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The Legacy of SrebrenicaJuly 10, 2005

The 1995 massacre in Srebrenica occurred because Bosnian Serb leaders, intoxicated by hatred and anillusory sense of omnipotence, lashed out savagely against the countrys Muslim population. But theinternational community also bears responsibility for the worst crime in Europe since World War Two.After promising protection to the inhabitants of Srebrenica, the United Nations and NATO allowed thesafe area to fall. That responsibility is compounded by the continuing failure to bring to justiceRadovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the two men indicted as the principal architects of the Srebrenicagenocide.

The Dutch United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) battalion based in Srebrenica failed to take

the military action necessary to save the town. Robust NATO air strikes that could have stopped theSerb onslaught were never authorized, despite repeated requests from Dutch peacekeepers on theground.

The fall of the Srebrenica safe area was the foreseeable consequence of U.N. and NATO policies on theuse of force during the Bosnian conflict. The U.N. Security Council had authorized air strikes by

NATO if U.N.-designated safe areas in Bosnia Sarajevo, Bihac, Srebrenica, Tuzla, Zepa, andGorazde were attacked. But throughout the war the U.N. adopted a position of neutrality that in

practice meant inaction, even when Bosnian Serb forces attacked safe areas or the warring partiesotherwise violated ceasefire agreements. Key NATO countriesincluding the United States, Franceand Britainconveniently hid behind the U.N. position.

Isolated air strikes in 1994 were too limited in scope and number to deter further offensives. In May1995, when NATO targeted Serb heavy weapons around Sarajevo in response to continuing attacksagainst the capital, Serb forces responded by taking hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers hostage. TheBosnian Serb leadership announced that their threats to U.N. soldiers would end only if theinternational community stopped air strikes. NATO never formally renounced the use of air strikes, but

by June 18, 1995, the U.N. hostages had been released.

Serb forces led by General Ratko Mladic and under overall command of Bosnian Serb president

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Radovan Karadzic began the attack on Srebrenica on July 6. The U.N. command declined to call in NATO air strikes on the positions of the advancing Serbs despite repeated requests by the Dutch battalion in Srebrenica. The four hundred lightly armed Dutch soldiers in and around Srebrenica hadneither the authorization nor the capacity to repulse the Serb offensive. The Netherlands later launchedan investigation into the shattering failures of that time: but the responsibility was much broader thanthat. The world simply looked away. The limited NATO air strikes launched on July 11 came too late to

have any impact. The rest is tragically well known: the Serbs entered Srebrenica, and in the followingweek killed between 7,000 and 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

Mladic and Karadzic were indicted for genocide in Srebrenica in 1995. Their continuing freedom, adecade later, is a profound moral failure for NATO and the international community. The number of arrest attempts against both men by NATO peacekeepers can be counted on one hand. Instead of takingthe action necessary to bring the men to justice, NATO has instead offered a series of excusesfromignorance of the mens whereabouts to concerns over reprisalsto justify its failure. As Human RightsWatch has documented, those excuses are simply not credible. While arresting Mladic is now a matter for Serbia, Karadzic is almost certainly still in Bosnia. His arrest by NATO forces in long overdue.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2005/07/10/legacy-srebrenica

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