David ROHDE

The Fall of Srebrenica

P R E F A C E

          In August 1995, while covering the war in Bosnia for The Christian Science Monitor, I heard about suspected mass graves U.S. spy planes had located near Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. The surrounded Muslim town had fallen to the Bosnian Serbs a month earlier. Survivors reported mass executions.

          On August 16, I received permission from the Bosnian Serbs to enter their territory and drive straight to Pale - their self-declared capital. With a faxed copy of the satellite photo of the suspected graves in hand, I headed in the direction of Pale but stopped instead in Nova Kasaba - the village where the suspected graves were spotted. After searching for two hours, I found four swaths of fresh digging, two empty ammunition boxes, notes from a Srebrenica town meeting, an elementary school diploma with a Muslim name, and finally, a decomposed human leg.

          I then spent two weeks in September searching refugee camps on the other side of the front line for survivors of mass executions. I found nine survivors who told credible stories of thou-sands of unarmed Muslim prisoners being short. Soldiers who survived the trek from Srebrenica led me to the brother of the man whose elementary school diploma I'd found twenty-five feet from a suspected grave in Nova Kasaba. When I showed the diploma to him, his face went blank and he turned and disappeared into a crowd of soldiers. His twenty-one-year-old brother Murat had been missing since Srebrenica fell.

          In October, I reentered Serb territory without permission and found two more execution sites. At the first were three canes and a stack of civilian clothes one hundred yards from what looked like two freshly dug mass graves, corroborating survivor's stories of old men and civilians being killed. At the second, human bones lay next to an earthen dam, again confirming survivor accounts of executions. Just before I took photos of the bones, a Bosnian Serb watchman arrested me.

          I was convicted of illegal entry, jailed for ten days and threatened with an espionage charge that carried a sentence of ten years to death. After twelve members of my family and two of my editors at The Christian Science Monitor flew to ongoing Bosnia peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, the Clinton administration pressured the Serbs into freeing me.

          At that time, I believed Srebrenica's fall to be a simple tale of victim and perpetrator. But the town's fall has proven far more complex, convoluted and darker than I expected.

          The fall of Srebrenica has emerged as one of the great controversies - and mysteries - of the war in Bosnia. Countless conspiracy theories, some dubious and some plausible, revolve around the tragedy.

          The truth in the former Yugoslavia - a region that has been dominated by authoritarian regimes for centuries - is a nebulous concept. Exaggeration and manipulation of the facts are well accepted tools for survival and propaganda is the norm. All sides in the brutal war - including many Western and UN officials - have resolutely convinced themselves that they are blameless and the other side is guilty.

          United Nations, Dutch, French, American and Bosnian officials lied about, downplayed or covered up their own roles in the tragedy and blamed others for the enclave's fall. Survivors and people from Srebrenica exaggerated, openly lied or presented a sanitized version of their actions and decision making. Many Bosnian Serb authorities refused to speak and intimidated those who did.

          This book focuses primarily on the experiences of seven people - three Muslims, two Dutch, a Serb and a Croat. The were chosen because of what they lived through and because I found them to be highly credible. The account that follows, which includes individuals' detailed thoughts and recollections, is a description of events as related to me by these individuals and characterized in documents and press reports. Central characters were allowed to review the portions of the book they appear in for accuracy. I took this unusual step to avoid misinterpretation and to give the book immediacy. Every event or atrocity that occurred may not be here, but I believe this is an accurate portrayal of the dynamic at work in Srebrenica and Bosnia at the time.

          Notes have been used to explain the source of information and to discuss allegations. Conversations have been reconstructed on the basis of interviews with participants or from reports written at the time. Where I am unsure of what occurred I say so, or explain why in a note. I apologize for any inaccuracies, distortions or omissions. I have tried to make this as accurate as possible. All errors in judgment are mine.

          This book should be considered only an initial account of the fall of Srebrenica, not the final word. My hope is that it will spark further investigation. Propaganda, mistrust and rumor sparked and fueled the war in Bosnia and played an insidious role in Srebrenica. The goal of this book is to help break that dynamic, not feed it.

          Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats are racially identical. All three groups are white Eastern European Slavs. "Yugoslavia" means "land of the South Slavs."All three groups speak Serbo-Croatian with a Bosnian accent. The difference between Bosnia's Muslims, Serbs and Croats is their religious faith. The only way Serb, Croat or Muslim can distinguish one another is by their first or last names.

          Bosnia-Herzegovina is slightly larger than the state of West Virginia. When war broke out in April 1992, the picturesque country of 4.3 million was 44 percent Muslim, 31 percent Serb, 17 percent Croat, and 8 percent "Yugoslav" or people who chose to describe themselves as part of no nationality. It was the most ethnically integrated of Yugoslavia's six republics and intermarriage between Serbs, Croats and Muslims was common in cities and larger towns.

          Bosnia is one of the world's great crossroads. For centuries, civilizations, armies and empires have met and overlapped here. The country's long occupation by great empires is what divided its people into roughly three groups. Those who converted to Catholi-cism under the rule of the Catholic Holy Roman Empire became known as Bosnian Croats. Those who converted to Orthodox Christianity under the rule of the Eastern Orthodox Byzantine Empire became known as Bosnian Serbs. Those who converted to Islam under the rule of the Muslim Ottoman Turks became known as Bosnian Muslims.

          After the death in May 1980 of Yugoslavia's founder and dictator, Josip Broz Tito, politicians playing on nationalism rose to power across the country. In Serbia, Slobodan Miloševic used state-controlled television to whip up nationalism and play on people-s fears that past Serb suffering might be repeated. On the June 1989 anniversary of the defeat that led to the Ottoman Turks' brutal, 500-year occupation of Serbia, Miloševic told a rally o roughly one million Serbs: "Six centuries later, again we are in battles and quarrels. They are not armed battles, though such things should not be excluded yet."

          On June 25, 1991, both Croatia and Slovenia declared independence. Fighting between Slovene nationalists and the mostly Serb Yugoslav National Army soon flared, but lasted for only ten days. In Croatia, bitter fighting erupted in July between Serbs and Croats and raged for six months amid frantic European peace ef-forts. A UN arms embargo was imposed on all of the former Yugoslavia in September 1991 to theoretically lessen fighting. But the embargo simply locked into place the huge military advantage enjoyed by the Serbs, the largest group in the former Yugoslavia, who controlled the Yugoslav National Army and its vast stockpile of ammunition.

          Over 12,000 UN peacekeepers arrived in March 1992 to implement a tense cease-fire in Croatia. In six months of brutal figh-ting, ten thousand died and Serb nationalists seized approximately one-third of Croatia. They vowed to link their territory with Serbia and create a "Greater Serbia." Croats vowed to retake every inch of it.

          Fighting erupted in Bosnia less than a month later. Troops and ultranationalist paramilitary groups from Serbia crossed into neighboring Bosnia. They began expelling or "ethnically clean-sing" hundreds of thousands of Muslims and Croats from eastern and northern Bosnia.

          At the same time, Croatia, the second most powerful republic after Serbia, began funneling troops, weapons and ammunition to Croat nationalists living in Bosnia. Serbian President Miloševic and Croatian President Franjo Tudjman hoped to divide Bosnia bet-ween themselves and create a "Greater Serbia" and a "Greater Cro-atia." Bosnia's Muslims, trapped between the two more powerful groups, had few weapons and no outside backer.

          Tucked into the mountains of eastern Bosnia, Srebrenica (pronounced Srebreneetsa) takes its name from the Serbo-Croatian word for silver, srebro. Srebrenica or "Silver City" has been known for its silver since the Romans mined the region twenty centuries ago. The Romans called it "Argentaria", a variation of the Latin word for silver.

          The Roman garrison that once stood in the town is gone, but the ruins of a medieval castle built according to local legend by Jerina, the widow of a Serb lord, lie on a hill to the south. According to the legend, the castle was built by slaves. Each night a different slave was brought to Jerina's bedroom. Each morning, the exhausted slave was thrown to his death from the top of the castle.

          One mile east of town lies Crni Guber, a natural spring that produces medicinal water with large amounts of iron and a "harmonious" mixture of copper, cobalt, nickel and manganese. The spring has its own health spa; locals say drinking the water cures anemia, rheumatism, multiple sclerosis, lack of appetite, exhaustion and chronic diseases of the hair and skin.

          The town of Srebrenica is shaped like a long, thin finger. The quaint mining town had a prewar population of roughly 9,000. Driving from one end to the other takes only fifteen minutes. A thin strip of houses, schools and stores runs at the bottom of a two-mile-long, half-mile-wide ravine. Steep hills rise on either side of Srebrenica, giving one a sense of being sheltered - or trapped.

          White houses with terra-cotta roofs line the streets and dot the surrounding hills. A dozen gray apartment buildings built for miners and factory workers by Yugoslavia's Communist government seem out of place. The hospital lies in the northern half of the town. The elementary and high schools are near the center. The border with Serbia in only ten miles away and many teenagers left town for jobs or universities in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Yugoslavia, instead of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia.

          Small family-run grocery stores and cafés once enlivened the main street. A large gray Serbian Orthodox church, a mosque with a hundred-foot minaret and an open-air farmer's market comprise the town's historic center. A state-run department store, the six-story Hotel Domavija and a small shopping center make up its modern side.

          After World War II, Yugoslavia's Communist government built car battery, car brake and zinc processing factories in Potocari, a village two miles north of Srebrenica. Bauxite and zinc mines to the south and northeast flourished. Nearly every miner or factory worker had an apartment, car and summer cottage. By the 1990s, most households had a TV, VCR, washing machine and a host of modern appliances. Movie theaters and supermarkets opened. Srebrenicans enjoyed a standard of living that rivaled that of the Uni-ted States and Western Europe.

          According to the last census conducted before the war, 37,211 people lived in Srebrenica opština or municipality, which consisted of the town and an approximately fifty-square-mile area around it. Seventy-three percent described themselves as Muslims, 25 percent as Serbs and 2 percent as "Yugoslavs" or part of no ethnic group.

          Soon after fighting broke out in April 1992, nationalist paramilitary groups from Serbia seized control of Srebrenica with the aim of expelling the town's Muslims as they had throughout Bosnia. Muslims fled to nearby forests. Three weeks later Muslims led by Naser Oric, a charismatic twenty-six-year-old policeman, retook the town. The heavily armed Serbs had suffered one of their first major defeats of the lopsided war, but they still surrounded the town. Oric then led Muslim forces from Srebrenica to a series of stunning victories in 1992, which more than doubled the size of the island of Muslim territory. By January 1993 the enclave was only five miles from linking with Muslim-held central Bosnia.

          But Bosnian Serbs, backed by troops, tanks and artillery from neighboring Serbia, quickly launched a counteroffensive. With the Serbs blocking UN food convoys, U.S. Air Force planes dropped food into the area by parachute. Muslim-held towns and villages continued to fall. By mid-March 1993, over 60,000 Muslim civilians packed the town of Srebrenica and a small area around it.

          Fearing the collapse of Srebrenica, the UN commander in Bosnia, French general Philippe Morillon, set off for the teetering enclave without the permission of his superiors in New York. Morillon bluffed his way through Serb lines and entered Srebrenica. Surrounded by Muslim women and children when he tried to leave a day later, Morillon made an impromptu announcement that would cost him his job and change the course of the war.

          "You are now under the protection of the United Nations", the fifty-seven-year-old, white-haired general with a flair for the dramatic proclaimed from a post office window on March 12. "I will never abandon you". The UN flag was then raised over Srebrenica.

          The Serbs allowed a few food convoys into the enclave but just over a month later they attacked again. As the town's defenses crumbled on April 15, Srebrenica's leaders requested that surrender negotiations begin. Under intense pressure to act, a divided UN Security Council passed Resolution 819 declared Srebrenica and a thirty-square-mile area around it the world's first United Nations "safe area" on April 16.

          When UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali later re-quested 34,000 peacekeepers to police Srebrenica and five other newly declared safe areas, the United States and other countries balked at sending their own troops. A second proposal sarcastically referred to as "safe areas lite" by UN officials, was adopted and only 7,600 peacekeepers were sent to the six new safe areas.

          First Canadian and then Dutch peacekeepers were deployed in Srebrenica. Seven hundred and fifty lightly armed UN peace-keepers were responsible for disarming Srebrenica's Muslim de-fenders and "deterring" Bosnian Serb attacks against the safe area. Two years later, a Serb flag flew where the UN's once did and 7,079 Muslim men were missing.

          Three months after the Bosnian Serb triumph in Srebrenica, General Ratko Mladic's forces were pummeled by a massive NA-TO bombing campaign and routed by a combined Muslim-Croat offensive. The attack on Srebrenica and the subsequent executions had emerged as the turning point of the war. By mid-September, the Serb attempt to end the war had backfired. The portion of Bosnia controlled by the Serbs would shrink from 70 percent to under 50 percent.

          Days away from losing Banja Luka - the largest city held by the Bosnian Serbs - and the hundreds of square miles around it, Mladic's army was reeling. But he was saved by his longtime backer, Serbia, and an unlikely ally - the Clinton administration. The fall of Srebrenica and mass executions had changed the course of the war, but not Western priorities in Bosnia. The aftermath of Srebrenica's collapse would prove to be, in some ways, as dark as its fall.

          With the Bosnian Serb attack on Zupa intensifying, pressure rose for an American or European response. On Monday, July 17, before a regular breakfast meeting of the administration's foreign policy team, Anthony Lake presented his "endgame strategy" of a new U.S. diplomatic initiative backed by a threat of air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs and a lifting of the arms embargo against Bosnia's Muslim-led government, Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Secretary of Defense William Perry, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff John Shalikashvili, U.S. ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright and Deputy National Security Adviser Sandy Berger were present. An American troop presence in Bosnia seemed inevitable. The central issue was whether they would be enforcing a peace settlement or leading a humiliating UN withdrawal.

          Usually the President did not attend such meetings, but Lake had secretly requested that he drop in on the meeting to emphasize his commitment to the new initiative. "I don't like where we are now", Clinton said. "The policy is doing enormous damage to the United States and our standing in the world. We look weak". He predicted more problems to come. "And it can only get worse down the road. The only time we've ever made progress is when we geared up NATO to pose a real threat to the Serbs". But, Clinton added,"I'm not sure what we should do".

          That day Médecins Sans Frontieres and the International Committee of the Red Cross evacuated fifty-nine wounded Mus-lims from Potocari and Bratunac. Camila Omanovic was safely taken to central Bosnia. But seventeen wounded Muslim men were separated in various ways as "suspected war criminals" by the Bosnian Serbs. One of them was the Muslim artillery officer who wrote "30 Dutch equals 30,000 Muslims" on Lieutenant Egbers' scrap of paper. Four men who were wounded after holding the Serb tanks in the Bibici trench with Ibran Malagic were also taken away.

          The following day, July 18, Clinton and his senior foreign policy advisers gathered in the Oval Office. Vice President Gore spoke about Bosnia. "The worst solution would be to acquiesce to genocide and allow the rape of another city and more refugees", he said. "At the same time, we can't be driven by images, because there's plenty of other places that aren't being photographed where terrible things are going on, but we can't ignore the images either". Gore referred to a front-page story in The Washington Post over the weekend that described a young Srebrenica rape victim who tied her belt and shawl together and hanged herself at the UN air base in Tuzla.

          "My twenty-one-year-old daughter asked about that picture", he said. "Shat am I supposed to tell her? Why is this happening and we're not doing anything?"

          Gore, who had a close relationship with Clinton, was openly challenging the President. "My daughter is surprised the world is allowing this to happen", Gore said. "I am too".

          The President replied that the administration would take action.

          Žepa could not be saved, Gore continued, "but we now can't watch sixty-five thousand people in Gorazde be helplessly sub-jected to the same treatment."

          As for Chirac's proposal to retake Srebrenica, it was in the tradition of the grand French gesture. "Chirac now wants to roll the dice and keep his own record clear. We have to come up with something practical that makes real military sense", Gore said. "Acquiescence is not an option".

          "I've been thinking along the same lines", the President rep-lied. The status quo was no longer tenable, he said. "The situation underscores the need for robust airpower to be authorized", Clinton reportedly asserted. "The United States can't be a punching bag in the world anymore".

          The following day, July 19, fighting dramatically escalated in Bosnia and neighboring Croatia. While Serbs in Bosnia pressed their attack on the UN safe area of Zepa in eastern Bosnia, Serbs in neighboring Croatia launched a major offensive against the surro-unded UN safe area of Bihac on the other side of the country - in western Bosnia. A sixty-square-mile chunk of the enclave fell in a single day.

          For Serb nationalists, their own "endgame" was advancing smoothly. The goal appeared to be to seize the remaining Muslim enclaves and unite the 70 percent of Bosnia and 30 percent of Croatia that the Serbs had conquered and declare an ethnically pure "Greater Serbia". But they were gambling. Bihac was far more important strategically than Srebrenica to the West and, most importantly, to neighboring Croatia. Sandwiched between a chunk of Croatia and a piece of Bosnia controlled by Serb nationalists, the long front lines of the vast Bihac enclave of 180,000 people tied up thousands of Serb troops and dozens of Serb tanks and artillery. If the enclave fell, Serb soldiers and tanks would be free to swing around and blunt an offensive the Croatian Army was expected to launch that summer.

          By threatening Bihac, the Serbs were giving the powerful Croatian Army an excuse to enter the war. For the last three years, the United States had tacitly allowed the Croatian government to violate the UN arms embargo and secretly import crucial tanks and heavy artillery. Retired U.S. generals openly trained Croatian Army officers in state-of-the-art NATO tactics. If Croatia joined the fighting, the war would widen and the Serbs would find themselves facing a real army-not outgunned Muslims.

          But the Serb leadership pushed on. General Smith's analysis that the Serbs hoped to conclude the war that summer was proving correct.

          At the Serbs attacked Bihac and Zepa, three Muslim men covered with blood and in tattered clothes staggered across the front line. Hurem Suljic, Mevludin Oric and Smail Hodzic - a third survivor of the execution whom they had met in the woods - were desperate to find their families. They were also eager to tell the world what they had survived.

          The day after the execution, Suljic and Oric had glimpsed the nearby Drina River from a hilltop and realized how close they were to Muslim-held central Bosnia. Overwhelmed with hunger, Suljic dared to climb an apple tree later that day as Oric watched for Serbs. An unshaven elderly man in bloodstained clothes abruptly entered the clearing. As soon as they saw the blood, Hurem and Mevludin realized he too had survived an execution. The man was Smail Hodzic, the sixty-five-year-old Muslim who had heard General Mladic's speech on the Nova Kasaba soccer field. After spending the night in the back of a truck in Bratunac, Hodžic had been brought to the same school gym in Grbavci as Hurem and Mevludin. As the three talked, they realized that Hodzic had been taken to the killing field a few hundred yards from the one Mevludin and Hurem had escaped.

          The three forged on and later met another Muslim in the woods. Three days after the mass execution, they reached the front line but were unable to cross it. Two Serb bunkers with machine guns sat on either side of a stream leading to Muslim-held territory. Mevludin was convinced the stream was mined. The four waited until dark and crept down a path through the trees. The Serbs spotted them in the moonlight and fired. They retreated back into Serb territory.

          The four men hid all the following day. Mevludin laughed for the first time since the execution when they found a pile of bags dumped by Muslims who had passed through the area. Hurem and Smail ate toothpaste to clean their mouths and satisfy their thirst. When darkness finally came, the four men crept up the stream on the night of July 18. They found no mines. At dawn, they were only a few hundred yards from Muslim territory but divided over what to do next.

          They retreated to a nearby barn. Mevludin fell asleep. Desperately cold, Hurem started a fire. Mevludin woke and was furious. He was sure the smoke would lead to their capture. After four days of waiting patiently for slow-moving older men, the twenty-five-year-old abandoned them and set off up a steep hill. Two hours later, all four slipped across different parts of the front line. They were reunited that night in the village of Nezuk, amazed to be alive, and safe.

          The following day, they were bused, along with other men who had emerged from the woods, to the UN air base in Tuzla. The first people to whom they told their story were stunned Bosnian police. Over the next few days, UN human rights investigators and journalists quickly descended upon them. The first credible survivors of the much-rumored mass executions had arrived.

          Akashi, who had failed to report the refugee accounts of atrocities to his superiors in New York, was under pressure to investigate. He had received a cable from Kofi Annan on July 18 asking him why New York had received no information ton corroborate or contradict the accounts of Serb atrocities and UN passivity so widely reported in the press.

          Even the three survivors didn't believe that the Serbs killed all of the men they captured. Many survivors hoped that the Bosnian Serbs still held thousands of prisoners and hundreds of men from Srebrenica still lurked in the woods. ICRC officials continued to demand that the Bosnian Serbs give them access to Muslim prisoners from Srebrenica, but were denied it. In Sarajevo, Muslim and Serb negotiators began talks about a massive prisoner exchange. Relatively few suspected or could believe that most of the thousands of missing were already dead.

          The next day, July 21, American and European Defense and Foreign Ministers met in London to formulate a Western response to the Serb offensive that had begun fifteen days before with the attack on Observation Post Foxtrot. The conference produced the "London Declaration", which stated that "substantial and decisive" airpower would be used to defend Goražde. The U.S. delegation, led by Warren Christopher, William Perry and General John Shalikashvili, blocked a French proposal to have U.S. helicopters ferry 1,000 French reinforcements to Goražde. The United States warned of heavy casualties and argued that more Western soldiers in the enclave, which already had 280 British and 100 Ukrainian peace-keepers, would only create more potential hostages.

          American, French and British officials hailed the declaration as a watershed; Srebrenica had galvanized the West. But it was bitterly denounced by the Bosnian government as another empty promise. Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdžic called the conference "disgusting". Western analysts dismissed the declaration as more meaningless American and European rhetoric. One of the most important aspects of the declaration was what it didn't say - an attack on only Goražde, not Zepa, would trigger the massive air strikes. Zepa, whose soldiers were still holding back General Ratko Mladic's forces, was ignored. The 15,000 Muslims who had resisted fierce Serb attacks and toiled in the isolated enclave for two years were abandoned to the same fate as Srebrenica's Muslims.

          Almost from the outset of the Serb attack on Zepa, UN and Western intelligence and military assessments called the enclave "indefensible" and predicted it would fall within days. But Zepa, which was more mountainous than Srebrenica, was famous for frustrating attackers. In World War II, German forces occupied eastern Bosnia but were never able to gain full control of the jagged mountains, caves and ravines that surrounded Zepa.

          The UN and NATO military assessment that getting reinforcements to the remote mountain enclave in the midst of the Serb attack would be dangerous was correct. But on July 21, UN reinforcements weren't needed. Zepa's own defenders were holding the town. Air strikes on attacking Serb tanks and artillery could have been attempted.

          As Western leaders met in London, the Serbs seemed to try to weaken Western political will just as it was solidifying. The Dutch battalion and its Muslim staff workers received permission to leave Potocari. At 12:02 p.m. on July 21, a long caravan of UN trucks and jeeps began to stream out of the desolate Dutch compound. Before leaving, the peacekeepers had neatly stacked all of their weapons, flak jackets and helmets inside the base. General Mladic had reneged on the July 15 promise in Belgrade that permitted the Dutch to leave with all of their equipment. Food, medical equipment and supplies worth tens of thousands of dollars were left behind, but as the Dutch crossed the Drina River the Serbs lost 450 valuable potential hostages.

          The Dutch convoy arrived at UN headquarters in Zagreb, Croatia, at 4 a.m. on July 22. Crown Prince Willem Alexander of the Netherlands, Defense Minister Joris Voorhoeve and the country's top military leadership gave the peacekeepers a heroes' welcome. A party, complete with a forty-two-piece brass band playing Glenn Miller songs, cases of been and drunken Dutch soldiers dancing in a chorus line, was thrown that afternoon.

          The following day, Dutch military officials allowed UN human rights investigators and staffers to interview seventeen peacekeepers chosen by the Dutch for only a five-hour period. A handful of peacekeepers agreed to speak with reporters about what they saw in Srebrenica and Potocari. One of them was Warrant Officer Be Oosterveen, the soldier who had taken the photos of the nine dead bodies. Another was Ron Rutten, the peacekeeper who had called the Serbs "Nazis" and condemned other Dutch for working with them.

          At a press conference, Voorhoeve announced that Dutch soldiers had seen Muslims being led away and then heard shooting. He also said Dutch soldiers had received a tip that 1,600 Muslims were reportedly killed in a local schoolyard. Rumors of rapes and other atrocities reported by survivors in Tuzla were too numerous and "too authentic" to be untrue, Voorhoeve said, and he complained that the International Committee of the Red Cross was still not being given access to the estimated 6,000 Muslim prisoners.

          The Dutch commander in Srebrenica, Colonel Karremans, then read a statement. The attack on the enclave was an "excellently planned military operation", he aid. Bosnian Serb military commander General Ratko Mladic was strategically very clever. "But he was a commander, not a gentleman. There are no gentlemen in this war". Karremans added: "We learned that the parties in Bosnia cannot be divided into 'the good guys' and 'the bad guys,'" apparently referring to Srebrenica's corrupt leaders.

          He said nothing about the treatment of the enclave's civilians and failed to mention the beatings, one execution or nine bodies his soldiers had seen in Potocari. Egbers and thirteen other Dutch peacekeepers had told their superiors of gunshots coming from the Nova Kasaba soccer field on the night of July 13, but Karremans somehow failed to mention it. Nor did he bring up the fact that Dutch peacekeepers were disarmed, robbed and in one case forced to go "Muslim hunting" by Serbs.

          He also committed mention of a declaration the Serbs asked his deputy commander, Major Franken, to sign on July 17. It stated that the "evacuation" of Muslims was carried out according to "international humanitarian law". Franken added one caveat: "as far as it concerns convoys actually escorted by UN forces", and signed it.

          The destruction of a videotape which showed the nine bodies found near a stream and also showed the Forward Air Controllers at work before the town fell went unmentioned. The Dutch feared that it the Serbs obtained the video they would harm the Forward Air Controllers who guided the NATO attack. Not a word was said of the 239 Muslim men forced to leave the Dutch base or the list containing their names. Major Franken, who promised to show the list to the world, turned it over to UN officials in Zagreb that day. Assuming it was too late to do anything for the men, UN staffers made sure the ICRC had a copy and then told no journalists of its existence.

          The battalion finally returned to a heroes' welcome in Holland on July 24. The Ministry of Defense granted them a one month vacation. The peacekeepers were instructed not to speak to the media about what they saw before a debriefing scheduled to begin in September.

          After the Dutch departed, the hunt continued in the woods around Srebrenica. Hundreds of men were still alive. Local Serb military units carried out daily patrols to find them. Fear that the Muslims would attack and kill Serb civilians was one motivation; revenge was another. Almost all Muslims captured were executed.

          Three days after the London conference ignored them, Zepa's defenders were still doggedly holding off General Mladic's, troops. But Janvier, incensed that Bosnian soldiers had taken over UN positions and held Ukrainian peacekeepers hostage, opposed using air power to defend Zepa. Before departing on a two-day leave, Janvier stated in a July 14 letter to General Smith that because Zepa could not be reinforced by land "CAS cannot be considered". The also asked Smith to "propose possible course of action" in Gorazde and stated that "the option of immediately withdrawing the pointless forces would avoid being placed in the same situation as in Srebrenica and Žepa." In a meeting, Admiral Leighton Smith asked Janvier what he wanted NATO to do to aid Žepa. Janvier stated that "I can't do anything" because "in order to get to Žepa I've got to fight my way through Serb territory and I'm not combat ready." Janvier again appeared to be doing what he could to enact his proposal in May of withdrawing from Srebrenica, Žepa, Goražde, that the UN Security Council had rejected.

          On July 24, the UN special rapporteur for human rights, former Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, completed a week of investigations into the fall of Srebrenica. Mazowiecki said 7,000 of Srebrenica's 40,000 residents seemed to have "disappeared." He urged Western leaders not to let the same fate befall Žepa's 15,000 inhabitants.

          More survivors emerged from the woods. The middle-aged man and teenage boy who suffered through the second mass execution of July 14, at the Red Mud Dam in Dulici north of Karakaj, were interviewed by UN investigators after they crossed the front lines. An investigator relayed the account of the older man to the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, in Zagreb, Galbraith sent a highly classified "no distribution" cable directly to Secretary of State Christopher on July 25 using the survivor's tale to argue that many of the men from Srebrenica captured by the Serbs had been massacred. The ambassador urged Christopher to save Žepa's men from the same fate.

          "The London Declaration implicitly writes off Žepa", Galbraith wrote. "In view of the numerous accounts of atrocities in Srebrenica and the possibility of a major massacre there, I urge reconsideration of air strikes to help Žepa". After giving a detailed account of the man's story, Galbraith continued: "Again, it is not too late to prevent a similar tragedy at Žepa. Žepa's defenders valiantly continue to hold on. Undoubtedly they realize the fate that awaits them. They should not be abandoned". Galbraith's cable resulted in no change in the U.S. policy of defending only Goražde, but Christopher did order Assistant Secretary of State John Shattuck to travel to Tuzla and interview Srebrenica survivors.

          That day, the International War Crimes Tribunal for the For-mer Yugoslavia charged General Mladic, Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžic and twenty-two other Bosnian and Croatian Serbs with committing crimes against humanity earlier in the war. The court, established with strong U.S. backing, by the UN Security Council in 1993, was the fist of its kind since the Nuremberg and Far East war crimes trials following World War II.

          The tribunal was essentially toothless. It had no power to arrest indicted war criminals and relied on the voluntary cooperation of countries to turn in people. In other words, the Bosnian Serbs or Serbia were expected to turn over Karadžic, Mladic and other indicted war criminals voluntarily.

          The tribunal also suffered from severe budget problems. With the Republican-led U.S. Congress refusing to pay $1.1 billion in dues the United States owed the United Nations, Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali cut spending across the board. At times, the number of trips war crimes investigators could take to Bosnia was limited.

          The tribunal had still attracted top-notch talent. The United States seconded FBI investigators and Justice Department prosecutors to the court. Britain, France and other European countries also loaned top investigators to the Hague-based body. Eleven judges were chosen from eleven different nations and respected South African jurist Richard Goldstone became chief prosecutor.

          Unlike Nuremberg, no trials in absentia could be held and the court could not inflict the death penalty. But supporters saw it as a crucial tool for bringing war criminals to justice and breaking the cycle of revenge that haunted the Balkans. If successful, supporters hoped, the tribunal, and a sister tribunal created to prosecute war criminals in Rwanda, could be turned into the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.

          The day he was indicted, Mladic flouted the tribunal by taking a second UN safe area. Žepa's civilian authorities finally surrendered. Serb soldiers took control of the town; two UN civilian negotiators also managed to reach it. But Žepa's military commander, the charismatic Avdo Palic, followed orders from Sarajevo and refused to abide by the surrender agreement. A rift had developed between the town's civilian and military leaders. Over Palic's objections, the civilian leaders had met with Bosnian Serb commander General Mladic the previous week. After the meeting, Mladic was shown on Bosnian Serb television lifting weights near the front line.

          The following day, July 26, thousands of Muslim civilians and soldiers still hid in the steep hills ringing Zepa. Mladic picked up a megaphone and began bellowing, "I am Ratko Mladic! I am Ratko Mladic!" Hi voice echoed throughout the valley. "Surrender! You will not be harmed!" By the end of the day 2,500 of Zepa's estimated 15,000 inhabitants had been bused to Tisca and dumped at the border. Serb soldiers allowed one UN observer per bus. No attempt was made to separate old men from their families.

          Mladic's confidence had apparently not been shaken by his indictment for war crimes the previous day. On boarding one of the buses, according to Muslims, the Serb commander said, "Not Allah, not the United Nations, not anything can help you. I am your God."

go to part II