UN mission in Bosnia may be counterproductive

By Jonathan Power

LONDON (JP): Washington, London and Paris seem to regard the demotion of the UN troops in Bosnia to mere peacekeepers as some sort of defeat. But the real truth is far worse than that. The whole business of attempting to hang tough after the Serb seizure of the UN hostages has become less of a defeat than a farce -- the 12,500 new French and British soldiers will have nothing to do unless, of course, the Security Council decides to order a total retreat in the fall, which is another matter.

The release of the hostages owed nothing to the macho- posturing of Prime Minister John Major and President Jacques Chirac. The 12,500 extra troops would have been a drop in the bucket if the Western nations had truly decided to fight it out with the Serbs. The hostages were freed when it was made absolutely clear to President Slobodan Milosevic and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic that there would be no more NATO bombing. Any other interpretation of what has happened the last couple of weeks is simply obfuscation.

And that, in a word, is the trouble with so much of what has gone on under the secretary-generalship of Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Traditional UN peacekeeping has got subsumed under a cloud of military prowess that in Somalia led the UN to withdraw in utter ignominy and in Bosnia has so confused the situation that paralysis now appears the end result.

Peacekeeping, as practiced for many years before the Cold War ended, was long on patience and short on arms. Peace enforcement as practiced by Boutros-Ghali's UN has borrowed heavily from American military ethos, which is fine for all-out war, but which is often counter-productive in situations less than that.

Complicating and compounding the problems of the UN presence in Bosnia is that blue has become the color of everything. UN soldiers wear blue helmets when engaged in enforcement. They wear the same when undertaking peacekeeping. Blue is the color of the relief convoys operated by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, with blue helmets riding shotgun. In the eyes of the Serbs, this blue is simply one seamless web, with no one knowing where it begins or ends. Should we be surprised that they shoot at all of it?

In the long run the UN had better improve its color code -- say, blue for peacekeepers, yellow for non-armed relief workers and battle green if and when enforcement is ever used, which it should only be on such rare occasions, as in Iraq, when the international community decides to defeat an aggressor.

Right now, however, no quick paint job can redeem an expedition that has got hopelessly muddled. And yet we have a situation that is clearly worsening fast for the Moslems, and that would deteriorate even faster if the UN decided to cut and run, which it is thinking about doing before another winter advances.

The laptop bombardiers will then press their keyboards even more in earnest, demanding a lifting of the arms embargo. But this will just raise the killing to Lebanese proportions. Sarajevo, at present mainly intact, will be reduced to rubble as surely as was Beirut.

The alternative, I suggest, lies in a different direction, albeit minimalist, which is all that is possible after so many serious mistakes have been made. The UN soldiers, in a clearly defined peacekeeping mode, should endeavor to do two main things -- keep Sarajevo airport open and provide anti-sniping protection (but not retaliation) in downtown Sarajevo. They should also, if possible, keep a presence in the so-called "safe areas" as long as they have the consent of both sides.

The United Nations High Commission for Refugees and its heavily armed blue-helmeted protectors should withdraw from the relief business and instead invite the International Committee of the Red Cross to take their place. The Red Cross (and the Red Crescent) have another way of working and one far more suitable for this situation. They don't accept military protection. They threaten no one and their motives are transparently disinterested. And in Bosnia, unlike the UN, they carry no baggage.

This is the only way to defuse the super-charged atmosphere of the relief convoys which are now perceived by the Serbs as part of the blue continuum that may start with food parcels but ends up with bombs dropped from F-16s.

Undoubtedly, if the present Anglo/French build-up continues, there will be a lot of blue helmets sitting around Bosnia twiddling their thumbs. And it's always in the cards, as it nearly was last year, that the protagonists will run out of steam and seek a negotiated compromise -- and then the blue helmets will have plenty of traditional blue work to do, keeping the peace.