Dutch Blue Helmets in Srebrenica. As part of a UN peacekeeping force, the soldiers of Dutchbat were charged with protecting the Muslim enclave. At that time it accommodated ten times as many inhabitants as usual. Thousands of men, women and children had sought a safe haven from Bosnian Serb offensives.
The hostilities were part of the war in Bosnia, which broke out when the Bosnia-Herzegovina region declared its independence in 1992. The People’s Republic of Yugoslavia, which until then had appeared a model of harmonious coexistence, began to disintegrate. Bosnian Serbs disputed the independence, even proclaimed a Serbian Republic and with a clash of arms and the support of Serbia claimed large sections of the country. On July 11, 1995, Bosnian-Serb tanks rolled into the enclave under the command of General Ratko Mladic. The lightly armed Dutchbat soldiers were unable to offer the population adequate armed protection.
Mladic and his soldiers deported and murdered about eight thousand Muslim men and youths, the worst act of genocide in Europe since the Second World War. To this day, mass graves of victims are being uncovered. The Dutch government ordered an independent investigation into the drama. When this report was published in 2002, the cabinet of Wim Kok assumed political responsibility for the failure of the Dutchbat mission and resigned. The trauma of Srebrenica has become so much a part of national awareness that it is included in the historical canon. However, this did not put an end to Dutch involvement in UN missions.
The international community regularly attempts to control conflicts through deploying peacekeeping troops. Sometimes under the flag of regional alliances, but more often under the UN flag. The United Nations does not have its own army. The troops of peacekeeping forces are supplied voluntarily by the member states.
The composition of a peacekeeping force is certainly not a Western affair. Asian and African countries, for example, also supply soldiers. The costs of peacekeeping operations, which are generally expensive, are borne by the international community. Not all UN missions have been successful, but in El Salvador and Mozambique, among other places, interventions have resulted in sustainable peace. UN missions are active in many places in the world, for example in the Sudan and Cyprus, in the latter case since 1964.
