http://www.antiwar.com/malic/
ANTIWAR, Thursday, June 24, 2004
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
Srebrenica Revisited
Reports, Confessions and the Elusive Truth
Following the publication of a 42-page report by the Srebrenica Commission
of the Bosnian Serb government, media around the world carried a variation
of this headline on Friday, June 11: "Bosnian Serbs Admit Srebrenica
Massacre!" Many saw this as the final and incontrovertible proof that what
happened in Srebrenica in July 1995 was a planned, systematic genocide of
Bosnian Muslims – just as Sarajevo, the Western press and the Hague
Inquisition have asserted all along.
As with so many things concerning the Balkans, the media was wrong yet
again. The "June 11 Report" was a sham, a coerced confession with a
Stalinist flavor. It was a result of viceroy Ashdown's personal fixation,
and in great part simply repeated the unproven assertions of the Hague
Inquisition. The only tangible good it produced was the existence of several
previously unknown graves with bodies of the Srebrenica dead. It did not,
however, cast a new light on the events of July 1995 – only on those today
who continue to wave them about like a bloody shirt.
There They Go Again
Here are the opening lines of a BBC news story on June 11, typical of the
general tone of reporting about the Commission's "findings":
"An official Bosnian Serb investigation into the Srebrenica events of July
1995 has found that several thousand Muslims were murdered by local Serb
forces.
"It is the first time the Bosnian Serb authorities have admitted the
killings which The Hague war crimes tribunal has declared an act of
genocide."
Framed this way, it sounds straightforward: many Muslims were killed; this
was ruled to be genocide; Serbs confessed; end of story – which is doubtless
the way viceroy Ashdown had in mind when he established the Commission and
ordered it to produce a conclusion he would accept, "or else." What any of
that has to do with truth is an entirely different matter.
The full text of the report is not widely available yet. Though substantial
excerpts were published by regional media, the Western press remained
content to offer its own interpretation, mostly along the lines of the
above-mentioned BBC story. One notable exception is Nicholas Wood of the New
York Times, who provides the most meaningful quote from the report:
"[S]everal thousand [Bosnian Muslims] were liquidated in a manner which
represents a heavy violation of international human rights."
This is clearly an admission that Serb forces executed POWs, something the
Serbs never really contested. It is not an admission of genocide, or even a
confirmation of the infamous number of "8,000." Those who have trumpeted
both over the past ten years obviously didn't consider in their interest to
note the distinction – but it was there, nonetheless.
Ashdown's Private War
Crucial for understanding the June 11 report is the role Bosnia's viceroy
Paddy Ashdown played in its creation. Namely, the Commission was established
by Ashdown in October 2003, after the Serb Republic was forced to fund the
building of a Muslim "genocide memorial" in Potocari. The memorial was
opened by Bill Clinton last September, prompting a rehash of all the
propaganda about Srebrenica. A month later, Ashdown gave the eulogy at the
funeral of Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, making no secret of his
sympathies in Bosnia.
In April this year, Ashdown vented his anger at the Commission's apparent
inability to follow simple orders and sacked the Bosnian Serbs' top general
as well as one of the key Commission members, Dejan Miletic. However,
Ashdown's vendetta ruffled the wrong feathers.
According to a Washington-based intelligence newsletter, Defense and Foreign
Affairs, SFOR officials intervened, claiming that the sackingof
Miletic"dealt a major blow to counter-terrorism intelligence in
Bosnia-Herzegovina at a critical time." As a result, Miletic's dismissal was
reversed, and he was in fact promoted – the first time anything like that
happened to anyone proscribed by the viceroy. Commenting on the affair to
DFA, one SFOR official said:
"[Ashdown's] only concern is to protect his own reputation and his old
Muslim friends who have turned out to be radical Islamists and not the
democratic moderates he thought them to be."
Ashdown ended up getting his "Srebrenica confession," but he already had a
new demand in store: arrest Radovan Karadzic! And while the bumbling Serb
officials try to appease him but complain that Karadzic is awfully hard to
find (after all, NATO occupation troops have failed to seize him for over
eight years), Ashdown is already scheming to use this impossible demand as
an excuse to further centralize Bosnia. News from Sarajevo is that
Izetbegovic's heir Sulejman Tihic is demanding the abolition of the Serb
Republic altogether.
Echoes of Inquisition
Because of Ashdown, it was virtually impossible for the Commission to
produce an objective report. They went a step further, though, and simply
copied crucial sections from the Hague Inquisition. Here is a quote from the
report, printed in the Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti on June 12:
"Because of time limitations, and to rationalize the proceedings, the
Commission copied the historical context and statement of facts contained in
the verdict 'Prosecution vs. Radislav Krstic,' in which the accused was
convicted by the Appeals chamber of the Hague Tribunal of aiding and
abetting genocide committed in Srebrenica."
There is a major problem with the "facts" from the April 28, 2004 Krstic
judgment, hailed as "historic" by the pro-Tribunal press. Even a cursory
analysis reveals that Krstic was never given a fair trial, and that the
judgment was based on assumptions that were (among other things)
self-contradictory. Furthermore, the verdict "established" genocide in
Srebrenica through subterfuge: not only was the concept of genocide defined
so loosely it could encompass just about any number of people, but:
"[N]o evidence was presented to substantiate the prosecutor's claims that
between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men were ever executed in the first place.
The failure of Krstic's defense team to adequately contest that assertion
doesn't by any means prove that it's true."
It would be interesting to compare the Krstic verdict with the text of the
June 11 report, and see how much of it was actually original…
Unfinished Work
In late 2002, eminent Balkans scholar Alex Dragnich wrote a roundup of
various reports on Srebrenica in the South Slav Journal, warning that
"before we can have a final verdict on Srebrenica, a great deal of arduous
work remains to be done." Dragnich argues that a "steady beat" of propaganda
has drowned out actual research on the subject.
There are certainly many unknowns about Srebrenica that are still to be
addressed. The Dutch have done some in-depth work concerning the presence of
their peacekeepers; their 2002 report treats the allegation that Serbs
massacred Muslims as established fact, but it is otherwise solid. One of the
major issues they raise is the incongruity of having a "safe area" that has
never been demilitarized, and is indeed home to an entire division of the
Bosnian Muslim army.
How is it that nearly all commanders of the 28th Division were evacuated by
the Sarajevo government prior to July 1995? Who decided to conduct a
fighting retreat to Tuzla, instead of surrendering and hoping for an
exchange? Why was the Second Corps of the Bosnian [Muslim] Army sitting
idle, when it could have at least launched a spoiling attack? Did
Izetbegovic purposefully let Srebrenica fall and its people suffer, to score
propaganda points? These are the questions asked by several Bosnian weeklies
and a few politicians, as well as war veterans.
There are other questions no one is asking. What of the Srebrenica Serbs,
ethnically cleansed in 1992? What of the great Muslim offensive that
collapsed in April 1993? What about Naser Oric's videotaped atrocities? One
report that tried to put Srebrenica in the wider context of the war,
published in September 2002 by a Bosnian Serb commission, was harshly
denounced by both Muslims and Ashdown. There has yet to be another.
So, What Happened?
It has been established beyond reasonable doubt that a number of Bosnian
Muslims died in July 1995, between Srebrenica and Tuzla. But while most
media conjure images of unarmed civilians lined up and shot or slaughtered,
most of the dead belonged to the 28th Division of the BH Army, and were
therefore not civilians. While there are civilians among the bodies exhumed
and identified so far, they were among those who chose to join the 28th in
its ill-fated fighting retreat. According to most sources, anywhere between
four and six thousand people made it to Tuzla; others fell prey to
firefights, artillery, landmines, exhaustion and starvation (it's a 50-mile
hike over bad terrain) – and yes, some were captured and executed by the
Bosnian Serbs, Malmedy-style. The real question is, how many? Forensic
experts examining the exhumed bodies should be able to determine the cause
of death easily – yet their voice has been conspicuously absent.
Bosnian Serbs never denied that their forces killed many Srebrenica Muslims;
indeed, they've admitted killing several thousand in combat. What they have
always contested – and still do, even in the June 11 report (though not
explicitly) – was the allegation that they massacred some 8,000-plus unarmed
civilians, and with genocidal intent at that.
So far, the accusation of genocide relies on assertions and conjectures of
the Sarajevo government and the ICTY prosecution. Such a serious charge
demands strong and overwhelming evidence, and there simply isn't any. If
there were, would Ashdown have tried to extort a confession?
Though issues of the victims' identity (POW or civilian) and the manner of
death are entirely legitimate, quibbling about whether 14-year-olds were
combatants is simply in bad taste. Fact is, thousands of families suffered a
grievous loss, and that tragedy is being cruelly manipulated to achieve
political ends. Truth may be the first casualty of war, but these people are
very real victims, too. Not that the list stops there.
Muslims, believing themselves the virtuous victims of "aggression" and
"genocide," find themselves blinded to Izetbegovic's hateful ideology of
domination that tore Bosnia apart. Serbs, targeted by propaganda of
unprecedented proportions accusing them of Nazi-like evil, refuse to
acknowledge any of the atrocities they may have actually committed, rightly
afraid it would be considered an admission of the fabrications as well. The
population of the Empire, deluded by lies of their governments and media to
believe in "humanitarian" and other interventions, increasingly lose their
lives, liberty and property as Bosnia has led to Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq,
and God knows where else. All victims: of war and politics.
The only truth about Srebrenica that no one can contest is that war is a
crime against humanity. Trying to present such state-organized murder as a
fight against "evil" by putting enemies on trial for "war crimes" is simply
an attempt to mask that fact.
Serbian News Network - SNN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.antic.org/
