Srebrenica Report : America Used Islamists To Arm The Bosnian Muslims

[Andrej Tisma]

America Used Islamists To Arm The Bosnian Muslims
The Srebrenica Report Reveals The Pentagon's Role In A Dirty War

By Richard J Aldrich

Reprinted from The Guardian (LONDON)
Monday April 22, 2002


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.
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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.