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

246He concluded that in Bosnia Humint formed a much more valuable, precise and rapid source of tacticalmilitary intelligence, as compared to Sigint. 1300 His remark related to the SFOR period, following theDayton Accord. It can safely be assumed that the situation was no better before the summer of 1995,as at this point no American ground troops were present in Bosnia. It can be concluded that muchintelligence material gathered through national strategic platforms, such as satellites and special aircraft,was simply not automatically provided to UNPROFOR.Akashi confirmed this to Annan. Some of the countries that had contributed troops did indeedhave access to a ‘very large pool of detailed tactical and strategic intelligence’. After all, Yugoslavia wasthe object of scrutiny by all intelligence services. Akashi said that a large part of the intelligencegathered by the leading troop-contributing nations was indeed Sigint, ‘the most jealously guarded of allintelligence products’. In the case of the US, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealandthis is governed through the UKUSA alliance, and ‘sharing outside this agreement is simply not1301possible’, according to Akashi.It is also important that UNPROFOR, and probably Akashi himself, were important Americanand European monitoring targets. Not only was the communications traffic of the Generals Rose andSmith intercepted; their headquarters in Sarajevo, and that of Janvier in Zagreb, were permanentlymonitored with special eavesdropping equipment. In this respect the headquarters and thecommunications traffic with New York, Zagreb, Geneva and other capitals was also a relatively easytarget, as virtually nothing was done to raise communications security. After all, the UN was an openand transparent organization. This made it possible, for instance, for a Scandinavian service to interceptthe communications between various Dutch units, 1302 and the Danish Military Intelligence Servicemanaged to monitor telephone conversations between Rose and Mladic. 1303Bosnia was an ‘intelligence carnival’ with dozens of intelligence actors, all seemingly operatingindependently of each other in the area of SIGINT. In this respect it is only fair to say that SIGINTwas given to different UN intelligence officers in Zagreb and Sarajevo, but to them where it wascoming from and in what form it was being received was not clear. It is also indisputable that the vastmajority of the raw intelligence that was being provided to UN forces in Bosnia came from US sources,including much of the low-level SIGINT. However, the complaints were often that there was nosource information attached to the intercepts, so the consumers in Bosnia had no idea where it wascoming from, how reliable it was, etc.But it is easy to have critique on Washington DC. For instance, why did the European Sigintorganizations contribute so little to UNPROFOR? The Germans, French, Brits, Austrians, Italians, etc.all conducted extensive Sigint collection in and with respect to Bosnia. However, this material washardly forwarded to UNPROFOR or the Dutch but mostly used in support of their own forces inBosnia and not for sharing with the smaller nations participating in the Bosnia peacekeeping operation.There is much in this chapter about NSA’s history of failing to liaise with NATO allies. However, thetruth is also that British, French, German, Austrian or other national Sigint services operating in andwith respect to Bosnia were any better than the Americans in providing comparable Sigint. The ‘simple’answer probably must be that they were just as ‘bad’ as the Americans, which should be one of thelessons of Bosnia from an intelligence standpoint. It was not until Kosovo in 1999 that the system waspartially repaired through greater sharing of intelligence, including Sigint. But this was a NATOoperation rather than a UN sponsored operation.1300 Lt. Col. George K. Gramer, Jr., USA, ‘Operation Joint Endeavor: Combined-Joint Intelligence in Peace EnforcementOperations’, Military Intelligence, October-December 1996, p. 13.1301 UNNY, DPKO, UNPROFOR, Akashi to Annan, Z-1189, 18/07/95.1302 Interview with J.M.J. Bosch, 10/10/01.1303 Interview with H.A. Couzy, 04/10/01.