Dutch state liable for three Srebrenica deaths

[jmm99]

Thanks to Ken and JMA:

Ken
Very interesting stuff and a far cry from what the American public currently expects.

JMA (quoting Andrew Thompson)
'If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.'

which led me to look for a siege I vaguely recalled (Chateau-Gaillard); and to find Thompson's article (JMA's link doesn't work for me). They led me to think a bit more about what I bolded in what Ken and Thompson said.

First to Chateau-Gaillard, which has many references; here are two. Wiki -The Siege of Chateau Gaillard:

The local population sought refuge in the castle to escape the French soldiers who ravaged the town. The castle was well supplied for a siege, but the extra mouths to feed rapidly diminished them; between 1,400 and 2,200 non-combatants were allowed inside, increasing the number of people in the castle at least five-fold. In an effort to alleviate the pressure on the castle's supplies, Roger de Lacy, the castellan, evicted 500 civilians; this first group was allowed to pass through the French lines unhindered, and a second group of similar size did the same a few days later. Philip was not present, and when he learned of the safe passage of the civilians, he forbade further people being released from the castle. The idea was to keep as many people within Chteau Gaillard to drain its resources.

Roger de Lacy evicted the remaining civilians from the castle, at least 400 people, and possibly as many as 1,200. The group was not allowed through, and the French opened fire on the civilians. They turned back to the castle for safety, but found the gates locked. They sought refuge at the base of the castle walls for three months; over the winter, more than half their number died from exposure and starvation. Philip arrived at Chteau Gaillard in February 1204, and ordered that the survivors should be fed and released. Such treatment of civilians in sieges was not uncommon, and such scenes were repeated much later at the sieges of Calais in 1346 and Rouen in 14181419, both in the Hundred Years' War.

Pennell, Highways and byways in Normandy (1900), "Chateau-Gaillard", p.27-31, goes into the misery suffered by the civilians caught between the armies; and that Philip's act of mercy occured only after he personally met with some of the starving civilians who begged him to show mercy.

Pennell also describes how the castle was captured and adds to the Wiki:

Wiki
With supplies running low Roger de Lacy and his garrison of 20 knights and 120 other soldiers surrendered to the French army, bringing to an end the siege on 6 March 1204.

Pennell, p.31
In the days when iron protected against iron, it took a good deal of fighting to kill a man, and it is said that only four men fell in this last encounter. Philippe Auguste rewarded Roger de Lacy for his courage by giving him liberty. The English garrison marched out of the castle, and the golden fleurs-de-lys floated over the proud donjon. Chateau-Gaillard had fallen, and with it Normandy was lost to England.

The distinction made by the French in the treatment of Chateau-Gaillard civilians, vs its knight and soldiers, was a "we-they" distinction based on class and status. The common "we-they" distinctions based on e.g., race, ethnicity, geographic distance ("out of sight, out of mind") certainly did not apply. In fact, the civilians (from an area on the Ile de France - Normandie border) were more closely related to the French army than to the English Chateau-Gaillard garrison.

This event, like many others, illustrates what that time's public expected - and what lives in that era were "worth" more than others. Here, "worth" is not an accounting item, but is the relative concern (along a spectrum) that a person has for the lives of people at the given Chateau-Gaillard or Srebreneca.

The Thompson situation expands the facts and issues to the present - and raises added issues, starting with How many more must die before Kofi quits? Former UN human rights lawyer Kenneth Cain says the secretary-general could finally redeem himself by saving lives - after years of lethal passivity (by Kenneth Cain, The Observer, 3 April 2005):

... Next to these tributes [to the Rwandan slain] is another installation - a reproduction of the infamous fax by the UN Force Commander, General Romeo Dallaire, imploring the then head of UN peacekeeping, Kofi Annan, for authority to defend Rwandan civilians - many of whom had taken refuge in UN compounds under implicit and sometimes explicit promises of protection.

Here, too, is Annan's faxed response - ordering Dallaire to defend only the UN's image of impartiality, forbidding him to protect desperate civilians waiting to die. Next, it details the withdrawal of UN troops, even while blood flowed and the assassins reigned, leaving 800,000 Rwandans to their fate.
...
I am co-author of a book critical of Annan's peacekeeping legacy, "Emergency Sex (and Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone." My co-author, Dr Andrew Thomson, penned a line that drove the UN leadership to fire him. Lamenting UN negligence in failing Bosnian Muslims whom it had promised to protect in its 'safe area' of Srebrenica - where 8,000 men were slaughtered - Thomson wrote: 'If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.'

Let me be clear about myself. My level of concern is very graduated and very much based on geographic distance. You all know what I think about interventions in Eurasia and Africa; and that I'm no fan of the UN. That being said, if one decides to intervene, one intervenes with both feet well planted; and provides all that is required to execute both non-violent and violent actions.

The Cain-Thompson book was cited in this report, Promote Freedom or Protect Oppressors: The Choice at the UN Review Summit (by John Bercow MP and Victoria Roberts; September 2005)

pp.28,29-30

Humanitarian Intervention

As part of their obligation under the responsibility to protect, states must be willing to take action to protect human rights. There is a continuum of action from using mediation to sanctions to the use of force. In order to increase the prospect of action being taken to suppress the violation of human rights, the UN should accept the proposed five principles to judge whether intervention should go ahead. They are seriousness of threat, proper purpose, last resort, proportional means and balance of consequences.
...
Member states must be willing to make peace-enforcement and peacekeeping operations most effective. One of the most powerful arguments against humanitarian intervention is that intervention often seems to do more harm than good. Traditionally peacekeepers have lacked the mandate, resources and military might to carry out their mission. The international community must be willing to invest in training, logistics and hardware for their missions.

What is more, the developed world must be willing to send in its troops. Dr Andrew Thompson, in his book on UN peacekeeping, wrote If blue-helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs. States must accept that there will be casualties in any enforcement effort. The notion of peaceful peacekeeping is a contradiction in terms. As in any military operation, the goals of the mission must dictate the actions taken. It is quite wrong for states to prioritise the safety of the troops over and above the safety of the civilians they are supposed to protect.

This report (on a whole it sounds like Susan Rice and Samatha Power to me) simply has too much "humanitarian intervention", "responsibility to protect", etc. for me to swallow. But, I fully agree that, if an international or regional organization, a state or group of states, decides to intervene, it can't do it half-heartedly. On the other hand, I'd be a damn liar if I said what Bercow says:

It is quite wrong for states to prioritise the safety of the troops over and above the safety of the civilians they are supposed to protect.

I (figuratively sitting here on my a$$ and, as a US citizen, sending our troops to bad places and into worse situations) will always prioritize the lives of American troops over the lives of remote peoples. That's the way I am; and that's one more reason why I'm a reluctant intervenor.

I also realize that executing a mission may require troops to sacrifice themselves - a "forlorn hope" attack; letting people take pot shots at you (as on the Mexican border); or being killed to protect people that are totally remote from you. That is the point made by Carl and it's valid:

In the movie Go Tell The Spartans the last scene or two depicts guys doing the right thing regardless. The only people I ever heard of doing something almost exactly similar were some Frenchman in Indochina. They ran an irregular force of mountain tribesman and gave them their personal word that they would stick by. When the French pulled out those guys didn't. They stayed and they died.

The French and Indochinese dying together in North Vietnam were from Roger Trinquier's special operations group. That story was a tragedy. The fictional "Go Tell The Spartans" (Wiki) is a great film.

Regards

Mike