Case Study:

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In mid-July 1995, soon after the war in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina had begun its military and diplomatic dénouement, Bosnian Serb soldiers and members of at least one paramilitary police unit belonging to the government of the Republic of Serbia (The Scorpions – see appendix) executed thousands of captive Slavic Muslim men and boys from Srebrenica, a United Nations-designated «safe area» located near Bosnia’s eastern border with Serbia (BBC News, Matt Prodger, 2005; ICTY, 2009, IT-03-69, p. 1522). These executions – which were accompanied by the suicides and combat deaths of other Slavic Muslim men, the rapes, killings, and suicides of Muslim women, the killings of Muslim children, and the expulsion from Srebrenica of about 40,000 Muslim people – amounted to Europe’s largest massacre since Yugoslav Communist Partisans executed thousands of prisoners after World War II. Both the United Nations Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the United Nation’s principal judicial organ, the International Court of Justice, ruled that the 1995 Srebrenica massacre and expulsions constituted an act of genocide (ICTY, 2001, IT-98-33; ICTY, 2004, IT-98-33-A; ICJ, 2007; H.E. Judge Rosalyn. Higgins, 2007). The International Court of Justice ruled that the Republic of Serbia was responsible for failing to prevent the act of genocide at Srebrenica and also for failing to punish the persons who had perpetrated this act (ICJ, 2007; H.E. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, 2007).

 A. Context

Yugoslavia – with its mélange of Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Slavic Muslims, Albanians, Montenegrins, members of smaller ethnic groups, and persons born of mixed marriages – emerged after World War I as an independent kingdom under a Serb king and a predominantly nationalist Serb political elite that resorted to strong-arm tactics to subdue political foes and separatists from other ethnic groups. During World War II, Nazi Germany and its allies dismembered Yugoslavia and gave control of Bosnia and Herzegovina to Croat nationalist extremists who, during a campaign to create an ethnically pure Croat state, ignited Croat-Serb and Serb-Muslim animosities and inter-communal violence. Massacres of civilians in Srebrenica and other areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina left deep wounds on the survivors’ psyches. Yugoslavia’s postwar Communist regime tried using police repression, economic incentives, and agitprop to dampen ethnic animosities; it considered Bosnia and Herzegovina’s ethnically mixed and largely peasant population to be especially volatile. According to the 1991 census, the ethnic structure of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s population was: Slavic Muslims, 44 percent; Serbs, 32 percent; Croats, 17 percent; and persons who considered themselves ethnic Yugoslavs, 5 percent. The Srebrenica district, a mining area, was home to 36,666 people in 1991; 75 percent were Slavic Muslims, 22.6 percent were Serbs, and the remainder were Croats, Yugoslavs, and others (Census, 1991, Bilten no. 234).

Yugoslavia’s descent into ethnic violence in the 1990s resulted from a dysfunctional socialist economic system, resurgent nationalism, and the policies of Slobodan Milošević in Serbia and Franjo Tudjman in Croatia, who exploited popular fears and memories of past violence to secure themselves power in successor states they were working to expand. Milošević’s and Tudjman’s territorial ambitions overlapped in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The aim of the nationalist Serb party in Bosnia and Herzegovina was to seize as much territory as possible and join it with Serbia. Supported by the Republic of Serbia and the Yugoslav National Army, Bosnian Serb forces began a land grab a few weeks before the European Community and the United States recognized Bosnia and Herzegovina as an independent state in April 1992. By late summer, Serb forces had driven hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats from their homes. About seven weeks after a failed peace conference in London in August, nationalist Croat forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, backed by the Republic of Croatia’s Army, launched its first ethnic-cleansing operation against Muslims, at Prozor, a town on territory Tudjman wanted to absorb into Croatia (SENCE - Tribunal, 2006; ICTY, 2008, IT-04-74-T). The United Nations deployed a «peacekeeping» force in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the autumn of 1992 but limited its mission to protecting delivery of food, medicines, and other aid. Local Muslim forces recaptured Srebrenica from the Serbs in May 1992 but, by that autumn, the Muslims in Srebrenica – including thousands of people violently uprooted from Zvornik, Bratunac, Višegrad, and other nearby towns and villages – were encircled, running low on food and medical supplies, and receiving no food or other aid. Lightly armed Muslim soldiers and civilians attacked poorly defended Serb villages around Srebrenica, stealing food and killing Serb soldiers and civilians. These attacks enraged the Serbs and expanded the area controlled by Muslim forces in Srebrenica under the command of Naser Orić.

In January 1993, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s mostly Muslim Army was fighting a two-front war against nationalist Serbs and Croats. Serb forces controlled two-thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s territory, but the Serbs still coveted Srebrenica and two other Muslim enclaves along the Bosnia-Serbia border, Žepa and Goražde, because their existence would stymie the Serb campaign to merge Serb-held territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina with the Republic of Serbia itself. From a strategic point of view, taking control of Srebrenica was in fact indispensable and meant the «reunification of Serb territory», creating a monolithic Serbian political entity that was coherent and viable. The Muslims in Srebrenica attacked northwestward in late 1992 and mid-January 1993 and advanced to within several kilometers of Bosnian government-controlled territory. This advance prompted the Bosnian Serb Army to launch a counteroffensive. During February, March, and April, it collapsed the Srebrenica enclave and forced thousands of Muslims from outlying villages into the overcrowded town of Srebrenica, where they suffered hunger, exposure, and Serb shelling attacks. The United Nations Security Council declared Srebrenica to be a safe area on April 16. The United Nations deployed several hundred peacekeeping troops to deter attacks by their mere presence, not by strength in numbers or firepower (HRW, 1995; Sudetic, 1998). A United Nations evacuation operation and overland treks through Serb territory reduced Srebrenica’s population to about 40,000. The town came to resemble a concentration camp occupied by disaffected Muslims, patrolled by United Nation peacekeepers, and surrounded by Serbs, many of whom were seeking vengeance (H.E. Judge Rosalyn Higgins, 2007).

In March 1995, the Bosnian Serb President and Commander in Chief of the Bosnian Serb Army, Radovan Karadžić, issued an order (Directive No. 7) to the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Staff, commanded by Ratko Mladić, to, «by planned and well-thought-out combat operations, create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica» (ICTY, 2000, IT-98-33; ICTY, 2001, IT-98-33, p. 6384). The Serbs attacked on July 6. The United Nations peacekeepers, from The Netherlands, proved to be no deterrent. The enclave’s Muslim forces were feckless. The Serb forces shelled Srebrenica for days, overran several United Nations observation posts around the safe area’s edge, taking peacekeepers hostage. United Nations officials protested. The Serbs pressed ahead. On July 10, peacekeepers fought beside the Muslims against the Serbs for several hours before the Muslims began abandoning their positions. Late that evening, the United Nations commander in Srebrenica assured local Muslim leaders that NATO air strikes the next morning would halt the Serb onslaught. The offensive resumed after dawn. A pinprick NATO airstrike had no effect. Srebrenica’s Muslims began fleeing in two main groups. About 25,000 Muslims, the vast majority of them women, children, and aged persons, trudged northward for five kilometers and sought protection at the United Nations base at Potočari; there, after dark, Serb soldiers began terrorizing and killing Muslims in the crowd. About 15,000 Muslim men, some 5,000 of them armed, attempted to march in a column through 30 kilometers of hostile territory to reach friendly lines; on the morning of July 12, Serbs split the column; thousands of Muslim men and boys subsequently surrendered.

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