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The International Response to the Crisis

January 2010

January 2010

In book: The Triumph of Ethnic Hatred and the Failure of International Political Will: Gendered Violence and Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda (pp.201-267.)
Edition: 1st
Publisher: Edwin Mellen Press
Editors: Hilmi M. Zawati

Authors:

Centre for International Accountability and Justice (CIAJ)

In the last two decades or so, minorities have been targeted and victimized in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South-eastern Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In many of these cases, the international community, represented by the United Nations, received early warnings of such events, but failed to take action soon enough to reduce human suffering and save lives. To convey the idea of early warning and conflict resolution in a practical sense, this chapter tries to establish a clear conceptual definition of the procedure by concentrating on the possible role of the United Nations and its agencies in its development. Moreover, it discusses why the procedure failed so tragically to respond to those early warnings and to manage ethnic conflicts during the 1990s, particularly in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Furthermore, this chapter critically examines the abject failure of the international community’s political will to prevent or stop war, and discloses its suspicious role in managing the crisis whether by arming genocide or taking no action. It also underlines the immediate need for an effective reform of the United Nations to restore its role in maintaining international peace and security.

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Hilmi M. Zawati, “The International Response to the Crisis,” in Hilmi M. Zawati,

The Triumph of Ethnic Hatred and the Failure of International Political Will:

Gendered Violence and Genocide in the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda

(Lewiston, N.Y.: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2010) pp. 201-267.

Chapter Five

The International Response to the Crisis

“We don’t want to run into anyone

important” 1

NATO Officer

In the last two decades or so, minorities have been targeted and victimized

in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South-eastern Asia, Africa, and Latin

America. In many of these cases, the international community, represented by the

United Nations, received early warnings of such events, but failed to take action

soon enough to reduce human suffering and save lives.2

To convey the idea of early warning and conflict resolution in a practical

sense, this chapter tries to establish a clear conceptual definition of the procedure

by concentrating on the possible role of the United Nations and its agencies in its

development. Moreover, it discusses why the procedure failed so tragically to

respond to those early warnings and to manage ethnic conflicts during the 1990s,

particularly in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Furthermore, this chapter

critically examines the abject failure of the international community’s political

1 D. Rieff, “Arrest Them: The Case against the Serb War Criminals,” The Washington Post (8

September 1996) C1 [hereinafter Rieff].

2 A. Adam, Book Review of Early Warning and Conflict Resolution by K. Rupesinghe & M.

Kurode, eds., (1994) 14:4 Refuge 15; B. Harff & T. Gurr, “Systematic Early Warning of

Humanitarian Emergencies,” (1998) 35:5 Journal of Peace Research 551[hereinafter Harff]; L.

Gordenker, “Early Warning: Conceptual and Practical Issues,” in K. Rupesinghe & M. Kurode,

eds., Early Warning and Conflict Resolution (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 1992) 1

[hereinafter Gordenker].

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will to prevent or stop war, and discloses its suspicious role in managing the crisis

whether by arming genocide or taking no action. It also underlines the immediate

need for an effective reform of the United Nations to restore its role in

maintaining international peace and security.

I. Early Warning and Conflict Management

1. Building an Effective Early Warning System

Early warning is associated with humanitarian emergencies and man-made

disasters like forced migration, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. A practical

definition of early warning and conflict management can include the forecasting,

detecting, collecting, and analyzing of informational data by multi-disciplinary

experts, prior to crisis occurrence, and communicating this data to policy and

decision makers in order to develop a timely response to deter, prevent or counter

a humanitarian crisis. This definition implies a specific relationship, conceptual

and structural, between the processed information, a time factor, and potential

strategic responses to the crisis. It emphasizes the intervention of a third party

interested in promoting and keeping peace and security among nations, and, at the

same time, asserts that an effective early warning must result in early action.3

3 A. Ahmed & E. Kassinis, “The Humanitarian Early Warning System: From Concept to

Practice,” in J. Davies & T. Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and Crisis

Early Warning Systems (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998) 203

[hereinafter Ahmed]; A. Dmitrichev, “The Role of Early Warning in the Office of the UN High

Commissioner for Refugees,” in J. Davies & T. Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk

Assessment and Crisis Early Warning Systems (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,

Inc., 1998) 220-221 [hereinafter Dmitrichev]; C. Guicherd, L’Heure de l’Europe: premiéres

leçons du conflit Yougoslave [Europe’s Time: First Lessons of the Yugoslav Conflict], Paris,

CREST-École Polytechnique, 1993, à la p. 45 [ci-après Guicherd]; D. Krumm, “Early Warning:

An Action Agenda,” in J. Davies & T. Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment

and Crisis Early Warning Systems (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998)

251 [hereinafter Krumm]; G. Scarborough, “An Expert System for Assessing Vulnerability to

Instability,” in J. Davies & T. Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment and

Crisis Early Warning Systems (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998) 142

[hereinafter Scarborough]; Gordenker, supra note 2 at 2; H. Adelman, “Difficulties in Early

Warning: Networking and Conflict Management,” in K. Walraven, ed., Early Warning and

Conflict Prevention: Limitations and Possibilities (The Hague, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law

International, 1998) 52-53 [hereinafter Adelman]; H. Adelman, “Humanitarian and Conflict-

Oriented Early Warning: A Historical Background Sketch,” in K. Walraven, ed., Early Warning

and Conflict Prevention: Limitations and Possibilities (The Hague, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law

203

The aftermath of the Cold War has witnessed ethnic cleansing and mass

killings in the former Yugoslavia, the Rwandan genocide, and the recent Gulf

War and occupation of Iraq to name only a few events. All of these demonstrate

how urgently necessary it is for the United Nations to activate systems of early

warning and develop a grand strategy to forestall all potential inter-state or intra-

state conflicts, to prevent or mitigate thereby human suffering.4

There is no doubt that the United Nations is in the best position to play such

a role and exercise its mandate in maintaining international peace and security.

Article 1 (1 & 3) of the Charter of the United Nations states5 that the principal

International, 1998) 45 [hereinafter Early Warning]; J. Cockell, “Toward Response-Oriented Early

Warning Analysis,” in J. Davies & T. Gurr, eds., Preventive Measures: Building Risk Assessment

and Crisis Early Warning Systems (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998)

232 [hereinafter Cockell]; M. Kuroda, “Early Warning Capacity of the United Nations System:

Prospects for the Future,” in K. Rupesinghe & M. Kuroda, eds., Early Warning and Conflict

Resolution (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 1992) 216 [hereinafter Kuroda]; S. Shaw, Early

Warning and Preventive Diplomacy: The Case of Rwanda (M.A., Department of Political Studies,

Queen’s University at Kingston, 1997) 55 [hereinafter Shaw]; S. Toope, “Does International Law

Impose a Duty Upon the United Nations to Prevent Genocide?,” 46 McGill Law Journal 191

[hereinafter Toope]; T. Woodhouse, “Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping: Critiques and

Responses,” in T. Woodhouse & O. Ramsbotham, eds., Peacekeeping and Conflict Resolution

(London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000) 21 [hereinafter Woodhouse].

4 Some scholars have argued that the United Nations can become effectively involved in ethnic

conflict resolution through mediation, peace-keeping, and observation missions. Galtungs, for his

part, has classified three peace strategies that can be applied to most types of conflicts, and that

would help the establishment of an efficient conflict resolution within the international

organization: peace-keeping, to separate warriors; peace-making, to encourage negotiations and

peaceful settlement instead of taking arms; and peace-building, to play a constructive role in the

peace process. See E. Sloan, Bosnia and the New Collective Security (Westport, Conn.: Praeger,

1998) 3 [hereinafter Sloan]; G. Ramcharan, “Early Warning in United Nations Grand Strategy,” in

K. Rupesinghe & M. Kuroda, eds., Early Warning and Conflict Resolution (New York, N.Y.: St.

Martin’s Press, 1992) 181 [hereinafter Ramcharan]; J. Sutterlin, “Early Warning and Conflict

Prevention: The Role of the United Nations,” in K. Walraven, ed., Early Warning and Conflict

Prevention: Limitations and Possibilities (The Hague, The Netherlands: Kluwer Law

International, 1998) 121 [hereinafter Sutterlin]; Kuroda, supra note 3 at 215; S. Ryan, “The United

Nations and the Resolution of Ethnic Conflict,” in K. Rupesinghe & M. Kuroda, eds., Early

Warning and Conflict Resolution (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 1992) 110-111 [hereinafter

Ryan].

5 While Howard Adelman, director of the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University,

believes that the initial type of the UN’s early warning system was associated with collecting

information to deter threats against its peacekeeping troops in the Congo in the early sixties of the

last century, others have traced the modern conception of this system to a study of forced

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purposes of the organization are to maintain international peace and security and

to promote and encourage respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms for

all peoples without distinction.

To set up an effective early warning system within the United Nations,

there are three major elements that should be taken into consideration: (a)

collecting information through UN field posts, UN agencies, regional

organizations, and non-governmental organizations; (b) analyzing information,

which should be carried out by highly qualified policy analysts operating in the

three UN secretariat departments most involved in the prevention of conflict—

the Department of Political Affairs, the Department of Peace-Keeping Operations

(DPKO), and the Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA); and (c)

communicating information by establishing an early warning division within the

Secretary-General’s office.6

migration submitted by Prince Sadruddin Agha Khan to the UN Commission on Human Rights in

1981. In this study, Prince Sadruddin recommended the establishment of an early warning system

within the UN to find and study factors contributing to forced migration. However, early warning

in some form has been recognized in the United Nations for a long time. UN Secretary-General

Pérez de Cuéllar was the first to emphasize an early warning system as a requirement of

preventive diplomacy, a term changed later to preventive action to include actions unusual in

traditional diplomacy. In 1987, he established the office for research and the collection of

information (ORCI), and authorized it to collect significant information, analyse it and suggest

recommendations to the Secretary-General to take action. Howard Adelman added that he was

involved with the ORCI as an academic research partner in an attempt to establish the

Humanitarian Early Warning System (HEWS). The Project failed due to a lack of resources, and

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the then Secretary-General, abolished the ORCI in the end. See A. Dorn &

D. Bell, “Intelligence and Peacekeeping: The UN Operation in the Congo, 1960-1946,” (1995) 1:2

International Peacekeeping 11; Adam, supra note 2 at 15; Ahmed, supra note 3 at 203; B.

Ramcharan, The International Law and Practice of Early-Warning and Preventive Diplomacy:

The Emerging Global Watch (The Hague, The Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1991)

17; Early Warning, supra note 3 at 45-46; Kuroda, supra note 3 at 215; Ryan, supra note 4 at 109;

Sutterlin, supra note 4 at 121-122; United Nations Charter, (1945), Signed at San Francisco, 26

June 1945. 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. 993, 3 Bevans 1153, (Entered into force on 24 October 1945)

[hereinafter UN Charter].

6 Cockell, supra note 3 at 232; Dmitrichev, supra note 3 at 222-223; H. Adelman & A. Suhrke,

“Early Warning and Response: Why the International Community Failed to Prevent the

Genocide,” (1996) 20:4 Disasters: The Journal of Disaster Studies and Management 302

[hereinafter Adelman & Suhrke]; Kuroda, supra note 3 at 219; Ramcharan, supra note 4 at 192;

Sutterlin, supra note 4 at 122-125.

205

With respect to the first element, the United Nations should consider

regional organizations like the OSCE and the OAU as important sources of early

warning information. While the high commissioner on national minorities is

mandated to submit information on potential conflicts within the framework of

the OSCE, the OAU system doesn’t possess such a mechanism, although it can

assume a substantial part of the responsibility to prevent future ethnic conflicts in

Africa. In the early nineties, the OSCE played a prominent role, shown in the very

effective cooperation it achieved with UN field staff, who submitted early

warning information in the form of reports sent from the new states of the former

Soviet Union to the office of the UN Secretary-General. To derive the greatest

potential value of such information, the secretary-general, according to Article 99

of the UN Charter, has the mandate of bringing to the attention of the UN Security

Council such matters as would, in his opinion, undermine international peace and

security.7

2. Early Warning but Reluctant Early Action

Yet in spite of the fact that American, French, and Belgian authorities, as

well as decision makers at the United Nations, received dozens of early warnings

in the months preceding the outbreak of mass killings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and

genocide in Rwanda, the organization failed to act effectively to prevent the

7 Besides the UN field staff and agencies, Howard Adelman has pointed out other sources of

information, including: (a) NGOs like the Carnegie Commission, the Council of Foreign Relations

in New York, and International Alert in London, which developed different models of early

warning and preventive diplomacy; (b) theoretical models based on indicators or comparative

case-studies, and developed by academic individuals and research centres such as those at the

University of Maryland, Harvard University, the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, Leiden

University, Syracuse University, and the University of Michigan; and (c) individual states which

have the capacity to initiate and develop early warning systems through their various agencies and

departments. In September 1996, a consortium of all the above groups founded an organization

called Forum for Early Warning and Emergency Response (FEWER). See A. Tekle, “The OAU:

Conflict Prevention, Management, and Resolution,” in H. Adelman & A. Suhrke, eds., The Path of

a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction

Publishers, 1999) 111-113 [hereinafter Tekle]; Early Warning, supra note 3 at 47-49; Krumm,

supra note 3 at 248; Kuroda, supra note 3 at 219-220; Sutterlin, supra note 4 at 126-129; UN

Charter, supra note 5.

206

slaughter or manage the conflict. This was due to a lack on its part of the

functional capacity to process early warnings and analyze them dynamically, not

to mention the disinterest of the US, French, and Belgian governments when it

came to dealing with the above conflicts. Unfortunately, the Secretariat General

of the United Nations was politicized and hijacked by the Security Council’s

permanent members, particularly the United States, who controlled the peace-

keeping and other enforcement operations through their financial commitments

and their power of veto. The major powers were reluctant to take any effective

action that would prevent genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda, as both

countries had very little economic, political, and strategic significance.8

In fact, the United Nations had long been involved in trying to resolve the

deteriorating situation in the Great Lakes region of Africa, where Rwanda,

Uganda, Zaire, and Burundi had been at loggerheads for some time. In the

aftermath of the RPF invasion of 1990, the United Nations was involved in

negotiations between the Rwandan-dominated Hutu government in Kigali and the

RPF representatives. Furthermore, the UN Secretary-General initiated a

preventive diplomacy effort when he dispatched his military advisor to Rwanda in

8 As early as the breakout of mass killings in the Rwandan capital, General Dallaire observed

that the solution to the crisis was in the hands of the United States and France. This point has been

emphasized in his recently published book Shake Hands with the Devil, where he states as

follows: “I truly believe the missing piece in the puzzle was the political will from France and the

United States to make the Arusha Accords work and ultimately move this imploding nation

toward democracy and a lasting peace.” See A. des Forges, “Genocide in Rwanda and the

International Response,” in H. West, ed., Conflict and its Resolution in Contemporary Africa

(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997) 123; H. Adelman, et al., The International

Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Study 2 ‘Early

Warning and Conflict Management’ (Copenhagen: Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of

Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, 1996) 68 & 71 [hereinafter International Response]; Human

Rights Watch, Press Release, “Rwandan Genocide could have been Stopped: Comprehensive

Study Points Finger at U.S., UN, France, and Belgium,” (31 March 1999); D. Rieff, D.,

“Slaughterhouse: The Balkans - What have we Learned? What must we do?” in Hate, Genocide,

and Human Rights Fifty Years Later: What have we Learned? What must we do? A Conference

Sponsored by McGill Law School, 27-28 January 1999 [hereinafter Rieff]; L. Mackenzie, “One

Deadly Fiasco after Another: The UN Security Council, not Dallaire, is Responsible for Rwanda’s

Genocide,” National Post (13 April 2000) A1 & A18; R. Dallaire & B. Beardsley, Shake Hands

with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (Toronto, Ont.: Random House Canada, 2003)

514 [hereinafter Dallaire]; R. Thomas, “NATO, the UN, and International Law,” (1999) 10:3

Mediterranean Quarterly 26-27 [hereinafter Thomas].

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April 1993 to establish the United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda

(UNOMUR), which later deployed military observers to monitor the 150

kilometres-long border between Uganda and Rwanda. Upon the request of the

OAU, the UN participated in the preparations for the Arusha peace process. On 5

October 1993, the UN established the UNAMIR under the command of the

Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, and deployed 1,300 peacekeepers

in Rwanda by the end of December 1993 to implement the APA and facilitate the

operation of the Broad-Based Transnational Government (BBTG).9

The UNAMIR was aware of the impending crisis and received several early

warnings from the time it landed in Kigali. In December 1993, a number of senior

officers of the FAR contacted General Dallaire, sounding the alarm urgently that

collective mass killings would soon spread throughout Rwanda, starting with

regions that had great concentrations of Tutsi. Later on, another message was sent

to General Dallaire urging him to take the steps necessary to disarm the militia

and other paramilitary groups. A copy of this message was sent to the diplomatic

missions in Kigali, whose representatives followed events carefully yet rarely

shared their own intelligence with the UNAMIR.10

9 H. Adelman, “Blaming the United Nations,” (2008) 4:1 Journal of International Political

Theory 21 [hereinafter Adelman]; International Response, supra note 8 at 20 & 35; “Leave None

to Tell the Story,”: Genocide in Rwanda (New York, N.Y.: Human Rights Watch, 1999) 141

[hereinafter Genocide in Rwanda]; R. Dallaire, “The Rwandan Experience,” in A. Morrison, et al.,

eds., The New Peacekeeping Partnership (Cornwallis Park, N. S.: The Lester B. Pearson Canadian

International Peacekeeping Training Centre, 1995) 21; R. Dallaire & B. Poulin, “Rwanda: From

Peace Agreement to Genocide,” (1995) 24:3 Canadian Defence Quarterly 7 [hereinafter Dallaire];

Shaw, supra note 3 at 75-76; UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on Rwanda,

UN Doc. S/26488 (24 September 1993) 1 [hereinafter Report of the Secretary-General on

Rwanda].

10 General Dallaire commented on this issue in the Canadian press later, saying: “A lot of the

world powers were all there with their embassies and their military attachés. And you can’t tell me

those bastards didn’t have a lot of information. They would never pass that information on to me,

ever.” See A. Kuperman, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention: Genocide in Rwanda

(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001) 101 [hereinafter Kuperman]; A. Thompson,

“Nightmare of the Generals in 1994: Canada was warned a massacre Loomed in Rwanda,” The

Sunday Star (5 October 1997) 1; B. Jones, Peacemaking in Rwanda: The Dynamics of Failure

(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2001)114 [hereinafter Jones]; Genocide in Rwanda,

supra note 9 at 142; T. Sheehy, “Limitations to United Nations Peacemaking in Africa,” in H.

208

On 10 January 1994, General Dallaire received interesting information from

Jean-Pierre, a high-ranking Interahamwe commander. If that information had

been taken into consideration by the United Nations and the Security Council’s

members, the Rwandan genocide might not have proceeded. This key informant

asserted that elaborate plans had been prepared to massacre the entire Tutsi ethnic

group together with thousands of Hutu moderates who might oppose the killings.

This former member of the Rwandan president’s security staff confirmed that

there were plans to attack the UNAMIR Belgian troops to force them to leave the

country. In return for protection for himself and his family, Jean-Pierre promised

General Dallaire to provide him with more information about weapons cashes,

training centres, and extermination squads. Moreover, he confirmed that he could

move the weapons wherever the UNAMIR would like to store it, and he could get

back the already distributed arms.

Based on this information, General Dallaire sent his famous coded cable on

11 January 1994, to General Maurice Baril at the DPKO in New York, passing on

the above information and asking for permission to raid and seize the weapons

cashes, as well as to provide protection to the informant and his family. The cable

was passed to Kofi Annan, the then Under-Secretary General for Peacekeeping

Operations, who refused General Dallair’s demands saying that seizing arms

operations would shift the UNAMIR mission from peacekeeping to peacemaking,

which was not within the UNAMIR mandate, and asked Dallaire to pass this

information to President Habyarimana, and share it with the US, French, and

Belgian Ambassadors to Rwanda. Furthermore, Annan refused to offer protection

to Jean-Pierre and his family. On 12 January 1994, General Dallaire and Jacques-

Ruger Booh-Booh, the Secretary-General’s Special Representative (S-GSR) met

with representatives of the US, French, and Belgian embassies, who likewise

West, ed., Conflict and its Resolution in Contemporary Africa (Lanham, Md.: University Press of

America, 1997) 112.

209

evidently refused to give the informant the asylum he requested. Two years after

the Rwandan genocide, Kofi Annan refused to allow General Dallaire to testify

before a Belgian Senate investigatory commission.11

As early as December 1993, the US, Belgian, and French diplomatic corps

in Kigali were keenly aware of the preparations for genocide in Rwanda. Between

3 December 1993 and 4 January 1994, the Belgian ambassador in Kigali informed

his government about paramilitary training camps and the distribution of weapons

to Hutu extremists. In early January 1994, four months before the eruption of

mass killings, an analysis of the Rwandan situation by the US Central Intelligence

Agency (CIA) warned that more than 500,000 Rwandans might be exterminated if

a civil war broke out in Rwanda. The French government too was aware of the

deteriorating situation in Rwanda. On 21 January 1994, 12 a French DC-8 landed

11 Surprisingly, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the UN Secretary General, was the last one to know

about Dallaire’s cable, although his special representative was informed by General Dallaire and

joined him in his meetings with the United States, France, and Belgium ambassadors to Rwanda.

In his words: “Throughout most of January 1994, I was away from UN headquarters in New York

and not in close touch with the Rwanda situation. Not until three years later did I learn that a cable

had been sent by General Dallaire to the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO)

reporting an informant’s claim that weapons were being stockpiled by Hutu forces in preparation

for mass killings of Tutsis. Dallaire requested authorization to try to seize the weapons, but his

request was denied by the DPKO on the ground that the United Nations’ mandate for Rwanda did

not cover such operations. ” See B. Boutros-Ghali, Unvanquished: A U.S. – U.N. Saga (New

York, N.Y: Random House, 1999) 130 [hereinafter Ghali]; C. Trueheart, “UN Alerted to Plans for

Rwanda Bloodbath,” The Washington Post (25 September 1997) A1; Genocide in Rwanda, supra

note 9 at 150-152; H, Fein, “The Three P’s of Genocide Prevention: With Application to a

Genocide Foretold-Rwanda,” in N. Riemer, ed., Protection against Genocide: Mission

Impossible? (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2000) 41-66; J-R. Booh, Le patron de Dallaire parle :

révélations sur les dérives d’un général de l’ONU au Rwanda [Dallaire’s Boss Speaks:

Revelations on the Drifts of a UN General in Rwanda], Paris : Duboiris, 2005, à la p. 92-93 [ci-

après Booh]; Kuperman, supra note 10 at 102; L. Marchal, Rwanda: La Descente aux enfers:

témoignage d’un peacekeeper décembre 1993- avril 1994 [Rwanda: Descent into Hell: Testimony

of a Peacekeeper, December 1993], Brussels, Èditions Labor, 2001, à la p. 167 [ci-après Marchal];

L. Torchin, The Burden of Witnessing: Media and Mobilization in the Age of Genocide (Ph.D.,

New York University, 2007) 191 [hereinafter Torchin]; P. Gourevitch, “The Genocide Fax,” The

New Yorker (11 May 1998) 43; R. Dallaire, “Request for Protection for Informants,” An Outgoing

Code Cable No. 212-963-9852 to General Maurice Baril, the Department of Peacekeeping

Operations in New York, from General Roméo Dallaire, Force Commander of the United Nations

Assistance Mission to Rwanda (UNAMIR), Kigali, Rwanda (11 January 1994).

12 Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9 at 145-147 & 156-157; International Response, supra

note 8 at 67; Kuperman, supra note 10 at 12 & 107.

210

secretly at night in Kigali airport with a load of arms in support of the Rwandan

government, an action that violated the terms of the APA.

Two weeks after the outbreak of violence in the Rwandan capital, Hutu

extremists massacred ten Belgian Blue Helmets, which incident caused the

withdrawal of the Belgian and British UNAMIR peacekeepers. Instead of

reinforcing the UNAMIR forces, however, the UN Security Council voted on 21

April 1994 to reduce the UNAMIR by 90 percent. The UN Secretariat ordered the

UN troops to work with the 500 French soldiers to evacuate Western nationals

rather than protect threatened Rwandans. Under ongoing international pressure,

the Security Council authorized on 17 May 1994 the establishment of UNAMIR

II, which was to consist of 5,500 troops. Once the decision was formally approved

on 8 June 1994, the Pentagon demanded an additional seven weeks to negotiate it.

Accordingly, the decision was never made, and no additional UN peacekeepers

landed in Kigali before the RPF’s final victory in mid-July 1994.13

In 1998, a number of American institutions decided to test General

Dallaire’s argument that the UNAMIR would have been able to prevent most of

the killings in Rwanda had the Security Council reinforced his mission with 5,000

troops and the right mandate. The Carnegie Commission report, based on analysis

provided by thirteen senior military leaders, addressed this issue and concluded

that “A modern force of 5,000 troops sent to Rwanda sometime between 7 and 21

April 1994, could have significantly altered the outcome of the conflict.” One

year later, in 1999, Kofi Annan appointed a three-person inquiry team led by

13 Dallaire, supra note 9 at 9; ; H. Adelman, “Bystanders to Genocide in Rwanda,” (2003) 25:2

The International History Review 359 [hereinafter Adelman]; The 1994 Rwandan Genocide and

U.S. Policy: Testimony of Holly Burkhalter to Physicians for Human Rights Subcommittee on

Human Rights and International Operations, Physicians for Human Rights, (5 May 1998) at 9

[hereinafter Burkhalter]; Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide, International Panel of Eminent

Personalities to Investigate the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda and the Surrounding Events,

Organization of African Unity, Report, 2000, at Chapter 10, p. 2 [hereinafter International Panel];

Shaw, supra note 3 at 77; UN Security Council’s Resolution 912 (1994), Taking Note of the

Report of the Secretary-General Dated 20 April 1994, Expressing Regret at the Tragic Incident in

which the Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi Lost their Lives, Condemning the Ongoing Violence

in Rwanda, Particularly in Kigali, which Dangers the Lives and Safety of the Civilian Population

(21 April 1994), UN Doc. S/RES/912 (1994).

211

Ingvar Carlsson, the former prime minister of Sweden, and including Hun Sung-

Joo, a former foreign minister of the Republic of Korea, and the retired

Lieutenant-General Rufus M. Kupolati of Nigeria, to investigate the role of the

United Nations in the Rwandan genocide. The report14 confirmed the implication

of the United Nations in the events that transpired and criticized it for its “costly

error of judgment.”

In less than a year, the UN committed another “costly error of judgment,”

as if it were doomed to repeat its failure in protecting civilians from mass

slaughter. The ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims in Central Bosnia and of Serb

civilians in Krajina and Slovenia in 1995, as well as the Serb attacks against the

UN-declared “Safe Havens” of Žepa and Srebrenica, demonstrated again the

inability of the international community to prevent such killings. Serbian forces

exterminated 800 Bosnian Muslims in July 1995 under the eyes of the

UNPROFOR. It soon came to light that UNPROFOR had disarmed these enclaves

and allowed them to fall in the hands of Bosnian Serb paramilitary extremists.

Once again, the UNPROFOR failed to take urgent action to protect more than

two-thousand Muslim men and boys held by Bosnian Serbs in the Banja Luka

region after the fall of Srebrenica.15

14 B. Crossette, “Rwanda Genocide Seen as Worsened by U.N. Inaction,” The New York Times

(17 December 1999) A1 & A12 [hereinafter Crossette]; Burkhalter, supra note 13 at 6;

International Panel, supra note 13 at Chapter 10, p. 1; I. Carlsson, “The UN Inadequacies,” (2005)

3:4 Journal of International Criminal Justice 842 [hereinafter Carlsson]; R. Oakley, “Peacekeeping

and Humanitarian Crises,” in H. West, ed., Conflict and its Resolution in Contemporary Africa

(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1997) 77; Report of the Independent Inquiry into the

Actions of the United Nations during the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, UN Doc. S/1999/1257 (16

December 1999) 39-40 [hereinafter Carlsson Report]; S. Feil, Preventing Genocide: How the

Early Use of Force might have Succeeded in Rwanda (New York, N.Y.: Carnegie Commission on

Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1998) [hereinafter Feil Report].

15 B. O’Shea, The Modem Yugoslav Conflict 1991-1995: Perception, Deception and

Dishonesty (New York: Frank Cass, 2005) 78 [hereinafter O’Shea]; D. Paul, “Ethnic Cleansing:

The Price of Peace,” in B. Cohen & G. Stamkoski, eds., With No Peace to Keep: United Nations

Peacekeeping and the War in the Former Yugoslavia (London: Grainpress, Ltd., 1995) 93

[hereinafter Paul]; Genocide against the Serb People in Croatia, 1941-1991. Produced and

Directed by Serbian TV. Running Time 01:11:47. Serbian TV, 1992. (Videocassette); Guicherd,

supra note 3 at 46; M. Barnes, Beyond Conflict: The Structure and Purposes of Genocide in the

20th Century (Ph.D., Department of Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University,

212

II. The Failure of International Will: Arming Genocide or

Taking No Action

1. Failure of Political Will and Lack of Interest

Previous studies and war analyses confirmed three facts about the armed

ethnic conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda: that the great powers knew

ahead of time that a serious tragedy was about to take place; that with a

reasonable military intervention at the proper time, they could have halted the

catastrophe; and that even after the eruption of violence, it would have been

possible to reduce the number of casualties and mitigate the crisis were there

sufficient political will to do so. This section of the present analysis explores the

conspiratorial role played by the international community, whether by arming the

aggressors or by taking no action to deter the calamity, such as by bringing

perpetrators of war crimes and gender-based crimes to justice.

The failure of the West to deal with the Yugoslav crisis took on three

dimensions: before, during, and after the war.16 The first and most blatant failure

1999) 851-852 [hereinafter Barnes]; S. Perkins, “The Failure to Protect: Expanding the Scope of

Command Responsibility to the United Nations at Srebrenica,” (2004) 62:2 University of Toronto

Faculty of Law Review 208 [hereinafter Perkins].

16 Regardless of the West’s complete failure to halt the tragedy and restore peace among the

Yugoslav nations, Western governments were diplomatically involved in Yugoslav affairs as early

as the eruption of war in Slovenia in June 1990. This involvement included: the efforts made by

the EC, the UN, and the CSCE special mediation envoys; the international Conference on former

Yugoslavia (ICFY); the EC Arbitration Commission chaired by Robert Badinter, jurist and

president of the French conseil constitutionnel; the Contact Group 1994-1995, including the

United States, Russia, Germany, Britain, Italy, and France; the EC diplomatic and military

monitoring missions; the too late and too little NATO and UN military intervention for

peacekeeping; the EC and the UN economic sanctions and arms embargos; and finally the

establishment of the UN ad hoc International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to

bring the war crimes suspects to justice. See B. Nelan, “Do Something … Anything: Clinton is

under Mounting Pressure to Stop the Killing, but there is no Easy or Politically Popular Way to do

it,” Time (3 May 1993) 42 [hereinafter Nelan]; “The Bosnian Conflict: US Involvement in the

Balkans,” Congressional Digest 75 (February 1996) 33; Canada, House of Commons,

“Humanitarian Assistance to the Former Yugoslavia,” by Barbara McDougall, Sessional Papers

(1993); D. Kreseock, “Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: The Legal Foundations of Foreign

Intervention,” (1994) 27 Cornell International Law Journal 225 [hereinafter Kreseock]; D.

Orentlicher, “Separation Anxiety: International Responses to Ethno-Separatist Claims,” (1998)

23:1 Yale Journal of International Law 65 [hereinafter Orentlicher]; D. Silović, “The International

Response to the Crisis in Yugoslavia,” in M. Spencer, ed., The Lessons of Yugoslavia (New York,

213

N.Y.: JAI, An Imprint of Elsevier Science, Inc., 2000) 151 [hereinafter Silović]; F. Ajami, “Under

Western Eyes: The Fate of Bosnia,” (1999) 41:2 Survival 45 [hereinafter Ajami]; J. Sharp,

“Rethinking Western Policy in the Balkans,” (1999) 12:2 Cambridge Review of International

Affairs 109-110 [hereinafter Sharp]; K. Jurišić, “The Role of the CSCE in the Conflict in Former

Yugoslavia,” in International Conference: Armed Conflicts in the Balkans and European Security.

A Conference Held in Ljubljana, 20-22 April 1993, eds., J. Kožar, et al., (Ljubljana, Slovenia:

Ministry of Defence, Center for Strategic Studies, 1993) 95 [hereinafter Jurišić]; Library of

Parliament, Bosnia-Hercegovina: The International Response (Background Paper) by V. Rigby

(Ottawa: Library of Parliament, 1994) 12 [hereinafter Rigby]; Library of Parliament, International

Humanitarian Responses to Crises and Conflicts: Current Challenges (Background Paper) by G.

Schmitz (Ottawa: Library of Parliament, 1995) 6 [hereinafter Schmitz]; M. Crnobrnja, The

Yugoslav Drama, 2nd ed. (Montreal, Quebec: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1996) 189

[hereinafter Crnobrnja]; N. White, “The Legitimacy of NATO Action in Bosnia,” New Law

Journal 144:6647 (13 May 1994) 649 [hereinafter White]; R. Gaudreau, “La Politique canadienne

et le maintien de la paix en Ex-Yougoslavie,” [Canadian Policy and Peacekeeping in the Former-

Yugoslavia] dans C-P. David & A. Legault, dirs., Les Leçons du conflict Yougoslave: des

politiques de sécurite à redéfinir, Saint-Foy, Québec, Centre Québecoise de Relations

Internationales, 1995, à la p. 214 [ci-après Gaudreau]; Russian Federation, Ministry for Foreign

Affairs, Statement Concerning the Situation in the Former Yugoslavia, 14 June 1995, UN Doc.

S/1995/492, Annex; UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the International

Conference on the Former Yugoslavia, UN Doc. S/24795 (11 November 1992), 31 I.L.M. 1549-

1594 (1992); UN Security Council’s Resolution 713 (1991), Supporting the Cease-Fire

Agreements of 17 and 22 September 1991; Urging Peaceful Settlement through Negotiation at the

Conference on Yugoslavia; Deciding that States shall Enforce a Weapons Embargo against

Yugoslavia (25 September 1991), UN Doc. S/RES/713 (1991), 31 I.L.M. 1427 (1992); UN

Security Council’s Resolution 724 (1991), Noting that, without a Cease-Fire, a UN Peacekeeping

Operation cannot be Deployed; Endorsing the Supplementation of the UNSG Personal Envoy’s

Mission with Military Personnel; Requesting an Embargo on All Deliveries of Weapons and

Military Equipment to Yugoslavia; Deciding to Establish a Committee of the Security Council to

Examine Reports, Gather and Consider Information and Recommend Appropriate Measures (15

December 1991), UN Doc. S/RES/724 (1991), 31 I.L.M. 1435 (1992); United States, The House

of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives Resolution 204, by Mr.

Diaz-Balart, “Providing for Consideration of the Bill (S.21) to Terminate the United States Arms

Embargo Applicable to the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” 28 July 1995; United States,

Implementation of the Helsinki Accords: Hearing before the Helsinki Accords: Hearing before the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 104 Congress, First Session, “The United

Nations, NATO, and the Former Yugoslavia,” 6 April 1995; United States, The Senate of the

United States, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 290, by Mr. Pressler and other

Senators, “Regarding the Aggression against Bosnia-Hercegovina and Conditioning United States

Recognition of Serbia,” 29 April 1992; United States, The Senate of the United States, 102nd

Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 330, by Mr. Pell, “Relating to Authorization of

Multilateral Action in Bosnia-Hercegovina under Article 42 of the United Nations Charter,” 6

August 1992; United States, The Senate of the United States, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate

Resolution 341, by Senator Mr. Gorton, “Calling for the Termination of the Arms Embargo

Imposed on Bosnia-Hercegovina and Croatia,” 16 September 1992; United States, The Senate of

the United States, 102nd Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 2743, by Mr. Pell, “Yugoslavia

Sanctions Act of 1992,” 20 May 1992; United States, The Senate of the United States & the House

of Representatives, 103rd Congress, 2nd Session, Enacted in a Congress Assembled 2042, “To

Remove the United States Arms Embargo of the Government of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” 12 May

1994.

214

was the West’s lack of political will to act and prevent the Yugoslav wars of

dissolution. The United States’ failure to bridle Milošević’s aggression was not

therefore due to the lack of early warning or to a shortage of intelligence. The

Bush administration was keenly aware of the impending violent break-up of

Yugoslavia. Throughout the Cold War, the West had kept a careful eye on the

former Yugoslavia and other East European countries. One year before the

eruption of war in Slovenia, the CIA had published an alarming report warning of

Milošević’s provocative and dangerous acts against Kosovar Albanians and other

Yugoslav republics. Similarly, Warren Zimmerman, the United States

Ambassador to Belgrade, 1989-1992, prepared several warning reports about the

deteriorating situation in Yugoslavia, including the 1991 Serbo-Croatian plans to

partition Bosnia-Herzegovina. EC governments, for their part, didn’t take early

warning reports into consideration and turned a deaf ear to the United States’

warnings that the escalation of violence in Yugoslavia might trigger a full-fledged

civil war. The primary US concern, however, was for political stability. Thus

President Bush dispatched James Baker, the then Secretary of State, to Belgrade

in June 1991, to inform Milošević that the American administration supported the

unity and integrity of Yugoslavia and that it would not, under any circumstances,

undertake military intervention to stop a Serb offensive against seceding

republics. Milošević, for his part, took this message to be a green light to carry out

his plans for a “Greater Serbia,” even by force.17

17 A. Dragnich, “The West’s Mismanagement of the Yugoslav Crisis,” (1993) 156:3 World

Affairs 63 [hereinafter Dragnich]; B. Denitch, “Stop the Genocide in Bosnia,” (1993) 40:3 Dissent

283 [hereinafter Denitch]; D. Gompert, “The United States and Yugoslavia’s Wars,” in R. Ullman,

ed., The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars (New York, N.Y.: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996)

122 [hereinafter Gompert]; G. Gustenau, “The War in Yugoslavia and Future European Security:

Austrian Views,” in International Conference: Armed Conflicts in the Balkans and European

Security. A Conference Held in Ljubljana, 20-22 April 1993, eds., J. Kožar, et al., (Ljubljana,

Slovenia: Ministry of Defence, Center for Strategic Studies, 1993) 172 [hereinafter Gustenau]; J.

Pilger, “The West is Guilty in Bosnia,” New Statesman & Society (7 May 1993) 14 [hereinafter

Pilger]; J. Sharp, Anglo-American Relations and Crisis in Yugoslavia (Paris: Institut Français des

Relations Internationales, 1998) 15-16 [hereinafter Crisis in Yugoslavia]; L. Cohen, Broken

Bonds: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993) 216 [hereinafter

Cohen]; M. Elliott, M., “Why is the West Scared?” Newsweek 123:7 (14 February 1994) 24

[hereinafter Elliott]; M. Rezun, Europe and War in the Balkans: Toward a New Yugoslav Identity

215

After the outbreak of war in Slovenia in the summer of 1991, the EC

stepped forward too late with offers of economic and diplomatic aid for

Yugoslavia. This delay in EC economic support in fact seriously aggravated the

unsteady post-Cold War economic and political conditions in the former

Yugoslavia. Neither the EC troika of foreign ministers nor the European

Committee Military Monitoring Mission (ECMM) achieved any notable success

in mediating the conflict or mitigating the tragedy. The EC withdrew the ECMM

from Croatia after the killing of one member of the mission near Mostar on 2 May

1992. On the following day, the EC also suspended the mission to Bosnia-

Herzegovina and pulled the ECMM monitors out of Sarajevo as a dangerous

place. The Carrington-Cutliero proposal of March 1992 to divide Bosnia-

Herzegovina into three ethnic cantons was little more than a plan for ethnic

division and apartheid. Even the UNPROFOR, which was deployed in Eastern

Croatia in February 1992 after a cease-fire brokered by Cyrus Vance between

Serbia and Croatia, treated the Serb self-proclaimed RSK as a de facto state. 18

(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1995) 176 [hereinafter Rezun]. M. Zucconi, “The European Union in

the Former Yugoslavia,” in A. Chayes & A. Chayes, eds., Preventing Conflict in the Post-

Communist World: Mobilizing International and Regional Organizations (Washington, D.C.:

Brookings Institution, 1996) 240 [hereinafter Zucconi]; R. Lukić & A. Lynch, “U.S. Policy

towards Yugoslavia: From Differentiation to Disintegration,” in R. Thomas & H. Friman, eds.,

The South Slav Conflict: History, Religion, Ethnicity and Nationalism (New York, N.Y.: Garland

Publishing, Inc., 1996) 266 [hereinafter Lukić]; S. Larrabee, “U.S. Policy in the Balkans: From

Containment to Strategic Reengagement,” in C. Danopoulos & K. Messas, eds., Crises in the

Balkans: Views from the Participants (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997) 281 [hereinafter

Larrabee]; S. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War

(Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995) 151 [hereinafter Woodward]; Sharp, supra

note 16, at 111-112; United States, The House of Representatives, 102nd Congress, 1st Session,

House of Representatives Resolution 470, by Mr. Hoyer & Mr. Eckart, “Regarding United States

Policy Toward the Former Yugoslavia,” 21 May 1992.

18 D. Pushkina, United Nations Peacekeeping in Civil Wars: Conditions for Success (Ph. D.,

University of Maryland, 2002) 155 [hereinafter Pushkina]; J. Mcallister, “To Bomb or not to

Bomb? Clinton Settles on a Tougher Policy toward Serbian Aggression,” Time (10 May 1993) 24;

M. Blanchfield, “Partisan U.S. Weakens UN: Kosovo Judge, Washington Opposes what it can’t

Control,” The Ottawa Citizen (13 October 1999) A10; M. Ignatieff, “Too Little, Too Late: The

West has Made Things Worse in Bosnia,” The Gazette (18 May 1993) B3; M. Weller, “The

International Response to the Dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia,” (1992)

86:3 American Journal of International Law 581 [hereinafter Weller]; R. Watson, et al., “We are

216

Moreover, the great powers repeated their mistake when they deliberately avoided

discussing the unresolved status of Kosovo during the Dayton peace negotiations.

The second failure came after the spread of war into other Yugoslav

republics. The EC and the United States’ inaction when it came to preventing the

spread of violence and stopping the slaughter was at the core of the West’s failure

to address adequately the Yugoslav tragedy, reflecting a collective lack of will to

back-up their diplomatic efforts with sufficient military force. Since the beginning

of the violence, the international community, in spite of its differences, had

agreed on one thing: it opposed any military intervention to enforce peace and

terminate the conflict. The great powers’ confusion and lack of knowledge about

the nature of the Yugoslav conflict19 led them to view the problem as an internal

All Accomplices,” Newsweek 124:24 (12 December 1994) 42; Sharp, supra note 16 at 113; S.

Terrett, The Dissolution of Yugoslavia and the Badinter Arbitration Commission: A Contextual

Study of Peace-Making Efforts in the Post-Cold War World (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2000) 79

[hereinafter Terrett]; UN Security Council’s Resolution 727 (1992), Deploring the 7 January 1992

Incident Resulting in the Death of 5 Members of the EC Monitoring Mission; Endorsing the

UNSG’s Sending a Group of 50 Military Liaison Officers to Promote Maintenance of the Cease-

Fire; Reaffirming the UNSC Resolution 713 Embargo (8 January 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/727

(1992), 31 I.L.M. 1437 (1992); United States, The House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 2nd

Session, House of Representatives Resolution 542, by Mr Hoyer and other Representatives,

“Concerning the Implementation of the Genocide Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia-

Herzegovina,” 26 September 1996; W. Bradford, “The Western European Union, Yugoslavia, and

the Disintegration of the EU, the New Sick Man of Europe,” (2000) 24 Boston College

International and Comparative Law Review 28 [hereinafter Bradford]; War Crimes in Bosnia-

Hercegovina, vol.1 (New York, N.Y.: Helsinki Watch, a Division of Human Rights Watch, 1993)

174 [hereinafter War Crimes]; “The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: U.S. and International

Response,” Congressional Digest 75 (February 1996) 36.

19 C. Rogel, The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood

Press, 1998) 63 [hereinafter Rogel]; D. Riesman, “Western Responses to the Current Balkan

War,” in T. Cushman & S. Meštrović, eds., This Time We Knew: Western Responses to Genocide

in Bosnia (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1996) 352 [hereinafter Riesman]; L.

Freedman, “Why the West Failed,” (1994-1995) 97 Foreign Policy 53 [hereinafter Freedman]; M.

Akarslan, Bosna-Hersek ve Türkiye [Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey] (Istanbul: Ağaç Yayincilik,

Ltd., 1993) 46 [hereinafter Akarslan] Turkish; R. Lukić & A. Lynch, Europe from the Balkans to

the Urals: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union (New York, N.Y.: Oxford

University Press, 1996) 303 [hereinafter Lukić]; R. DiPrizio, Armed Humanitarians: U.S.

Interventions from Northern Iraq to Kosovo (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press,

2002) 103 [hereinafter DiPrizio].

217

dispute over territorial issues, and to consider all warring factions as equally

guilty, which made it unworthy of the West’s interest.

When war flared up in Slovenia in June 1991, the American administration

dropped the case into the hands of the EC, and simultaneously dismissed the

possibility of any military intervention. This was due to the fact that the United

States had its own special view on the use of force in ethnic conflicts. American

troops cannot be engaged in a war without having a clear political aim and the

likelihood of absolute victory with minimum or, better still, no casualties. The

reluctance of the Americans to intervene militarily in the Yugoslav conflict was

thus ruled out by three factors: the Yugoslav war did not constitute a direct vital

threat to United States’ interests; American military leaders, taking into

consideration lessons learned from Vietnam and Lebanon, believed that the

United States should avoid military intervention there at any cost, as it would

expose American troops to unacceptable and unnecessary risks; and military

intervention in internal conflicts, deeply affected by the transformation of the

international system following the end of the Cold War, had become a source of

dispute between Congress and the government.20

Although American leaders believed that the world’s peace and security

would be unattainable without US participation and involvement, they preferred

20 C-P. David, “Procrastinating into the New World Order: American Policy towards the

Yugoslav Crisis,” (Centre d’études des politiques étrangères et de securité and the Military and

Strategic Studies Programme of the University of Montreal, 21 April 1994) [Unpublished

Lecture]; Freedman, supra note 19 at 56; G. Xhudo, Diplomacy and Crisis Management in the

Balkans: A US Foreign Policy Perspective (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 1996) 83

[hereinafter Xhudo]; Gompert, supra note 17 at 131; I. Daalder, “The United States and Military

Intervention in Internal Conflict,” in M. Brown, ed., The International Dimensions of Internal

Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1996) 463-464 [hereinafter Daalder]; S. Lucarelli,

Europe and the Breakup of Yugoslavia: A Political Failure in Search of a Scholarly Explanation

(Boston, Mass.: Kluwer Law International, 2000) 111 [hereinafter Lucarelli]; S. Walker,

“Genocide: We are Responsible,” in S. Meštrović, ed., The Conceit of Innocence: Losing the

Conscience of the West in the War against Bosnia (College Station, Tex.: Texas A & M

University Press, 1997) 233 [hereinafter Walker]; United States, The House of Representatives,

Hearing before the Committee on Armed Services, 103 Congress, 1st Session, “The Policy

Implications of US Involvement in Bosnia,” 25-26 May 1993; W. Nagan, et al., “U.S. Security

Interests and the War in Former Yugoslavia,” (1993) The American Society of International Law,

Proceedings of the Annual Meeting 208-209 [hereinafter Nagan].

218

to watch the Balkan slaughter for five years from the sidelines. After each

massacre, American leaders issued military threats without any follow-up, a

pattern that encouraged Milošević to perpetrate more atrocities and that incited

Franjo Tudjman to cleanse Eastern Croatia and Western Bosnia-Herzegovina of

non-Croats. In a roundtable on NATO intervention in Kosovo and international

humanitarian law, Irwin Cotler discerned that the impunity given to Milošević in

Bosnia and the failure of the international community to punish and isolate him

encouraged him to commit more crimes in Kosovo. This inaction damaged the

United Nations’ credibility and weakened the ICTY. Attitudes only changed at a

later stage, when the human crisis in the Yugoslav constituent republics provoked

the fears of Western governments as to the effects of war on Europe’s stability,

including the flow of refugees, the risks of the expansion of war to neighbouring

countries, and the gravity of making a division within the EC and NATO. When

the Western governments decided to intervene with a force to provide

humanitarian aid to civilians and to broker a peaceful settlement, they established

a UN peacekeeping protection force, with Britain and France providing most of

its manpower. Yet this UNPROFOR took on a very passive role, did nothing to

curb Serb aggressions, even on UN-protected zones, and restricted its mandate to

the protection of UN personnel and the international humanitarian aid convoys.

Moreover, the controversial arms embargo imposed by the UN and the EC on

Yugoslavia21 had the effect of undermining the capability of the principal victims,

21 A. Schiff, “The War Powers Resolution: From the Halls of Congress to the Hills of Bosnia,

Inertia should Give Way to Post-Cold War Reality,” (1996) 11 The American University Journal

of International Law and Policy 899-900 [hereinafter Schiff]; Akarslan, supra note 19 at 49; Crisis

in Yugoslavia, supra note 17 at 22; D. Chandler, “Western Intervention and the Disintegration of

Yugoslavia, 1989-1999,” in P. Hammond & E. Herman, eds., Degraded Capability: The Media

and the Kosovo Crisis (London: Pluto Press, 2000) 19 [hereinafter Chandler]; DiPrizio, supra note

19 at 111; G-J. Knoops, “The Transposition of Inter-State Self-Defense and Use of Force onto

Operational Mandates for Peace Support Operations,” in R. Arnold, ed., Law Enforcement within

the Framework of Peace Support Operations (Leiden, the Netherlands: Martinus Nijhoff

Publishers, 2008) 19 [hereinafter Knoops]; I. Cotler, et al., “NATO Intervention in Kosovo and

International Humanitarian Law,” in a Roundtable Sponsored by InterAmicus, the Faculty of Law

of McGill University, and the UQAM, 20-22 October 1999; Orentlicher, supra note 16 at 73-74;

P. Williams, “The International Community’s Response to the Crisis in Former Yugoslavia,” in B.

Magaš & I. Žanić, eds., The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991-1995 (London: Frank

219

the Bosnian Muslims, to defend themselves, while the illegal flow of arms to the

aggressors, the Bosnian Serbs, never stopped.

When the Yugoslav war came to an end with the signing of the DPA in

1995, the international community registered another great failure. This was the

incredible lack of political will to arrest the major war crimes suspects,

particularly Radovan Karadžić and his wartime military commander Ratko

Mladić, who were indicted by the ICTY in the summer of 1995 for war crimes

and crimes against humanity, including gender-based crimes.22 The reluctance of

Cass Publishers, 2001) 276 [hereinafter Williams]; R. Gutman, A Witness to Genocide (New

York, N.Y.: Maxwell Macmillan International, 1993) 1-2 [hereinafter Gutman]; S. Ramet, “The

Serbian Church and the Serbian Nation,” in S. Ramet & L. Adamovich, eds., Beyond Yugoslavia:

Politics, Economics and Culture in a Shattered Community (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press,

1995) 453-455 [hereinafter Ramet]; Sharp, supra note 16 at 116; UN Security Council’s

Resolution 721 (1991) Approving Efforts of the U.N. Secretary-General (UNSG) and his Personal

Envoy (Cyrus Vance); Endorsing the Deployment of a U.N. Peacekeeping Operation Once a

Cease-Fire is Effected (27 November 1991), UN Doc. S/RES/721 (1991), 31 I.L.M. 1433 (1992);

W. Bert, The Reluctant Superpower: United States’ Policy in Bosnia, 1991-1995 (New York,

N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 1997) 68-69 [hereinafter Bert].

22 Amazingly, on 21 July 2008—only one week after bringing charges against the Sudanese

President—the world was taken by surprise at the arrest of Radovan Karadžić in Belgrade by

Serbian Security Services. His arrest took place ten days after the thirteenth commemoration of the

Srebrenica Massacre of July 1995, and two weeks after the formation of a new pro-European

union membership government dominated by President Boris Tadić’s pro-Western Democratic

Party. See D. Bilefsky, “Karadzic Arrest is Big Step for a Land Tired of Being Europe’s Pariah,”

The New York Times (23 July 2008) A17; D. Bilefsky, “Karadzic Sent to Hague for Trial Despite

Violent Protest by Loyalists,” The New York Times (30 July 2008) A15; D. Charter, “Radovan

Karadzic’s Fate Sealed when Tadic Loyalists Replaced Nationalists,” The Times (28 July 2008)

A9; D. Rohde, “Arrest Gives Credibility to War Crimes Tribunals,” The New York Times (22 July

2008) A1; “EU Hails Arrest of Karadzic; Sees Serbia Moving Closer to EU Membership,” The

Associated Press, Brussels, Belgium, 22 July 2008; I. Cotler, “Radovan Karadzic’s Arrest: No

More Impunity,” National Post (24 July 2008) A7; ICTY, Press Release NJ/MOW/PR1275e,

“Tribunal Welcomes the Arrest of Radovan Karadzic,” (21 July 2008); ICTY, Press Release

OTP/PR1274e, “Statement of the Office of the Prosecutor on The Arrest of Radovan Karadžić,”

(21 July 2008); Impunity ‘Not an Option’, Security Council Told in Briefing on Completion,

Online: Web Newswire (13 December 2008) <http://www.webnewswire.com/node/446443>

(Accessed on: 14 December 2008); “Karadzic Extradited,” The Associated Press, Belgrade,

Serbia, 30 July 2008; Karadzic ‘to Fight’ Extradition Bid, Online: Al Jazeera Net (23 July 2008)

<http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/07/ 200872344857411450.html> (Accessed on: 23

July 2008); Karadzic being Extradited for Trial, Online: Al Jazeera Net (30 July 2008)

<http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2008/07/200873023922912486.html> (Accessed on: 30

July 2008); “Karadzic Trial Adjourned Until January,” Deutsche Presse Agentur (DPA), The

Hague, 28 October 2008; M. Simons & D. Bilefsky, “At Trial, Former Serb Leader Seeks to

Represent Himself,” The New York Times (24 July 2008) A13; M. Simons, “Karadzic Declines to

220

the Implementation Force (IFOR) to arrest both criminals served only to further

the culture of impunity, and demonstrated the superb diplomatic hypocrisy of the

Western governments. This was in spite of the fact that Article 29 of the Statute of

the ICTY, which was established by the Security Council’s resolution 827 under

Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, imposes an obligation on states to

arrest indicted persons and extradite them to the ICTY. Furthermore, Articles IX

& X of Annex 1-A of the DPA made it an obligation for parties to cooperate in

the investigation and prosecution of war crimes and other violations of

international humanitarian law. Article VI.5 of Annex 1-A of the above

agreement also authorized the IFOR to do all that is necessary and proper to carry

out its responsibilities. This authority includes the right to use military force to

search for and arrest persons indicted by the ICTY.23

Plead at War Crimes Court,” The New York Times (30 August 2008) A7; P. D’Amato, The

Selective Prosecution of War Crimes: The Arrest of Radovan Karadzic, Online: CounterPunch (25

July 2008) <http://www. counterpunch.org/damato07252008.html> (Accessed on: 25 July 2008);

Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić, Amended Indictment of 31 May 2000, IT-95-5-1; S. Jennings,

Prosecutors Seek to Streamline Karadzic Indictment: Two Months after Ex-Bosnian Serb Leader

Arrested, Tribunal Prosecutors Apply to Amend his Charge Sheet, Online: Tribunal Update 570

(26 September 2008) <http://www.iwpr.net> (Accessed on: 26 September 2008); “Serbia Captures

Fugitive Wartime Leader Karadzic,” Agence France Presse, Belgrade, Serbia, 22 July 2008;

“Serbian Judge Orders Karadzic to UN Tribunal,” The Associated Press, Belgrade, Serbia, 22 July

2008; “Top War Crimes Suspect Karadzic Arrested in Serbia,” The Associated Press, Belgrade,

Serbia, 21 July 2008; Z. Cirjakovic & T. Wilkinson, “War Crimes Suspect Karadzic Extradited to

the Hague,” Los Angeles Times (30 July 2008) A11.

23 C. Trueheart, “France Denies Officer who Met with Karadžić Compromised Plans for

Arrest,” The Washington Post (24 April 1998) A20; C. Trueheart, “France Sees NATO Ties

Unhurt by Spy Case,” The Washington Post (4 November 1998) A16; C. Trueheart, “New Chief

Prosecutor for Balkans Says ‘Arrests are Acute Priority’,” The Washington Post (1 October 1996)

A14; C. Trueheart, “War Crimes Prosecutor Blasts West for Inaction: S. African Judge Says Serb

Suspects should be Seized,” The Washington Post (19 September 1996) A26; Dayton Agreement

on Implementing the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 10 November 1995, UN Doc. A/50/810-

S/1995/1021, Annex; E. Neuffer, “Bosnia’s War Criminals Enjoy Peacetime Power,” The Boston

Globe (29 October 1996) A1; Government of Canada, News Release 28, “Canada to Provide War

Crimes Investigation Team to the United Nations,” (5 February 1993); Prosecutor v. Radovan

Karadžić & Ratko Mladić, Indictment of 25 July 1995, IT-95-5, Online: The International

Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia <http://www. un.org/icty/ind-e.htm> (Accessed on:

18 April 2005); S. Myers, “Rights Group Says Bosnian Suspects Flaunt Freedom,” The New York

Times (26 November 1996) A11; S. Sullivan, “Bosnia’s Most Wanted Mostly Accessible: War

Crimes Suspects Maintain High Profile in Croat-Run Town, but Police Pay no Mind,” The

Washington Post (27 November 1996) A21; S. Woodward, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: How not to

221

Fourteen years after the issue by the ICTY of orders to arrest the wartime

Bosnian Serb military leader Ratko Mladić, the IFOR has still failed to detain

him. This failure has been due to indifference on the part of the countries

participating in the IFOR. Unfortunately, the West hasn’t spoken with one voice

on this matter, nor has the United States yet decided on the importance of

arresting him, while other NATO countries remained silent. One IFOR

peacekeeper has said: “we don’t want to run into anyone important,” while

another NATO officer cynically illustrated the NATO’s policy24 on arresting

End Civil War,” in B. Walter & J. Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention (New

York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1999) 73; Secretary of State for External Affairs, Canada,

News Release 62, “Canada Issues First Report to the United Nations on Violations of International

Law in the Former Yugoslavia,” (9 March 1993); Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal

for the Former Yugoslavia, United Nations SCOR, 48th Sess., 3175. Annex, at 40, UN Doc.

S/25704, 3 May 1993. (As Amended on 19 May 2003 by Security Council’s Resolution 1481)

[hereinafter Statute of the ICTY]; UN Security Council’s Resolution 808 (1993), Deciding that an

International Tribunal shall be Established for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious

Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former

Yugoslavia Since 1991 (22 February 1993), UN Doc. S/RES/808 (1993); UN Security Council’s

Resolution 827 (1993), Approving the UN Secretary-General’s Report, Deciding to Establish the

Tribunal, and Specifying Implementing Tasks (25 May 1993), UN Doc. S/RES/827 (1993); 32

I.L.M. 1203-1205 (1993); United States, The House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1st

Session, House of Representatives Resolution 118, by Mr. Weldon and other Representatives,

“Calling on the President to Provide to the United States Armed Forces in the Former Yugoslavia

Resources and other Support Necessary to Carry out the Mission of Enforcing the Peace

Agreement between the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Republic of Croatia, and the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia,” 6 December 1995; United States, The House of Representatives, 103rd

Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives Resolution 154, by Ms. Molinari and other

Representatives,” Concerning the Need for Immediate Investigation into Violations of

International Law in the Former Yugoslavia and Prosecution of Persons Responsible for those

Violations,” 23 September 1993; United States, The House of Representatives, 104th Congress, 1st

Session, House of Representatives Resolution 282, by Mr. Kennedy, “Supporting the International

Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and Expressing the Sense of the House of

Representatives that War Criminals from the Conflict among Republics of the Former Yugoslavia

should be Brought to Justice,” 20 November 1995; United States, The Senate of the United States,

104th Congress, 2nd Session, Senate Resolution 270, by Mr. Lieberman and other Senators,

“Urging Continued and Increased United States Support for the Efforts of the International

Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to Bring to Justice the Perpetrators of Gross

Violations of International Law in the Former Yugoslavia,” 21 July 1995; W. Sharp,

“International Obligations to Search for and Arrest War Criminals: Government Failure in the

Former Yugoslavia,” (1997) 7:2 Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 445

[hereinafter Sharp].

24 C. Soloway & S. Hedges, “How Not to Catch a War Criminal,” U.S. News & World Report

(9 December 1996) 43; “The Cost of Weakness,” The Economist 330:7848 (29 January 1994) 54;

222

Karadžić: “Of course, we’ll arrest Karadžić, but he may have some trouble

passing the guards at our front gate if he arrives without an appointment.”

On one occasion, in fact, two French NATO officers took further steps and

passed sensitive information about NATO plans to arrest Karadžić and bomb

military targets in Yugoslavia. Major Herve Gourmelon, an IFOR French military

officer whose job it was to maintain contacts with Bosnian Serbs, and who might

have been useful in convincing war crimes suspects to surrender to the ICTY, had

met repeatedly with Karadžić, thereby frustrating plans to arrest the latter. By the

same token, Major Pierre Bunel, who was working at the NATO headquarters in

Brussels as Chief of Staff to France’s top military representative, confessed in his

meeting with French investigators that he had passed sensitive information to

Belgrade about the details of the NATO plans for punitive air strikes against Serb

military targets.25

Judge Richard Goldstone, the former war crimes chief prosecutor, asserted

at the time that if the international community truly wanted to serve justice and

D. Rieff, “Arrest Them: The Case against the Serb War Criminals,” The Washington Post (8

September 1996) C1; E. Neuffer, “Arrest Warrants for Karadžić, Mladić: A Test for Clinton,” The

Boston Globe (14 July 1996) A2; H. Zawati, “Politics v. Justice: Challenges to Arrest War Crime

Suspects in the Territory of Former Yugoslavia,” (Division of Humanities, Bishop’s University,

22 October 1996). [Unpublished Lecture]; Human Rights Watch, Press Release, “Two Years after

Srebrenica, Killers Remain Free,” (11 July 1997); P. Akhavan, “Justice in The Hague, Peace in the

Former Yugoslavia? A Commentary on the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal,” (1998) 20:4

Human Rights Quarterly 803 [hereinafter Akhavan]; P. Williams & P. Taft, “The Role of Justice

in the Former Yugoslavia: Antidote or Placebo for Coercive Appeasement?,” (2003) 35 Case

Western Reserve Journal of International Law 248 [hereinafter Williams and Taft]; R. Gross,

“Strength of Cases Weighed in Bosnia,” The Washington Times (26 February 1998) A13; Sharp,

supra note 23, at 450.

25 A. Swardson, “French Officer Accused of Spying for Yugoslavia,” The Washington Post (3

November 1998) A12; B. Macintyre, “Serbs were Given NATO Targets,” The Times (3 November

1998) 2; C. Bremner, “Spy Case Damages French Bid for Key Kosovo Role,” The Times (4

November 1998) 3; “French Major Held in Spying at NATO Panel,” The New York Times (3

November 1998) 8; J. Lichfield, “France Accused over Genocide in Rwanda,” The Independent (9

April 1998) 2 [hereinafter Lichfield]; J. Nundy & C. Stephen, “French Hold Officer who Spied for

Yugoslavia,” The Scotsman (3 November 1998) 10; R. Graham, “French Officer Accused of

Leaking Secrets to Serbs,” Financial Times (4 November 1998) 2; R. Gutman, “Bosnia Spotlight

Back on France,” New York Newsday (24 April 1998) A23.

223

restore peace in the former Yugoslavia, it had to respect its obligations and use

the necessary military force to arrest war criminals. Goldstone strongly disagreed

with the Pentagon’s view that United States troops should arrest war criminals

only if the operation could be carried out with no casualties on the American side.

He has said that in his talks with top Clinton administration officials, including

the secretary of defence, the secretary of state, and the chairman of the Joint

Chiefs of Staff, he received no encouragement that NATO troops would arrest

either Karadžić or Mladić. The chief prosecutor couldn’t hide his frustration, on

the day of his farewell luncheon, when he condemned the inaction of the great

powers that had created the ICTY and failed to abide by their obligation to arrest

war crimes suspects. Eight years later, the same feeling of depression and deep

concern were expressed in the critical comments of Graham Blewitt, the ICTY

deputy prosecutor, who was quoted as saying “we in the tribunal have been

constantly told that there is political will in the West to arrest Karadžić, but I have

to say openly that I don’t believe in that. Look what happened to Saddam

Hussein. There was political will to snatch him, and they snatched him. Has there

been the same such will for Karadžić, who could stay at large until his death?”26

2. Arming Genocide or Taking No Action

In Rwanda, after several weeks of mass killings, the international

community did less than nothing to stop the collective bloodbaths. Major heads of

state were reluctant to call the slaughter by its real name, “genocide,” despite their

eagerness to condemn the massacres. The UN Security Council debated for eight

hours on 29 April 1994, to decide if the mass killing was genocide. They did their

26 A. Roberts, “Communal Conflict as a Challenge to International Organization: The Case of

the Former Yugoslavia,” in O. Otunnu & M. Doyle, eds., Peacemaking and Peacekeeping for the

New Century (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998) 41[hereinafter Roberts];

“Ex-War Crimes Prosecutor Blasts US for Inaction in Bosnia,” Agence France Presse,

Washington, D.C., USA, 17 April 1998; J. Perlez, “War Crimes Prosecutor Criticizes NATO,”

The New York Times (22 May 1996) A1; R. Goldstone, “Bringing War Criminals to Justice during

an Ongoing War”, in J. Moore, ed., Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention

(Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998) 199 [hereinafter Goldstone]; Sharp, supra note 23, at

451.

224

best to avoid using this term in order to escape the obligation to act under the

norms of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention.27

The OAU was involved in Rwanda as early as the RPF invasion of 1990

and throughout the Arusha meetings, the establishment of the UNAMIR, and

Operation Turquoise. It made several efforts to bring the warring factions to the

negotiating table, and tried to prevent violence and internal conflict. Although the

OAU’s charter provides for the establishment of a Commission of Mediation,

Conciliation, and Arbitration (CMCA), and while the Addis Ababa Declaration of

1990 had committed OAU member states to peaceful settlement of their conflicts,

the Secretariat General failed to broker a real peace or play an effective role in

preventing the Rwandan genocide. This was due to the fact that the above

commission never really worked, as member states gave priority to a political

resolution to any conflict, rather than a judicial settlement, and intervention could

only be done with the consent of the parties to the conflict. Even when the heads

of member states agreed to establish, within the OAU, a Mechanism for Conflict

Prevention, Management and Resolution (MCPMR), the Secretariat General

couldn’t find the expertise and the resources needed to handle the Rwandan

conflict. 28

For many years before the 1994 Rwandan genocide took place, the United

States had more than a foothold in Africa, particularly in supporting Zaire’s

27 Genocide in Rwanda: April-May 1994, Human Rights Watch, May 1994, Vol.6, No.4, at 8-9

[hereinafter Genocide].

28 African [Banjul] Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Adopted on 27 June 1981, O.A.U.

Doc. CAB/LEG/67/3/Rev. 5, (1981), reprinted in 21 I.L.M. 58 (1982) (Entered into force on 21

October 1986) [hereinafter African Charter]; C. Waugh, Paul Kagame and Rwanda: Power,

Genocide and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc.,

Publishers, 2004) 47 [hereinafter Waugh]; Declaration of the Assembly of Heads of State and

Government of the Organization of African Unity on the Political and Socio-Economic Situation

in Africa and the Fundamental Changes Taking Place in the World, 11 July 1990, O.A.U.

Declaration/Resolution No. AHG/Dec1.1 (XXVI); H. Adelman, “Rwanda Revisited: In Search for

Lessons,” (2000) 2:3 Journal of Genocide Research 432 [hereinafter Adelman]; International

Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 11, p. 3; M. Plaut, “Rwanda: Looking beyond the Slaughter,” The

World Today 50:8-9 (August 1994) 149 [hereinafter Plaut]; R. Joshi, “Genocide in Rwanda: The

Root Causes,” (1997) 3:1 East African Journal of Peace & Human Rights 77 [hereinafter Joshi];

Tekle, supra note 7, at 111.

225

dictatorial government and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Moreover, in

spite of all the massacres carried out by the Habyarimana regime in Rwanda, the

1992 American administration’s report to the Congress described relations with

Rwanda as excellent and denied any systematic human rights abuses by the

Rwandan government or its agents. When the Rwandan case was placed on the

UN Security Council’s table in October 1993, the United States had just lost

eighteen soldiers in Somalia, a matter that traumatized Americans and made them

reluctant to send their troops on any new UN peacekeeping mission, particularly

to areas where they had neither strategic nor economic interests at stake. This was

in addition to the resentful feeling that the UN Secretary-General had dragged the

American troops into Somalia, kept them there longer than it was necessary, and

made them do what the United Nations was supposed to undertake.29

29 Consecutive American administrations had the same position on military intervention in

Rwanda. James Woods, then deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs in Clinton’s

administration, was instructed by his superiors to remove Rwanda from the list of troubled areas.

The higher authorities told James Woods that “The United States national interest is not involved

and we can’t put all these silly humanitarian issues on lists, like important problems like the

Middle East, North Korea, and so on.” James Woods commented “American policy under Clinton

remained the same as it had been before him: a modest interest in encouraging democratization

and liberal economic reforms, but little interest in human rights, ethnic cleavages, and massacres.”

Similarly, in an interview with the ABC in early 2000, George W. Bush, then the leading

Republican presidential candidate, answered the interviewer’s question “What would you do if,

God forbid, another Rwanda should take place?” by saying: “We should not send our troops to

stop ethnic cleansing and genocide outside our strategic interest. I would not send United States

troops into Rwanda.” See A. Klinghoffer, The International Dimension of Genocide in Rwanda

(New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1998) 91 [hereinafter Klinghoffer]; B. Urquhart,

“In the Name of Humanity,” Book Review of Deliver Us from Evil: Peacekeepers, Warlords and

a World of Endless Conflict by W. Shawcross; Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to

General Assembly Resolution 53/55 (1998) (Srebrenica Report), UN Document; Report of the

Independent Inquiry into the Actions During the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda, UN Document, The

New York Review of Books 47:7 (27 April 2000) 20; Daalder, supra note 20, at 475; E. Reficco,

Reluctant Interventions: Presidential Decision-Making in the Face of Ambiguity (Ph.D., Fletcher

School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2002) 249 [hereinafter Reficco]; F. Ohaegbulam,

U.S. Policy in Postcolonial Africa: Four Case Studies in Conflict Resolution (New York, N.Y.: P.

Lang, 2004) 92 [hereinafter Ohaegbulam]; G. Burci, “United Nations Peacekeeping Operations in

Situations of Internal Conflict,” in M. Sellers, ed., The New World Order: Sovereignty, Human

Rights and the Self- Determination of Peoples (Washington, D.C.: Berg, 1996) 243 [hereinafter

Burci]; H. Burkhalter, “The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda,”

(1994-1995) 11:4 World Policy Journal 45 [hereinafter Burkhalter]; International Panel, supra

note 13, at Chapter 12, p. 1; L. Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda’s

Genocide (London: Zed Books, 2000) 198 [hereinafter Melvern]; R. Haass, “The Squandered

Presidency: Demanding More from the Commander-in-Chief,” (2000) 79:3 Foreign Affairs 136;

226

The Security Council’s resolution on the establishment of UNAMIR was in

fact issued just three days after the murder of the eighteen American troops and

one day before the pullout of the American army from Somalia. This synchrony

of timing was not to Rwanda’s advantage, as was reflected in the size and

mandate of the UNAMIR. Moreover, the administration suppressed any attempt at

the Security Council to take more effective measures to prevent or stop the

Rwandan genocide. From that time onwards, the American administration has

dictated most Security Council resolutions on peacekeeping missions, while

Presidential Decree Directive 25 (PDD25) prohibits the American army from

involvement in any serious peace enforcement mission in the future.30

S. Edwards, “Dallaire Points Finger at the Powers,” National Post (13 April 2000) A1 & A14; S.

Power, “Why the United States Let the Rwandan Tragedy Happen,” (2001) 288:2 The Atlantic

Monthly 92-93 [hereinafter Power]; S. Varisco, Narrative Decision-Making and the Clinton

Administration’s Peacekeeping Experiment (Ph. D., Columbia University, 2001) 53 [hereinafter

Varisco]; The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, “Remarks by the President to Genocide

Survivors, Assistance Workers, and U.S. and Rwanda Officials,” Kigali Airport, Kigali, Rwanda,

(25 March 1998) [hereinafter White House].

30 Richard Clarke of the National Security Council, and a special assistant to President Clinton,

had produced PDD 25, listing sixteen factors that American policymakers have to take into

consideration before supporting any peacekeeping operation, as follows: seven factors if the

United States were to vote in the UN Security Council on peacekeeping mission to be carried out

by non-American troops; six factors if United States troops were to participate in UN

peacekeeping operations; and three factors if the American troops had to be involved in actual

warfare. Representative David Obey, of Wisconsin, concluded that these factors offered the

Americans “Zero degree of involvement, zero degree of risk, and zero degree of pain and

confusion.” In this respect, Anthony Lake, Clinton’s national security advisor, was quoted: “Let us

be clear. Peacekeeping is not the center of our foreign or defence policy. Our armed forces’

primary mission is not to conduct peace operations, but to win wars.” See A. Adebajo & C.

Landsberg, “Back to the Future: UN Peacekeeping in Africa,” in A. Adebajo & C. Sriram, eds.,

Managing Armed Conflicts in the 21st Century (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2001) 165

[hereinafter Adebajo]; A. Lake, “The Limits of Peacekeeping,” The New York Times (6 February

1994) 17; Burkhalter, supra note 13, at 9; Burkhalter, supra note 29, at 49; Daalder, supra note 20,

at 481; Genocide, supra note 27, at 11; Ghali, supra note 11, at 135; H. Adelman, The Role of

Non-African States in the Rwandan Genocide, Online: Centre for Refugee Studies, York

University <http://www.yorku.ca/crs/ Publications> (Accessed on: 21 April 2005) 18 [hereinafter

Adelman]; International Panel, supra note 13, at chapter 12, pp. 7-8; J. Cohen, One-hundred Days

of Silence: America and the Rwanda Genocide (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007)

51 [hereinafter One-hundred Days of Silence]; J-M. Coicaud, Beyond the National Interest: The

Future of UN Peacekeeping and Multilateralism in an Era of U.S. Primacy (Washington,

D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007) 52 [hereinafter Coicaud]; Klinghoffer, supra

note 29, at 90; L. Roberts, “The Reluctant Peacemaker: Rwanda April 1994,” (Professor Roger Z.

227

Although many governments were to blame for either arming genocide or

taking no action to prevent it or even to stop it, the United States remains the

party most responsible for undermining the potency of the UNAMIR. In the

aftermath of the murder of ten Belgian soldiers by Rwandan government forces,

Belgium withdrew its troops and called for the withdrawal of the entire

UNAMIR. This matter was used as a pretext by Madeleine Albright, who was

implementing the white House’s instructions, to convince the Security Council’s

members to adopt a resolution that would reduce the personnel of UNAMIR and

restrict its mandate to mediation and humanitarian aid. The dramatic reduction of

UNAMIR to 270 troops in the midst of genocide resulted in the mass rape of

thousands of Tutsi women and caused the loss of tens of thousands of innocent

Rwandan lives, many of whom would have sought refuge with the Blue Helmets.

Moreover, Boutros-Ghali has since revealed how the United States placed

George Seminar on the National Security Process, National War College, National Defence

University, December 2002) 10; M. Barnett, “Peacekeeping, Indifference, and Genocide in

Rwanda”, in J. Weldes, eds., Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities and the Production of

Danger (Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1999) 177 [hereinafter Barnett]; M.

Curtis, The Great Deception: Anglo-American Power and World Order (Sterling, Va.: Pluto

Press, 1998) 202 [hereinafter Curtis]; M. Leitenberg “Rwanda, 1994: International Incompetence

Produces Genocide,” Peacekeeping and International Relations 23:6 (November 1994) 8

[hereinafter Leitenberg]; Melvern, supra note 29, at 191; Power, supra note 29, at 90; R. Dallaire,

et al., “The Major Powers on Trial,” (2005) 3 Journal of International Criminal Justice 867

[hereinafter Dallaire]; R. Omaar & A. de Waal, “US Complicity by Silence: Genocide in

Rwanda,” Online: CovertAction Quarterly (1995) 52 <http://mediafilter.org/MFF/ CAQ/

CAQ52Rwanda. html> (Accessed on: 22 April 2005) [hereinafter Omaar]; Sénat de Belgique,

rapport fait au nom de la commission d’enquête par MM. Mahoux et Verhofstadt, session de

1997-1998, Commission d’enquête parlementaire concernant les événements du Rwanda [Report

Submitted in the Name of the Board of Inquiry by Mahoux and Verhofstadt, Session of 1997-

1998, Parliamentary Board of Inquiry Concerning the Events of Rwanda], no.1 - 611/7, annexes

no. 1 - 611/8 à 15 (Belgique: Sénat de Belgique, 6 décembre 1997, à la p. 525 [ci-après Sénat]; T.

Marley, “The Triumph of Evil: An Interview with Tony Marley, Political Military Advisor for the

US State Department 1992-1995,” Online: PBS Frontline, (1999) <http://www.pbs.org/wbgh/

pages/frontline/shows/evil/interviews/marley.html> (Accessed on: 21 April 2005); UN Security

Council’s Resolution 872 (1993), Welcoming the Secretary-General’s Report and Deciding to

Establish a Peace-Keeping Operation under the Name ‘United Nations Assistance Mission for

Rwanda (UNAMIR) (5 October 1993), UN Doc. S/RES/872 (1993); United States, The National

Security Archive, “The US and the Genocide in Rwanda 1994: Evidence of Inaction,” edited by

W. Ferroggiaro, Online: The National Security Archive <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

NSAEBB/NSAEBB53/press.html> (Accessed on: 22 April 2005) [hereinafter Evidence of

Inaction].

228

conditions on its participating in the UN peacekeeping missions and forced other

UN Security Council members to delay the Security Council’s Resolution 918 of

17 May 1994 calling for an increase in the number of UNAMIR troops to 5,500

and an expansion of its mandate, until the Secretary-General satisfied the

requirements stated in PDD25. This amounted to a deliberate delay in the

deployment of UNAMIR II until the end of the Rwandan genocide in July 1994.31

The lack of attention paid to the Rwandan catastrophe by the United States

government and high-ranking officials was remarkable. On 20 August 2001,

seven years after the genocide, the United States National Security Archive

(USNSA) released sixteen declassified government documents under the US

Freedom of Information Act (USFIA). These documents clarified what US

officials in Clinton’s administration knew about the genocide, and why they chose

to avoid military intervention to stop the slaughter. These documents explicitly

indicated that Clinton’s administration, in contrast with public statements, had

pressured the UN Security Council to withdraw the UNAMIR troops after the

breakout of violence. It was uncooperative in other areas as well: Warren

Christopher, the then Secretary of State, did not authorize the use of the term

“genocide” until the first week of June 1994; the administration refused to shut

down the Hutu extremist radio station, which was inciting the killings and sexual

violence; and finally, the administration received early warning of and was alerted

31 A. de Waal & R. Omaar, “The Genocide in Rwanda and the International Response,” (1995)

94:591 Current History 157 [hereinafter Waal]; A. Kuperman, “Rwanda in Retrospect,” (2000)

79:1 Foreign Affairs 95 [hereinafter Kuperman]; A. Rall, “The Rwandan Genocide Mercilessly

Put to Death Millions of Innocent Women and Children,” Off Our Backs 26:3 (1996) 19

[hereinafter Rall]; Burkhalter, supra note 29, at 46-47 & 50; Evidence of Inaction, supra note 30,

at 4 & 7; Ghali, supra note 29, at 133-140; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 12, pp.

8-9; J. Eriksson, et al., The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the

Rwanda Experience, Synthesis Report (Copenhagen, Denmark: Steering Committee of the Joint

Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, 1996) 20 [hereinafter Eriksson]; Joshi, supra

note 28, at 75; Omaar, supra note 30; P. Louvard, “France must Account for its Actions in

Rwanda,” Online: Bosnet-Digest, 5:825 (1998) <bosnet-digest@bosnet.bosnet.org> (Received on:

26 March 1998) [hereinafter Louvard]; Sénate, supra note 30, at 525; UN Security Council’s

Resolution 918 (1994), Demanding that All Parties to the Conflict Immediately Cease Hostilities,

Agree to a Cease-Fire, and Bring an End to the Mindless Violence and Carnage Engulfing

Rwanda (17 May 1994), UN Doc. S/RES/918 (1994).

229

to mass killings that would take place shortly thereafter. In fact, the administration

did too little to halt the massacres although it knew those responsible and was in

contact with them.32

France also played a pivotal and central role in Rwanda before, during, and

after the genocide. It was the closest ally of the Hutu-dominated government

especially on military, economic, and political issues. Although the UN Secretary-

General and the heads of state of the United States and Belgium eventually

acknowledged some blame for the tragedy and apologized to the Rwandan people,

the French government asserted, regardless of the conclusive evidence of its share

in arming the genocide, that France was the only country that had played a

significant role in stopping the Rwandan genocide. Under growing internal and

international pressure and local tough criticism, the French government agreed in

1998, for the first time in French history, to set up a parliamentary committee to

investigate the Rwandan calamity. Before discussing the findings of the

committee’s four-volume report, 33 the subsequent paragraphs will show the

32 Evidence of Inaction, supra note 30, at 3; J. Muravchik, The Imperative of American

Leadership: A Challenge to Neo-Isolationism (Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 1996)159-160

[hereinafter Muravchik]; Melvern, supra note 29, at 195; Rall, supra note 31, at 16; S. Peterson,

Stories and Past Lessons: Understanding U.S. Decisions of Armed Humanitarian Intervention and

Non-Intervention in the Post-Cold War Era (Ph. D., Ohio State University, 2003) 133 [hereinafter

Peterson].

33 C. Trueheart, “French Leaders from 1994 Defend Rwanda Policy,” International Herald

Tripune (22 April 1998) 1; “France and Rwanda: Humanitarian?” The Economist (25 April 1998)

48; France, assemblée nationale, commision de la défense nationale et des forces armées et de la

commission des affaires étrangéres, “Rapport d’information sur les opérations militaires menées

par la France, d’autres pays et l’ONU au Rwanda entre 1990 et 1994,” [Information Paper on the

Military Operations Carried out by France, other Countries and the UN in Rwanda between 1990

and 1994] (15 décembre 1998), no. 1271, Président: M. Paul Quilès, Rapporteurs: MM. Pierre

Brana et Bernard Cazeneuve, Députés. En ligne: Mission d’information sur le Rwanda <http://

www.assembleenationale.fr/2/dossiers/rwanda/r/271.htm> (date d’accès : 26 février 2005), à la p.

342 [ci-après Assemblée]; Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9, at 116; International Panel, supra

note 13, at Chapter 12, p. 1; Joshi, supra note 28, at 78; Klinghoffer, supra note 29, at 80;

Lichfield, supra note 25, at 2; Louvard, supra note 31; M. McNulty, “French Arms, War and

Genocide in Rwanda,” (2000) 33:1-2 Crime, Law and Social Change 105 [hereinafter McNulty];

Republic of Rwanda, President’s Office, Press Release, The Role of France in the Genocide in

Rwanda (Kigali: President’s Office, 1998); White House, supra note 29.

230

French role in Rwanda from the time of that country’s independence up to and

including the genocide.

The French involvement in Rwanda corresponded to the United States’

increased interest in neighbouring Zaire and its growing support for Mobutu’s

government. A few years after Rwanda’s independence, France was the closest

ally and become the country’s major arms supplier. Among many military and

civilian agreements concluded between the two countries, the 1975 military treaty

gave France a solid position in Rwanda by providing technical support and

training to the national police force. This treaty was modified in 1983 to include

involvement in military affairs, which became clear in the aftermath of the 1990

RPF invasion. Armed French support was extended to the FAR although the

agreement stipulated that the assistance must be directed to the “Gendarmerie

rwandese.”34

These extraordinary relations came to a climax when France committed

itself to defending the Habyarimana regime after the RPF invasion in October

1990. France considered the invasion an aggression against a francophone

country, supported by anglophone Uganda to overthrow a francophone

government. Accordingly, France regarded the defence of Habyarimana’s system

as a necessary step to deter an anglophone conspiracy and to defend the French

role in Africa.35

Moreover, France had turned a blind eye to human rights abuses by the

Rwandan regime, and continued its unfailing support to that murderous

government. The French ambassador to Rwanda refused to join a delegation of

European diplomats who met with Habyarimana to express their deep concern

34 Assemblée, supra note 33, at 26; Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9, at 118; International

Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 12, pp. 2-3; Leitenberg, supra note 30, at 21; S. Goose & F.

Smyth, “Arming Genocide in Rwanda,” (1994) 73:5 Foreign Affairs 89 [hereinafter Goose].

35 Assemblée, supra note 33, at 229; B. Jones, “Military Intervention in Rwanda’s Two Wars:

Partisanship and Indifference,” in B. Walter & J. Snyder, eds., Civil Wars, Insecurity, and

Intervention (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1999) 131; International Panel, supra

note 13, at Chapter 12, p. 3; Joshi, supra note 28, at 79; Louvard, supra note 31.

231

about the deteriorating human rights situation after the ghastly massacre in

Southern Rwanda in 1992. Although the French government had received early

warnings that genocide and mass killings were imminent, France increased its

unconditional military and diplomatic support to Habyarimana. In 1993, after

several massacres were committed against the Tutsi minority, the French Minister

for cooperation asked the Rwandan opposition publicly to establish a common

front with the Habyarimana regime against the RPF. Furthermore, French officials

rejected the findings of the report of the International Commission of Inquiry on

Human Rights Abuses in Rwanda in 1993, saying that such things were expected

in Africa.36

Knowing that the FAR was incapable of defeating the RPF, France

launched “Operation Noroît” after the RPF’s 1990 invasion. French soldiers were

sent to Kigali to protect the Habyarimana regime and to prevent the victory of the

RPF. Soon after, the French commanders became an integral part of the Rwandan

Hutu-dominated army, offering their expertise in training and expanding the FAR

from approximately 6,000 to 35,000 troops in less than three years. Following the

1993 escalations, France multiplied its military and financial assistance to the

Rwandan government. French officers offered essential training to the

Presidential Guard and Interahamwe, who carried out much of the mass killing

and genocide in 1994. Furthermore, France was Rwanda’s major source of

military supplies whether in the form of troops or arms or by making funds

available to cover arms deals with Egypt and South Africa. It became evident that

the French arms flow to the Rwandan army continued until June 1994, 37 three

36 Adelman, supra note 30, at 10; Assemblée, supra note 33, at 342; International Panel, supra

note 13, at Chapter 12, p. 4; M. Abdul-Rahman, Book Review of Shake Hands with the Devil: The

Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by R. Dallaire (2004) 8: 1 Mediterranean Journal of Human

Rights 394 [hereinafter Abdul-Rahman]; M. Barnett, Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United

Nations and Rwanda (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2002) 131 [hereinafter Barnett].

37 Assemblée, supra note 33, at 137; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 12, pp. 4-5;

M. Shaw, War and Genocide: Organized Killing in Modern Society (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press,

2003) 212 [hereinafter Shaw]; McNulty, supra note 33, at 111.

232

months after the beginning of the genocide. All this was in addition to its

suspicious role in protecting the leaders of the Rwandan genocide through

“Operation Turquoise.”

Although the French parliamentary committee was surprised by the level of

French involvement in and commitment to supporting Habyarimana’s racist and

criminal government, the French government denied responsibility for the

Rwandan tragedy. The committee’s 1,800-page report was full of contradictions

and discrepancies. There was a considerable difference between the available

facts and the report’s conclusion which conceded that France had made certain

errors of judgement regarding Rwanda, but that it was neither responsible nor

guilty. The report claimed instead that the international community, particularly

the United States and Belgium, were most at blame for the Rwandan crisis of

1994. The French government justified its support for the Rwandan regime by

alluding to the importance of its strategic presence and economic interests in

Africa, as well as to the need to frustrate the American conspiracy to drive France

out of Africa.38

The French government overlooked the arms embargo on Rwanda, and

continued its support to the FAR after 17 May 1994. At least five shipments of

artillery, machine guns, assault rifles, and ammunition were sent by France

through Goma airport in Zaire, as an alternative to Kigali airport. When the

Rwandan government was on the verge of collapse around the middle of June

1994, the French government decided to deploy 2,500 troops in Rwanda for

humanitarian purposes, saving lives and restoring public order. This military

intervention, called “Operation Turquoise,” was authorized on 22 June 1994 by

38 A. Callamard, “French Policy in Rwanda,” in H. Adelman & A. Suhrke, eds., The Path of a

Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction

Publishers, 1999) 174 [hereinafter Callamard]; A. Huliaras, “The Anglo-Saxon Conspiracy:

French Perceptions of the Great Lakes Crisis,” (1998) 36:4 Journal of Modern African Studies

597; Adelman, supra note 30, at 6; Assemblée, supra note 33, at 152; International Panel, supra

note 13, at Chapter 12, p. 5; M. Simons, “France’s Rwanda Connections,” The New York Times (3

July 1994) 6.

233

the UN Security Council’s resolution S/RES/929 under Chapter VII of the UN

Charter. The real aim of this intervention became clear when the French troops

declared a “Humanitarian Zone” in South-western Rwanda to help the IDP,

including war culprits. The rump Rwandan government, the majority of the

genocide’s leaders, and the FAR forces had retreated to the “Humanitarian Zone”

to resume their attacks on the RPF, and incite their Hutu followers to rape and kill

Tutsi civilians. This was done under the protection of French troops. Moreover,

Colonel Luc Marchal, the commander of UNAMIR’s Belgian contingent,

mentioned in an interview that, while he was at Kigali airport, one of the first

three French planes that landed at the airport was full of ammunition, which was

then loaded into trucks and sent to the Ikonombe army camp.39

At the time of launching “Operation Turquoise” for “humanitarian”

purposes, a number of other doubtful actions by the French pointed to their

complicity in the Rwandan conflict. One of these was France’s support for

Belgium’s demand to cancel the UNAMIR and its call for the withdrawal of the

2,000 UN troops while Rwanda was in the midst of the genocide; this operation

further undermined UNAMIR II, and exhausted the resources that could have

been otherwise used to carry it out. French troops furthermore refused to arrest the

leaders of the genocide who drew back to the “Safe Zone,” including those who

39 Adelman, supra note 30, at 12; C. Off, The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle: A Story of Generals

and Justice in Yugoslavia and Rwanda (Toronto, Ont.: Random House Canada, 2000) 80

[hereinafter Off]; C. Trueheart, “EX-French Officials Defend Rwanda Role Charges of Complicity

in Massacres Denied,” The Washington Post (22 April 1998) A18; C. Whitney, “At Inquiry,

French Officials Say they Tried in Rwanda,” The New York Times (22 April 1998) A6; Evidence

of Inaction, supra note 30; “France Shifts Blame on U.S. for Role in Genocide in Rwanda,” CNN

WorldView (Aired on: 21 April 1998, at 6:03 P.M ET) Transcript; “The French in Rwanda,” The

Economist 332:7870 (2 July 1994) 39; J-P. Gouteux, Un Génocide secret d’état: La France et le

Rwanda, 1990-1997 [A Secret State Genocide: France and Rwanda, 1990-1997], Paris, Editions

Sociales, 1998, à la p. 87-98 [ci-après Gouteux]; O. Igwara, “Introduction: Ethnicity, Nationalism

and Genocide in Rwanda,” in O. Igwara, ed., Ethnic Hatred: Genocide in Rwanda (London:

ASEN Publications, 1995) 80 [hereinafter Igwara]; Rwanda/Zaire: Rearming with Impunity-

International Support for the Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide, Human Rights Watch, May

1995, Vol.7, No.4, 6-7 [hereinafter Rearming with Impunity]; T. Odom, Journey into Darkness:

Genocide in Rwanda (College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2005) 83 [hereinafter

Odom]; UN Security Council’s Resolution 929 (1994), Determining that the Current Situation in

Rwanda Constitutes a Threat to Peace and Security in the Region (22 June 1994), UN Doc.

S/RES/929 (1994).

234

openly acknowledged the killings, and encouraged and ordered the mass sexual

violence against Tutsi women. Finally, French official vehicles were used to

move the “génocidaires” and their weapons safely to Zaire. For the above reasons

and more, General Dallaire was enraged by even the idea of the “Operation

Turquoise,” as he knew of the French secret arms deliveries to the FAR. Dallaire

said: “If they [the French] land their planes here to deliver their damn weapons to

the government, I’ll have their planes shot down.”40

Regardless of the fact that it had gradually been supplanted by France in

Rwanda approximately two decades before the Rwandan genocide, Belgium was

active in preventive diplomacy and participated in the UN peacekeeping mission

to further the APA. More Belgian involvement, including military cooperation,

was contingent on Rwanda’s role in advancing the implementation of the APA

and establishing the transnational government. Belgian troops also formed the

largest Western contingent in UNAMIR. Furthermore, for several months before

the genocide, Belgium warned the international community of an imminent

slaughter that would take place in Rwanda and asked the UN Security Council to

increase the number of UNAMIR troops and extend its mandate. The United

States government, which was keenly aware of the escalating situation, 41 refused

40 Adelman, supra note 30, at 13; B. Willum, “Legitimizing Inaction Towards Genocide in

Rwanda: a Matter of Misperception?” (1999) 6:3 International Peacekeeping 19 [hereinafter

willum]; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 15, p. 11; J. Nundy, “France Haunted by

Rwanda Genocide,” Daily Telegraph (10 April 1998) 3; Klinghoffer, supra note 29, at 82-83; L.

Marchal, “An Interview with Colonel Luc Marchal, the Commander of the UNAMIR’s Belgian

Contingent: When Good Men Do Nothing,” Online: Interview by BBC Panorama, 7 December

1998 <http://www.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/default/stm> (Accessed on: 22 April

2005); L. Minear & P. Guillot, Soldiers to the Rescue: Humanitarian Lessons from Rwanda (Paris:

Development Centre, Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 1996) 95

[hereinafter Minear]; Plaut, supra note 28, at 152; “Whose Justice for the Hutus?: France’s

Dilemma in Rwanda Strengthens the Case for a World Criminal Court,” The Economist 332:7874

(30 July 1994) 16.

41 Adelman, supra note 30, at 4; Igwara, supra note 39, at 79; International Panel, supra note

13, at Chapter 15, p. 8; Klinghoffer, supra note 29, at 88-89; Sénat, supra note 30, at 422; Sénat

de Belgique, rapport de la commission d’enquête parlementaire concernant les événements du

Rwanda, Orateurs, MM. Mahoux, et al., session ordinaire 1997-1998 [Report of the Parliamentary

Commission of Inquiry Concerning the Events of Rwanda, Speakers, Mahoux et al. Ordinary

235

Belgium’s demand, as well as any requests that would increase the UNAMIR’s

expenses or put the lives of foreign troops in danger.

The Belgian position was turned head over heels in the aftermath of

accusations that the UNAMIR Belgian troops had fired the missile that brought

down the President’s airplane and in the wake of the murder of sixteen Belgians,

ten Blue Helmets and six civilians, by Rwandan government forces. The killings

left a bad impression on Belgian public opinion and forced the Belgian

government to evacuate its citizens, close the Belgian Embassy, and ask General

Dallaire to release the Belgian battalion. The unexpected withdrawal of the

Belgian troops weakened the UNAMIR and had tragic consequences; it was

directly responsible for the killing of two thousand Rwandan refugees by the

Presidential Guards and paramilitary extremists. This was due to the fact that,

once the genocide began, increasing numbers of Tutsi families and children began

seeking refuge with a group of UNAMIR Belgian troops posted in the École

technique officielle (ETO) in Kigali. The refugees were approximately 2,000 in

number, including 400 children. When the troops received orders to evacuate the

site, the refugees begged the Belgians to shoot them before they left rather than

leave them to the extremist Hutu to butcher them. The troops left the school from

one door, 42 while the Presidential Guard and Hutu militias entered from another.

They killed most of the refugees using all kinds of weapons.

Session 1997-1998], seances plenieres, no.1–153, (Belgique: Sénat de Belgique, 17 décembre

1997) à la p. 17 [ci-après rapport de la Sénat].

42 A. Suhrke, “Dilemmas of Protection: The Log of the Kigali Battalion,” in H. Adelman & A.

Suhrke, eds., The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick,

N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999) 262 [hereinafter Suhrke]; Adelman, supra note 30, at 6;

Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 49; Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9, at 618-620;

International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 15, p. 9; Off, supra note 39, at 62; R. Copson, R.,

African’s Wars and Prospects for Peace (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1994) 138

[hereinafter Copson]; S. Cook, “The Politics of Preservation in Rwanda,” in S. Cook, ed.,

Genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda: New Perspectives (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction

Publishers, 2006) 286 [hereinafter Cook]; Sénat, supra note 30, at 569-570.

236

With this tragic unilateral withdrawal, the Belgian government looked as if

it was implementing the Hutu extremists’ strategy, causing many of the Belgian

troops, including officers, to feel ashamed and humiliated. Upon their return to

home, they cut their berets into pieces and threw them on the ground in disgust.

Colonel Luc Marchal, the commander of the UNAMIR’s Belgian battalion, wrote:

“Our political leaders should have known that in leaving UNAMIR, we would

condemn thousands of men, women, and children to certain death.” To save face,

the Belgian government followed up this shameful act with a further disgraceful

step when it strongly requested the UN Security Council to cancel the UNAMIR,

a demand that was initially supported by the United States, France, and the United

Kingdom. In this connection, Boutros-Ghali wrote: “Belgium was affected with

the American syndrome.” It is worth mentioning that, six years later, the Belgian

Prime Minister had to apologize to the Rwandan people on behalf of his country

and assume its share of the responsibility for that tragedy.43

The international conspiracy did not end with the defeat of the genocidal

government. In spite of the UN arms embargo, which was established on 17 May

1994, secret transfers of weapons have continued to reach the former Rwandan

army, as well as the Hutu militias that had fled the country to neighbouring Zaire.

Between 25,000 and 30,000 FAR soldiers and Interahamwe crossed the border

and regrouped in Goma, where they received hundreds of tons of weapons sent

mainly from Bulgaria, Albania and Israel between February and May 1995.

Arming the perpetrators of the genocide was done with the knowledge of the

Zairian and other regional governments. Notwithstanding the international

obligation, imposed by UN Security Council Resolution 978 of 27 February 1995,

to arrest and bring to justice those responsible for crimes against humanity in

Rwanda, more than 400 top FAR and Interahamwe commanders remain at large.

They raise funds, travel freely to various African and European countries, and

43 Adelman, supra note 30, at 6; Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 44; Genocide in Rwanda,

supra note 9, at 620; Ghali, supra note 11, at 132; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter

15, p. 9; Sénat, supra note 30, at 525.

237

finance and train Hutu extremists, who have committed several political

assassinations across the border.44

III. United Nations Response to the Crises

1. The Mismanagement of the Conflicts

While peacekeeping is not explicitly mentioned in the UN Charter, the UN

collective security system and its legal framework to maintain international peace

have their foundation in Article 24 and Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Article 24

(1&2) stipulates that member states assign to the Security Council the

responsibility to act on their behalf, in accordance with the purposes and

principles of the United Nations, in taking the necessary measures, including

specific powers, to maintain and restore international peace and security. The

powers given to the Security Council to assume this responsibility are laid down

in several chapters, particularly Chapters VI and VII, and range between imposing

economic or military sanctions and using force against a state or entities within a

state that threaten the world’s peace and security. Article 43 of Chapter VII

authorizes the Security Council to require member states45 to provide armed

44 B. Boutros-Ghali, “Arrangements for the Establishment of an International Commission of

Inquiry to Investigate Allegations of Arms Flows to Forces of the Former Government of

Rwanda,” A Letter to the President of the Security Council from Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the

Secretary-General of the United Nations (31 August 1995), UN Doc. S/1995/761; Democratic

Republic of Congo: Arming the East, Amnesty International, 5 July 2005, AFR 62/006/2005; G.

Evans, Responding to Crisis in the African Great Lakes (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University

Press, 1997) 45-46 [hereinafter Evans]; H. McCullum, The Angels have Left Us: The Rwanda

Tragedy and the Churches (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1995) 55 [hereinafter McCullum];

Rwanda: Arming the Perpetrators of the Genocide, Amnesty International, June 1995, AI-Index:

AFR. 02/14/95, at p. 5 [hereinafter Arming the Perpetrators]; UN Security Council’s Resolution

978 (1995), Urging States to Arrest and Detain Persons within their Territory against whom there

is Sufficient Evidence of Responsibility for Acts of Violence within the Jurisdiction of the

International Tribunal for Rwanda (27 February 1995), UN Doc. S/RES/978 (1995).

45 This authority is embodied in Article 43 of the UN Charter, which states:

“1. All Members of the United Nations, in order to contribute to the maintenance of

international peace and security, undertake to make available to the Security Council, on

its call and in accordance with a special agreement or agreements, armed forces, assistance,

and facilities, including rights of passage, necessary for the purpose of maintaining

international peace and security.

2. Such agreement or agreements shall govern the numbers and types of forces, their degree

of readiness and general location, and the nature of the facilities and assistance to be

provided.

238

forces, military assistance and the equipment needed for maintaining international

peace and security.

In the former Yugoslavia, as well as in Rwanda, the Security Council

showed a preference for peacekeeping over peace enforcement, a decision that led

to the unavoidable failure of both UN missions for the following reasons: (a) the

situations in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda were extremely dangerous and

required that the Security Council take more powerful measures to restore peace

and security by deploying peace enforcement troops instead of neutral

peacekeeping troops with limited mandates; (b) traditionally, peacekeeping

missions are required to preserve an already established cease-fire on the ground

and request warring factions to withdraw their artilleries to the cease-fire lines;

instead, with no actual peace to keep, the UNPROFOR and UNAMIR units were

given trivial mandates that allowed their troops to patrol and, at best, secure the

delivery of humanitarian aids, and ensure the safety of UN personnel; and (c) the

UN missions’ rigid mandates and the superpowers’ lack of interest had tied the

hands of the peacekeepers, leaving them powerless to prevent or stop wartime

rape and mass killings. In fact, they even failed to fulfil their restricted mandates

and protect themselves. Peacekeepers were fired on, injured, killed, humiliated

and taken as hostages. The UN limitations on peacekeeping missions neither

3. The agreement or agreements shall be negotiated as soon as possible on the initiative of the

Security Council. They shall be concluded between the Security Council and Members or

between the Security Council and groups of Members and shall be subject to ratification

by the signatory states in accordance with their respective constitutional processes.”

See also D. Sarooshi, “The United Nations System for Maintaining International Peace: What

Role for Regional Organizations Such as NATO?” (1999) 52 Current Legal Problems Annual 473-

475 [hereinafter Sarooshi]; K. Childers, “United Nations Peacekeeping Forces in the Balkan Wars

and the Changing Role of Peacekeeping Forces in the Post-Cold War World,” (1994) 8:1 Temple

International and Comparative Law Journal 118 [hereinafter Childers]; R. Higgins, “The New

United Nations and Former Yugoslavia,” (1993) 69:3 International Affairs 466 [hereinafter

Higgins]; UN Charter, supra note 5; V. Dimitrijević & J. Pejić, “UN Sanctions against

Yugoslavia: Two Years Later,” in D. Bourantonis & J. Wiener, eds., The United Nations in the

New World Order: The World Organization at Fifty (New York, N.Y.: St. Martin’s Press, 1995)

135 [hereinafter Dimitrijević].

239

prevented war nor achieved peace in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, mainly

due to the huge gap between the UN’s mandate and political reality during

genocide and other inhuman atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

This issue will be the object of discussion in the rest of this section.46

The UN’s overwhelming failure in dealing with the Rwandan case in

particular was not due to the lack of early warnings or insufficient information. It

was due to the UN Security Council members’ lack of political will to act. This

failure characterized UN mismanagement of the crisis before, during, and after

the tragedy. 47

46 C. Franchet & S. Fontenelle, Casque bleu pour rien: ce que j’ai vraiment vu en Bosnie,

Paris, Lattes, 1995, à la p. 21; Childers, supra note 45, at 117; D. Sarooshi, The United Nations

and the Development of Collective Security: The Delegation by the UN Security Council of its

Charter VII Powers (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1999) 217[hereinafter Sarooshi];

Higgins, supra note 45, at 468-469; J. Fink, “From Peace Keeping to Peace Enforcement: The

Blurring of the Mandate for the Use of Force in Maintaining International Peace and Security,”

(1995) 19:1 Maryland Journal of International Law and Trade 33 [hereinafter Fink]; J. Paust,

“Peace-Making and Security Council Powers: Bosnia-Herzegovina Raises International and

Constitutional Questions,” (1994) 19 Southern Illinois University Law Journal 135 [hereinafter

Paust]; L. Howard, Learning to Keep the Peace? United Nations Multidimensional Peacekeeping

in Civil Wars (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 2001) 36 [hereinafter Howard]; UN

Security Council’s Resolution 743 (1992), Deciding to Establish a UN Protection Force

(UNPROFOR) for an Initial Period of 12 Months; Urging Parties to Comply with the Cease-Fire

Arrangements Signed on 23 November 1991 and 2 January 1992; Demanding Measures to Ensure

the Safety of Personnel Sent by the UN and the European Community Monitoring Mission (21

February 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/743 (1992), 31 I.L.M. 1447 (1992); UN Security Council’s

Resolution 761 (1992), Authorizing the UNSG to Deploy Additional Elements of the

UNPROFOR to Provide Security at the Sarajevo Airport and to Ensure the Delivery of

Humanitarian Assistance (29 June 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/761 (1992), 31 I.L.M. 1462(1992); UN

Security Council’s Resolution 776 (1992), Authorizing Enlargements of UNPROFOR’s Mandate

and Strength in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Particularly for the Protection of Convoys of Released

Detainees upon the Request of the ICRC (14 September 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/776 (1992), 31

I.L.M. 1472 (1992); UN Security Council’s Resolution 893 (1994), Reaffirming Approval for

Deployment of UNAMIR As Outlined in the Secretary-General’s Report of 24 September 1994

(5/26488 and 5/26488IAdd.1), Including the Early Deployment of a Second Battalion to the

Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) (6 January 1994), UN Doc. S/RES/893 (1994); UN Security Council’s

Resolution 909 (1994), Regretting the Delay in Implementing the Arusha Peace Agreement and

extending UNAMIR’s Mandate until 29 July 1994 (5 April 1994), UN Doc. S/RES/909 (1994).

47 A Lack of Political Will: An Independent Report Slams the United Nations’ Failure to Act

during the Genocide in Rwanda. Produced by CBC. Directed by Barbara Smith. Running Time

00:05:33. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1999. Online Clip: CBC <http://archives.cbc.ca>

(Accessed on: 14 June 2005); Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 43; Dallaire, supra note 8, at 514;

International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13, p. 1.

240

Two months after the establishment of the UNOMUR at the request of the

governments of Uganda and Rwanda to monitor their joint border, the APA and

its six protocols were ratified on 4 August 1994, bringing with it the hope of an

end to four years of vicious civil war in Rwanda between the Hutu-dominated

government of Rwanda and the RPF. The two parties relied heavily on the United

Nations to implement the agreement and guarantee the overall security of the

country by supervising the protocol on the integration of armed forces, verifying

the maintenance of law, and ensuring the security of civilians and delivery of

humanitarian aid. The OAU, a patron of the above agreement, had already

proposed itself for the role of peacekeeper, but Boutros-Ghali put it in clear terms

that the UN Security Council’s members would not fund operations they did not

command and control. Based on Chapter VI of the UN Charter, the Security

Council adopted Resolution 872 (5 October 1993) transforming the UNOMUR

into the UNAMIR under the command of General Roméo Dallaire.48

In spite of the growing violence and eventual mass killings in Rwanda after

the signing of the APA, which was reflected in the UN Commission on Human

Rights (UNCHR) report on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, and

likewise in spite of the warning message delivered by a joint Government-RPF

delegation on 15 September 1993 to the Secretary-General in New York, urging a

rapid deployment of the international force to rescue the fragile peace process, the

mandate given to the UNAMIR was extremely limited and equipped with less

than the force proposed by the Secretary-General to the Security Council and far

48 Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 6-9; Dallaire, supra note 9, at 7; Feil Report, supra note

14, at 4-7; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13, p. 2; J. D. Bizimana, “Joint Request

by the Rwandese Government and the Rwandese Patriotic Front Concerning the Stationing of a

Neutral International Force in Rwanda,” A Letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations

from Jean-Damascéne Bizimana, the Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations

(15 June1993), UN Doc. S/25951; T. Laegreid, “U.N. Peacekeeping in Rwanda,” in H. Adelman

& A. Suhrke, eds., The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New

Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999) 231 [hereinafter Laegreid]; UN Security Council’s

Resolution 846 (1993), Establishing the United Nations Observer Mission Uganda-Rwanda

(UNOMUR), to be Deployed on the Ugandan Side of the Uganda-Rwanda Border for an Initial

Period of Six Months (22 June 1993), UN Doc. S/RES/846 (1993).

241

from the APA’s broad concepts. The Security Council’s misjudgements regarding

the nature, task, and capacity of the UNAMIR had paved the way to an inadequate

mandate and pinpointed the vital element in the failure of the UN mission to

Rwanda.49

In this respect, following the Belgians’ unsuccessful attempts to expand the

UNAMIR’s mandate by the end of February 1994, and after the downing of the

president’s plane on April 6, Willy Claes, the Belgian Foreign Minister, warned

the UN staff of possible widespread massacres in Rwanda, emphasizing that

public opinion would never tolerate having peacekeepers hiding behind the

limitations of their mandate and remaining passive witnesses to genocide. He

insisted that the UNAMIR be allowed to protect political leaders and civilians as

well. When the Belgian ambassador to the UN carried these concerns to Kofi

Annan, the latter stressed that the UNAMIR could not use armed force, which

required a move from the current Chapter VI mission (classic peacekeeping

within an agreed-upon framework) to a Chapter VII (peacemaking or

enforcement) operation, a change that had been rejected by the US representative,

supported by Western permanent members of the UN Security Council. At the

time, instead of declaring an emergency and broadening the UNAMIR’s mandate,

the Security Council contented itself with releasing a statement demanding that

the warring parties stop the killings. Unfortunately, the Security Council, led by

the US, ignored the deteriorating situation in Rwanda and formulated the

UNAMIR’s inadequate mandate.50

49 Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 7; J. McKinley, Jr., “Ugly Reality in Rwanda,” The New

York Times (10 May 1998) 4; UN Commission on Human Rights, Extrajudicial, Summary or

Arbitrary Executions, UN Doc. E/CN.4/1994/7/Add.1 (11 August 1993) 9-13 [hereinafter

Arbitrary Executions].

50 B. Boutros-Ghali, “Report on Violations of International Humanitarian Law in Rwanda

during the Conflict,” A Letter to the President of the Security Council, from Boutros Boutros-

Ghali, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (25 July 1994), UN Doc. S/1994/867; Carlsson

Report, supra note 14, at 31-32; Feil Report, supra note 14, at 23; Genocide in Rwanda, supra

note 9, at 600-603 ; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13, p. 5; J-D. Bizimana,

“Transmitting a Note from the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation of Rwanda

Explaining the Political Situation in Rwanda Since the Assassination of its President on 6 April

242

Moreover, both UNAMIR missions suffered terribly from a lack of

resources and logistics. They encountered a number of serious problems including

a lack of trained personnel, equipment, and finances. General Dallaire, having no

knowledge of Rwanda, was assigned to lead the mission without any briefing

about the actual situation in Kigali, even though a critical report by the Special

Rapporteur of the UNCHR had been published few weeks before his departure,

indicating that the country was on the brink of genocide. Furthermore, American,

Belgian, and French diplomats, who had accurate information about the situation,

never shared it with the UNAMIR. Paradoxically, in most of General Dallaire’s

meetings with them, they provided him with conflicting or misleading

information, such as when the French military attaché told him that 500 unarmed

observers would be enough to deal with the situation in Rwanda, the same number

suggested earlier by the US representative to the UN Security Council.

Furthermore, General Dallaire was not in any position to handle confidential

matters, 51 having no secure phone lines and faced with a headquarters so deeply

1994,” A Letter to the President of the Security Council, from Jean-Damascéne Bizimana, the

Permanent Representative of Rwanda to the United Nations (13 April 1994), UN Doc.

S/1994/428; Joshi, supra note 28 at 75; N. Hashemi, “Peacekeeping with no Peace to Keep: The

Failure of Canadian Foreign Policy in Bosnia,” in M. Shatzmiller, ed., Islam and Bosnia: Conflict

Resolution and Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States (Montreal, Quebec: McGill-Queen’s

University Press, 2002) 196-197 [hereinafter Hashemi]; Sénat, supra note 30, à la p.525-526; UN

Security Council’s Presidential Statement 16 (1994), The Situation Concerning Rwanda (7 April

1994), UN Doc. S/PRST/1994/16; W. Claes, “The Worsening Situation in Rwanda may Impede

UNAMIR’s Capacity to Fulfil its Mandate,” A Letter to the Secretary-General of the United

Nations from Willy Claes, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of Belgium (14 March 1994).

51 Feil Report, supra note 14, at 17-19; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13, p. 4;

Laegreid, supra note 48, at 232-233; R. Conroy, “Flawed UN Arms Embargoes in Somalia,

Liberia, and Rwanda,” in D. Cortright & G. Lopez, eds., The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN

Strategies in the 1990s (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2000) 197 [hereinafter

Conroy]; R. Dallaire, “Rwanda-Operations other than War: From Peace Agreement to Genocide in

Less than 12 Months,” in N. Azimi, ed., Humanitarian Action and Peace-Keeping Operations:

Debriefing and Lessons (London: Kluwer Law International, 1997) 268 [hereinafter Dallaire]; T.

Findlay, “Background Paper: UNAMIR and the Rwandan Humanitarian Catastrophe-

Marginalization in the Midst of Mayhem,” in N. Azimi, ed., Humanitarian Action and Peace-

Keeping Operations: Debriefing and Lessons (London: Kluwer Law International, 1997) 180

[hereinafter Findlay].

243

infiltrated by local staff that parts of his discussions with government officials

were broadcast by the RTLM.

When the war broke out, General Dallaire discovered that his title as Force

Commander was in fact titular, since the largest contingents, the Belgians and the

Bangladeshis, only responded to orders from their own leaders. When shooting

began, the Bangladeshi contingent, which was poorly trained and equipped,

couldn’t follow orders. The soldiers refused orders to open the gate of the

stadium, where they were stationed, even when their Belgian counterparts were

confronted with a furious crowd and paramilitary forces for more than two hours.

On another occasion, the Bangladeshi troops did not respond to a call from the

UNAMIR headquarters to help three Belgian soldiers protecting the home of the

Parti social démocrate (PSD) leader, Félicien Ngango, early in the morning of 7

April 1994. The Belgian soldiers failed to persuade the culprits to leave Ngango’s

family alone, with the result that they were slaughtered immediately after the

Belgians left the site.52

Financially, the UNAMIR’s budget was approved on 4 April 1994, two

days before the beginning of the genocide. This delay in funding prevented the

mission from buying or leasing necessary equipment and supplies, including

armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and helicopters. The shortage of funds, poor

equipment and lack of capacity left the UNAMIR unable to deal with any crisis.

On 8 April 1994, the mission had food for less than two weeks, drinking water for

two days, and fuel for three days. There was a critical shortage53 of ammunition

52 Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9, at 598; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13,

p. 4.

53 Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 39; Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9, at 597; H. Zawati,

“Impunity or Immunity: Wartime Male Rape and Sexual Torture as a Crime against Humanity,”

(2007) 17:1 Torture Journal 27 [hereinafter Zawati]; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter

13, p. 3; M. Barnett, “The Politics of Indifference at the United Nations and Genocide in Rwanda

and Bosnia,” in T. Cushman & S. Meštrović, eds., This Time We Knew: Western Responses to

Genocide in Bosnia (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1996) 142 [hereinafter

Barnett]; Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire. Produced by Peter

Raymont & Lindalee Tracey. Directed by Peter Raymont. Running Time 00:56:00. White Pine

Pictures, 2005. (DVD) [hereinafter Shake Hands].

244

and medical supplies. The Belgian contingent, which was considered the best

equipped in the mission, suffered from a lack of arms.

On the logistical level, the Belgian contingent was the only battalion in the

UNAMIR that arrived with APCs. When the DPKO succeeded in borrowing eight

Russian APCs to be used by the Bangladeshi troops, who lacked even the basic

knowledge to operate them, UNAMIR officials found that the APCs’ manuals

were written only in Russian, had no spare parts, and gave no access to the

engines. In this connection, the DPKO hired private contractors to provide the

helicopter units as the contributing countries failed to do this job. Ironically, those

contractors were not available when the war erupted on April 6. Even after the

establishment of the UNAMIR II, many disturbing issues continued. When the

Clinton administration agreed to lease 50 APCs to the force for use in freeing

trapped civilians, it sent the decision for clearance by the Pentagon bureaucracy in

the slowest possible manner. The carriers arrived in Uganda on 23 June 1994,

only two weeks before the genocide ended, and never reached Rwanda. Another

significant problem was the UN’s failure to convey 800 fully equipped Ethiopian

troops to Rwanda as part of the UNAMIR II. Consequently, they arrived in Kigali

in mid-August, two months after they had been committed by their government

on May 25, and one month after the end of the genocide.54

Another aspect of the United Nations’ mismanagement of the Rwandan

conflict was the dispute over the rules of engagement and implementation of the

mandate. As soon as General Dallaire and his staff arrived in Kigali, they drafted

a set of rules of engagement, which corresponded to the UNAMIR mandate, to

govern the conduct of the UNAMIR troops. These well articulated rules specified

in strong terms the moral duty and legal obligation of the UNAMIR soldiers to

use all available means and take necessary action to prevent any criminal act.55

54 International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 15, p. 5.

55 These fine-sounding rules, particularly paragraph 17, reflected General Dallaire’s attempts

to deal more effectively with the rapidly deteriorating situation in Rwanda. Paragraph 17 reads:

“There may also be ethnically or politically motivated criminal acts committed during this

245

On 23 November 1993, General Dallaire sent these rules to the UN headquarters

in New York for approval, but he never received a formal response.

Moreover, before and during the Rwandan genocide, General Dallaire was

firmly commanded to interpret and implement the UNAMIR’s mandate in the

most narrow and restricted way. Even when he sent his famous coded-cable of 11

January 1994 to the DPKO requesting protection for the informant and asking for

permission to act against the distribution of weapons in the capital and to seize

upon the arms’ caches—which violated the norms of the APA and the Kigali

Weapons Secure Area (KWSA)—the DPKO rejected all his requests, insisting

that he pass on all this information to President Habyarimana, and instructing him

to avoid taking any action that would lead to the use of force.56

Although there was no doubt that a crisis was about to occur in Rwanda, the

United Nations failed to stop the violence and protect Rwanda’s political leaders

and civilians. Soon after the president’s plane crashed, the DPKO instructed the

UNAMIR to cooperate with French, Belgian, US, and Italian troops who would

arrive in Kigali to evacuate their fellow citizens. The Western powers’

mandate which will morally and legally require UNAMIR to use all available means to halt them.

Examples are executions, attacks on displaced persons or refugees, ethnic riots, attacks on

demobilized soldiers, etc. During such occasions UNAMIR military personnel will follow the

ROD outlined in this directive, in support of UNCIVPOL and local authorities or in their absence,

UNAMIR will take the necessary action to prevent any crime against humanity.” See Calsson

Report, supra note 14, at 9; Comprehensive Report on Lessons Learned from United Nations

Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), October 1993- April 1996 (New York, N.Y.: Lessons

Learned Unit, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, December 1996) 55 [hereinafter Lessons

Learned]; Force Commander, “Operational Directive No.2, rules of Engagement,” File No.

4003.1 (19 November 1993) 7; Genocide in Rwanda, supra note 9, at 132-133 & 596;

International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13, p. 5.

56 A-M. de Brouwer & S., Chu, eds., The Men who Killed Me: Rwandan Survivors of Sexual

Violence (Toronto, Ont.: D&M Publishers, 2009) 3127 [hereinafter de Brouwer]; B. Willum,

“Legitimizing Inaction towards Genocide in Rwanda: A Matter of Misperception?” in The Third

International Conference of the Association of Genocide Scholars. A Conference Sponsored by

the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 13-15 June 1999; Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 10-11;

International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13, p. 6; L. Howard, UN Peacekeeping in Civil

Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) 31 [hereinafter Howard]; Laegreid, supra

note 48, at 234-235; S. Edwards, “General Dallaire to Face UN Genocide Panel: Conflict of

Interest,” National Post (4 October 1999) A1 & A13.

246

mobilization of their troops within two days in order to evacuate Western

expatriates and abandoning Rwandan civilians to their grim fate, underlined a

number of facts: (a) Western lives were seen as more valuable than Rwandan

lives by the so-called civilized world and Western democracies; (b) the

superpowers controlling the UN Security Council would have been perfectly able

to stop the genocide had they felt that their interests were threatened; and (c) the

DPKO had no qualms about instructing the UNAMIR to act beyond its mandate

when it came to rescuing the lives of foreign nationals, and to implement its

mandate in the most narrow way when it came to saving the lives of Rwandan

civilians.57

While the UN Security Council’s resolution 918 explicitly assigned the

UNAMIR the responsibility of protecting the IDP, including refugees and

civilians at risk, relief supplies and humanitarian support operations, the

peacekeeping mission never did more than the classic peacekeeping operations.

There was a clear discrepancy between the Security Council resolutions and the

UNAMIR’s practice on the ground.58

The superpowers’ unwillingness to deploy a sufficient number of troops in

Rwanda undermined General Dallaire’s attempts to expand the UNAMIR’s

mandate and enlarge its personnel. These shortages were reflected in the force’s

lack of mechanisms to obtain the information it needed to operate and offer

protection in times of danger. The UNAMIR troops as a result failed to protect

thousands of displaced people and refugees. The limited number of UN troops at

Kibeho compound refused to protect those civilians who sought refuge with them.

Refugees threw their children and themselves over the UN compound’s fence,

57 Carlsson Report, supra note 14, at 44-45; International Panel, supra note 13, at Chapter 13,

p. 2; L. Melvern, “The Security Council: Behind the Scenes in the Rwanda Genocide,” in A.

Jones, Genocide, War Crimes and the West: History and Complicity (London: Zed Books, 2004)

263 [hereinafter Melvern]; M. Abdul-Rahman, “Peacekeeping or Genocide Monitoring: The

United Nations Failure in Rwanda,” (Student Services, Vanier College, 7 April 2004).

58 S. Kleine-Ahlbrandt, The Protection Gap in International Protection of Internally Displaced

Persons: The Case of Rwanda (Genève: Université de Genève, 1996) 79 [Displaced Persons].

247

where many of them were crushed or injured. The UN troops failed again to help

refugees returning on foot from Kibeho to Butare. They never fired one shot, even

in the air, to protect the victims. Consequently the UNAMIR soldiers were

equally despised by belligerents, officials, and civilians. After the Kibeho

massacre and the UN troops’ inaction to prevent it or even to protect adequately

the IDP, the RPA placed serious restrictions on the UNAMIR’s movement, didn’t

respect its status, and accused it of gross misconduct. The UNAMIR troops were

accused of hiding and protecting génocidaires in the UN protected zones, who

were engaged in several acts of violence.59

In the former Yugoslavia, following the failure of the CSCE and the EC to

resolve the situation and restore peace there by the end of September 1991, the

United Nations became involved in trying to end hostilities and bringing the

59 Kibeho refugee camp, located near the town of Kibeho in the Southwest of Rwanda, was the

largest camp, inhabited by more than 100,000 internally displaced persons (IDP). The camp was

surrounded by two RPA detachments, and not far from the UNAMIR Zambian battalion. In early

1995, the Rwandan government decided to forcibly close all IDP camps in a step to return

refugees to their homes. Among the innocent civilians dwelling the camp, there were a number of

Interahamwe members, who were concerned about their position as they might be killed or

imprisoned. As the clearing began on 22 April 1995, the Interahamwe become very concerned,

and started to harass the people and then attacked the crowds with machetes to create a diversion

in order to escape. The terrified people were in panic and began pushing towards the RPA soldiers,

who thought that a riot had begun and started shooting on the crowds indiscriminately. When

shooting began, the people rushed to the UNAMIR compound, many of them were bleeding to

death. The Zambian soldiers closed the gates and refused to let the people in, with the result that

between 4,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed. See Africa: In Search of Safety: The Forcibly

Displaced and Human Rights in Africa, Amnesty International, June 1997, AI-Index: AFR.

01/005/1997, p.3; Displaced Persons, supra note 58, at 84-85; G. Nzongola-Ntalaja, “Civil War,

Peacekeeping, and the Great Lakes Region,” in R. Laremont, ed., The Causes of War and the

Consequences of Peacekeeping in Africa (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 2002) 95; Human Rights

Watch World Report, 1996 (New York, N.Y.: Human Rights Watch, 1996) 42-43; J. Burnet,

Genocide Lives in Us: Amplified Silence and the Politics of Memory in Rwanda (Ph. D.,

Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2005) 196 [hereinafter

Burnet]; J. Castonguay, Les Casques bleus au Rwanda [The UN Peacekeepers in Rwanda], Paris,

L’Harmattan, 1998, à la pp. 225-226 [ci-après Castonguay]; J. Castonguay, Rwanda : souvenirs,

témoignages, reflexions [Rwanda: Memories, Testimonies, Reflections], Montréal: Art global,

2005, à la p. 73 [ci-après , réflexions]; L. Saur, “From Kibeho to Medjugorje: The Catholic Church

and Ethno-Nationalist Movements and Regimes,” in C. Rittner, et al., eds., Genocide in Rwanda:

Complicity of the Churches? (St. Paul, Minn.: Aegis in association with Paragon House, 2004)

211 [hereinafter Saur]; Rwanda: Two Years after the Genocide, Human Rights in the Balance, an

Open Letter to President Pasteur Bizimungu, Amnesty International, April 1996, AI-Index: AFR.

47/002/96, p.5; Rwanda and Burundi: The Return Home, Rumours and Realities, Amnesty

International, February 1996, AI-Index: AFR. 02/001/1996, p. 18.

248

warring factions to the negotiating table. The UN Security Council convened at

the request of Austria, Canada, and Hungary to discuss the situation. On 8

October 1991, the UN secretary-general appointed Cyrus Vance, former US

secretary of state, as his special envoy to Yugoslavia. The United Nations,

however, directed its efforts to ward solving the Yugoslav problem in three ways:

diplomatic channels; economic sanctions and arms embargoes; and deployment of

peacekeepers to act as a buffer between warring parties. The UN secretary-general

asserted that the role of the UN forces would be restricted to peacekeeping under

Chapter VI of the UN Charter, and should not use force except for self-defence.

He believed that using force against one side in the conflict would endanger the

lives of the UN troops on ground and force an end to the UN peacekeeping

mission.60

60 The United Nations worked side by side with the EC for the settlement of the Yugoslav

conflict. Vance, who maintained close contacts with Lord Carrington, Chairman of the EC-

sponsored International conference on Yugoslavia, had mediated a cease-fire in Croatia before the

deployment of the UN forces. On 3 January 1992, a cease-fire was in place, following an

agreement signed in Geneva between the governments of Croatia and Serbia to end hostilities

between their armies, and UN military observers were deployed throughout Croatia by 17 January

1992. Although this cease-fire was broken several times, including the downing of the EC cease-

fire monitors’ helicopter, the UN Secretary-General confirmed that the UN peacekeeping units

would use minimal force and only in self-defence. The UNPROFOR’s limited mandate

encouraged Serbs to dictate their conditions and inspired a culture of impunity. See B. Boutros-

Ghali, As Agenda for Peace: Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking and Peace-Keeping (New

York, N.Y: UN Department of Public Information, 1992) 11; C. Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody

Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press,

1995) 238 [hereinafter Bennett]; F. Pilch & J. Derdzinski, “The UN Response to the Balkan

Wars,” in J. Morton, et al., eds., Reflections on the Balkan Wars: Ten Years after the Break up of

Yugoslavia (New York, N.Y.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) 95 [hereinafter Pilch]; H. Stark,

“Histoire immediate de la guerre Yougoslave,” [Immediate Story of the Yugoslav War] dans C.

Monnot, dir., Dernier guerre Balkanique? Ex-Yougoslavie: témoignages, analyses, perspectives,

Paris, Édition L’Harmattan, 1996, à la p. 19 [ci-après Stark]; J. D’hollander, Economic Sanctions

as a Means to Enforce Human Rights (LL.M., Institute of Comparative Law, Faculty of Law,

McGill University, 1995) 52 [hereinafter D’hollander]; K. Doubt, Sociology after Bosnia and

Kosovo: Recovering Justice (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Little field, 2000) 36 [hereinafter Doubt];

Lukić, supra note 19, at 284-287; M. Zucconi, “The Former Yugoslavia: Lessons of War and

Diplomacy,” (1995) SIPPI Yearbook: Armaments, Disarmaments and International Security 213-

214 [hereinafter Zucconi]; N. Procida, “Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, a Case Study:

Employing United Nations Mechanisms to Enforce the Convention on the Prevention and

Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” (1995) 18:2 Suffolk Transnational Law Review 673-674

[hereinafter Procida]; N. Sacirbey, “The Genesis of Genocide: Reflections on the Yugoslav

Conflict,” (1996) 3:1 The Brown Journal of World Affairs 343 [hereinafter Sacirbey]; Report of

the Secretary-General, Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Security council Resolution

249

On 21 February 1992, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 743

endorsing the secretary-general’s recommendations as to the goals of the

UNPROFOR, which confined its competence to: demilitarizing the zones of

fighting, helping warring parties to formulate a settlement plan; assisting in the

creation of a police force that reflected the existing composition of the nation;

rejecting any forced change in borders; and supporting the return of forcefully

displaced persons to their homes. Four years after the deployment of the

UNPROFOR in Croatia, none of the above main goals had been achieved.61

The UNPROFOR did indeed fail to demilitarize the UN-protected areas. In

North-eastern Croatia, Serb militias refused to hand over their weapons to the UN

forces, and rejected orders to withdraw to the cease-fire lines prior to the conflict.

When the one-year-long cease-fire terminated, Serb militias and paramilitaries

raided the sites where peacekeepers monitored Serb military equipment and took

back all the weapons, including heavy artillery and tanks. Surprisingly, the

UNPROFOR dealt with the self-proclaimed RSK as a de facto state, and failed to

prevent the flow of arms, in spite of the arms embargo, from Serbia to the Krajina

region. Furthermore, the UNPROFOR failed to stop forced migration from the

protected areas and couldn’t return victims of ethnic cleansing who had been

forced to leave their homes. This fact persuaded the Croatian Government to ask

for termination of the UN peacekeeping mission in Croatia62 as of 31 March 1995.

749 (1992), UN Doc. S/23836 (24 April 1992) 1 [hereinafter UN Report]; T. Birch, “NATO and

the Bosnian Quagmire: Reluctant Peacemaker,” in C. Danopoulos & K. Messas, eds., Crises in the

Balkans: Views from the Participants (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997) 331 [hereinafter

Birch]; V. Gowlland-Debbas, “UN Sanctions and International Law: An Overview”, in V.

Gowlland-Debbas, ed., United Nations Sanctions and International Law (The Hague, The

Netherlands: Kluwer Law International, 2001) 17 [hereinafter Gowlland-Debbas].

61 “Boutros Ghali’s Report to the Security Council,” Review of International Affairs 43:1002

(1 March 1992) 10; Lukić, supra note 19, at 288.

62 B. Harden, “Confused Croatian Peace Threatened Despite UN Forces Arrival,” The

Washington Post (17 May 1992) A26; Lukić, supra note 19, at 289; P. Lippman, “Promoting

Return of Refugees: Sarajevoand Zvornik in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in N. Dimitrijević & P.

Kovács, eds., Managing Hatred and Distrust: The Prognosis for Post-Conflict Settlement in

250

The UN fiasco in Croatia was due to the limited mandate there and a lack of

political will on the part of the superpowers.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, where there was no peace to keep, the UN’s real

role was neither peacekeeping nor peacemaking, but desperate efforts carried by

some UN organizations and a number of NGOs to mitigate the effects of mass

killings, ethnic cleansing, and wartime rape. The UN peacekeeping mission to

Bosnia-Herzegovina failed even before it had started. When war erupted in early

April 1992, the UN secretary-general refused the Bosnian government’s request

to send UN peacekeeping troops in a preventive capacity to stop hostilities,

systematic atrocities and ethnic cleansing. After one month of fierce war, the

secretary-general allowed the deployment of a limited number of unarmed UN

observers. This mission was too late, symbolic, disorganized, and lacked the most

elementary materials and logistical equipment. Bosnian Serb forces took

advantage of these shortages, seized more than seventy percent of the land, and

declared the establishment of the Republika Srpska, their own proclaimed

republic. Consequently, the situation deteriorated throughout Bosnia-Herzegovina

as Bosnian Serbs, supported by the JNA, continued its mass killings and its policy

of ethnic cleansing against non-Serbs in most Bosnian territories. As a result of

the continuous shelling of the city of Sarajevo by Serb forces, the secretary-

general also decided to reduce the UN troops in the city. On 16 May 1992, 63 UN

Multiethnic Communities in the Former Yugoslavia (Budapest: Local Government and Public

Service Reform Initiative, 2004) 5 [hereinafter Lippman].

63 C. Sudetic, “Bosnia Foes Agree on Movement Across the Siege Lines at Sarajevo,” The New

York Times (18 March 1994) A1; Childers, supra note 45, at 136; J. Darnton, “Croats and Serbs

Broaden Battle: U.N. Pessimistic,” The New York Times (28 January 1993) A1; J. Kifner, “Peace

Effort in Bosnia could Lose its Momentum, UN General Says,” The New York Times (5 March

1994) A5; M. Gordon, “Bush Backs a Ban on Combat Flights in Bosnia Airspace,” The New York

Times (2 October 1992) A1; R. Cohen, “Serbs Shell Bosnian Capital as U.N. Monitors Watch,”

The New York Times (15 September 1992) A3; Report of the Secretary-General, Further Report of

the Secretary-General Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 749 (1992), UN Doc. S/23900 (12

May 1992) 3; War Crimes, supra note 18, at 149-150.

251

peacekeepers were evacuated to Zagreb, all except 150 troops left behind to

protect relief convoys and negotiate a lasting peace between the warring factions.

The UNPROFOR forces were ineffective in maintaining peace and security.

They never achieved a lasting cease-fire between the warring parties. The only

cease-fire that held, albeit only for one year, was in Croatia, where the Croats

used the time preparing themselves to retake territories captured at the beginning

of the war by Serbs in Eastern Croatia. In spite of the escalating situation, the

United Nations minimized the goals of its mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina and

ignored its mandate of protecting civilians; decisions that persuaded the

UNPROFOR commander in Sarajevo to admit the failure of the UN mission.64

Furthermore, the UNPROFOR failed to fulfil its mandate to protect and

facilitate the delivery of humanitarian supplies to displaced or rounded-up people

in besieged Bosnian cities and towns. The UN relief supplies were frequently

delayed, blocked, and attacked by warring factions. Only forty percent of these

supplies ever reached civilians, who were constantly in desperate need.65

64 The UNPROFOR troops failed to prevent genocide, ethnic cleansing, and war crimes

including torture and wartime rape. The UN’s powerless troops, with their restricted mandate,

failed to protect civilians, who were systematically driven from their homes, brutally tortured and

killed. It was estimated that more than 200,000 people were killed, approximately 50,000 women -

mainly Muslims -were raped, and nearly two and a half million people were forcefully displaced.

See Ǻ. Eknes, “The United Nations’ Predicament in the Former Yugoslavia,” in T. Weiss, ed., The

United Nations and Civil Wars (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1995) 118 [hereinafter

Eknes]; B. Harden, “U.N. Commander in Bosnia Opposes Intervention,” The Washington Post (13

December 1992) A38; Childers, supra note 45, at 135-137; D. Binder, “U.N.’s Yugoslavia Envoy

Says Rising War-Weariness Led to the Cease-Fire,” The New York Times (8 January 1992) A3;

Lukić, supra note 19, at 290-292; M. Battiata, “Bosnia Peace-Keepers: Caught in the Middle,” The

Washington Post (3 December 1992) A30; P. Lewis, “Envoy Urges Stronger Role for U.N. Forces

in Bosnia,” The New York Times (1 September 1992) A3; P. Szasz, “Peacekeeping in Operation: A

Conflict Study of Bosnia,” (1995) 28 Cornell International Law Journal 686 [hereinafter Szasz];

Sacirbey, supra note 60, at 349; T. Weiss & J. Chopra, “U.N. Should Enforce Peace,” Christian

Science Monitor (2 February 1993) 18; “U.N. General: Bosnia Mission a Failure, Chief

Peacekeeper in Sarajevo Urges Forceful Foreign Intervention,” The Washington Post (6 December

1992) A33; UN Report, supra note 60, at 3-5; UN Security Council’s Resolution 770 (1992),

Demanding that Fighting Cease in Bosnia and Herzegovina; Demanding Access by the ICRC to

All Camps, Prisons and Detention Centers (13 August 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/770 (1992), 31

I.L.M. 1468 (1992); W. Pfaff, “Give the Bosnians What they Need to Defend Themselves,”

Christian Science Monitor (31 January 1993) 3.

65 Barnett, supra note 53, at 152; C. Sudetic, “Stalemate in Sarajevo, but Some Muslim

Gains,” The New York Times (25 December 1993) 4; “U.N. General Visits Besieged Bosnians,”

252

Among other aspects of the Security Council’s mismanagement of the

Yugoslav conflict were economic sanctions and arms embargoes imposed on the

former Yugoslavia since the beginning of the crisis and maintained against the

Yugoslav independent states. Although these sanctions were a key instrument in

the hands of the Security Council to prevent genocide and restore peace and

justice, they failed miserably to achieve their objective. To force the warring

factions in Yugoslavia to comply with the calls of the international community to

stop fighting, prevent further escalations, and secure a cease-fire, the UN Security

Council adopted Resolution 713 imposing an arms embargo on all parties at

conflict in Yugoslavia, since none of the breakaway Yugoslav states was yet

recognized by the international community. At a later date, the UN Security

Council adopted Resolution 727, imposing a similar arms embargo on all

Yugoslav states, after three of them had been admitted to the United Nations, but

in complete disregard of their right to individual and collective self-defence

guaranteed to all UN member states under Article 51 of the UN Charter.66

New York Times (6 March 1993) 10; Childers, supra note 45, at 139; J. Burns, “Convoy Halted by

Serbs Looms as Test Case in Bosnia,” The New York Times (16 February 1993) A3; J. Burns,

“Halt in Aid Leaves Bosnians Stunned, and Hungry,” The New York Times (19 February 1993)

A3; J. Burns, “Most Relief Operations in Bosnia are Halted by U.N. Aid Agency,” The New York

Times (18 February 1993) A1; J. Burns, “Relief Director in Bosnia Calls for Tougher Action,” The

New York Times (15 February 1993) A7; L. Mouat, “U.N. Resumes Talks on Balkans Amid

Challenges to Relief Efforts,” The Christian Science Monitor (18 February 1993) 1; Pilch, supra

note 60, at 114.

66 Sanctions on Bosnia-Herzegovina had several controversial effects. It badly affected the

Bosnian government, which was resisting the aggression of Bosnian Serbs who, in spite of the UN

embargoes, continued to receive manpower and military supplies from Serbia. Consequently, the

UN General Assembly requested the Security Council to lift embargoes imposed on Bosnia-

Herzegovina. While the Security Council believed that lifting arms embargoes would increase

bloodshed, some experts argued that arming Bosnian Muslims to the point that they would be able

to defend themselves would create a balance of power that might lead to peace and stability in the

region. See A. Juppe, “Bosnia: Hesitant Action on Goražde and Foreign Ministers’ Peace

Proposal,” Foreign Policy Bulletin 5:1 (1994) 57; Admission of the Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina to Membership in the United Nations, GA Res. A/RES/46/237 (22 May 1992);

Admission of the Republic of Croatia to Membership in the United Nations, GA Res.

A/RES/46/238 (22 May 1992); Admission of the Republic of Slovenia to Membership in the

United Nations, GA Res. A/RES/46/236 (22 May 1992); D. Cortright & G. Lopez, eds.,

“Sanctioning Yugoslavia,” in D. Cortright & G. Lopez, eds., The Sanctions Decade: Assessing UN

253

These embargoes failed to accomplish any of their goals for several

reasons: (a) they were imposed indiscriminately on all parties, victims and

aggressors, causing disequilibrium in the balance of armament; (b) these

resolutions were built on the wrong assumption that all warring factions were

completely dependant on external sources of armament; (c) they overlooked the

geostrategic position of the warring parties, such as Croatia, with broad access to

the world by air, land, and see, or the porous border that allowed the flow of arms

to continue to the Bosnian Serb militias from Serbia; (d) they favoured the

aggressor Serbs, who seized the JNA arm caches and continued to receive arms

supplies from the Serbian government; (e) they deprived the Bosnian government

of the right and ability to defend itself; and (f) a number of UN member states

violated these embargoes by helping the JNA to buy 14,000 tons of weapons from

Christian militias in Beirut via Cyprus.67

In addition to arms embargoes, the UN Security Council adopted a number

of resolutions imposing economic sanctions on Serbia, Montenegro, and the self-

proclaimed republics of RS and RSK.68 Although its economy was badly hurt as a

Strategies in the 1990s (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc., 2000) 63; D’hollander,

supra note 60, at 71; M. Roch, “Military Intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Will World Politics

Prevail over the Rule of International Law?,” (1996) 24 Denver Journal of International Law and

Policy 479 [hereinafter Roch]; Procida, supra note 60, at 684; Sacirbey, supra note 60, at 348-349;

The Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, GA Res. A/RES/49/10 (3 November 1994); Szasz,

supra note 64, at 688; Lukić, supra note 19, at 295-296.

67 F. Harris & H. Dewar, “Bombing Prompts Dole to Give Boost to Clinton’s Bosnia Policy,”

The Washington Post (31 August 1995) A38; Lukić, supra note 19, at 295-299; M. Almond,

Europe’s Backyard War: The War in the Balkans (London: Heinemann, 1994) 224; N. Malcolm,

Bosnia: A Short History (New York, N.Y.: Macmillan, 1994) 243 [hereinafter Malcolm].

68 UN Security Council’s Resolution 752 (1992), Expressing Concern over Deterioration of

the Situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina; Demanding Compliance with the Cease-Fire Signed on 12

April 1992; Demanding that Outside Interference Cease and that Neighboring Countries Take

Swift Action to Stop Such Interference; Demanding that the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and

Elements of the Croatian Army be withdrawn or become Subject to the Authority of Bosnia-

Herzegovina; Emphasizing the Need for Humanitarian Assistance; Requesting the UNSG to

Ensure that UNPROFOR will Assume Full Responsibilities in All UN Protected Areas (UNPAs)

(15 May 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/752 (1992), 31 I.L.M. 1451 (1992); UN Security Council’s

Resolution 757 (1992), Deploring the Fact that the Demands of Resolution 752 have not been

Met; Deciding that all States shall: Enforce a Trade Embargo against the Federal Republic of

254

result of those sanctions, Serbia continued its military and economic support to

Serbs fighting in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The UN economic sanctions

were largely ineffective, and so failed to achieve any of their goals, mainly due to

incompatible interpretations of the sanctions by UN member states. This

contradiction tended to favour Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, who continued

receiving arms and oil supplies from Serbia, which was in turn supplied by other

European countries, particularly Romania and Greece.69

In sum, it becomes evident from the foregoing analysis that the Serbs

continued their policy of ethnic cleansing and violations of international law in

the face of United Nations’ weakness in enforcing international conventions, and

inaction to prevent or halt acts of genocide. Although the Genocide Convention

articles clearly specify elements of the crime of genocide and the measures that

should be taken to prevent it, the United Nations chose peaceful solutions through

political channels to prevent and suppress acts of genocide rather than applying

“Collective Security” actions to enforce peace in the former Yugoslavia. This was

Yugoslavia (FRY) (Serbia and Montenegro), Except for the Supply of Approved Medical Supplies

and Foodstuffs; Deny Landing, over flight or Take-off Permission to Aircraft that have Taken off

from or are Destined to Land in FRY; Reduce their Diplomatic and Consular Staffs in FRY;

Setting Forth Further Tasks for the Committee Established by Resolution 724; Demanding the

Creation of Conditions for Unimpeded Delivery of Humanitarian Supplies to Destinations in

Bosnia and Herzegovina (30 May 1992), UN Doc. S/RES/757 (1992), 31 I.L.M. 1453 (1992).

69 B. Harden, “In Europe: New World Order vs. Old Nationalisms: Greece Blocks Recognition

of Macedonia,” The Washington Post (10 June 1992) A25; C. Trean, “Allegement des Sanctions

prolongés pour Belgrade,” Le Monde (14 janvier 1995) 2; D. Williams, “Bosnia Embargo

Decision Puts U.S. Loyalty in Doubt,” The Washington Post (12 November 1994) A21; Lukić,

supra note 19, at 300-301; M. de Leeuw, “A Gentleman’s Agreement: Srebrenica in the Context

of Dutch War History,” in C. Cockburn & D. Zarkov, The Postwar Moment: Militaries,

Masculinities and International Peacekeeping, Bosnia and the Netherlands (London: Lawrence &

Wishart, 2002) 169 [hereinafter de Leeuw]; R. Cohen, “Serbia Said to Keep Aiding Serbs in

Bosnia,” The New York Times (12 December 1994) A6; “Romania Will Break Some U.N.

Sanctions,” Radio Free Europe Daily Report (10 June 1992) 4; S. Coll, “Sanctions Unlikely to

Affect Transfers,” The Washington Post (7 June 1992) A30; S. Coll, “Serbian Money Trail Leads

to Cyprus,” The Washington Post (7 June 1992) A1; S. Engelberg & E. Schmitt, “Serbs Easily

Outflank UN Arms Embargo,” The New York Times (5 July 1992) A6; S. Stedman, “The Former

Yugoslavia,” in R. Haass, ed., Economic Sanctions and American Diplomacy (New York, N.Y.:

The Council on foreign Relations, Inc., 1998) 185; “UN Bars Weapons Sales to Yugoslavia,” The

New York Times (26 September 1991) A3; War Crimes, supra note 18, at 157-159.

255

due to the fact that UN Security Council members had divergent interests and

agendas, making it difficult to arrive at a consensus regarding issues that require

powerful intervention. On the other hand, the United Nations usually depends on

member states, particularly Security Council members, to donate troops, money,

and equipment. Accordingly, enforcement measures could not be taken if

intervention was inconsistent with the members’ political interests, regardless of

the situation’s threat to world peace and security.70

2. The Safe Areas Betrayed

The “Safe Areas” fiasco may have been the most embarrassing disaster in

the history of UN peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

The statement by an American officer to General Dallaire that “the lives of

800,000 Rwandans were only worth risking the lives of ten American troops” was

not an anomaly. After losing ten soldiers, the Belgians also told him that “the

lives of Rwandans were not worth risking another single Belgian soldier.”

Similarly, the French and Dutch governments concluded secret agreements with

the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs to release their troops held as hostages by Serb

forces. In return, the UNPROFOR did not call for NATO air strikes on Serb

artillery positions, and as well abandoned Srebrenica to the Serb forces, who

brutally massacred more than 8,000 Muslim civilians.71

70 Procida, supra note 60, at 679 & 681; T. Grant, “Extending Decolonization: How the United

Nations might have Addressed Kosovo,” (1999) 28:1 Georgia Journal of International and

Comparative Law 12 [hereinafter Grant].

71 Dallaire, supra note 8, at 522; Forbrytelse og straff [Crime and Punishment]. Produced by

Thomas Robsahm & Margreth Olin. Directed by Maria Fuglevaag Warsinski. Running Time

01:15:00. Speranza Film as, 1998. Video Cassette (German); H. Silajdžić, “Measures for Halting

of the Serbian Aggression on the Safe Area of Goražde,” A Letter to the President of the Security

Council from Haris Silajdžić, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (17

April 1994), UN Doc. S/1994/456, Annex; J. Berry & C. Berry, “Introduction: Collecting

Memory,” in J. Berry & C. Berry, eds., Genocide in Rwanda: A Collective Memory (Washington,

D.C.: Howard University Press, 1999) 145 [hereinafter Berry]; M. Sells, , “James Gow’s Claim of

Dutchbat Heroism,” Online: JUSTWATCH-L (1998) <JUSTWATCH-L@LISTSERV.ACSU.

BUFFALO.EDU> (Received on: 24 August 1998) [hereinafter Sells]; J. Geary, “Politics and

Massacres: Did France Tacitly Trade a Bosnian ‘Safe Haven’ to the Serbs for the Return of

Peacekeeper Hostages?” Time 147:26 (24 June 1996) 28 [hereinafter Geary]; T. Mazowiecki, “The

256

Besides the painful fact that the UN peacekeeping missions to the former

Yugoslavia and Rwanda were carrying the seeds of their own failure from the

start, there were a number of external and internal factors that affected the

missions’ operations negatively. Among these factors were: (a) the reluctance of

the contending parties to cooperate with the missions, as many of them were

against the idea of peacekeeping; (b) the absence of a clear framework to carry

out peacekeeping operations, including the efficient use of power to preserve

peace and security for people in danger and to place pressure on the aggressors to

prevent further escalations; (c) conflicting interpretations of the rules of

engagement, mainly the failure to reach a clear definition of what constituted

“protected people”, and under which conditions the UN forces would justify the

use of force to protect them; and (d) the severe lack of sufficient military

resources, particularly manpower and logistical supplies.72

Following the siege and shelling of Sarajevo at the beginning of the war,

the Serbs continued their policy of ethnic cleansing, which led to the isolation and

siege of a number of towns in Eastern and Western Bosnia-Herzegovina, namely,

73 Bihać in the northwest, and Srebrenica, Tuzla, Žepa, and Goražde in the east.

UN’s Failure: An Interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Special Representative of the United

Nations Commission on Human Rights in the Yugoslavian Conflict,” Interview by Bernard Osser

and Patrick de Saint-Exupéry, The New York Review of Books 42: 14 (21 September 1995) 38; Y.

Akashi, “An Interview with Yasushi Akashi: Muddling on is an Achievement,” Interview by

Robert van de Roer, BosNet-Digest 6:1036 (3 November 1998) 4 [hereinafter Akashi].

72 D. Last, “Safe Areas and the Dilemma of Civilian Protection: Lessons from Yugoslavia,” in

M. Spencer, ed., The Lessons of Yugoslavia (New York, N.Y.: JAI, 2000) 186-188 [hereinafter

Last]; M. Berdal, “The Security Council, Peacekeeping and Internal Conflict after the Cold War,”

(1996) 7 Duke Journal of Comparative and International Law 79 [herinafter Berdal]; S. Vohra,

“Impartiality in United Nations Peace-Keeping,” (1996) 9 Leiden Journal of International Law 78

[herinafter Vohra]. Y. Inoue, “United Nations’ Peacekeeping Role in the Post-Cold War Era: The

Conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” (1993) 16:1 Loyola of Los Angeles International and

Comparative Law Journal 273 [hereinafter Inoue].

73 D. Leurdijk, “Background Paper: United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR),” in N.

Azimi, ed., Humanitarian Action and Peace-Keeping Operations: Debriefing and Lessons

(London: Kluwer Law International, 1997) 76 [hereinafter Leurdijk]; J. Imamović, “L’Ex-

Yougoslavie, la Bosnie-Herzégovine et Tuzla en Europe,” dans M-F. Allain, dir., L’Ex-

Yougoslavie en Europe: de la faillite des démocraties au processus de paix, Paris, L’Harmattan,

257

These Muslim enclaves were deliberately attacked by Serb heavy artillery,

resulting in a huge number of casualties among the besieged populations.

Acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council adopted

Resolution 819, requesting all parties to consider Srebrenica and its surroundings

as a “Safe Area,” and consequently, that it should be exempted from any armed

attacks or hostilities. A few weeks later, after a fact-finding mission visited the

region, the Security Council adopted Resolution 824 under Chapter VII of the UN

Charter declaring that Sarajevo, Bihać, Goražde, Tuzla, and Žepa and their

surroundings should be treated as “Safe Areas” and exempt from attacks of any

kind. Once again, acting under Chapter VII, the Security Council adopted

Resolution 836 ensuring full respect for “Safe Areas” mentioned in the previous

resolutions and extending in paragraph 5 the mandate of the UNPROFOR to

include: deterring attacks against the “Safe Areas”; monitoring cease-fires in the

“Safe Areas”; promoting the withdrawal of military or paramilitary units other

than those of the Bosnian Government; occupying some key points on the ground;

and participating in the delivery of humanitarian relief to the populations in the

“Safe Areas.” Paragraph 9 of the same resolution authorised the UNPROFOR to

take any necessary measures, including the use of force in reply to bombardments

against the “Safe Areas,” armed incursions into them, and any deliberate

obstruction in or around those areas to the freedom of movement of the

1997, à la p.211; Report of the Secretary-General, Srebrenica Report: Report of the Secretary-

General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 (1998), (15 November 1999) 59

[hereinafter Srebrenica Report]; S. Murphy, Humanitarian Intervention: The United Nations in an

Evolving World Order (Philadelphia, Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) 206

[hereinafter Murphy]; UN Commission on Human Rights, Situation of Human Rights in the

Territory of the Former Yugoslavia Submitted by Mr. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, UN Doc.

E/CN.4/1995/4 (10 June 1994); UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant

to Resolution 844 (1993), UN Doc. S/1994/555 (9 May 1994); UN Security Council, Report of the

Secretary-General Pursuant to Resolution 913 (1994), UN Doc. S/1994/600 (19 May 1994); UN

Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Resolution 959 (1994), UN Doc.

S/1994/1389 (1 December 1994); UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General

Submitted Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1010 (1995), UN Doc. S/1995/755 (30 August

1995).

258

UNPROFOR or of protected humanitarian convoys. Moreover, the Security

Council decided in paragraph 10 that member states, acting nationally or through

regional organizations or some other arrangement, might take, under the authority

of the Security Council and subject to close coordination with the secretary-

general and UNPROFOR, all necessary measures, through the use of air power, in

and around the “Safe Areas” in the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, to support

the UNPROFOR in the performance of its mandate as set out in paragraphs 5 & 9

above.74

Despite the above fine-sounding resolutions, the UNPROFOR failed to

protect adequately or guarantee the security of humanitarian supplies to the

besieged population of the “Safe Areas.” In March 1943, the Serbs increased their

attacks on Srebrenica and other enclaves in Eastern Bosnia, where dozens of

people died daily as a result of shelling, lack of food, and medical supplies. The

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) convoys were

blocked by Serb forces and humanitarian stocks hit rock bottom. By mid-1995,

living conditions had dangerously deteriorated in the besieged enclaves, while the

UNPROFOR had failed to open Tuzla and Sarajevo airports for relief supplies.

The UNPROFOR, disregarding its authority to use force in response to violations

of international humanitarian law, in effect encouraged the Serbs to use food and

other relief supplies as a weapon of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. When 10,500

Rapid Reaction Force (RRF) troops arrived in June 1995, Yasushi Akashi, the

74 E. Primosch, “The Roles of United Nations Civilian Police (UNCIVPOL) within United

Nations Peace-Keeping Operations,” (1994) 43:2 International and Comparative Law Quarterly

426 [hereinafter Primosch]; Howard, supra note 56, at 49; R. Siekmann, “The Fall of Srebrenica

and the Attitude of Dutchbat from an International Legal Perspective,” (1998) 1 Yearbook of

International Humanitarian Law 305 [hereinafter Siekmann]; Sarooshi, supra note 45, at 486-487;

UN Security Council’s Presidential Statement 71 (1994), The Situation in the Republic of Bosnia

and Herzegovina (26 November 1994), UN Doc. S/PRST/1994/71; UN Security Council’s

Resolution 819 (1993), Demanding that All Parties and others Concerned Treat Srebrenica and

its Surroundings as a Safe Area which Should be Free from any Armed Attack or any other Hostile

Act (16 April 1993), UN Doc. S/RES/819 (1993); UN Security Council’s Resolution 836 (1993),

Calling for the Full and Immediate Implementation of All its Relevant Resolutions, Commending

the Peace Plan for the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina as Contained in Document S/25/479,

and Deciding to Ensure Full Respect for the Safe Areas Referred to in Resolution 824 (1993) (4

June 1993), UN Doc. S/RES/836 (1993).

259

SGSR in the former Yugoslavia, didn’t allow them to implement the

UNPROFOR’s mandate.75

In contrast with their mandate, as well as with Article 103 of the UN

Charter, the UNPROFOR commanders believed that there was no obligation on

them to use force to prevent or stop killings and other crimes against humanity in

Bosnia-Herzegovina, relying on the notion that the UN was not a party to the

Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of

War, of 1949 (Geneva IV). The UN troops, however, went even further when

they: disarmed the defenders of the Muslim enclaves; refused to call for NATO

air strikes against Serb artillery positions shelling the “Safe Areas”; helped Serb

forces, after the fall of Srebrenica, 76 to separate Muslim youth and men for

75 Killing Time: Women Activists Awaiting Justice. Produced by Lorenza Fabretti & Todd

Waller. Directed by Todd Waller. Running Time 00:27:00. National Public Radio, 2001. (Video

Cassette); M. Brutsalis, “Too Little, Too Late,” in B. Cohen & G. Stamkoski, eds., With No Peace

to Keep: United Nations Peacekeeping and the War in the Former Yugoslavia (London:

Grainpress, Ltd., 1995) 81-83 [hereinafter Brutsalis]; M. Sacirbey, “Reviewing of the Security

Council of the Conduct of UN Mandated Officials in Safe Areas,” A Letter to the President of the

Security Council from Muhamed Sacirbey, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Republic of

Bosnia and Herzegovina (31 October 1995), Report of the Secretary-General, Srebrenica Report:

Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 (1998), (15

November 1999) 57 [hereinafter Srebrenica Report]; UN Doc. S/1995/904, Annex; Report of the

Secretary-General, The Situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Doc. A/49/758 (6 December

1994).

76 According to testimonies provided by victims and witnesses to UN investigators in the

summer of 1992, UN peacekeepers had molested Muslim women captives at Sonja Kontiki

concentration camp near Sarajevo. See A Cry from the Grave: The Srebrenica Massacre. Produced

by Krishan Arora. Directed by Leslie Woodhead. Running Time 01:44:07. Antelope, 2000.

(Videocassette); D. Rieff, Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West (New York, N.Y.:

Touchstone, 1996) 121 [hereinafter Rieff]; J. Honig & N. Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War

Crime (New York, N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1997) 37 [hereinafter Honig]; M. Sells, The Bridge

Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,

1996) 132 [hereinafter Sells]; R. Gutman, “Blue Helmets above the Law,” in B. Cohen & G.

Stamkoski, eds., With No Peace to Keep: United Nations Peacekeeping and the War in the

Former Yugoslavia (London: Grainpress, Ltd., 1995) 99 [hereinafter Gutman]; R. Gutman,

“United Nations and the Geneva Conventions,” in Gutman, R., & Rieff, D., eds., Crimes of War:

What the Public Should Know (New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999) 361

[hereinafter United Nations]; R. Ullman, “The Wars in Yugoslavia and the International System

after the Cold War,” in R. Ullman, ed., The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars (New York, N.Y.:

Council on Foreign Relations, 1996) 27 [hereinafter Ullman]; United Nations, The United Nations

and the Situation in the Former Yugoslavia (New York, N.Y.: United Nations, 1995) 37; United

Nations, Disarmament and Conflict Resolution Project: Managing Arms in Peace Processes,

Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina (New York, N.Y.: United Nations, UN Institute for

260

execution; and themselves committed massive human rights abuses, including the

rape of Muslim women captives.

The UNPROFOR command structure had been left intact during the

Yugoslav conflict. The UN troops’ inaction to protect civilians was due to the fact

that the UN executives perceived that the safety of the peacekeepers prevailed

over the Security Council’s mandates. The UN Secretariat and the British

government provided another justification for the UNPROFOR passivity. They

argued that the UN peacekeepers could not take sides in the conflict, although

Serb forces’ actions fell into the category of war crimes. This neutrality was

forgotten, however, when the UNPROFOR allowed the delivery of JNA heavy

weapons, including artillery tanks and aircraft to the Bosnian Serb army, while

Bosnian Muslims were left defenceless under the UN arms embargo.77

When Bosnian Serbs stepped up their attacks on Srebrenica in March 1995,

they captured 400 UNPROFOR troops, many of them French, and held them as

hostages. The French Government agreed to prevent NATO air strikes against

Serb positions on the condition that Bosnian Serb forces release the French

peacekeepers. This secret agreement was behind the refusal of French General

Disarmament Research, 1996) 126 [hereinafter Disarmament]; W. Grigg, Beasts in Blue Berets:

The Reality of the United Nations, Online: The New American (1997) <http://www.

whatreallyhappened.com/rancho/ politics/ un/peace.html> (Accessed on: 22 August 2004).

77 Shashi Tharoor, an official at the DPKO with daily responsibilities for the former

Yugoslavia, submitted a confidential memo to Yasushi Akashi and Kofi Annan questioning the

role of the UNPROFOR in Yugoslavia and recommending that the UN should take a harder line

with Serb forces, including calling for NATO air strikes. Tharoor’s memo was rejected and he

didn’t take the matter any further. See A. Izetbegović, “ Accelerated Deterioration on the Part of

the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in Implementing the Mandates Adopted by

the Security Council,” A Letter to the President of the Security Council from Alija Izetbegović,

the President of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (11 November 1994),

UN Doc. S/1994/1280, Annex; B. Magaš, “UN Safe Havens: United Nations and NATO have

Acted in Complicity with the Serbs against Bosnia,” New Statesman & Society (9 December 1994)

25; D. Rieff, “The U.N. and Bosnia: The Institution that Saw no Evil,” The New Republic 214:7

(12 February 1996) 19; Disarmament, supra note 76, at 86; Siekmann, supra note 74, at 307; UN

Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1019

(1995) on Violations of International Humanitarian Law in the Areas of Srebrenica, Žepa, Banja

Luka and Sanski Most, UN Doc. S/1995/988 (27 November 1995).

261

Bernard Janvier, commander of the UN forces in the former Yugoslavia, to call

for NATO air strikes to stop the Serb assault on Srebrenica in July 1995. General

Janvier met with the Bosnian Serb commander General Ratko Mladić on 4 June

1995, and two high-ranking French officers were dispatched by President Jacques

Chirac two days later to sign the agreement.78

By the same token, the Dutch Government covered up its troops’ role in the

fall of Srebrenica. The Dutch minister of defence contacted Akashi, and asked

him to save the lives of thirty Dutch blue helmets held as hostages by Serb forces.

The Minister convinced Akashi in a two-hours-long phone call to stop NATO air

strikes on Serb forces, and persuaded him that a battle between the Dutch and

Serbs over the enclave would result in a pointless bloodbath and risk the lives of

civilians. On 11 July 1995, the day the enclave fell to the Serbs, a Dutch APC ran

over and deliberately crushed to death some thirty Muslim men who tried to stop

it. Dutch Lieutenant Ron Rutten filmed his colleagues helping Serb forces to

separate Muslim boys and men to be deported and murdered. Lieutenant Rutten’s

film, which affirmed the Dutch crimes and their collaboration with the Serb

forces, was presented to a 1995 Dutch inquiry. The Dutch government later said

that the film had been destroyed “by mistake,” while Rutten’s testimony was

systematically removed from the inquiry’s report.79

78 Akasha, supra note 71; Greay, supra note 71, at 28; Honig, supra note 76, at 150; J. Burns,

“UN Disarms Muslim Defenders of Srebrenica: Canadian Troops are Only Buffer between

Town’s Civilians and Serb Militia,” The Gazette (22 April 1993) A18; R. Mladić, “An Open

Letter to the UNPROFOR Commander,” A Letter to Lieutenant – General Bernard Janvier, the

UNPROFOR Commander, Zagreb, from Lieutenant-General Ratko Mladić, Commander of the

Bosnian Serb Army (4 September 1995); Safe Haven: The United Nations and the Betrayal of

Srebrenica. Produced by Ilan Ziv & Rory O’Connor. Directed by Ilan Ziv. Running Time

00:39:00. First Run/Icarus Films, 1996. (Video Cassette); Srebrenica: Reconstruction,

Background, Consequences and Analysis of the Fall of a Safe Area, Online: Netherlands Institute

for War Documentation (2002) <http://www.Srebrenica.nl/en/a_index.htm> (Accessed on: 21 July

2003) 41, at Part III, Chapter 3, p.1 [hereinafter Netherlands].

79 A. Khan, The Unquiet Dead: Humanitarian Intervention, the Fall of Srebrenica, and

Political Will as a Normative Linchpin (Ph.D., York University, 2004) 309 [hereinafter Khan];

Akasha, supra note 71; “Former Blue Helmet Alleges Dutch ‘Collaboration’ in Srebrenica,”

Agence France Presse, The Hague, The Netherlands, 18 August 1998; D. Zarkov, “Srebrenica

Trauma: Masculinity, Military and National Self-image in Dutch daily Newspapers,” in C.

262

The fall of Srebrenica and other “Safe Areas” was not the responsibility of

the Dutch and French battalions only; blame should be laid on Boutros-Ghali,

Kofi Annan, and the permanent members of the Security Council, as well as on

Yasushi Akashi, all of whom shared responsibility for the failure of the

international community in managing the Yugoslav conflict between 1993 and

1995. In an interview with Dutch journalist Robert van de Roer, Akashi said: “We

were keepers of a peace that did not exist.” When he was confronted with the fact

of having taken the side of the Serbs during the years of conflict, Akashi admitted

that in the spring of 1994, he allowed several Bosnian Serb tanks to pass, under

UN escort, through the twenty kilometre zone around Sarajevo, although this area

was demilitarized and declared free of weapons.80

In Rwanda, the “Safe Areas” situation was slightly different. The Security

Council didn’t specify any particular area in Rwanda to be considered a UN “Safe

Area,” but authorized the UNAMIR to establish the KWSA, and temporary

“humanitarian areas” to protect IDPs. As already mentioned, the Security Council

adopted Resolution 872, on 5 October 1993, authorizing the UNAMIR to

contribute to the security of the city of Kigali and its environs by monitoring and

observing it as a demilitarized zone established by the cease-fire agreement. On

Cockburn & D. Zarkov, The Postwar Moment: Militaries, Masculinities and International

Peacekeeping, Bosnia and the Netherlands (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2002) 186-187

[hereinafter Zarkov]; H. Veenhof, ed., Srebrenica: Oorlogsdagboek van Piet Hein Both

[Srebrenica: The War Diary of Piet Hein Both] (Barneveld: De Vuurbaak, 1995) 45. (Dutch); I.

Traynor, “Despair in the Balkans: Dutch Troops Admit Role in Srebrenica Massacre,” The

Guardian (17 August 1998) 13; Sells, supra note 71; Siekmann, supra note 74 at 303; T. Weiss,

“Collective Spinelessness: U.N. Actions in the Former Yugoslavia,” in R. Ullman, ed., The World

and Yugoslavia’s Wars (New York, N.Y.: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996) 69 [hereinafter

Weiss].

80 Akasha, supra note 71; B. O’Shea, Crisis at Bihać: Bosnia’s Bloody Battlefield: Incuding

the Carter Peace Initiative, Croatia Reclaims Western Slavonia, the Fall of the Krajina Serbs

(Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, Ltd., 1998) 43-47 [hereinafter O’Shea]; D. Rohde,

“Srebrenica 10 Years on: Tormenting Memories,” The New York Times (10 July 2005) 1; E.

Vulliamy, Srebrenica: Ten Years on, Online: Open Democracy, 7 July 2005 <http://www.

opendemocracy.org/conflict-yugoslavia/srebrenica_2651.jsp> (Accessed on: 7 July 2005); Honig,

supra note 76 at 141; J. Nadler, “Srebrenica Haunts World,” The Gazette (12 July 2005) A16.

263

17 May 1994, the Security Council adopted Resolution 918, authorizing the

deployment of the UNAMIR II, and expanding its mandate to include in

paragraph 3 certain responsibilities that should not exceed the limits of its

available resources: (a) to establish and maintain secure humanitarian areas to

protect IDPs, refugees and civilians at risk in Rwanda, and (b) to secure the

distribution and delivery of humanitarian aid and relief supplies. Two months

after the outbreak of mass killings in Rwanda, the Security Council adopted

Resolution 925, emphasizing the same responsibilities. Following the

inconvenient delay in the deployment of the UNAMIR II, due to obstacles

imposed by the United States, the Secretary-General criticized the failure of the

international community to halt the massacres. At that time, France offered to

send 2,500 troops, under the name of Opération Turquoise, to establish a safe

humanitarian zone in South-western Rwanda to protect IDPs until the deployment

of the UNAMIR II. Accordingly, the Security Council adopted Resolution 929, on

22 June 1994, determining that the deteriorating humanitarian situation in

Rwanda constituted a threat to the region’s peace and security, and welcoming the

offer by member states, mainly France, to establish a temporary operation under

national command to protect IDPs, refugees, and civilians at risk in Rwanda.81

81 In carrying out the Opération Turquoise, French troops were reinforced by more than 500

African troops as follows: Chad 132, Congo 40, Egypt 7, Guinea-Bissau 35, Mauritania 10,

Nigeria 43, and Senegal 243. See Carlsson Report, supra note 14 at 8; Displaced Persons, supra

note 58 at 116-117; J-B. Mérimée, “Adoption of a Resolution under Chapter VII of the Charter as

a Legal Framework for the Deployment of a Multinational Force to Maintain a Presence in

Rwanda until the Expanded UNAMIR is Deployed,” A Letter to the Secretary-General of the

United Nations from Jean-Bernard Mérimée, the Permanent Representative of France to the

United Nations (21 June 1994), UN Doc. S/1994/734; Melvern, supra note 29 at 195; Murphy,

supra note 73, at 259; UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-General on the Situation in

Rwanda, UN Doc. S/1994/640 (31 May 1994); UN Security Council, Report of the Secretary-

General on the Situation in Rwanda, UN Doc. S/1994/924 (3 August 1994); UN Security Council,

Progress Report of the Secretary-General on the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda,

UN Doc. S/1994/1133 (6 October 1994); UN Security Council, Progress Report of the Secretary-

General on the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda, UN Doc. S/1994/1344 (8

November 1994); UN Security Council’s Resolution 925 (1994), Reaffirming its Commitment to

the Unity and Territorial Integrity of Rwanda (8 June 1994), UN Doc. S/RES/925 (1994).

264

Prior to the tragic death of President Habyarimana, the UNAMIR carried

out the UN Security Council’s Resolution 872, and deployed its military

observers to monitor cease-fire and buffer zones between the RPF and RGF

throughout the demilitarized area of Kigali. Due, however, to a series of local and

regional emergencies, as well as to its lack of fundamental resources, the

UNAMIR failed to provide a precise intelligence analysis of the situation or

assess the capabilities of the warring parties, particularly the Interahamwe.

Moreover, the UNAMIR failed to observe the Rwandan government’s distribution

and stockpiling of weapons in Kigali and its suburbs. After the eruption of war,

civilians, mainly Tutsi and moderate Hutu, sought refuge with the UN

peacekeepers and gathered at UN sites. Among those sites were the Amahoro

stadium and the ETO, where thousands of Rwandan families congregated. Those

sites ought to have been considered ad hoc “Safe Areas” under the UN Security

Council’s Resolution 872. Nevertheless, Belgian peacekeepers withdrew from the

school82 and abandoned more than two thousand refugees to be tragically

slaughtered by the Interahamwe and other Hutu paramilitary forces, who waited

at the main gates and around the building for four days for their chance.

While the world was watching helplessly, the Rwandan genocide

continued. When the RPF forces advanced towards Kigali and fierce fighting

spread from the capital region to reach the borders of Burundi, the French

government decided to carry out a humanitarian intervention, under the

authorization of the Security Council, to stop the genocide and protect the lives of

civilians at risk. Following the deployment of French troops in the region of

Butare in Southern Rwanda, the Permanent Representative of France to the

United Nations informed the Security Council, through the Secretary-General,

about the grave concerns of the French authorities regarding the deteriorated

situation in Rwanda in general and the danger of another humanitarian tragedy in

82 Carlsson, supra note 14 at 45-46; Dallaire, supra note 8 at 289; Feil, supra note 14 at 5;

Laegreid, supra note 48 at 231-232.

265

that region in particular. Accordingly, French troops, by executing Opération

Turquoise, decided to establish and organize, 83 on the basis of the Security

Council’s Resolutions 925 and 929, a safe humanitarian zone to preserve the lives

of hundreds of thousands of civilians who had fled their homes during the

fighting.

Although Opération Turquoise did rescue hundreds of thousands of

Rwandans and contributed to the stability of the South-western region of Rwanda,

it was highly criticized for its timing and impartiality. The French Government

decided to carry out this operation after three months of bloodshed and fighting

between warring parties, that had already claimed the lives of hundreds of

thousands of civilians. In the midst of the genocide, France was in favour of

decreasing the number or withdrawing the UNAMIR troops from Rwanda. The

operation was, moreover, carried out after the RPF’s conclusive advance on

Kigali and the absolute debacle of the Hutu interim government. General Dallaire

was asked to pass a letter from the leaders of Les Forces Démocratiques de

Changement, a new party which opposed the establishment of the safe

humanitarian area, describing it as a protection zone for war culprits. The RGF

were still moving inside the humanitarian zone with their weapons, while the

gendarmerie were assisting the French forces with maintaining security and

public order in that zone. General Jean-Claude Lafourcade, the commander of the

French forces, declared that the members of the Rwandan interim government

would be allowed to seek asylum in the French “humanitarian zone” if Gisenyi

83 B. Boutros-Ghali, “France’s Offer to Undertake a Multinational Operation to Assure the

Security and Protection of Civilians at Risk in Rwanda,” A Letter to the President of the Security

Council from Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (20 June 1994),

UN Doc. S/1994/728; B. Boutros-Ghali, “Transmitting a Letter from the Permanent

Representative of France to the United Nations Dated 1 July 1994 Concerning the Establishment

of a Safe Humanitarian Zone in Rwanda,” A Letter to the President of the Security Council from

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary-General of the United Nations (6 July 1994), UN Doc.

S/1994/798; Carlsson Report, supra note 14 at 49-50; J. Kakwenzire & D. Kamukama, “The

Development and Consolidation of Extremist Forces in Rwanda,” in H. Adelman & A. Suhrke,

eds., The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire (New Brunswick, N.J.:

Transaction Publishers, 1999) 83-84.

266

fell to the RPF. At this point, it became obvious that the Operation’s mandate was

designed to satisfy the French government’s real goals in the intervention, 84

which didn’t include two major elements of maintaining peace and security

among the Rwandan peoples: disarming soldiers and arresting war criminals,

which France was not willing to do.

Concluding Remarks

The above account compels us to ask the following legitimate questions:

What decision would the Security Council have taken if the victimized Rwandans

and Bosnians were white Americans? Does the United Nations value the lives of

all people, according to its Bill of Rights, equally? How would Kofi Annan’s

reply to Dallaire’s famous cable have been different if the Rwandan informant,

Jean-Pierre, were a member of Saddam Hussain’s Presidential Guard, and if

General Dallaire were Hans Blix, head of the United Nations Monitoring,

Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)? Would Kofi Annan have

asked Hans Blix to contact Saddam Hussein and provide him with the

information? These outrageous double standards and the irresponsible hegemony

of the superpower states on the Security Council have and will continue to

damage the United Nations’ credibility, and render the whole world more insecure

than at any time before. The UN Security Council members, spearheaded by the

United States, blocked any official international recognition of the ongoing

slaughters in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda as genocide, since this would have

obliged them, as signatory states of the Genocide Convention, to take military

action to prevent further killings. Moreover, they reduced their role to one of

supporting the weak mandate of the UNPROFOR and the UNAMIR, and to

securing the delivery of humanitarian aid to the war-torn areas. Unfortunately, the

84 Dallaire, supra note 8 at 464 & 472; Displaced Persons, supra note 58 at 118-119; G.

Prunier, “Operation Turquoise: A Humanitarian Escape from a Political Dead End,” in H.

Adelman & A. Suhrke, eds., The Path of a Genocide: The Rwanda Crisis from Uganda to Zaire

(New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1999) 295 [hereinafter Prunier]; “The UN’s

Rwanda Failure: Criticism of Policy,” New Statesman & Society (29 July 1994) 4.

267

key players in the international community set their priorities and interests over

saving the lives of innocent civilians in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. 85 Again,

the above account indicates that the UN’s early warning system, however poor it

may be, will never effectively function without the superpowers’ impartiality and

political will.

85 Madeleine Albright, then US ambassador to the United Nations, played a key role in

blocking any attempts to expand the UN peacekeepers' mandate in Bosnia-Herzegovina and

Rwanda. In particular, she did everything possible in her power to prevent the use of the word

genocide in referring to mass killings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda. See Barnes, supra note

15 at 854; F. Boyle, “An Interview with Francis A. Boyle: Is Bosnia the End of the Road for the

United Nations?” Periodica Islamica 6:2 (1996) 51 [hereinafter Boyle]; Genocide in Rwanda,

supra note 9 at 629; International Panel, supra note 13 at Chapter 10, p. 3; International Response,

supra note 8 at 67.

Perhaps this time it's different: ideas and interests in shaping international responses to financial crises

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Apr 2015

Arie Krampf

The experience of the recent two decades of financial crises shows that donor countries and international financial institutions (IFIs) can respond to a crisis in a peripheral open economy by either of two crisis management strategies: either they can impose harsh conditionality to fix the domestic economy and prevent future moral hazard problems, or they can provide last-resort credit to restore market confidence. In some cases, the crisis management strategy changes as the crisis evolves. What are the factors that determine the choice of key donor countries and IFIs? This article traces the processes by which the USA and the International Monetary Fund designed the crisis management strategy in respect to the Asian crisis, and how Germany and the European Central Bank designed the response to the eurozone crisis, in order to understand how ideas regarding the causes and solutions of a financial crisis interact with the interests of key donor countries. The article argues that in both cases ideas and interests are mutually constituted, but in each case the mechanism that linked ideas and interests was different: whereas in the Asian case US interests led to policy innovation and experimentation and to a change in the crisis management strategy, in the European case ideas played a greater role in shaping German interests. The article explains this difference on the basis of the lessons learned by IFIs from the Asian crisis, which were then implemented in the eurozone case.

Six. The Politics of Indifference at the United Nations and Genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia

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Michael Barnett

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Mark Curtis

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Dick A. Leurdijk

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Trevor Findlay

10 Flawed UN Arms Embargoes in Somalia, Liberia, and Rwanda

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Nader Hashemi

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Stephen Terrett

This title was first published in 2000: Yugoslavia’s dissolved at a time when rhetoric of the New World Order was firmly established in legal and political discourse. Nevertheless, the largely positive appraisal of international law’s response to the Iraq - Kuwait conflict has not been mirrored in relation to Yugoslavia. This book evaluates the peace-making efforts of the major institutional actors, whilst focusing specifically on the Badinter Arbitration Commission, an ad hoc EC-created organ required to provide legal advice on the issues surrounding Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Initially composed of constitutional lawyers, aiming to redraft Yugoslavia’s constitution, the Commission soon faced problems of public international law. Its’ jurisprudence challenges international lawyers to reassess their state-centric conceptions of international law in a world where most conflicts, war crimes and human-rights abuses exist within rather than between States. This book is vital reading for anyone interested in international law, international relations, politics and central/eastern European studies.

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