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

70Republika Srpska. The work was nonetheless focused on the gathering of intelligence regarding theCroatian armed forces. 316The CIA station in Sarajevo was mainly concerned with an operation to expel Mujahedeenfighters from the country, and (partly overlapping) with fighting ‘terrorism and the removal offoreigners’. This mainly concerned fundamentalists from Tunisia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, andRevolutionary Guards from Iran and Yemen. As it happens, they were stateless Muslim soldiers, whohad been recruited from the slums of cities like Cairo and Algiers. At the time considerable sums ofmoney flowed from Iran to the ABiH to pay these fighters. The ABiH, however, wanted nothing to dowith fundamentalists within Bosnia in the beginning. The ABiH may not have seen them as a dangerand was not anxious to observe the wishes of the Chief of Station, who had been ordered fromWashington to expel those particular fighters from the country. According to CIA workers, theBosnian Muslims constantly tried to mislead the CIA and to downplay the problem of the Mujahedeenfighters. By the spring of 1996 CIA field officer Robert Baer worked with a half-dozen people inBosnia on counterterrorism. 317The CIA continued to actively pursue the order to expel these fighters from the country. Forinstance, they put pressure on Izetbegovic to force the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to leave. Thepresident did not want to comply and in the first instance denied that such fighters were playing animportant role. The CIA demonstrated that the Mujahedeen were closely involved with the Minister ofthe Interior of Bosnia, and also demonstrated that the Revolutionary Guards were occupied withtraining the ABiH to produce car bombs. However, a blind eye was turned to these RevolutionaryGuards in the interest of what was considered to be the good cause of the struggle of the BosnianMuslims. In these Iranian training centres in Bosnia, the CIA also encountered models of buildings thatwhere evidence that the Iranians were planning to storm certain premises. In addition, the ABiH hadengaged mercenaries from Albania and the Chechen Republic, which were needed because it had noother choice for training soldiers: most of its soldiers had no combat experience. Iran was permittedwith American tacit agreement to supply weapons to the Bosnian Muslims, 318 but after the arrival of thefirst American troops the Revolutionary Guards had to leave Bosnia again. CIA workers, incidentally,admitted this ‘tacit agreement’ for arms trading; one of them remarked: ‘That is politics.’ 319The CIA in Sarajevo soon discovered that the Bosnian Muslims had a ‘white hot hatred’ on allpolitical and military levels towards the French. The CIA station, for example, received lists from theABiH of French equipment, which had ostensibly been confiscated by the VRS. According to CIAofficials, however, this concerned ‘normal’ French supplies to the VRS, for example two field kitchens,where each kitchen could feed approximately six hundred soldiers. These kitchens were transported inenormous trucks with low loaders and ‘you do not just lose one of these accidentally along the way’,according to a CIA official. In addition, the lists included summaries with serial numbers of radios,firearms, uniforms, rifles, military systems and communication equipment which were supposed tohave been confiscated by the VRS. According to CIA officials, this was evidence that the ABiH hadhighly placed agents within the VRS or were able to intercept their communication traffic. 320 The CIAitself also ran agents in Pale, who, according to a former official of the Dutch MIS, supplied excellentintelligence. 321German, Turkish, Italian, Russian, Iranian and French intelligence services were also active inBelgrade, Zagreb, Sarajevo and Tuzla. CIA officials in Sarajevo and Zagreb had a golden rule: nocontacts with the French foreign and/or military services; the CIA apparently did not trust the Frenchservices. There was no Chief of Station of the British foreign intelligence service SIS present in316 Confidential interview (12).317 Baer, See No Evil, pp. 236 - 237.318 For this, see Chapter 4 of this study.319 Confidential interview (12).320 Confidential interviews (6) and (12). See also Chapter 6 of this study for the Bosnian Sigint capacities.321 Confidential interview (78).