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Show HINCKLEY JOURNAL OF POLITICS 2002/2003 result shows that in this instance, the UN ought to have adopted a different course of action. The EC's role in Yugoslavia was bound to fail because its three main goals for Yugoslavia were to provide aid, to keep Yugoslavia united, (which was an outlook adopted by most of the international community), and to prevent conflict. The EC failed to understand that at that point, there was no possibility of keeping Yugoslavia together. With nationalist tendencies gathering steam among Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, the ethnic populations in Yugoslavia were already well past the 'conflict prevention' stage of the EC's plan. Once the EC realized this, they tried to switch tactics, but it was already too late. The EC had "...embarked upon the path of rhetoric rather than action" (Williams 2001, 275), a mistake that contributed to their failure. Amidst impending dissension in its ranks, the EC was finally forced to accept the fact that Yugoslavia was going to break up and that it was not equipped to handle the crisis. The EC then conceded and accepted the independence of Slovenia and Croatia early in 1992, and stepped down as the leading institution in this crisis. THE THIRD AND FOURTH UN MISTAKES The UN began to realize in the fall of 1991 that the European Community's efforts in Yugoslavia were ineffectual and the institution prepared to take action. The third and fourth mistakes in the Yugoslav operation were committed during this time period. Mistake number three, occurring in the early fall, was the embargo against Yugoslavia, voted in place by the UN. The embargo alone was not the mistake. If looked at in retrospect, however, the embargo shows that the UN had no clear plan of action to follow in Yugoslavia. The UN was witnessing the EC's failure in Yugoslavia, and the only action it took was an embargo. At that time, no other plans were made. The whole operation in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina came about in the same way. The operation was planned piece by piece when what was really needed was a full-scale plan of action right from the start. The fourth mistake (and the second of that year) was made when Bosnia formally applied for independence in December of 1991. At the time of its application, the Bosnian government requested UN peacekeeping troops be sent to help alleviate the conflict that would inevitably ensue at Bosnia's secession. The request for peacekeeping troops was denied. The probable reason for the denial was that it was not a major concern to anyone (yet), as the conflict was at that time centered in Croatia, and was not alarming in Bosnia. This shortsightedness on the part of the UN proved to be a huge mistake. Conflict did indeed break out in Bosnia upon independence, a conflict which would rage, almost uncontrollably, from mid-1992 up through 1995. THE FIFTH UN MISTAKE With the EC's complete withdrawal from the crisis in early 1992, the UN was obligated to take full responsibility over the crisis in the former Yugoslavia. Early that same year, the UN began to deploy its first members of its "peacekeeping" mission into Croatia. The force was named the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) and was created by order of the Security Council. UNPROFOR was to be "an interim arrangement to create conditions of peace and security required for the negotiation of an overall settlement of the Yugoslav crisis" (Security Council Resolution 743, February 21, 1992; see Durch and Schear 261). Although it was intended to be a peacekeeping mission, Durch and Schear classify UNPROFOR as "...a precarious midpoint between total disengagement and forceful intervention, which raised the spectre of a Balkan quagmire and even competing interests" (1996, 206). In their book, Lawrence Ziring, Robert Riggs, and Jack Piano define a UN peacekeeping mission as "...a UN non-fighting field operation, usually involving military as well as civilian personnel, undertaken to maintain or restore peace in an area of conflict" (2000, 172). Ziring et al. consider UNPROFOR to be a peacekeeping mission (2000, 172) whereas William J. Durch notes in his essay that UNPROFOR is a "humanitarian intervention" (1996, 5). In the end, however, UNPROFOR seemed to be more like a multi-dimensional operation, having more and more tasks assigned to its mandate as the conflict raged on. Whatever its classification, under no circumstances can UNPROFOR be called a success. UNPROFOR first deployed into Croatia in 1992 and was implemented originally according to a strategy called the Vance Plan (named after its creator, former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance). The Vance Plan, in essence, was to create "safe zones", officially designated as United Nations Protected Areas (UNPAs). These zones were to be established in areas of heavy conflict and were designed mainly to remove the presence of the Serbian controlled Yugoslav National Army. The rest of the Vance Plan included demilitarizing these safe zones (removing armed forces as well as weapons), restoring a sense of normalcy to the safe zones and to allow people who had been driven out to return to their homes and neighborhoods without the threat of violence. Operating according to the Vance Plan was the fifth identified error in judgment on the part of the UN. The Vance Plan failed for reasons similar to those that caused the EC's efforts to fail. The Vance Plan was solely focused on aid and creating small areas of reprieve from the turmoil. The only thing this plan did was to slap a Band-Aid over the wound without examining the wound or finding out where it came from. This strategy did not try to solve the underlying problems of the conflict; it only gave temporary respite from it. The Vance Plan created a situation where the UN dealt with the conflict not by stopping the violence but by trying to ease the burden on the innocent bystanders, a response that "...allowed the suffering to continue" (Higgins 1993, 469). UNPROFOR failed in Croatia eventually because its mandate had no teeth to it. In the beginning, it was fairly useful because it brought with it much needed aid and hope to the civilians in this war torn country. After the initial usefulness 45 |