Operation Deliberate Force: The UN and NATO campaign in Bosnia 1995 By Tim Ripley by Tim Ripley

Author:Tim Ripley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: CDISS & Herrick/Telic Publications
Published: 2015-07-09T22:00:00+00:00

ONTO IGMAN

As British, French and American politicians were congratulating themselves on the successful outcome of the London Conference, the gulf that separated their rhetoric and the reality of the war in Bosnia was made apparent during the evening of Saturday 22nd July. In two separate mortar attacks, French convoys were attacked on Mount Igman, near Butmir, and inside the UN’s base at Zetra Stadium in central Sarajevo. Two young French officers, one a doctor, were killed and two Danes wounded by the mortar fire.

The bodies of the Frenchmen were only recovered after a daring flight into Sarajevo airport, in broad daylight, by a French helicopter. Dozens of Serb and Bosnian guns were trained on the French Army Aviation (Det ALAT Split) Puma as it briefly touched down on the exposed runway, before heading safely for Split. Major General Herve Gobillard, the Sector Sarajevo commander and acting UNPROFOR Commander in the absence of General Smith, who was travelling back from the London Conference, decided enough was enough. He first ordered three Serb tanks be destroyed with 90 mortar rounds. Lieutenant General Bernard Janvier claimed the Serbs lost 18 dead and 58 wounded in these attacks. “They had never had that type of retaliation before”, recalled Janvier. Gobillard then telephoned Janvier in Zagreb to request the deployment of the Multi-National Brigade (MNB) and the British artillery to Mount Igman. President Jacques Chirac was informed and backed his generals. The French Foreign Legion were to move immediately to Mount Igman. If the British and the UN did not like it, then they could stay behind.

Animated by their President’s orders, Janvier and Gobillard set in train the necessary preparations. At Gornji Vakuf, Brigadier Andrew Pringle received the request from Sarajevo just before 2am on Saturday 23rd July and in his capacity as senior British officer in Bosnia, immediately contacted Joint Headquarters at Wilton, to get clearance from the British government to commit the Royal Artillery. This was clearly a “novel and contentious” action which required political top cover from London. While he waited for London to give its opinion, Pringle set in train the necessary action to alert British units to be ready if they were cleared to move. Task Force Alpha was put on notice to be ready to move from 10am. Many commentators have seen the move to Mount Igman as a natural progression from the London Conference, but this was not the case.

At the conference British ministers had talked about sending a battalion to replace a French battalion in the Bosnian capital, but the idea had “no sense of urgency”, recalled Pringle. The plan was not even to be briefed to ministers until the following Monday. There was a feeling in London that the French were trying to “bounce” the British into the Mount Igman operation. “There was always some frustration if individual countries - the French tend to be more guilty of this initiative than most - take unilateral action without dealing with the need for proper international co-ordination”, said British Foreign Secretary, Malcolm Rifkind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.