Top secret plan to withdraw British troops from battle zone
DEFENCE chiefs drafted a “high-risk” top-secret plan to swiftly withdraw British troops from a key battle zone during the Bosnian war almost a quarter of a century ago, newly declassified documents reveal.
The air evacuation from Gorazde, involving 1,500 military personnel, was presented to then prime minister John Major amid fears the Muslim enclave would fall victim to a brutal onslaught by the Bosnian Serb Army as tensions escalated throughout the former Yugoslavia.
Details of the strategy, codenamed Operation Screwdriver, disclosed how helicopters would be brought in, under the cover of relative darkness, to airlift British troops to safety during an operation lasting “10 to 15 minutes”.
But it was not without risk, documents released by the National Archives at Kew show.
According to briefing notes, the operation in the Adriatic would have involved a fleet of 30 helicopters, all on standby nearby in Italy.
An advance copy of a letter from new defence secretary Michael Portillo to the prime minister in July 1995 said: “We must never lose sight of the fact that this is a high-risk operation in military terms.”
It added: “It is planned that some disruption measures will be employed immediately prior to the evacuation sortie; these would range from the precise electronic jamming of ‘enemy’ communications through to the destruction of any key installations positing a threat.”
The note warned that UN commanders might be sensitive to such measures provoking reprisals, particularly hostage-taking, with Bosnian Serb forces detaining British troops on tours of duty with the UN peacekeeping corps throughout the conflict.