Full Text

In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army invaded the enclave of Srebrenica, a UN safe
area guarded by Dutch blue helmets, and murdered about 8,000 Muslim Bosniak
civilians under the eyes of the international community. Reports say that even as of
today as many as 2,306 victims from the massacre are still missing. The massacre of
Srebrenica - the secret codeword of the operation was "Krivaja95" - became known
as the largest genocidal massacre of a civilian population in Europe since World
War II. It represents the deliberate killing of innocent people in the wake of a
ferocious civil war in the former socialist republic of ex-Yugoslavia in the first place, and the inaction of the international community who did not intervene to prevent
the forced displacement and massacre, too. The present study elucidates how
various international state actors and organizations such as the UN, the blue
helmets led by the French and Dutch, the Serbs, the Bosnians among others that
have been concerned with the massacre have (re)interpreted the facts and
responsibilities in their public discourses. It does not discuss criminal responsibilities
of individuals as these have been taken care of by the International Criminal
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). It does not intend to single out individuals
who might have failed in their moral judgment and behaviour either.
The main purpose of the study is to explore how national and international entities
"face up to their own responsibility in the events" (p. 12) by analyzing and
comparing the different parliamentary inquiries, fact-finding missions and UN
reports that were commissioned to establish possible institutional malfunctions and
learn from possible errors, mistakes and wrongdoings. The editors are well aware
that "these often tedious investigations and reports" (p. 10) may offer few new
insights. How well does the study then succeed in providing answers to the question
of identifying and assigning responsibilities and in evaluating how parliamentary
and international institutions construct knowledge from information and facts?
It is precisely the interview with the ICTY police investigator Jean-Rene Ruez, who
gathered meticulous criminal evidence for the prosecution, which reveals the most
shocking lessons of the study. The interview unveils that the massacre was not a
spontaneous act but a premeditated act requiring large organizational and logistic
resources. The Serbs, who referred to their victims not as prisoners but "packages"
(p. 37), were at that time already fully aware that "there would be inquiries into
these events" (p. 27). Malicious efforts were therefore undertaken to camouflage
the number killed by transferring all but a few corpses from the primary mass graves
to secondary graves (p. 27). The factual nature of the "criminal truth" reported by
Ruez contrasts sharply with official parliamentary reports deemed to produce a
"public discourse of truth" (p. 41). In this regard, the contribution of Pieter Lagrou,
professor of history at the Free University of Brussels, on the Dutch parliamentary
Srebrenica report offers detailed insights into the political construction of the truth
process. According to his conclusions, the Dutch report (NIOD) published in April
2002 served one single purpose: to whitewash the political class by allowing the
Dutch Government "by means of a report and a resignation, to once and for all turn
the black page of Srebrenica" (p. 101).
While the editors agree in their final assessment and comments with the findings of
Larou by describing the "methods and results of the NIOD" as "often weak" (p. 150)
they disagree with the comments of the French fact-finding member, socialist MP
Pierre Brana, with regard to the controversial role of the French UNPROFOR top
commander General Bernard Janvier who had categorically refused to order airBook Reviews
378
strikes against the Serbs on the night of 10 July 1995, just before the Serbs captured
Srebrenica and began executions. Whereas the editors question the basic
willingness of French MPs to seriously "analyse" events in their report (p. 45) and
openly criticize General Janvier for having done "nothing to defend the enclave,
deliberately abandoning it to its fate" (p. 154), Brana refuses to settle individual
responsibilities in his contribution and refers instead to "differences of analysis" (p.
62) in assessing General Janvier's decisions. This polemic between editors and
Branaon the role and responsibilities of General Janvier is regrettable because it
diminishes the academic quality of the study which claimed, at the outset, to simply
establish a narrative of events (historiography) by comparing the findings of various
UN and parliamentary reports on Srebrenica with a "focus on the inquiry as such" (p.
2). Even the word "inquiry" gets an ideological colouring when Brana notes that the
French preferred to use the word "fact-finding" because inquiry suggests "suspicion
of wrongdoing" (p. 57). At the same time, Brana regrets that the word "genocide"
was not explicitly used in the French report (p. 63). He does not, however, explain
why the term genocide - which is much stronger and clearer than the vague term
"ethnic cleansing" (p. 153) - was not used even though it was legally, morally and
politically correct to do so in light of the judgment of the International Court of
Justice at Hague in 2007.
Getting back to the main findings of this study, the editors stress two main points:
there has been disagreement among the various studies on the reasons for carrying
out the massacre and there is disagreement on identifying the levels and layers of
responsibility, that is, who should take responsibility and for what actions. Despite
these variations the reports remain very similar in style and aims according to the
editors. In her final conclusion Isabelle Delpla, a philosopher, unable to deduct a
meaningful public truth from the various reports she analysed, asserts that only the
criminal investigations of the ICTY - which in her view offer the most reliable,
verifiable and scientific testimonies (p. 153) - can give a true and complete picture
and enrich our understanding. She also gives high credit to the UN report and the
book Endgame written by David Rohde, who was the first to investigate and locate
the mass graves, for having contributed to the full understanding of the dynamics of
the events. Her disappointment with the various official reports becomes obvious
when she writes at the end of the book that "one should no longer read these
reports as a form of political or moral reflection" (p. 164) but as a form of "theodicy"
which assigns responsibility to a metaphysical condition or impersonal force. In
other words, by issuing these reports the international community - facing the evil in
Srebrenica - tried to justify its inaction on higher philosophical grounds.