The Longest Siege Humanitarians and Profiteers in the Battle for Sarajevo

Abstract

Bosnia has a special place in the post-Cold War landscape of armed conflict and international intervention. The 1992–5 war in the former Yugoslav republic became the poster child of ‘ethnic conflict’ — indeed, the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ was popularized during the Bosnia experience (although the practice is certainly not new). Bosnia and the other conflicts related to the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia represented the first outbreak of war in Europe since the end of World War II and erased the widespread assumption that war on the continent was unthinkable.1 Bosnia was also the first drawn out humanitarian crisis of the decade, prompting a far more expansive and ambitious interventionist role for the United Nations — and the humbling experience significantly undermined the early enthusiasm for its conflict prevention and resolution capacity. No other war is as closely associated with humanitarian assistance as is the Bosnia conflict. More than 100,000 foreigners, at least a dozen UN agencies, and over 200 non-governmental organizations (NGOs) were part of the humanitarian relief operation in Bosnia.2 By the middle of 1995, two-thirds of all UN blue-helmeted peacekeepers in the world were deployed in the region, with the number of troops in Bosnia peaking at about 22,500.3KeywordsOrganize CrimeBlack MarketEthnic ConflictUrban BiasPeace OperationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.