he was placing them under UN protection, an unauthorized pledge; surprised UN officials reluctantly endeavored to fulfill the pledge by sending a small detachment of Canadian troops to Srebrenica. Morillon’s démarche seconded efforts by the ICRC’s Cornelio Sommaruga to persuade the UN to create a series of protected zones in default of any international sentiment to offer Bosnia’s refugees sanctuary abroad.4 The concept received an additional boost from several nonaligned UN member states, most notably Austrian Foreign Minister Alois Mock and Venezuela’s Security Council representative, Diego Arria, who visited Srebrenica a few weeks later. By 16 April, with the town’s fall seemingly imminent, UNSC Resolution 819 affirmed Srebrenica’s status as a UN-protected safe area, which it based on the 1948 Convention against Genocide. Indeed, the text...

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