The Balkans Project

This week marks 15 years since the massacre at Srebrenica. In July of 1995, the Army of the Republika Srpska, commanded by General Ratko Mladić, murdered somewhere around 8000 male Bosniaks in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in what was the largest single massacre of the Bosnian war.

Srebrenica is also the epitome of the Euro-Atlantic community’s indecisiveness and impotence in the face of humanitarian crisis. The United Nations had declared Srebrenica a “safe area” and sent 400 Dutch peacekeepers to guard the site, but they stood by when confronted by the armed Serbs. This inaction, the result of a peacekeeping plan that was itself half-hearted and far too small, allowed genocide to occur in “the heart of Europe at the dawn of the 21st century,” as the Slovenian Foreign Minister recently put it.

Guilt over this failure has led to supportive treatment of the survivors and memorializing for the victims. Both the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia have established and documented that what took place was indeed a genocide, giving needed recognition to survivors. Conditionality on the part of both the EU and US has brought all ICTY indictees, with the exception of Mladić, to The Hague.

But the anniversary of Srebrenica is also a reminder of the imperfection of the conditions that led to Bosnia’s shaky peace. While many perpetrators of Srebrenica have been punished, the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing was largely successful: Bosnian Serbs now have their own entity largely free of Muslims and led by an ultranationalist. In essence, to make peace Dayton rewarded the violence of the aggressors.

Thus, on the same day that Serbian president Boris Tadić was in Srebrenica to honor the dead, Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik was denying that what happened was a genocide. Though they have been present in Bosnia for 15 troubled years, the international community must not delude itself into thinking that Bosnia has been “fixed.” Without a state that protects its citizens and opens their door to Europe, long-term stability and peace in the region will remain an unfulfilled dream.