That’s not the end of the story. Last week, after boarding the cargo ship, Croatian authorities seized a container labeled fuel and compressed gas. Inside they found antitank weapons, small-arms ammunition, tank shells and 15 tons of TNT While U.N. officials pleaded administrative snafu, the Croatian press accused UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) of trying to funnel weapons to the Bosnian Muslims.
UNPROFOR’s 20-month operation in Bosnia reads like a long complaint filed by an abused spouse. President Clinton may have praised the humanitarian airlift in his State of the Union speech last week, but on the ground the United Nations has been humiliated. blackmailed and harassed by all parties to the conflict, particularly the Bosnian Serbs and Croats. One Briton was abducted and killed while delivering aid last week, leading London to temporarily suspend its relief operation. Bitter squabbles between field commanders and New York bureaucrats, recently erupting in the press, have given the world body the look of a dysfunctional family. “The United Nations can only be as strong as its member states want it to be,” protests Kofi Annan, U.N. under-secretary-general for peacekeeping operations. Countries with large contingents on the ground are threatening to bring them home. French and U.S. officials spent last week trading charges of moral hypocrisyall signs of exasperation and impotence in what has become an insoluble tragedy.
The United Nations has created some of its own problems. Last week UNPROFOR’S new Chief of Mission Yasushi Akashi announced the results of a two-month investigation into charges of illegal conduct by U.N. soldiers. The blue helmets got off easy. While the report acknowledged some blackmarket trading in cigarettes, alcohol and fuel among a handful of troops–19 Ukrainian soldiers and four Kenyans were repatriated for disciplinary action it could not, says Akashi, “substantiate allegations of prostitution activities or illicit drug dealing.” That finding surprised one NEWSWEEK reporter, who routinely witnessed offers of sex for cigarettes at the U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo last summer. “Tell those two [women] standing behind the wall over there to come over in a few minutes, " a French private told young boys who stood outside the barbed-wire perimeter; soon the women walked over in the dark to negotiate with him.
Some of UNPROFOR’S troubles have been thrashed out more publicly. French Gen. Jean Cot, commander of U.N. forces in the Balkans, and U.N. Secretary-General Boutros BoutrosGhali recently went at it like two angry mongrels. At stake: who has the authority to call for NATO airstrikes to protect U.N. forces. After Cot tried to end-run the secretary-general by appealing to the U.N. Security Council directly, Boutros-Ghali persuaded French President Francois Mitterrand to recall the commander. Less well known is another case of insubordination. Last November, NEWSWEEK has learned, Belgian Lt. Gen. Francis Briquemont, then commander Of UNPROFOR in Bosnia, ordered the 700-man-plus Nordic battalion into the eastern Muslim enclave of Srebrenica to relieve Canadian troops there. But Sweden’s defense minister balked and instructed the Swedish battalion commander to ignore the order. Briquemont complained to U.N. headquarters but was powerless to do anything.
In late January, Briquemont quit. Like Cot, he used the press to sing about the failures of UNPROFOR. But his complaint ran deeper than a wounded ego. Briquemont excoriated the Security Council for passing resolutions that couldn’t possibly be implemented, given UNPROFOR’s extremely limited mandate and resources. His favorite example: the vote last spring to turn a half-dozen Muslim enclaves threatened by Bosnian Serbs into “safe areas.” Of the 7,500 additional troops required, only 2,000 were sent. “The Security Council passes resolutions that are a result of political calculations and not necessarily geared to operations on the ground,” says a Western diplomat.
Those political calculations spring from contradictory impulses. There’s the don’t-just-stand-there pressure brought by the public and the media, countered by the profound reluctance to take costly and meaningful action. The international community wasn’t “prepared to do a Desert Storm-type operation,” says the Western diplomat. “That’s led to the existential angst and self-questioning.” It has also produced a series of compromises in the Security Council–like threatening airstrikes without seriously intending to carry them out-that have undermined the West’s credibility. As the crisis continues to elude diplomatic resolution, consensus among allies has become increasingly elusive. Last year the United States caved in to European demands and shelved a plan to arm the Muslims–while deferring authority for airstrikes to the U.N. secretary-general. That’s come back to haunt France, and lies at the heart of the recent insult-fest between Washington and Paris. “Last year the French were insisting on all this U.N. oversight because they didn’t want NATO making decisions,” says State Department official. “Suddenly, this elaborate mechanism they helped to construct is constraining them and they’re frustrated. So they take it out on us.”
The West’s charade began with sending peacekeepers into a situation where there is no peace to keep. “UNPROFOR was stillborn from the word go,” says Edward Luck, president of the U.N. Association for the United States. Today the U.N. operation is putting food into the hands of less than half of those who need it-at a cost of $100 million a month. That may be a small price to keep U.S. troops out of the Balkans, now that the Clinton administration has placed new limits on participating in peacekeeping operations. UNPROFOR can’t end the war in Bosnia. But it still serves a useful purpose as a whipping boy for the West.
