The UN in Bosnia: creating apartheid in Europe
FRANCIS BOYLE is professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. He served as legal adviser to Bosnian President Izetbegovic and Foreign Minister Haris Silajdzic during the Owen-Stoltenburg negotiations in Geneva, and represented the Bosnian government at the International Court of Justice. This interview by EDDY JOKOVICH is excerpted from a new magazine, VolteFace.
Initially, so-called great players wanted to keep Yugoslavia intact, but when it became obvious that this wasn't going to be the case, the west introduced a number of conferences and plans. If these plans violated established human rights, racial discrimination, and apartheid conventions, why have they been attempted?
The great powers have basically concluded that the Bosnians have lost the war, and of course, the reason the Bosnians lost the war was that the great powers at the Security Council imposed the arms embargo upon them. So when the signal was given by President Milosevic to attack Bosnia, the Bosnian people were totally defenceless.
Hence, the creation of the plans and schemes that violate every known principle of international law. When I was instructed by President Alija Izetbegovic to sue Britain in November 1993, I put out a statement at the UN — which the ambassador circulated and then filed with the World Court accusing Britain of aiding and abetting genocide — that the Owen-Stoltenburg Plan violated the Racial Discrimination Convention. Anyone who knew anything at all about that plan would have understood that. It also violated the Apartheid Convention.
So any of the permanent members of the Security Council can be sued for violating the Genocide Convention, the Racial Discrimination Convention and the Apartheid Convention. But when President Izetbegovic instructed me to sue Britain, the then Bosnian foreign minister, Ljubijankic, was called in and told that if the Bosnian government was to continue with the lawsuit, the humanitarian assistance being provided to the Bosnian people would be cut. They were pressured by the French, the Germans and the Americans, as well as Owen and Stoltenburg, to drop the whole case.
The Vance-Owen plan would have carved up Bosnia into 10 cantons on an ethnic basis, but would not have destroyed Bosnia as a state. When Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic and the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karazdic, and his so-called parliament rejected the Vance-Owen plan, the great powers then moved on to the Owen-Stoltenburg plan. It would have carved up the state itself.
The plan today, the so-called Contact Group plan, carves Bosnia into two pieces. It will preserve the shell of the Bosnian state. They're still trying to carve Bosnia up, and the land that they have allocated to the so-called federation will make Bosnia an appendage of Croatia.
The Washington plan instigated a confederation between Croatia and Bosnia. If the Bosnian government can federate with Croatia, why can't the Bosnian Serbs federate with Serbia?
The Washington agreements were designed by the State Department to carve up Bosnia under the fiction of preserving the state of Bosnia, but consigning these people to the control of Croatia. The federation with Croatia was imposed on the Bosnians; it's not something that they wanted. So the argument that the Serbs must have the same deal is just total hypocrisy.
But the point is, the Serbs have already been promised a confederation by the great powers. That's why the federation-confederation was set up between Croatia and Bosnia — to ultimately give the Serbs the same thing.
Milosevic is perceived by the US and the west as someone that they can do business with. Is this in terms of the arms trade, or economics, or other geopolitical factors?
In control and domination of the Balkans. They're all saying the west can do business with Milosevic, not only in respect to Bosnia, but in the whole region. He can keep it under control.
When Yugoslavia was about to fall apart, George Bush sent his secretary of state, Jim Baker, to meet with Milosevic and make the statement that the United States supports the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia. Why? The policeman theory: the US needs Belgrade to keep the Balkans under control. That statement was the green light to Milosevic to invade Slovenia, then to invade Croatia and then to invade Bosnia. And then the arms embargo was put on.
On the issue of the international arms embargo over the former Yugoslav republics, the UN General Assembly voted to lift the embargo, the US Congress voted to lift the embargo as well, yet it remains in place. Why has the international arms embargo not been lifted?
First of all, Resolution 713 outlining the arms embargo was imposed on the former Yugoslavia. There is no Security Council resolution at all that says that independent Bosnia is subject to an arms embargo. The situation consisted of the British, the French and the Americans deciding to prevent the government of Bosnia from defending themselves from a genocidal assault.
It was the British Navy, the French Navy and the American Navy in the Adriatic and the Air Force that made it quite clear that no weapons could go into Bosnia. Eventually Congress forced Clinton to pull out, but the British and the French are still there policing this embargo.
Belgrade, after some procrastination, went along with this because they already had enough weapons, and therefore the embargo was not going to hurt them, but hurt the Bosnians.
That's what the international community has been doing so far. "You can't have that; we're not giving it to you. All you have is a little apartheid Muslim mini-state."
The United Nations is an instrument, and in this sense, Boutros-Ghali is correct in stating that the UN can only act according to its mandate. He just does what the great powers tell him to do.
This is the first case in the post-World War II era where a formal determination of the existence of genocide was produced, and of the trigger of the Genocide Convention obligation. I won that World Court ruling on April 8, 1992, and no-one did anything about it despite the existence within the UN Convention of the obligation to stop genocide. Later on, of course, the same thing happened in Rwanda and nothing was done there either.
What we are witnessing now is a degradation of any international commitments to any principles at all. Even when genocide stares the great powers in the face, they refuse to do anything to stop it. As Haris Silajdzic said in Geneva, if you kill one person you're prosecuted; if you kill 10 people, you're a celebrity; if you kill a quarter of a million people, you're invited to a peace conference.
What is the purpose of the War Crimes Tribunal, and what are the problems that exist within its legal framework?
I don't mean to criticise any of the judges involved and I'm sure that they're men and women of good faith, but essentially, the War Crimes Tribunal is an exercise in public relations by the Security Council. The CIA has made detailed reports, the State Department has made detailed reports, they have their reconnaissance satellites and their airplanes; they know all about the war crimes in Bosnia. But the Security Council decided to set up the tribunal to make it appear as if something is being done, whereas in fact what they are doing is negotiating with the very people they know are responsible for the war crimes.
During the [1992] campaign Clinton had to appeal to a certain constituency in the United States, the human rights lobby, and for them Bosnia is an important issue. So Clinton has to make it appear as if something is really being done on Bosnia, and the installation of the tribunal gave this appearance.
It's just like what happened with the Bassiouni commission. Sharif Bassiouni was put in charge of the commission to investigate war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. The UN gave him no money. He had to go out and find his own money. Then the UN put Bassiouni out of business because he was doing an effective job even with all the financial obstacles. And when it was proposed that Bassiouni should be the chief prosecutor, the British objected because they couldn't control him — he might do an effective job; he might do something silly like indict Milosevic.
The US knew about the death camps through their intelligence networks, but they weren't saying anything about them, and they weren't going to do anything about them. Then Roy Gutman, the courageous reporter from Newsday, broke the story and it went out all over the world.
There is one consistent factor in the conflicts in Bosnia, Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Gulf War — a toleration by the west of atrocities committed against Muslim populations.
The west seems to be going to war with the Muslim world. The way that the Palestinians are being treated by the Israelis is tantamount to genocide. Libya is being attacked and destabilised because of oil and the fact that Colonel Qadhafi will not take orders from the west. Iran is under assault by the United States primarily at the beck and call of the Israelis. The entire Gulf is under the control of the United States. The US sits on top of all that oil — 50% of the world's oil supply. And the US is keeping Iraq in near genocidal conditions. Chechnya again is a situation where more Muslim people are being wiped out.
And we've heard Owen and others say, "We don't want a Muslim state in Europe". This is the final cleansing and wiping out of a major concentrated population of Muslims in Europe, and no-one really cares.
What future do you see for the republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina?
The Bosnians are going to keep fighting. Where this will lead, I really can't say, but as long as the Bosnians keep fighting, the pillars of the post-World War II legal order are going to be shaken — the UN, NATO and the World Court.
That arms embargo is the most critical factor now, as they need the heavy weapons to defend their people. This is their right under Article 51 of the UN Charter. It is also their obligation under the Genocide Convention.
What future is there for the United Nations?
None. As I see it, if this continues the way that it's going, then the UN means nothing, and it would be better to put it out of its misery, than a continuation of the current hypocrisy.
The Security Council should be put out of business and all the functions for any maintenance of international peace and security should be transferred to the General Assembly. In this sense, there would be the capacity to have some sort of democratic control, but this suggestion is not on anyone's agenda. The Security Council is like a star chamber these days, where they no longer even meet in public. It's just a little club of the most powerful members of the world to order around everyone else.