| The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation's (NIOD) 7,600-page long report on the circumstances surrounding the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 continues to cause controversy in the Balkans and internationally. As soon as it was published on 10 April, the Dutch government-commissioned report was dismissed as a whitewash by survivors and families of the victims, as well as by some independent human rights organizations. The report apportioned much of the blame for the massacre, in which as many as 8,000 Bosniak Muslim men and boys were killed, to the Dutch government, Dutch military leaders, and the UN. In his first comments, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok said that his cabinet "fell short" in July 1995. "It was the opposite of a success," he said. But only six days later, on 16 April, Kok and his entire cabinet resigned, saying the government had to face the political consequences of the report. The premier and his ministers will nevertheless remain in office as a caretaker government until 15 May, when the next parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place. On 17 April, the chief of general staff of the Dutch army, General Ad van Baal, also resigned, under pressure from Defense Minister Frank de Grave. "I am taken aback by the current developments and I think that things are unfolding too fast. We are nevertheless satisfied by the way the report has been received by the public," Professor Hans Blom, the NIOD Director, said in an interview with TOL. He and nine of his colleagues had worked on the report since 1996, trying to establish what exactly happened without passing political judgements. They talked to hundreds of witnesses and sifted through tens of thousands of pages of documents, some of which were classified. But Dion van den Berg, an official of the Dutch non-governmental Interchurch Peace Council (IKV), told TOL that "the report is a complete failure and disappointment because it did not show the mistakes that the Dutch military and the government made in Srebrenica." Van den Berg is one of the authors of an alternative IKV report on Srebrenica, which was published on 27 March. The report directly accuses the Dutch government and military of doing nothing to save the lives of Srebrenica men and boys after the Bosnian Serb army conquered the town in July 1995. What both reports clearly demonstrate is that over the last six years, the Srebrenica massacre has haunted the Dutch public and grown into a huge domestic political issue. "Srebrenica was an unwanted child," said Professor Blom. On the basis of the NIOD research, Blom concluded that the Dutch government was dragged into Srebrenica in 1993 when the Canadian battalion serving in the enclave was withdrawn. The NIOD report notes that "humanitarian motivation and political ambitions drove the Netherlands to undertake an ill-conceived and virtually impossible peace mission." "In March 1993, French General Philippe Morillon [the commander of UN forces in Bosnia] became a hostage of Srebrenica citizens, who let him leave the town only after he promised that the peacekeepers [would] protect them," Blom said. "As soon as they arrived, the Dutch troops were flabbergasted, because the reality was much different from what was expected. The enclave was not demilitarized and the Bosnian Serb troops did not withdraw [as required by the 18 April 1993 agreement between the commanders of Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Muslim forces]," he said, stressing that the Dutch troops were too few in number and insufficiently equipped to defend the enclave. An additional problem, he said, was that the international focus at the time was on events in and around the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, while the Srebrenica developments did not really register with the international community or the mainly Bosniak Muslim government in Sarajevo. Srebrenica was largely left on its own, and to the 200 Dutch peacekeepers. "Out of 200 soldiers who were in the enclave, only 100 were operational. On the other hand, [Bosnian Serb army commander General Ratko] Mladic had between 1,500 and 2,000 well-trained, armed, and motivated soldiers. Our conclusion is that the Dutch troops would have stood no chance in an open conflict," Blom said, adding that the UN troops in Bosnia were instructed not to open fire unless they come under a direct attack. Dion van den Berg of the IKV thinks that the Dutch troops were nevertheless obliged to resist General Mladic's troops. "The NIOD report fails to mention that in the evening of 3 June, a meeting was held between General Ton Karremans, the commander of the Dutch troops in Srebrenica, and Ramiz Becirovic, the commander of the [mainly Bosniak Muslim] Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ABiH) in Srebrenica. The meeting came as a result of Becirovic's initiative after the Serb forces in the morning of that same day occupied the UN observation post, ECO. That's when an informal agreement was reached that a joint defense of Srebrenica be organized in case of an attack," said van den Berg. He learned about the meeting from a translator who interpreted the meeting's proceedings. Van den Berg did not manage to find out if the UN command in Sarajevo or the Bosnian government was informed about the agreement reached at the meeting. "When the attack came, the Muslims fought, while the Dutch sat idly in their base. The Dutch battalion and the government knew that air support would be provided only if the Dutch battalion came under attack and if it were unable to defend itself," van den Berg said. General Karremans requested close air support of the NATO air task force patrolling Bosnia's sky, but the UN authorities blocked the request. "Without an active military defense, the chances to get air support were reduced to zero. The British and the French actively defended the enclaves in which they were deployed, while the Dutch were ordered not to shoot unless they were attacked," said van den Berg. But Blom denies that the NIOD report totally ignored the meeting between Karremans and Becirovic. "The problem is that our report is 7,600 pages long and that most people who criticize it, including government representatives, have not even read it. We do mention the meeting between Karremans and Becirovic, but according to our analysis, that meeting was not very important, so we didn't give it much prominence in the report. First of all, that meeting was not so much related to the Srebrenica developments as it was to what was happening in Gorazde," Blom said. END OF PART ONE |
| 19 April 2002 Who is to Blame for Srebrenica? The authors of two controversial Dutch reports on the Srebrenica massacre tell TOL how and why they apportioned blame. by Milorad Ivanovic |
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