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other as the “biggest public relations scam of all time.”
Taking into account the wide divergence of views, the
team sought to understand the complexities of the situation on
the ground and offer practical recommendations for the future.
By “future,” we mean both the next phase of actions in the
former Yugoslavia and responses to similar challenges elsewhere.
As former Yugoslav ambassador and journalist Cvijeto
Job wrote in the Fall 1993 issue of Foreign Policy: “The breakdown
of restraints following the end of the Cold War is not just
a Yugoslav problem. It is a global trend. And any disposition
on the part of the international community to ignore that trend
will yield only more disorder and bloodshed.”
This report benefits from earlier case studies of the Humanitarianism
and War Project, an initiative for which our
two institutions have served as cosponsors during the past
three years (see Annex 4). The Project has employed a similar
approach to review lessons in armed conflicts in the Horn of
Africa, the Persian Gulf, Cambodia, and Central America. The
interviews in the former Yugoslavia are part of more than a
thousand conversations the Project has held with practitioners
around the world.
In one such interview last June in Zagreb, a U.N. official
noted that “It’s very hard to run this humanitarian operation
according to a book that hasn’t been written.” The present case
study seeks to identify issues that should be addressed in the
U.N.’s humanitarian operations manual of the future and to
offer recommendations about how those issues might be approached.
This study would not have been possible without the
support of many institutions and individuals. We acknowledge
our gratitude to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner
for Refugees and the United Kingdom’s Office of Development
Assistance, whose grants underwrote a portion of the
costs. The remaining costs were met by general program funds
from the Refugee Policy Group and the Humanitarianism and
War Project. These two organizations and the Watson Institute
are profiled at the end of this report.
We also wish to express special thanks to the officials of
the United Nations, who cooperated fully in our endeavor,
sharing their views and facilitating access to difficult-to-reach
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