Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by Experts as Politicized and Ethnically Divisive

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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 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.

You must also remember the Serbs have every right to defend their homes ... you will fire back with fury, wont you?

Absolutely, it is OK to defend yourself. When the USA was attacked on 9-11, we fired back "with fury", but not indiscriminately. We bombed Taliban military positions, our special forces chased Al Qaeda into the mountains, and our infantry is still conducting raids and searches for the remnants. But we didn't slaughter Taliban prisoners, we didn't execute Afghan farmers, and we didn't bombard or burn down villages and villagers. And that is the difference.

My experiences as an M-60 gunner in light infantry units in the US Army, while relevant to the discussion, do not serve as the basis of the factual evidence contrary to your position, Kosta.

Machine guns, when mounted upon stabilization devices, such as tripods, and equipped with sighting devices, such as scopes, can become very accurate weapons.

I have referenced you to Carlos Hathcock's feat with an M-2, and there is further evidence of that weapon's use as a sniper weapon on the FAS site:

The M2 machine gun on the M3 tripod provided a very stable firing platform. Together with its slow rate of fire and its traversing and elevating mechanism, the M2 was used to a very limited extent as a sniper weapon during the Vietnam war at fixed installations such as firebases. Snipers prefired the weapons at identifiable targets and worked the data into range cards insuring increased first-round accuracy.

The weapon shown being used by Karadzic and Limonov is on a tripod, and has a scope - it therefore posesses two of the qualities needed for accurate long range shooting: the ability to acquire the target, and a stable base from which to engage it from.

While I doubt that Limonov or Karadzic posessed the requisite skill to utilize the weapon shown to the extent of it's capabilities, the fact remains that the weapon shown, in the hands of a skilled operator, could do just what the Bosnian Serbs did in Sarajevo for 4 years, being the murder of civilians over long distances, shooting down from the hills surrounding the city.

You have been talking out of school, Kosta, you were Military Intelligence (if memory serves), and should know better than to simply state your opinion as fact, and continue to do so in the face of evidence to the contrary.

But we didn't slaughter Taliban prisoners, we didn't execute Afghan farmers, and we didn't bombard or burn down villages and villagers. And that is the difference

Hmmm, we weren't so accurate when it came to bombing Serbia. And civilian losses in Afghanistan were a real source of concern and embarrassment for us, if I remember correctly. Never mind that, under our watch, several dozen Taliban suffocated to death in container trucks. And we don't (conveniently) count Iraqi civilian deaths.

But, in all fairness, it is not our policy to target civilians, execute prisoners, shoot up a family in a car by trigger-happy and scared young men and women in harms way, but it happens because that's what war does, even if you are careful. My Lai is a perfect example that even the world's leading democracy is subject to man's failings. Can we expect more from others?

Hoplite, if you look carefully at the picture, you will notice that the machine gun in question has a tailstock. If memory serves me (and you right), a 0.50 cal doesn't for obvious reasons. I would therefore conclude that the weapon in question is not a 0.50 cal "sniper," but closer to something you used, except on a heavier tripod. The footage of Radovan shooting the weapon shows that he did not possess the skills of a fine marksman with that machine gun. His fire seemed indiscriminate. I don't know if non-combatants were in those buildings, or if the buldings were abandoned, so I can't pass a judgemnt other than that any such undisciplined firing is highly irresponsable and -- coming from a high political figure -- reprehensable.

The gun like that one was used to fire on Bosnian Muslim positions and, yes, people who wore civilian clothes died. Many of them carried weapons, and were not really civilians. Others were innocent people, even kids, heartlessly caught in someone's cross -- on both sides, Hoplite, let's not forget that.

anyone who has been in the military knows that anything firing on automatic (see the stacked bullets) is not a precision weapon.

I take it from your response that we have cleared this up - I referenced the M2 as an example of a machine gun employed in the sniper role.

The weapon in question is a Zastava M84 (thanks to Mark502Inf) and my comments as to it's effectiveness, when configured properly, as a long range weapon stand.

Lastly, the Bosnian Serb sniping campaign against civilians, carried out in conjunction with and concurrently with a military campaign against Sarajevo's defenders is too well documented to bring into question, Kosta. Please do not do so.

Hoplite, we have cleared it up -- on M2, a .50 cal. machine gun capable of firing a single round. Equipped with a rifle scope and an effective range of about 2,000 yards, it was -- according to your own source -- listed as a rarely used sniper weapon.

The weapon pictured in your post showing Radovan Karadzhich aiming it, is not a .50 cal. weapon, and is not capable of firing single shots and therefore cannot be used as a long-range sniper rifle.

The Zastava M84 is a 7.62 mm (.30 cal) machine gun, based on the Soviet PKM design, and is capable of short bursts of 10 rounds, and is therefore ideal for sweeping fire cover rather than "sniper" precision shots. Although its range is 1,500 meters, it's effective against open targets up to 1,000 meters, but best suited for targets at 600 meters (perhaps you can provide some details as to how far the Serbs-Muslim lines were from the location where Karadzhich was filmmed).

I hope we have cleared this up, and hopefully you can admit that your claim was incorrect about Radovan the "sniper."

Civilians were targetted by heartless people on both sides, Hoplite. I believe there is evidence of that too. But since both of us hopefully are not questioning it, we really don't want to go there, you are right.

is not capable of firing single shots

Because Serbs are too stupid to put bullets in one at a time, or because they are too clumsy to operate the trigger so as to only fire one round at a time?

You're out of your depth here, Kosta.

Furthermore, this isn't about single shot operation, it's about effectively hitting a target over long distances using an automatic weapon, which, in this particular case corresponds to civilians in Sarajevo being targeted by machine guns on the hills surrounding it.

Hmmm, we weren't so accurate when it came to bombing Serbia ... But, in all fairness, it is not our policy to target civilians, execute prisoners, shoot up a family in a car by trigger-happy and scared young men and women in harms way, but it happens because that's what war does, even if you are careful. My Lai is a perfect example that even the world's leading democracy is subject to man's failings. Can we expect more from others?

Missing your target or misidentifying a target in combat are mistakes, not crimes. Isolated and rare atrocities committed by combatants are exactly as you put it: "man's failings" and not indicative of a nation's policies nor its military strategy.

However, what occurred at Srebrenica was organized and deliberate mass murder of prisoners committed by Serb forces--very different than a mistake made by a stressed out young soldier on a battlefield trying to make life or death decisions in a split second.

Cowboy, the primary purpose of the M84 is as you described--to provide a high volume of automatic fire for area coverage. However, the M84 is constructed to be accurate out to 1000 meters firing standard ammunition. The problems at that range are limitations in target acquisition and aiming imposed by the naked eye as well as round dispersal caused by recoil effect. The scope fixes the first problem, the tripod fixes the second. So, as configured in the photo, it could be an effective weapon against point targets at long range--a sniper rifle equivalent.

I suspect from your posts that you have armor experience. Think of how much more accurate a coaxial machine gun in a tank is versus the same type fired by an infantryman. The difference is based on the fixed & completely steady mount of the MG in the tank as well as the gunner's highpowered sights.

And we know the difference cannot be attributed to human factors, since infantry soldiers are unquestionably a higher level life-form than tankers.

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