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Building a Multiethnic Military in Post-Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina PDF

273 Pages·2022·29.234 MB·English
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Building a Multiethnic Military in Post-Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina ii Building a Multiethnic Military in Post-Yugoslav Bosnia and Herzegovina Elliot Short BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2022 Copyright © Elliot Short, 2022 Elliot Short has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on pp. xii–xiii constitute an extension of this copyright page. Cover image: Bosnian soldiers board a US airforce plane 01 June 2005, at Sarajevo airport. The 36-men unit, trained in unexploded ordnance removal will join the US-led forces in Iraq. © Elvis Barukcic/Afp Via Getty Images. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permissions for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologizes for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3501-9093-1 ePDF: 978-1-3501-9094-8 eBook: 978-1-3501-9095-5 Typeset by Newgen KnowledgeWorks Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters. Contents List of Figures vi List of Maps viii Foreword by Rohan Maxwell ix Acknowledgements xii List of Abbreviations xiv Introduction 1 Part 1 Precursors 1 The region before the Second World War 17 2 The Yugoslav People’s Army 33 Part 2 Components 3 The Army of Republika Srpska 57 4 The Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croat Defence Council 85 Part 3 Construction 5 The entity armies, 1995–2002 117 6 The Orao Affair and military unification 139 7 The Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina 161 Conclusion 185 Notes 191 Bibliography 229 Index 249 Figures 1.1 Soldiers of the k.u.k. Army planting the imperial flag on Bosnian soil 22 1.2 A military brass band of the 1st Bosnian Infantry Regiment, 1915/16 27 2.1 Josip Broz Tito and his entourage present a banner to battalions of the First Proletarian Division, 1942 36 2.2 President of Yugoslavia Josip Broz Tito (1892–1980) 43 3.1 Troops of the newly established VRS evacuate Sarajevo airport 70 3.2 VRS General Ratko Mladić is flanked by Generals Živomir Ninković, Milan Gvero, and Jovan Marić at a parade ceremony 78 3.3 F-16 Falcons from the 510th Fighter Squadron, Aviano Air Base, Italy 80 3.4 Gathered statesmen applaud the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords 81 4.1 Bosnian soldiers wearing a variety of uniforms walk among civilians in Sarajevo 98 4.2 Emina Bakić of the ARBiH on Mount Trebević, outside Sarajevo 100 4.3 Bosnian government soldiers atop a truck wave a captured Serb flag in Zenica 111 5.1 A Bosnian family on a horse cart makes its way through the M1 Abrams tanks of a US IFOR checkpoint 118 5.2 Bosnian Croat soldiers of the VF stand in support of Croat self-rule 124 5.3 MPRI consultants train Bosnian and Croatian army soldiers 126 5.4 A column of VRS M-84 tanks in Lepnica, northern Bosnia 128 6.1 US Secretary of State Colin Powell shakes hands with Lord Paddy Ashdown, High Representative of the International Community for Bosnia-Herzegovina 145 6.2 German soldiers destroy weapons at their base in Rajlovac, near Sarajevo 146 6.3 The regimental patches of the 1 (Guards) Infantry Regiment, the 2 (Rangers) Infantry Regiment, and the 3 (Republika Srpska) Infantry Regiment 158 6.4 Bosnian soldiers raise the flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina during a handover ceremony 160 Figures vii 7.1 A Slovakian lieutenant and an OSBiH sergeant look for information on a case of ammunition discovered at a cache site near Ad Diwaniyah, Iraq 163 7.2 Specialist Rebekah Wall pulls security with an OSBiH Soldier at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan 165 7.3 An OSBiH soldier working to clear landmines in BiH 169 7.4 US and Bosnian troops conduct a colour guard parade during the Bosnian–US Friendship Day ceremony in Mostar 171 7.5 Armed police from Republika Srpska and the Republic of Serbia train together 178 7.6 Soldiers of the Republika Srpska Regiment of the OSBiH attend an unconstitutional statehood day parade in Banja Luka 183 Maps 2.1 The Western Balkans, 1945–91 39 3.1 The disintegration of Yugoslavia, 1991–5 69 5.1 Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Dayton Peace Agreement 120 Foreword When Elliot interviewed me a few years ago, I did not imagine that I would one day be writing the foreword to his book. I am pleased to be doing so: the development of Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina is worth examination, both in its own right as a piece of history and as a source of broadly applicable lessons. Elliot has captured both elements effectively, bringing fresh perspective and extracting lessons of interest to defence and security sector reform practitioners. My involvement with the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina began one morning early in 2003. I was in my office at 5 Combat Engineer Regiment in Valcartier, Quebec, when the telephone rang. A voice from National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa asked whether I would be interested in a one-year secondment to the Office of the High Representative in Sarajevo. I had no idea what a High Representative was, so I temporised and promised to ring back the following day with my response. The Canadian Army in those days had not yet seen fit to provide internet access on all of its workstations, so I rang my wife, Maggie, who conducted some expedited research. When I got home she informed me that the High Representative was responsible for the implementation of civilian aspects of the Dayton Peace Accords, and that the Office of the High Representative included a Military Advisor, supported by several staff officers, one of whom was Canadian. I happened to know him, and the next day I sent a brief email: what exactly was he doing, and would I like it? His response was equally brief: he was helping to build an army, and yes, I would like it. I rang Ottawa and said ‘Yes’. On a sunny Sunday afternoon six months later, newly arrived in Sarajevo, I installed myself in a sidewalk café on the street known to many as ‘Sniper Alley’, and opened the dark blue cover of a thick report. ‘The Path to Partnership for Peace’ was a detailed proposal for placing the entity armies under a single chain of command. As I sipped my coffee, I could see the Holiday Inn a short distance to the west across a patch of waste ground, diagonally opposite the parliament building. When war came to Sarajevo in April 1992, two of the anti-war protestors around parliament were killed by shots fired from the Holiday Inn. There was a plaque to their memory, affixed to a bridge a short distance to the south, down the street to my left. Shortly after they died, that section of the river became part of the front line between the two armies that the authors of the report proposed to unite. It was an ambitious undertaking: less than eight years earlier, those armies had made the intersection where I was sitting one of the most dangerous places in the world. It would be an interesting way to spend a year. As it turned out, by the time Maggie and I left Sarajevo, it had been our home for roughly the same amount of time that the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina had been in existence: sixteen years. My first major task, in the autumn of 2003, had been to conduct a week-long workshop during which the structure of the new Ministry

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