Operation Irma

File:Sarajevo Siege ShellingDestruction.jpg

{{Main|Siege of Sarajevo}}

The Bosnian War erupted in March 1992, following Bosnia and Hercegovina's declaration of independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.{{Cite book |page=[https://archive.org/details/warinbosniaherze00stev/page/117 117] |first=Steven L |last=Burg |title=The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina: ethnic conflict and international intervention |publisher=M E Sharpe |year=2000 |isbn=1-56324-309-1 |url=https://archive.org/details/warinbosniaherze00stev/page/117 }} In April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces, representing the Republika Srpska and the Yugoslav People's Army, took up positions in the areas surrounding the Bosnian capital Sarajevo and initiated a siege that was to last for four years.{{cite book |page=297 |first=Robert |last=Donia |title=Sarajevo: a biography |publisher=University of Michigan Press |year=2006 |isbn=0-472-11557-X }} The siege was characterized by sniper fire and shelling directed at the city's buildings and infrastructure and at civilian residents of the city.{{Cite book |page=95 |title=International Law Reports |editor=Elihu Lauterpacht |volume=108 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1998 |isbn=0-521-58070-6}} Reports showed that between the beginning of the siege and November 1992, an average of eight persons were killed and 44 wounded in Sarajevo per day.{{Cite web|url=http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/ANX/VI-01.htm#I.C |title=Study of the battle and siege of Sarajevo - part 1/10 |publisher=United Nations Commission of Experts, established pursuant to security council resolution 780 (1992) |access-date=23 August 2010 |date=27 May 1994 |editor=M. Cherif Bassiouni |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140302163248/http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/ANX/VI-01.htm |archive-date=2 March 2014 }}

On 30 July 1993, a mortar shell fired by Bosnian Serb troops hit a Sarajevo neighbourhood, injuring five-year-old Irma Hadžimuratović and killing several others, including her mother. Sarajevo's overstretched Koševo hospital was unable to provide adequate treatment for the injuries Irma received to her spine, head and abdomen. She developed bacterial meningitis as a result.{{Cite journal |url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20106153,00.html |title=Leaving The Inferno |date=30 August 1993 |volume=40 |issue=9 |first=Ron |last=Arias |journal=People }} Edo Jaganjac, the surgeon treating Hadžimuratović, tried unsuccessfully to have her evacuated on a UN relief flight. He then resorted to distributing her photograph among foreign journalists in Sarajevo. Several picked up Irma's story, giving it widespread coverage in the international (and especially the British) press. On the evening of 8 August, BBC News led with coverage of Irma's injuries. On 9 August, British Prime Minister John Major personally intervened,{{Cite news |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4184373.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121102235920/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4184373.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 November 2012 |date=12 August 1993 |first=William |last=Tuohy |publisher=Chicago Sun-Times |title=Britain Launches 'Operation Irma' }} dispatching an RAF Hercules{{Cite web |url=http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/milestones-of-flight/british_military/1993.cfm |publisher=Royal Air Force museum |title=British Military Aviation in 1993 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101206150034/http://www.rafmuseum.org.uk/milestones-of-flight/british_military/1993.cfm |archive-date=2010-12-06 }} to airlift Irma to London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.{{Cite news |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/9/newsid_2528000/2528483.stm |title=Wounded Bosnian girl flown to London |work=BBC News |date=9 August 1993 }}

In the following days and months dozens more Bosnians were evacuated under a programme the UK media dubbed "Operation Irma". During the week beginning on 9 August, 41 people were taken out of Sarajevo.{{cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1993/08/12/world/sweden-and-britain-to-evacuate-41-bosnians.html?scp=5&sq=%22irma+hadzimuratovic%22&st=nyt |title=Sweden and Britain to evacuate 41 Bosnians |work=New York Times |date=12 August 1993 |first=William E |last=Schmidt }} It was reported later that hundreds were eventually evacuated under the programme.{{cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jkscAAAAIBAJ&pg=6464,5935165&dq=operation-irma&hl=en |publisher=Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel |date=3 April 1995 |title=Girl paralyzed by Serb shelling dies of infection |access-date=27 October 2020 |archive-date=31 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220331171856/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=jkscAAAAIBAJ&pg=6464,5935165&dq=operation-irma&hl=en |url-status=dead }} Other countries, including Sweden and Ireland, organized further airlifts, and the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Norway, and Poland also offered hospital beds.

Though Operation Irma was widely publicized, and was reported in September 1993 to have raised £1 million in donations to evacuate the wounded from Sarajevo,{{Cite news |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-14773435.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121102235927/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-14773435.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=2 November 2012 |date=22 September 1993 |title=Mismanagement and corruption at the UN |publisher=Sunday Times }} it attracted a number of criticisms. These addressed the operation's limited scale, the motives of the British press and foreign governments in launching the airlifts, the devotion of resources to evacuation instead of supplying material support to local medical services, and the broader issue of the United Kingdom's response to the war in Bosnia.

Some critics focused on the small numbers of persons evacuated via the operation. During August 1993 the violence in Bosnia killed on average three children each day, and thousands of others were injured or made homeless. Between the beginning of the siege on 5 April 1992 and the first airlifts under Operation Irma the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had approved only 200 of Sarajevo's 50,000 critically wounded patients for medical evacuation. By 15 August, the British press storm had prompted offers of 1250 hospital beds in 17 countries;{{Cite news |url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HuQVAAAAIBAJ&pg=6037,2744894&dq=operation-irma+donations&hl=en |date=15 August 1993 |title=Offers pouring in for sick Bosnians |publisher=AFP |access-date=27 October 2020 |archive-date=31 March 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220331172009/https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=HuQVAAAAIBAJ&pg=6037,2744894&dq=operation-irma+donations&hl=en |url-status=dead }} though a vast increase on prior offers of help, the total was dwarfed by the estimated 39,000 children requiring hospital treatment throughout Bosnia.{{Cite journal |title=Geneva talks (Bosnia) |journal=Keesing's Record of World Events |url=http://www.keesings.com/search?kssp_search_phrase=%22operation+irma%22&x=0&y=0&kssp_a_id=39603n05xxx&kssp_selected_tab=article&kssp_rspn=1&kssp_v_id=39 |volume=39 |date=August 1993 }}

As well as the scale of the response, critics questioned the criteria against which patients were selected for evacuation. At first the UK was challenged over its decision to include only children in the transports while tens of thousands of adults remained wounded in the city.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cjZlAAAAMAAJ&q=%22operation+irma%22 |title=Civil society and media in global crises: representing distant violence |publisher=Pinter |year=1996 |first=Martin |last=Shaw |isbn=978-1-85567-387-8 }} Sylvana Foa, spokesperson for the UNHCR, commented that Sarajevo should not be regarded as a "supermarket" of photogenic potential refugees, asking "Does this mean Britain only wants to help children? Maybe it only wants children under six, or blond children, or blue-eyed children?"{{Cite book |title=Rethinking geopolitics |first=Simon |last=Dalby |isbn=978-0-415-17250-9 |publisher=Routledge |year=2008 }} Patrick Peillod, head of the United Nations medical evacuation committee, said that the UK had treated Bosnian children "like animals in a zoo"{{Cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/british-hospitals-open-doors-to-bosnian-refugees-1461398.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/british-hospitals-open-doors-to-bosnian-refugees-1461398.html |archive-date=2022-05-24 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=British hospitals open doors to Bosnian refugees |first=Andrew |last=Gliniecki |work=The Independent |date=16 August 1993 }} and was trying to pick and choose evacuees to suit a public relations agenda.{{cite news |url=https://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/72181262.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Aug+16%2C+1993&author=John+Pomfret&pub=The+Washington+Post+%28pre-1997+Fulltext%29&edition=&startpage=A.01&desc=39+Patients+Flown+Out+Of+Sarajevo%3B+Recipient+Countries+Quarrel+With+U.N.+Over+Motivations |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604061617/http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/72181262.html?FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Aug+16,+1993&author=John+Pomfret&pub=The+Washington+Post+(pre-1997+Fulltext)&edition=&startpage=A.01&desc=39+Patients+Flown+Out+Of+Sarajevo%3B+Recipient+Countries+Quarrel+With+U.N.+Over+Motivations |url-status=dead |archive-date=4 June 2011 |title=39 patients flown out of Sarajevo; Recipient countries quarrel with UN over motivations | first=John | last=Pomfret | date=16 August 1993}} When the government revised its approach and included adults on flights out of the city, claims were made that wounded combatants had been among those taken to the UK, Sweden, and Italy, and that patients had paid bribes to be included in the transports.{{Cite news |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/three-soldiers-among-patients-flown-to-uk-1461618.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/three-soldiers-among-patients-flown-to-uk-1461618.html |archive-date=2022-05-24 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live |title=Three soldiers among patients flown to the UK |first=Helen |last=Nowicka |date=17 August 1993 |work=The Independent }}

UK Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd, on 9 August, countered that though the operation would evacuate relatively few of the city's wounded, it was still a benefit: "Because you can't help everybody, it doesn't mean you shouldn't help somebody." Sylvana Foa also later acknowledged that, after months of Western European indifference toward the war in the former Yugoslavia, the new public sympathy inspired by Irma's case was "like day following night."

Beyond these questions of scale and selection, the motives of both the British press and the government in publicizing Hadzimuratovic's case and then in launching Operation Irma were challenged. Some critics disparaged as hypocritical the sudden intensity of coverage devoted to a single victim of what was already a protracted siege. In December 1993 another Sarajevo evacuation program, 'Operation Angel,' received minimal press coverage in the UK, and the Financial Times suggested that such human interest stories captured the popular imagination only during the British press's summer 'silly season' when Parliament was in recess.{{Cite news |title=Mercy's short shelf life |publisher=Financial Times |date=24 December 1993 |first=John |last=Willman }} Susan Douglas, in the October 1993 edition of American magazine The Progressive, said British papers had indulged in "a ghoulish competition to scoop each other over Irma's condition and to use her evacuation to salve British guilt about standing apart from the carnage in Bosnia."{{Cite journal |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_n10_v57/ai_13290569 |title=The View from London |date=October 1993 |journal=The Progressive |first=Susan |last=Douglas }}

The British government was widely depicted as having launched Operation Irma in direct response to the level of press interest.{{cite book |title=A guide to the economies in transition |page=552 |first=Ian |last=Jeffries |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=dTgC6VtIOFsC&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA552 |publisher=Routledge |year=1996 |isbn=0-415-13684-9 }}{{Cite book |first=Brendan |last=Simms |author-link=Brendan Simms |title=Unfinest hour: Britain and the destruction of Bosnia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HktpAAAAMAAJ&q=%22operation+irma%22 |pages=36–7 |publisher=Allen & Lane |year=2001 |isbn=0-7139-9425-8 }} Rescuers themselves joked that "Operation IRMA" was an acronym for "Instant Response to Media Attention."{{Cite book |title=Brassey's Defence Yearbook 1997 |publisher=Brassey's |year=1997 |isbn=1-85753-215-5 }}{{Cite journal |doi=10.1108/13563289910268089 |journal=Corporate Communications |volume=4 |title=Television: force multiplier or town crier in the global village?|issue=2 |year=1999 |first=Philip M |last=Taylor |pages=61–72}} A Council of Europe publication later noted that European governments had been criticized for regarding the exercise as having "more to do with a political and media operation than with humanitarian relief."{{Cite book |editor=Sophie Jeleff |title=A fractured peace: the former Yugoslavia : debates |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bs5Hy2yggBwC&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA11 |publisher=Council of Europe Publishing |year=1998 |isbn=92-871-3780-3 }}{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PMBcg4MOcx0C&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA123 |page=123 |title=The gender perspective, part 42 |isbn=92-871-2822-7 |publisher=Council of Europe |year=1995 }} The mission also received some criticism in the domestic press: Mark Lawson in The Independent called prime minister Major's efforts with the mission a "failure ... to silence the hostile snipers" based on a misunderstanding of popular indecision about Bosnia and on a failure to manage domestic press skepticism.{{Cite news |title=Leadership based on what the papers say |date=17 August 1993 |first=Mark |last=Lawson |author-link=Mark Lawson |work=The Independent |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leadership-based-on-what-the-papers-say-1461658.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20220524/https://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leadership-based-on-what-the-papers-say-1461658.html |archive-date=2022-05-24 |url-access=subscription |url-status=live | location=London}}

Meanwhile, within the former Yugoslavia, Operation Irma was regarded as evidence that the British government had taken sides in the conflict, favouring Bosnian Muslims over Croats or Serbs.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fKtBLkjm83AC&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA123 |title=The media and international security |page=123 |first=Stephen |last=Badsey |publisher=Routledge |year=2000 |isbn=978-0-7146-4848-4 }}{{Cite book |title=Bosnia warriors: living on the front line |isbn=0-7090-6158-7 |publisher=Robert Hale |year=1998 |first=Vaughan |last=Kent-Payne |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Op5pAAAAMAAJ&q=%22poor+little+girl%22 |page=295 }}

Some UN aid workers immediately criticized the operation, arguing that very sick children were poorly served by programmes that obliged them to travel hundreds of miles.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wd5wiQEnRb0C&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA88 |title=On liberal peace: democracy, war and the international order |page=88 |first=John |last=MacMillan |publisher=I.B. Tauris |year=1998 |isbn=1-86064-010-9 }} They argued, too, that with costs of around £100,000 per evacuated child the programme was devouring funds that could have been used to improve local facilities and treatment. The head of Kosevo Hospital's plastic surgery department said "It would be much better if you sent the tools to do our jobs properly than for you to make a big show of a few token evacuations." Countering this, A.D. Redmond of the Overseas Development Administration (the predecessor to the Department for International Development) wrote in November 1993 to the British Medical Journal:{{Cite journal |author1=A D Redmond |title=The war in Bosnia: Operation Irma acted as a catalyst |journal=British Medical Journal |date=27 November 1993 |volume=307 |issue=6916 |page=1425 |pmc=1679624 |doi=10.1136/bmj.307.6916.1425}}

The Overseas Development Administration has been foremost in supplying medical and humanitarian aid to the people of Bosnia throughout the conflict ... In some circumstances medical teams are needed, requested, and supplied, but in others medical supplies alone are the most appropriate form of aid. I have also, however, received personal pleas from doctors whom I know well to evacuate patients who cannot be treated in Sarajevo ... No solution will suffice. We are all trying to help.

File:Evstafiev-bosnia-travnik-girl-doll-refugee.jpg

The press coverage surrounding the evacuation was later cited as an example of "disaster pornography", in academic analyses concerned with the portrayal of child victims of violence and disaster in ways that reaffirm those victims' remoteness from and subjectivity to western (here, Northwestern European) agency.{{Cite journal |doi=10.1111/j.1467-7717.1994.tb00310.x |url=http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119276307/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130105235334/http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119276307/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0 |url-status=dead |archive-date=2013-01-05 |title=Innocents Abroad: Western Fantasies of Childhood and the Iconography of Emergencies |first=Erica |last=Burman |author-link=Erica Burman |journal=Disasters |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=238–253 |year=1994 |pmid=7953493 | bibcode=1994Disas..18..238B |url-access=subscription }} In a similar vein, Dominic Strinati has presented the press interest in Operation Irma as evidence of a popular appetite for news stories that resemble the structure and tone of fictional narratives on war: "War films work most effectively ... by stripping back the too easily confusing contextual details of a conflict and focusing instead on the 'existential' problem of the protagonist's experience – the problem of being human in dehumanising circumstances ... News reporting – in this case from the Balkans – then has to compete even at the level of basic comprehension with this already established way of understanding things ... It may not be surprising, therefore, that one of the most memorable news 'stories' to come out of Bosnia was that of Irma, a rescued child."{{Cite book |title=Formations: a 21st century media studies textbook |page=110 |editor=Dan Fleming |first=Dominic |last=Strinati |chapter=Taking popular culture seriously |isbn=0-7190-5846-5 |year=2001 |publisher=Manchester University Press }} The operation has also been portrayed as representative of a trend whereby public reaction to media coverage of disasters leads and shapes official state response,{{Cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MrvJ6wJY1icC&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA170 |chapter=Constructing and deconstructing childhood: images of children and charity appeals |title=Psychological research: innovative methods and strategies |page=174 |editor=John Trevor Haworth |first=Erica |last=Burman |isbn=0-415-11790-9 |publisher=Routledge |year=2006 }} even precipitating the creation of policy where none has existed before.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=AosWAQAAIAAJ&q=%22operation+irma%22 |title=Humanitarian intervention?

|first=Nicholas |last=Hopkinson |publisher=Her Majesty's Stationery Office |isbn=0-11-701521-0 |year=1995 |page=28 }} Erica Burman, developing this theme, has argued that Irma Hadžimuratović became an "emotional focus" for a British public dismayed by its government's ambiguous and cautious attitude to the conflict in Bosnia:

The widespread anxieties and consternation over government inactivity throughout the crisis could be deflected and resolved by rescuing a handful of children. In terms of recovering a sense of agency (in a conflict characterised by protestations of powerlessness by political and military authorities alike), the desire to do (and be seen to do) something was expressed and assuaged by transporting and incorporating some of the need and distress into the UK where it could be tended to and made better.

A textbook on public relations cites the episode as an example of a "bargaining game" in which various players – the UNHCR, British government, and press – all sought to achieve individual advantage.{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=djAybSNdvMUC&q=%22operation+irma%22&pg=PA42 |title=Public relations: an introduction |page=42 |first=Shirley |last=Harrison |publisher=CENGAGE Learning |year=2000 |isbn=1-86152-547-8 }}

Despite initial improvement, Irma Hadžimuratović was paralyzed from the neck down and required a ventilator to breathe.{{cite news |publisher=People |volume=43 |issue=15 |url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20105535,00.html |title=Losing little Irma |date=17 April 1995 }} She died of septicaemia in Great Ormond Street on 1 April 1995, aged seven,{{cite web| url = http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20105535,00.html| url-status = dead| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20090602034033/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20105535,00.html| archive-date = 2009-06-02| title = Losing Little Irma : People.com}} following twenty months in intensive care.{{Cite news |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/02/world/rescued-bosnian-girl-dies.html?scp=1&sq=%22irma+hadzimuratovic%22&st=nyt |title=Rescued Bosnian girl dies |work=New York Times |date=2 April 1995 }} The coroner at her inquest called her "a victim of war".

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{{Bosnian War}}

{{Wars and battles involving Serbs}}

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Category:1993 in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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