At the end of World War II, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was formed and the population consisted of Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia along with several ethnic groups. These comprised of Orthodox Christian Serbs, Catholic Croats, Muslim Bosniaks and Muslim ethnic Albanians.
Tensions in the Balkans were commonplace, but after President Josip Broz Tito assumed power in 1943, he ruled as a dictator with an iron fist, and was able to keep everyone in check. While Tito was considered to be a “benevolent dictator”, he was also quite ruthless when he wanted to be. His iron fist rule ensured that no ethnic group could manage to dominate the country and he was instrumental in banning political mobilization and sought to create a unified identity for Yugoslavia.
However, after Tito died in 1980, his imposed order began to undo itself. A number of republics and ethnic groups inside Yugoslavia decided to seek independence, and once the end of the Cold War was imminent, the country slowly descended to a state of disarray and spiraled out of control. When Slobodan Milosevic ascended to power in 1987, Serb nationalism was further ignited. Milosevic tapped into the feelings of nationalism purely for his own gain, and succeeded to adopt changes to the constitution that favored the Serbs, whereby a 90 percent Serbian military was formed. He even extended his power and influence over the country’s financial, media, and security structures. With the aid of Serbian separatists in Croatia and Bosnia, he fueled ethnic tensions by pitting communities against each other, convincing Serbian populations that other ethnic groups posed a threat to their democratic rights.
In June 1991, Yugoslavia started to collapse as soon as independence was declared between the Slovenian and Croatian republics. The Yugoslav army, comprising mostly of Serbs, invaded Croatia by giving the false impression that they were trying their level best to protect ethnic Serb populations there. They carried out mass executions of hundreds of Croat men in the city of Vukovar, burying them in mass graves. This was the start of the ethnic cleansings that highlighted the numerous atrocities that were orchestrated during the Yugoslav Wars.
In April 1992, it was turn of Bosnia. Soon after their independence, Serbian forces along with the Bosnian Serbs endeavored to ethnically cleanse the territory belonging to the Bosniaks. With the assistance of former Yugoslavian military equipment, they managed to surrounde Sarajevo, Bosnia’s capital. Snipers hid themselves in the hills and shot at civilians as they tried to organise food and water. Extremely widespread was the advent of mass executions, rape and sexual violence, concentration camps, and forced displacement. The “siege of Sarajevo” is known to be one of the most dramatic parts of Yugoslavia’s breakup, with thousands killed over a span of close to four years.
The European Union made mediation attempts which proved unsuccessful and the United Nations refused to interfere, apart from providing humanitarian aid in the form of limited troop convoys. Later, the UN even tried to establish six safe areas which included Sarajevo and Srebrenica, but these proved ineffective. Peacekeepers were unable to protect those pursuing refuge there and all fell under Serb control except for Sarajevo.
In July 1995, Serb forces, headed by General Ratko Mladic, descended upon Srebrenica and began shelling it vigorously. The peacekeepers were unable to protect their turf as their fuel and ammunition was steadily drying up, so much so that a Dutch commander had even reported that the unit was no longer militarily operational a month earlier. After even the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation denied support, Srebenica fell to the Serbs in just a day.
Mladic succeed to expel 25,000 women and children from the town, while simultaneously, his forces attempted to hunt down nearly 15,000 Bosniak men who had tried to escape to central Bosnia. Up to 3,000 men were successfully killed by either gunshot or decapitation, while trying to escape. Many Bosniaks even tried to seek refuge at a UN base near Potocari, but were not safe there for long, as Serb forces caught up with them by the afternoon. By the next day, buses reached Potokari to take them away, separating the men from the women and children. Serb troops even forced the Dutch peacekeepers to hand over their uniforms and helmets so that they could trick the civilians into thinking they were safe.
After the four day massacre had finally drawn to a close, around 8,000 men and teenage boys had been killed, and many women were subjected to rape and torture. Thousands were buried in mass graves. In order to cover up their crimes, Serb forces even dug up the original graves of numerous victims and relocated them across a large territory. Even though there were strong warnings that an attack at Srebrenica was being prearranged, the international community failed to equip the peacekeeping forces there with the ammunition and support necessary to safeguard the lives of thousands who either died or were terrorized. After the Holocaust, the atrocities committed at Srebrenica are considered to be the worst on European soil.
Since 1992, Srebrenica had been targeted by Bosnian Serb forces in a well-orchestrated campaign to gain control of territory in the eastern region of Bosnia and Herzegovina with the eventual aim which was to annex this territory to Serbia, the adjacent republic. This involved the dismissal of Bosniak inhabitants who opposed annexation. In March 1995, Radovan Karadzic, the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, directed his military forces to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica.” By the month of May, an embargo on food and other supplies was imposed by Bosnian Serb soldiers that encouraged most of the Bosniak fighters to escape from there. In late July, the Bosnian Serb military command formally ordered operation Krivaja 96, that eventually culminated in the massacre.
In early July 1995, the utter surrender of Srebrenica to Bosnian Serb forces ensured that a complete mockery was made of the international community’s commitment to safeguard regions it declared as “safe areas” and placed under United Nations protection in 1993. The United Nations peacekeeping officials were unwilling to honor any requests for support from their own forces stationed within the enclave. This led to a complete overrun by the Bosnian Serb forces to commit max executions of eight thousand civilian men and boys. This included terrorizing, raping, beating and robbing civilians who were being deported from the area, without any interference from UN soldiers whatsoever. It was conceivably the worst massacre in post second world war European history.