Byzantine Blog

Was there “Genocide” at Srebrenica?

Excerpts from Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis

Unlike US-supported attacks by Croatian troops on Serb-inhabited UN Protected Zones (Western Slavonia and the Krajina), the Bosnian Serb Army’s capture of Srebrenica was a predictable response to military provocations. Unlike the Croatian operations Flash and Storm, the Bosnian Serbs helped arrange a massive safe passage operation to Tuzla for thousands of Srebrenica residents who chose to leave from nearby Potocari where the buses were deployed.

By the first week of August 1995, 35,632 people had registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian Government as displaced persons, survivors of Srebrenica. If the goal of the Serbs had been genocide, or even an act of genocide, there would have been no safe passage for the civilian population. According to Carlos Martins Branco, “if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide, instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north — which left the possibility of escape to the north, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no-one escaped.”

The premise that Serbian forces executed 7,000 to 8,000 people “was never a possibility,” according to former BBC journalist Jonathan Rooper, who has investigated the events that followed the capture of Srebrenica on site and through official records over many years, and whose findings are presented in the upcoming report of the Srebrenica Research Group. He points out that numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce battles as the Muslim 28th Division and military age men accompanied them.

Srebrenica Population Before and After — The Numbers Don’t Add Up

The official numbers provided also preclude the possibility of such a large number of executions. In addition to the 35,632 registered survivors, the International Committee of the Red Cross observed that “several thousand men,” (at least 3,000) who fled from Srebrenica with the 28th Division had survived the harrowing journey across Serb held territory and were redeployed to fight elsewhere “without their families being informed.”

Dutch military observers and British SAS intelligence officers in Srebrenica witnessed a bitter battle between Muslim factions, before the Serbs entered the town. These observers say that the clash between Muslim men who wanted to stay and defend the town and those who followed orders to evacuate, left about 100 were killed and their bodies were left where they had fallen. Some 700 Muslim soldiers from Srebrenica made their way to Zepa, emerging safely when that town fell to the Serbs during the last week of July 1995.

“Taking all these factors together, in order for 7,300 people from Srebrenica to have been massacred, the population of the safe area before it fell to the Serbs, would have had to be well over 46,000 — a figure far in excess of any credible figure put forward at the time,” Rooper reports.

Patricia Wald, one of the Tribunal Judges who convicted Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic of crimes at Srebrenica, wrote an article on the case for Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics in 2003 where she states that “prior to the attack, Srebrenica was a village of some 37,000 inhabitants”.

“Judge Wald was apparently supremely unaware that her own figure made it impossible for the crimes for which Krstic was convicted to have taken place,” Rooper states.

According to Michael Mandel, Professor of International law at York University in Toronto the Tribunal’s claim genocide occurred at Srebrenica was not supported by the facts it found or by the law it cited. Even the trial chamber’s conclusion that ‘Bosnian Serb forces executed several thousand Bosnian Muslim men [with the] total number of victims ... likely to be within the range of 7,000 to 8,000’ was not supported by its specific findings.

Bodansky: Srebrenica Muslim Casualties in the Hundreds, Not Thousands

Yossef Bodansky, who has written several books on the war in Yugoslavia and also serves as Research Director of ISSA, calls the 7,000 figure “disinformation” and notes that “all independent forensic evidence points to Muslim casualties in the hundreds. Continued emphasis on such allegedly high numbers of Muslim deaths at Srebrenica also obfuscates the Muslim murders in that city, earlier, of Serb civilians.”

Bodansky also wrote extensively on the link between Osama bin Laden and the Bosnian Islamists in numerous articles and special reports and three books, including Offensive in the Balkans: the Potential for a Wider War as a Result of Foreign Intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995), Some Call it Peace: Waiting for War in the Balkans (1996), and Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (1999).

Rooper points out that the 40,000 inhabitants the UN used in July of 1995 before the capture of Srebrenica roughly matches the number of former residents accounted for in the aftermath. A commander of the Muslim-dominated Army of BiH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) later confirmed to parliament in Sarajevo that 5,000 BiH troops escaped largely intact to Tuzla while the UN registered some 35,632 civilian survivors.

International Outcry Only a Month Later, Courtesy of Albright

While the capture of Srebrenica was reported in July 1995, as it unfolded, an international outcry only took place a month later, after Madeleine Albright, then US representative to the UN, held up a photo which she said provided evidence that thousands of Muslim victims had been buried at field near Nova Kasaba, 19 kilometers from Srebrenica.

Excavations which took place following the war, however, yielded 33 bodies at Nova Kasaba. Two years after the event, a total of 400 bodies had been found at 20 sites near Srebrenica, an area which had seen bloody fighting over a three year period.

Instead of acknowledging that there was no support for the original figures, Rooper says a various means were used to prop up the official story.

Three Thousand “Srebrenica Victims” Vote in Elections

Spokesmen for the Clinton Administration suggested that Serbs might have moved the bodies to other locations. Rooper points out that excavating, transporting and reburying 7,000 bodies was “not only beyond the capabilities of the thinly-stretched, petrol-starved Bosnian Serb Army, but would have been easily detected under intense surveillance from satellites and geostationary drones”.

By 1998, thousands of bodies excavated from all across Bosnia were stored at the Tuzla airport. Despite state-of-the-art DNA testing, only 200 bodies have been linked to Srebrenica.

Around 3,000 names on a list of Srebrenica victims compiled by the Red Cross matched voters in the Bosnian election in 1996. “I pointed out to the OSCE that there had either been massive election fraud or almost half the people on the ICRC missing list were still alive,” says Rooper. “The OSCE finally responded that the voting lists had been locked away in warehouses and it would not be possible for them to investigate.”