The first casualty of war is the truth, a dictum that has held historically, and a warning that underpinned some of the thinking behind the decision taken by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s 57 participating states to deploy the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.
In the age of information warfare and alternative facts, it is increasingly difficult for policy-makers and the general public to make informed decisions. With the lives and livelihoods of millions of people in eastern Ukraine hanging in the balance – and with other far-reaching implications – the need to establish facts is paramount. Uninformed policy is the last thing anyone wants. If peace is to be restored, it will be done as a result of decisions made by men and women armed with facts.
To ensure that the SMM is part of the solution – and not the problem; not just another source of biased non-factual information – strict operational guidelines have been established.
Operating on the principle of parity, patrols are planned and executed to ensure equal patrolling on both sides of the contact line.
Obviously, events on the ground may sometimes dictate otherwise, and as such a flexible operational posture is maintained that allows us to respond to incidents or increased kinetic activity in a given area. We have, for instance, recently been devoting considerable resources to the deterioration in the Petrovsky district in Donetsk city, and surrounding satellite towns. Incidents involving large numbers of civilian casualties – such as happened in the northeastern outskirts of Mariupol in January 2015 – obviously entail focusing our attention, sometimes temporarily at the expense of other areas. With less than 600 monitors covering an area the size of Switzerland, it could not be otherwise.
In tandem with parity at the operational level, the SMM strictly adheres to the principle of objectivity, insisting on reporting only the facts. Our daily reports – although often making for dry reading – constitute a factual archive, as well as a daily record, of events and incidents, not just in Donbas, but throughout Ukraine.
Already widely used by journalists and researchers and no doubt by historians in time to come, these reports are recognized as objective source material, allowing for journalistic and academic output that informs, elucidates and generally contributes to the quest for a peace based on justice and law rather than prejudice and ignorance.
After three years of conflict – with agreements in place on a ceasefire, the withdrawal of weapons, the disengagement of forces and hardware and mine action, all signed by the sides – something, however, is clearly not working.
Weapons proscribed by the Minsk agreements – namely tanks, mortars and artillery, including multiple launch rocket systems – remain in place; disengagement, even in the three pilot areas agreed, remains at best only partially implemented; mines and unexploded ordnance are littered all across Donbas; and ceasefire remains the exception rather than the rule.
The responsibility for this failure – for non-implementation of agreements, for this continued violence – clearly lies with the sides. The 51 civilian fatalities confirmed by the OSCE SMM thus far this year – double the number recorded in the same period last year – died because the sides have refused to do what they promised.
Instead of taking responsibility for their actions, those responsible for this continuing carnage have instead sought to lay blame elsewhere, often on the shoulders of the OSCE SMM.
Two weeks ago, for instance, journalists – demonstrating that many still insist on being part of the problem rather than the solution – accused us of having failed to report on civilian casualties in the Trudovskyi area of Petrovskyi district in Donetsk city.
It was at best an inaccuracy if not a blatant lie.
Not only had we reported the facts, we had done so despite restrictions on our access to the area imposed by the so-called “DPR”. On the way to the scene of the tragedy, our patrol was initially forced to turn back because of the risk from possible land mines on a section of unpaved road. On a second attempt to reach the area, so-called “DPR” armed men stopped the patrol and refused to allow it to proceed for 40 minutes. The SMM also reported the facts despite the dangers posed, with the patrol in Trudovskyi recording 34 explosions assessed as caused by outgoing mortar rounds and four shots of small-arms fire 1km north-west of its position.
The unarmed civilian monitors on that patrol to Trudovskyi exemplify the dedication and bravery that has been the hallmark of the SMM since the beginning of hostilities. Their dedication to establishing the facts in the face of danger – to contributing to the return to normalization and stabilization – is in marked contrast to the armed men firing weapons from and on residential areas, armed men who instead of allowing the OSCE SMM to do its job, have regularly prevented it from doing so. These armed men have refused to remove mines, resulting, so far this year, in the death of 17 civilians and the injury of 43 others. One member of an SMM patrol was killed in Pryshyb on 23 April, most probably the result of a mine. They regularly deny us access to certain areas, especially in areas not controlled by the government, and often threaten our monitors. Recently an armed man in Petrivske even harassed an unarmed female civilian monitor.
Undermining the OSCE SMM – restricting its access and reducing its ability to report on the facts – in and of itself is not the reason for the continuation of violence. But it does nonetheless reduce the effectiveness and efficacy of one of the international community’s main tools for resolving the conflict.
The recent victims of violence in Trudovskyi and in neighboring Marinka and Krasnohorivka join the estimated 10,000 others killed since the start of this conflict. More will undoubtedly follow as those inflicting this pain on the civilian population refuse to face reality, and worse, continue to try to distort it.
Truth is sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes hard to face. But no future, none at least involving peace and normalization, is possible, without facing it.
Truth – as the first casualty – is not dead, partly because of the brave monitors of the OSCE SMM, who every day try to establish facts on the ground. It has been injured though and if it is to recover, freedom of movement – as promised by the sides – needs to be restored, and threats and risks posed to the SMM by the sides need to end.
Facts matter because lives matter.
Alexander Hug is the deputy chief monitor of the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
