Dutchbat

Dutchbat ; Dutch Air Mobile Battalion
Lineup	February 1994 to November 1995 (Dutchbat I – III) ; July to November 2005 (Dutchbat IV)
Country	UN European Union Netherlands; ;
Armed forces	Dutch armed forces
Strength	up to 600 (Dutchbat I – III)
Insinuation	United Nations Protection Force
headquarters	Potočari (Dutchbat I – III) ; Tuzla (Dutchbat IV)
Incidents	Srebrenica massacre

Site of the former Dutch battalion (Dutchbat) in Potočari.

The Dutchbat , the Dutch Air Mobile Battalion (English ' Dutch air mobile battalion'), was the Dutch contingent for the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) during the Yugoslav War from 1994 and the EUFOR - Operation Althea 2006.

The units Dutchbat I to III were tasked with protecting the UN protection zone of Srebrenica . During the deployment of Dutchbat III, the Srebrenica massacre by Serbian units of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) took place, in which over 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks - mainly men and boys between the ages of 12 and 77 - were killed in July 1995 .

Dutchbat IV took part in the EUFOR Operation Althea in 2004.

task

Dutchbat I-III

The task of Dutchbat I to III was to protect the UN protection zone of Srebrenica and the Bosnian civilian population living in it . The protection zone was established on the basis of Resolution 819 of the UN Security Council of April 16, 1993, since the area around the protection zone had been occupied by the army of the Republika Srpska. Any attack on Srebrenica or any other hostile act against this protective zone must be avoided.

The Security Council underlined the status of Srebrenica as a security zone on May 6, 1993 through Resolution 824 and on June 4, 1993 through Resolution 836. The latter permitted the use of armed force by UNPROFOR soldiers for purposes of self-defense . Combat operations should only be carried out by units of NATO's Operation Deny Flight .

In her task of Dutchbat was I-III only with light weapons, including anti-tank weapons (TOW) and off-road vehicles and 27 armored personnel carriers armed with machine guns.

Dutchbat IV

The aim of Operation Althea is to use a military presence to help create a secure environment in which the Dayton Accords can be implemented. Outbreaks of violence by the former conflicting parties are to be prevented and national and international actors are to be enabled to carry out their tasks.

In addition, EUFOR supports the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia , among other things in the arrest of suspected war criminals.

history

UN protection zone Srebrenica

According to the UN resolution to set up UNPROFOR, the Netherlands undertook to send a contingent of up to 600 men. On April 18, 1993, the first 170 UNPROFOR soldiers, mainly Canadians, replaced the French initially deployed in Srebrenica. Their headquarters were set up in a factory near Potočari , within the UN protection zone of Srebrenica. The battalion created 30 observation posts in and on the edge of the UN protection zone Srebrenica from which the area should be controlled.

The first Dutch units, Dutchbat I, arrived in their area of operations in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina in March 1994 .

The establishment of the Srebrenica protection zone was followed by a period of relative stability. The number and severity of the fighting decreased. Nevertheless, the pacification of the protection zone and the protection of its residents were not fully achieved. According to Blauhelm information, the required demilitarization of the Bosniak units within the enclave largely succeeded. The Bosniaks, however, resisted complete disarmament. The Bosnian Serb units completely refused to comply with the demilitarization provisions. Bosniaks repeatedly complained about attacks by the Bosnian Serbs. The Bosnian Serb army also impeded and blocked aid convoys intended for Srebrenica. The situation of the population in the protection zone remained critical despite the relative stability.

In the spring of 1995, more and more aid convoys for Srebrenica were blocked by Bosnian-Serb associations. When members of UNPROFOR left the Srebrenica protection zone to organize supplies of material and food for their troops, they were subsequently refused to return to the protection zone by Bosnian-Serb forces. In this way, the number of Dutch blue helmets in the protection zone fell from initially 600 to around 450 to 400.

Invasion of the Serbs

Map of military activities during the Srebrenica massacre

The Drina Corps of the Bosnian-Serbian army, some fifteen thousand strong, and the paramilitaries marched into the protection zone from the south in July 1995 and took over the Dutchbat checkpoints. On July 9th they were only one kilometer from the city limits. Resistance from Bosniak troops or UNPROFOR units was almost completely absent. The Dutchbat was militarily inferior and there was no permission for the use of armed force to carry out the order.

In view of this escalation, the commander of the “Blue Helmets”, Thomas Karremans , requested NATO air support several times. Comprehensive air support did not materialize. Two NATO planes bombed a Bosnian Serb tank and put it out of action. Immediately thereafter, the Bosnian Serbs threatened that if NATO air strikes continued, they would murder the UNPROFOR soldiers who they had already held as hostages. Furthermore, they would target the huddled refugee masses under fire. As a result, all efforts to stop the invading Bosnian Serb troops by air strikes were stopped.

Srebrenica massacre

After the Bosnian-Serbian units took control of Srebrenica, thousands of Bosniak residents fled to Potočari to seek protection on the blue helmets' grounds. On the evening of July 11, 1995, there were around 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniak refugees in Potočari .

Since the morning of July 12th, the Bosnian Serb forces began to weed out men from the mass of refugees and to detain them in separate places - in a zinc factory and a building called the “White House”. The buses that transported the women, children and the elderly to Kladanj were stopped on the way there by the Bosnian Serb military and searched for men. If any were discovered, they were taken away.

On July 12th and 13th, the children and female refugees were taken to Bosniak-controlled area near Kladanj. The Dutch blue helmet soldiers tried to escort the buses, which they only succeeded in the first convoy. Bosnian-Serbian units prevented them from entering the subsequent convoys. The vehicles were taken from the UN soldiers at gunpoint.

On the evening of July 13th there were no more Bosniaks in Potočari. On July 14th, the UN soldiers did not discover a living Bosniak while exploring the city of Srebrenica.

Through the selection, internment and later evacuation, the singled out were withdrawn from any protection by UNPROFOR. When asked by blue helmet soldiers about the reason for the selections, Bosnian Serb soldiers responded with the pretext that they were looking for people who had committed war crimes.

The Bosniak men who had been separated from women, children and the elderly in Potočari were transported to Bratunac . This group was later joined by men who had attempted to flee through the woods with the column but had been captured by the Bosnian Serbs.

Almost all Bosniak prisoners were killed. Some were murdered individually, others in small groups when they were captured, and still others were killed in the places where they were interned. Most were killed in carefully planned and executed mass executions that began on July 13 in the region north of Srebrenica. Prisoners who were not killed on July 13 were transported to execution sites north of Bratunac. The extensive mass executions in the north took place between July 14th and 17th.

retreat

On July 21, when the area had been occupied by the armed forces of the Republika Srpska for several days , the Dutchbat withdrew. The humiliating farewell and abuse of the commander of the "Dutchbat III" Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Karremans by General Ratko Mladić was broadcast worldwide on television. Also known was a photo that Mladić and Karremans took on the evening of July 12, 1995 while toasting them together.

EUFOR

At the NATO summit in Istanbul in June 2004, it was decided to end the multinational stabilization mission SFOR to support and monitor the implementation of the Dayton Agreement in Bosnia-Herzegovina at the end of 2004. On July 12, 2004, the Council of the European Union decided to send a military mission as an additional measure in addition to the political approaches, the aid programs and the police and observer mission .

On December 2, 2004, EUFOR began its largest mission to date with 6,300 soldiers. It thus had a staff level similar to that of SFOR. The EUFOR operational area was divided into three areas. The Multi-National Task Force (MNTF) North was stationed with around 1,300 soldiers in Tuzla , the MNTF North West with around 1,000 soldiers in Banja Luka and the MNTF South East with around 1,400 soldiers in Mostar .

The Dutchbat IV was stationed as part of the MNTF in Simin Han , east of Tuzla, from July to November 2005 as part of Operation Althea .

Controversy in the Netherlands

The role of Karreman and that of the Dutch blue helmet soldiers, who did not take decisive action to prevent the deportations in Srebrenica, is still controversial today: Critics accuse the Dutch blue helmets of witnessing parts of the massacre and tolerating them by not intervening. In this context, there is also talk of aiding and abetting a war crime. These critics state a failure of the Dutch battalion, which was followed by targeted cover-up attempts by Dutch military and politicians.

Other statements emphasize, however, that the soldiers on site had little knowledge of the atrocities because the units of the Bosnian Serbs systematically prevented them from making appropriate observations. They were also left in the lurch despite multiple requests for air support to protect the enclave and for their own safety. Dutchbat had also been entrusted with the protection of the Bosniaks by Dutch and international politicians, without adequate means at their disposal. The critical report by a commission of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation on the role of the Dutch blue helmets in Srebrenica pointed to the unclear mandate, inadequate rules of engagement , lack of training and a lack of international cooperation. However, reference was also made to the taking of 55 Dutchbat soldiers, the death of one soldier and insufficient connections to the outside world. The Dutch government under Wim Kok resigned on April 16, 2002.

Accompanied by protests from survivors, the Dutch government honored around 500 soldiers on December 4, 2006. At the time, you had an “extremely difficult assignment”, according to the Dutch Defense Minister Henk Kamp . After 1995, they were exposed to false accusations for years, but have now been exonerated by official investigations. Bosnia and Herzegovina protested against this honor at the diplomatic level. Relatives of massacre victims and survivors from Srebrenica spoke of a "genocide order" at protest rallies. The Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) took part in the demonstration in Sarajevo against the soldiers' award and demanded an apology from the survivors of Srebrenica in an open letter to Kamp and Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende .

In July 2010, four victims from Srebrenica, including the surviving interpreter Hasan Nuhanović and relatives of the murdered Rizo Mustafic, a Muslim electrician, both employed by Dutchbat during the Bosnian War, filed a complaint against Karremans, his deputy Major Rob Franken, for “genocide and war crimes” and personnel officer Berend Oosterveen resigned; they are responsible for the extradition of local, Muslim employees of Dutchbat to the Serbs. On July 5, 2011, an appeals court ruled that the Netherlands were responsible for the deaths of three men. According to the judges, the commanders must have known of the danger that the deportation from the camp posed to the three men. On September 6, 2013, the High Council of the Netherlands passed the verdict: The Netherlands are liable for the murders of three Bosnian Muslims during the Srebrenica massacre due to the failure of their UN troops in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The decision of the earlier instance from 2012 was hereby confirmed.

literature

Hasan Nuhanović : Under The UN Flag: The International Community and the Srebrenica Genocide , DES Sarajevo, 2007 ISBN 978-9958-728-87-7
Eric Stover, Gilles Peress: The Graves - Srebrenica and Vukovar Scalo, Zurich 1998, ISBN 3-931141-75-6
David Rohde : The last days of Srebrenica. What happened and how it became possible. Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1997, ISBN 3-499-22122-5
Jan Willem Honig, Norbert Both: Srebrenica: the largest mass murder in Europe after the Second World War. Lichtenberg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-7852-8409-8
Agilolf Keßelring (publisher on behalf of MGFA ): Bosnia-Herzegovina , Paderborn, Munich, Vienna, Zurich 2007, Ferdinand Schöningh, ISBN 978-3-506-76428-7