In July 1995, a renegade group of Serbian army that called itself Scorpions massacred 8000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica.
Bosnia declared independence in 1991 and Serbs tried to maintain unity. Srebrenica had strategic importance to achieve this objective of keeping Bosnia in the fols and was predominantly inhabited by Bosniaks(who are Muslims). Skirmishes started happening in 1992 itself and in 1993, it was declared a "Safe Area". Safe Area in quotes because 400 Dutch Peacekeepers representing United Nations were going to keep it safe!!!
Well, in 1995, the world found out how safe this safe area was. In July, Serbian President Radovan Karadzic issued the following directive:
"Complete the physical separation of Srebrenica from Žepa as soon as possible, preventing even communication between individuals in the two enclaves. By planned and well-thought out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica."
Tensions started mounting and the peacekeeping force kept sending missives for reinforcements. None came...hail United Nations!!! Remember the scene from Hotel Rwanda?Well, 8000 men of combat age were taken out of refugee camps and were slaughtered. Yesterday, 4 of the perpetrators were sentenced in Serbia( first such indictment within Serbia of the numerous war crimes committed by the army there in the Balkan conflict). Radovan Karadzic is still at large.
Bottom line, United Nations needs to be revamped. There have been too many massacres in last 20 years and only a powerful international force with means and moral force can help. NATO did a good job when they decided to intervene in Kosovo to avoid the repetition of Srebrenica but they also ignored Rwanada Burundi. Why? This selectivity has to go. UN, and US being the most powerful nation in its roster, need to be much more forceful and develop much better quick mandates. That is the only hope otherwise the world is not short of people like Karadzic, Milosevic, Omar Al-Bashir, Charles Taylor, Foday Sankoh...the list goes on.
1 comment:
In your last paragraph you make a case against the UN standing force actually.
Any such thing will be a tool in the hands of the americans, and you can see what they have done in Iraq.
In cases like Rawanda nothing happened because the americans were not interested, the rest were selling arms and there is no oil involved. The secretary of state made non sensical statements like "incidents of genocide have happened" without acknowledging that any real genocide happened.
UN has by and large worked well in the past several decades, whenever the member states could agree. If the member states can not agree then any standing army will be useless in the best case, the worst I leave to your imagination.
The call to "revamp" the UN usually comes from people who do not really want any reforms but who want more control on UN than they already have. It is sad to see you joining their ranks.
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