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

37had indications that this attack had indeed been carried out by Bosnian Muslims themselves. However,all associated evidence was brushed aside by American officers in Sarajevo. A British colonel of theSpecial Air Services (SAS), who investigated the matter together with a senior UNMO official, thenpassed on the contrary findings to a British daily newspaper. 140At a later stage, the MIO was reorganized in April 1995 by Svensson who also asked New Yorkfor more manpower. The UN then approved to strengthen the analyst capacity and the organization inZagreb was tightened up. Svensson then had a staff of 13 nationalities, which spoke 11 differentlanguages. 141 After that the MIO not only observed the military situation, but also assembledinformation on political, economic and humanitarian matters. According to Smith, a standing joke inthe MIO until then had been that: ‘If you understand the situation in the former Yugoslavia, you musthave been poorly briefed.’ 142In April 1995, some members of the staff of the MIO were finally given access to theintelligence stored in the Linked Operational Intelligence Centre Europe (LOCE) network. LOCE wasused to obtain American Imint and to exchange the results of electronic and other intelligence. Thesituation in other military information offices was sometimes similarly poor. The G-2 officer at theheadquarters of Sector North East in Tuzla, Major Knut Eilertsen of Norway, had absolutely no accessto LOCE, and he was the only intelligence officer there. Visits to units or areas were impossiblebecause of the shortage of staff. Eilertsen therefore hoped for a speedy expansion of his G-2 section, ashe expressed during a visit by Dutch soldiers. The Dutch Chief of Staff of Sector North East, ColonelJ. Engelen, had to admit frankly after this visit that the provision of information in the UN wasminimal. 143In 1994 and 1995, the access to ‘the rest of the world’ at the Zagreb office of the G-2 staffconsisted of a few daily newspapers and a TV that could pick up the European broadcasts of the newsstation CNN and the music station MTV. The latest news ‘as seen by CNN’ and the latest video clipswere therefore the only contact with the region outside the Balkans. This is how the MIO discoveredthat the CNN news was not free of an anti-Serb bias. During the Gorazde crisis in April/May 1994,CNN showed pictures of the VRS attack on the enclave, which surprised the staff, who wondered howCNN could have acquired the pictures. What they found even stranger was that a French APC wasvisible in the film pictures in Gorazde, because they knew that no French units were stationed there. Ittranspired later that the pictures concerned had been recorded several years earlier, when the ABiHwere engaged in driving out the Bosnian Serbs from the region. 144Despite the fact that the MIO was inadequately equipped, the staff attempted to make the bestof things. The MIO had three departments in Zagreb. One was responsible for keeping an eye on theOrders of Battles of the different warring factions and updating a complete map overview. The seconddepartment was responsible for analysing the situation on the ground. This covered a wide spectrum ofsubjects, such as weapons imports, local skirmishes, food shortages, thefts and attacks on convoys. Thethird department fulfilled all the administrative functions and was responsible for some degree ofmanagement as regards the intelligence efforts. Moreover, there turned out to be no archives from theperiods 1991, 1992 and 1993, so that all the experience gained and earlier ‘lessons learned’ wereunavailable to the new MIO team (since 1994). 145Again the work of the MIO staff only really got under way when the first American Deputy G-2Officer arrived in Zagreb. The staff then held a briefing every morning between 7.30 and 8.00 for theofficer responsible for operations (in military terms known as the G-3). The briefing was open toUNMOs, NGO’s and various aid organizations, such as the International Red Cross (ICRC) and the140 Confidential interview (44).141 Interview with Jan-Inge Svensson, 15/11/02 and E-mail Jan-Inge Svensson to the author, 26/11/02.142 Smith, New Cloak. Old Dagger, p. 210.143 MoD, CRST, Morning Briefing, No. 378, G-2 Cap. Hagenaars to HINL, no. CBST/941, 15/09/94.144 Collection NIOD (3).145 Confidential interviews (9), (45) and (47).