Jihadists yet again play clueless and ignorant Westerners for fools. “Srebrenica was an Inside Job” by Andy Wilcoxson in the Balkan Report, June 15:
In the wake of the July 1995 fall of the Srebrenica enclave, thousands of Muslim soldiers and draft eligible men were killed or went missing. Some were captured and summarily executed by Bosnian-Serb forces, and others died in combat.
Western governments, news media, and the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague have assiduously misled the public about the nature of the massacre; at the same time they have remained conspicuously silent about the role U.N. officials and the Muslim regime in Sarajevo played in orchestrating the massacre.
Srebrenica’s Fall Could Have Been Prevented
Yasushi Akashi, who at the time was the special envoy of the U.N. Secretary General in the former Yugoslavia, said the U.N. had “limited capabilities” and could not prevent the fall of Srebrenica. He told the Associated Press, “There was a hundred of U.N. troops versus thousands of Serb troops. What could we have done?” [1]
According to the Dutch battalion of U.N. peacekeepers who were deployed in Srebrenica, quite a bit could have been done. They were authorized to call in air strikes if the enclave was attacked, and when it was attacked they did indeed call in air strikes, but they were blocked by the U.N. until it was too late.
According to the debriefing of Dutch Battalion personnel, “The battalion was counting on massive air support…air support was requested around 10.30 hrs. [on July 11, 1995] Then, despite all of its promises, the U.N. still failed to release air power.”
The Dutch Battalion’s report states that, “Both the battalion staff and the rest of Dutchbat are convinced that the fall of the enclave can be attributed to a distinct lack of support from the air; the limited close air support did not arrive until the battle was actually over.” [2]
Even without the U.N.’s help, Bosnian-Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic’s regime could have intervened to stop the fall of the enclave and subsequent massacre, but they chose not to act either.
Sefer Halilovic was the commanding officer of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war. He was the most senior officer in Izetbegovic’s military and he testified under oath at the UN war crimes Tribunal in The Hague that “the command of the 2nd Corps and the General Staff knew when the operation on Srebrenica started, but from a series of testimonies, the people who were in Srebrenica, both from military and political structures, we can clearly see that they asked for help, both of the command of the 2nd Corps and the command of the General Staff and President Izetbegovic, but that they did not receive that assistance. To answer your question whether they had the power and materiel to help, to come to the help of Srebrenica, I think that they did.” [3]
Even though Srebrenica was abandoned by its supposed protectors at the U.N. and by its own government in Sarajevo, the Muslim forces based in Srebrenica should have been able to defend the enclave themselves. Instead, on July 12, 1995, they fled the enclave with the rest of the able-bodied men and abandoned Srebrenica’s women, children, and elderly to the mercy of the attacking Bosnian-Serb forces.
Although UN Military Observers (UNMOs) were uncertain of the exact number of Muslim military personnel in Srebrenica, they believed “that at least half had side arms as well as heavy machine guns, light mortars, and anti-tank weapons including rocket propelled grenades and more modern ones.” [4]
The Command of the 2nd Corps of the Army of Bosnia Herzegovina (ABiH) prepared a report detailing the operation Srebrenica’s men undertook to flee Srebrenica across Bosnian-Serb territory to Tuzla. Their report said, “Numbers were not established when the column was formed, but some estimates put the number in the column at 10,000 to 15,000 people, including approximately 6,000 armed soldiers, not counting soldiers from Zepa.” [5]
According to UN Military Observers, at the time of the attack the Bosnian-Serb Army’s “Drina Corps was known to be stretched in terms of resources” and the strength of the Bosnian-Serb units surrounding Srebrenica was “1,000 to 3,000 infantry with up to 20 tanks as well as artillery and multiple launch rocket systems.” When Srebrenica fell, the UNMOs estimated that the local Bosnian-Serb brigades “probably have around 1,500 infantry in total” and together with reinforcements from units stationed in adjacent areas, the total strength of the Bosnian-Serb forces around Srebrenica was “probably no less than 2,000 infantry.” [6]
Even if they hadn’t been abandoned by the UN and by their own government, 6,000 armed Muslim soldiers should have been able to fight off 1,000 to 3,000 Serb infantry men.
When the Bosnian-Serbs attacked the enclave, UN Military Observers were stunned that the Muslim army didn’t attempt to defend it. In their report they state: “The ABiH had the force ratios to defend the enclave particularly considering its hilly, wooded nature.” They went on to write, “The advantages militarily seem to have been with the [Muslim] defenders to at least hold out for longer and have inflicted greater losses on the Bosnian-Serb Army than believed. However, the ABiH leadership seems to have actually acted against their own interests to carryout a successful defense.” [7]
Dutch Battalion personnel in Srebrenica were surprised when Muslim troops in the enclave did not avail themselves of the weapons they were offered. On the morning of July 6th 1995 battalion personnel “Informed the Bosnian government forces that, if the Bosnian-Serb Army crossed the enclave boundary, the arms in the weapon collection point in Srebrenica would be released. Later, when this situation did indeed occur, the Bosnian government forces did not avail themselves of this opportunity.” [8]…
There is much more. Read it all.