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From notes@igc.apc.org Wed Jan 31 03:08:08 1996
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Date: 30 Jan 1996 23:35:39
Reply-To: Conference "zamir.chat"
From: Ivo Skoric
Subject: (Fwd) Guardian story
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From: "Ivo Skoric"
"BOSNIA: THE SECRET WAR." This is the headline of an article in the 29
January edition of the British daily The Guardian, which deals with
politics of another kind. It is no secret to those who have followed the
conflict closely that different governments within NATO were pursuing
very different agendas in the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession, but this
article sheds some light on the particularly glaring differences between
Washington and London in 1994. Probably even before the fighting began,
elements of the British Conservative government and that of French
President Francois Mitterrand seem to have concluded that the chief
threat to their "interests" in the post-cold-war Europe somehow came
from their primary allies of the previous half century, namely the U.S.
and Germany. Accordingly, the Serbs came to be regarded by some in
London and Paris as allies of sorts against Washington and Bonn -- and
those two countries' presumed Balkan stalking horses, Croatia and
Bosnia. In concrete terms, this meant that London and Paris opposed
foreign intervention and backed "a negotiated solution," which
effectively left the Serbs with a free hand on the battlefield. The
latest article explores how British special forces -- the SAS -- worked
with the British commander and former SAS officer General Sir Michael
Rose to thwart NATO plans for airstrikes against Bosnian Serb military
targets. The result was a Serbian tank onslaught against Bihac. The
article goes on to show how the U.S. embarked on an agenda of its own,
which led to the reversal of fortunes on the battlefield -- and
ultimately brought the Serbs to the conference table in Dayton in 1995.
-- Patrick Moore
The Guardian
January 29, 1996
HEADLINE: HOW THE CIA INTERCEPTED SAS SIGNALS;
US intelligence was involved in a fierce backstage struggle with its 'reluctant'
allies at the height of the conflict, writes Ed Vulliamy
BYLINE: Ed Vulliamy
BODY:
THE American secret services - notably the CIA - embark on their first
publicly -sanctioned mission in Bosnia this week, to shield Nato soldiers from
hostile paramilitaries and help war crimes investigators.
But, despite official denials, these agencies, including the CIA's Pentagon
cousin the DIA, have been engaged deep within Bosnia's war since its
inception.
Among their surveillance targets were top-secret communications between the
high command of the United Nations military operation in Sarajevo and the
British special forces, the SAS, operating under deep cover. What the
Americans discovered was that the UN command was engaged in neutralising Nato
air strikes against the Serbs.
US intelligence became enmeshed in the war as the Americans became
increasingly exasperated by what they saw as the thwarting of a robust stand
against the Serbs, stemming from the reluctance of the European Union, Britain
in particular. The outcome was a fierce backstage struggle between the Americans
and their European and British allies, each pursuing radically diverse agendas.
American frustration was most acute during 1994, a period of cautious
authority in the field exercised by General Sir Michael Rose, a former SAS
commander.
The tension arose most acutely from the American belief that Nato air
strikes should be used to bomb the Serbs to the negotiating table.
The United Nations Protection Force in Bosnia - and especially Gen Rose -
was sceptical, and feared that air strikes would endanger its soldiers on the
ground. The American strategy, and its thwarting by Unprofor and the British,
turned the issue of air strikes into a covert backstage confrontation between
secret services, commandos in the field and diplomats at the highest levels.
Now American intelligence sources have revealed what they found when they
eavesdropped on communications between Gen Rose's headquarters in Sarajevo and
SAS scouts deep inside Serb-held territory, near the besieged Bosnian town of
Bihac, during the ferocious Serbian advance on that UN "safe area" late in 1994.
THE communication line was established so that the undercover SAS teams,
assigned to the UN as forward air controllers, could identify Serb artillery
positions and relay the co-ordinates to headquarters and the pilots of Nato
bombers.
But a controversial order came over the air from Gen Rose's command to the
SAS: hold off, do not identify the targets, thus neutralising the air strike.
The Nato pilots were shown nothing; their planes came and went, impotent. It
was a measured instruction, highly secret, defiant of Nato. But it was not a
private one. It was overheard, not by an enemy but by the Americans.
Gen Rose could not be reached for comment on the eavesdropping allegations
yesterday at his headquarters at Trenchard Lines, Wiltshire. Sir Michael has
argued that aggressive use of air power would have threatened the safety of UN
soldiers on the ground and jeopardised Unprofor's humanitarian mission.
The general did order Nato air and ground strikes against the Serbs around
Gorazde in 1994, and was then eager to use close air support to defend his SAS
men trapped in the enclave, but was overruled by the UN envoy, Yasushi Akashi.
It was fundamental to Gen Roses's debate with the Americans that the UN
"cannot be used to alter the military balance in a civil war . . . a
peacekeeping force cannot allow itself to be hijacked by political pressures and
become involved in the conflict".
He wrote: "There exist obvious limitations on the use of air power in any
confused civil war situation. It is simply not possible to secure safe areas . .
. by the use of air power alone."
The handling of the Bihac crisis was a dramatic illustration of how the
Western "allies" were at each other's throats over Bosnia, with the Americans
determined to override what they saw as the sabotaging of Nato efforts to bomb
the Serbs into a peace deal.
BIHAC had been under siege for 30 months. A French Unprofor battalion had
pulled out and been replaced by one from Bangladesh, by then marooned and
virtually unarmed. Humanitarian aid convoys had been throttled since May.
Halfway through November the Serbian assault came. A relentless bombardment
included the first reported use of naplam in the war. Serbian planes mocked the
"no-fly zone" by cluster-bombing the safe area. Bihac was about to shrivel, or
else collapse completely.
Nato intervened. There was an air strike against a Serb air field in
Croatia. The UN commander in Zagreb, General Bertrand de Lapresle, insisted on
the strike being limited to damaging runways and anti -aircraft missiles and not
the planes themselves. B ut Nato's commander in southern Europe, Admiral
Leighton Smith, told the Pentagon: "My hope is that we will not have to go
back." The Western alliance creaked, then the drama began.
Gen Rose told the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, that unless the
raids stopped Serbian positions overlooking Bihac would be attacked. Mr Karadzic
replied by fax on November 23, telling the UN that the Serbs were now on a hill
called Drebelac, which turned out to be inside the safe area.
Gen Rose rushed to Pale, the Bosnian Serb "capital" near Sarajevo, the next
day and then on to the Croatian capital, Zagreb. He concluded that the UN should
call in air strikes.
There was an American air force observer at UN headquarters in Zagreb and he
was worried about reports from US intelligence in the field that the Bosnian
Serbs had aquired a fresh arsenal of Russian SAM anti-aircraft missiles, sent
via Belgrade.
Gen Rose put the air strike request on hold, and set about negotiating a
ceasefire instead.
But the Americans were stepping up the pressure. On that Friday, November
25, the US ambassador to Sarajevo, Victor Jakovec, visited Gen Rose to discuss
reports that Serb tanks were heading for the heart of Bihac city itself. Gen
Rose told him he believed there was little the UN could do. Mr Jakovec put in an
early call to the state department.
The call prompted a diplomatic flurry. The state department contacted the US
ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright. She in turn bent the ear
of the UN's head of peacekeeping in New York, Kofi Annan. The message was clear:
the US government was insisting on Gen Rose calling air strikes, and Mr Annan
duly conveyed it to him.
Newspapers on Saturday November 26 were bewildered after "confused reports
of Nato air activity over Bihac last night".
The state department spokeswoman, Christine Shelly, said the ceasefire
brokered by Gen Rose in Bihac was by no means holding, but added that Nato
should not be blamed for its failure.
This is what had happened. Gen Rose heeded Kofi Annan's request for close
air support from Nato - an intervention within the strict rules stipulating that
the pilot had to find a smoking gun before he could strike. The men responsible
for locating the smoking gun were the SAS teams, in radio contact with Gen
Rose's headquarters. That night Nato planes took off from the US air force base
at Aviano in Italy.
This was the showdown between Gen Rose's philosophy of cautious mediation
and the Americans' interventionism. For Gen Rose's command, there was only one
way to stop the bombing: they would have to tell the SAS scouts not to
identify the target for Nato to bomb. The rules of engagement were clear: no
target, no bombs.
The American intelligence sources now allege that this is what the
Unprofor
command did. It was a careful decision and a controversial one; by the end of
the weekend, Serb tanks were blasting their way through the suburbs of Bihac.
The Bihac debacle had confronted the Clinton administration with a gesture
of defiance, forcing the president to choose between maintaining the Atlantic
alliance and continuing his support for the Bosnian government.
In public Mr Clinton chose the Nato alliance. Within two days the
administration had offered concessions to the Serbs and 10 days later it agreed
to recognise the "Republika Srpska".
But while Washington overtly courted the Europeans, the US intelligence
operation was now entrenched, pushing new strategies for Bosnia. The DIA/CIA
station was based at the Zagreb embassy, where the US ambassador, Peter
Galbraith, was welding the alliance with Croatia, and where the military
attache, Colonel Richard Herrick, boasted an unusually generous staff of 19.
On top of this the Virginia-based military consultancy MPRI was retraining
the Croatian army.
The MPRI executive overseeing the contract with Croatia was an old-time
master of intelligence, Ed Soyster, a former DIA director.
AN extraordinary correspondence, seen by the Guardian, led to the
contract. It began in November 1994 with the hawkish Croatian defence minister,
Joko Susak, writing to the US deputy defence secretary John Deutsch asking for
direct US aid to the Croatian military. Mr Deutsch replied explaining that the
embargo prevented such direct involvement, but that it could be organised
through a private consultancy.
Such genuflection to the rules, however, did not seem to inhibit assistance
to the Bosnians, though this could not be delivered publicly.
The next task for US intelligence advance parties was to clear the ground
for an assault by the Bosnian army on the capital, Sarajevo. For this, American
intelligence organised the famous Tuzla air drops of weapons and military
equipment to the Bosnian army, in breach of the embargo.
The received wisdom is that there were two such drops, on February 10 and
12, spotted by Norwegian UN personnel. In fact there were four. A C130 transport
flew over, escorted by four American F18 fighters. The material dropped included
radar equipment and anti-tank missiles.
Nato held an "internal inquiry" into the episode once it became public
knowledge. The four-man inquiry team was all American and its report said that
the Norwegian "paramedics" who made the sightings could confused them with
civilian air traffic in and out of Belgrade.
But there was no civilian air traffic going in and out of Belgrade, and no
night traffic at all. The Norwegians were not paramedics.
But by this time, about April, the war was starting to go the Americans'
way. There was a new UN commander, General Rupert Smith, who favoured air
strikes which damaged the Serbs.
Some months later, to the Americans' delight, Gen Smith swung his authority
behind the "defining moment", - the air strikes against Serb targets in Bosnia
last summer. This time, as the bombs found their prey, there was a loud cheer in
the US embassy in Zagreb.