A Rare Glimpse at the Reality of the Bosnian War

During the trial of ex-Bosnian Serb official Biljana Plavsic, Madeleine Albright and Elie Wiesel made speeches about the supposedly monstrous Bosnian Serbs. They portrayed Bosnian Muslims as analogous to Jews and Bosnian Serbs as analogous to Nazis. As I shall demonstrate in an upcoming article on that trial, what Albright and Wiesel said amounts to Holocaust denial. In addition, I will demonstrate that in his so-called testimony, Mr. Wiesel lied.

Anyway, while researching Elie Wiesel's earlier statements about Yugoslavia, I happened to read a most revealing 1992 Associated Press (AP) dispatch. It is posted below.

1) It describes an all-out attack on the Serbian civilian population in and around the Bosnian town of Gorazde.

Prior to the attack, there had been sustained fighting between Bosnian Serb troops and Muslim military forces who controlled the town of Gorazde which had a mixed Muslim/Serb population. The Serbian troops withdrew as a peace gesture. After that, on August 26th, a column of cars and buses including:

The AP dispatch was published on September 12th, that is, 17 days after the attack. Yet up until then,

This AP dispatch is unusual in that it actually *mentions* the attack on these Serbs. Mostly the media was silent when Serbs were attacked. As we shall show in a soon-to-be-published article by Prof. Francisco Gil-White, in fact it was the Serbs and also their moderate Muslim allies who were the main victims of anti-civilian terror in Bosnia. This was not because the Serbs were saints. It was because the people whom they and their Muslim allies were fighting were fanatical Islamic Fundamentalists, misportrayed in the Western media as peace loving, moderate democrats. But all that is discussed in Prof. Gil-White's forthcoming article. (When posted, it will be at http://emperors-clothes.com/gilwhite/bsn.htm The point here is: this AP dispatch stands out because it at least reports the anti-Serb atrocities.

2) But even this article reveals anti-Serb media bias. From the start the article refers to anti-Serb violence as "revenge." Revenge for what? What does the AP claim happened to provoke such "revenge"? The article gives no details, saying only that the town had been under siege.

By using the terms, "siege" and "revenge," the writer creates the impression that monstrous crimes must have been committed *by the Serbs* because how else could what the Muslims did constitute "revenge"?

The article says the Muslims outnumbered the Serbs in the Gorazde area, 70% to 30%. A 30% minority is probably not in a position to terrorize a 70% majority. More, this particular majority was armed and prepared to carry out the sort of atrocities described in the AP dispatch.

Supporting this point, the AP uses the term, "siege." If Gorazde was under siege *from Serbian forces* then it must have been controlled *by Muslim forces.* So: the town had a mainly Muslim population; it was militarily controlled by Muslims; they were quite capable of carrying out massacres. This hardly sounds like a situation in which the Serbian forces would feel safe in provoking the Muslims, even if they wanted to.

Moreover, as the article states, the Serbs withdrew their forces as a peace gesture. Would they have done so without first rescuing the Serb civilian inhabitatants of Gorazde if, having committed outrages, they had every reason to expect anti-Serb "revenge?"

The withdrawal of Serbian troops, the coordinated assault on the Serbian neighborhoods, the desperate flight of columns of cars and buses without troops to protect them, the ambush and the extreme violence all suggest that a) the Serbs naively misestimated their foes' capacity for terror and b) after the troops withdrew, the Serbian civilians were caught unaware by the anti-Serb attack and fled in disarray.

And a Serbian military official says: "'Muslims have abused our peace gesture by launching attacks on innocent civilians.'"

Based on all of the above, I would suggest this hypothesis: the presence of Serb military forces near Gorazde *prevented* atrocities against Serbian civilians. When the Serbian military withdrew, the extremists among Muslims launched a pogrom: ambushes, horrific murder, torching and looting of houses, slaughter of livestock.

3) Speaking of livestock, note that the article describes the attackers as having slaughtered pigs in the Serbs' yards. The Bosnian Serbs were/are mostly peasant farmers, many of whom do indeed breed pigs. This is an important detail. Let me explain why.

The AP dispatch states that, "The Serb forces hold about two-thirds of Bosnia's territory." It was common for the Western media to make such statements, suggesting that the Serbs had *seized* most of Bosnia, i.e., they were aggressors.

A small point that the media neglected to mention was: the Serbs *owned and occupied* roughly 2/3 of Bosnia.

Before the fighting broke out in Bosnia, the Slavic Muslim population was comprised mainly of city dwellers. The Slavic Orthodox population was overwhelmingly farmers. Because farming is land-intensive, in 1991 the Serbian population owned about 2/3 of the land in Bosnia - that is, they owned the land they lived on and farmed. Bosnian Serb farmers were important food producers for Yugoslavia and other European countries.

The Bosnian Serbs forces controlled *only* 2/3 of the land because, in fact, they fought a mainly defensive war. Many Serb farmers lived near Muslim-majority towns, and what the Western media continually called "laying siege" actually involved the Serbian army posting troops near concentrations of Serbian farmers and town dwellers to protect them from attack by Islamists in nearby cities. In the upcoming article by Francisco Gil-White, he shows that the Bosnian Islamic Fundamentalists had an ideological commitment to *not* living in peace with non-Muslims.

BODY:
Charred human skeletons, decomposing corpses and burned-out cars are the grim remnants of a Muslim assault on a column of Serb refugees fleeing war-ravaged Gorazde.

When Serb forces on Aug. 26 eased their four-month siege of the town in southeastern Bosnia, most of Gorazde's Serb inhabitants tried to escape. Many feared retaliation by majority Muslims who had been under Serbian guns during the siege.

At dawn the next day, one of the columns of cars and buses carrying 3,000 Serbs, mostly women and children, was ambushed by Muslims at Gnjila canyon, 11 miles north of Gorazde. Witnesses said at least 50 people were killed and many more injured. Others managed to escape the hail of bullets and grenades by jumping down the steep rocky ravine or by hiding in bushes and woods, they said.

"It was like hell. Everyone was screaming as people and children, some cut in half by volleys of bullets, stumbled all over the place," said Dragica Gavrilovic, one of the refugees.

"People were trapped in their burning cars. Others crawled looking for their relatives, or jumped down the cliff in panic," she said, standing frozen next to the grave of her 11-year-old son, Dragan, who was killed in the ambush.

"Many others were not that lucky. They had to leave their dear ones behind," Gavrilovic said.

Evidence of the massacre was still visible two weeks after the ambush. No one has dared to remove the remaining corpses, fearing another attack from nearby forests.

Skeletons sat in burned-out cars, and decomposing corpses lay on the side of the dusty road. Stray dogs were eating the remains.

Many Western governments and international organizations, including the United Nations and the European Community, have blamed Serb forces for much of the violence in the civil war that has killed thousands. The Serb forces hold about two-thirds of Bosnia's territory.

But rival Muslims and Croats have also come under increasing international criticism for crimes and human rights abuses, including "ethnic cleansing" of territories under their control.

"Ethnic cleansing" is the term used to describe the expulsion of people to create ethnically homogeneous areas.

After the Serb forces left their positions on the hills above Gorazde, Muslim residents, 70 percent of the town's prewar population of 40,000, looted and torched the houses of fleeing Serbs, witnesses said.

Almost every building, including Serb Orthodox churches, has been torched in the Serb quarter on the southeastern bank of the Drina River that divides Gorazde, a trading center about 35 miles southeast of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo.

The move to loosen the siege on Gorazde coincided with an international London peace conference in which all warring groups participated. The decision by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic angered local Serb warlords - and those who had to flee.

"Muslims have abused our peace gesture by launching attacks on innocent civilians. We may have to counterattack to regain the territory," Dusan Kornjaca, the commander of Serb forces, said in an interview.

In Rogatica, heavy cannon and machine-gun fire could be heard from the direction of Gorazde as trucks towing howitzers headed there.

"The decision to give up Gorazde is a treason. Karadzic should be ashamed," said 68-year-old Marko Ratkovic, who managed to flee to Mladenovac, 75 miles northeast of Rogatica, in neighboring Serbia.

"All of us here have lost at least one family member in this brutal war. It has to stop before we all exterminate each other," said Ruza Blagojevic, one of about 200 Gorazde Serbs who settled in the Mladenovac refugee center after a harrowing journey.

She said when a charity organization offered them clothes, all the women chose black - for mourning.

This is an email I dispatched to a fellow FRper earlier today.

The attack was, according to Mladic, not primarily designed to take
the entire enclave. That decision was made after a large number of
Muslim fighters decided to give up the Defence and to attempt an
extremely risky outbreak in the night of July 10 to Tuzla. "Muslims
fled in large numbers the night before the attack," said the Dutch
Army representative in Washington, Colonel G. van Oppen, in the
Fries Dagblad of 13 October 1995: "The question of why this
happened was never asked in the Netherlands." This is what I have always said and many others on FR never touched upon. They always discussed the fleeing of the Higher Officer Corps (down below)

But Michael Evans of The Times already knew this on July 13 when
he reported, referring to "Western intelligence sources," that Muslim
commanders had left the city after a provocation from their side, the
night before the first Serb tanks entered the scene. "Prior to the Serb
advance the Muslims had fired upon Serb units along the main road to
the South. (...) The apparent decision made by the Muslims to leave
the city gave the Serbs an unexpected opportunity to seize
Srebrenica." The Serb intention was to take the city as part of the agenda of wrapping up and ending the war before the 95-96 winter.

THE ORDER OF EVENTS brings to mind the situation of Gorazde in
April 1994. A study made by US Colonel John Sray, former head of
UNPROFOR?s intelligence service in Sarajevo, reveals what
happened:

      "Two British observers were located at an observation post
      behind Muslim lines. Various attacks by the Serbs were
      effectively stopped and the position could be defended for a
      long period. Then the Muslims realized that the British
      observers were positioned right behind them. During the next
      Serb attack the Muslims retreated unexpectedly and for no
      reason. Their only objective was to expose the observers to an
      attack of the confused Serbs. Serb bullets killed one British
      soldier and wounded the other, but responsibility for this lies in
      the hands of the Bosnian Muslims, who hoped to provoke a
      revenge strike by NATO as a punishment for the killing of a
      neutral observer." BINGO! This is exactly how it happened. Except the round was from an anti-aircraft converted weapon to "antipersonnel" weapon...:)

(John Sray in Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware)

The trap failed in Gorazde, but in Srebrenica no half-measures were
taken.

Apart from the flight of the Muslim troops in the night prior to the
attack, there are many more indications that the Muslim leadership
abandoned the enclave on purpose. The Defence was already
weakened because of the fact that best troops had been moved out to
Tuzla, Sarajevo and Mt. Treskavica, long before the month of July,
according to a commander of a Bosnian Serb special unit. Naser Oric
himself, who had sworn never to allow Srebrenica to become Serb as
long as he was in charge, was no longer present. "His whereabouts
during the months prior to the collapse of Srebrenica are quite a
mystery," according to Charles Lane in De Volkskrant of 12 August
1995. But Ivanisevic argues that Oric, together with 2500 of his best
troops, was called on duty in April and May of 1995 to an area south
of Sarajevo in order to take part in the planned Muslim offensive.
Estimates of the number of armed personnel that stayed behind
mention six to ten thousand, comprising 3000-4000 regular Army
recruits. The Serbs were able to counter this with 3,500 men, all from
this region, far better equipped but only accompanied by four outdated
tanks. Besides, not more than a few hundred men took part in the
attack on the city itself. The difference in capabilities of the two
sides seems to underline the opportunistic nature of the Serb offensive. It
is also important to take into consideration that the Muslims had
suffered heavy losses during supply runs between Srebrenica and
Zepa in April, May and June, which could have cast doubts on
chances to defend the city in the long run. The area hardly has any
natural resources, and is strategically of far less significance than
Gorazde, for example.

Eventually, while the "Dayton" agreement was in preparation, the
Bosnian government [Izetbegovic] accepted the concept of
exchanging territory: Srebrenica, Zepa and Gorazde for the Serb
Sarajevo. Bosnian Minister of foreign affairs Muhammad Sacirbey
had already informed Secretary of State Voorhoeve about this option
during talks held in May (see De Volkskrant of 1 November 1995).
The deal came as a blessing for the Americans, so close to the start of
an election campaign. The fiercely criticized UN peace force very
much wanted to abandon the "safe havens" as well. Srebrenica
became the turning point from a military, political and publicity
perspective. Only the retreat of the peacekeepers made it possible for
NATO to start with the air strikes in September. The wave of horror
stories about mass executions overshadowed the Croatian terror in
the Krajina and no word got out about the Muslim-Croatian crimes in
cities like Glamoc, Grahovo and Sanski Most... "

WHAT REMAINS unanswered is the amount of Muslim men
missing, who possibly died [in action] or were possibly killed.
According to Miroslav Deronjic, official of the new municipality
Srebrenica-Skelani, that number is two thousand; according to
Amnesty International ? four thousand; according to the International
Red Cross, between seven and eight thousand; and Muslim sources
state eight to twelve thousand. Each number represents an enormous
tragedy in itself, but the results are also the product of a
hypothetical
calculation method. The size of the population before the fall of
Srebrenica cannot be known beyond reasonable doubt.

Manipulation with numbers was turned into an art during the Bosnian
war, and it is fair to assume that this also happened in Srebrenica....

On July 14, the ICRC [Red Cross] counted 23,000 refugees who were
taken by bus to Tuzla, more than half of them children. This group was
later joined by thousands of Muslim men who arrived on foot. In total
the World Health Organization and the Bosnian government have
registered 35,632 refugees from Srebrenica up to this moment. An
unknown number of men have not had themselves registered and
have been absorbed, as announced by the Bosnian Army, in the 28th
division. Others (1,000? 2,000?) have fled to Zepa and Serbia.

MORE THAN TEN THOUSAND persons were registered as
missing. "Conclusions about the number of missing people based on
this figure has to be done with caution," UN inspector Tadeusz
Mazowiecki wrote, "because there may have been double counts in
the missing person notices and because resolved cases are not always
reported to the Red Cross." It is also possible that names have been
forged in an attempt to increase the number of missing people, or in
an attempt to escape prosecution for war crimes. Mazowiecki?s
successor, Elisabeth Rehn, came to the number of 8,000 people whose
fate was unknown: five thousand men of military age who left the
enclave before the fall, and three thousand men who were separated
from their families. Rehn agreed with Mazowiecki, who suspected on
the basis of "strong indications" that the missing Muslims had been
murdered. During her visit of locations near Srebrenica in January of
this year, she seemed to tone down her initial comments a little bit.
She was still looking for evidence.

{Editor's Note: The UN bureaucrat accuses the Serbian forces of
murder despite the denials of UN military officers on the scene during
the fighting. Having made the accusation, the accuser goes "looking
for evidence!}

Miroslav Deronjic also gave his version in a report about the events:

"According to intelligence of the Army of Republika Srpska, around
six thousand Muslim conscripts have not joined the convoys for
evacuation, but instead continued armed resistance, or tried to force
an outbreak through the Serb lines of Defence in the direction of
Srebrenica ? Kravica ? Konjevic Polje ? Cerska ? Crni Vrh ? Tuzla.
Skirmishes with this group (...) have continued for the next twenty
days in the district of Konjevic Polje ? Cerska ? Udrica. A large
number of Muslim fighters were killed during the attempt to break
through the lines of Defence of Bratunac and Zvornik, or during
clashes between their own competing factions. Part of the fighters
surrendered ? a small number, two hundred ? and they have been
transferred as prisoners of war to the military prison of Bjeljina. The
larger part, around four thousand, reached the territory of the
municipality of Tuzla. It is impossible to give exact estimates of the
number of Muslim soldiers that died, because the fighting took place
over a large area and in different directions."

That Muslims fought each other, as Deronjic argues, cannot be found
in the reports of Mazowiecki, Rehn and Human Rights Watch, but is
known from statements made by the Dutch UN military personnel.

{This is another indication of the anti-Serb bias of the UN
bureaucracy and Human Rights Watch, as opposed to the UN troops!}

At least on two occasions Muslims have clashed with each other.
According to general Couzy, the issue was a dispute about the
question if the enclave should be defended or abandoned. Yugoslav
agency Tanjug already reported in February last year about a "heavy
conflict and fighting" in the vicinity of the town called Slap, between
Muslims who wanted to leave to Macedonia via Serbia and Oric?s
men, who controlled the Drina crossings in the hamlet of Luka. Later,
unconfirmed reports mentioned a rivaling "modest" military unit
under command of Osman Suljic. In July, Muslims from Srebrenica
who wanted to surrender apparently received a harsh treatment by
hard-liners under command of Zulfo Tursun, Ejub Golic and Nezir
Mandzic. Such a fight, according to Deronjic, had taken place just
after the fall of the enclave at Bokcin Potok. A team of the Dutch
NOS-news discovered the corpses of tens of victims on 3 February.

NOW, CAN WE, looking at everything, say anything about the
number of missing people with certainty? The latest number of 7,000,
picked by the American State Department, seems to be far too high
for the time being, but that the fate of many Muslims who fled is
uncertain is a fact. Have they been killed on orders given from the
top, or in acts of individual revenge? Are hundreds, maybe thousands
of Muslims being held by the Bosnian Serbs and assigned to forced
labor, as some refugees in Tuzla assume or at least hope? It is about
time that an independent institution investigates suspected mass
graves, and interrogates witnesses who might have been accomplices
to mass murder (like the Bosnian Serb soldier Drazen Erdemovic,
arrested last week). Only then there will be clarity about the real
events and the actual magnitude of the tragedy in Srebrenica.

{Editor's note: even after all the evidence they have provided, the
authors still use language that assumes the credibility of the charges
against the Bosnian Serbs. Thus they speak of the need to look for
"suspected mass graves." In fact, as George Pumphrey shows in
Srebrenica: Three years later and still waiting , the NATO forces
have been looking for "suspected mass graves" since 1995 with no
result. Perhaps more damning, The US claimed to have satellite
photos of mass graves around Srebrenica, but the photos somehow
got lost.} This is the time when I mentioned there were 3 large graves. One of each for the Serb and Muslim military dead and the other was of civilians killed in the crossfire.

SerbianFire- eyes of serbia

Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now

Pedal in Peace 2003- Cycling Challenge for the Children of Serbia

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.