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

85specific nature of the work, there was hardly any contact between the SBP and the IDB. Nevertheless,overlaps in their activities did occur. For instance, the SBP occupied itself extensively with investigatingthe disputes between the Soviet Union and China in the 1960s, a field in which the IDB also attemptedto gather intelligence.On 1 November 1990, it was decided to disband the SBP, although analysts continued to beinvolved in compiling analyses of foreign political developments that were regularly contributed to theCVIN. The disbanding took place within the framework of the complete reorganization of the BVD bythe then head of the service, A. Docters van Leeuwen. Its objective was to cure the BVD of its ColdWar syndrome, and to create a different working culture. Vertical departments were abandoned infavour of small teams working on finite projects, to bring an end to internal divisions and forms ofspecialization. The staff of the SBP were subsequently distributed as analysts around the variousdirectorates, to be used on a project basis.Changes to the new organization soon followed. Some projects turned out to have no real end,such as the fight against terrorism or Yugoslavian organized crime. This meant that analysts remainedcontinuously engaged in studying overall political and economic developments in the Balkans. This wasprimarily carried out in Team Radar within the State Security Directorate. The leader of Team Radarrapidly came to the conclusion that a separate team would have to be created for Yugoslavia. This wasto be Team Adriaan, which also incorporated the BVD’s counterintelligence section on Yugoslavia,which here refers to the gathering of intelligence on the activities in the Netherlands by Yugoslavintelligence services. 392Team AdriaanTeam Adriaan started with 7 staff but expanded, especially after the arrival in The Hague of theYugoslavia Tribunal, to approximately 20 staff. This was excluding the capacity of the RegionalIntelligence Services, because in each large Regional Intelligence Service, in which the BVD and thepolice closely cooperated, one person was responsible for Yugoslavia. When the threat as aconsequence of the arrival of the Tribunal proved to be less severe than expected, the number of staffdropped again to between 12 and 15.Team Adriaan’s responsibilities included giving security advice and gathering intelligence amongYugoslav Displaced Persons, as well as tracking the activities of Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serbs, Serbsand Croats in the Netherlands. The team independently debriefed refugees from these areas. The teamemployed several translators, who in addition to translation work were also responsible for monitoringtapped telephone traffic. The BVD had many Russian-speaking staff; because the major threat fromRussia had ebbed meanwhile, they were retrained to become proficient in Serbo-Croat. In the firstinstance, the BVD approached the translators training school of the Military Intelligence Service, theSMID, but they were turned down because of a lack of capacity. A BVD official was even requested bythe SMID to lobby the leaders of the MIS/Army for the training of more Serbo-Croat translators at theMIS. Because of the time and the trouble that this would have involved, the BVD then approached areputable language institute, which retrained the BVD staff in 3 months. After that, there were no morelanguage capacity problems. It was then possible to obtain much intelligence from the Yugoslavcommunity that had long resided in the Netherlands. This source supplied the BVD with more than theintercepted message traffic of the MIS. 393The collaboration of the BVD with its foreign counterparts was not excellent, but from 1993 itimproved somewhat, thanks to the arrival of the Tribunal. One BVD official stated that this suddenlyappeared to make the Yugoslavian conflict a concern of other countries. The associated conclusion isagain that the extent to which services recognize shared risk apparently influences the sharing of392 Confidential interviews (15 ) , ( 16 ) and ( 17).393 Confidential interview (15).