Srebrenica As a Metaphor
March 12, 2004
Written by: Prof.
Emil VLAJKI
Translated by: Nebojsa Malic
Aggression against Yugoslavia, and the Serbian people in particular, did not begin in 1999, and has not been primarily physical in character, but rather spiritual. What happened in 1999 is but a manifestation of the spiritual aggression that had started ten years prior.
In this age of American globalization and hypocritical insistence on “human rights,” the rules of the game mandate that spiritual aggression must always precede the physical one. Thus Serbs had to be demonized before there was an effort to destroy them physically. As the major world media have been controlled by the aggressor, it was easy to fabricate and broadcast a series of untruths about the Serbs during the ongoing aggression against Yugoslavia, from “Death camps” to “rape camps” and such. But the aggressors knew that such lies (mostly) were short-term phenomena easy to debunk and liable to be forgotten by the fickle world opinion. Since the destruction of Yugoslavia and Serbia was designed to be long-term, they needed to come up with an ominous metaphor that would forever and ever brand the Serb nation as criminal and genocidal, one that would justify any subsequent destructive action against the Serbs.
The first attempts in that direction were the Sarajevo massacres, but the attempt was sloppy. Some Western media even slipped off the leash and absolved the Serbs of responsibility, and there were also secret field reports from the “peacekeepers” sent to the UN, which clearly indicated that Serb responsibility for the massacres was most likely nonexistent.
US psychological warfare experts then designed Srebrenica. The plan was complex and long-term. First the enclave was to be declared a “safe area”, accompanied with a media blitz decrying the impossible living conditions in the town; Serbs were to be allowed to take other “safe areas,” while thousands of Muslim soldiers were concentrating in the supposedly demilitarized area; finally, the Sarajevo government had to be convinced to surrender Srebrenica to the Serbs without a fight.
The American psy-op operatives had a simple calculus: Serbs would likely avenge the massacres of Serb civilians by Oric’s gangs in the surrounding villages; some of the Muslim soldiers would be killed in the breakout, some would be captured, some would pull out of the area before the surrender, while many Muslims from Srebrenica had already died during the war, who knows where. It needs to be said that some Serb soldiers very likely murdered some of the captured Muslim men. Though it is apparent that the massacre did not happen – especially to the extent that has been alleged (6-12,000 people) – the right propaganda conditions for creating a social construct of the Srebrenica disasters were met. There was no need for the actual massacre to happen.
The American plot to spiritually massacre the Serbs was successful beyond expectations. Serbs accepted the proffered Trojan horse, acted carelessly when entering Srebrenica, and allowed the Western propaganda machinery free reign.
Although proof of the alleged massacre has always been weak, the military-political propaganda complex in the US did its job, and Srebrenica became one of the biggest myths of the XX century. Serbs were accused of the most horrific massacre in Europe after Hitler, and all the criminal acts, lies and attacks against the Serbian people by the “international community” derived legitimacy from that “fact.” Through constant repetition in the media, Srebrenica became more than a Halloween yarn. Instead, it entered the annals of international institutions, schoolbooks and video games, and anthologies of world genocides. Associations for protection and political rehabilitation of “Srebrenica victims” were established, government programs and monuments were funded by international institutions, and the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) bases its “moral” existence on the Srebrenica tragedy. The Srebrenica myth has succeeded so much that it has created a Pavlovian reflex in the West: at the first mention of “Serbs” people think of Srebrenica and vice versa.
Another tragedy for the Serbian people was that the political team that came to power after the 2000 “October revolution,” assisted by some intellectuals and most media, was mostly in the pay of the US government (see Vlajki, “Demonizing Serbs”). As such, it aggressively disseminated American propaganda about the supposed Serb crimes to its own people, endeavoring in every way to finish off Yugoslavia and Serbia. They invented the specters of refrigerator trucks and mass graves filled with bodies of non-Serbs, while the propaganda movie about the “Srebrenica massacre” (“A cry from the grave”) – which, by the way, shows nothing of the sort – was forced on the Serbian public almost daily. The culmination of this mercenary anti-patriotism was the criminal arrest and deportation of Milosevic and scores of other Serbian patriots to the American-sponsored Hague Tribunal. It is not insignificant that an official Serbian delegation attended the recent [September 2003] unveiling of the monument to “Srebrenica victims.” No one at the ceremony, not even the Serb delegation, said a word about over 1000 Serbs massacred in an around Srebrenica; only Muslims were designated as victims.
Therein lies a key paradox. Marking the anniversary of the criminal US-NATO aggression against Yugoslavia and Serbia, while silently accepting the myth of the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims, and thinking of the two as separate, is a major contradiction. People who do it – hopefully unwittingly – do not seem to understand the significance of Srebrenica as a widely accepted metaphor in the world opinion. That metaphor, embedded in the minds of hundreds of millions, gives credibility to all other accusations leveled at the Serbs, from the “death camps” and Sarajevo massacres “committed by the Serbs,” to the “Serb genocide of ethnic Albanians” in Kosovo. And while the Srebrenica metaphor does not make the 1999 US-NATO intervention legal (nothing can), it serves to make it appear legitimate, and justify all other “humanitarian” interventions in the world. A nation cannot claim that a military intervention against it was criminal and baseless, but at the same time admit it has committed unspeakable atrocities! Can anyone really be so blind, or so stupid, not to make the obvious connection? People who do just that, regardless of their professed good intentions, do inestimable harm to the Serbian nation. In a way, they are even worse than the former mercenary government, which at least had money as the motive for its dirty anti-patriotic deeds.
All this inevitable imposes a conclusion. The foremost sacred duty of true Serb intellectuals is to demystify the Srebrenica myth and finally establish the truth – whatever it may be. For as long as the myth exists, and they keep silent, nothing good or just can be created. That malevolent fiction defiles any effort and taints every possible future of the Serbian people. Such intellectuals should not be surprised if the Srebrenica myth is used some time in the near future by the already organized armed separatist movements to inspire copycat “Srebrenicas.” They would, in turn, justify the further disintegration of the already precarious Serbia-Montenegro (dis)union, so that Serbia itself would be erased from the map.
Emil Vlajki is a former professor of political science at Sarajevo University. He was also visiting and associate professor: Yale, Leuven, Montréal, Laval, Ottawa.
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