British Troops are a wake up call for Bosnian War Criminals

Heavy snow was falling from a black, pre-dawn Balkan sky when the night time silence was broken at 0330 hrs by the sound of 120 pairs of boots scrambling into vehicles primed and ready to go. Doors slammed and the sixty or so vehicles set off for the hour and a half drive east from the Banja Luka Metal Factory - home to 1,200 of EUFOR's (European Union Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina) Multi National Task Force (NW).

It was destined to be a very good day for the garrison's battle group, the 1st Battalion The Royal Ghurkha Rifles (RGR). More than 12 hours later they would return with valuable intelligence.

It had been the latest and, as the Gurkhas were in the final month of their deployment, the last of the battle group's intelligence gathering operations, designed to disrupt the networks that support major war criminals. In this case the individual being targeted – not for arrest but simply for the paperwork and computer files he might yield – was suspected of having financial links with Radovan Karadzic, the wartime Bosnian leader.

The suspect got his morning knock at 0700 hrs, early enough to ensure everyone was in the house and avoid endangering children on their way to school. To keep the element of surprise, the operation was conducted at just 36 hours notice and on a need-to-know basis. There have been marked improvements in local police security over the years, but leaks can still jeopardise an operation. Lieutenant Colonel Tim Warrington, the battle group's Commanding Officer, said:

"I am 100 per cent certain they didn't know we were coming because of the things we found. He definitely wouldn't have had that stuff around if he had known. All I can say is it was well worth getting out of bed for, even at three in the morning. We've got him bang to rights."

According to the local papers the next day, the finds in the suspect's home included a tin containing 100,000 Euros:

"I need to keep 20,000 Euros available for each family member, for weddings and funerals and general living expenses," he told reporters.

Not bad in a country where those lucky enough to have a job can expect to earn little more than 250 Euros a month, if they get paid at all. But the money was incidental to the success of the battalion's operation. What mattered more was the information gleaned. It gave the authorities another piece in the jigsaw linking organised crime to the support of war criminals. And it also showed some of the institutional problems that the Bosnians face in flushing out official corruption.

The suspect had been the Republica Srpska Director of Roads – a position of real power – until he was dismissed by Lord Ashdown (International High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina) last year. As with all these operations, it was the local authorities who took the lead. EUFOR soldiers operated, as one officer put it, like "a prefect in a school playground, making sure that the area was safe for the authorities to work in."

For Major Philip Hannah of B Company, 1 RGR, this was an excellent way to finish off the deployment. He and his men had been conducting operations in Bosnia for close to six months. Fourteen four-man teams worked around the clock in three-week stints, almost constantly in the field:

"This has been a great way to end the tour," said Hannah. "It's great to finish on something big that goes well and in which no one got hurt."

That was testament to the professionalism of the Gurkhas, a quality of which Hannah is overtly proud:

"Getting it right is vitally important. We could easily have entered the house without being noticed and then just popped up, but that way you can startle people and end up with someone getting hurt."

In January 2006, the Gurkhas had completed another successful raid where some "first division" criminals were arrested. Following this, a group of "second division" crooks promptly handed themselves into the local police. Hannah recalled with obvious satisfaction:

"They'd seen what my guys could do and the quality of the intelligence we were working with, and they just assumed we'd be coming for them next."

This article, by Ian Carr, first appeared in Focus - the newspaper for people in defence.