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472 GCHQ GOES GLOBAL
friendly with the Bosnian Serb headquarters at Pale, where SIS
undoubtedly enjoyed good sources of intelligence. Along with
the secret services of Greece and the Ukraine, Mossad was openly
pro-Serbian, and was concerned by the CIA's close cooperation
with Turkey and Iran in a covert operation to fly in arms and
jihadist fighters from the Middle East to bolster the Muslim cause,
in clear contravention of the United Nations arms embargo. The
former Yugoslavia also offered some fascinating lessons in the
tortuous politics of allied signals intelligence. 2o
Bosnia was a place where relations between GCHQ and NSA
were tense. Intelligence sharing between the two allies on the
Balkans was limited, and NSA was very reluctant to provide its
British partner with any intelligence on the Muslim factions
that were favoured by Washington. Meanwhile, General Sir
Michael Rose, a former head of the SAS and now the British
Commander in Chief of the United Nations Protection Force,
found that his biggest problem was the insecure and elderly
communications equipment that the British Army had endured
for years. The need for better radios had been one of the obvious
lessons from the Falklands, but Britain's defence bureaucrats
had bungled hopelessly. Rose realised that his UN headquarters
in Sarajevo were effectively under surveillance by the Americans.
He himself was regarded as a 'legitimate target' for sigint collection
by the USA, since he was officially serving as a UN military
chief, rather than as a British commanderY
NSA worked closely with the German BND to offer sigint
support to the various Muslim elements, not least to Croatia,
which had suffered badly at the hands of the Serbs in the fighting
of 1991 and 1992. They focused on boosting the work of Admiral
Davor Domazet, chief of Croatia's military intelligence during
the struggle against secessionist Serbian guerrillas in the east of
the country. This was especially visible during 1993, when
Croatian forces pushed forward into the Medak Pocket, and
again in August 1995, when they conducted a lightning offensive
known as 'Operation Storm'. This was supported by
unmanned intelligence-gathering drones which allowed