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

77For instance, the general mental attitude in the area of intelligence was still too much orientedtowards the old East-West way of thinking. Many analysts found it hard to abandon this habitualpattern. There was still too much thinking, reasoning and analysis in the context of the Cold War andthe transition took place only with difficulty. Furthermore, the intelligence services were nowconfronted with a different sort of conflict, a low intensity conflict, which was new to them. Manyservices found this difficult to cope with, because there was often no well-defined concept that madeclear who exactly the enemy was.The operations of different paramilitary organizations increased this confusion further.Alliances of warring factions could shift within 24 hours, and allies in a given region or town couldsuddenly turn out to be enemies in a different district or town. After all, a conflict with ethnic andreligious backgrounds is quite a different matter to a few Soviet tank divisions on the North Germanplains.The Western intelligence community had sufficient resources to gather timely warnings aboutpreparations for war. But, as the British author Rathmell put it so aptly: ‘These warning systems are notappropriate for warning of threats such as ethnic conflicts. Such threats require more holisticassessment but defence intelligence agencies do not yet appear to have adapted their approaches.’ 367As far as political problems were concerned, this chapter has argued that intelligence servicesoften had a different view of the conflict in Bosnia from policymakers. In some Western intelligenceand security services the thinking was not in terms of ‘good guys, bad guys’, and usually a morebalanced view could be detected than that adhered to by the politicians. Former CIA director JamesWoolsey confirmed that the CIA was balanced compared both with those who said there were noMuslims atrocities and those who said the Bosnian Muslims killed as many as the Serbs. Both viewswere wrong. The same issue was also raised in the many confidential interviews and in thecomprehensive analysis of the Canadian intelligence community that has been quoted extensivelyabove.However, as the conflict progressed, and the press, public opinion and the politiciansincreasingly took the side of the Bosnians, some intelligence services ‘turned’. This was especially trueof the Americans. The phenomenon of the politicization of intelligence emphatically raised its head. 368Studies were sometimes written to please the most senior policymakers, as opposed to providing themwith intelligence. This had already been the case during the Cold War, and it was sometimes nodifferent in Bosnia. Unwelcome issues with respect to the activities of the Bosnian Muslims and Croatswere only reported to a limited extent, if at all. Political correctness also crept into the analyses, whichwas evident from the fact that the deeds of the Bosnian Serbs came fully into the spotlight while themisdeeds of the Muslims and Croats were given hardly any attention.As an example, there is the trouble that the spokesman of the State Department had inrecognizing that the Bosnian Muslims had concentration camps. According to him, they were merelydetention centres.369Furthermore, the reporting of the armed conflict between the different factionswas not always uniformly ‘policy neutral’. Cause and effect, as well as action and response, were oftenpresented out of sequence, either by policymakers, or the press. In this respect, the politicalpolicymakers were often supported by a press which expressed very little criticism and which, withrespect to television reporting, was mainly dependent on the large television networks.The views of some Western services increasingly diverged and no longer corresponded witheach other. This had the consequence that transatlantic collaboration in the area of intelligence liaisonalso started to suffer. As outlined comprehensively above, intelligence liaison was already a delicatesubject. The exchange of intelligence is not automatic, as is sometimes assumed. It usually happens onthe basis of bilateral agreements and according to the quid pro quo principle. If a service has nothing to367 Andrew Rathmell, ‘Privatising intelligence’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Vol. XI (1998) 2, p. 203.368 This had also frequently taken place in earlier years. See: Bill Gertz, ‘study reveals "politicization" of intelligence’, TheWashington Times, 09/10/00.369 Sremic, War of Words, p. 115.