THE FORBIDDEN SREBRENICA REPORT
1. Link to the September 2002 Republika Srpska report about the alleged
massacre in Srebrenica / LINK AL RAPPORTO 2002 DELLA REPUBBLICA SERBA
DI BOSNIA SUL PRESUNTO MASSACRO DI SREBRENICA (15 MB !):
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/srebrenica.pdf
2. Srebrenica Revisited. Reports, Confessions and the Elusive Truth
(June 24, 2004 -- by Nebojsa Malic / Antiwar.com)
VEDI ANCHE nel nostro archivio
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/ :
A proposito di Srebrenica
1. Srebrenica: Una propaganda disperata (P. Teobaldelli)
2. Qualcosa a proposito di Srebrenica (M. Andolina)
JUGOINFO 12 luglio 2004
BAJRO MAHMUTOVIC, MARTIRE DI SREBRENICA ?
JUGOINFO 6 gennaio 2004
Documentazione su Srebrenica
(www.resistenze.org - E. Vigna)
JUGOINFO 10 maggio 2004
Srebrenica (english / deutsch)
1. ISSA: Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by Experts as
Politicized and Ethnically Divisive
2. W. Langthaler: Clinton in Srebrenica
JUGOINFO 7 ottobre 2003
Return to the Crime Scene. Kosovo and Bosnia Revisited
(by Nebojsa Malic)
JUGOINFO 2 ottobre 2003
Retter, Propheten, Sehide. Bill Clinton wurde in Srebrenica begeistert
empfangen. (Juergen Elsaesser / junge Welt)
JUGOINFO 24 settembre 2003
“Evidence” in the “Milosevic case“: What’ s behind Carla’s promises?
(By Cathrin Schütz)
JUGOINFO 29 agosto 2003
Srebrenica und Karthago. Sommer 1995. Deutschlands meldet sich als
kriegsführende Macht auf der Bühne der Weltpolitik zurück (Juergen
Elsaesser / junge Welt)
JUGOINFO 28 agosto 2003
Srebrenica, lettere di protesta ai giornali (english / italiano)
JUGOINFO 8 agosto 2003
=== 1 ===
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC.ORG, Saturday, October 16, 2004
THE FORBIDDEN SREBRENICA REPORT
In September of 2002 the Republika Srpska Bureau for Cooperation with
the ICTY issued a report about the alleged massacre in Srebrenica. The
report relied on UN documents, International Red Cross documents, BH
Army documents, and photographic documentation. The report, which had
been destined to be part of a larger final report, exposed the official
Srebrenica story as a fraud.
Needless to say, the Muslims and the so-called "international
community" were furious that the Srebrenica story had been debunked.
The Serbs weren't supposed to expose the story as a fraud, they were
supposed to confess so that nobody would have to try and prove the
Srebrenica story with evidence. The Serbian confession was supposed to
be the proof, and by debunking the story those dastardly Serbs
messed-up everything.
Paddy Ashdown, who is for all intents and purposes Bosnia's dictator,
was furious at the Serbian disobedience. He condemned the report
without even reading it. He sacked the leadership of the commission
that wrote the report, and he demanded that another report be written.
According to a report issued by the International Strategic Studies
Association, Ashdown and his cronies at the OHR demanded that a
fabricated report be issued in which Serbs blindly accepted the all
blame for everything that the Muslims accused them of at Srebrenica.
After hand picking a new commission, and firing everybody who would
dare to question the Muslim version of the Srebrenica story; Ashdown,
not surprisingly, recently got the report that he wanted.
But for Ashdown one problem exists. The original report of September
2002 still exists, and it still proves that the Srebrenica story is a
fraud, and no amount of phony extorted "confessions" can change that.
Ashdown has been lucky so-far, because only 500 copies of the original
report were ever printed. This makes it a very hard document to find,
and keeps it largely inaccessible to the general public.
But Mr. Ashdown's luck has ran out. We have managed to obtain a copy of
the forbidden 139-page report. We have scanned it, and now we are
making it available for you to download and distribute all over the
internet!
SREBRENICA REPORT, September 2002 (15 Mb) PDF File
To Download to your computer right click on link and select "save
target as"
URL of the Srebrenica report is:
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/srebrenica.pdf
=== 2 ===
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=2865
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.
1. Link to the September 2002 Republika Srpska report about the alleged
massacre in Srebrenica / LINK AL RAPPORTO 2002 DELLA REPUBBLICA SERBA
DI BOSNIA SUL PRESUNTO MASSACRO DI SREBRENICA (15 MB !):
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/srebrenica.pdf
2. Srebrenica Revisited. Reports, Confessions and the Elusive Truth
(June 24, 2004 -- by Nebojsa Malic / Antiwar.com)
VEDI ANCHE nel nostro archivio
http://it.groups.yahoo.com/group/crj-mailinglist/ :
A proposito di Srebrenica
1. Srebrenica: Una propaganda disperata (P. Teobaldelli)
2. Qualcosa a proposito di Srebrenica (M. Andolina)
JUGOINFO 12 luglio 2004
BAJRO MAHMUTOVIC, MARTIRE DI SREBRENICA ?
JUGOINFO 6 gennaio 2004
Documentazione su Srebrenica
(www.resistenze.org - E. Vigna)
JUGOINFO 10 maggio 2004
Srebrenica (english / deutsch)
1. ISSA: Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by Experts as
Politicized and Ethnically Divisive
2. W. Langthaler: Clinton in Srebrenica
JUGOINFO 7 ottobre 2003
Return to the Crime Scene. Kosovo and Bosnia Revisited
(by Nebojsa Malic)
JUGOINFO 2 ottobre 2003
Retter, Propheten, Sehide. Bill Clinton wurde in Srebrenica begeistert
empfangen. (Juergen Elsaesser / junge Welt)
JUGOINFO 24 settembre 2003
“Evidence” in the “Milosevic case“: What’ s behind Carla’s promises?
(By Cathrin Schütz)
JUGOINFO 29 agosto 2003
Srebrenica und Karthago. Sommer 1995. Deutschlands meldet sich als
kriegsführende Macht auf der Bühne der Weltpolitik zurück (Juergen
Elsaesser / junge Welt)
JUGOINFO 28 agosto 2003
Srebrenica, lettere di protesta ai giornali (english / italiano)
JUGOINFO 8 agosto 2003
=== 1 ===
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smorg-sreb101604.htm
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC.ORG, Saturday, October 16, 2004
THE FORBIDDEN SREBRENICA REPORT
In September of 2002 the Republika Srpska Bureau for Cooperation with
the ICTY issued a report about the alleged massacre in Srebrenica. The
report relied on UN documents, International Red Cross documents, BH
Army documents, and photographic documentation. The report, which had
been destined to be part of a larger final report, exposed the official
Srebrenica story as a fraud.
Needless to say, the Muslims and the so-called "international
community" were furious that the Srebrenica story had been debunked.
The Serbs weren't supposed to expose the story as a fraud, they were
supposed to confess so that nobody would have to try and prove the
Srebrenica story with evidence. The Serbian confession was supposed to
be the proof, and by debunking the story those dastardly Serbs
messed-up everything.
Paddy Ashdown, who is for all intents and purposes Bosnia's dictator,
was furious at the Serbian disobedience. He condemned the report
without even reading it. He sacked the leadership of the commission
that wrote the report, and he demanded that another report be written.
According to a report issued by the International Strategic Studies
Association, Ashdown and his cronies at the OHR demanded that a
fabricated report be issued in which Serbs blindly accepted the all
blame for everything that the Muslims accused them of at Srebrenica.
After hand picking a new commission, and firing everybody who would
dare to question the Muslim version of the Srebrenica story; Ashdown,
not surprisingly, recently got the report that he wanted.
But for Ashdown one problem exists. The original report of September
2002 still exists, and it still proves that the Srebrenica story is a
fraud, and no amount of phony extorted "confessions" can change that.
Ashdown has been lucky so-far, because only 500 copies of the original
report were ever printed. This makes it a very hard document to find,
and keeps it largely inaccessible to the general public.
But Mr. Ashdown's luck has ran out. We have managed to obtain a copy of
the forbidden 139-page report. We have scanned it, and now we are
making it available for you to download and distribute all over the
internet!
SREBRENICA REPORT, September 2002 (15 Mb) PDF File
To Download to your computer right click on link and select "save
target as"
URL of the Srebrenica report is:
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/documents/srebrenica.pdf
=== 2 ===
http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=2865
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.