Srebrenica “We Could Have Prevented This Horror, We Chose Not To”

Srebrenica: The name of a town that few people in the United States recognize unless they were touched by the war that engulfed the former Yugoslavia. Many that experienced the Bosnian War consider the early days of July 1995 as some of the worst in the history of humanity. War crimes and genocide against humanity were committed against the Muslim residents of Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb soldiers and police led by General Ratko Mladic — the worst massacre of civilians since the World War II Nazi Holocaust.

During my 2006 visit to Srebrenica 8,372 was the number engraved on a memorial stone at the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial, representing those killed but with the notion, “the total number of victims that is not final.” Each year, often in July, families bring the remains of their loved ones that have laid in unmarked mass graves for years, to be buried alongside the other victims — innocent unarmed men and boys killed, massacred, victims of genocide, for no reason other than they were Muslim.

The Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial sits across the street from the “Battery Factory,” the former headquarters of the U.N. Protection Force (UNPROFOR) compound manned in 1995 by the Dutch Army Battalion or DUTCHBAT. Today the building is a museum to the victims, but also to ensure that the world does not forget what happened in July 1995. The museum holds the pictures of many of those killed, along with items found on the victims; a watch, family pictures. The curators kept the sometimes obscene graffiti painted on the walls by the Dutch soldiers representing the boredom and attitude toward their mission of protecting the U.N. designated “Safe Zone.”

On my first visit to Srebrenica Ćamilia Omanović, a survivor of Srebrenica, led us through the museum and through a translator told us her story; her losses, her husband, her attempted suicide, and her rescue by Dutch soldiers. Across the street, in the cemetery, a volunteer told us how he survived the massacre by running from the Bosnian Serb soldiers and his escape over the mountain to Tuzla.

The story of Srebrenica is burned into the memory of those of us that experienced it in some fashion whilst others argue, like the Holocaust, that Srebrenica didn’t happen; that it was the residents of Srebrenica that attacked the Bosnian Serb soldiers and argue that it is a Muslim myth, it never happened, it never happened…except who are those bodies buried in the cemetery?

Later I visited the morgue and identity center administered by the United Nations. It was filled with partial skeletons laid on tables waiting for more bones to arrive so as much of a body as possible could be returned to the family. In the cooler, more bodies waited identification, twelve years after the massacre!

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) — a United Nations agency — has classified the massacre as genocide. ICTY has indicted and is prosecuting General Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the former president of the Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska for crimes against humanity. Their trials are ongoing and they are both being held at the ICTY Detention Center.

On July 8 a British drafted resolution to declare Srebrenica as genocide was vetoed in the U.N. Security Council by Russia, an ally of Serbia. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Powers characterized it saying, “This is a veto of a well-established fact.”

Paddy Ashdown, U.N. High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina (2002–2006), at a recent memorial ceremony at Westminster Abbey said:

“We could have prevented this horror, we chose not to. We should therefore remember Srebrenica, not just to bear witness to those who suffered, but also as a warning to us all of what happens when we turn our back.”

Srebrenica will fade from memory unless we as humanity never turn our backs! If you want to learn more about Srebrenica I suggest Pulitzer Prize author David Rohde’s book End Game which tells the story through the eyes of Ćamilia Omanović and other Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serb soldiers and police, and Dutch UNPROFOR soldiers. I am rereading my copy that Ćamilia signed in 2006 thanking me for my visit. When I returned to Srebrenica in 2007 she had passed away.

David Mattingly retired from the Navy as a Master Chief Intelligence Specialist and has continued to work as a senior intelligence analyst and served with NATO Stabilization Forces and U.S. European Command National Intelligence Cell Sarajevo. Mr. Mattingly holds a Master in Arts, focusing on terrorism and security analysis from American Military University. He is a member of the Military Writers Guild and a contributor to U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, War on the Rocks, and the International Social Science Review.