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

79Most of the CIA officials interviewed stated, for example, that in Sarajevo they were not allowed toshare intelligence with the French. The same was true in reverse: the French services in Sarajevo oftenexchanged no information with their NATO allies, which could well appear extremely illogical to anoutsider in the light of a joint peacekeeping operation. This observation would appear to be justifiedconsidering that Scandinavian peacekeepers died for the French had not told them where snipers werelocated, though they did have this information. Established and habitual patterns apparently do notchange in leaps and bounds. The extent to which services recognize shared risks apparently influenceliaison. On the other hand, intelligence officials remarked to the author that the allegations about theFrench were not true as a categorical statement. Information was exchanged with the French in Zagreband other capitals, by many different parties. The French exchanged with their German and Canadiancounterparts. Also US and other officials of different nationalities exchanged a great deal ofinformation with the French at a variety of levels. 375The unwillingness to share intelligence was boosted further because UNPROFOR’s politicaland military course during the entire war in Bosnia was a thorn in the side of the US politicalpolicymakers, while senior military circles and the intelligence community in the United States actuallyhad a more balanced view of the conflict. 376 These political differences resulted in American but alsoother Western services sending agents to try to infiltrate the most important staffs of UNPROFOR andthe humanitarian relief organizations, a strategy, which in some cases proved successful. Furthermore,American services tried to monitor as much of the UNPROFOR communication traffic as possible. 377Sometimes a variety of operations were executed against UNPROFOR and against the policy thatUNPROFOR favoured on behalf of the UN. This repeatedly led to great tensions and conflicts. Theconflict in the area of intelligence was therefore sometimes no longer directed against the jointlyperceived enemy (Bosnian Serbs and Serbs): there was sometimes also a ‘conflict’ between Westernservices themselves.Now, the reader may get a bit confused here at the end because the stage the author of this studyset is that on the one hand, the cold-war mentality has the western intelligence architecture crippled andunable to respond to the crisis in the Balkans, and on the other hand, a scenario of the Balkans ‘swarmingwith spies’. The correct answer is probably that both were partly true. While capabilities were building, theywere not what they would eventually come to be. It was in this sombre constellation of a lack ofpreparation for the conflict in Yugoslavia, mutual animosity between Western services, little willingnessfor international intelligence liaison, various different political points of view on the origin and progressof the military conflict, and a different perception of who were the good guys and who were the badguys in the conflict, that Dutchbat departed for Bosnia at the beginning of 1994. At that time variousintelligence officers were already present there playing all kinds of roles in different organizations.375 Confidential information (80).376 See Part II of the Srebrenica report.377 This is discussed further in Chapter 5 of this study.