Paid to Predict

In 1993, Ewen Southby-Tailyour joined the British Foreign Office for duties with the European Community Monitoring Mission. He was also tasked, informally, by MI6 to report on a few characters. Monitoring the cease-fire violations along the Confrontation Line between Croatia and the Republic of Serbian Krajina plus the humanitarian and economic issues for the regeneration of Dalmatia were professionally satisfying; as were a covert beach reconnaissance, interviewing war criminals and pacing the length of a ‘secret’ airfield that was eventually used by US Predator unmanned surveillance aircraft to support Croatia’s ethnic cleansing of all Serbs from Krajina. Closing in on hard evidence that Germany and the US were breaking UN Arms Embargo 713, the author was caught in the diplomatic cross-fire between the Greeks, who supported Serbia and the French who supported Croatia. To prevent the French knowing of any illicit arms embargo, he was order by the Greeks to falsify his reports. He resigned from the mission.

This is a thought-provoking, disturbing tale of deceit and duplicity between European countries (and, notably, the US) all supposedly supporting a common cause—peace in the Balkans—but, in effect, helping to ethnically cleanse 200,000 Serbs from their 500 year-old homeland.