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

334the VRS on 4 and 5 July but had not passed this information on. A reason for this was not given. 1863The report drawn up by Butler for the Tribunal reveals that a report was indeed prepared by the 28thDivision. 1864 It is unclear however what then happened to this ABiH report. Westerman and Rijs alsoreported that two weeks before the fall the Bosnian Intelligence Service had clear indications that theBosnian Serbs were planning something. An elite Serb unit had been reported; unusually busy militarytraffic had been observed and intercepts revealed large deliveries of fuel. 1865Despite this, one must seriously question all the aforementioned claims about prior knowledgeof the attack on Srebrenica. To begin with, there were in fact no preparations that started weeks before.The planning for the operation only started on 2 July. Secondly, in Chapter 6 it has been shown that theBosnian Muslims did not have real-time Sigint at their disposal. It thus seems probable that theirknowledge of preparations was gained only after the event. After all, although there were Bosnianintercepts which show that it was possible to monitor VRS communications traffic, the Bosnianmilitary or political leadership never shared these intercepts with UNPROFOR or the UN in NewYork.The intercepts were however later provided to journalists and to the NIOD (directly and via theMIS). It is important to ask whether these were near-real-time or even real-time intercepts. If this wasthe case, then the Bosnian intercept operators listened in live to attack orders. Konjuh, Okresanica andTuzla reported both to the 2nd Corps and to the ABiH headquarters in Sarajevo and to the higherpolitical leadership. The Bosnian national security service in Okresanica reported chiefly to the politicalleaders of Bosnia. 1866 The fact that the Bosnian permanent representative to the UN was certainly notinformed is revealed by statements by Sacirbey. On 10 July Sacirbey called Minister Voorhoeve with thenews that Bihac was to be the next VRS target. He made no mention at all of the other easternenclaves. 1867Were real-time intercepts possible? As previously described, a simple calculation shows that thenumber of channels to be monitored multiplied by the required personnel was larger than the numberof people available to process and report in near-real-time. The processing of the Comint was very slowand labour-intensive. Chapter 6 concluded that some telephone calls and VHF channels may have beenmonitored live, but that the large majority of the substantial VRS military communications traffic wasrecorded on tape and first analysed much later. Moreover, up to 6 July the VRS had maintained radiosilence. As a result, much of the context was lost and VRS messages that were indeed intercepted inreal time could never be placed in the correct context.Reviewing the Bosnian Comint efforts, it can be concluded that the service responsible forSigint was simply too small (ten people per monitoring station) and too poorly equipped to fulfil itsmission adequately. When the attack started it is possible that a great deal was intercepted (mostlytraffic via walkie-talkies), but there was not enough processing and analysis capability for theseintercepts, and insufficient reporting of the intercepted messages. Intercepts were not processed in acomputer, but written by hand in logbooks. Tapes of intercepts were re-used and almost no use wasmade of computers to process and disseminate the stream of information. Moreover, there were noComint analysts working at the monitoring stations to analyse the intercepts and to evaluate its truevalue. In addition, there was a lack of fixed, secure communications links to the ABiH headquarters.Moreover, there are no indications that the Bosnian services had analysis capabilities at the levelof brigade, corps or higher to facilitate the swift integration of Comint with other intelligence, such asHumint. Even if the political will to publicize these dramatic intercepts had existed, this would still nothave succeeded because the intelligence structure was not geared to this. The real-time intercepts weretoo fragmentary. In any case, the study of archives of Dutchbat, UNPROFOR, the MIS and of foreign1863 NIOD, Coll. Brantz. Diary Brantz, pp. 277, 281 and 284.1864 Rapport Butler, ‘srebrenica Military Narrative – Operation Krivaja 95’, 15/05/00, pp. 950764.1865 Westerman & Rijs, Het Zwartste Scenario, pp. 209-210.1866 Confidential interview (54).1867 Diary Voorhoeve, p. 103.