Blue Helmets and Black Markets: The Business of Survival in the Siege of Sarajevo

by Peter Andreas

The 1992-1995 battle for Sarajevo was the longest siege in modern history. It was also the most internationalized, attracting a vast contingent of aid workers, UN soldiers, journalists, smugglers, and embargo-busters. The city took center stage under an intense global media spotlight, becoming the most visible face of post-Cold War conflict and humanitarian intervention. However, some critical activities took place backstage, away from the cameras, including extensive clandestine trading across the siege lines, theft and diversion of aid, and complicity in the black market by peacekeeping forces.

In Blue Helmets and Black Markets, Peter Andreas traces the interaction between these formal front-stage and informal backstage activities, arguing that this created and sustained a criminalized war economy and prolonged the conflict in a manner that served various interests on all sides. Although the vast majority of Sarajevans struggled for daily survival and lived in a state of terror, the siege was highly rewarding for some key local and international players. This situation also left a powerful legacy for postwar reconstruction: new elites emerged via war profiteering and an illicit economy flourished partly based on the smuggling networks built up during wartime.

Andreas shows how and why the internationalization of the siege changed the repertoires of siege-craft and siege defenses and altered the strategic calculations of both the besiegers and the besieged. The Sarajevo experience dramatically illustrates that just as changes in weapons technologies transformed siege warfare through the ages, so too has the arrival of CNN, NGOs, satellite phones, UN peacekeepers, and aid convoys. Drawing on interviews, reportage, diaries, memoirs, and other sources, Andreas documents the business of survival in wartime Sarajevo and the limits, contradictions, and unintended consequences of international intervention.

Concluding with a comparison of the battle for Sarajevo with the sieges of Leningrad, Grozny, and Srebrenica, and, more recently, Falluja, Blue Helmets and Black Markets is a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary urban warfare, war economies, and the political repercussions of humanitarian action.

Genres: History, War, Military Fiction, Academic, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published August 7, 2008

About the author

Peter Andreas is a professor in the Department of Political Science and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University. He was previously an Academy Scholar at Harvard University, a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution, and an SSRC-MacArthur Foundation Fellow on International Peace and Security. Andreas has written numerous books, published widely in scholarly journals and policy magazines, presented Congressional testimony, written op-eds for major newspapers, and provided frequent media commentary.

Reviews

[Brian Thorson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read examining the interplay between local conflict and international intervention within Sarajevo. Andreas deviates from the standard analysis of ethnic conflict as the root cause of the longest modern military siege. Instead, he identifies the frontstage and backstage relationships of criminal behavior between governments, peacekeeping forces, criminals, militaries, local residents, journalists, and opportunists.

Most interesting to me are the dual effects of most actions taken by the local and international governments attempting to resolve the conflict and end the siege. As an example, by placing an arms embargo, this advantages the side with weapons, increases the value of weapons on the black market, and creates dependencies on either external support or local organized crime organizations.

My biggest critique is that the book could have been reduced by 20-30 pages by simply removing the repetition found throughout.

[Blue Morse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating read on the complexities behind the siege of Sarajevo, the longest military siege in history.

Andreas examines the “bottom-up, micro dynamics of the siege,” drawing attention to the myriad influencers that often ended up becoming reinforcers.

Humans tend to focus on top-down, macro level approaches that rely heavily on meta-narratives. Andreas does the opposite by detailedly tracing the interaction between the formal and informal dimensions of the siege, particularly between humanitarian assistance and the criminalized war economy. Hence, the siege of Sarajevo becomes a beautiful representation of the classic phrase “we have met the enemy, the enemy is us.”

For example, he shows how the much publicized UN airlift took on a life of its own and ended up becoming an end in itself; institutionalizing the siege and ultimately making the siege tolerable to the international community.

[Liam]

As someone who is only minimally acquainted with the Yugoslav Wars, I found this insightful, and truly fascinating. The basic framework is the intersection between the official “front stage” and clandestine “backstage” actions of state and non-state actors within the siege of Sarajevo which resulted in an abundance of criminality exhibited by practically every actor: gangs, soldiers, state leaders, foreign journalists, UN troops, and aid agencies with a lot of blurring between who fits in which group. Prolonging the siege to a staggering three years benefited these actors to varying degrees, running counter to their front stage aim of ending the siege. It’s terribly messy and presents a highly penetrative view into what fuels human conflict, even outside of this specific context. I will admit it was hard to not think of Ukraine through this lens too, even if it's a completely different situation.

Here are some notes I took:
o Trading two Serbian POWs for a cow.
o Only being able to bribe a border guard with his favorite brand of cigarettes or whiskey.
o The trading tunnel under the UN-controlled airport used for smuggling.
o Patriot mafia: criminal actors who are treated as heroes for their opportunistic actions during the war.
o Ethnic rivals are willing to trade, drink together, and make money with one another but ready to kill each other the next day.
o It’s hip to be in Sarajevo: artists, journalists, and celebrities travel there and are able to stay at the semi-functional Holiday Inn. Situations like a play being staged in the city for the benefit of the foreigners staying there.
o Srebrenica being viewed as a backwater den of thieves which leads to its dehumanization and enables the massacre to occur.

[Milton Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blue helmets and Black markets is a book on the Bosnian-Serbian conflict, focusing on the role on the UNHCR and UNPROFOR during the siege of Sarajevo and the role of black markets throughout the entirety of the conflict. It attempts to present an alternative perspective besides the traditional evil ethnic hatred starting a terrible siege.

The author presents three main lines of argumentation: 1st, The role of Black markets in allowing the siege to happen. He points to their responsibility in bringing food aid into Sarajevo, the impromptu Brigades set up under mob bosses, and later on how they smuggled weapons to both Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian government.

2nd: The complicity of the Bosnian government, Serbs, UNHCR, and Western governments in prolonging the siege. The Bosnian government used it as a platform to gain international recognition. The Serbs as a way to distract international audiences from other war atrocities (eg ethnic cleansing). And the UNHCR as a tool by Western governments to show they were doing something, avoiding putting boots on the ground in a display of realpolitik.

3rd: The relationships between all parties and black markets. Throughout the siege, everyone relied on black markets to procure supplies and equipment, with the UN turning a blind eye to weapon smuggling, and journalists getting fed by stolen UN aid. All this to provide the wider world with a image of the war that included only the relatively bloodless siege.

Throughout the book, the double edged nature of black markets is presented and stressed- how they could help and hinder a nation's defense, and their capacity to do good, though ultimately becoming bad. How they could make or break wars, and were yet criminally (hehe) underrepresented.

I liked this book, and I'm convinced by its argument.

[Peter Macksen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blue Helmets and Black Markets by Peter Andreas is a brief (though arguably bloated through some repetition) study of the political economy in the Siege of Sarajevo in particular, but also with regards to internationalised conflicts more broadly. The book combines elements of narrative history (descriptions of smuggling schemes, accounts of UN officials outdrinking Serbs) with an academic assessment of how crime was both aided and abetted by the internationalisation of the Bosnian War, using Goffman's "frontstage/backstage" dichotomy to explain how appearances may have been kept up for the international community, while the actions had hidden "backstage" effects.

The book clearly has its genesis in academic research and papers written by Andreas, but the addition of narrative history as well as his strong writing style makes this easily accessible for laypeople. That said, laypersons should be aware that there is some reptition in the book that could've been culled, and it is not an attempt by any means to document the Siege of Sarajevo from the perspective of political, diplomatic, or military history.

An interesting if specialised read.

[Aaron Warren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was about a conflict I know almost nothing about so it was interesting. The book however does not go into great detail on the over arching conflict instead he dives into the implications of the way external support likely made the war last longer.

The final chapter has a great summary of the points he made, and the second to last chapter compares this siege with other historic sieges which was really interesting. It was a quick read and I really enjoyed the book. The author did tend to repeat himself pretty regularly, which was my only real gripe, but it helped the information stick in my brain a bit better.

[Tiro · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on the Bosnian conflict giving great insight into the more shady local and international dynamics of the conflict, including how governments abetted and protected criminal thugs who made a fortune on the suffering of the people they purported to defend. And it's less than 200 pages long. Definitely worth reading.

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book looks at the siege of Sarajevo very differently than other historical narratives of this awful war.

[Ian Fleischmann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a good message, but it could have been relayed in about 40 pages max. Most of Andreas' time is spent detailing specific smuggling schemes which may be interesting but do not do much to add to his thesis. If this had been a humanitarian history of the siege of Sarajevo instead of a book about criminalized markets in conflict, these stories would have had a role to play.
The underlying thesis of this book is good. Modern siege warfare exists and is enabled by both global media and humanitarian aid. Furthermore, an inevitable side effect of conflict is the destruction of formal trade markets and the establishment of black markets which can serve as trafficking zones for criminal activity. The resolution of these conflicts can, and often does, codify these criminalized markets and their operators with a degree of economic and political power which inhibits post-conflict economic and social growth.
In short, war presents an opportunity for individuals and entities to translate risk into [political/economic/military] wealth and these gains endure post-conflict. Additionally, war is the continuation of politics with the addition of other means. Violence is certainly part of this, but there is an element of war as theater for the political leaders. This is as true in the siege of Sarajevo as it was in the propagandizing of Patton's march across Europe or the final years of active fighting in Korea.

[Danijel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kaj naj rečem oz. napišem. Vem, da je vseh teh knjigah le majhen delček resnice, ki je vrh ledene gore. Samo resnico mi je težko razumeti, ker nisem živel ali odrastel v takšnih razmerah. Tako kot so zapisali, je v balkanskih kulturah v navadi, da so nepridipravi obenem tudi narodni heroji. Srčno upam, da vsi ti heroji lahko spijo.