Each year I take the eleven days between November 1st and Remembrance Day to reflect on the folly of war. This year, talk of ceasefire in the Middle East recalls memories of facilitating one in the Balkans three decades ago. As with most issues of war and peace, especially in places like the Balkans or Middle East, things are rarely simple.
A New Year Break
There’s a triangular little corner of the Balkans where the boundaries of today’s Croatia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina meet. In late 1992 their newly-assembled armies, militias and paramilitaries were fighting to convert administrative boundaries between the former federated republics of Yugoslavia into international boundaries between nation-states. For Croatians and Montenegrin Serbs the major point of contention was Croatia’s control of access to Montenegro’s spectacular Bay of Kotor. Herzegovina was more complex because it was riven by internal three-way strife between Bosnian Croats, Serbs and Muslims, with neighbouring Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia anxious to support, and perhaps absorb, their ethnic counterparts. It could be complicated.
Two days before Christmas, on a routine visit by one of our white-uniformed European Community Monitoring Mission teams to the town of Trebinje, the Serb Herzegovina Corps asked us to relay an offer of a ceasefire to their Croatian Army counterparts in Dubrovnik. It would span the three weeks between Croat Roman Catholic Christmas Eve to Serb Orthodox New Year’s Day. The Croatian Army agreed and we relayed the reply. The hilly extension of the Dinaric Alps toward the Adriatic Sea can be bitterly cold and miserable at that time of year and everyone would welcome the break.
Violations
The truce came into effect at noon on December 24th. To no one’s surprise, by the following morning each side was routinely denouncing violations by the other. Merry Christmas indeed! A couple of days later, after another harrowing drive over mountainous back roads to Trebinje, we got agreement from the Herzegovina Corps to investigate for ourselves. But not until the following day.
After an afternoon with the International Red Cross discussing threats of “ethnic cleansing” and walking around town to demonstrate international presence to sometimes hostile Serb citizens, we settled into the Hotel Leotar for the night. According to its website it looks like a nice place to stay nowadays, but back then it was reminiscent of the “Wild West”. Still, as my journal recalls, although it was “as grotty as ever, at least we had heat this time.” The next morning we waited until a team of UN Military Observers could join us; then off we went on an escorted drive to overlook a valley and contested hills beyond.
Show and Tell
Before long we heard a burst of machine gun fire to our left. A few minutes later there was a heavier explosion and column of smoke to the right. The pattern continued sporadically throughout the afternoon. Clearly we were not hearing firefights but random bursts along the length of the front. We even suspected prearranged theatre for our benefit.
After pressing the Serbs, and later Croatians on the point, both reluctantly admitted that they didn’t really see such things as violations anyway. Bored young men were amusing themselves, or keeping the opposition alert. My Dutch colleague dubbed that “teasing fire”. From then on we stopped relaying complaints of ceasefire violations unless there was evidence of one side or the other trying to gain ground or reinforce. Otherwise, we just reported that a “Balkan Ceasefire” was holding. Until it wasn’t.
Reflections
Anything that stops people shooting at each other, if only temporarily, can’t be a bad thing. Nonetheless, a ceasefire is not an end in itself. It can indeed be a first step to bringing war to a close, like the 1918 armistice which we remember on November 11th. But less well remembered is that the post-armistice peace treaty in Versailles was so punitive that many Germans regretted ever having agreed to it. That helped lead to Hitler, a second World War, and a pitiless fight for unconditional surrender. Some temporary pauses in fighting, like Korea and Cyprus, have frozen conflict lines for decades.
No one agrees to a ceasefire unless they see it as being to their advantage. Some, usually the underdog, may see it as an opportunity to cheat and achieve a tactical advantage before fighting resumes. Often fighting intensifies to consolidate positions before a ceasefire begins. Peacemaking requires a critical look at motives.
Thoughts on Gaza
Hamas failed in its attempt last year to rally support of the Muslim world by murdering, torturing and raping some 1,200 civilians and taking some 250 hostage. It failed to acknowledge the disaster that the predictable overreaction would cause for the long-suffering people it cynically claims to serve. It shows no signs of reconsidering the clauses of its 2017 Charter to “confront the Zionist project” (it refuses even to name “Israel”) and liberate Palestine “from the river to the sea”. By that it means “from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras al-Naqurah (in Lebanon) in the north to Umm al-Rashrash (Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba) in the south”. In other words, all of Israel.
Small wonder that Israeli hardliners have little incentive for anything but brief “humanitarian pauses”, especially after the experience of pulling illegal settlements out of Gaza (and a few from the West Bank) in 2005, only to have Hamas use it as a base for attacking Israel two years later. Small wonder that Hamas hardliners now plead for a ceasefire, exploiting the propaganda of pity in hopes of reconstituting their ability to persist with their own genocidal fantasies.
One can only hope that someday the respective hardliners will become like a couple who can’t stand each other but can’t separate and so, for the sake of the children, agree to stop squabbling.
Photos:
The feature photo is mine, taken during the joint ECMM/UN investigation near Trebinje. The cartoon is modified from one in the UK “Evening Standard” of 11 August 1992. The photo of an ECMM member pondering a conundrum was taken by a Canadian colleague, but I can’t remember who. My apologies.