DISMANTLING THE MYTH OF SREBRENICA
Napoleon once observed that “history is a set of lies that people have agreed upon”. Nowhere is that truer than in the case of Srebrenica.
The still widely accepted authorised version of events in July 1995 remains a gross distortion of historical truth – a politically inspired fabrication contrived and agreed upon by the US, the EU and NATO in a desperate bid to retain power and influence in Europe.
Srebrenica occupies a special place in the demonisation of the Serbs as genocidal killers. What is alleged to have taken place – the worst massacre since the Second World War, with up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys murdered in cold blood and buried in mass graves – has endowed Srebrenica with a unique power to appall.
Western political imperatives dictated that the Serbs be branded genocidal degenerates. But that only made them the bad guys on the wrong side of a complicated civil war in a faraway country.
What the west really needed to justify international intervention was an enemy they could project as a clear and present danger to cherished ideals of democracy, the right of self determination and human rights. To mobilise world opinion the Serbs had to be projected as an imminent existential threat – the enemy at the gate. And so it came to pass.
It was at this point the west lost all claim to be a disinterested, impartial peacekeeper. It steadily became an active combatant, illegally arming the Muslims and later the terrorist Kosovo Liberation Army.
The putative peacekeepers deliberately identified Serbs as modern day Nazis and all future coverage of the Balkans conflict was viewed through that lens. Relentless propaganda and American PR finished the job, successfully condemning Serbs in the eyes of posterity.
There are two things profoundly wrong with the imposed, orthodox version of what happened at Srebrenica. First, it is a fiction, which by definition ignores the facts, and secondly, the figures just don’t add up.
Thanks to the accumulation of evidence which has emerged over the past three decades it is now possible to demonstrate, beyond reasonable doubt, that the authorised narrative is wholly unsustainable – literally incredible.
But that’s only the half of it. These lies were legitimised and sacralised by the ICTY, itself a wholly illegal international court created by the UN for that specific purpose.
There have been further abuses of power since then to deliberately obfuscate the truth and complete the cover up. New laws in Bosnia and Croatia now make it effectively impossible to ever access or challenge the primary evidence on which the court claims to have based its convictions.
A toxic moral climate has been successfully created in which anyone challenging the official narrative is instantly anathematised as a holocaust denier. These brazen and barefaced attempts to bury the truth and perpetuate a lie are a double injustice – one that is ultimately doomed to exposure. And the truth will out.
Perhaps the most dangerous legacy of the ICTY and other similar courts is that they undermine the political independence of smaller sovereign states by enabling big powers to interfere in their affairs on the pretext of humanitarian intervention which historically is very rarely successful.
Future peace and prosperity in the Balkans rely on a fair and accurate account of the past – one that is just to all sides. To begin to set the record straight it is essential to fully understand a few basic facts.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND AND CONTEXT
Srebrenica was neither undefended nor indefensible. Despite its designation as a UN Safe Area, it was bristling with more than 4,000 well-armed soldiers of the 28th Division, of the Bosnian Muslim Army – the ABiH. From 1992-1995 this division, based in Srebrenica, launched regular, savage attacks on isolated Serbian farming communities, killing an estimated 3,000 Serbs and burning their homes.
Although the sadistic commander of the Muslim forces, Nasir Oric, had himself been unexpectedly ordered to leave Srebrenica some weeks before the Serbs took control of Srebrenica town, his troops remained well entrenched there right up until the evening of 10 July when they too were inexplicably withdrawn.
The following day the Serbs were amazed to take the largely empty town unopposed with a tiny force of just 2-300 men, 5 tanks and without a shot fired!
Why did the ABiH 28th division abandon Srebrenica without putting up a fight? It’s known the order to leave came from the Bosnian government in Sarajevo. As mentioned, Nasir Oric had been withdrawn from Srebrenica some two months earlier. There is speculation that this was done well in advance because of fears that he might refuse to obey orders.
There is strong circumstantial evidence, including a death bed statement by Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, that President Bill Clinton, on a visit to Bosnia earlier in the war, had told Izetbegovic and other senior Muslims that it would require a large scale Serbian atrocity with at least 5,000 casualties, to enable the US to enter the war on the Muslim side.
With all sides exhausted by three years of war, a major human rights abuse could well provide a pretext for the US to implement an endgame. There appears to have been a strong element of orchestration in the way events unfolded.
The Muslims were well aware that withdrawing their troops with some 10,000 civilians through Serb held territory entailed considerable risk. It would obviously and inevitably lead to further conflict and loss of life – under the Geneva Convention such a mixed column was considered a legitimate military target.
But any excessive Muslim casualties could be readily attributed to Serbian bloodlust and genocidal intent. There may well have been a cynical calculation that, whatever the fate of the column, it would very likely be sufficient to trigger international intervention.
In any event there is no shortage of eyewitness accounts of what actually transpired. As the column reached safety in Tuzla over 1200 statements from Muslim troops and civilians were recorded by ICTY investigators, many telling of intense shelling. But the victims were overwhelmingly combat deaths not executions, a crucial distinction the international court was always reluctant to make.
Nevertheless forensic analysis of bone injuries by the ICTY’s own prosecutors shows beyond any doubt that deaths were predominantly caused by heavy artillery fire or mines rather than close range rifle or pistol shots indicative of executions.
The timing of the bloody breakout from Srebrenica also provided a useful distraction from the almost simultaneous launch of Croatia’s brutal American backed Operation Storm, to ethnically cleanse 300,000 Krajina Serbs from land their families had lived on for 400 years. This savage purge was completely overshadowed by events in Srebrenica and went largely unreported by the international media.
Another indication that events were being closely coordinated was the fact that, days before the Serbs even entered Srebrenica, Bosnian Muslim leaders were calling their contacts in the western alliance to allege appalling massacres.
It wasn’t however until 10 August – a full month later – that US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, showed a special late night session of the UN Security Council half a dozen spy satellite photos – the first ‘compelling evidence’ she claimed of mass burial sites. The media disagreed. They were largely dismissive, finding the pictures inconclusive.
The images were instantly sealed from further public scrutiny for fifty years! Such secrecy can only arouse suspicion. Despite dark warnings the US ‘would be watching’, no more spy pictures ever appeared.
Claims that the UN failed to protect Srebrenica are absurd. That wasn’t their job. Their role was to try to keep the peace – they had no remit to intervene on the part of either side. But the international community must bear heavy responsibility for the failure to actually demilitarise the area in 1993.
This enabled Nasir Oric to continue his sadistic raids on Serb communities, recklessly fuelling the cycle of violence and thirst for revenge.
Today, almost three decades after the fall of Srebrenica there is still no credible evidential basis for the lurid claim that 7-8,000 Muslim men and boys were murdered there in cold blood. The evidence of a planned genocide remains non existent.
The ICTY’s long term chief investigator, Jean Rene Ruiz, told a French parliamentary commission he had never found any evidence of a planned genocide or massacre and events on the ground speak for themselves.
Serb commander General Ratko Mladic arranged for hundreds of Moslem women, children and elderly to be safely bused from Srebrenica to Tuzla, an act totally irreconcilable with genocidal intent. Many Moslem troops arriving in Tuzla attested to having received good treatment and medical care when taken prisoner by the Serbs. Genocidal killers don’t take prisoners.
We know that, by the end of July 1995, 35,600 survivors had been recorded by the UN at Tuzla . The Aid Agencies consensus figure for the population of Srebrenica before the fall was 38,000. The fact that more than 3,000 Bosnian Muslim soldiers were seen by UN troops safely behind Muslim lines, in an area called the Sapna Finger, rules out any possibility of a large scale massacre. Evidence recorded from troops on both sides agrees on a total estimated death toll from the fighting of around 2000.
One of the greatest problems in trying to establish the truth about Srebrenica has always been that crucial forensic and DNA evidence apparently held by the International Commission for Missing Persons was withheld – even from the International Court’s own prosecution teams. All the ICTY received was a verbal report by a senior manager summarising the ICMP’s conclusions without any explanation or context.
It has been revealed that laws subsequently passed in Croatia and Bosnia now give the ICMP total immunity in perpetuity from any independent scrutiny. The agency has state immunity to deny any request for access from any outside body, ever.
Why was this deemed necessary? It can only raise doubt and suspicion that there is indeed something to hide.
The ICMP claimed in the early 2000s to have developed cutting-edge DNA techniques which apparently enabled accurate identification of corpses buried for more than 5 years from minute samples of DNA taken directly from bones.
The laboratory in Tuzla used by the ICMP for this work claimed a near 100 % success rate in accurately identifying bodies and body parts allegedly recovered from mass graves.
But none of this can be independently checked or verified because of the new laws granting the ICMP permanent exemption from outside scrutiny. This is particularly concerning because the Tuzla lab was never accredited by the international DNA authorities and was not certificated to carry out this work.
The last census taken in Srebrenica had been in 1991. In early 1992 most of the permanent residents – Muslim and Serb – had started to move out, fearing that good relations between the communities were bound to break down.
Realising that Srebrenica was likely to be an important bargaining chip in any peace negotiations, the Sarajevo government re-populated the town with refugees displaced from homes elsewhere in Bosnia and others who were simply ordered to go to Srebrenica.
The population continued to shift throughout the war, with many residents fleeing by night to escape the harsh treatment they received from Oric and his men. Numbers were in constant flux, topped up with new draftees. No population records were kept.
When the war ended the only means the Red Cross had to create a population record was to launch a public appeal for relatives of those missing from Srebrenica to come forward and report their missing relatives. By a strange coincidence, just over 7,300 reports were made – very close to the number being claimed by the Bosnian government and western media.
3,000 of the missing reportedly voted in local elections the following year,1996, but the election organisers, the OSCE, refused to confirm this by checking the voting papers. They said it would be ‘too expensiveʼ to recover them from storage and check through the records.
THE ILLEGAL INTERNATIONAL COURT
The Hague Tribunal was not a legally constituted court. The UN Charter contained no power allowing the UN Security Council to create a criminal court. Indeed, several of the 5 founding nations of the UN had made it plain during the Charter drafting process that they would not join the UN if the Charter included any provision empowering the UN to create an international court of any kind.
This problem was very clearly reported to the Security Council by the then Secretary-General of the UN, but they decided to go ahead anyway on the ground that action needed to be taken to prevent a humanitarian tragedy. This justification is meaningless in law and did not reflect the reality on the ground.
Not only was The Hague Tribunal illegal, it also ignored all the detailed conditions set down by the Security Council to govern its operations. Explicitly instructed to enforce only existing humanitarian law, the ICTY nevertheless proceeded to write its own Statute empowering it to do whatever it liked. If it found it lacked the power to do something, it simply amended its Statute to include the new power.
The UN meanwhile renounced all responsibility for the monster it had helped create, leaving the ICTY entirely unaccountable – a law unto itself. It wilfully abandoned all claim to due process and best practice.
All the cases that came before the ICTY were overwhelmingly based on uncorroborated witness testimony, hearsay and evidence gathered via plea bargaining. Indictments were issued against individuals before any evidence had been gathered against them. This often remained the case throughout the trials. None of the ICTY cases was based on a proper criminal investigation carried out impartially by those with appropriate training and skills.
The trial of Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, was a prime example. It meandered on for several years on the indictment raised against him for the Kosovo war, but got nowhere. The prosecution then asked the judge for extra time to deal with the Bosnian indictment. This was granted but the result was the same.
After more than 4 years they they were still scrabbling to make a case against him. Only Milosevicʼs untimely and highly suspicious death in custody saved the court from having to rig a guilty verdict. Today the evidence of genocide at Srebrenica remains as non existent as the evidence of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.