Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by
Experts as Politicized and Ethnically Divisive
The International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA) - September 18, 2003
WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2003: On the eve of the dedication of a monument
to Muslims killed at Srebrenica, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1995, a group which
includes a former UN official, intelligence experts, and journalists, released a
statement challenging the alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims as "vastly
inflated and unsupported by evidence".
They asserted that one-sided interventionist policies permitted al-Qaida forces
and radical Islamists backed by the Iranian clerical government to take root
during the Bosnian war, clouding the future of the region. As well, they agreed
that the "memorialization" of false numbers in the monument actually appeared to
be intended to perpetuate regional ethnic hatred and distrust and to
deliberately punish one of the victim groups in the Bosnian civil war. Former US
President Bill Clinton is expected to attend and legitimize the dedication of
the monument at Srebrenica, which was constructed using one million dollars of
US Embassy funds at the request of High Representative Paddy Ashdown. But former
BBC journalist Jonathan Rooper, who has researched the events in Srebrenica
since 1995, says that the region was a graveyard for Serbs as well as Muslims
and that a monument to inflated casualties on one side "serves neither truth nor
the goal of reconciliation".
Phillip Corwin, former UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator in Bosnia during the
1990s, said: "What happened in Srebrenica was not a single large massacre of
Muslims by Serbs, but rather a series of very bloody attacks and counterattacks
over a three year period which reached a crescendo in July of 1995." Mr. Corwin
is author of Dubious Mandate, an account of his experiences during the conflict.
He points out that Srebrenica, which was designated a safe zone, was never
demilitarized as it was claimed to be, and that Muslim paramilitary leader Nasir
Oric, who controlled Srebrenica, launched repeated attacks on surrounding Serb
villages. He noted: "I was the United Nations" chief political officer in Bosnia
the day that Srebrenica fell. Coincidentally, it was the same day that the
Bosnian Government tried to assassinate me as I drove over Mount Igman on the
way to Sarajevo."
Intelligence expert and strategist Gregory Copley, President of the
International Strategic Studies Association and the ISSA's Balkan & Eastern
Mediterranean Policy Council, accused US Ambassador Donald Hays, who serves as
Deputy High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, of using the power of the
Office of the High Representative (OHR) governing Bosnia "to force Bosnian Serb
elected officials to sign a fraudulent document accepting the official version
of events in Srebrenica. The leaders of Republica Srpska [the predominantly
Serbian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina] invited the office of the High
Representative to join their investigation of the events in Srebrenica. Instead
they were told to sign a statement drafted by OHR endorsing
casualty figures they publicly disagreed with." Copley added: "It is significant
in that the former US Clinton Administration fought this war unquestioningly
supporting only the Croat and Muslim factions and disregarding the historic
alliance of the Serbian peoples with the US. Then, after the war, the Clinton
Administration failed to follow US tradition in helping to heal the wounds of
war, but, rather, perpetuated ethnic divisions and hatreds. This differs from
the US role in all other wars."
"Unfortunately, all of the policies and officials put in place in the region by
the Clinton Administration remain. The current Bush Administration has neglected
the Balkans and has, instead, allowed the Clinton policies to continue, which
has meant that divisive politics continue. This, then, requires the ongoing
commitment of US peacekeeping forces in both Bosnia and in the Kosovo province
of Serbia."
Copley added that, according to intelligence obtained from Islamist sources,
that the monument was intended to become a shrine for radical Islamists in
Europe and site for annual pilgrimages. He added: "Deputy High Representative
Donald Hays forced the Republica Srpska Government to issue a statement which
accepted the radical Islamists" version of the Srebrenica affair, despite the
fact that the Office of High Representative does not have any investigative
capability of its own to make a valid assumption on the matter. As well, the
International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague " no friend of
the Serbs " has itself not completed its investigation of Srebrenica, and nor
has the office of the Government of Republica Srpska which has been working with
the ICTY."
Amb. Hays and OHR chief Paddy Ashdown forced the Republica Srpska statement
merely to ensure that the opening of the "shrine" " to be attended by Clinton "
would vindicate Clinton Administration policies of support for the radical
Islamists." Yossef Bodansky, who has written several books on the war in
Yugoslavia and also serves as Research Director of ISSA, calls the 7,000 figure
"disinformation" and notes that "all independent forensic evidence points to
Muslim casualties in the hundreds, possibly the low hundreds. Continued emphasis
on such allegedly high numbers of Muslim deaths at Srebrenica also obfuscates
the Muslim murders in that city, earlier, of Serb civilians." Bodansky also
wrote extensively on the link between Osama bin Laden and the Bosnian Islamists
in numerous articles and special reports and three books, including Offensive in
the Balkans: the Potential for a Wider War as a Result of Foreign Intervention
in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995), Some Call it Peace: Waiting for War in the Balkans
(1996), and Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (1999).
Rooper says that at least 1,000 Serbs, mostly civilians, were killed by forces
led by Oric who did not bother to hide his crimes, even showing videotapes of
slaughtered Serbs to Western journalists. Meanwhile a group of academic experts
and journalists from the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Serbia, and the
United Kingdom has been organized by Professor Edward S. Herman of the
University of Pennsylvania to examine the evidence regarding events at
Srebrenica in July 1995 and earlier, how the media reported these events, and
the political role of claims about Srebrenica. It is expected that a report from
this group will be available in June 2004. Rooper points out that the 40,000
inhabitants the UN used in July of 1995 before the capture of Srebrenica roughly
matches the number of former residents accounted for in the aftermath. A
commander of the Muslim-dominated Army of BiH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) later
confirmed to parliament in Sarajevo that 5,000 BiH troops escaped largely intact
to Tuzla while the UN registered some 35,632 civilian survivors.
While the capture of Srebrenica was reported in July 1995, as it unfolded, an
international outcry only took place a month later, after Madeleine Albright,
then US representative to the UN, held up a photo which she said provided
evidence that thousands of Muslim victims had been buried at field near Nova
Kasaba, 19 kilometers from Srebrenica. Excavations which took place following
the war, however, yielded 33 bodies at Nova Kasaba. Two years after the event, a
total of 400 bodies had been found at 20 sites near Srebrenica, an area which
had seen bloody fighting over a three year period. Instead of acknowledging that
there was no support for the original figures, Rooper says a various means were
used to prop up the official story.
"Spokesmen for the Clinton Administration suggested that Serbs might have moved
the bodies to other locations. Rooper points out that excavating, transporting
and reburying 7,000 bodies was "not only beyond the capabilities of the thinly
stretched, petrol-starved Bosnian Serb Army, but would have been easily detected
under intense surveillance from satellites and geostationary drones.
By 1998, thousands of bodies excavated from all across Bosnia were stored at the
Tuzla airport. Despite state of the art DNA testing, only 200 bodies have been
linked to Srebrenica. Around 3,000 names on a list of Srebrenica victims
compiled by the Red Cross matched voters in the Bosnian election in 1996. "I
pointed out to the OSCE that there had either been massive election fraud or
almost half the people on the ICRC missing list were still alive," says Rooper.
"The OSCE finally responded that the voting lists had been locked away in
warehouses and it would not be possible for them to investigate."
The inflated Srebrenica statistics are part of a larger picture that
intelligence experts such as Bodansky and Copley find troubling. They say US
policymakers have been slow to recognize that Bosnia is viewed as a strategic
base for operations in Europe by al-Qaida and the HizbAllah. In 1993, when the
Clinton Administration was strongly backing the Muslim President of Bosnia,
Alija Izetbegovic, Osama Bin Ladin was regular visitor to his office, according
to Renate Flottau of the German weekly, Der Spiegel. The Bosnian daily, Dani,
reported that the Vienna Embassy of BiH issued a passport to Bin Ladin in 1993.
A special report by Copley, issued Tuesday, September 16. 2003. noted that
Bosnia-Herzegovina Ambassador Huso Zivalj, who issued the passport to Bin Ladin,
later served as Bosnian Ambassador to the United Nations in September 11. "It is
becoming increasingly clear that the movement of Zivalj to the New York post
just before (and his departure just after) the September 11,2001 attacks was not
coincidental."
"To refer to US Bosnia policy as a success story is to disregard substantial
evidence to the contrary. Instead of misplaced symbolism in Srebrenica, US
policymakers need to take a hard look at assumptions which have guided US
actions in the region," Copley said.
BALKAN & EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN POLICY COUNCIL
PO Box 20407, Alexandria, Virginia 22320, USA
Telephone (703) 548-1070.
Facsimile (703) 684-7476.
Website: www.StrategicStudies.org.
Contact: Gregory Copley, 703-548-1070
Copyright 2003
The International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA)
Posted for Fair Use only