Revealed: The West’s Role in the Genocide at Srebrenica
A new investigation into declassified evidence shows that, in an attempt to secure a larger peace deal, British, American and French governments knowingly left the Muslim population of the Bosnian town vulnerable to a genocide that killed 8,000 men and boys in 1995.
Then-Bosnian Serb Army Gen. Ratko Mladic, center, accompanied by an aide and French U.N. security troops, at the Sarajevo airport in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April 1993. (Michael Stravato / AP)
A new investigation into declassified evidence shows that, in an attempt to secure a larger peace deal, British, American and French governments knowingly left the Muslim population of Srebrenica vulnerable to a genocide that killed 8,000 men and boys in 1995.
The killings are regarded as the worst massacre in Europe since the Third Reich.
The shocking findings were gathered over 15 years by former Le Monde correspondent Florence Hartmann for her book “The Srebrenica Affair: The Blood of Realpolitik.”
The Guardian reports:
Declassified cables, exclusive interviews and testimony to the [war crimes] tribunal [in The Hague] show that the British, American and French governments accepted – and sometimes argued – that Srebrenica and two other UN-protected safe areas were “untenable” long before [Bosnian Serb General Ratko] Mladic took the town, and were ready to cede Srebrenica to the Serbs in pursuit of a map acceptable to the Serbian president, Slobodan Miloševic, for peace at any price.
But as they considered granting Srebrenica to the Serbs, western powers were also aware, or should have been, of the Bosnian Serb military “Directive 7” ordering the “permanent removal” of Bosnian Muslims from the safe areas. They also knew Mladic had told the Bosnian Serb assembly, “My concern is to have them vanish completely”, and that [Bosnian Serb leader Radovan] Karadžic pledged “blood up to the knees” if his army took Srebrenica.
Robert Frasure, a US diplomat working as an international representative, reported to Washington that Miloševic would not accept a peace map unless the safe areas were ceded to the Serbs. His boss, Anthony Lake, the US national security adviser, favoured a revised map that ceded Srebrenica, and the US policy-making Principals Committee urged that UN troops “pull back from vulnerable positions” – ergo, the safe areas.
France and Britain agreed…
As the killing hit full throttle, top western negotiators met Mladic and Miloševic but did not raise the issue of mass murder, even though unclassified US cables show that the CIA was watching the killing fields almost “live” from satellite planes.
Read more here.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
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