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indirect extermination of the whole population?” Sanctions
are “an inappropriate and unprecedented form of collective
punishment of a nation, inflicting grave and far-reaching
economic, demographic, health and social-developmental consequences
on my country,” wrote the Prime Minister to the
President of the U.N. Security Council in August 1993.
A third consequence was growing resistance to cooperating
with the United Nations. On the humanitarian side, the
authorities in Belgrade linked discussion of the needs of
refugees to those of the broader population. Cooperation with
U.N. efforts to reach eastern Bosnia through Serbia stood to be
affected. On the political side, the effects were less clear. There
was some evidence to suggest that the desire to have sanctions
lifted contributed to pressure by Belgrade on the Bosnian
Serbs to be more supportive toward peace negotiations in
1993. In this respect, the sanctions may have accomplished one
of their purposes. Without doubt, relaxation of sanctions had
by 1993 become an overriding foreign policy priority of the
regime.
The impacts of the sanctions had by late 1993 brought the
U.N. to an important fork in the road. Growing evidence
supported the conclusion of Judith Kumin, UNHCR’s Chief of
Mission in Belgrade, that “trying to implement a humanitarian
program in a sanctions environment represents a fundamental
contradiction.” Yet the choices were not easy. Should
sanctions be kept in place, creating additional civilian hardship
in the hope of putting more pressure on the Belgrade
authorities to support a negotiated end to the conflicts? Or
should they be eased or scrapped in view of the damage to
associated U.N. activities? At a minimum, a fresh look at the
interaction between political and humanitarian objectives was
required.
Association with the Military
Shifting the focus to Croatia, we scrutinize how much the
association with UNPROFOR compromised the integrity of
U.N. humanitarian activities in the UNPAs. The example with
which we began this discussion, linking UNPROFOR to the
refoulement of persons fleeing from Bosnia and Herzegovina,
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