-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory Elich [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 7:36 AM
To: Jim Yarker
Subject: Srebrenica
Hi Jim,
Ken Freeland asked me about Srebrenica (what happened?)
Thought you might be interested in my response.
Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory Elich" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Ken Freeland" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 7:31 AM
Subject: Srebrenica
As you know, Srebrenica has been the subject of one of the most
relentless propaganda campaigns. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to
separate fact from propaganda in this case, as there has been very
little independent research. I have quite a bit of material, and have made a real ffort to determine as best I can what happened, but even I can't say
for ure exactly what happened. I do have some general ideas, even if I
lack exact details in some aspects.
First, to understand what happened in Srebrenica, one must look at
the context. That is, in 1993, Bosnian Muslim troops based in Srebrenica launched raids on Serbian villages in the surrounding area. Muslim troops, led by their commander, Naser Oric, burned down many Serbian villages, slaughtering the inhabitants. The villagers were murdered in quite horrific ways: beheaded, tortured and severely mutilated. In the late spring of 1993, counter-attacking Bosnian Serb forces took back the burned
villages, and discovered several mass graves.
As the graves were unearthed, it was obvious that the Serbian civilians had been mutilated before being killed. Bosnian Serb forces were determined in 1993 to take Srebrenica and put in end to these sort of war crimes.
I have several articles detailing the condition of the corpses from these mass graves, and I can ensure you that what was done to those civilians was horrible beyond imagining.
In all, over 1,300 murdered Serbian civilians were unearthed from these mass graves, victims we never hear about. I also have interview articles with Zoran
Stankovich, the head of the war crimes committee we visited in Belgrade
(he was out of town the day we visited). I really wanted to ask the
committee about this as well as other sites that Zoran Stankovich had worked on in Bosnia.
There is also a Washington Post article in which Naser Oric
bragged to the reporter about slaughtering Serb civilians, and played
him a video of beheaded and mutilated Serb civilians. Entertainment, I
suppose.
Anyway, as Serb forces closed in on Srebrenica, there was panic in
Washington. Immediately, NATO threatened to bomb Bosnian Serb
territory if the Serb forces continued their offensive against Srebrenica.
This threat stopped the Serb offensive. Some time later, the UN declared Srebrenica a "safe area," which would be immune from attack and would be provided with aid. There were other "safe areas" as well. What they all had in common was that Bosnian Muslim forces within the safe areas could keep their weapons and carry out offensive actions, but Bosnian Serb forces were
required to refrain from action against these areas.
During the "safe area" period, Naser Oric ran Srebrenica as his personal fiefdom. Humanitarian aid was confiscated by him and sold on the black
market. He made huge sums of money. I also have an interview with a
Bosnian Muslim woman from this period, in which she talks about how she and many other Muslim women were forced into prostitution by Oric's men. Again, another profitable venture. Dissent was also severely punished
by Oric, as he essentially terrorized his own civilians.
In the spring and early summer of 1995, Oric again launched raids on
surround In the spring and early summer of 1995, Naser Oric once again
launched raids on surrounding Serbian villages, burning them to the ground and murdering the inhabitants. This was too much, and Bosnian Serb forces
pushed Oric's forces back into Srebrenica. Some prominent Bosnian
Muslim politicians later accused Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovich
of intentionally giving up Srebrenica knowing that there would be
retribution, and that executions would make excellent propaganda.
I cannot say for sure whether or not Izetbegovich ordered that Srebrenica be abandoned, although there are indications. What we do know is that there were skirmishes along the outskirts of the town, and that one night Naser Oric, his officers, and most of his troops slipped out of the town. The next day, a small
force of 200 Bosnian Serb forces found that the town lay open before them.
There are reports that there was a battle within Srebrenica between those
Muslim troops which wanted to surrender and those which did not. It seems
there was such a battle, but I have not been able to determine the scale of
death. So some deaths resulted from this battle, although probably the scale
was small.
Anway, the force of 200 Bosnian Serb troops entered and took Srebrenica virtually without a fight. Soon, another 500 Serb troops joined them. Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic offered the remaining Muslim leadership their choice of staying in Srebrenica or staying there.
They chose departure, probably fearing for their safety. Transportation by
busses was arranged for the women and children, while the men were
taken for questioning, to determine whether each had been involved in massacres. Dutch troops based in Srebrenica directly witnessed 3 executions and indirectly an apparent 8 further executions. Apparently things were
pretty quiet that first day, and Serb troops were handing out candy to Muslim
children. There was gunfire that evening, though.
I do know that Arkan's paramilitary Tigers arrived later in the area, and I assume that much of the gunfire may have come from them. Like many paramilitary groups, Arkan's Tigers had no compunction about killing civilians. Most Bosnian Muslim troops, though, escaped, and there were running gun battles in the forests as the Bosnian Muslim troops worked their way, and fought their way to safety.
It appears to me that most of the Bosnian Muslim deaths resulted from these running gun battles. A large group of Bosnian Muslim soldiers actually made their way to Yugoslavia (Serbia), where they were given food and shelter (another thing one never hears about), and allowed to return home in safety.
In the three days following the capture of Srebrenica there were
some executions. I cannot judge the scale at all, because here the
propaganda dwarfs the evidence. I assume that several hundred were executed.
A Bosnian Croat who was in the Bosnian Serb army later gave himself up to
the Hague Tribunal, and claimed that he was involved in the execution of (I
forget exact amount) perhaps a couple of hundred or so. Later excavations
at the site brought up less than he claimed, but still (I forget exact
amount) over 100 bodies.
In UN interviews of refugees, they could not find one direct witness to executions. Interestingly enough, at the time of these events, there was a New York Times article saying that satellite photos could not find any evidence of executions. One month later, while Croatian forces were slaughtering Serbs and driving out virtually the entire Serbian population of Krajina, suddenly the New York Times reported that the US had satellite photos showing evidence of executions in Srebrenica.
Why did it take one month to discover and report these satellite
photos? This had the effect of mostly erasing Krajina from the news,
convenient, because the US supplied the arms and training for the Croatian
Operation Storm, and the US gave the green light for what became the single
largest ethnic cleansing in the war. Instead, Srebrenica was suddenly in the
news, and its propaganda value was exploited to the full.
Along the propaganda lines, Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic
rejected the UN plan to accomodate refugees from Srebrenica at various
sites, so as to handle the flow. Instead, they had to be dumped all at
one site, which could not cope, but this made a more effective propaganda
picture. Western reports constantly state that there are 7,000, or
sometimes 8,000 or even 9,000 missing men from Srebrenica, implying
that therefore they were all killed. However, many of these missing men
later appeared on voter rolls after the war. I do not have details
immediately at hand, but there were various ways the total of "missing" was
manipulated, and the real number is much less.
There is, of course, no justification for executions, but one needs to understand the context: that there was huge anger based on Oric's slaughter of civilians, and some soldiers had a mood for revenge. It might be noted that the Bosnian Muslim town of Zepa fell shortly after Srebrenica and no executions took place there, so I think anger over the slaughters was a big factor here.
I also think that most Bosnian Muslim deaths resulted from the running gun battles outside of Srebrenica, and that the number of those executed is much less than simply taking the inflated total of "missing" and claiming that they were all executed.
I think that probably the total executed is much less (but still a large amount) than the 1,300 Serbs murdered by Oric's forces in 1993, not to mention his victims in 1995. But we never hear about them. Nor has Oric been charged with war crimes by the Hague Tribunal. Of course. So that is about as close as I can come to what happened, although I am always on the look out for further information.
You may well remember Darko from our visit to Yugoslavia. His website
has an interesting article of his investigation and report on Srebrenica,
and is well worth reading. The primary value of Srebrenica, of course, is propaganda. This has been exploited to the full, and it is remarkable how often one encounters the same claim parroted (7 to 9,000 missing and "therefore" executed), without any attempt at analysis or research. Hope this helps.
Greg
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