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[–]JFVarletThe USSR caused the Holocaust by resisting the German invasion![S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

(cont. Part 2)

A basic problem throughout has been the fact that there was severe fighting between the thousands of Bosnian Muslim 25th regiment soldiers, who left Srebrenica for Bosnian Muslim lines on or shortly before July 11, 1995, and Bosnian Serb forces.

I don't know why Herman refers to the "25th regiment", when the relevant ARBiH unit in Srebrenica was the 28th Division (and 6,000 would be too many for a regiment besides). When the division was divided into slightly smaller units, it was generally into brigades.

Both Bosnian Muslim and Serb officials have estimated that 2,000 or more Muslim soldiers were killed in this retreat; the Bosnian Muslim Chief of the Supreme Command Staff General Enver Hadzihasanovic testified in the trial of Radislav Krstic that he could "claim for certainty that 2,628 members, both soldiers and commanding officers, members of the 28th Division, were killed" during this retreat.

I've been through this above - this would still leave a mostly civilian death count. Also, that 2,628 includes those killed (or captured and later killed) anywhere on the journey from Srebrenica to Tuzla. Some of those died a long way from Srebrenica and wouldn't come up in the mass graves there.

Also, the events that led to the capture and killings of the men Hadzihasanovic is talking about were pretty far from “severe fighting” – in fact they’ve more often been described as a manhunt of 15,000 men, the vast majority of whom were unarmed, attempting to make their way undetected through about over 50 miles of Serb-held territory.

According to an analysis of the autopsy reports compiled by the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICTY from 1995 to 2002 by the Serb forensic expert Ljubisa Simic, in roughly 77 percent of the bodies associated with these reports it was either impossible to determine the manner of death (i.e., execution or combat) or the manner of death strongly suggested that it was in combat.

Herman dismisses Croat, Bosniak and ICTY as biased, and then takes Serb statements as a given. No sign of bias there. Also, Simic, like Herman, was already blatantly on the Serb side before he analysed the bodies, and thinks there are actually only ~2,000 bodies there at all.

This uncertainty was very convenient, because, with a compliant ICTY, Bosnian Muslim investigative authority, and media, they could all be quietly assumed to have been executed.

They didn't 'quietly assume' anything, because Simic's analysis was thrown out because the analysis of the International Commission on Missing Persons completely contradicted it.

There is no doubt that there were at least several hundred executions in the Srebrenica area in July 1995, as 443 ligatures and "at least" 448 blindfolds were found in the mass graves

Herman is basing this on his earlier figure of ~2,000 bodies exhumed by 2001, which tells us nothing about the more than 4,000 others exhumed since then.

but there is no serious evidence that more Bosnian Muslims were executed there than the number of civilians killed by Croatian forces in Operation Storm in the following month.

Well, I don’t know exactly how many Herman meant by the “several thousand” he claimed died in Storm. It could be more than the Srebrenica, could be less. But as I said above, his claim is garbage anyway, so it doesn’t matter.

The Bosnian Serbs were in a vengeful mood as the "safe area" of Srebrenica had long been the military base from which Bosnian Muslim forces went out to attack nearby Serb towns. Many scores of these towns were assaulted and several thousand Serbs were killed in these actions in the several years before July 1995.

For a start, Herman is completely ignoring the other side of this time period. The Bosniaks had never abided by the terms of the “safe area” agreement, it’s true – but neither had the Serbs; they kept their heavy weaponry and tanks around Srebrenica when they were supposed to withdraw them to a safe distance. Bosniak raids from the Srebrenica enclave did happen, yes – but so did Serb raids into it (though admittedly fewer, because it didn’t benefit the Serbs militarily as much). Oh, and there’s the small matter that Srebrenica was a town under siege, already incredibly overcrowded (more than 40,000 people inhabiting a town that before the war had been the home of just 9,000), and the VRS were blocking humanitarian food convoys in an attempt to starve the Bosniaks into submission (indeed, it has been suggested that the Bosniak raids were more motivated by a desperate attempt to steal supplies rather than any particular military aim). But no, according to Herman, only the Serbs had any reason to be in a “vengeful mood”.

This may be a pedantic point, but I also want to touch on his reference to “Serb towns”. For a start, these settlements are for the most part villages, not towns – we’re talking about places with a population of a few hundred. Also, Herman of course neglects to mention the reason they were Serb towns – their (usually majority) Bosniak populations had been murdered or expelled in the preceding years.

Also, again, his casualty figures are nonsense. In fact, I’ll give his reference for “several thousand” here:

Serb historian Milivoje Ivanisevic lists the names of 3,287 Serbs, most of them civilians, who were killed in the Srebrenica-Birac region, 1992-1995; Srebrenica July 1995 (Belgrade: Christian Thought, 2008).

Again, Herman’s policy on estimates is that Croat, Bosniak, ICTY and UN estimates are inherently biased and therefore unreliable, but Serb estimates are a completely reliable source. And for the record, this isn’t even in tune with other Serb estimates, including those of Ivanisevic himself – the referenced book is actually his second on Srebrenica, his earlier one having given the noticeably lower number of about 1,200. This is already a comparatively high estimate; the Republika Srpska’s Commission for War Crimes puts the number at 995. Nor were they mostly civilian; quite the opposite; the RDC puts the military:civilian casualty ratio at more than 3:1. Unshockingly, the VRS used the villages surrounding the enclave as military outposts, rather than simply leaving them as totally civilian settlements; indeed, they even based artillery in some of them.

Naser Oric, the Bosnian Muslim military commander in those years, actually bragged about his killings to Western journalists, showing them videos of beheadings, and acknowledging an action which had left 114 Serb dead. What a field day the ICTY would have had if such admissions, and videos, had been attributable to Karadzic, or Mladic, or Milosevic!

Herman references two articles here, one by Bill Schiller for the Toronto Star, one by John Pomfret for the Washington Post, both from early 1994. I can’t track down the original of the former, though I have found a similar article by Schiller from July 1995 in which he discusses his meeting with Oric again, so I’ll base my criticism on that.

Neither article mentions seeing beheadings in the video. They mention seeing severed heads and headless bodies, but no actual beheadings. This may seem a minor issue (the fact that the videos didn’t show them doesn’t prove Oric and his men did not kill people by beheading them), but it’s another example of Herman stretching the information to fit his point.

As for the 114 Serb dead, the article in question (Schiller’s) does not refer to one action, but one town. It says nothing about whether the dead were military or civilian.

Also, Herman by placing this just after his discussion of “safe area” violations, implies the events of Oric’s raids described in these articles were among those violations. Yet Schiller himself says:

These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric's glory days. That was before most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a "safe zone" with U.N. peacekeepers inside - and Serbs on the outside. But given their attribution to an alleged defender of a victim population, Oric could get away with murder.

“Murder” here meaning “killing enemy fighters in a war”.

The EU resolution of January 2009 mentions twice that Srebrenica was "a protected zone" by virtue of a UN Security Council ruling, and that "Muslim men and boys . . . had sought safety in this area under the protection" of UN protection forces, so that the massacre "stands as a symbol of the impotence of the international community." But the Resolution fails to mention that the protected zone was supposed to have been demilitarized, but wasn't. Naser Oric and his fighting cadres had not been disarmed, and many attacks on Serb villages had been launched from the "protected area."

And as noted above, it wasn’t just the Bosniaks who were supposed to demilitarise – the Serbs around Srebrenica were too, and they never did, and continued to shell Srebrenica with their artillery.

(cont. below)

[–]JFVarletThe USSR caused the Holocaust by resisting the German invasion![S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

(Part 3)

Furthermore, in July 1995 there were several thousand well-armed Bosnian Muslim soldiers of the 25th regiment located in the town.

No, there were several thousand badly armed, many even unarmed, Bosnian Muslim soldiers of the 28th Division located in the town. Many of these men were armed with little more than pistols and hunting rifles. They were cut off by more than 50 miles from the main RBiH-held territory, while being surrounded by VRS troops, who contrary to Herman’s claim, were the actual well-armed ones, having inherited a huge chunk of equipment, including artillery, war planes and tanks ( the 28th Division had none of any of these), as well as the best-trained men and officers, from the old (Serb-dominated) Yugoslav Army, and being well-supplied by Milosevic in Belgrade too.

It deceives (and lies) secondly in saying men and boys had "sought safety" in Srebrenica, implying that these were civilians, not the 25th regiment.

The bulk of them were. There were ~20,000 men and boys in Srebrenica in 1995, only 6,000 of whom were soldiers. Herman unsurprisingly again neglects to mention the systematic massacres and ethnic cleansing of Bosniaks from the areas around Srebrenica in the preceding years.

It contains other lies: one is that there was "rape of a large number of women," a charge for which there has never been any evidence whatsoever.

Witness testimonies (including from Dutchbat) don’t count as evidence according to Herman.

The fact that a well-armed Bosnian Muslim regiment of several thousand men was located in Srebrenica, and retreated without putting up any defense against a Serb attack force of 200, shows that the charges against the lightly armed Dutch peacekeeping contingent of 69 men are ridiculous and misdirected.

Unless by ‘200’, Herman actually means, ‘1,500-2,000, supported by several hundred paramilitaries from Serbia, Russia and Greece, with another 2,000 reinforcements if they needed them’, he’s making up numbers here. And as I said, the VRS soldiers were vastly better equipped and supplied than the 28th Division.

Why not sue the Bosnian Muslims responsible for the retreat for any deaths that followed in the Srebrenica area?

Because the Dutchbat soldiers in question were not charged with simply failing to protect the town, but with complicity in the massacre that followed. That charge cannot be levelled at the retreating Bosniak soldiers.

Another Srebrenica memorial myth is that the memorial and political actions associated with it are necessary for real peace. In the words of the EU resolution, "there cannot be real peace without justice," which means getting Mladic into court, and this is essential for "reconciliation" so that "civilians of all ethnicities may overcome the tensions of the past." But how about justice for the thousands of Serbs killed from the UN-protected Srebrenica base between 1992 and July 1995, the 250,000 driven out of Krajina in Operation Storm, and the thousands of Serbs and Roma driven out of Kosovo since the NATO takeover and installation of the KLA in power?

Again, I can’t speak as to Kosovo, but many Croats have been put on trial for atrocities perpetrated during Storm. Tudjman and Šušak have never been put on trial for the simple reason that it’s quite hard to try dead people. However, at the time Herman was writing here, the ICTY trials of generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Čermak and Mladen Markač for atrocities during Storm were all ongoing.

And to finish off, a couple more pieces of evidence that Herman opts to miss out – the testimonies of VRS soldiers. If the massacre at Srebrenica did not happen, as Herman claims, how does he explain the testimony of Dražen Erdemović, who testified that he was part of a VRS unit charged by Mladic with killing 1,200 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica, and that he killed around 70 personally? Erdemović is all the more convincing given that he actually sought out an ABC reporter to confess to his crimes and freely turned himself in to ICTY. Had he stayed quiet, he probably never would have been arrested. Or Dragan Obrenović, who confessed and gave plenty of information of ICTY regarding the whole massacre, including instructions from his superiors to kill all the Bosniak men? Both men have now served their sentences and been released, and neither have yet renounced their testimonies. Why do they say the massacre took place, if it did not?

In summary, Herman plays bait-and-switch with numbers all the way through, with the occasional made up number for good measure too. He rejects ICTY, UN, Croat and Bosniak figures and accounts as biased, yet uncritically accepts Serb ones as gospel truth. But most crucially of all, this is not “the other side” history. He’s not saying that a portrayal of the Bosnian War as “Bosniaks good, Serbs bad” is too simplistic and biased and then presenting the more complex narrative; he’s simply trying to reverse the narrative to make the Serbs the good guys and the Bosniaks the evil ones instead.

Maybe I’ll deal with Rwanda as well in another post, but this has taken me a while to put together, so it might take a while to do another one. Also, Herman has also done a longer set of articles on the breakup of Yugoslavia as a whole which I’ve started reading, but I don’t anticipate longer actually meaning it contains any more actual fact.

Anyway, hope you made it all the way through that, appreciate it was long!

Sources (at least, my main ones, ICTY has truckloads of relevant documents, and they can at times be hard to keep track of which is which):

Naser Oric judgement

Radislav Krstic judgement

Krstic case information sheet

Gotovina et al judgement summary

Popovic et al judgement