Stoking the Flames of War (fwd)

[todd ingalls]

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Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 11:52:45 -0700
From: Bob Gonsalves <pinknoiz at pinknoiz.com>
To: parapol-request at pinknoiz.com
Subject: Stoking the Flames of War

http://www.guardian.co.uk/yugo/article/0,2763,688327,00.html

America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims

The Srebrenica report reveals the Pentagon's role in a dirty war

Richard J Aldrich Monday April 22, 2002 The Guardian

The official Dutch inquiry into the 1995 Srebrenica massacre,
released last week, contains one of the most sensational reports
on western intelligence ever published. Officials have been
staggered by its findings and the Dutch government has resigned.

One of its many volumes is devoted to clandestine activities
during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s. For five years,
Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University has had
unrestricted access to Dutch intelligence files and has stalked
the corridors of secret service headquarters in western capitals,
as well as in Bosnia, asking questions.

His findings are set out in "Intelligence and the war in Bosnia,
1992-1995". It includes remarkable material on covert operations,
signals interception, human agents and double-crossing by dozens
of agencies in one of dirtiest wars of the new world disorder.

Now we have the full story of the secret alliance between the
Pentagon and radical Islamist groups from the Middle East
designed to assist the Bosnian Muslims - some of the same groups
that the Pentagon is now fighting in "the war against terrorism".
Pentagon operations in Bosnia have delivered their own
"blowback".

In the 1980s Washington's secret services had assisted Saddam
Hussein in his war against Iran. Then, in 1990, the US fought him
in the Gulf. In both Afghanistan and the Gulf, the Pentagon had
incurred debts to Islamist groups and their Middle Eastern
sponsors. By 1993 these groups, many supported by Iran and Saudi
Arabia, were anxious to help Bosnian Muslims fighting in the
former Yugoslavia and called in their debts with the Americans.
Bill Clinton and the Pentagon were keen to be seen as
creditworthy and repaid in the form of an Iran-Contra style
operation - in flagrant violation of the UN security council arms
embargo against all combatants in the former Yugoslavia.

The result was a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling though
Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US,
Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist
groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah.
Wiebes reveals that the British intelligence services obtained
documents early on in the Bosnian war proving that Iran was
making direct deliveries.

Arms purchased by Iran and Turkey with the financial backing of
Saudi Arabia made their way by night from the Middle East.
Initially aircraft from Iran Air were used, but as the volume
increased they were joined by a mysterious fleet of black C-130
Hercules aircraft. The report stresses that the US was "very
closely involved" in the airlift. Mojahedin fighters were also
flown in, but they were reserved as shock troops for especially
hazardous operations.

Light weapons are the familiar currency of secret services
seeking to influence such conflicts. The volume of weapons flown
into Croatia was enormous, partly because of a steep Croatian
"transit tax". Croatian forces creamed off between 20% and 50% of
the arms. The report stresses that this entire trade was clearly
illicit. The Croats themselves also obtained massive quantities
of illegal weapons from Germany, Belgium and Argentina - again in
contravention of the UN arms embargo. The German secret services
were fully aware of the trade.

Rather than the CIA, the Pentagon's own secret service was the
hidden force behind these operations. The UN protection force,
UNPROFOR, was dependent on its troop-contributing nations for
intelligence, and above all on the sophisticated monitoring
capabilities of the US to police the arms embargo. This gave the
Pentagon the ability to manipulate the embargo at will: ensuring
that American Awacs aircraft covered crucial areas and were able
to turn a blind eye to the frequent nightime comings and goings
at Tuzla.

Weapons flown in during the spring of 1995 were to turn up only a
fortnight later in the besieged and demilitarised enclave at
Srebrenica. When these shipments were noticed, Americans
pressured UNPROFOR to rewrite reports, and when Norwegian
officials protested about the flights, they were reportedly
threatened into silence.

Both the CIA and British SIS had a more sophisticated perspective
on the conflict than the Pentagon, insisting that no side had
clean hands and arguing for caution. James Woolsey, director of
the CIA until May 1995, had increasingly found himself out of
step with the Clinton White House over his reluctance to develop
close relations with the Islamists. The sentiments were
reciprocated. In the spring of 1995, when the CIA sent its first
head of station to Sarajevo to liaise with Bosnia's security
authorities, the Bosnians tipped off Iranian intelligence. The
CIA learned that the Iranians had targeted him for liquidation
and quickly withdrew him.

Iranian and Afghan veterans' training camps had also been
identified in Bosnia. Later, in the Dayton Accords of November
1995, the stipulation appeared that all foreign forces be
withdrawn. This was a deliberate attempt to cleanse Bosnia of
Iranian-run training camps. The CIA's main opponents in Bosnia
were now the mojahedin fighters and their Iranian trainers - whom
the Pentagon had been helping to supply months earlier.

Meanwhile, the secret services of Ukraine, Greece and Israel were
busy arming the Bosnian Serbs. Mossad was especially active and
concluded a deal with the Bosnian Serbs at Pale involving a
substantial supply of artillery shells and mortar bombs. In
return they secured safe passage for the Jewish population out of
the besieged town of Sarajevo. Subsequently, the remaining
population was perplexed to find that unexploded mortar bombs
landing in Sarajevo sometimes had Hebrew markings.

The broader lessons of the intelligence report on Srebrenica are
clear. Those who were able to deploy intelligence power,
including the Americans and their enemies, the Bosnian Serbs,
were both able to get their way. Conversely, the UN and the Dutch
government were "deprived of the means and capacity for obtaining
intelligence" for the Srebrenica deployment, helping to explain
why they blundered in, and contributed to the terrible events
there.

Secret intelligence techniques can be war-winning and life-
saving. But they are not being properly applied. How the UN can
have good intelligence in the context of multinational peace
operations is a vexing question. Removing light weapons from a
conflict can be crucial to drawing it down. But the secret
services of some states - including Israel and Iran - continue to
be a major source of covert supply, pouring petrol on the flames
of already bitter conflicts.

· Richard J Aldrich is Professor of Politics at the University of
Nottingham. His 'The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War
Secret Intelligence' is published in paperback by John Murray in
August.

richard.aldrich at nottingham.ac.uk

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002