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>Незаконно выданный на расправу т. н. Международному трибуналу для бывшей Югославии в Гааге экс-президент Югославии Слободан Милошевич выступил в середине февраля на этом судилище. Его речь вызвала шок у заправил этого мероприятия. С. Милошевич полностью вскрыл не только заказной характер сфабрикованного процесса против него лично как политического лидера, защищавшего интересы своей страны и народа, но и причины, по которым Запад предпринял действия по разрушению многострадальной балканской страны.
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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.
