THE massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 is a crime which ranks with the worst depravities in modern Europe, with the Nazi destruction of whole communities like Lidice in Czechoslovakia or the 20,000 captured Polish Army officers slaughtered at Katyn by the Russians. It demonstrated with sickening clarity the prevailing general failure of the international community to confront Serb brutality with resolution and courage.
It therefore beggars belief that members of the Dutch battalion who surrendered to the Serb militias of Vladko Mladic, without firing a shot, should have just been given medals for their service in the town. This was one of the biggest humiliations ever suffered by the Dutch military. Many of the 600 soldiers involved still feel revulsion for their officers who caved in to Serb threats. There is equal disgust for the fact that some of the force was told to help the Serbs separate the men and boys from the women and children, after Mladic had calmed the fearful populace by promising the males were being taken to prison camps.
There is no denying that the Dutch commander Col. Thom Karremans found himself in an extremely difficult position. He had been surrounded for five days by much larger Serb forces in a town crowded with maybe 30,000 people, many of them refugees from surrounding villages. He had limited supplies and ammunition and had no strong defensive points. The day before he surrendered, 30 of his men had been captured without a fight by Serb forces. When he called the French NATO commander Gen. Janvier, asking for immediate air support, he was told it could not be provided. When two bombs were finally dropped on the Serbs, they threatened to execute their hostages and kill refugees.
Nevertheless, had Karremans taken a strong position from the start, 8,000 Bosnian Muslims might still be alive today. The Serbs might have halted their advance or they might have attacked. But once the Dutch started taking casualties, NATO would have responded vigorously. Soldiers are wounded and sometimes they die. It is what they do. For 30 Dutch troops to have allowed themselves to be captured and disarmed without a fight was unforgivable. For Karremans to allow the fate of these men to influence his judgment on the fate of the 30,000 Bosnians he was supposed to be protecting, was a cardinal dereliction of duty. Five years later, after a damning report, the entire Dutch government resigned.
The insignia awarded, eleven years after the Srebrenica atrocity, to all 850 members of the Dutch Battalion who served in Bosnia is in general recognition of their service throughout the campaign. Yet it is entirely appropriate that Bosnians, especially relatives of the dead of Srebrenica, should be outraged at the insensitive decision to make these awards at all. The abject failure to carry out their duty and protect helpless civilians is something many Dutchmen may be trying to forget. For those who suffered so terribly as a consequence of the Dutch surrender, there is no forgetting and probably no forgiving either.
