“The Bosnian government is not a mirror image of Karadzic's regime: the mass murder of civilians is not one of its military objectives. Serb villages in reconquered areas of Herzegovina live peacefully now under the protection of the Bosnian state.”
This claim appears in an article by the historians Mark Almond, Adrian Hastings, Branka Magas, Norman Stone and Noel Malcolm published in the International Herald Tribune on 29 November 1994, two months after the Bosnian Army (ARBiH) captured about 100 square kilometres of territory south of the town of Konjic in September 1994.
The focus of the attack was the Bijela, a village that prior to the war had 635 Serb, 1,186 Muslim and 1,492 Croat inhabitants. The Committee for Collecting Data on Crimes Committed Against Humanity and International Law in Belgrade claimed that when the ARBiH took the village on 12 September they found only three people, “a bed-ridden old man and two mental patients”, killed the old man and transferred the other two to a prison camp in Konjic. The name of the old man (Simo Nenadic, born 1910) appears on a large list of names compiled by the Committee of Serbs allegedly killed in Konjic between 1992 and 1995. While this list should obviously be treated with scepticism, many of the same names appear on the widely-respected Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Centre’s list of people killed in the war in Konjic, though Simo Nenadic’s does not.
The Committee’s implicit claim that the Serb inhabitants of Bijela left before the ARBiH advance is easier to establish. Speaking during a session of the National Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia Herzegovina in Pale in November 1994, General Zdravko Tolimir, Assistant Commander for Intelligence and Security of the Bosnian Serb Army Main Staff, said: “During the attack on Borci [a Serb-held town in Konjic municipality that was also targeted by the ARBiH in September] we have lost the villages of Bijela, Mladeskovici, Ljubina ... The total number of evacuated Serbian inhabitants is 850.”
According to an International Crisis Group report of 1998, there were 728 Serbs in Konjic municipality in 1998. The report says that 600 Serbs left the municipality at the end of the war, suggesting a population of about 1,300 Serbs at the end of hostilities. Most of these Serbs probably lived in areas that were under Serb control before being transferred to the Muslim-Croat Federation in line with the Dayton Accords that ended the war. Given that there were no major changes in territorial control between the ARBiH advance in 1994 and the Dayton Accords, it seems reasonable to surmise that the Serb population in the entire territory Konjic municipality was roughly 1,300 in late 1994. If this number and Zdravko Tolimir's estimate of 850 evacuated Serbs are remotely correct, there was clearly a sharp fall in and possibly complete disappearance of the Serb population in the captured territory.
That these villages were unlikely to come “under the protection of the Bosnian state” in any meaningful sense is certainly suggested by previous actions of the ARBiH in Konjic municipality. When Muslim and Croat forces captured the village of Bradina in May 1992, inhabitants were taken to the Celebici prison camp and beaten, raped and murdered. Units of the ARBiH were then involved in atrocities against Croat civilians in Konjic during 1993, including the Trusina massacre in April of that year. During 1993, military units including the “Black Swans” and the 4th Muslim Brigade of the ARBiH’s Mostar-based 4th Corps, or “Muderis”, commanded by the cleric Nezim Halilovic, gained notoriety in Konjic.
The 4th Muslim Brigade “played a key role” in the successful 1994 attack on Bijela and other villages, according to the journalist Sefko Hodzic in his book ‘Bosnian Warriors’. Elsewhere in Bosnia, in October 1994, the month before the publication of the Herald Tribune article, some 2,000 Serb civilians fled before the ARBiH 7th Corps advance towards Kupres, according to the UN.
With the benefit of hindsight, we know that in 1995 the much more extensive ARBiH capture of territory was preceded by the flight of the Serb inhabitants, wisely given the treatment of those who were unable to leave. In northern Bosnia, the majority Serb village of Vozuca was taken by the ARBiH in September 1995, to provide a road link between its 2nd and 3rd Corps, but also, according to some sources, to house refugees from Srebrenica, which had recently fallen to the Serbs. The attack, assisted by foreign “Mujahideen” fighters, resulted in war crimes and the exodus of Vozuca's Serbs.
The actions of the ARBiH obviously have to be seen in the context of the much worse atrocities committed by the Serbs, but the idea that the Serb villages it captured came “under the protection of the Bosnian state” – and the implication that Serb civilians remained there and were left unharassed – is not credible.
4 comments:
Rory, I value your research and the fact that you are clearly able to think and form opinions on the various aspects of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina for yourself.
After reading much of what you have published on this blog it is clear to me you hold to an original and nuanced view of the war, that in some aspects follows the established view in the West, just as it in other aspects differs from that view. At the same time, however, virtually all of your sharing of your research on this blog seems to be dedicated to the aspects in which you diverge from the established view.
I understand why this would be the case. You may not feel writing in support of orthodoxies on the war being terribly exciting, or that there is any need to make them firmer by adding your voice and research in their support since after all they are already orthodoxies. However, this leaves a person like myself who disagrees with a greater number of orthodoxies on the war than yourself without an entry point to engaging you on any issues where we differ.
When you disagree with an orthodoxy you will dedicate a post to it, and back up your conclusion with quality research, which someone else may dispute and argue if they feel up to the task. When you state your agreement with an orthodoxy on the war, however, you will as a rule mention it only in passing, as a sort of premise, or a self-evident fact without much attempt of substantiation, as if it did not require any.
You may want to keep in mind that a reader of your posts may not only come from the position where what you are saying challenges their views when you diverge from an orthodoxy, but may also come from a position where what challenges their views is when you state your agreement with an orthodoxy.
For example in this post you say the Bosnian Serbs committed much worse atrocities than the Bosnian Muslims, but without even so much as naming some kind of an example. I for one do not doubt the Bosnian Serbs drove more people from their homes in Bosnia than did the Bosnian Muslims, or killed more civilians with artillery fire, etc, just from the fact they were militarily stronger, however, I can not think of such an atrocity that would have been committed by Bosnian Serbs, but not by Bosnian Muslims. What do you mean when you say Serbs were guilty of much worse atrocities? Would these be qualitatively different atrocities?
In my opinion at least, it would be a good idea to elaborate more clearly what you mean and on the basis of what, also when you stake out a position that is in agreement with the established view and therefore address also the people who are even more removed from it than yourself, and not only those who are attached to it to a greater extent than yourself.
Many thanks for your comment.
I say the Bosnian Serbs committed much worse atrocities, because they killed more people. To give an example, I think it's fair to say that the Tuzla shelling of May 1995 that killed about 70 people was a worse atrocity than a mortar attack in Brcko a year earlier that killed three people. I think a quantitatively worse atrocity is also a qualitatively worse one.
Clearly, the fact that Serbs committed worse atrocities was at least partly due to their being militarily stronger. But I also think other factors were involved. Maybe I will write something about this later and you will have an opportunity to disagree with me about something!
Nice. I am glad that you were able to clearly decipher what I was trying to say in my comment.
Rory Gallivan said: ""The attack, assisted by foreign 'Mujahideen' fighters, resulted in war crimes and the exodus of Vozuca's Serbs."
My question to you is: SO WHAT? Serbs from Vozuca and Ozren mountain were terrorizing Maglaj and surrounding towns for years, blocking humanitarian convoys, starving the muslim population in enclaves. They were aided by Russian, Romanian and other Christian Mujahadeens. So, why do you think it's a bad thing that Serbs were expelled from Vozuca? Shouldn't you be shedding your tears for the the Bosniak-muslim population that was terrorized by those same Serbs who held us besieged and on the verge of starvation and who showered us with grenades on a daily basis?
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