Aid missions turned peacekeepers into hostages and fed victims for slaughter.

Evidence

To the passive violence of the Western policy makers was added a false humanitarianism. By focusing the UN mission on the supply of humanitarian aid while refusing to stop the campaign of genocide, the UN Security Council created a system that put UN peacekeepers as suppliers of humanitarian aid to Bosnia-as hostages. Whether or not they were actually detained by radical Serb militias was not important. They could be detained at will and thus served as hostages whether or not they were confined. — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 339

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The insight that whether hostages were actually detained didn’t matter — hostage status is a function of credible capability, not actual confinement — is dense and disturbing, worth sitting with.
• XREF: Connects to the Milgrom/Shapiro material on how perceived capability and reputation, not actual enforcement, drive outcomes in institutional arrangements.