The Sniper and the Free Lance Photographer:
Problems in Peace Enforcement

S.P. Dawkins, Foreign Service officer, ret.

Infantry Doctrine

If an infantry lieutenant takes a casualty from sniper fire when moving his platoon up to a line of departure, the lieutenant reports the sniper's location to his company commander and moves on. His mission is to get his platoon on line, prepared to attack or defend; not to stop and deal with a sniper in an area he is passing through.

In peace enforcement operations, however, that lieutenant, his platoon, and lots of local people will live and stay in that area. So will the sniper.

A sniper without press coverage presents only a police problem. Yet press coverage of snipers escalates to a political problem splashed across hundreds of millions of TV screens. The link here is often the free lance photographer who specializes in catching on film the agony of an innocent at the moment a sniper's bullet kills. Infantry doctrine now is not relevant.

Political Realities

The sad political reality is that the people of the world will pay to see on film or in photographs somebody being killed. Next, the press, and then the public, and then their governments will demand that the suffering be stopped. A CINC can find himself dealing with what used to be the minor problem of a platoon leader. The political reality is that snipers must be stopped early in any peace enforcement operation. The problem is political. It does no good to criticize the media.

The Free Lance Photographer

Let us imagine that somewhere in Europe or the Middle East a young man with a camera, no job, hungry children, and a long suffering wife decides that he has to make some money. The way for a free lance (unemployed) photographer to make money in a short time is to shoot scenes of violence. A war or a peace enforcement operation offers the best opportunities. Let us also assume that our young photographer is not an evil man. He needs to support his family and he knows that photo editors around the world will pay for pictures of violence. He has not thought out yet what he has to do. He just wants those pictures. The incidents described below happened; but the photographer is pure fiction and designed to dramatize the sniper problem. I know of no American photographer who did any of these things.

Five Steps to Awareness

This young photographer will go through five steps to awareness. To illustrate this, let us assume that the scene is Sarajevo during the summer of 1995, before the Bosnia cease-fire in October. He hitches a ride into Sarajevo from the coast with an aid convoy and takes a room at the Holiday Inn between the airport and the city. At the bar, he asks other photographers where he can get the best pictures. They tell him to talk to Ratko, or Mohammed, or Dario. Each one coming from one of the three ethnic factions, but all interested and cooperating with each other to make money.

Step One - Our photographer pays his new "associate" 100 German marks, the only currency accepted in Bosnia, to show him a vantage point where he can get good pictures. The associate briefs him on the sporadic sniper fire in that district, and shows him where to sit with his back safely against a good brick wall, and what time of day the sunshine and the light will be best. After three days nothing has happened.

Step Two - The room at the Holiday Inn costs 220 DM a day. The photographer talks to another associate and asks him for help. For 200 DM, the photographer is taken to an area where the associate knows a sniper will be active. The photographer now gets pictures of frightened civilians crouched behind a UN armored car waiting for the sniper to stop shooting. That sells.

Step Three - The associate now offers to arrange a meeting between the photographer and a sniper. The photographer pays in advance, with the understanding that the sniper will not fire his weapon. When the photographer meets the sniper he sees that he has a firing position on the 8th floor of an abandoned apartment building set among many similar buildings. Resting on a table with a filthy mattress, the sniper has his match rifle, spotting scope, windage tables, and can sight through a hole in the building, and through the hole in another building, and get a field of fire on a road not far from the Holiday Inn. The photographer gets pictures he can sell.

The sniper, through an interpreter, now shows the photographer how to look through the spotting scope. The sniper points out two people standing on a street 350 meters away, unaware of the danger. The sniper then challenges the photographer to choose which one he wants to live. The photographer protests that there was to be no shooting, he is not a part of the conflict, and he wants to leave. The sniper then quickly fires two rounds, killing both civilians. He taunts the photographer that he could have saved one. "Who is the war criminal now?" says the sniper.

Step Four - The photographer realizes what is happening. He can pay an associate to set the scene for the most profitable picture of all - a civilian going down at the moment of impact. The sniper agrees to kill a civilian on order. In Sarajevo, one sniper shot a woman leading a small boy across a street. One shot slammed into the woman's abdomen. She turned in shock and horror to look at her son just as the sniper's second round took off the top of his head. (I do not know if a photographer arranged this true incident, but in Bosnia it was always wise not to assume these profitable incidents were a coincidence.) In this case, the sniper was a Serb and the victims were Bosnian Muslims. The hue and cry against this barbaric cruelty backfired against the Serbs and they stopped the sniping at that time.

Step Five - The Serbs then pulled back their snipers and the shooting stopped. But, then it started again. The same horrible pictures of civilians under sporadic sniper fire were back on the front pages of the International Herald Tribune and thousands of newspapers and TV screens world wide. Our photographer produced the dramatic death pictures he wanted.

In the meantime, the French Army units in the sector were suspicious. Their intelligence told them the Serbs had indeed pulled back their snipers. So, French officers located the buildings where the new snipers were active. Next the French moved up armored cars and infantry. When the French were ready, they called the Muslim HQ and explained that they had located the "Serb" snipers and were prepared for an all out assault on them. The French then watched those buildings. Within minutes, the French saw snipers running out of the buildings and scampering to safety.

An operations analyst would say that the French tactic here was putting information into the top of an organization and watching to see where the results come out. The snipers now were, in fact, Muslims shooting their own people. The anti-Serb publicity was just too good to pass up. So, the Muslims assigned their own snipers to kill their own people for the viewing public of the world and blamed the Serbs. It was a fact that during the entire war the Muslims ran a superb public relations campaign while the Serbs never tried.

This time most sniper activity in Sarajevo ended. Both Serb and Muslim commanders realized that it was not in their political interests to commit snipers to killing civilians.

The Serb Strategy Fails

Why were the Serbs killing civilians in Sarajevo? Their goal was to terrorize the population and drive the Muslims and the Muslim government north to Tuzla. The Serbs wanted Sarajevo as the capital of their Republika Srpska. The Muslims resisted, however, and refused to flee Sarajevo. By the summer of 1995, the Serb strategy had failed. The Serbs did not know what to do; they did not know how to change their policy of terror. NATO bombing then nudged them to the Dayton peace talks.

However, the Muslims had a problem too. In fact, the press coverage of the Serb snipers killing Muslim civilians had long worked in favor of the Muslim government. The world's sympathy was with the Muslim victims. And the world's condemnation again turned on the Serbs.

The political reality is that the sniping benefited the Muslim government and hurt the Serbs.

The Public Demands

The public demands gory pictures. The photo editors pay and the public buys the newspapers. I heard a correspondent for a major U.S. weekly news magazine try for 15 minutes by telephone one night in a Sarajevo hotel try to sell his photo editor in New York color photos taken by a free lancer of remains exhumed from a mass grave. The photo editor eventually refused because the skeletal feet sticking out of the earth did not have civilian shoes on them. Not dramatic enough.

Our mythical photographer walked through the five steps to awareness of the symbiotic relationship between the free lance photographer and the sniper. They both understand it. Army officers on the ground must understand this relationship too.

Snipers - A Political Problem

Snipers must be stopped in peace enforcement operations. The ability of snipers to time their killing to the needs of photographers ensures that snipers will get far more media attention than almost any other kind of atrocity. Killing snipers rarely solves the problem, however. In fact, the snipers are rarely killed and easily replaced. The solution remains political. The Serbs pulled back their snipers from the Sarajevo suburbs because their political strategy of terror had failed. The Muslims pulled back their snipers because the political benefits were turned against them too.
Since the political objectives of warring factions center on control of territory, the CINC must tie his recognition of their control to respecting cease fire accords and to ensuring that no snipers operate in their territories.

Sarajevo Again

In January 1996, less than one month after the Implementation Force (IFOR) arrived under the command of Admiral Leighton Smith, Jr. USN, Serb snipers started shooting civilians in a Muslim area not far from the Holiday Inn. The Admiral immediately told the local Serb authorities that they were responsible because the fire came from their territory. The Serbs denied any responsibility.

The Admiral then flew to Belgrade and met with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Explaining carefully what he had told the Serb leaders in Bosnia, the Admiral put the question to Milosevic: "If the sniper fire comes from a Serb area, I think the Serb authorities should take responsibility." Milosevic thought for a minute or two and then responded. "I agree." After the Admiral left the lunch (which the author attended) Milosevic called the Serb authorities and summoned the speaker of the Serb parliament, Momcilo Krajisnik, to Belgrade. We do not know what Milosevic said to Krajisnik, but the sniper fire stopped.

Conclusion

Peace enforcement often takes a minor infantry problem up to the level of politics at the chief of state level. Four star admirals, rather than infantry lieutenants, now resolve the sniper problem. The results are more permanent and the political authorities on all sides stop killing civilians. The free lance photographer merely drives the solution.

A Note About the Author: Stephen P. Dawkins, a retired Foreign Service officer, served as the POLAD (political advisor) to the Commander-in-Chief of the Implementation Force in Bosnia from December 1995 to September 1996. Prior to that he was POLAD to the former Chief of Staff, U.S. Army, General Gordon R. Sullivan. From 1958-1961, he served as an infantry lieutenant and platoon leader in the USMC.

1998, Foreign Area Officer Association
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