With the Hague justice tribunal now concluding, it’s worth remembering the role that American and British special operations forces played in capturing many Bosnian-Serb war criminals.
The individuals on the target lists were the war’s worst of the worst. Responsible for Nazi-style concentration camps and genocidal rampages, they turned a beautiful land into a hellish dystopia.
Fortunately, hunting them down across the 1990s were elements of Britain’s 22nd Special Air Service, Seal Team Six, and Delta Force.
And what characterized the various snatch operations was patient intelligence collection and innovative tactics. The special operations forces would sometimes spend weeks in the field, waiting for a suspect to pass their location. Had they been compromised, they would have been caught, tortured, and executed. But the hard work paid off.
They were able to secure one of the authors of the Srebrenica massacre, Radislav Krstić and a senior concentration camp commander, Goran Jelisić. Dozens of other suspects were also detained, but utilizing the element of surprise, the American and British “operators” ensured very few of their targets were killed.
One exception was Simo Drljaca, who inadvisably decided to fire on an SAS team that confronted him. Amusingly, Drljaca’s complaining supporters then received a quick rebuke from the stabilization force commander, Gen. William Crouch.
Sometimes, of course, things didn’t go to plan. As The Guardian recalls,
Nevertheless, it’s worth considering that without the SAS and their U.S. counterparts, many war criminals would likely still be at large.
