Counting the consequences of Bosnia’s war

There is a point in his book, In Harm's Way, where Martin Bell relates that his cameraman turns to him and says "you know, there are times when I hate this fucking job." Bell agrees.

They are covering the flight of Croatian refugees during the Bosnian War, but at any time during this brutal conflict it could have been Muslims or Serbs. An elderly woman and her granddaughter, burdened down with what are now their sole possessions, are making their faltering way down a cart track that is known to be mined.

In all humanity they should have been helping the pair, but if they had they would be missing their deadline; if they had survived they would have been arrested by the Serbs, and their credibility as impartial observers would have been destroyed.

"It seemed a lame excuse then. It still does now," he writes.

I met Bell, a hero of mine for four decades, in Burma. Retired from BBC Television and a career in which he covered 18 wars, he is now an Ambassador for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) along with such celebrities as David Beckham and Elle Macpherson. "Of course you can't send these people into war zones to publicise the plight of children there, so they send me – I am the expendable ambassador," he said.

Interestingly, the Burmese Governments this year released a list of journalists who had previously been banned from the country, but who would now be allowed in. "My name was on the list even though I had never visited it until now and, as far as I can remember, not said a word about it."

What he has said and written about extensively is the Bosnian War he covered from its beginnings in 1992 until the acceptance of the Dayton Accords which put an end to the war, or at least to the overt hostilities, three-and-a half years later. In Harm's Way is an updated version of the original edition, which he wrote before the end of the war "by candlelight in my room at the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo" and contains his reflections on its legacy.

He calls it the most consequential war of our time – because the West, flushed with success in reversing Iraq's annexation of Kuwait and brokering a ceasefire in the conflict between Croatia and Serbia, declined to get involved in what it saw as Bosnia's internal problems.

Yet Bosnia contained all the ingredients that had ripped apart the manufactured republic of Yugoslavia. There were Muslims, Croats and Serbs and also, most significantly, foreign fighters allied to the Bosnian Government but not under its control: the Mujahedin. They came because television had brought pictures of ruined mosques and fleeing Muslims into Islam's heartlands; they wanted revenge and they took no prisoners. Because of this, reporters on the war tended to give the 'Muj' a wide birth. The world was hardly aware of their presence, but they were there, the pioneers on the road to September 11.

It was also consequential for what happened afterwards. Stung by the very valid criticisms of inaction and weakness that had led to atrocities, the worst of which was the Srebrenica massacre, world leaders over-reacted. While Bell points to some success from this new robust attitude in Sierra Leone and Kosovo, it also led to the Iraq debacle in the Second Gulf War. "Put simply, the outcome was that in seeking to avoid another Bosnia, we found ourselves in another Vietnam," he writes.

Both in the book and in our conversations, Bell forcefully laid down his four principles for military intervention.

"First it must be legal under the United Nations Charter or a specific authorising resolution; second it must conform to the Geneva Convention on the conduct of a war; third it must have the general support of the populations of the countries taking part and fourth it must be doable.

"Bosnia in 1995 met all these conditions. Iraq met none of them."

These principles are controversial, especially to those belonging to the Bolton-Rumsfeld school of international diplomacy. However, Bell said that in Iraq the commanders, at least on the British side, could see disaster coming. "We had no plan for day two," he reports one as saying, maintaining that a lack of military experience among the politicians that sent the troops to war resulted in a misunderstanding about what force, by itself, could achieve.

But this is not a book about Iraq. Bell saw the Bosnian conflict through from beginning to end, apart from short breaks for R&R on less onerous assignments and once when he was wounded. He did not seek Bosnia; it sought him, and as the BBC's most seasoned war correspondent the task was inevitable.

He had returned from covering the First Gulf War in the hopeful belief it would be his last. "I was given the job of reporting on the changes in Europe following the fall of Communism, things like the reunification of Germany; for a while I thought this might make me the BBC's peace correspondent," he said.

But those changes were to include the break-up of Yugoslavia, and the wars that followed. His trademark white suits would be augmented with flak jackets for the next four years.

He is damning of the West's attitude through most of the conflict. What was eventually worked out in 1995 could have been achieved in 1992 with the saving of tens of thousands of lives. Inattention prevailed at every level.

"The Bosnian War was described by the American Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, as 'a problem from hell', which was a coded way of saying that there was nothing that he or anyone else was able or willing to do except to wish it away. And to a large extent, the West averted its gaze," he writes.

And when the ever-breaking waves of horror finally forced its attention, what was the result? He describes the resulting constitution worked out under the Dayton Accords as so Byzantine as to be a formula for unending governmental deadlock and confusion – something I can testify to in my own reporting on post-war Bosnian reconstruction.

In what is supposed to a unitary state the Serbs are virtually autonomous and are even allowed to call their region Republika Srpska; hard-line Croatians harbour their own secessionist dreams and politicians with extreme nationalist views are almost constantly in power, voted in by electorates who see the need to have a strong man in charge as a form of protection.

The Dayton Accords that brought peace are now an obstacle to Bosnia's development and progression towards modern statehood, ensuring its communities remain apart and suspicious of each other.

In 2009, William Hague, then Britain's shadow Foreign Secretary, and Paddy Ashdown, the European Union's High Representative to Bosnia from 2002-05, co-authored an article in the United Kingdom Financial Times which Bell reproduces in part. The pair said the consequences of Bosnia's disintegration would be catastrophic:

"The breakdown of the country into independent ethnic statelets would not only reward ethnic cleansing – surely a moral anathema – but would also risk the creation of a failed state in the heart of Europe; a fertile breeding ground for terrorism and crime, and a monstrous betrayal of all those who survived the concentration camps, mass graves and displacement of the 1990s."

 

The most consequential war of our time may still hold some nasty surprises for those who believed Dayton solved everything in 1995.

I have purposely not included Bell's reportage and commentary on the war itself. The book is an outstanding memoir which will reward everyone with an interest in the subject.

In Harm's Way. Martin Bell. Icon Books. $9.53 (from Amazon).