Cecile Dubernet - The International Containment of Displaced Persons

UN soldiers had special night vision equipment allowing them to spot escapees as soon as they began their dash from the perimeter and when this happened, an armored personnel carrier would hunt the escapees, shining a spotlight on them to ease the chase. The problem was that Serb snipers opened fire as soon as someone was caught in the spotlight.1

The above quotation illustrates the situation faced by Sarajevans trying to escape their besieged town in the winter of 19921993. That UNPROFOR, the United Nations Protection Force, failed to protect Bosnian civilians is known. That they occasionally transformed themselves into the watchdogs of the assailants begs questions regarding the nature of the UN mission, especially with regards to civilians seeking to flee the conflict. At the end of the 1990s, the issue remains topical. In 1998, the Yugoslav province of Kosovo imploded. Serb security forces stepped up their attacks on the Kosovo Albanian population in late February 1998. By June, the assaults had turned into a fully fledged war against civilians witnessed by an international community very reluctant to interfere.2 Despite a cease-fire agreed to in October of the same year, Serb police forces and the army responded to the provocation of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA, in disproportionate ways, slaughtering civilians in villages.3 Observers from the Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe - the so-called OSCE verifiers - dispatched to Kosovo to monitor the cease-fire, stood by powerless. Verifiers were well named. Like UNPROFOR six years before, they were deployed to observe, negotiate and ring the alarm bell, but not directly to protect civilians. International presence was also intended to encourage scores of displaced persons to return to their burnt-down farms. Until March 1999, that is one year into the conflict, the Bosnian war seemed to repeat itself. As in Bosnia, but also northern Iraq or Rwanda, the assumption underlying the deployment of lightly armed troops in Kosovo in 1998 had remained that presence equals protection: in other words, that Western governments react with might and anger to barbaric acts that come to their attention. Therefore assailants restrain themselves in front of observers. Nevertheless, time and time again, widely broadcast deliberate violence against civilians brought about little more than rhetoric. Numerous aid workers found themselves powerless and frustrated. Many lives were ruined before any substantial military protection of civilians was attempted. What