This historical assessment of the events leading up to the conflict that erupted in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s is borne out by a detailed scrutiny of the background and development of the conflict. It is no longer possible to honestly argue that the West’s role in the conflict, under the overall direction of the United States, was in any meaningful way conducive to peace. Many experts who have analysed the background to the conflict have confirmed the West’s complicity in effectively engineering a war by playing all sides against each other. U.S. analyst Sara Flounders, national Co-Director of the New York-based antiwar group the International Action Center (IAC) – founded and headed by former U.S. Attorney-General Ramsey Clark under the Presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson – observes that: “U.S. conduct has involved many maneuvers that have prolonged the war”.[2] The late Balkans specialist Sean Gervasi, Professor of Economics at the University of Paris and consultant to the United Nations for 25 years elaborated that the Western powers under U.S. leadership “carefully planned, prepared and assisted the secessions which broke Yugoslavia apart…

“And they did almost everything in their power to expand and prolong the civil wars which began in Croatia and then continued in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They were involved behind the scenes at every stage of the crisis. Foreign intervention was designed to create precisely the conflicts which the Western powers decried. For they also conveniently served as an excuse for overt intervention once civil wars were under way… It is nonetheless true that Germany and the U.S. were the principal agents in dismantling Yugoslavia and sowing chaos there.”[3]

“[I]t was the United States that undermined every subsequent peace initiative that might have brought an end to the killing. The Vance/Owen and later the Owen/Stoltenberg peace plans were both subverted by the Americans so that the fighting was prolonged… It appeared that the United States was determined to pursue a policy that prevented a resolution of the conflict by other than violent means.”[5]

“Washington started out in 1991 by supporting the unity of Yugoslavia and opposing the secessionist republics. By early 1992, the United States was supporting the secessionist republic of Bosnia. In early 1993, the Clinton Administration began by supporting the Vance-Owen plan for the cantonization of Bosnia, but then changed its mind and brought about the collapse of the plan. Later in 1993, Washington accepted the Owen-Stoltenberg plan for the three-way partition of Bosnia, a virtual duplicate of the three-way partition plan the Bush Administration had urged Sarajevo to reject in 1992, then rejected it, then accepted it, then rejected it again. Also in 1993, the United States adopted its ‘lift and strike’ policy (i.e., lifting the arms embargo on the Bosnian government and launching airstrikes against the Serbs), then abandoned this and began to characterize the Bosnian war as a civil rather than an international conflict, then returned to lift and strike. In 1994, Washington continued to blow hot and cold about lift and strike, changing its mind from one month and even one week to the next, blowing with the winds of Realpolitik.”[6]

“I was in Belgrade when U.S. Secretary of State, James Baker assured the Yugoslav Prime Minister, Anton Marcovic, that if the Slovenes attempted to break away from the Federation by illegal means then the Yugoslav army could be used to prevent secession. A few days later this is what happened but the United States then quickly withdrew its support for unity [thus reneging on its initial promise]. The West abandoned the many thousands of Yugoslavs of different ethnic or religious persuasion who believed in a united Yugoslavia. The playing field was left to the extremists and those who wished to separate.”[7]

“Germany’s determination to reassert its dominance in the Balkans led it to encourage and support Slovene and Croatian independence. Chancellor Kohl’s insistence that Slovenia and Croatia be recognized as independent states was the death sentence for Yugoslavia. Sadly it was also the death sentence for many thousands of Serbs and Croats.”[8]

Many such manoeuvres were conducted by the Western powers in events that were crucial in engineering the disintegration of Yugoslavia through war. One of the most particularly significant one, which will be discussed here in some detail, occurred on 18^th March 1992 when an agreement brokered by the European Community was successfully negotiated in Lisbon among the Bosnian Muslim, Croatian and Serb forces. Although this agreement would have prevented the war, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of refugees, “Washington sabotaged this original agreement by telling the Bosnian regime of Alija Izetbegovic that it could get much more - possibly domination of the whole region - with U.S. backing,” as Sara Flounders reports. “The U.S. role in destroying the carefully crafted agreement is acknowledged by all sides. The U.S. government officially encouraged Izetbegovic [head of the Party for Democratic Action] to unilaterally declare a sovereign state under his presidency”.^[9] Jose Cutileiro, Secretary-General of the Western European Union, further observed that “the Muslims reneged on the agreement” signed at Lisbon which was to be the basis for future negotiations. “Had they not done so, the Bosnian question might have been settled earlier, with less loss of (mainly Muslim) life and land.” But Cutileiro adds the important fact that the decision to renege on the signed agreement at Lisbon did not issue forth from the Bosnian President alone: “To be fair, President Izetbegovic and his aides were encouraged to scupper that deal and to fight for a unitary Bosnian state [by Western mediators]”.[10] The Washington Times specified that: “The (Lisbon) agreement was scuttled by hapless Mr. Zimmermann [then U.S Ambassador to Yugoslavia], who encouraged the Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, then signatory to the Lisbon Agreement, to reverse himself and withdraw”.[11] The problem with the West’s policy was that by recognising Bosnia as an independent state under the March referendum, they immediately subjected Bosnia to war, since in the words of the New York Times: “Bosnian Serbs [had] boycotted [the referendum on Bosnian independence], warning that it was a prelude to civil war”.[12]

On 29 February to 1 March 1992, the citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina voted for independence. “The problem with that referendum”, observes America’s ‘newspaper of record’, “was that although the Bosnian Muslims and Croats overwhelmingly endorsed it, the Bosnian Serbs boycotted it, warning that it was a prelude to civil war”.[13]

The Bosnian Serbs, who constituted 32 per cent of the population boycotted the 1^st March referendum. This left another 63.4 per cent of eligible voters who participated in the elections, out of whom 99.4 per cent voted for independence. Rejecting the validity of the March referendum, the Serbs made explicitly clear that they found its terms absolutely unacceptable - so unacceptable that they were willing to initiate a war if those terms were enforced.[14] Almost as soon as the declaration of Bosnia’s independence occurred in March, the Serbs commenced their bombardment of Sarajevo, while attacking other Bosnian Muslim and Croatian areas. Despite these obvious indications of an impending crisis, the United States pushed Izetbegovic into reneging on the original Lisbon agreement. The other Western powers followed suit in recognising Bosnian sovereignty.

However, the overall inevitability of the outbreak of conflict under Western tutelage cannot be doubted in light of the fact that the proposed peace plans repeatedly brokered by the international community, which were subverted in the policies and processes discussed above, were completely inadequate. Indeed their inherent flaws and disastrous implications for the Bosnian Muslim people in particular meant that their rejection was almost inevitable simply because they were unreasonable and in humanitarian terms illegitimate. Muslim historian Salahi Sonyel, Professor of History at the Near East University in Northern Cyprus, points out that: “The Vance-Owen plan caved in to Serbian and Croatian war aims by tacitly acknowledging Bosnia’s carve-up along ethnic lines.”[15] Describing the later peace plan brokered by the international community, U.S. Balkans expert Francis Boyle –Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois, and Legal Representative of the Bosnian State during the war - observes that:

“The Owen-Stoltenberg Plan would have carved-up the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina - a UN Member State - into three ethnically based mini-states, destroyed Bosnia's Statehood under international law and practice, and robbed Bosnia of its Membership in the United Nations Organization. Furthermore, in accordance with an internal study prepared by the United States Department of State, this proposed tripartite partition of Bosnia would have subjected approximately 1.5 to 2 million more Bosnians to ‘ethnic cleansing’, which I had already argued to the World Court was a form of genocide. Both in fact and in law, the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan incarnated an agreement by the rump Yugoslavia and the Republic of Croatia to divide and partition the People and State of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina between these two more powerful states along ethnic, racial, and religious lines.”[16]

“This is a very cautious first step, and we are definitely not making much noise about it. But it could be the start of something bigger... You could argue that NATO now has a foot in the door. Whether we manage to open the door is not sure, but we have made a start.”[18]

“The United States dispatched its Ambassador from Belgrade to Sarajevo, who encouraged the Muslim leader, Alia Izetbegovic to withdraw his signature from the agreement he had signed along with his Serbian and Croatian counterparts. This U.S. intervention guaranteed civil war in Bosnia and the death and displacement of thousands of people.”[19]

For example, “[A] Bosnian Muslim group in the northwest Bihac area led by Fikret Adbic had declared its autonomy from the U.S.-backed government based in Sarajevo”, most probably doubting the sincerity of U.S. motives. In response, the U.S. intervened to crush Fikret Adbik’s Muslim movement through the use of Izetbegovic’s forces as a U.S. proxy army. Accordingly, the arms embargo that had been imposed by the international community on Bosnia-Herzegovina was temporarily violated by the U.S. to siphon military assistance to Izetbegovic’s forces, which were then deployed against Adbik’s Bosnia Muslim government of northwest Bihac.[21] Adbik’s regime had been staunchly opposed to U.S. intervention in the region. No doubt this was at least part of the reason behind the U.S.-backed attempt to eliminate his movement.[22] Retired U.S. Air Force General Charles G. Boyd, former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. European Command from 1992 to 1995, noted that Adbik’s government was seen as a threat to U.S. interests in the Balkans because it was “one of the few examples of successful multi-ethnic cooperation in the Balkans… Adbic, a powerful local businessman, was a member of the Bosnian collective presidency. He outpolled Izetbegovic in national elections and had been expelled from the government” when Izetbegovic rejected the Lisbon agreement under U.S. pressure.[23]

“[T]he Bosnian Fifth Corps launched an offensive in northwest Bosnia against fellow Bosnian Muslims loyal to Fikret Abdic, a Bihac politician and businessman who had made his peace with the Serbs and Croats. After concerted shelling, the towns of Velika Kladusa and Cazin both in the Bihac pocket, fell to the Fifth Corps. Some 30,000 Abdic loyalists fled to Serb-held territory across the border in Croatia.”[25]

Though Izetbegovic’s U.S.-backed offensive in the Bihac was at first successful, the Bosnian Serbs in alliance with Croatian Serbs and Adbic’s Bosnian Muslim forces, reorganised to initiate an effective counter strategy. In response, “U.S. bombers under NATO command came to Izetbegovic’s defense. In the U.S. media, neither the U.S. role in planning the offensive nor the fact that the U.S.-backed forces were the ones to violate the cease-fire was examined.”[26] Joan Hoey recorded the catastrophic results in some detail:

“In October, the Fifth Corps launched an offensive out of the UN-designated ‘safe area’ of Bihac, cutting a swath through Serbian territory around the enclave. The safe zone of Bihac was used as a staging area for attacks against Serb populated areas on the Grabez plateau, leading to the expulsion of about 10,000 Serbs, who escaped to neighboring Serb-held Croatia, following the tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims who had fled the earlier Bosnian Fifth Corps offensive.”[27]

Having exploited Izetbegovic to attack and subdue the elements in the region opposed to a U.S./Western presence in the Balkans, the U.S. had no qualms about leaving the civilian population at the mercy of Serb aggressors. Indeed, having pushed Bosnia into a precarious sovereignty whose annihilation by the Bosnian Serb Army had been imminent all along, the Western powers under U.S. leadership seemed to have little interest in defending it. The Bosnian Muslims had been abandoned by the same Western powers who had created Bosnian sovereignty in the knowledge that Serb forces would destroy it.[28]

The betrayal of Bosnia has been discussed by Muslim historian Professor Salahi Sonyel. He notes that: “It thus took just over a year for the international community to complete the betrayal of Bosnia, and the destruction of its Muslim people. In Washington, the five Powers – U.S., Britain, France, Spain and Russia - secretly buried a nation, a state that they had all officially recognized in April 1992, by making clear that they had no intention of intervening by force, which alone could have saved Bosnia.” The about-turn in policy is perhaps best demonstrated in the international community’s comprehensive embargo on arms, ammunition and even adequate food supplies to the new Bosnian state under Serb attack. As Professor Sonyel points out, the blockade was in fact illegitimate, constituting a violation of international law. Article 51 of the UN Charter stipulates explicitly that sovereign states have the “inherent right” of self-defence, which therefore should not be impaired.[30] By illegally imposing a blockade against the fledgling Bosnian state that had been recognised by the same powers now denying its very rights as a sovereign entity, the international community had effectively supported the efforts of the Bosnian Serb army by weakening Bosnian Muslim forces.

“‘Lifting the arms embargo will only exacerbate the conflict’, was the standard line, ‘and lead to more deaths and destruction’. Tell that to the decimated population of Cerska, who, after a year of pleading for outside intervention, are now either dead, or on the run, or in Serbian concentration camps. The question that begs an answer from the proponents of the embargo is how many lives could have been raped, and villages ‘ethnically cleansed’, had the Bosnians been allowed to defend themselves? ... The guilty... lie not in Pale and Belgrade, but also in Paris, London, and Washington, for they have the means and the power to end the carnage, yet they refuse to do so.”[31]

A statement by German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel reported by one of his colleagues confirms that such policies were motivated by less than honest concerns. Kinkel had scathingly accused that Britain and France - two UN Security Council powers - were guilty of “playing games” with Bosnia.[32] U.S. Balkans expert Joan Hoey noted in this connection that: “Bosnia has become the theater of war in which the rivalries among the world powers are being played out. All of Bosnia is a stage and all its armies merely players. It is not really their war any longer. The people pulling the strings are in Washington, Bonn, London, Paris and Moscow.”[33]

Yet while adopting a stance of apparent indifference, if not tacit support for the Serb onslaught, the U.S. continued to promise to eventually come to the aid of Bosnia. In mid-1994, the Washington Post recorded the testimony of senior UN officials - two of the highest ranking UN representatives in Bosnia - who blamed the United States “for the continuation of the war in Bosnia because it has given Muslim-led Bosnian government the false impression that Washington’s military support was on the way.” According to the UN officials, the U.S. was leading on Bosnian forces by promising as much as full-scale NATO intervention on Bosnia’s side.[34] Hoey similarly noted during the war that: “[T]he United States is doing more than enough overtly to influence what is happening on the battlefield. Washington’s declared lift and strike policy has encouraged the Bosnian government to keep fighting in the hope that one day the United States will really come to the rescue.”[35] Actual U.S. policy illustrates clearly that this was a false impression, deliberately propagated to allow the Western powers to manipulate the Bosnian regime along with the other parties in the conflict to carve up the region in accordance with strategic objectives. As Commander-in-Chief of the Bosnian armed forces, Commander Zulfikar, observed while the crisis was escalating: “If you ask me, the whole of the Western international community are bastards. Nobody is helping us. What’s more, they have sold us out and are accomplices to the extermination of our people”. The distinguished political scientist Professor John Keane of the University of Westminster – founder of London’s Centre for the Study of Democracy (CSD) and Karl Deutsch Professor of Politics at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin – aptly remarks: “The bitterness expressed by Zulfikar is warranted. It should disturb the dreams of all Western democrats.”[36]

In exemplification of Western complicity in the humanitarian crisis, the Muslim town of Srebrenica - a UN safe area - was overrun by the Serb army with Western acquiescence.[37] The case of Srebrenica provides a classic illustration of the anti-humanitarian role of the Western powers in Bosnia. An analysis of the fall of Srebrenica to Bosnian Serb forces - arguably the most horrifying episode during the Bosnian conflict in terms of civilian death and destruction - discloses sharply the complicity of the international community in the crisis.

In July 1995, United Nations troops were stationed at the central UN base at Potacari. The Security Council had declared Srebrenica a safe area on 16 April 1993, following a massive Serb offensive against the town. UN Security Council Resolution 819, passed in April 1993, declared that the Western powers must “take the necessary measures, including the use of force” to protect Srebrenica from attack, henceforth binding the Western powers under international law to protect the people of this town “if necessary.”[38] Three weeks later other enclaves also became United Nations ‘safe areas’.

Yet on 6^th July 1995, the Serbs violated the agreement and launched an attack on the UN ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica. The unconscionable response of the international community is now notoriously well known, although largely not properly understood. By 11^th July, UN peacekeeping forces in Srebrenica whose mandate was to protect the town’s unarmed inhabitants violated their own mandate. The UN forces handed over Srebrenica to Serb forces, allowing them to take control of the town and refusing to defend it. UN troops further fraternized with the Bosnian Serb army, and even facilitated the separation of Bosnian Muslim males from females.^[39] Subsequently, an estimated 23,000 Bosnian Muslim inhabitants were forcibly removed from their homes - “ethnically cleansed”; up to about ten thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed, with thousands beaten and tortured prior to execution; and an undetermined number of Bosnian Muslim women were raped.[40]

This horrific sequence of events has been commented on harshly by one of the world’s leading specialists on international relations, Andre Gunder Frank, Professor Emeritus of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.[41] Summarising the sequence of events, he writes that:

“In the era of the video camera, both the Dutch [UN battalion] and the Serbs filmed the final days of the UN’s ‘safe area’. Srebrenica was effectively handed over to the Serbs, who claimed that they wanted to question the town’s Muslim male population to search for ‘war criminals’. In a documentary about the massacre, to be shown on the BBC this week, previously unseen video film shot by the Serbs shows the Dutch troops fraternising with the Serb force. They even toast the health of Serb officers and accept gifts. The Dutch are subsequently shown carousing happily in the Croatian capital Zagreb in celebrations they themselves captured on video. The impression given is that they felt they had performed a painful job adequately. The behaviour of the [UN] troops has caused an outcry in the Netherlands, although nowadays the official Dutch explanation is that their orders were ambiguous.”[43]

British legal expert Geoffrey Robertson QC, Visiting Professor of Human Rights at Birkbeck College, accordingly notes with disgust “the astonishing fact that this rankest of crimes was committed under the noses of the UN’s ‘Blue Helmets’, and in some respects with their complicity.”[44] Although almost every atrocity in the Bosnian war committed by the various parties was done so “under the noses” of the Western powers, it is worth noting that the massacre at Srebrenica was hitherto unprecedented in scale. The result of the UN-NATO policy was a massacre that the press has described as the worst act of genocide since the Second World War. At face value, a harsh view of the role of the United Nations would conclude that it amounted to nothing but gathering and preparing lambs for the slaughter: attracting as many Bosnian Muslims as possible; grouping them into a single easily targeted area; disarming them; and then handing them over to Serb forces to be killed. Unfortunately, an examination of the documentary record leading up to the fall of Srebrenica confirms rather than refutes this view.

“American intelligence agencies began observing a Bosnian Serb military buildup around Srebrenica in late June. There were reports that Bosnian Serb Gen. Ratko Mladic was furious about a series of raids by Srebrenica-based Muslim troops on neighboring Serb villages, and that he wanted to teach the Bosnian government a lesson. U.S. intelligence analysts concluded… that the Serb aim was to ‘neutralize’ the enclave”.[46]

The United Nations had also anticipated the Serb attack. A three-month investigation by Newsday found that “some top UN military aides had predicted the Serb attack on Srebrenica months before it occured and advised that the only defense was NATO air power.”[47] There was also no doubt that the attack would involve acts of genocide.   While both the UN and NATO had anticipated the Serb attack, the earlier record of such attacks sufficed to illustrate their genocidal nature, providing ample notice of what was about to occur at Srebrenica. Typical examples from the record include the ethnic cleansing of vast ranges of eastern Bosnia, where almost 99 per cent of the previous majority population was removed; the catastrophe of Spring 1992 in Brcko and its Luka compound; and the existence of concentration camps established by the Serb army.[48] There can be no doubt then that the international community had anticipated a genocidal Serb attack on the UN ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica from months beforehand.

Yet, compounding the ominous implications of the above, an insufficient number of Dutch UN troops were sent to Srebrenice under the mandate of Security Council Resolution 819. The number of troops was simply not enough to fulfil their professed mandate[49] As reported by BBC News, “Srebrenica had been named a ‘safe haven’ by the UN Security Council”, thus attracting Muslims from throughout the region into the town in search of refuge from the Serb onslaught. “The town was packed with Muslim refugees,” as a consequence. However, “member nations had declined to provide enough troops to make sense of their declaration” that Srebrenica was now a UN ‘safe area’.[50] Due to the drastically insufficient number of troops the possibility that they would actually be capable of fulfilling their mandate was undercut from the outset. As Professor Geoffrey Robertson QC observes: “The Dutch troops’ task was doomed from the start.”[51] In tandem with the facts discussed above, this reveals the total vacuity of the United Nations intervention. Since its very inception, the potential effectiveness of the intervention had been eliminated by the Western strategists of the UN Security Council, the United States, Britain, and the European powers. Rendering the UN force impotent from the outset, it thus appears that the whole intervention was a facade from start to finish.

Indeed, the internationally contrived impotence of the United Nations force in Srebrenica was cited as justification for the UN to avoid ordering NATO air strikes. The professed fear was that the very UN force that had allegedly been sent to protect the UN ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica, would become hostage to Serb forces, thus giving rise to the risk of potential UN casualties. The Washington Post observes that the West “feared for the safety of several hundred Dutch peacekeepers in the enclave,” leading to the repeated vetoing of NATO strikes by the UN Representative on the ground and the Dutch government, “despite requests by the local Dutch commander for deterrent strikes.”[53] But the reasoning here is flawed. As human rights specialist Geoffrey Robertson QC observes, “There is little doubt that General Mladic”, who led the Serb assault, “a cunning calculator of odds, would have retreated under aerial bombardment and would not (at least for long) have provoked the international community by holding Blue Helmets hostage.”[54] In fact, the Dutch commander had repeatedly requested the use of air power in vain. Yet NATO air strikes were vetoed by the UN, damning the population of Srebrenice to the “neutralisation” of wholesale annihilation.[55] The idea that it was fear of Dutch casualties that led to the vetoing of NATO airstrikes is hardly very credible considering that the UN troops fraternised fearlessly with the Serb troops.

The ‘fear theory’ is further damaged by the fact that United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan admitted that then UN chief Boutros Boutros-Ghali and all his senior advisers were “fully aware” that NATO air power was all the UN could deploy in response to an attack on the enclave. In spite of this crucial admission of awareness of the absolute necessity of air power to prevent genocide, the UN nevertheless “declare[d] repeatedly and publicly that we did not want to use air power against the Serbs except as a last resort” and “accept[ed] the shelling of the safe areas as a daily occurrence” in contradiction to the UN mandate in the region, effectively amounting to a green light for the Serbs to invade.[56] Annan’s admission confirms the conclusions of top UN military aides months before the attack that only NATO air power would suffice to defend the enclave. But rather than preparing for the deployment of NATO air power in anticipation of the attack, the creation of a UN ‘safe area’ in Srebrenica to be guarded by an impotent UN force – so impotent that it was even unable to defend itself - was arranged in full awareness that it would not suffice, and that air strikes would be essential to protect the town. Geoffrey Robertson QC states the case against the West bluntly: “Western European governments preferred to dishonour promises and to allow Muslims to die in their thousands rather than to suffer one more Dutch casualty”.[57] Indeed, the fact that video evidence documents the UN troops “fraternising with the Serb force” - going so far as to facilitate the handing over of Bosnian Muslim civilians to the Serbs - only adds damning weight to this case.[58]

The overall inconsistency in an interpretation of these events that sees the West as having genuinely humanitarian concerns, but merely being too cowardly and/or blundering to actualize them sensibly, is firstly established by the fact that the entire crisis was manufactured by the Western powers under American leadership; on a secondary level, it is highlighted by the elementary fact that the UN force which had been sent to supposedly protect Srebrenica, was actually nothing other than – in the words of Robertson QC - “a fashionable gesture of sending soldiers under the impossible condition that they should not be required to fight”,[59] whose ability to protect even themselves had been eliminated by keeping the size of the force inadequate. It simply cannot be reasonably maintained that this force was sent in to protect Srebrenica when its numbers had been consciously limited so that such protection was impossible, in the knowledge that an entirely different category of military operation – NATO air strikes – was necessary to forestall catastrophe. Clearly, this basic contradiction in the humanitarian claim reveals that the UN force was not designed to play any such protecting role. Rather, as Robertson QC scathingly observes, it was inputted to play another more appropriate role: making a “fashionable gesture”, that could meanwhile be used as justification to avoid NATO air strikes.

Indeed, if no troops had been sent to Srebrenica at all, then there would have been no possible justification for avoiding NATO air strikes. The only humanitarian options available were either to send in a UN ground force of significant size coupled with plans to rely on air strikes, or not to send in any force at all and rely on NATO air strikes alone. Yet the West ominously opted for neither: it knowingly sent in an impotent force that would not be able to protect anybody including itself, and then exploited this as a justification to avoid undertaking significant action.[60]

The ongoing deception that permeated this horrifying event was particularly evident when writer Michael Ignatieff confronted the UN Secretary-General of the time, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, with the following question. “Why,” he asked as Srebrenica fell to the Serbs, “insist on being neutral in the face of a clear aggressor and a clear victim, when that neutrality daily undermines the UN’s moral credit?” The Secretary-General replied with a lie: “We are not able to intervene on one side. The mandate does not allow it.”[61]

“NATO commanders deliberately decided not to save this ‘safe haven’ by deploying aerial bombardment, although Security Council Resolution 819 charged them with taking ‘the necessary measures, including the use of force’ to protect it from attack.”[62]

“… disturbing evidence that the Bosnian Serbs have massacred many, if not most, of the 5,000 plus military age men in their custody following the fall of Srebrenica. If the Bosnian Serb Army massacred the defenders of Srebrenica, we can be sure a similar fate awaits many of the 16,000 people in Zepa… Again, it is not too late to prevent a similar tragedy at Zepa. Zepa’s defenders valiantly continue to hold on. Undoubtedly they realize the fate that awaits them. They should not be abandoned.”[63]

“[T]hese men, these UN officials, maybe they did not actually kill the people of Srebrenica themselves but without their behaviour, Srebrenica would never have happened. This makes them as guilty, as they’re aiders and abettors to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity… UN officials had deliberately sacrificed Srebrenice to produce the carve-up of Bosnia.”[65]

“… all met together in Belgrade in order to further develop, promote and implement their common criminal purpose and plan to carve-up and destroy the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, a UN Member State, no matter how many Bosnian lives would be destroyed in the process. As proven by a UN Memorandum of 17 July 1995, Kofi Annan was kept fully informed of and involved in this criminal enterprise. As a result of this criminal meeting, subsequent meetings were held between Mladic and Smith in order to further develop, promote and implement this criminal enterprise while the inhabitants of Srebrenica were being systematically exterminated by Mladic and Milosevic with the full knowledge and approval of the above-named UN Officials, their subordinates, and others.”[66]

London-based journalist and historian Tim Judah, a specialist in Balkan affairs, similarly concludes that as part of a wider plan of population exchange designed to facilitate the carve up, the United States gave a green light to the Serb assault on Srebrenica. Judah notes that the U.S., leading its Western partners, did “nothing to prevent” the oncoming genocide. The U.S. then exploited the gruesome massacre that resulted “to distract attention from the exodus of Krajina’s entire population which was then taking place” in Croatia.[67]

The “retired” U.S. military officers who aided what the press described as “the largest ethnic cleansing” of the war in Yugoslavia, were in fact members of a “private” U.S. organisation - Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) - and were able to carry out their task with NATO aid, consisting of U.S. arms and planes.[71] According to the prominent Croatian politician Stipe Mesic, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman “received the go-ahead from the United States. Tudjman can only do what the Americans allow him to do. Krajina is the reward for having accepted, under Washington’s pressure, the federation between Croats and Muslims in Bosnia.” Mate Mestrovic, the Croatian Assembly Deputy, similarly affirmed that: “[The] United States gave us the green light to do whatever had to be done.”[72] According to Krajina Foreign Affairs Adviser Slobodan Jarcevic, NATO “completely led and coordinated the entire Croat offensive”. NATO began by first “destroying radar and anti-aircraft batteries. What NATO did most for the Croatian Army was to jam communications between [Serb] military commands”.[73]

The result of the U.S./NATO-backed carnage was utter devastation. A member of the Zagreb Helsinki Committee reported after visiting the region: “Virtually all Serb villages had been destroyed.... In a village near Knin, eleven bodies were found, some of them were massacred in such a way that it was not easy to see whether the body was male or female.”[74] A confidential European Union report states that 73 per cent of Serb homes were destroyed.

“Evidence of atrocities, an average of six corpses per day, continues to emerge. The corpses, some fresh, some decomposed, are mainly of old men. Many have been shot in the back of the head or had throats slit, others have been mutilated… Serb lands continue to be torched and looted.”[75]

Thus, while the genocide at Srebrenica - manufactured under UN-NATO auspices - drew the world’s attention, the U.S. actively supported the ethnic cleansing of Serb civilians in Croatia, all in the name of undertaking a humanitarian peacekeeping operation. There can thus be little doubt over the duplicity of U.S. policy in the Balkans. Indeed, the hypocritical policy brings up a critical question put forth by the San Francisco Chronicle: “Why can the U.S. support Croatian ethnic cleansing in Croatia but oppose Serbian ethnic cleansing? The answer likely has little to do with ‘stopping the killing’ and much to do with the expansion of NATO and its post-Cold War global role.”[76]

“Now, in the years after the cold war, the United States is again establishing suzerainty over the empire of a former foe. The disintegration of the Soviet Union has prompted the United States to expand its zone of military hegemony into Eastern Europe (through NATO) and into formerly neutral Yugoslavia.”[77]

The respected British newsletter the Intelligence Digest further noted that this NATO expansion into the Balkans had been driven by fundamentally commercial interests.[78] This is clear from an analysis of the policies of the Western powers under U.S. leadership in the aftermath of the Bosnian conflict.

“Humanity and peace, Europe and the UN, have been defeated in Bosnia. The Serb-Croat plan to partition this country, with international consent is simply a moral and political disaster. How many UN resolutions are now redundant, how many pledges and peace plans?”[79]

“The Pentagon now controls all navigation on the mighty Danube River - major thoroughfare of the Balkans and Eastern Europe. All shipping is restricted. The Danube is more important for Europe than the Mississippi River is for commerce in the U.S. All countries of the Danube Basin - not only Serbia but Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovakia - thus effectively come under the blockade. The Western capitalist powers are the only ones that stand to benefit from the resulting economic dislocation in a number of formerly socialist countries that are now forcibly going through privatization of their major industries and resources. Entire industrial complexes, no longer able to be competitive in the world market or even to receive raw material for production or ship their goods, can literally be bought for a song by multinational corporations.”[80]