C. Wiebes - Intelligence en de oorlog in Bosnië 1992-1995. De rol van de inlichtingen- en veiligheidsdiensten - Engels

135any indications of continuous guidance from political power centres in the former Yugoslavia. For thisreason, the BVD decided not to start its own investigation in this area. The only perceived danger wasto the staff of the Yugoslavia Tribunal, but with only a few exceptions this threat was never serious innature.Intelligence had to come mainly from the MIS/CO and the Military Intelligence Services of twoof the three branches of the Armed Forces: MIS/Army and the MIS/Air Force. It must be concludedthat the information position was neither unique nor special. This did not change after the departureand stationing of Dutch soldiers in Bosnia. The MIS/CO had no special sources and the same was trueof the MIS/Army. No Humint operations were executed, since such operations were not permitted bysenior Ministry of Defence officials. Another tool for gathering intelligence from Dutch soil, Sigint,could not be used optimally because of technical obstacles. However, technical obstacles did not applyto DutchBat. Like nearly every other contingent they could have brought some tactical capability withthem. Except for the Bangladeshis, Kenyans, Nepalese, and maybe the Indonesians, practically everyother contingent had some sort of capability. As outlined above, this was not a technical problem, but apolitical problem, which prevented DutchBat from being able to protect themselves.In this respect, the intelligence services of other countries were also unable to fill the voidbecause they too had little intelligence available or had other priorities and areas for attention.Statements by the Ministers of Defence that the MIS analyses did not rise above the average level ofthe International Herald Tribune do no justice, however, to the quality of the many products that, in spiteof all the internal and external problems, were actually supplied. What the Ministers were mainly givento read were the MIS/CO analyses, but this service was at a constant disadvantage relative to theMIS/Army. The MIS/Army, for example, ultimately had a clear insight into the order of battle of thewarring factions and was definitely in a position to supply good political-strategic analyses. The sameapplied for work such as the Deny Flight Intelligence Summary supplied by the MIS/Air Force.However, the supply of information could have been much better, and this is a view shared by manyMIS personnel.Intelligence liaison was further obstructed because the Dutch intelligence and security serviceshad little material to share. There was no intelligence input from Dutchbat, because no seriousintelligence-gathering structure was set up with respect to the battalion. The local population was apotentially important source of information but contact with them was reduced to a minimum,particularly under Dutchbat III. Not only did this mean that Dutchbat itself remained deprived ofpotentially important intelligence, but neither could anything be passed on to Sector North East,Bosnia-Hercegovina Command or The Hague. This meant that on many levels political and militarypolicymakers were groping in the dark. Another contributory factor was the awkward contact betweenDutch staff officers and troops under UNPROFOR command. Other nationalities had less troublewith this and they did provide their respective capitals with information. Apparently, the instructionfrom New York that ‘while serving the UN, officers must follow the UN Chain of Command andrespond to orders from the UN, not from their national governments’ was taken extremely literally. 642Dutch UNPROFOR soldiers operated as prescribed: intelligence was not to be gathered within a UNcontext, although certain staff officers sometimes did issue intelligence directly to the Defence CrisisManagement Centre. In this respect, the Netherlands was in fact more righteous than its UN masters. 643The information position of the military services was also weakened by the mutual infighting.This sometimes took place between the BVD and the intelligence services, but also within the MISitself. There was also an element of competition between the various MISs. For many years, the MISwas an ‘island kingdom; one service in name but in reality fragmented, difficult to manage, barelytransparent and poorly understood’, according to the former director of the MIS, Major General J.A.642 Everyone was reminded of this at the end of 1995: MoD , Archive, Operations file. BLS, Biegman to Foreign Affairs, No. 1205, 07/12/95.643 Confidential interview (37).