The cooperation between Pakistan and Bosnia and Herzegovina can be traced back to the Bosnian civil war which was responsible for 100,000 casualties. During the war, Pakistan supplied weapons to the Bosnians, despite the UN-imposed arms embargo, and airlifted refugees into its territory.
The author, Adeel Yousaf, notes that since then, the two states have cooperated in the education, defense, and economic sectors. In 2005, when Pakistan was struck with a devastating earthquake, Bosnia and Herzegovina supported Pakistan by assisting in the health and education sector.
The author asserts that given their strong ties, the cooperation between the two states can extend to other sectors as well.
The Civil War in Bosnia and the Role of Pakistan
After World War II, the modern Balkan states demanded separation. Separatists longed for freedom from Yugoslavia. As Serbia had the advantage of majority power, it was against the separatist agenda. Like the other states, when Bosnia demanded freedom in 1992, Serbia sent the army over to Bosnia. The propaganda was not just opposing the call of independence but another rather horrific and inhumane agenda, ethnic cleansing.
The Yugoslavian army, comprising mostly of Serbs, attacked many of the Bosnian populations such as Zvornik, Foča, and Višegrad. Slobodan Milosevic was the central figure for sending out tanks to the villages of Bosnia, igniting a spark that ended with a civil war in Bosnia, killing about 100,000 people and having more than 2,000,000 people displaced. Another one of the key people in the civil war in Bosnia was Ratko Mladic, more commonly “The Butcher of Bosnia”. He assisted the army in carrying out the savage attacks.
Ratko Mladic arrives at Sarajevo airport, 1993
“General Ratko Mladic (centre) arrives for UN-mediated talks at Sarajevo airport, June 1993” by Evstafiev Mikhail is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5
The war had a number of brutal outcomes such as the mass rape of Bosnian women by the Army of Republika Srpska and the Srebrenica massacre. The Srebrenica massacre, also called the Bosnian genocide, is one of the most brutal ethnic cleansing massacres in history. Separating the men and children of Srebrenica from their families and throwing their bodies in marshes after brutally murdering about 10,000 Muslims led to protests all over the world. Bosnia was suffering.
Help from the Government of Pakistan
The United Nations had imposed an arms embargo in Bosnia. The fascist Serbs took advantage of this and brutally murdered the innocent Bosnians. The president of Pakistan at that time, Sardar Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari, said, “The Western policy of appeasement of the Serbian aggressors is not going to pay.” Pakistan decided to provide Bosnia weapons in spite of the embargo imposed by the UN. Anti-tank missiles were provided to the Bosnian government so it could fight off the Serbs which eventually capsized the civil war in the favor of Bosnia.
On the orders of the president to the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan, PIA (Pakistan International Airline) airlifted Bosnian refugees into Pakistan, safely to the Bosnian village made specifically for them. The role of Abdul Sattar Edhi cannot be ignored as he raised about 1 million PKR in one day to help the Bosnian refugees.
A wartime loan of 20 million USD was given to Bosnia, later converted into a “gift” from Pakistan. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, along with then Turkish premierTansu Ciller, visited the Bosnian capital to help those in need and to bring the attention of the west to the suffering of the Bosnians, who, apparently had been blind to the manslaughter taking place in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Help from Pakistan Army to the Bosnians
PAK-BATS (Pakistan Battalion) struggled for 34 hours and set up a camp for 50,000+ Bosnians in the war-ravaged state. Pakistan had the largest number of human resources provided to Bosnia and the largest number of human lives lost in the mission. The engineers of the Pakistan Army eliminated land mines, which ultimately opened the roads to the locations that the Serbian army had declared as no-man zones.
The ISI and the Civil War in Bosnia
The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), under the supervision of General Javed Nasir, ran a military intelligence program. The ISI provided a systematic supply of arms to the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The overall help from Pakistan to Bosnia and Herzegovina was indeed one of the most important factors in helping the Bosnians fight the Serbs. As a result of this assistance in the form of weapons, military personnel, and refuge, the idea of federalization and centralization of Yugoslavia by the Serbian nationalists went up in ashes.
