Bosnia-Herzegovina: challenging the notion of civil war

The term genocide was first coined by Raphael Lemkin during World War II and its most widely accepted definition is that contained in the United Nations Convention on Genocide. However, genocide in Srebrenica was a clear indication that the mere adoption of the United Nations Convention on Genocide by the international community was not capable of preventing genocide from reoccurring in Europe.

Several genocides in different parts of the world have occurred since its adoption. What makes the genocide in Srebrenica so unique is that it is a paradigm of the overall suffering endured by Bosniaks at the hands of Serbian perpetrators. Srebrenica is also unique as it took place in Europe, which had promised “never again”, and yet it occurred under the very supervision of the United Nations peacekeeping forces. This is what makes it an unforgivable crime.

Although obliged to prevent genocide in Bosnia, the international community first denied that what was actually taking place in Bosnia was actually genocide. It was only after the brave American journalist Roy Guttmann finally managed to reveal to the world the sheer magnitude of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Muslims in northern Bosnia that the Western policy-makers started issuing statements to the effect that this kind of Serb behaviour would not be tolerated. So much for the firm promise “never again”.

Bill Clinton promised during his election campaign that if he were elected US president, "ethnic cleansing would stop". After he was elected, he spent 18 months standing by as genocide in Bosnia continued to unfold. The American Left was unwilling to contemplate any use of American military power to save Bosnia. They would have regarded it as imperialism. Ordinary Americans did not want to send their children to risk their lives in Bosnia.

The UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, when he visited Sarajevo on December 31, 1992, declared what was going on in Bosnia was “a rich man’s war". In fact, as The New York Times David Rieff has pointed out in his brilliant account about Western failure in Bosnia, he meant that Bosnia was a white man’s war. “I understand your frustration”, he said, “but you have a situation that is better than ten other places in the world … I can give you a list”. Then he left the city.

For more than four years the world watched the genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, destruction and other atrocities without seriously considering the calls by the victims, or the media to do something.

The armed humanitarian intervention on the side of justice and truth eventually did happen in Bosnia in 1995. But by then it was too late. Bosnia-Herzegovina, that precious symbol of centuries-old multi-ethnic coexistence in the heart of Europe was effectively carved up. The final peace settlement brokered by Richard Holbrook only legitimated the gains made by the Serbian perpetrators.

Although some adjustments were made by NATO's surgical strikes on the Serb positions to enable the Bosnian Muslims to regain more territory, as envisaged by the latest peace settlement, the Americans said this was the best deal they could obtain by negotiating with Milosevic. According to David Rieff, the reason the Americans said they could not offer more support to the Bosnian Government was because it would imperil the Yeltsin Government in Moscow. Apparently, this was what the US Deputy Secretary of State, Strobe Talbot, told President Clinton. It indicates larger strategic issues were at play preventing the US from acting more robustly in order to halt the genocide of Bosniaks.