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The Approved Narrative of the Srebrenica Massacre* 1

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The Approved Narrative of the Srebrenica Massacre* 1 EDWARD S. HERMAN THE APPROVED NARRATIVE OF THE SREBRENICA MASSACRE* ABSTRACT. The Srebrenica massacre has taken on both symbolic and mythical properties, all in the service of political agendas. The symbol is of Serb evil, mani- fested in an alleged cold-blooded and unprovoked massacre of innocents reminiscent of Nazi behavior during World War II. The myth is that 8000 Bosnian Muslim ‘‘men and boys’’ were executed in the vicinity of Srebrenica in July 1995, and that any executions there were unprovoked and carried out in accord with a genocidal plan. Both facts and language have had to be aggressively massaged to support these claims. The political agendas served by the massacre claims were those of the Bos- nian Muslims, striving to get NATO to enter the Bosnian struggle more actively, the Croats, who needed a demonization of Serbs to carry out their own ethnic cleansing plans (most notably, removing 250,000 Serbs from Croatian Krajina in the very next month, August 1995), and the Clinton administration, under attack for a failure to intervene more actively on behalf of the Croats and Muslims and searching for an excuse to do so. 1. Introduction ‘‘Srebrenica’’ has become the symbol of evil, and specifically Serb evil. It is commonly described as ‘‘a horror without parallel in the history of Europe since the Second World War’’ in which there was * This paper is partly drawn from and cites chapters in a forthcoming book on the Srebrenica massacre, Srebrenica: The Politics of War Crimes, written by George Bogdanich, Tim Fenton, Philip Hammond, Edward S. Herman, Michael Mandel, Jonathan Rooper, and George Szamuely. This book is referred to in the notes below as Politics of War Crimes. The author and his colleagues are indebted to Diana Johnstone, David Peterson, Vera Vratusa-Zunjic, Milan Bulajic, Milivoje Ivanisevic, Konstantin Kilibarda, and George Pumphrey for advice. Johnstone’s Fools Crusade is a fine basic statement of an alternative perspective on the Balkan Wars; George Pumphrey’s ‘‘Srebrenica: Three Years Later, And Still Searching,’’ is a classic cri- tique of the establishment Srebrenica massacre narrative and repeatedly hit the target with facts and analyses still not rebutted. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law Revue Internationale de Se´miotique Juridique (2006) 19: 409–434 DOI 10.1007/s11196-006-9031-z Ó Springer 2006 410 edward s. herman a cold-blooded execution ‘‘of at least 8000 Muslim men and boys.’’1 The events in question took place in or near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica between July 10 and 19, 1995, as the Bosnian Serb army (BSA) occupied that town and fought with and killed many Bosnian Muslims, unknown numbers dying in the fighting and by executions. There is no question but that there were executions, and that many Bosnian Muslim men died during the evacuation of Srebrenica and its aftermath. But even though only rarely discussed there is a major issue of how many were executed, as numerous bodies found in local grave sites were victims of fight- ing, and many Bosnian Muslim men who fled Srebrenica reached Bosnian Muslim territory and Yugoslavia itself safely.2 Some bod- ies were very possibly those of the many Serbs killed in the forays by the Bosnian Muslims out of Srebrenica in the years before July 1995. The Srebrenica massacre has played a special role in the politics of West’s restructuring of the former-Yugoslavia and in Western interventionism more broadly, and it received renewed attention and memorialization at its tenth anniversary in July 2005. It is reg- ularly cited as proof of Serb evil and genocidal intent and helped justify a focus on punishing the Serbs and Milosevic and NATO’s 1999 military assault on Serbia. It has also provided important moral support for the further Western wars of vengeance, power projection, and ‘‘liberation,’’ having shown that there is evil that the West can and must deal with forcibly. Srebrenica has also been the locus of a restructuring of lan- guage, with ‘‘ethnic cleansing,’’ ‘‘genocide’’ and ‘‘humanitarian intervention’’ in the alleged interest of ‘‘human rights’’ coming to the fore, and matters like ‘‘sovereignty,’’ ‘‘aggression,’’ the ‘‘UN 1 ‘‘Bosnia: 2 Officials Dismissed for Obstructing Srebrenica Inquiry,’’ AP Report, New York Times, April 17, 2004; Marlise Simons, ‘‘Bosnian Serb Leader Taken Before War Crimes Tribunal,’’ New York Times, April 8, 2000; UN, The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 506 (http://www.un.org/News/ ossg/srebrenica.pdf). 2 Between 840 and 950 Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica and Zepa swam across the river Drina to find safety between the 11th and the 13th of July 1995. These refugees — an entire brigade of the Bosnian Muslim Army — were apprehended, processed and provided with accommodation and care (including visits by the Red Cross, which also provided delivery of mail and cigarettes) by the Yugoslav authorities. See Prosecutor v. Milosevic, IT-02-54, Trial transcripts, December 10th, 2003, p. 30340, line 17, to p. 30341. the approved narrative of the srebrenica massacre 411 Charter,’’ and ‘‘self-defense’’ fading into the background as obsolete or inapplicable to dealing with the Balkans wars, all adap- ted to service to the agenda of the West and its local allies. There are three matters that should have raised serious ques- tions about the Srebrenica massacre itself at the time and since, but didn’t and haven’t. One was that the massacre was extremely con- venient to the political needs of the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Croats (see Section 2 below). A second was that there had been (and were after Srebrenica) a series of claimed Serb atrocities, that were regularly brought forth at strate- gic moments when forcible intervention by the United States and NATO bloc was in the offing but needed some solid public rela- tions support, but which were later shown to be fraudulent (Section 3). A third is that the evidence for a massacre, certainly of one in which 8000 men and boys were executed, has always been problem- atic, to say the least (Sections 4 and 5). 2. Political Convenience The events of Srebrenica and claims of a major massacre were extremely helpful to the Clinton administration, the Bosnian Muslim leadership, and Croatian authorities. Clinton was under political pressure in 1995 both from the media and from Bob Dole to take more forceful action in favor of the Bosnian Muslims,3 and his administration was eager to find a justification for more aggres- sive policies. Clinton officials rushed to the Srebrenica scene to confirm and publicize the claims of a massacre, just as William Walker did later at Racak in January 1999. Walker’s immediate report to Madeleine Albright caused her to exult that ‘‘spring has come early this year.’’4 Srebrenica allowed the ‘‘fall to come early’’ for the Clinton administration in the summer of 1995. Bosnian Muslim leaders had been struggling for several years to persuade the NATO powers to intervene more forcibly on their behalf, and there is strong evidence that they were prepared not only to lie but also to sacrifice their own citizens and soldiers to serve the end of inducing intervention (matters discussed further in 3 See Ivo Pukanic, ‘‘US Role In Storm: Thrilled With Operation Flash, President Clinton Gave the Go Ahead to Operation Storm,’’ Nacional (Zagreb), May 24, 2005. 4 Barton Gellman, ‘‘The Path to Crisis: How the United States and Its Allies Went to War,’’ Washington Post, April 18, 1999. 412 edward s. herman Section 2). Bosnian Muslim officials have claimed that their leader, Alija Izetbegovic, told them that Clinton had advised him that U.S. intervention would only occur if the Serbs killed at least 5000 at Srebrenica.5 The abandonment of Srebrenica by a military force much larger than that of the attackers, and a retreat that made that larger force vulnerable and caused it to suffer heavy casualties in fighting and vengeance executions, helped produce numbers that would meet the Clinton criterion, by hook or by crook. There is other evidence that the retreat from Srebrenica was not based on any military necessity but was strategic, with the personnel losses incurred considered a necessary sacrifice for a larger purpose.6 Croatian authorities were also delighted with the claims of a Srebrenica massacre, as this deflected attention from their prior devastating ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Bosnian Muslims in Wes- tern Bosnia (almost entirely ignored by the Western media),7 and it provided a cover for their already planned removal of several hun- dred thousand Serbs from the Krajina area in Croatia. This mas- sive ethnic cleansing operation was carried out with U.S. approval and logistical support within a month of the Srebrenica events, and it may well have involved the killing of more Serbian civilians than Bosnian Muslim civilians killed in the Srebrenica area in July: most of the Bosnian Muslim victims were fighters, not civilians, as the Bosnian Serbs bused the Srebrenica women and children to safety; 5 ‘‘Some surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have stated that President Izetbegovic also told that he had learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but could occur only if the Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5000 of its people. President Izetbegovic has flatly denied making such a statement.’’ The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secre- tary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, par. 115, (http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/reports/UNsrebrenicareport.htm). The UN report does not mention that there were nine others present at that meeting, and that one of them, Hakija Meholijic, former Srebrenica chief of police, has stated that eight of them (all those living) ‘‘can confirm’’ the Clinton suggestion (Dani, June 22, 1998: http://cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/dani/dani2.html).
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