#20 Betrayal & Barbarism in Bosnia:

The UNPROFOR Operation, National Caveats

& Genocide in the Srebrenica UN “Protected Area”

 

– Dr Regeena Kingsley

 

In my recent blog, “#18 Caveats Endanger & Caveats Kill: National Caveats in UN Operations in Angola, Rwanda & Bosnia-Herzegovina”, the severely negative effects of limitation and prohibition rules of engagement – otherwise known as “national caveats” – were examined with reference to failed United Nations (UN) operations in Angola (UNAVEM II), Rwanda (UNAMIR) and Bosnia (UNPROFOR).

With the return to civil war in Angola in 1992-1993, an unwise and unrealistic UN mandate, combined with Scandinavian national caveats, served to frustrate the UN Regional Commander at the Huambo Regional Headquarters, as the UN personnel fled for their lives from two violent and hostile oncoming militias (for deeper analysis on this incident see blog “#19 Hindering Escape during an Emergency: National Caveats & the UNAVEM II Operation in Angola”).  In Rwanda and Bosnia, respectively, Belgian and Dutch caveat constraints, that constrained the employment of lethal force against belligerents with hostile intent in the two diverse conflict theatres, led to the failure of UN forces to protect the lives of civilian war refugees who had sought UN protection at UN compounds.  These terrible and shameful failures led directly to massive loss of life among the civilian population in both theatres of war.  Namely, the slaughter of 2,000 Tutsi civilians in Rwanda at a protected school compound under Belgian UN command in Kigali in 1994, and subsequently, the execution of 8,000 male civilians in Bosnia at the UN “Protected Area” under Dutch UN command in Srebrenica in 1995. As is clear from this brief overview, these human disasters took place within mandated UN security operations, under UN command, and due in large part to the conduct of UN security forces. 

There is an old, wise and true proverb to the effect that those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.  It is in this spirit, and in the hope and goal of saving lives, that this research is offered. It is hoped that deeper analysis of these security disasters may reveal hidden truths and important lessons that – if heeded – may help to avoid similar political and military failures in future international security campaigns, in which the lives of both civilians and military personnel are placed in very real danger by the decisions made by politicians and military commanders in national capitals.

In this blog, I turn my attention once again to the Balkans region of Southeast Europe and the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR) operation that was conducted in the conflict theatre of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992-1995.  In the following, I will examine in much greater detail the human catastrophe that took place in the UN ‘Protection Area’ in Srebrenica under the command of Dutch UN forces.

Chiefly, this study will analyse, firstly, the impact of politico-military decisions and national caveat restraints on the ability of Dutch national military forces to fulfil the UN ‘safe area’ mandate and be effective in in their security tasking within the Srebrenica safe zone, and secondly, further obstacles to effectiveness caused by the orders issued by the Dutch Minister of Defence in The Hague, the National Commander of the Dutch UN contingent in Srebrenica, and the UNPROFOR Commander himself at UNPROFOR Bosnia and Herzegovina Command Headquarters in Sarajevo.

The shocking and grisly end result of this crucially-important chain of decisions, made in the halls of power in The Hague and at UNPROFOR Command Headquarters in Sarajevo, will then be described in terms of the real-life consequences of these key decisions and caveat restrictions on the lives of Bosnian civilians seeking refuge during the Bosnian War at the UN enclave under Dutch command, and on the behaviour and choices made by soldiers of the Dutch national military contingent who had been deployed to Srebrenica to protect the war refugees in the safe area.

 

Background: The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Between 1989-1990 the Communist Bloc of Eastern Europe, formerly hidden behind the so-called “Iron Curtain” of Soviet Russian control, disintegrated as Communist governments collapsed like dominoes in Poland, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania, and transition towards truly democratic government representation began.[1]  By 1991 the Soviet Union itself – the great Communist champion and superpower – had likewise collapsed, an event which signalled not only the end of the “Cold War” of global superpower competition between Democratic America and Communist Russia, but also the end of Russian support to multiple satellite Communist states around the world that had hitherto been propped up and controlled by the Soviet Union.

The crumbling of this network of Communist control and support also extended to the Balkans and the Communist state of the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia”, which since the end of the Second World War had been comprised of six republics – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia – all governed from the Serbian capital of Belgrade.  In June 1991 this formerly Communist state of Yugoslavia dissolved as two of its six republics, Croatia and Slovenia, declared their independence and seceded to become independent and democratic nation states in their own right.[2]  

In Croatia war immediately broke out across the republic as Croatian Serbs, who opposed independence from Serbian rule, allied themselves with soldiers of the federal Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) stationed in Croatia, who at this point still operated under the command of the Serb government led by President Slobodan Milosevic in the federal capital of Belgrade.[3]  Together they employed military violence against Croatian civilians in an effort to occupy Croatia and forcibly stop the republic’s independence from the Communist entity of the state of Yugoslavia.  Combat between pro-independence Croatians and anti-independence Croatian Serbs and their Serbian allies continued from 1991 to 1995, with the exception of a temporary cease-fire in January 1992, ending ultimately with a pro-independence Croat victory against the anti-independence and pro-Serbian alliance.

 Map of Yugoslavia prior to and following its fragmentation.[4] 

In 1992 a third Yugoslavian republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, likewise sought freedom and self-autonomy from Communist Yugoslavia to be a nation-state in its own right on the international stage.  On 29 February-1 March a democratic referendum was held in which a majority of the Bosnian population voted to declare their independence from the remaining Yugoslavian Federation and Serbian rule from Belgrade.[5]  However, as in Croatia, this bid for independence divided Bosnia’s ethnically- and religiously-diverse population. While the majority Muslim Bosniak population supported independence, Serbian Orthodox Bosnian Serbs wanted to remain under Serbian rule from Belgrade, while the minority Catholic Bosnian Croats wanted Bosnian independence, but also wished to annex Croat-dominated Bosnian areas in order to join them to the neighbouring and newly-independent state of Croatia.[6]  As a result of the affirmative majority vote by the Bosnian population, and despite the dissent of Bosnian Serbs, on 3 March 1992 the local government of Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence and was immediately recognised internationally as an independent and sovereign nation.[7] 

As in Croatia, however, this emphatic move towards independent self-governance enraged the Serb population of Bosnia.  Open war broke out at once in Bosnia-Herzegovina as severely disgruntled Bosnian Serbs, supported by Milosevic’s Serb government in Belgrade, likewise allied themselves with other elements of the JNA stationed in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This newly-assembled and mixed group of anti-independence Serbs – comprised of Serb JNA army and Special Forces personnel together with Bosnian Serb militia fighters, police officers and civilians – sought to regain control of the new nation by force.[8]  Declaring themselves “The Army of the Serb Republic” (“Republika Srpska”) fighting for a ‘Greater Serbia’, these Serb forces used their military arsenal to attack and take control of all ethnically Serb areas around Bosnia-Herzegovina, ultimately occupying over half of its total territory.[9]

With the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina unable to function properly as a result of this loss of territory, the Bosnian Serbs next launched a siege on the Bosnian Capital of Sarajevo.[10]  The ensuing “Sarajevo Siege” became the longest siege in modern military history, lasting four years (44 months or 1,425-days).[11]  During the siege the Serbs blockaded the city, cutting off the capital city’s supply of fresh water, food and power.[12] In addition, the Serbs relentlessly attacked the city and its inhabitants.  As a UN report later stated:

‘Serb shells continued to land in the [Sarajevo] safe area at an average rate of approximately 1,000 per day, usually into civilian-inhabited areas, often in ways calculated to maximize civilian casualties, sometimes at random, and only occasionally for identifiably military purposes. This pattern, which had begun on 6 April 1992, continued, with lulls of varying lengths until Operation Deliberate Force in August 1995’.[13]

Indeed, at the height of the siege 3,000 mortar shells were being fired by Bosnian Serb forces at the capital city every single day.[14]

Sarajevo Siege: Two apartment buildings in downtown Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia-Herzegovina, burn with fire after being shelled with artillery on 8 June 1992, three months after the city first came under military attack from anti-independence Bosnian Serb military forces on 5 April.[15]

At the same time Serb snipers dug into the surrounding hills or hidden in city buildings made the daily lives of civilians a living hell, by continuously targeting them in the streets of the city – most notoriously along the main Sarajevan boulevard, which became infamous as the deadly “Sniper Alley”.[16]  As one indicted Bosnian Serb commander, Stanislav Galic, later admitted in court during his trial for war crimes: ‘For a citizen of Sarajevo, there was no place to hide from the attacks. He wasn’t safe at home, in schools, or in hospitals’. [17]  Approximately 11,500 people were killed and a further 50,000 wounded during the “Siege of Sarajevo”.[18]

Sniper Alley: Unarmed and defenceless civilians seeking to buy food in the city run for their lives to escape deadly sniper fire from entrenched Bosnian Serb forces during the ‘Siege of Sarajevo’. As they flee they pass French UNPROFOR forces, who are stationed in Sarajevo to bring protection and peace, but are in fact powerless either to shield these civilians from the Serb sniper onslaught or to bring peace to Sarajevo.[19]

 

Anti-Independence Bosnian Serbs Enact a Strategy of ‘Ethnic Cleansing’

Outside of the capital city, Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska forces also sought simultaneously to decisively swing the balance towards Serbian rule in the new Bosnian nation. In order to achieve this anti-independence Serb forces carried out a deliberate, targeted strategy of eradication of the pro-Independence Bosniak and Croatian population of Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992-1995 – in other words, “ethnic cleansing”.  Adopting an extermination strategy not seen since the Jewish Holocaust conducted by Nazi Germany throughout Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, Bosnian Serbs and their JNA and Croatian Serb allies employed the use of expulsion, torture, physical injury, sexual assault and murder, all carried out in the most brutal and savage manner, in order to instil terror on the pro-independence Bosnian civilian population. 

Specifically, Bosnian Serbs: forcibly expelled unwanted Bosniak and Croatian ethnic groups from Serb-inhabited areas; seized or expropriated their property; destroyed homes, villages and towns; eradicated cultural buildings, places of worship and cemeteries; seized civilians and used them as human shields; carried out systematic mass rape of approximately 50,000 Muslim Bosniak and Catholic Bosnian females – including in ‘rape camps’ deliberately established for this purpose; and conducted widespread mass murder, including deliberate, targeted executions of Muslim Bosniak males all over Bosnia-Herzegovina.[20]

These measures were all used by Republika Srpska forces to incite extreme terror in the pro-independence population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and thereby cause the civilian populace either to submit and assent to Serbian rule from Belgrade, or to flee their homes, regions – and even their very nation – in order to save their lives from abuse, terrorization and death.

The collective toll of these Bosnian Serb measures in terms of human suffering and loss of life in Bosnia – quite apart from the widespread physical destruction of cities, towns, villages and the natural landscape across the fledgling new nation – was devastating.  In terms of fatalities alone, for instance, over the four-year period between 1992-1995, a total of 104,732 people, of Bosniak, Serb and Croat ethnicity, were killed during the war over independence in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including a total of 28,726 civilian men, 7,974 civilian women, and 68,031 combatant soldiers.[21]

As for the Serb policy of mass rape against pro-independence Bosnian Croatians and Bosniaks – a tactic deliberately commissioned by Serb politicians and conducted by Serb fighters as part of their overall strategy of ethnic cleansing – a UN investigative Commission of Experts reported in 1994 that approximately 800 named victims and 1,673 unnamed victims (totalling 2,473 women) were reported to have been raped in Bosnia between 1991-1993, with victims ranging in age from 5 to 81 years.[22] A further 500 incidents, involving unknown numbers of women, were also reported to the Commission. [23]

These reported cases involved 600 named perpetrators and 900 unnamed perpetrators ((1,500 rapists in total), of whom 800 were identified as being either a member of the Bosnian Serb Army, Special Forces or paramilitary fighting groups, or a member of the Bosnian police force, or a Serb civilian.[24]  In 80 per cent of reported cases (involving considerably more than 1,978 women and girls), the females had been sexually violated in settings where they had been taken and held forcibly in custody.[25]  All of these acts were deliberately inflicted on the female Bosnian civilian population with the clear intent, as the Commission stated, ‘to terrorise, to displace, to demoralise and to destroy’.[26]

Women were not alone in being violently sexually abused however.  The Commission found that during the war Bosnian men were also ‘forced to rape women and to perform sex acts on guards or each other’ by armed fighting forces, or alternately were ‘subjected to castration, circumcision or other sexual mutilation’.[27] 

In total, an estimated 20,000 people are considered to have been sexually violated either by anti-independence Serbs or in revenge-rape by pro-independence Bosnian fighters – a brutal and appalling reality that led the UN Commission of Experts to state that it was ‘shocked by the high level of victimization and the manner in which these crimes were committed, as are the populations of all the parties to the conflict’.[28]  According to the Bosnian Ministry of the Interior, however, the real total figure is even higher – totalling approximately 50,000 rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Bosnian War for Independence.[29]

 

UNPROFOR: The UN’s “Protection Operation” in Croatia & Bosnia

During the course of these two Croatian and Bosnian wars of independence from 1992-1995, the UN established and operated a peace and security mission in both Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina called UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR).[30] From the outset this mission was intended to be a robust “Protection Operation” in an active war-zone, rather than a traditional UN operation of so-called “Peace-Keeping” by means of neutral and often unarmed military observers and civilian personnel in a theatre of low-level conflict. Indeed, UNPROFOR’s initial mandate was specifically: (1) to ensure that three United Nations Protected Areas (UNPAs) in Croatia were demilitarised; (2) to control the entry of civilians to these Croatian safe zones; and most importantly of all (3) to ensure that ‘all persons residing in them were protected from fear of armed attack’.[31]

In September 1992 this mandate was then expanded within neighbouring Bosnia-Herzegovina, with UNPROFOR forces tasked with the additional tasks of delivering humanitarian aid, protecting convoys of civilian detainees, and monitoring a “no-fly” zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.[32] As the war raged on ferociously in Bosnia during early 1993 and the fighting parties became increasingly fractured and complex, the UN created in June six further UNPA safe areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina around five Bosnian towns – Tuzla, Bihac, Gorazde, Zepa and Srebrenica – as well as the Bosnian capital city of Sarajevo.[33] These UN ‘safe havens’ were intended to be areas in which Bosnian civilians fleeing the fighting could find sanctuary and refuge in the midst of war. As the UN Security Council Resolution explicitly stated, these six new UNPA enclaves in Bosnia were to be kept ‘free from armed attack or any other hostile act’.[34]

The 6 UNPROFOR ‘Protected Areas’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1992-1995.[35]

To accommodate this new and important assignment, the UNPROFOR mandate was again altered – and in a highly significant way.  UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 836 was specifically based on the robust authority of Chapter VII in the UN Charter – ‘Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace, and Acts of Aggression’ – which allows UN members to assemble their national military forces and apply combined lethal force against aggressors for the purpose of creating and enforcing peace within a conflict theatre.[36]  The resolution, sponsored by France, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (U.S.), was adopted on 4 June 1993 and tasked UNPROFOR Troop Contributing Nations with sending ‘heavily armed’ national forces to the six new Bosnian Protected Areas, with explicit authorisation to ‘deter attacks’ on the safe zones.[37] As Resolution 836 (1993) unequivocally states, the Security Council:

‘5. Decides to extend to that end the mandate of UNPROFOR in order to enable it, in the safe areas  referred to in resolution 824 (1993), to deter attacks against the safe areas, to monitor the cease-fire, to promote the withdrawal of military or paramilitary units other than those of the Government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to occupy some key points on the ground, in addition to participating in the delivery of humanitarian relief to the population as provided for in resolution 776 (1992) of 14 September 1992…

 

9. Authorizes UNPROFOR, in addition to the mandate defined in resolution 770 (1992) of 13 August 1992 and 776 (1992), in carrying out the mandate defined in paragraph 5 above, acting in self-defence, to take the necessary measures, including the use of force, in reply to bombardments against the safe areas by any of the parties or to armed incursion into them or in the event of any deliberate obstruction in or around those areas to the freedom of movement of UNPROFOR or of protected humanitarian convoys;

 

10. Decides that, notwithstanding paragraph 1  of resolution 816 (1993), Member States, acting nationally or through regional organizations or arrangements, may take, under the authority of the Security Council and subject to close coordination with the Secretary-General and UNPROFOR, all necessary measures, through the use of air power, in and around the safe areas in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, to support UNPROFOR in the performance of its mandate set out in paragraph 5 and 9 above’ [emphasis added].[38]

This resolution was adopted on the basic assumption, held and disseminated by the UN Secretariat in a working paper presented to the Security Council, that the ‘warring parties’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina would cooperate with the UN by: firstly, agreeing to the establishment of the Bosnian UN Protected Areas; secondly, agreeing not to violate the territories of the safe areas by attacking them or bringing the war near or into the safe zones; and thirdly, by entering a ceasefire agreement, to be monitored by UNPROFOR personnel, in order to enforce this respect for the sanctity and safety of the safe areas for civilians.[39]  It was also agreed that since UNPROFOR was being tasked with enforcing the establishment of safe areas under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, UNPROFOR forces at the safe areas would require combat support arms to accomplish their mission, namely artillery and close air support.[40]

By March 1995 UNPROFOR comprised a total force strength of some 38,600 military personnel, the majority of whom were deployed throughout Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina at the nine designated Protected Areas, and who were authorised by the UN mandate to secure, demilitarise and defend militarily the civilian war refugees sheltering at the UN safe zones.[41]   

 

The UN ‘Safe Area’ at Srebrenica

Of the six safe zones in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Srebrenica Protected Area was of great concern to the international community as a key target area of Bosnian Serb ethnic cleansing against the pro-independence population.  Due to its strategic location shouldering Bosnia’s eastern boundary with Serbia, the Serb forces sought to drive out the Bosniak population and annex the territory, in order to forcibly merge it into a ‘Greater Serbia’.[42]  Prior to the creation of the UN safe zone at the town of Srebrenica, multiple villages had been torched, shelled or bombed, and 3,166 Bosniaks killed in the area (including a large number of small children) over a period of a year from April 1992 to March 1993.[43] In March, following the UN’s assumption of protective command over the Srebrenica enclave, one prominent French UNPROFOR Commander, General (GEN) Philippe Morillon, visited the Srebrenica township and reassured the ‘panicked’ populace at a public gather that ‘the town was under the protection of the UN and that he would never abandon them’.[44]

One month later in UN Resolution 819 of 16 April 1993, however, the UN Security Council acknowledged not only that Bosnian Serbs had been continuing to attack civilians, humanitarian aid convoys and UNPROFOR forces in and around Srebrenica, but also that they had begun a deliberate ‘slow-motion process of genocide’, through forced expulsions, mass killings and the denial of food, clean water, electricity and medical assistance to civilians.[45]  As the Security Council then stated, ‘Srebrenica is today the equivalent of an open jail in which its people can wander around but are controlled and terrorized by the increasing presence of Serb tanks and other heavy weapons in its immediate surroundings’.[46]   In short, the Srebrenica Protected Area was under siege.

The ‘Safe Area’ guarded by Dutch UNPROFOR troops in Srebrenica, Eastern Bosnia, from 1994-1995.[47]

As a magnet for frightened war refugees in a Muslim-dominated, pro-independence area of Eastern Bosnia, the Srebrenica ‘safe zone’, established by the UN in 1993 around the town of Srebrenica and the neighbouring industrial village of Potocari, soon held approximately 50,000 Bosnian civilians, including a preponderance of families and young people.[48]  Beginning on 18 April 1993, national contingents of some 600 UNPROFOR forces took command of the Protected Area, on the basis of six-monthly rotations.[49] A small command centre (“Bravo Company Compound”) was set up in the Srebrenica township, a larger main UN compound established 5 kilometres north of Potocari village, and 13 Observation Posts were erected around the perimeter of the Protected Area.[50]

Approximately 1-2,000 soldiers from the well-trained and disciplined “Drina Corps” of the anti-independence Bosnian Serb Army (BSA, otherwise known as Republika Srpska or VRS, comprised of JNA remnants and assorted Serb paramilitary units involving substantial criminal elements) surrounded the UN enclave, equipped with tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery and mortars.[51]  Small groups of pro-independence Bosniak fighters were also in hiding around the UN enclave.[52]

Two UN-brokered cease-fire agreements had been made between the two Bosnian Serb and Bosniak fighting parties in the area, on 18 April and 8 May 1993, in which both parties had agreed on specific borders for the Srebrenica safe area.  However, shortly after the agreement was forged, UNPROFOR Command ‘misplaced’ the agreed-upon map, resulting in a renewal of friction over the next two years with regard to boundaries, and to sporadic exchanges of fire between the two opposing forces as Bosniak fighting men travelled back and forth in the ‘corridor’ area in between the Srebrenica and Zepa UN Protected Areas.[53]  Republika Srpska and Bosniak fighting units both shadowed the UN Observation Posts on the perimeter of the safe area.[54] 

 

Dutch Forces at the Srebrenica UN ‘Protected Area’

Following the adoption of the UN’s new ‘safe area policy’ in Bosnia-Herzegovina during 1993, the government of the Netherlands, led by Prime Minister (PM) Wim Kok, lobbied the UN hard to ‘get the prestigious assignment’ of defending the Srebrenica UN Protected Area..[55]  At length their persistent efforts at the UN were rewarded with success. Between February 1994 – July 1995 the Netherlands took responsibility for command of the Srebrenica UN Protected Area in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 

On 8 January 1995 a fresh Dutch contingent of some 600 UNPROFOR military forces – known as Dutch Battalion III (DutchBat III) – was deployed to this Protected Area, where they manned the two UN bases and multiple Observation Posts around the perimeter of the safe zone.[56] An additional 180 DutchBat personnel served at UNPROFOR Headquarters and elsewhere around Bosnia.[57]

The contingent at Srebrenica was comprised of two infantry companies, a reconnaissance platoon accompanied by Special Forces commandoes, two security platoons, an engineer platoon, a detachment from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Command, and two Forward Air Controller teams.[58] In terms of the tooth-to-tail ratio, only half of the contingent – approximately 300 personnel – were ‘spearhead’ infantry soldiers, with the remaining 300 personnel comprising support personnel in various capacities.[59]  

These Dutch UN forces were tasked explicitly with (1) guarding the safe haven from military attack, (2) repelling any military assaults, and (3) protecting the civilian war refugees sheltering there under the UN flag.[60] 

Soldiers of the DutchBat III combat battalion survey the crowds of Bosnian war refugees in 1995 at the Potocari compound within the Srebrenica UN Protected Area, as they sit as UN representatives and “Protection Forces” under the UN flag.[61]

However, from the outset, the Dutch deployment to Srebrenica was problematic. Firstly, despite the Protection Operation’s mandate and tasking, these Dutch combat soldiers were lightly armed by their government, rather than ‘heavily armed’ for combat, as the UNPROFOR mandate required.[62]  These light arms were inadequate and ‘completely unrealistic’ for the kinetic protection mission in hand in the midst of an active war-zone. [63]

Secondly, Dutch Command had itself further weakened the unit by ordering its personnel not to carry many weapons in plain sight, as it did not want to appear ‘too warlike’.[64] The Dutch were determined, it seems, to maintain their soldiers in the traditional role of ‘neutral’ UN “Peace-Keepers” in the Bosnian war, rather than that of robust “Protection Forces” described in the UNPROFOR mandate and necessitated by conditions on the ground in Bosnia.

Thirdly, the DutchBat III forces were strictly restrained in their Rules of Engagement (ROE) by government-imposed national caveat constraints relating to the use of force, which, in a nod to the guidance given from the UN Secretariat itself, banned absolutely the use of lethal force except in individual or unit self-defence.[65]  Even worse than this, however, Dutch forces were bound by an additional, tighter national caveat in their self-defence ROE.  Namely, a caveat rule which prohibited Dutch forces from killing attacking Serb forces, even in self-defence. As one Dutch soldier later revealed, this ROE prohibition forbade Dutch combat soldiers from ‘shooting to kill’ in the Bosnian warzone, permitting them only to fire their weapons ‘over the heads of aggressors’, rather than directly and squarely at them, during defensive engagements with Enemy forces.[66]

It is highly likely that this absurd and non-sensical caveat for the context of the military situation faced by Dutch UN forces in Srebrenica was imposed by the National Commander of the Dutch contingent, Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Thomas (“Thom”) Karremans, since he alone held the necessary authority to impose additional restrictive constraints on the standing ROE of deployed Dutch UNPROFOR troops (for more information on the authority given to National Commanders to tighten existing ROE caveat restraints, see blog “#13 National Commanders: Caveat Mediators”).  

Lieutenant Colonel (LTCOL) Thomas Karremans, National Commander of the UNPROFOR DutchBat III contingent deployed to the Srebrenica Protected Area from January-July 1995.[67]

These extremely inappropriate lethal force prohibition rules severely restricted the extent to which Dutch Protection Forces could realistically fulfil the UNPROFOR mission to provide robust military protection to the 50,000 Bosniak civilians in their Srebrenica Area of Responsibility (AoR), including through the kinetic, offensive, repulsion of any hostile military attacks.  Indeed, an April 2002 report by the Dutch NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies blamed the Dutch government for ‘setting the troops up to fail’ in Srebrenica, a finding that led to the immediate resignation of the Dutch Prime Minister, PM Wim Kok, and the subsequent collapse of his left-wing Labour government that had ruled the Netherlands since 1994.[68]

Fourthly, beginning on 18 February 1995, units of the anti-independence Bosnian Serb Army successfully blockaded UN resupply convoys of food, medicine, ammunition and fuel into the Srebrenica safe area.[69]  With supplies dwindling with every passing week, and pleas for help sent to the UN going unanswered, Dutch Command ordered any DutchBat soldiers departing the Protected Area on leave between February and April not to return.[70] As a result, between January-July 1995 the total UNPROFOR contingent of Dutch Protection Forces deployed at the Srebrenica Protected Area decreased substantially from 600 to approximately 450 personnel.[71]

Finally, because of a shortage in personnel numbers, Dutch Command did not have sufficient personnel to man all 13 OPs around the perimeter of the Srebrenica Protected Area.  Instead, the Dutch deployed one of their infantry companies to man five OPs (Alpha, November, Papa, Quebec and Romeo) in the northern portion of the enclave, and the second company to man three more OPs (Charlie, Echo and Foxtrot) in the southern portion of the safe area.[72]  Together these eight OPs comprised the main strategic points from which Dutch forces could observe incursions into and out of the safe area along a 50 kilometre boundary line.[73]  However, as a UN report later concluded: ‘Significant blind spots existed in a number of areas, particularly along the western portions of the perimeter’.[74]

In sum, it is clear that, overall, due to decisions made by both PM Wim Kok’s Dutch government in The Hague and military commanders on the ground in Srebrenica, the Dutch UNPROFOR contingent lacked the necessary manpower, the necessary freedom of movement and action in ROE, and even the necessary will and resolve, to robustly defend the full perimeter of the Srebrenica UN Protected Area in Bosnia.

 

Early Consequences of Risk-Aversion & Caveats in Srebrenica

The consequences of these key Dutch decisions, made by both politicians and military commanders in The Hague and in Bosnia, were grave. In particular, there were tangible on-the-ground ramifications of the severely restrictive and risk-averse ROE placed on DutchBat forces in terms of the Dutch UNPROFOR contingent’s ability to effectively carry out its tasking and accomplish its protection mission in Srebrenica.  

To illustrate, during the six-month rotation process in early January 1995, upon the arrival of the DutchBat III troops in the Srebrenica enclave, Dutch forces failed to react to or repel militarily a Serb assault aimed at pushing the boundary line of the safe area inwards.[75] Territory was lost and the Bosniaks ‘vigorously accused UNPROFOR of having abandoned strategic territory to the Serbs’.[76] Dutch Command attempted to ameliorate the situation, by establishing an additional Observation Post (OP Mike) near Simici, and after the fuel for their vehicles ran out as a result of the continuing, unopposed, Serb blockade, another three OPs (Delta, Hotel and Kilo) from which to conduct foot patrols.[77] This raised the total number of manned OPs at the Srebrenica Protected Area to 12, but correspondingly reduced the number of soldiers stationed at each OP to approximately seven.[78] 

UN Map 4123 showing the 2 UN Command Posts located at Srebrenica township and Potocari village, together with the 13 UN Observation Posts (OPs) established to create a defensive perimeter around the Srebrenica Protected Area, that were manned by DutchBat UNPROFOR forces in June-July 1995.[79]

Six months later on 1 June, the same DutchBat III contingent failed a second time to react to or repel militarily another Serb incursion into the safe area in order to defend the war refugees there.[80]  As a direct consequence, the Serb ‘raiding party’ ambushed and killed a number of Bosniak civilians sheltering in the ‘protected’ enclave under Dutch command.[81]

Furthermore, a few days later on 3 June – and in spite of receiving advance warning of further planned Serb assaults – Dutch forces failed a third time to halt another Serb attack on the southern boundary of the Protected Area, resulting in the loss of one of the southernmost UN Observation Posts (OP) – OP Echo.[82]  Although DutchBat Command quickly established two new Observation Posts, OP Sierra and OP Uniform, near to where OP Echo had been, key territory had once again been lost to the Serbs, this time near to a strategic southern road.[83]  Civilian leaders among the Bosniak population within the Srebrenica safe area were reportedly ‘divided as to how to deal with the Serb attack on OP Echo and with what they perceived to be UNPROFOR’s inability, or unwillingness, to maintain the perimeter of the enclave’. [84]

Indeed, sensing the weakness of Dutch UNPROFOR military forces, on 23 June the emboldened and victorious Bosnian Serbs forces followed up these three unopposed previous attacks on the UN safe area by firing 20 shells directly into the Srebrenica township itself, situated at the heart of the Dutch-controlled UN Protected Area, which resulted in the death of one civilian and injury of two others.[85] Again, Dutch UN forces did not respond militarily to this Serb assault or mount any military defence of the UN safe zone.  In fact, a military response came not from the Dutch, but from local Bosniak fighters, who on 26 June raided the Serb village of Visnjica, 5 kilometres west of the Srebrenica safe area, burning houses, killing two, and stealing approximately 100 sheep, which were brought back by the fighters as food and eaten by the civilians at the Srebrenica enclave.[86]

UNPROFOR Dutch soldiers man one of the 13 UN Observation Posts established around the perimeter of the Srebrenica UN Protected Area.[87]

 

Failure to Protect: Dutch ‘Protection Forces’ Betray the Mission & Bosnian Civilians

In July 1995 the capability, commitment and resolve of both the Dutch government and their UN national contingent deployed on the ground at Srebrenica, to live up to the requirements of the UNPROFOR mandate and to fulfil the mission that the Netherlands had volunteered to conduct in Bosnia, was tested in the most critical way.

Over a period of six days, on 6-11 July 1995, Republika Srpska soldiers under the command of its supreme military commander, Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, acting on the orders of their appointed Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, launched a military attack on the UNPROFOR DutchBat III Observation Posts and invaded the Srebrenica Protected Area.[88]

Commander of the Bosnian Serb infantry forces from 1992-1996, General (GEN) Ratko Mladic – the “Butcher of Bosnia”, inspecting his troops in Vlasenica, Eastern Bosnia, in December 1995.[89]

Of the 50,000 war refugees then gathered at the Srebrenica UN Protected Area, 5,000 had been unarmed and admitted by the Dutch soldiers into the central, fenced-and-guarded UN compound at Potocari, 20,000 had sought refuge around this main UN compound in nearby factories and fields around Potocari, 15,000 where sheltering in the Srebrenica township itself, and a further 10,000 were hiding from Serb forces in the woods around Srebrenica.[90]

As a direct consequence of the decisions made and ROE imposed by the Dutch government on its UNPROFOR battalion in Bosnia, as well as its own National Commander LTCOL Karremans, no serious military attempt to defend the UN Protected Area was ever mounted by the 450-strong Dutch combat battalion in Srebrenica.  

In fact, despite receiving advance warning in the previous days that Bosnian Serb forces were building up ominously around two of the UN observation posts (OP Romeo and OP Quebec to the north) and that preparations were being made by Serb forces to assault the UN safe haven, Dutch Command of the battalion is reported to have remained ‘persistently lethargic’.[91]

As a result, the Dutch UN forces were quickly and easily overwhelmed by the Bosnian Serb militia forces and the 50,000 unarmed Bosnian civilians – who the Dutch were legally and morally obligated by the UN mandate to defend and protect in the UN Protected Area – were left unprotected and exposed to the lethal hostility and genocidal intent of their enemies.[92]

 

Shelling Begins: 6-8 July

Republika Srpska began their campaign to invade the Srebrenica UN safe area in the early hours of 6 July.  Shortly after 0300 hours the Serbs began the military assault by firing five rockets at the central DutchBat Command Headquarters in Potocari, which landed 300 metres away from the compound.[93]  At 0500 hours, after more than an hour of artillery attacks against the positions of local Bosniak fighters (during which time exchanges of small-arms fire had also taken place between the two fighting groups), the Serbs repeatedly fired tank rounds at OP Foxtrot on the south-eastern edge of the enclave, some landing only 100 metres away, and moved additional tanks into position near to OP Hotel.[94]

In light of the mounting Serb offensive against the safe area, the acting Commander of the local Bosniak fighting forces, Ramiz Beirovi, asked LTCOL Karremans, to give back to his forces the weapons that UN forces had taken away from them as part of the 1993 demilitarization agreement so that they could better defend themselves.[95]  Karremans refused this request since, as one of his Dutch superiors later stated, ‘it was our responsibility to defend the enclave, and not theirs’.[96]  However, despite this known duty, Dutch Command made no response to the shelling of the safe area – other than to observe, record and make reports as to the number of Serb shells fired, the direction they were fired from, and the approximate distance they landed from UN compounds, OPs or civilians.

Consequently, over the next few hours shelling by the Bosnian Serb Army continued unabated and – receiving no military response or defence at all from Dutch UN forces – with increasing boldness and rapidity.[97]  At 0800 hours several M-30 tank rounds were fired at OP Delta, and after that shelling continued, without opposition, throughout the morning of 6 July at locations in the northern, eastern, and especially the south-eastern quadrant of the safe area enclave.[98]  At 1255 hours a Serb tank fired at and hit the defensive wall of OP Foxtrot.[99]   A little time later, shells were fired at the main road connecting Potocari village, the location of the UN’s central Command Headquarters, with Srebrenica township, the location of the second UN Command Post, resulting in the death of one civilian and serious injury of several other civilians in the Srebrenica UN safe area.[100]

During this time LTCOL Karremans continued to make reports regarding these events to his superiors based at Sector North-East Headquarters in Tuzla and UNPROFOR Bosnia and Herzegovina Command in Sarajevo, but ordered no military response from his own protective contingent defending the Srebrenica ‘Protected Area’.[101]  To the contrary, shortly after 1300 hours, at which time DutchBat Headquarters officially went to alert state “red”, Karremans ordered all DutchBat Protection Force personnel ‘to the bunkers’.[102]  Over the next two hours, the Bosnian Serb Army continued to launch shells at OP Foxtrot, and was successful in hitting and causing ‘considerable damage’ to the Observation Post on the southern perimeter of the safe zone.[103] At 1442 hours, two heavy weapons situated near OP Papa again aimed their barrels at the central UN compound at Potocari.[104]

Although the UN Protected Area in Srebrenica was clearly under Bosnian Serb military attack, including the direct targeting of UN compounds, OPs and personnel – certainly sufficient to trigger DutchBat’s legal right to use lethal force in unit and individual self-defence – and resulting in several civilian casualties within the safe zone, no military action in defence of either UN forces or the war refugees was conducted by the Dutch combat battalion.  To the contrary, and in spite of the Chapter VII UN mandate, Dutch UN forces did not once return fire at Republika Srpska forces during this attack or mount any military action to defend the civilians gathered in the UN safe area.[105]

In fact, throughout 6-7 July, the only forces holding back the imminent Serb military assault were temporary ones – nightfall on 6 July and ‘poor weather’ the following day.[106]  By the end of 7 July, the Bosnian Serb Army had fired 287 shells inside the Srebrenica UN ‘safe area’, had deliberately targeted urban populations centres near to the UN compounds, and had killed 4 and wounded 17 civilian war refugees – all without any robust, defensive, military response from Dutch UN Protection Forces.[107] Tragically, this record of Dutch passivity, negligence and ‘failure to protect’ continued into the following days.

 

Serb Invasion: 8-9 July

At 0842 hours on 8 July, the Bosnian Serb Army once again began firing shells into the Srebrenica safe area, this time not only targeting the Srebrenica township and Bravo Company Headquarters there, but also sporadically firing shells around the entire area of the UN enclave throughout the day.[108]  The main Bosnian Serb assault on the safe area, involving an estimated 15,000 Serb fighters, began a few hours later, shortly after 1100 hours, and continued until Serb Republika Srpska forces had invaded and taken possession of the critical Observation Posts and a large area to the south and south-west of the enclave on 9 July.[109]

When the Serbs attacked UN OPs Charlie, Echo, Foxtrot, Sierra and Uniform along the southern perimeter near the Srebrenica township during the initial attack, the caveated Dutch forces never fired their weapons directly at the Serbs at all, nor during the subsequent invasion of the safe zone. This was in spite of the fact that each Observation Post was equipped with: (1) an Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) fixed with a 0.50-calibre heavy machine-gun; (2) one TOW anti-tank weapon fixed atop of the Observation Post; (3) a number of shoulder-launched AT-4 anti-tank rockets; (4) and an average of seven combat soldiers armed with automatic weapons and side arms.[110] As the 1999 UN report states:

‘It is true that the UNPROFOR troops in Srebrenica never fired at the attacking Serbs. They fired warning shots over the Serbs’ heads and their mortars fired flares, but they never fired directly on any Serb units. Had they engaged the attacking Serbs directly it is possible that events would have unfolded differently’.[111]

By refraining from shooting and killing the Serb aggressors and invaders, the National Commander and the soldiers of the Dutch UN battalion at the Srebrenica safe area had not only failed to live up to their name and mandate as Protection Forces of 50,000 war refugees sheltering at a UN Protected Area, but they had in fact also opted not to use their one potent legal authority under domestic and international military law: the authority to fire their weapons and use lethal force in individual and unit self-defence.

Dutch command feared that any show of force on the part of the Dutch battalion would ‘escalate the tension’, ‘perhaps render impossible their withdrawal from the area’, and ‘risk the lives of the crew’.[112]  The Dutch National Commander, as well as his superiors at the UNPROFOR Headquarters in Zagreb and the Dutch UNPROFOR Chief of Staff in Sarajevo, falsely believed that Republika Srpska forces ‘did not intend to overrun the whole enclave, but only to take control of strategic ground in the southern portion of the enclave’, which they were willing to cede to the Serbs without a fight.[113]

Instead, on the orders of DutchBat Commander LTCOL Karremans, the soldiers manning the five Observation Posts under attack on the southern and western defensive perimeter of the enclave, abandoned their posts and retreated, or else surrendered voluntarily into the custody of the Bosnian Serb invaders.[114]

To exemplify, at 1426 hours at the crucial southern post of OP Foxtrot, which had borne the brunt of Serb tank shells fired from a BSA tank stationed 100 metres in front of it, the UNPROFOR soldiers allowed two Bosnian Serb soldiers to walk into the OP unopposed, subsequently surrendered to them, handing over their weapons, and were escorted away from the safe area by the Serbs in an armoured personnel carrier.[115] A 1999 UN report later stated that, despite significant damage from the tank shells to the OP, the soldiers at OP Foxtrot still had a shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket in their possession at that time that ‘could have been used to fire at the BSA tank in front of them’.[116] The tank had not only been menacing the UN OP that day, but had also been firing shells at a small group of local Bosniak fighters, who had single-handedly been engaging in ‘intense fighting’ against the Bosnian Serb forces throughout the day, in a valiant attempt to hold back the Serb advance from the Bosniak population sheltering at the Srebrenica safe area.[117]

A few hours later at 1830 hours, DutchBat personnel at OP Uniform likewise withdrew and surrendered to approximately 25 Republika Srpska forces.[118]  Given the choice to return to Srebrenica or be escorted to Serb-held territory, the UN personnel opted to remain in Serb custody and were transported by the Serbs to nearby towns.[119]  The soldiers at OP Sierra quickly followed suit and were transported to Bratunac.[120]

It is clear that this order given by the Dutch National Commander to his battalion forces either to retreat or surrender to the Serbs – rather than to fight and defend the UN safe haven – was heavily influenced by the severely restrictive caveat in the contingent’s self-defence ROE, which forbade Dutch soldiers from shooting-to-kill in their defensive use of lethal force against attacking Serb forces. Without the necessary authority to use appropriate lethal force against Serb militia forces in defence of the civilians, or indeed in defence even of themselves, Dutch soldiers were utterly powerless to take the necessary defensive action.  In short, the Dutch soldiers had been completely bound by both their own government and the negligence, weakness and timidity of their own National Commander and his Dutch superiors in Zagreb and Sarajevo.

Invasion of the Safe Zone: UN Map 4124 showing the extent of the occupation of the Srebrenica UN Protected Area by Bosnian Serb forces at the end of day on 9 July 1995.[121]

Handicapped by caveat constraints as they were, most Dutch soldiers were reportedly happy to be relieved of any military responsibility by the Serb forces.  Indeed, Srebrenica survivors have testified that, as the Bosnian Serb forces continued to invade and take full control of the ‘safe zone’, several Dutch soldiers were so elated at their terrible defeat and mission failure that they threw their hats in the air for joy, hugged the Serb soldiers, slapped their backs, and even willingly handed over to the invading militia their UN uniforms.[122]

Furthermore, when the invading Serb militia approached the gates of the guarded central UN compound in Potocari, and requested entry ‘to inspect the camp’ of some 5,000 unarmed refugees, the DutchBat III forces agreed and opened the gates.[123] In fact, the soldiers of the Dutch combat battalion guarding Potocari gathered together and, ‘to avoid provocations’, laid down all their weapons in a massive pile, handing over to the invading Bosnian Serb militia a total of 199 rifles, 25 submachine guns, 28 pistols and 29 machine guns.[124]

Anti-independence Bosnian Serb military forces under the command of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, acting on the orders of their appointed President Radovan Karadzic (top left), attack and invade the Srebrenica UN Protected Area, 8-9 July1995.[125]

In addition, at the Serbs’ request, the Dutch at Potocari ruthlessly expelled a Bosniak family from the central UN compound, where they had been seeking safety under the protection of their relative and UN employee, Hasan Nuhanovic, an interpreter at the Srebrenica UN Protected Area.[126]  As part of a deal struck between the Dutch soldiers at Potocari and the Bosnian Serb militia, Nuhanovic’s father, mother and younger brother were forced to leave the compound.[127]  Both men were subsequently murdered by the Serbs, and Nuhanovic’s mother committed suicide shortly afterwards.[128]  According to Nuhanovic, it was not the lack of air strikes that caused the death of his parents and brother, as the Dutch claimed afterwards, it was the very Dutch soldiers themselves, who ‘forced his family to leave the relative safety of the UN compound’.[129]

Rizo Mustafic, another Bosniak employed by the UN to work for the Dutch as an electrician at the Potocari compound, was also forcibly expelled by the Dutch UNPROFOR soldiers and handed over to death at the hands of the Serb execution squads.[130] This second expulsion was carried out because, according to Dutch command, Mustafic did not have a proper UN identity card. [131]

Lastly, in a final act of betrayal of both their UNPROFOR tasking and the Bosnian civilians they were assigned to rigorously protect, when the Serbs began ‘marauding through the camp’ and carrying out their campaign of ethnic cleansing within the central UN compound, Dutch command did not report that ethnic cleansing was occurring within the Srebrenica Protected Area to UNPROFOR Command Headquarters in Sarajevo so that other UN reinforcement contingents could be sent to their aid. [132]   Instead, the Dutch contingent chose – to their enduring shame – to stay silent and simply ‘look the other way’. [133]

In fact, on 12 July LTCOL Karremans was photographed drinking a toast with the general of the invading Bosnian Serb forces, GEN Mladic “the Butcher of Bosnia”, at Potocari village within the UN Protected Area – three days after the Serb invasion and while Serb forces were ‘wreaking havoc’ and committing genocide and mass rape outside.[134] There were rumours that the toast was made after Karremans struck a deal with Mladic to hand over and exchange the lives of the 5,000 unarmed Bosniak civilians sheltering at the main UN compound at Potocari for the lives and safety of approximately 30 DutchBat soldiers who, on LTCOL Karremans orders, had surrendered to the Serbs during the previous days, and were now being held in custody and ‘well treated’ at local hotels around the area.[135]

The “Toast” of Shame: Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic (a.k.a. “The Butcher of Bosnia”, far left) drinks an alcoholic toast with Dutch UNPROFOR Commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Karremans (centre), at the main UN compound located at Potocari village within the Srebrenica Protected Area on 12 July 1995.[136]

 

Deaf Ears & Hard Hearts: Air Strike Requests Are Repeatedly Denied

The few exceptions to this disgraceful record by Dutch UN Protection Forces concern repeated attempts by Dutch Command during the early days of the invasion to bring in close air support against the invading Republika Srpska Forces.  Acting on a limitation caveat, the National Commander of the Dutch combat battalion, LTCOL Karremans, sought government approval in the Netherlands to bring in air strikes from other UN national contingents based in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.[137]  However, this request was categorically refused by the Dutch Chief of Staff, General Cees Nicolai, after the request was unequivocally denied over the telephone by the Dutch Defence Minister in The Hague, Joris Voorhoeve.[138]

It is interesting to note that a few days later, after NATO had conducted one successful air strike on Serb tanks advancing towards the Srebrenica township on 11 July, this same Dutch Defence Minister suspended a second and critical NATO ‘limited operation’ of F-16 air strikes on Serbian artillery pieces overlooking the town – while the operation was underway and before the UN Protected Area had been fully invaded – because the Serbs had threatened to retaliate to any air strikes by shelling the civilian refugees in Potocari and executing 15 Dutch UN ‘hostages’ they claimed to have captured in Bosnia.[139] ‘The Serbs have won’, Voorhoeve then reportedly stated.[140]

As a result of this claim of Dutch hostages, the Dutch government continued to ‘categorically reject any air support’ in defence of the Srebrenica Protected Area during the following days and weeks.[141] In doing so, the Dutch government prioritised the lives of its 15 combat-trained, career soldiers above the lives of some 50,000 defenceless, civilian, war refugees in Bosnia, who the Dutch government had pledged – to the UN and to the world – to defend and to protect militarily from aggression.

Joris Voorhoeve (left), the Dutch Minister of Defence in The Hague, and Lieutenant General (LTGEN) Bernard Janvier (right), the French Commander of UNPROFOR in 1995.[142]

However the Dutch were not the only ones unwilling to do their job, execute their mission, and fulfil their moral and legal responsibilities by robustly protecting the Srebrenica Protected Area and its 50,000 war refugees on land or from the air.  The record shows that a number of additional requests made by the Dutch National Commander to UNPROFOR Command Headquarters in Sarajevo to receive UN or even NATO air support, before and during the Serb invasion over a period of six days on 6, 8, 9, 10 and 11 July, were also ‘inexplicably’ denied five separate times by the new French UNPROFOR Commander, Lieutenant General (LTGEN) Bernard Janvier, or, following his departure from Sarajevo on ‘leave’, his UNPROFOR subordinates, the UNPROFOR Deputy Commander and Head of Sector Sarajevo (France) and especially the UNPROFOR Chief of Staff (Netherlands).[143]

This repeated refusal was in spite of the existence of a bilateral standing agreement between the Dutch and French UNPROFOR national contingents that French air forces would provide close air support for Dutch troops in the Srebrenica safe haven.[144] According to the Dutch UNPROFOR Chief of Staff in Sarajevo, he repeatedly ‘discouraged the request’ from LTCOL Karremans in Srebrenica because ‘he did not believe that the [UNPROFOR] Force Commander’s criteria on the use of air power, which in his view were very restrictive (to be used only as a last resort), had been met’.[145]  This position was also held and maintained by Karremans’ Dutch superiors in Zagreb (the Chief of Land Operations and Chief of Staff).[146]

In May-June 1995, prior to the Srebrenica Massacre and despite multiple warnings from UN military observers that Bosnian Serb forces were ‘evil enough to “cleanse an enclave”’ and likely to commit massacres amongst the non-Serb civilian population of Bosnia, the French UNPROFOR Commander had also: (1) petitioned the UN Security Council to abandon the UNPA safe areas; (2) commanded the cessation of UNPROFOR requests to NATO for close air support; and (3) issued instructions to UN forces that ‘the use of force must be avoided’ and that ‘fulfilling the mandate is secondary to the safety of UN personnel’.[147] LTGEN Janvier’s statements and behaviour at this time are now considered:

‘A perversion of the UN mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina as defined by Security Council resolutions’. [148]

Indeed, it seems that it was orders given by this French UNPROFOR Commander, prior to going on leave, that had prompted LTCOL Karremans to impose the additional and extremely harmful ROE caveat on his forces – not to fire-to-kill in self-defence, but instead to fire above the heads of invading Enemy forces. As a 1999 UN report on the ‘Fall of Srebrenica’ later made explicit, Karremans imposed this ban because he had received instructions from LTGEN Janvier that ‘the risk of confrontation with the Serbs was to be avoided’ at all costs, and further, that the execution of the UNPROFOR mandate to protect the war refugees in the safe area was in fact ‘secondary to the security of his [military] personnel’.[149]

 

Ethnic Cleansing: Slaughter & Gang-Rape in the UN ‘Safe Zone’

With Dutch UNPROFOR combat forces failing to mount any military opposition on the ground over six consecutive days, and the Dutch Defence Minister and French UNPROFOR Commander together refusing to execute air strikes on Serb forces in and around Srebrenica from the air over the same period, on 11 July Serb militia forces completely overran the UN safe haven.

As a direct result of choices made by Dutch and UN politicians and military personnel, these Republika Srpska forces were completely unimpeded by UN forces in carrying out their ethnic cleansing campaign of ‘liquidation’ within the UN-protected ‘safe area’ – the final stage of the Serb ‘Operation Krivaja’, through which Bosnian Serb forces hoped to forcibly create an ‘ethnically pure’ Serbian state.[150]  The Bosnian Serb forces sent out orders for local police forces and Serb rebel fighters in neighbouring Croatia to join them, and together these Serb forces systematically carried out their campaign of genocide within the Dutch-controlled UN Protected Area.[151]

Male adults, teenagers and children were first separated from their female counterparts, then the Bosniak males were either killed on site or loaded onto buses and summarily executed in obscure locations in the surrounding woods.[152] Meanwhile, the younger women and girls were seized and marched away from their families to designated locations within the Srebrenica UN Protected Area, where they were brutally gang raped by Serb militia forces.[153]

Over a period of nine days from July 11 to July 19, 1995, Bosnian and Croatian Serb forces methodically selected and killed thousands of Bosniak males of all ages – all of whom had sought UN protection there under Dutch command.  Approximately 8,000 men and boys were slaughtered there during the “Srebrenica Massacre”.[154]

What is more, in a deliberate attempt to conceal their gross violation of human rights and avoid future prosecution for war crimes from the international community, Serb forces went to great lengths to conceal the corpses of the slain in 32 separate mass graves – even going so far as to dig up buried bodies that might later be discovered if an investigation were later to take place and removing them to more isolated gravesites in the broader region.[155]  Indeed, according to Switzer: ‘The slaughter was planned thoroughly and executed with precision’.[156]

An indictment made by the UN International Tribunal in later years described these terrible events that took place in the UN safe haven, by stating:

‘The events of the nine days from July 10-19 1995 in Srebrenica defy description in their horror and their implications for humankind’s capacity to revert to acts of brutality under the stresses of conflict. In little over one week, thousands of lives were extinguished, irreparably rent or simply wiped from the pages of history.’[157]

 

Crippling Caveats Render Dutch Soldiers Impotent Witnesses to Savagery

Due to the extremely inappropriate set of ROE caveat constraints placed on the DutchBat III forces by their risk-averse and casualty-wary government in The Hague, in addition to the even tighter restrictions imposed on them by their Dutch National Commander at Dutch Command in Srebrenica, the 450 Dutch UNPROFOR soldiers were compelled by their own military law to helplessly stand aside and watch inactively as silent witnesses during these successive nine days of violence, violation and horror – or as one Dutch soldier later recounted, ‘torture, executions and slaughter’ – in the midst of the Srebrenica UNPROFOR Protected Area. [158]

Impotent Spectators of Savagery: Caveated Dutch UNPROFOR Protection Forces become powerless spectators of Serb barbarism against the Bosnian civilian population gathered at the UN Protected Area and ‘safe haven’ in Srebrenica, July 1995.[159]

According to survivors, at one point during the nine horrific days a group of older Bosniak women went and begged the Dutch UN soldiers to go and bring back the young girls who had been selected out and marched away to be gang raped, but their pleas were answered only with the words, ‘No, no, no’. [160] In fact, survivors testify that on multiple occasions they approached the Dutch combat soldiers and begged them for help and to intercede on their behalf for the lives of their men and the honour of their young women, but these pleas fell on deaf ears.[161]  Many times they were turned away – even pushed away – by the very blue-helmeted UN soldiers they had trusted to defend them.[162]

In truth, however, the tragic reality is that the power of military law working to enforce strict compliance to national ROE, including caveat limitations and bans, as well as their sworn duty of obedience to superior orders issued by LTCOL Karremans, meant that there was little the Dutch soldiers could lawfully do.  Bound by political, legal and military bonds imposed and enforced by their national government and superior commanders, these soldiers were in fact powerless to act to defend the civilian population around them or to render them assistance without risking a court martial.

Some Dutch soldiers attempted to drown out the horrific sights and sounds occurring around them during these days by plugging their ears with earphones and listening to music on their Walkmans.[163] Indeed, one survivor and key testifying witness, Munira Subasic, recalls one such soldier listening to music while successive women were raped in front of him.[164] She also recounts that a Dutch UNPROFOR soldier stood by and watched passively as a Serb fighter slit the throat of a crying baby and then stood laughing about it.[165]  Through it all, the soldier ‘didn’t react at all’, she recounts.[166]  Elsewhere, UN forces looked on silently as a Serb fighter decapitated a boy’s head from his body, while he was being held in the arms of his mother, leaving the headless corpse still in his mother’s arms.[167]

Indeed, following the indictment of Mladic and Karadzic for war crimes at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia on 16 November 1995, Judge Riad summarised the cruelty and barbarism that took place within the Srebrenica safe zone in the following way:

‘After Srebrenica fell to besieging Serbian forces in July 1995, a truly terrible massacre of the Muslim population appears to have taken place. The evidence tendered by the Prosecutor describes scenes of unimaginable savagery: thousands of men executed and buried in mass graves, hundreds of men buried alive, men and women mutilated and slaughtered, children killed before their mothers’ eyes, a grandfather forced to eat the liver of his own grandson. These are truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history.’[168]

The survivors refer to these hellish days as ‘bitter hours’, hours in which individuals like Subasic lost up to 22 members of their family in the Srebrenica UN Protected Area as the Dutch UN Protection Forces watched on inactively.[169]  All of these victims were human beings who had sought protection under the UN flag and trusted the combat forces the Dutch government had sent to Srebrenica to save them. As another survivor, Sabaheta Fejzic, has stated:  

‘In the summer of 1995 everyone in Srebrenica was scared to death of the Serbian militia. But the people still had faith: in the United Nations, which had declared this city in Bosnia a “protected zone,” and in the blue-helmeted soldiers from the Netherlands, who had been stationed nearby for more than a year, charged with protecting this sanctuary’. [170]

When, however, these very same Dutch UN soldiers repeatedly ignored their desperate pleas for help and pushed them away, remaining inactive over successive days as genocidal savagery was being unleashed at the UN safe zone all around them, these civilians realised the truth: ‘They no longer had protectors’.[171] The UN combat soldiers were merely spectators to the savagery.

Failure to Protect Leads to Ethnic Cleansing: Caveated Dutch UN Protection Forces fail in their legal and moral responsibility to protect the 50,000 Bosnian war refugees they were deployed to robustly defend in the Srebrenica UN Protected Area.

Top photos: Bosnian Serb soldiers use heavy machine guns to execute thousands of unarmed Bosniak male refugees in “mopping up” genocide operations, burying their bodies in 32 mass graves around Srebrenica, such as this one discovered and excavated in the nearby village of Pilica in 1996.

Bottom photos: A woman begs for help from a UN soldier during the massacre of men and gang rape of young women in the UN ‘safe haven’ in Srebrenica, but due to government-imposed caveat constraints the soldier is helpless to assist her or her loved ones. After the Srebrenica savagery, weeping women grieve for their missing men, and for themselves, at another UN refugee camp at Tuzla airport.[172]

Even worse than passive inaction, some other Dutch soldiers are accused of having fraternised with the Enemy and actually participated in the massacre and mass rape, by assisting the Serbs in their separation of the men, destined for execution, from the women, designated for gang rape, within the UN Protected Area.[173]  Whether these soldiers were participating voluntarily, out of fear, or under compulsion by Serb forces is unknown. One survivor has testified that one of the Dutch soldiers actually laughed at her in apparent merriment, when a Serb soldier stole away her son. ‘I will never forget this soldier’s face’, she recounted. ‘He just stood there and watched. But the worst was that he laughed’.[174] Another survivor has reported, moreover, that after the nine days of barbarism in the safe zone, UN soldiers lined up alongside the Bosnian Serb “Chetnik” militia forces ‘as if nothing had happened’.[175]

Finally, adding insult to injury, some of the victims and survivors relate that following the many days of murder, rape and barbarism in the UN Protected Area, Dutch soldiers celebrated and danced the conga when orders were received from The Hague that they would be replaced and redeployed on 21 July – in full sight of the traumatised survivors whom they had failed so horribly to defend and protect.[176] As Robinson states:

‘In the days after the fall of the enclave, footage emerged of Dutch troops celebrating their release. The juxtaposition was brutal: healthy looking Dutch men performed the conga while reports of the massacre started to seep into the press’.[177]

Two units of Dutch UNPROFOR forces greet each other as they pass by along the road.[178]

Frustratingly inappropriate national caveat rules that had turned these combat soldiers into powerless protectors, combined with the struggle for emotional self-preservation over a prolonged period in which they were merely witnesses to human horror, seems to have rendered these Dutch forces insensible of the great offense and total callousness of such behaviour in Srebrenica.

 

Expelled from the Safe Zone: The “Death March” from Srebrenica to Tuzla

In addition to the nine days of savagery that occurred within the UN safe zone proper, the failure of the Dutch combat battalion to defend the Protected Area incurred another consequence for the war refugees sheltering there. Namely, on 11 July Bosnian Serb forces forcibly drove approximately 23,000 women and children out of the safe haven into the surrounding hostile and war-ravaged countryside.[179]

Conquered & Deserted: Bosnian Serb forces patrol the now empty streets of the Srebrenica township within the Srebrenica UN safe area on 16 July 1995, in which, until a few days previously, 15,000 war refugees had sheltered under UN protection since March 1993.[180]

After being expelled from the Srebrenica Protected Area, this multitude of vulnerable people, including the elderly and many newly-made widows and paternal orphans, were compelled to walk to Tuzla, the nearest Bosniak-controlled town which hosted another UN refugee camp by the Tuzla airbase.[181]  As one UN worker at the UN refugee camp in Tuzla recorded in a report on 16 July: ‘It  took seventy-two hours for the Bosnian Serbs to hunt down, deport and probably kill the entire population of Srebrenica’. [182]

These 23,000 victims joined with thousands of other desperate civilians hiding and seeking safety in the woods around Srebrenica.[183]  In what is now known as the “Death March” (“Put Smrti”), this sea of people travelled on foot 150 kilometres over the period of five days from 11-15 July, using backchannels in the woods and avoiding main roads in an effort to stay hidden, as they journeyed towards Tuzla.[184] Many of these remaining victims died en route by means of either further brutality, sniping, shelling or poisonous gas unleashed on the unarmed civilians by GEN Mladic’s Bosnian Serb forces, or alternatively as a result of exhaustion, dehydration or starvation.[185]

Vulnerable Victims: On 13 July 1995, 23,000 war refugees at the Srebrenica UN ‘Safe Zone’ were expelled by Bosnian Serb forces and compelled to walk 150 km on foot to the nearest UN refugee camp in Tuzla. Survivors of the subsequent “Death March” receive treatment for injuries inflicted on them by Serb military forces along the way, while others are traumatised from the horror of their ordeal and grieve for their lost loved ones.[186]

These helpless multitudes were also joined by a column of approximately 15,000 mostly unarmed Bosniak fighters and male civilians who had fled Susnjari following the Bosnian Serbs seizure of Srebrenica.[187]  After first surviving passage through a Serb minefield on the perimeter of the enclave, the column was continuously hounded and fired at by Mladic’s Serb scouts and forces during the five-day journey, so that ultimately 2,000 of the wounded and elderly men surrendered along the way and were immediately killed by Mladic’s forces.[188]

Others were tricked by Serb soldiers dressed in the UN uniforms taken from the Dutch UN soldiers, or disguised as civilians, who promised safety to the frightened refugees but instead led and delivered them over to death by machine gun, firing squad or hand grenades in mass executions.[189] Some civilians were captured and forced to call over their relatives and friends into waiting ambushes, while others were attacked with artillery shells that released plumes of white smoke or non-lethal poisonous gas that caused the men to become disoriented and wander away from the main column into surrounding Serb territory.[190] The Serbs also laid treacherous booby traps and mines throughout the forest, including around beehives in the hope of killing any civilian seeking to regain their strength by collecting and eating the honey. [191]

Trail of Blood: Map showing the route of the ‘Death March’ from the Srebrenica Safe Area to the nearest UN refugee camp in Tuzla. Tens of thousands were killed by Bosnian Serb forces along the way, or died as a result of dehydration, starvation, or extreme exhaustion en route.[192]

 Only 3,500 of the most able-bodied male fighters and civilians from the original 15,000-strong column survived the treacherous and ‘horrific’ journey to reach safety and locate their families in the Tuzla refugee camp.[193] ‘For six days, from Srebrenica to Tuzla, the Serbs shot at me. Whoever they could kill, they killed’, one survivor later recounted.[194] The bravery of these fighters at that time was hailed by a British SAS officer in Bosnia as ‘the greatest act of military heroism in Europe since World War II’.[195]

To this day the woods around Srebrenica, through which this multitude of Bosniak refugees and fugitives was forced to travel to reach safety, after being expelled by the Bosnian Serbs from the UN safe area, following the Dutch defeat and surrender in Srebrenica, remains littered with the bones and dropped photographs and possessions of the dead.[196]

After the ‘Death March’: Decades after 23,000 civilians were expelled from the UN safe area, human remains are still being discovered on the forest floor in the woods surrounding the former Srebrenica Protected Area.[197]

In the next blog I will explore the aftermath of Srebrenica – in particular, the long-lasting questions over both the culpability and the legal and financial liability of the Dutch State, for the bloody and horrific human catastrophe that took place in a ‘Protected Area’ of the UNPROFOR mission under Dutch Command (See blog “#21 Srebrenica Aftermath: Serb Guilt & Dutch Liability for the Genocide in the UNPROFOR ‘Safe Area’ in Bosnia”).

 

* For more information and analysis on the issue of “national caveats” and their impact on the effectiveness of multinational military operations conducted in the interest of establishing and maintaining international peace and security, see Dr Regeena Kingsley’s original doctoral research in Defence & Strategic Studies (2014) entitled: “Fighting against Allies: An Examination of “National Caveats” within the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Campaign in Afghanistan & their Impact on ISAF Operational Effectiveness, 2002-2012”. 

 

Dr Kingsley’s full Thesis and its accompanying volume of Appendices can be viewed and downloaded from Massey University’s official website here: http://mro.massey.ac.nz/xmlui/handle/10179/6984

  

Endnotes

[1] United States Department of State (U.S. DoS), ‘Fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, 1989’, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/fall-of-communism, (accessed 24 May 2017).

[2] United Nations (UN), ‘Former Yugoslavia – UNPROFOR, United Nations Protection Force: Background’, Completed Peacekeeping Operations, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/unprof_b.htm, (accessed 26 September 2017).

[3] Ibid.

 [4] Modified image taken from ‘Timeline: Break-up of Yugoslavia’, BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4997380.stm, (accessed 8 March 2010).

 [5] ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina Timeline’, BBC News, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17212376, (accessed 5 May 2008).

[6] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Mladen Naletilic, aka “Tuta” and Vinko Martinovic, aka “Stela”’, International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Former Yugoslavia since 1991, 31 March 2003, p. 5, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/naletilic_martinovic/tjug/en/nal-tj030331-e.pdf, (accessed 25 September 2017).

[7] Ibid.

[8] UN, ‘S/1994/674 Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)’, United Nations Security Council (UNSC), 27 May 1994, p. 35, paragraph 142, http://www.icty.org/x/file/About/OTP/un_commission_of_experts_report1994_en.pdf, (accessed 27 September 2017).

[9] ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina Timeline’, op. cit.; UN, ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Mladen Naletilic, aka “Tuta” and Vinko Martinovic, aka “Stela”’, op. cit., p. 5.

[10] UN, ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Mladen Naletilic, aka “Tuta” and Vinko Martinovic, aka “Stela”’, ibid., p. 5.

[11] S. Burke, ‘Sarajevo Rose’, The Harvard Advocate [blog], 2016, http://theharvardadvocate.com/article/68/sarajevo-rose/, (accessed 26 September 2017); A. Crosby & M. Arnautovic, ‘A Quarter-Century Later, Sarajevans Still Haunted by Siege’, RadioFreeEurope-RadioLiberty, 5 April 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/bosnia-sarajevo-25th-anniversary-siege-anniversary-memories/28412521.html, (accessed 12 February 2018).  

[12] Crosby & Arnautovic, ‘A Quarter-Century Later, Sarajevans Still Haunted by Siege’, Ibid.

[13] United Nations (UN), ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, UN Secretary-General Report to the UN General Assembly, 15 November 1999, p. 25, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/324578-un-report-on-srebrenica-nov-1999.html (accessed  28 May 2018).

[14] ‘The Siege of Sarajevo’ [photo gallery], RadioFreeEurope-RadioLiberty, 5 April 2017, https://www.rferl.org/a/twenty-five-years-on-from-the-siege-of-sarajevo/28407397.html, (accessed 12 February 2018).

 [15] Modified image taken from ‘The Siege of Sarajevo’ [photo gallery], Ibid.

 [16] ‘The Siege of Sarajevo’ [photo gallery], Ibid.

[17] Crosby & Arnautovic, ‘A Quarter-Century Later, Sarajevans Still Haunted by Siege’, op. cit.

[18] Burke, ‘Sarajevo Rose’, op. cit.; Crosby & Arnautovic, ‘A Quarter-Century Later, Sarajevans Still Haunted by Siege’, ibid.

[19] M. Olasky, ‘Holiday Inn on Sarajevo’s Sniper Alley’, World, 28 June 2014, https://world.wng.org/2014/06/holiday_inn_on_sarajevos_sniper_alley, (accessed 14 February 2018).

[20] UN, ‘S/1994/674 Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)’, op. cit., p. 34, paragraphs 133-137; C. Kennedy-Pipe & P. Stanley, The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions, K. Booth (ed.), UK, Frank Cass Publishers, 2001, p. 73.

[21] ‘SREBRENICA – Srebrenica Massacre: Hate, atrocity and misprision – July 11, 1995: The beginning of the tragedy’, TRT World [Interactive Slideshow], 2018, http://interactive.trtworld.com/srebrenica/index.html#seventh, (accessed 29 January 2018).

[22] UN, ‘S/1994/674 Final Report of the Commission of Experts Established Pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992)’, op. cit., p. 1-2, 56. 

[23] Ibid., p. 56.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Cited in Kennedy-Pipe & Stanley, The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions, op. cit., p. 73.

[27] Ibid., p. 56.

[28] Ibid., p. 84, 72.

[29] Kennedy-Pipe & Stanley, The Kosovo Tragedy: The Human Rights Dimensions, op cit., p. 73.

[30] United Nations (UN), ‘Former Yugoslavia – UNPROFOR, United Nations Protection Force: Profile’, United Nations, http://www.un.org/en/peacekeeping/missions/past/unprof_p.htm, (accessed 26 September 2017).

[31] Ibid.

[32] Ibid.

[33] Ibid.; ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina Timeline’, BBC, op. cit.; M. Tanner, ‘Bosnia’s ‘Safe Areas’: West sets the stage for a human tragedy – The creation of UN ‘safe’ refugee zones proceeds apace. In these disease-ridden camps thousands of orphaned Muslim children, with no hope for the future, will turn to crime or terrorism’, 7 June 1993, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bosnias-safe-areas-west-sets-the-stage-for-a-human-tragedy-the-creation-of-un-safe-refugee-zones-1490291.html, (accessed 26 September 2017).

[34] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, ‘II. Findings of Fact: A. The Take-Over of Srebrenica and its Aftermath’, International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of  International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of Former Yugoslavia since 1991, p. 1,  para 1, http://www.icty.org/x/cases/krstic/tjug/en/krs-tj010802e.pdf, (accessed 26 April 2018).

 [35] Modified image taken from ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina’, World Atlas, 2017, http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/ba.htm, (accessed 26 September 2017).

 [36] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 22.

^[37] Tanner, ‘Bosnia’s ‘Safe Areas’: West sets the stage for a human tragedy’, op. cit.

[38] ‘United Nations Resolution 836 (1993), UN Security Council 3228^th Meeting Resolution S/RES/836 June 4, 1993’, Operation Joint Endeavour (IFOR), https://www.nato.int/ifor/un/u930604a.htm, (accessed 18 June 2018).

[39] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 22.

[40] Ibid.

[41] UN, ‘Former Yugoslavia – UNPROFOR, United Nations Protection Force: Profile’, op. cit.

[42] L. Dearden, ‘Srebrenica massacre: Dutch government ‘partially liable’ for murder of 300 Muslim men, court finds’, Independent, 27 June 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/srebrenica-massacre-dutch-peacekeepers-murder-300-muslim-men-serbia-bosnia-war-1995-appeals-court-a7809806.html#gallery, (accessed 15 May 2018).

[43] ‘Slaughter of Muslim Children Around Srebrenica in 1992’, Srebrenica Genocide Blog, 24 October 2009, http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.co.nz/2009/10/slaughter-of-muslim-children-around.html, (accessed 12 February 2018).

[44] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 6,  para  15.

[45] ‘‘A Slow-Motion Process of Genocide’’ started in 1993, Serbs Refused to Demilitarize (Resolution 819)’, Srebrenica Genocide Blog, 3 May 2010, http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.co.nz/2010/05/slow-motion-process-of-genocide.html, (accessed 12 February 2018).; Dearden, ‘Srebrenica massacre: Dutch government ‘partially liable’ for murder of 300 Muslim men, court finds’, op. cit.

[46] ‘‘A Slow-Motion Process of Genocide’’ started in 1993, Serbs Refused to Demilitarize (Resolution 819)’, op. cit.

 [47] Modified image taken from U. Ludwig & A. Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’ [online map], Spiegel Online, 5 June 2007, http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/criminal-negligence-srebrenica-survivors-sue-netherlands-united-nations-a-486755.html, (accessed (14 September 2017).

[48] Tanner, ‘Bosnia’s ‘Safe Areas’: West sets the stage for a human tragedy’, op. cit.

[49] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 7,  para  20.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid., p. 7,  para  21; UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p.  9.

[52] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, ibid., p. 7,  para  20.

[53] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 51.

[54] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 7,  para  20.

[55] A. Schröder, ‘Dealing with Genocide: A Dutch Peacekeeper Remembers’, Spiegel Online, 12 July 2005, http://www.spiegel.de/international/dealing-with-genocide-a-dutch-peacekeeper-remembers-srebrenica-a-364902.html, (accessed 26 April 2018).

[56] ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, Srebrenica Massacre, 5 June 2007, https://srebrenicamassacre1995.wordpress.com/tag/dutch-state/, (accessed 14 September 2017).

[57] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 53.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Ibid.

[60] D. Robinson, ‘Dutch still grapple with the shame of Srebrenica’, Financial Times , 11 July 2015, https://www.ft.com/content/93a5c67a-26d2-11e5-9c4e-a775d2b173ca, (accessed 26 September 2017); ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, op. cit.

 [61] Modified image taken from ‘SREBRENICA – Srebrenica Massacre: Hate, atrocity and misprision – July 11, 1995: The beginning of the tragedy’, op. cit.

 [62] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.; ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, op. cit.

[63] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, ibid.

[64] Ibid.

[65] ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, op. cit.

[66] Schröder, ‘Dealing with Genocide: A Dutch Peacekeeper Remembers’, op. cit.

[67] ‘Karremans eist excuus van minister Hennis van Defensie’ (‘Karremans demands an apology from Minister Hennis of Defence’), 11 July 2015, NOS Nieuws, https://nos.nl/artikel/2046361-karremans-eist-excuus-van-minister-hennis-van-defensie.html, (accessed 14 May 2018).

[68] Ibid.

[69] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 9,  para  26; UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 53-54.

[70] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, ibid.; UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, ibid.

[71] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, ibid., p. 9,  para  26.

[72] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit.,  p. 53.

[73] Ibid.

[74] Ibid.

[75] Ibid., p. 51.

[76] Ibid.

[77] Ibid., p. 54.

[78] Ibid., p. 53.

[79] Modified image of United Nations Map 4123 taken from UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, ibid., p. 56.

 [80] Ibid., p. 51.

[81] Ibid.

[82] Ibid.

[83] Ibid.

[84] Ibid.

[85] Ibid., p. 52.

[86] Ibid.

 [87] Modified image taken from Government of the Netherlands, Department of Defence [Ministerie van Defensie], ‘Dutchbat Powerlessness Written Down’ [‘Onmacht Dutchbat te boek gesteld’], 27 November 2014, https://www.defensie.nl/actueel/nieuws/2014/11/27/onmacht-dutchbat-te-boek-gesteld, (accessed 14 May 2018).

 [88] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

 [89] Modified image taken from ‘Mladic arrêté, la route de la Serbie vers l’UE s’ouvre’, Radio Télévision Suisse (RTS), 26 May 2011, https://www.rts.ch/info/monde/3168356-mladic-arrete-la-route-de-la-serbie-vers-l-ue-s-ouvre.html, (accessed 29 January 2018).

[90] ‘The Death March’, Remembering Srebrenica, 15 November 2014, https://www.srebrenica.org.uk/what-happened/srebrenica-genocide/column/, (accessed 31 January 2018).

[91] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.; United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 9.

[92] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, ibid.

[93] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, ibid., p. 57.

[94] Ibid.

[95] Ibid.

[96] Ibid.

[97] Ibid.

[98] Ibid.

[99] Ibid.

[100] Ibid.

[101] Ibid.

[102] Ibid.

[103] Ibid., p. 57-58.

[104] Ibid., p. 58.

[105] Ibid.

[106] Ibid.

[107] Ibid.

[108] Ibid., p. 59

[109] Ibid.; U. Ludwig & A. Mertin, ‘“A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, Spiegel Online, 4 July 2006, http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/a-toast-to-the-dead-srebenica-widows-sue-un-dutch-government-a-425024.html, (accessed 6 February 2018).

[110] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, ibid., p. 53.

[111] Ibid., p. 102.

[112] Ibid., p. 59

[113] Ibid., p. 58-59

[114] Ibid., p. 59, 102; United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 11, para 31.

[115] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, ibid., p. 59.

[116] Ibid.

[117] Ibid.

[118] Ibid., p.60.

[119] Ibid.

[120] Ibid.

[121] Modified image of United Nations Map 4124 taken from UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, ibid., p. 71.

 [122] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘“A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, op. cit.

[123] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[124] Ibid.

[125] Modified images taken from ‘Ratko Mladic Conviction Caps Decades of Grief Over Srebrenica Massacre’ [photo slideshow], NBC News, 23 November 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/ratko-mladic-conviction-caps-decades-grief-over-srebrenica-massacre-n823311, (accessed 29 January 2018) and D. Sim, ‘Srebrenica Massacre: Anniversary of 1995 Genocide Carried Out by Serb Forces During Bosnian War’, International Business Times, 10 July 2014, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/srebrenica-massacre-anniversary-1995-genocide-carried-out-by-serb-forces-during-bosnian-war-1456177, (accessed 29 January 2018).

 [126] L. Zegveld, ‘The Dutch State Failed in Its Duty to Protect Civilian Victims of Genocide at Srebrenica’, Srebrenica Massacre [blog], 3 June 2008, https://srebrenicamassacre1995.wordpress.com/tag/dutch-state/, (accessed 14 September 2017).

[127] Robinson, ‘Dutch still grapple with the shame of Srebrenica’, op. cit.

[128] Ibid.

[129] Ibid.

[130] Zegveld, ‘The Dutch State Failed in Its Duty to Protect Civilian Victims of Genocide at Srebrenica’, op. cit.

[131] ‘SREBRENICA – The Wounds of Srebrenica have still not Healed: West’s Failure to Prevent the Srebrenica Massacre’, TRT World [Interactive Slideshow], http://interactive.trtworld.com/srebrenica/index.html#thirteenth, (accessed 29 January 2018).

[132] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[133] Ibid.

[134] ‘Ratko Mladic Conviction Caps Decades of Grief Over Srebrenica Massacre’ [photo slideshow], op. cit.; Ludwig & Mertin, ‘“A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, op. cit.

[135] P. Vallely, ‘The Big Question: Why are Dutch soldiers being sued for the massacre at Srebrenica?’, Independent, 18 June 2008, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-big-question-why-are-dutch-soldiers-being-sued-for-the-massacre-at-srebrenica-849944.html, (accessed 7 May 2018); UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 60.

[136] B. Waterfield, ‘Commander of UN forces ‘aware Srebrenica massacre was about to happen’,  The Telegraph, 8 November 2011, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/serbia/8877056/Commander-of-UN-forces-aware-Srebrenica-massacre-was-about-to-happen.html, (accessed 25 April 2018).

[137] Ibid.; Robinson, ‘Dutch still grapple with the shame of Srebrenica’, op. cit.

[138] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.; Robinson, ‘Dutch still grapple with the shame of Srebrenica’, ibid.

[139] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, ibid.; ‘AICG Call to Indict General Janvier’, Bosnian Institute, New Series no. 1 (November-December 1997), http://www.bosnia.org.uk/bosrep/novdec97/indict.cfm, (accessed 14 February 2018); United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 11-12,  para 34.

[140] Schröder, ‘Dealing with Genocide: A Dutch Peacekeeper Remembers’, op. cit.

[141] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[142] Modified images taken from ‘Joris Voorhoeve: Biografie’, Vereniging van Onderzoeksjournalisten’ (VVOJ), 2018, https://www.vvoj.nl/2010/10/08/joris-voorhoeve/, (accessed 30 June 2018) and United Nations (UN), ‘United Nations Photo: Portrait of Lt. General Bernard Janvier, Theatre Force Commander’, 8 March 1995,  https://www.unmultimedia.org/s/photo/detail/295/0295770.html, (accessed 30 June 2018).

[143] ‘AICG Call to Indict General Janvier’, op. cit.; UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 57.

[144] ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, op. cit.

[145] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 57.

[146] Ibid., p. 57, 59.

[147] ‘AICG Call to Indict General Janvier’, op. cit.

[148] Ibid.

[149] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 102.

[150] N. Wood, ‘Bosnian Serbs Admit Responsibility for the Massacre of 7,000’, New York Times, 12 June 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/12/world/bosnian-serbs-admit-responsibility-for-the-massacre-of-7000.html?mcubz=3, (accessed 13 March 2010).

[151] Ibid.

[152] Ibid.; ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, op. cit.

[153] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[154] ‘Srebrenica Genocide Trial: Mladic & Karadzic Evade Justice – Genocide Trial Without Ratko Mladic & Radovan Karadzic’, Srebrenica Genocide 1995 [blog], 22 August 2006, https://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2006/08/trial-mladic-karadzic-evade-justice.html, (accessed 10 December 2017); Robinson, ‘Dutch still grapple with the shame of Srebrenica’, op. cit.; ‘U.N., Dutch Complicity in Srebrenica Genocide’, op. cit.

[155] Wood, ‘Bosnian Serbs Admit Responsibility for the Massacre of 7,000’, op. cit.; ‘Srebrenica Genocide Trial: Mladic & Karadzic Evade Justice – Genocide Trial Without Ratko Mladic & Radovan Karadzic’, ibid.

[156] T. Switzer, ‘Srebrenica: The massacre that forced America to act after years of bloodshed’, ABC News, 9 July 2015, http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/betweenthelines/srebrenica-massacre-forced-america-to-act-after-years-bloodshed/6600748, (accessed 30 January 2018).

[157] United Nations (UN), ‘Judgement: Prosecutor v. Radislav Krstic’, op. cit., p. 1,  para 2.

[158] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

 [159] Modified image taken from ‘The Netherlands liable for Srebrenica Victims’ [‘Niederlande haften für Srebrenica-Opfer’], Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF), 16 July 2014, https://www.srf.ch/news/international/niederlande-haften-fuer-srebrenica-opfer, (accessed 10 October 2017).

 [160] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[161] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘“A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, op. cit.

[162] Ibid.

[163] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[164] Ibid.

[165] Ibid.

[166] Ibid.

[167] Ibid.

[168] UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 6.

[169] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.

[170] Ludwig & Mertin, “A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, op. cit.

[171] Ibid.

[172] Modified images taken from Sim, ‘Srebrenica Massacre: Anniversary of 1995 Genocide Carried Out by Serb Forces During Bosnian War’, op. cit.; ‘Kaznom Za Zločine – Pravdom Za Žrtve’, Tačno.net, 27 June 2017, http://www.tacno.net/banja-luka/kaznom-za-zlocine-pravdom-za-zrtve/, (accessed 14 September 2017); and ‘Ratko Mladic Conviction Caps Decades of Grief Over Srebrenica Massacre’ [photo slideshow], op. cit.

 [173] U. Ludwig & A. Mertin, ‘Criminal Negligence? Srebrenica Survivors Sue Netherlands, United Nations’, op. cit.; Ludwig & Mertin, “A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, op. cit.

[174] Schröder, ‘Dealing with Genocide: A Dutch Peacekeeper Remembers’, op. cit.

[175] Ludwig & Mertin, ‘“A Toast to the Dead”: Srebrenica Massacre Widows Sue UN, Dutch Government’, op. cit.

[176] Robinson, ‘Dutch still grapple with the shame of Srebrenica’, op. cit.

[177] Ibid.

 [178] Modified image taken from ‘SREBRENICA – Srebrenica Massacre: Hate, atrocity and misprision – July 11, 1995: The beginning of the tragedy’, op. cit.

 [179] T. Switzer, ‘With the benefit of hindsight: The Srebrenica Massacre’, op. cit.

 [180] Modified image taken from ‘Ratko Mladic in Pictures’, The Guardian, 26 May 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2011/may/26/ratko-mladic-in-pictures, (accessed 3 July 2018).

[181] ‘Ratko Mladic Conviction Caps Decades of Grief Over Srebrenica Massacre’ [photo slideshow], op. cit.

[182] ‘AICG Call to Indict General Janvier’, op. cit.

[183] ‘SREBRENICA – Srebrenica Massacre: Hate, atrocity and misprision – July 11, 1995: The beginning of the tragedy’, op. cit.

[184] Ibid.

[185] Ibid.

[186] Modified images taken from ‘SREBRENICA – Srebrenica Massacre: Hate, atrocity and misprision – July 11, 1995: The beginning of the tragedy’, ibid.; Sim, ‘Srebrenica Massacre: Anniversary of 1995 Genocide Carried Out by Serb Forces During Bosnian War’, op. cit.; and ‘Ratko Mladic Conviction Caps Decades of Grief Over Srebrenica Massacre’ [photo slideshow], op. cit.

 [187] C. Eagar, ‘Death March: The extraordinary story of the Bosnians who marched 70 horrific miles to escape genocide’, The Daily Mail Online, 7 August 2011, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2021705/Death-March-The-Bosnians-walked-70-horrific-miles-escape-genocide.html, (accessed 31 January 2018).

[188] Ibid.; UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 70.

[189] Eagar, ‘Death March: The extraordinary story of the Bosnians who marched 70 horrific miles to escape genocide’, ibid.

[190] Ibid.; UN, ‘The Fall of Srebrenica – Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35’, op. cit., p. 70.

[191] Eagar, ‘Death March: The extraordinary story of the Bosnians who marched 70 horrific miles to escape genocide’, ibid.

[192] ‘The Death March’, Remembering Srebrenica, op. cit.

[193] Eagar, ‘Death March: The extraordinary story of the Bosnians who marched 70 horrific miles to escape genocide’, op. cit.

[194] Ibid.

[195] Ibid.

[196] Ibid.

[197] Modified image taken from ‘SREBRENICA – The Wounds of Srebrenica have still not Healed: West’s Failure to Prevent the Srebrenica Massacre’, op. cit.