op 18 front pages-converted - The Watson Institute for International ...

Against this backdrop, the present study examines the
suffering of the people and efforts by the United Nations and
others to provide assistance and protection. The chronology of
major events during the two-year period beginning in late
1991 has been assembled from U.N. documents, news accounts,
and Breakdown in the Balkans: A Chronicle of Events—
January 1989—May 1993, by Samantha Power (Washington,
D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1993).
Fall-Winter 1991-1992. U.N. efforts concentrated on assisting
civilians in Croatian areas under Serb attack such as
Vukovar, Osijek, and Dubrovnik. The siege of Vukovar, lasting
three months from late August, created massive suffering;
efforts to help people in Dubrovnik, besieged from early
October for more than a year, became a riveting international
event. In September the EC established the Peace Conference
on Former Yugoslavia in an effort to negotiate a settlement to
the conflict. The U.N. concentrated on peacekeeping issues,
deploying peacekeeping troops to Croatia following Security
Council action in February 1992.
In October 1991, UNHCR was designated lead agency in
the world organization’s humanitarian response. In November,
it appointed a Special Envoy, in December appealed for
$17 million for the relief operation, and by year’s end had
made its first relief deliveries to the region. It reported casualties
of 6,000 deaths, 15,000 wounded, and more than 500,000
displaced.
Spring 1992. In March, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared
independence. Fighting erupted in early March in Sarajevo
and in the eastern Bosnian Muslim enclave of Gorazde. A
campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Serbs to force Muslims out
of their homes picked up speed. In May, the Security Council
demanded an end to the war and to ethnic cleansing and
imposed economic sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Also in May, as the fighting in Sarajevo reached the
level of all-out war, the U.N. began relief operations, relying
on UNPROFOR troops for protection. Convoys of relief supplies
into Sarajevo were intercepted by the Serbs. Following
the killing one of its officials in a convoy ambush in mid-May,
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