The Netherlands will contribute 160 troops to the European operation EUFOR Althea in Bosnia and Herzegovina from the end of 2023, the Defence Ministry in The Hague announced on Thursday.
The role of this operation, which took over from NATO in 2004, is to ensure compliance with the Dayton (US) peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia. The war had a death toll of 100,000 from 1992 to 1995 and included tragic instances of ethnic cleansing.
The European Union wants to strengthen Althea because of an upsurge in tensions in the region following the war in Ukraine and attempts by Russia to increase its influence there, through the Bosnian Serb entity (Republika Srpska, RS), which has traditionally been close to Moscow.
The Netherlands announced in June last year its intention to further contribute to stability in the Western Balkans. Bosnia and Herzegovina was granted EU candidate status last December.
The Dutch government said it will send a 150-person infantry company from the Marine Corps to station there for one year, starting in October. A small intelligence unit of ten people will also be deployed from June for a period of two years, Dutch Defence Minister Kajsa Ollongren said in a letter to parliament.
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Dutch troops were there for the Srebrenica ethnic massacre of the Bosnian war. The enclave of Srebrenica, bordering Serbia, was taken on 11 July 1995 by Bosnian Serb forces while the area was under the protection of Dutch peacekeepers. Nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed in the worst massacre in Europe since the Second World War. Two Dutch servicemen had also lost their lives in that mission.
In July last year, Ollongren had offered her country’s “deepest apologies” for not having been able to prevent the genocide in Srebrenica, while stressing that the responsibility lay with “the Serbian army alone.”
