The massacre of over 5,000 Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica was the worst war crime to take place in Europe since World War II. It was also a humiliating and shameful event for the international community, because the people of Srebrenica had been under the protection of a Dutch contingent of UN troops. The commander of this unit allowed himself to be persuaded by Serb commanders that the population would be protected, but if the Dutch resisted, many civilians might be killed in the resulting firefight.
We will never know if the Serbs would have been prepared to take on the Dutch troops, if they had demonstrated absolute determination to resist the takeover of the town. The Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic and his political boss Radovan Karadzic were past masters of the communist tactic of pushing as far as they dared and then backing off when they discovered real resistance. After Srebrenica, the international community knew that there was no negotiating with Serbs. But it took the lives of over 5,000 innocents to stiffen their resolve.
There is a certain irony that it is in the Dutch city of the Hague that one of the Serbian commanders responsible, Dragan Obrenovic, is now being called to answer for his terrible crimes. He is only the latest in a succession of war crimes suspects to be paraded before the international bar of justice at the Hague tribunal. But the jaws of justice still gape for the three men most responsible for the horrors of Bosnia — Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic. The last of these men disappeared from his Belgrade home after the fall of Milosevic. Karadzic is still believed to be in the Serbian enclave in Bosnia.
But atrocities were not confined to the Serbs.UN investigators are expecting to finally uncover the mass grave of Serbian civilians butchered by Croats. Croats also carried out massacres of Bosnian Muslims. There were also cases of atrocities carried out by Muslims, but it has been established that there was never any hidden genocidal policy by the Bosnian government in Sarajevo.
In the antiseptic court room of the Hague, it has sometimes been difficult during the trials to click into the brutal reality of the horrific events that took place. But back in the blood-stained beauty of Bosnia, the trials and the verdicts are being followed closely. The slow parade of the guilty being brought at long last to justice is nurturing a quietly growing belief that, given time, life can return to something like normality. This week, a busload of Bosnian Muslims, mostly women, returned to Srebrenica to view the ruins of their old homes and look over the town which is still occupied by Serb civilians, many of whom were moved in by the Serb authorities.
The news cameras were running when out of the crowd of silent onlookers stepped an old man, a Serb, who walked toward a woman he had recognized and was greeting. His face was a picture of sadness, probably shame but also pleasure at seeing an old friend. It was in his name that Milosevic and Karadzic and Mladic and their minions had murdered his neighbors. But in his small way, he was demonstrating to one of those neighbors, that he wanted no part of it. From such little seeds, a new peace can grow.
