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.

I just don't have the time to study every book written about every subject on earth, and determine which author is writing propaganda and which is writing truthfully and honestly, before making up my mind.

Not much, but not much less than what every other average person knows about the subject.

As to Racak, Serb forces executed unarmed civilians, just like they had in Croatia and Bosnia before...

Bullshit. The whole world knows Racak was nothing more than a bunch of KLA/AlQuaeda terrorists losing a straight-up firefight, and you're basically a liar spreading disinformation on public forums.

Your world is obviously a bit smaller than mine, and populated by individuals not quite, how shall I put it, up to par, intellectually speaking.

Your whole schtick seems to consist of repeating lies, even after their exposed.

Not much of an act, is it?

If you want to go through the Racak fiasco, feel free to proceed.

Just don't be upset when you again find your face rubbed in your postings while you get your butt smacked to the sound of admonitions to not do it again.

I'm not suggesting you need to read every book, but following what has happened on this thread in regards to Srebrenica, Trnopolje, and what's going to happen as far as Racak should be a guide as far as providing an outline of which side is the biggest perpetrator of attempts to deceive the public in matters Balkan.

An alternate way to look at things is to find the biggest pushers of a certain perspective and see what their other positions are on subjects of interest - for instance, do you think that Living Marxism conforms to the ideology of a website such as FR?

If not, is it simply because different people have different opinions and that's ok, or is it because one side isn't being honest in their presentation of the issues and can only support their worldview through deceit?

I'm not Serbian and I don't even know any Serbs. The whole NATO thing in the balkans seemed strange enough to me during the mid 90s and when the situation in Kosovo came up in 98 I made it my business to go out on the internet and find out everything I could about it. The basic question was, even if everything we were reading was true and Serbs really were the ultimate assholes of the entire world, was it worth it? Was it worth risking the new relationship with Russia over?

What I found it from any number of sources was horrific. The west has been fed a steady diet of BS from the NATO and Clinton spin machines over a period of ten or twelve years, and American policies in the Balkans have much of the world viewing us as animals at present. In particular, nobody can figure out why we should worry about AlQuaeda after aiding them and their subsidiaries such as the KLA in taking over major sections of the Balkans.

It's not a question of who's controlling the world, it's a question of you vetting the sources you get information from before you lend that information any credence.

You don't have to believe any of the abovementioned groups - the Gulf War (the original one) was Muslim v. Muslim, but a clear picture has emerged of what happened there, thanks to third parties not directly involved in the fighting.

The same can be accomplished in regards to the Balkan wars, but again, I caution you to check out who's providing your information, with an eye to what their ultimate agendas are.

Okay. Actually we're not too far off. The key point here is that Bosnia is NOT "solidly Muslim." It's kinda sorta a solid majority in the Federation (where, at 48:17, they're maybe 3:1 over the Croats) but the Republika Srpska remains well over 90% Serb. Ahem.

The whole NATO thing in the balkans seemed strange enough to me during the mid 90s and when the situation in Kosovo came up in 98 I made it my business to go out on the internet and find out everything I could about it.>>

Why don't you ask someone who was there, instead of going to Internet sources solely? After all--ahem--we ALL know that everything posted on the Internet HAS to be true. Riiiiight? Riiiiight.

Replace the word "Muslim" with the word "Jew" in your post and your little teeny mustache becomes much more visible.

The Muslims didn't do a damned thing to deserve what the Serb fascists did to them in 1992-1995. NOTHING.

And don't babble about WW2. The Bosnian and Croat Nazis who served Hitler were executed by the tens of thousands by Tito at the end of the war. There were almost none left before the war started.

Srebrenica is pure media hype, as Joan is correct. Did you notice all the desecretation of all things Serbian i.e the Churches, cemetaries i.e that were obliterated by the muslims? I saw it, they are either completely demolished or slowly being repaird at snails pace.

Srebrenica is pure media hype, as Joan is correct.>>

Alternatediscourse said it, therefore it must be true. His knowledge is Godlike and omniscient. We bow before the higher power.

Not.

Did you notice all the desecretation of all things Serbian i.e the Churches, cemetaries i.e that were obliterated by the muslims? I saw it, they are either completely demolished or slowly being repaird at snails pace.>>

Well, yeah, you don't mention the number of mosques destroyed by the Serbs during the war, do you? The ratio of the number of destroyed mosques to Orthodox churches is about 3:1. And the Serbs have a real nasty habit of building churches on foundations where mosques used to be. I bet Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, just loooooooves that kind of abuse of His abode. Not.

As for slowly rebuilding, guess what: about 80% of Bosnia's industrial base was destroyed by the war the Serbs started. $85 billion total war damage. Sure they're rebuilding the churches slowly. They're rebuilding EVERYTHING slowly. Because the Bosnian Serb army destroyed just about everything that made anybody any money in the place.

Question ----

If you were a Bosnian Serb, would you live under Alija Izetbegovic upon learning or knowing of his Islamic Radikalism/fundamentalism?

RBJ's Answer (goes here)_____________________________

Have you ever been there? Have you been there since the end of the war? And on the highly unlikely event that you HAVE ever been there, have you done anything other than listened to disgrunteled relatives?

All you and Destro and your ilk do is spread hate, hate, hate for everyone who is not like you or who refuses to think like you. Go drown in your own bile. Lord knows you produce enough to drown in.

If you were a Bosnian Serb, would you live under Alija Izetbegovic upon learning or knowing of his Islamic Radikalism/fundamentalism?

RBJ's Answer (goes here) If I were a Serb and ACTUALLY READ HIS BOOK, yeah, I would. I know a number of Serbs in Tuzla who stuck with the government and fought their co-ethnics because they knew mindless Nazi hate when they heard it, having grown up with it and rejected it.

You ever drive from Tuzla to Zvornik and where the ZOS was established in 95/96, the mosques are sprouting up everywhere, new houses on the muslim side, whereas the Serb side, the houses have not been touched nor are the Serb Churches rebuilt? The money "earmarked" for the RS entity is withheld and rerouted elsewhere to benefit the "Federation". >>>

Yeah, I have made that drive many times... Very pretty countryside, if it weren't for all the farm houses the Serbs blew up after stealing the fridge. And yeah, 90% of the foreign aid money goes to the Federation. Why? The Serbs in the RS government STEAL it if we give it to them. The Federation (for all its fault) does not. We know who and how they spend the money. Give it to the RS and it winds up in hands of the mafia. We know this.

Hey bro, I was there last month.Evidently, you do not acknowledge what the trauma the local Serbs of Bratunac-Srebrenica, Milici, Skelani corridor experienced prior to the war and the onset. The Muslims did not listen tot he Serbs concerns, the Serbs wanted the same rights as the muslims, the right of self-determination. The muslims were granted the same right, the Serbs were denied after the Serbs voted 99% to seperate themselves from the muslims.

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