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

315gathered intelligence, then it must be asked what elements of this arrived at UNPROFOR’sheadquarters in Tuzla, Sarajevo and Zagreb, and the UN, New York.This analysis of the tactical prior information that was available with regard to the preparationsfor the attack is concluded in Section 6 with a review of the information present in the Netherlands atvarious levels. A description will be given of what information was received by NATO and what theinformation situation of the Dutch MIS was. Section 7 then takes a closer look at the informationsituation of the foreign intelligence services. This chapter ends with conclusions in Section 8 about theavailable prior knowledge regarding the Bosnian Serb attack. An answer is then given to the question:was this operation expected or did it come ‘out of the blue’?2. An intelligence failure?Many publications describe the attack on Srebrenica as an intelligence failure. In the words of theauthor Metselaar: ‘Increasingly, the attack tended to be seen as a tragic consequence of a combinationof failures in intelligence estimates, of failing anticipation, or, perhaps even worse, as a cynical chessgame in international “Realpolitik”.’ 1729 Military and political policymakers within UNPROFOR andNATO are said not to have received indications and warnings in time.A warning can be associated with four possible aspects:1. Hit: a warning is given and the event takes place;2. Miss: no warning is given and the event still takes place;3. False Alarm: a warning is given and the event does not take place;4. Correct Rejection: no warning is given and the event does not take place either.Whether a warning is correct or not depends on the actions of the recipient of the warning and ofthose who plan to take action. If the recipient makes the right analysis and takes action then he will tryto reduce the future uncertainties. 1730 If warnings were received about the attack on Srebrenica, then thenext question is whether these warnings were correctly identified and taken seriously by the recipient(e.g. UNPROFOR or others), whether no warning at all was given, or whether this came too late, orwhether it was taken seriously enough. 1731A warning may not be effective for a number of reasons. One reason may be that there is a lackof information about the capabilities of the opponent. This does not seem to have been the casehowever: UNPROFOR had a reasonably reliable picture of the capabilities and the order of battle ofthe VRS. But it was harder to gain good insights into the short-term and long-term aims of the VRS.Mladic and Karadzic had, after all, often announced that the eastern enclaves would be reduced orconquered; this was nothing new. The more important question was when this would happen.In fact, in the spring of 1995 there were continual rumours that an attack was going to takeplace. Both UNPROFOR and the US government were regularly warned by the Bosnian Muslims thata VRS attack was about to begin. But each time this proved to be a false alarm. This could easily createa ‘Cry Wolf’ mechanism: the more often a false alarm was sounded, the less credibility was attached to afollowing warning. 1732 One particular CIA report concluded that this mechanism did indeed affectUNPROFOR. There were indications of the attack, such as the flow of reinforcements, but the authorsof this report themselves noted: ‘similar troop movements had been recorded around the enclave1729 M.V. Metselaar, ‘Understanding Failures in Intelligence Estimates - Unprofor, the Dutch, and the Bosnian-Serb Attackon Srebrenica’, Netherlands Annual Review of Military Studies. The Bosnian Experience, 1997, p.25.1730 Arie Ofri, ‘Crisis and Opportunity Forecasting’, ORBIS, Vol. 26 (1983) 4, pp. 822-827.1731 R.K. Betts, ‘Intelligence Warnings: Old Problems, New Agendas’, Parameters, Spring 1998, pp. 26-35.1732 Handel, Diplomacy, pp. 478-479. In the Netherlands this is referred to as the ‘Major Sas Syndrome’. Sas was the Dutchmilitary attaché in Berlin who since November 1939 had repeatedly warned of a German attack that always failed tomaterialize. In the end he was no longer believed, after which the attack then came. See: De Jong, Het Koninkrijk derNederlanden, pp. 117-143.