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The politics of hard knowledge: uncertainty, intelligence failures, and the ‘last minute genocide’ of Srebrenica

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

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Abstract

Questions of uncertainty and responsibility have been central to the political and legal investigations of the failed UN/Dutch peacekeeping mission in Srebrenica. The official Dutch NIOD report on the peacekeeping mission has reconstructed the fall of Srebrenica as a surprise attack and as an ‘intelligence failure’. The report and its understanding of tactical uncertainty has led to a call for more intelligence in UN operations. I argue that the report builds its claims on a problematic epistemology of intelligence studies drawing upon a politics of ‘hard knowledge’. A similar epistemology can be identified in the proceedings of the war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY) in the legal approach of criminal intent for the violence in Srebrenica. Although it is recognised that the political responsibility to prevent genocide and the juridical responsibility to punish those who have committed crimes have different implications for what can be called relevant foreknowledge or criminal intent, both the juridical and the political approaches close off paths for the mobilisation of histories that are more sensitive to the productive workings of language and images and thus to their bearing on possible futures.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 5 , December 2011 , pp. 2221 - 2235
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2011

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References

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15 NIOD, ‘Authorised Summary for the Press of the Srebrenica Report’ (2002).

16 International Court of Justice, ‘Case concerning the application of the convention of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Serbia and Montenegro): Judgment’ (26 February 2007) §294.

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18 Ibid., chap. 1, §4.

19 Ibid., chap. 2, §4.

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26 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995, chap. 8, §3.

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30 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995, chap. 1, §1.

31 Ibid.

32 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995, chap. 1, §1.

33 Ibid., chap. 8, §8.

34 Ibid.

35 Ibid., chap. 6, §4. In chap. 8, §5.

36 Ibid., chap. 8, §8.

37 Yoeri Albrecht and Thijs Broer, ‘Je reed daar gewoon door de killing fields’: Het verhaal én de nooit gepubliceerde foto's van een Dutchbat-soldaat’, Vrij Nederland (13 April 2002). Author's translation.

38 Ibid. Author's translation.

39 Argos (Gerard Legebeke, Huub Jaspers and Franz-Joseph Hutsch), ‘Het onderzoek’, VPRO Radio (1 November 2002).

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 BBC Newsnight, ‘Secrecy still shrouds Srebrenica’ (22 October 2009), {http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8321388.stm}.

43 See Wiebes's judgement of General Smith's warnings that the enclave would be attacked. Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995, chap. 8, §3.

44 Cees Wiebes, ‘Intelligence and the war in Bosnia, 1992–1995 (Speaking Notes)’. Paper presented at the Peacekeeping Intelligence Conference, Ottowa (4–5 December 2003).

45 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995, chap. 8, §3.

46 Ibid.

47 UNSCM, Report of the Security Council Mission Established Pursuant To Resolution 819 (1993) (30 April)Google Scholar p. 7.

48 Ibid., p. 6.

49 Ibid., p. 8.

50 Ibid., UN Security Council, Resolution 819.

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53 Ibid.

54 Prosecutor vs. Radislav Krstic: Judgement. Case No. IT-98-33-T (19 April 2004), p. 29.

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid., p. 91.

57 Ibid.

58 Ibid., p. 29.

59 International Court of Justice, ‘Case concerning the application of the convention of the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina vs. Serbia and Montenegro): Judgment’ (26 February 2007), § 292.

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62 Bećirević, ‘More Than a ‘Local Genocide’.

63 Hemon, ‘Genocide's Epic Hero’.

64 Ibid.

65 See for an elaboration on ‘political sense making’, Oliver Kessler, ‘The same as it never was? Uncertainty and the changing contours of international law’, this Special Section.

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69 Van den Herik also describes a tendency in law to broaden the definition of genocide, but this is only a relative broadening in the light of the political (or what she calls the social) approach of genocide as mass killings.

70 See ICTY, ‘Prosecution's Third Amended Indictment (The Prosecution vs. Radovan Karadžić)’, Case No. IT-95-5/18-PT (27 February 2009); and the ‘Proscecution's marked-up indictment’, Case No. IT-95-5/18-PT (19 October 2009).

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73 Radio Netherlands Worldwide, ‘Prosecutors refine indictment against Karadžić (23 September 2008).

74 Florence Hartmann, ‘Re: Prosecutors refine indictment against Karadžić’, comment made on the Justwatch-List (23 September 2008).

75 Edina Bećirević, ‘More Than a ‘Local Genocide’. Later Milorad Dodik denied that it had been a case of genocide at all. See, for example, BBC Monitoring Newsfile, ‘Bosnian Serb leader disputes Srebrenica genocide “definition”’ (8 April 2010).

76 Ibid.

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78 Ibid.

79 Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992–1995, chap. 8, §8.