Well-armed Muslims greatly outnumbered the Dutch. And, in fact, the only Dutch personnel killed, was attacked by a Muslim soldier as he was withdrawing.
The Muslims had ample supply of arms and ammunition - and had this even much earlier in the war, as Alan Helvig, who received official UN reports, said. For instance, the UN ordered the report of the Muslims shelling Serb positions for three full hours not be released. The Serb counterattack however was much hyped, with the media claiming it was an unprovoked attack. No one low on ammunition shells constantly for three full hours with apparently no military objective but to get a counterattack for PR "bad Serb" purposes.
U.N. just doesn't learnWho am I to judge? I served in the former Republic of Yugoslavia during the early 1990s. I worked under the authority of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Belgrade office. Among other things, I was directly involved in the evacuations of Muslim refugees from Srebrenica to Tuzla in April 1993.
One night, Bosnian Serbs had shelled the Muslim enclave, injuring a number of women and children, who were subsequently airlifted and trucked to hospitals. You may recall the scene on CNN, where a young boy was lying in the back of a truck, covered in blood and screaming for his mama. The CNN reporter claimed that these people were victims of an unprovoked attack launched by the Serbs.
The truth of the matter is that the shelling was a counterattack against the Muslim forces in Srebrenica, who had just finished shelling nearby Serb positions. The Muslim assault had lasted for approximately three hours and ended moments before the counterattack began. How do I know this? I read the message from the U.N. Communications Team in Srebrenica to the U.N. Mission in Belgrade. The U.N. however, saw to it that the correct information was never released to the media. Why? Because the truth did not suit its political agenda.
That isn't the point. The point is that those Muslims could not have held out indefinitely in a Srebrenica surrounded by even more well-armed Serb Republic forces.
The Serb counterattack however was much hyped, with the media claiming it was an unprovoked attack.
Of course the attack on Srebrenica was provoked - if not by the bombardment, it was provoked by the presence in Srebrenica of Muslim soldiers who had been raiding and looting the local Serb towns, killing civilians there, etc.
The question is what happened to the prisoners afterwards. Executing POWs en masse is a crime, attacking an enemy force is not.