http://original.antiwar.com/malic/2010/07/09/srebrenica-the-sacred-lie/
Srebrenica: The Sacred Lie
by Nebojsa Malic, July 10, 2010
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In February 1991, Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic declared, "I would
sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina." He was true to his word;
his government’s declaration of independence in March 1992 sparked off a civil
war, pitting Bosnia’s ethnic communities — Serbs, Muslims, and Croats — against
each other over the following three and a half years.
The timing of Izetbegovic’s statement was particularly interesting, and often
overlooked. He was promising a war to get an independent Bosnia at the moment
the U.S.-led coalition was launching Operation Desert Storm to liberate Kuwait
from the Iraqi invaders. Initial reluctance of the Western public to back the
operation was transformed into an eagerness to "get Saddam" through reports of
Iraqi atrocities, such as the one of babies being thrown out of incubators and
killed. Though it turned out much later that the story was a complete
fabrication, it had already served its purpose.
This lesson was not lost on Izetbegovic, who hired the same PR agency that
launched the "incubator babies" hoax, and decided to fight the war not in the
trenches, but on CNN. The goal was simple: through real, imagined, or
exaggerated suffering, the Muslims would attract external military
intervention.
Just like in Kuwait. So the manufacturing of myths began.
Weapons of War
One after another, the claims came in: the war was "aggression" from Serbia,
intent on "genocide." There were Serb "death camps" in western Bosnia. Serbs
were systematically raping Muslim women. The siege of Sarajevo was worse than
Leningrad and Stalingrad combined. Some 300,000 Muslims alone had been killed
by
1993. Izetbegovic’s Foreign Minister, Haris Silajdzic, and UN Ambassador
Muhamed
Sacirbey tirelessly repeated whichever message of the day was on the agenda,
to whoever would listen. Bereft of an enemy in the aftermath of the Cold
War, the West ate it up. So did Islamic militants, after the end of the Afghan
jihad.
Eventually, however, the myths were exposed. The total death toll of the war
was
just under 100,000, and included many Serbs and Croats. The war in Sarajevo,
however brutal, was exaggerated and manipulated for propaganda purposes. There
was no evidence of mass rape, let alone its alleged systematic nature. The
"death camps" were a hoax.
In 1993, the Izetbegovic regime sued Serbia before the International Court of
Justice, alleging aggression and genocide. Francis Boyle, the American lawyer
who wrote the lawsuit, asserted in 1995 that, "the claims of the Bosnian People
for genocide will be vindicated for the entire world to see and for all of
history to know." Yet in 2007, the ICJ rejected every single claim from the
lawsuit.
The sole exception was Srebrenica, where the ICJ took for granted the decision
by its bastard cousin, the ICTY, that "genocide" had been committed there.
Srebrenica thus became the last remaining myth of the Bosnian War, and the
foundation on which the entire war "narrative" came to rest.
Facts and Fiction
The story officially espoused by the Muslim government is that, following the
capture of Srebrenica in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces separated men and boys
from the civilian refugees and summarily executed them. The exact number of
victims is never specified, ranging from 7,000 to "over 8,000." Though vague
and
riddled with inconsistencies, this story has been accepted unquestioningly by
the Western media and the ICTY, and is repeated ad nauseam.
When the Bosnian Serb troops entered Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, they did so
unopposed. Some 5,500 Muslim soldiers, members of the 28th Division of the
Bosnian Army, had abandoned the town — and their families — and set off on a
march towards Muslim-controlled Tuzla. The civilian population sought shelter
at
the UN compound in the hamlet of Potocari. Serb forces provided them with food
and water, then commandeered buses and trucks from the surrounding Serb areas
to
evacuate them to Muslim-held territory. Today the Dutch UN peacekeepers
are accused of "complicity" while the Serbs allegedly massacred Muslims before
their very eyes. But nothing of the sort happened. UN investigator Henry
Wieland, who in July 1995 spent a week interviewing the Muslims evacuated from
Potocari, reported, "we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an
atrocity taking place."
That the "genocide" memorial and cemetery were built on the site of the UN
compound in Potocari is an act of supreme cynicism and manipulation.
Neither Corpus nor Delicti
Advocates of the official story point to a number of verdicts by the ICTY,
thousands of bodies found in mass graves, and the confessions of executioners,
and demand that the entire world accepts the Srebrenica "genocide" as "judicial
fact." This type of approach is typical for PR, where what matters is what
people believe. In law, however, what matters is what one can prove. Yet when
it
comes to proof, both the ICTY and the advocates of the official story
consistently come up short.
The crown witness, on whom the entire case hangs, is a liar. Other witnesses
have been exposed as serial perjurers. The ICTY’s own forensic evidence,
gathered over the past fifteen years, has yielded 3,568 autopsy reports, but
fewer than 2,000 actual bodies. Only 442 bodies in the mass graves have
ligatures and/or blindfolds, strongly suggesting execution. The DNA evidence
allegedly collected by the International Commission for Missing Persons (a
quasi-NGO run by the U.S. government) has not been shown to anyone — including
the ICTY prosecutors and judges! Even so, DNA evidence can only identify the
bodies; it cannot prove the manner of death. Yet the ICTY maintains that the
DNA
evidence collected by ICMP somehow "proves" these people were executed.
Genocide is defined by a 1948 UN Convention as actions "committed with intent
to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as
such" (emphasis added).
No proof of such intent was ever produced by the ICTY. Instead, the intent
was inferred based on the bodies recovered, whose final number itself was
inferred back from the alleged genocidal intent. If this sounds like circular
logic, that’s because it is.
But who are the dead, then? Overwhelmingly, members of that 28th Division
column
mentioned earlier, who abandoned their families and set forth towards Tuzla.
Reports and testimonies of those who survived, along with the combat logs of
Bosnian Serb units, paint a picture of a harrowing trek through minefields,
under artillery fire, and constant skirmishes with Bosnian Serb units pursuing
them or seeking to bar their path. Some people just gave up and died of heat
exhaustion, hunger, and exposure. And as the forensic evidence mentioned
indicates, a number of them were captured, bound, and shot. This was clearly a
war crime, and should be prosecuted as such. But to call it genocide requires
stretching the definition of the act beyond recognition.
Politics of Genocide
This approach fits, however, into the pattern of PR propaganda concerning
Bosnia. From the very beginning of the war, the Serbs were presented as the new
Nazis. Croats and Muslims were presented not as combatants, but as innocent
victims. James Harff, of PR firm Ruder Finn, explained the purpose of this to a
French journalist in a 1993 interview:
"…the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by a real and cruel anti-semitism
[sic]. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps. So there was every
reason for intellectuals and Jewish organizations to be hostile towards the
Croats and Bosnians. Our challenge was to reverse this attitude. And we
succeeded masterfully."
By cynically manufacturing false parallels to the Holocaust, then exploiting
them to gain support in the Western public, the regimes in Zagreb and Sarajevo
were not just demonizing their current enemy, but whitewashing their own past.
Meanwhile, some Americans have tried to use Srebrenica (and subsequently the
equally imaginary genocide in Kosovo) as justification for the American Empire,
the only force capable of "stopping genocides" that were apparently commonplace
all over the world — in what one commentator dubbed the "weaponization of human
rights." The tears shed by Imperial officials at Srebrenica commemorations are
supposed to wash their consciences clear of their own murders in Iraq and
elsewhere. Such are the politics of genocide.
Read more by Nebojsa Malic
* The Endless Summer of 1914 – July 1st, 2010
* Empire’s Deal – June 13th, 2010
* A Meeting in Sarajevo – June 4th, 2010
* Butchery at Wakefield Prison – May 14th, 2010
* Stirring the Bosnian Pot – April 30th, 2010
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