Saturday July 11th 2015 marked the twentieth anniversary of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims by Bosnian Serbs in the town of Srebrenica. The opportunity to indulge in an orgy of Serb-bashing by opportunist, self-serving politicians and the duplicitous media was simply too good to miss. They were all-too-keen to continue propagating one of the biggest deceptions ever perpetrated on the West, a deception that did so much to advance Islamic jihad. For Islam, Srebrenica is the gift that keeps on giving as you’ll now see.
Let’s start with the then President of the United States, the Democrat Bill Clinton. Speaking at a ceremony at Srebrenica to mark the anniversary, a sombre Mr. Clinton apologized for the amount of time it took for the necessary force to be brought against the Serbs.
The former President neglected to mention the two peace deals scuppered by the United States which would’ve prevented so much bloodshed, including the massacre at Srebrenica. In 1992, the peace deal brokered by Portuguese diplomat José Cutileiro known as “The Lisbon Agreement,” had been signed by all three warring factions in Bosnia: The Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims.
However, after meeting with US Ambassador Warren Zimmerman, the leader of the Bosnian Muslims Alija Izetbegovic disavowed his signature and made an avoidable war almost certain.
Mr. Clinton didn’t mention the scuppering of the Vance-Owen plan in January 1993 which occurred under his Presidency. Once again, all sides had agreed to the deal which divided territory on ethnic lines. US ambassador Warren Christopher encouraged the Bosnian Muslims to hold out for an additional four percent of territory. Due to his advice, the deal collapsed
Across the pond, British politician Sir Eric Pickles tweeted his sympathy for the victims of Srebrenica, foolishly comparing the “genocide” to the holocaust. He seems to forget Jews were not committing atrocities against Germans, unlike Muslims in Bosnia against the Serbs. But the accusation of genocide is also incorrect because the Serbs had evacuated women and the elderly from Srebrenica. This proves it was a massacre and not genocide yet facts like this are conveniently ignored by both politicians and the media.
Predictably, the mainstream media all regurgitated the tried-and-tested “Serbs were guilty of committing genocide against Muslims” false narrative just as they had done twenty years previously. When you read the reports, all of them focus on what happened in July 1995. They accuse the Serbs of besieging the town, kidnapping UN peace-keepers and forcing women and children to flee. The aim is still to portray the Muslims as the innocent victims of Serb hatred and brutality.
It’s true the Bosnian Serb army did besiege the town and yes, they did indeed hold UN peace-keepers hostage to prevent NATO from carrying out air strikes on Serb positions. But it was Bosnian Serb commander Colonel-General Ratko Mladic who gave the order to evacuate the women and the elderly from Srebrenica.
So, there was a massacre at Srebrenica in July 1995. The question begging to be asked is: What happened before the massacre occurred?
Srebrenica, a predominantly Muslim town, was designated as a “UN Safe Zone” defended by around 600 Dutch UN peacekeepers. Between 1992 and 1995, Bosnian Muslim forces were smuggling weapons into the protectorate, attacking Serb positions as well as using it as a base to launch attacks on surrounding Serb villages. During that time, Bosnian Muslim forces under the command of Naser Oric massacred an estimated two-thousand Serbs including women and children.
Oric’s Bosniak Muslim troops raped, disembowelled, beheaded and roasted alive their victims. Curiously, all of these atrocities were ignored by the Western media who had singled out the Serbs as being the aggressors from the very start of the war.
Proof of the diabolical crimes committed by Bosnian Muslims came from the commander of the UN peace keeping force General Philippe Morillon. He had personally seen the mutilated bodies of Serb civilians and in his testimony to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, he stated Oric’s jihadists had carried out:
“attacks during Orthodox holidays including Christmas Eve and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.”
So much for Srebrenica being a “safe zone.” Clearly the UN peacekeepers were failing in their duty and were complicit in these massacres. It’s also curious that the media neither at the time of the massacres or on the anniversary twenty years later make any mention of what happened in the lead up to the massacre at Srebrenica.
Are the Serbs innocent? Of course not and their massacre of Bosnian Muslims committed out of revenge is equally as deplorable as the massacres committed by Oric’s jihadists. But war is a very dirty business. In a war where all sides – Serbs, Croats and Muslims – committed atrocities, apportioning all the blame on one side is part of the crime. It must be said, the failure of the UN to stop a “safe zone” becoming a base for Muslim terrorists means they must shoulder a share of the blame for the massacres too.
Serbian lust for revenge wasn’t the only motive at work here. The Bosnian Muslims were desperate to get the United States on their side because they knew the US could urge NATO to intervene in what was a civil war. President Clinton was looking for an excuse to justify military intervention. Oric and his commanders knew when the Serbs took Srebrenica there would be reprisals for what he and his vicious band of jihadists had done. They also knew this would give the President his perfect reason to justify military intervention against the Serbs. Just before Srebrenica fell into Serb hands, Oric and his men left the town and abandoned the remaining Muslims to their terrible fate.
So far from being genocide, Srebrenica was a betrayal of Muslims by Muslims to bring NATO into the civil war. Muslims were sacrificed by their own people for this cause. It was a set-up and it worked even better than Oric imagined, fooling Western politicians like Bill Clinton and of course, the mass media who seized the opportunity to demonize the Serbs who were wrongly accused of committing genocide. A crime they are still being accused of to this day.
The deception led to NATO jets bombing Serb forces at Srebrenica, thus becoming the air force for Islamic jihad. Although the war in Bosnia is commonly believed to be a civil war, it wasn’t really. It was and still is part of the global Islamic jihad and it did so much to help Islam establish a foothold in central Europe. And the West aided and abetted it.
Maybe it also set the tone for the denial of the reality of Islam and jihad. Twenty years on from the deception of Srebrenica, it simply does not occur to most people in the West that the atrocities carried out by Muslim forces during the war in Bosnia are exactly the same atrocities Islamic State is carrying out against Christians in Iraq and Syria today. And if anyone dared suggest it, no doubt they’d be told “it’s nothing to do with Islam.”
The saddest footnote about this conflict is the Dayton Agreement which brought the war to end three years after the US had scuppered The Lisbon Agreement and two years after Bill Clinton’s administration scuppered the Vance Owen peace plan.
It’s sad because there was very little difference between the peace deals, all three proposed dividing Bosnia and Herzegovina on ethnic lines. George Bush’s and Bill Clinton’s ill-judged interference unleashed a brutal three-year nightmare on Bosnia’s Croats, Muslims and yes, let’s not forget please, Serbs.
Christopher J. Green is an investigative journalist and historian specializing in the decline of America and Western civilization. He is the author of the new book: Death of the Family – True Stories of the Charlatans Who Deceived the World and Broke the Backbone of Our Society.
Yasser Arafat was in power until nearly his death in 2004 in the Palestinian territories.
He created a now-famous double narrative track when it came to the Muslims vs the West.
He spoke English and Arabic so too many in media lazily expected him to say the same thing in each of the two languages.
He did not.
His legacy in the Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian conflict was to try to do the same.
Being two-faced to the world only works if the media is very lazy.
There is the addition of a strong anti-semitism shared by many Western leaders and the Muslims in that conflict that played into seeing it as the Muslims claimed it was.
The internet was not empowered in the world as a news leader until Clinton’s 2nd term, if you recall.
MEMRI, which provides translations of Muslim proclamations came along even later.
The lazy media and the anti-semitism of the Western powers and their centrally controlled media played a huge part in coloring the message that got out to the world.
When MEMRI started translating Arafat’s Arabic statements to compare and contrast them with his English ones Arafat lost a lot of his power and his ability to gain Western dollars.
Good, no, great summaries of what really went on in Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia are vital for us to see whether we are making decisions based on reality on the ground or based on other motives.
Great read.
Christopher, a welcomed first contribution and excellent presentation. You brought some clarity to an otherwise confusing area that is so near (a stone’s throw from Italy and Austria) and yet so far.
Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina — the Balkans, have been a stomping ground for endless civilizations though the ages, disappearing, reappearing, it’s a wonder the people in the region aren’t all schizophrenics.
I believe that this complexity of history has been one reason for the lack of inquiry by our media into the truth. And as you note, the media bought the Muslim story line proffered by NATO, Clinton, etc.
IMHO, all religious movements contain or have retained some elements that ‘smother’ freedom of being and freedom of thought, however, the West is only now very slowly getting an understanding of the degree to which the Muslim faith is destructive and suppressive — on its own people. It is the most broadly oppressive force on earth (25% of world population). Still, our media continues selling the politically correct declarations to appease.
Bosnia and Kosovo were a joke. All sides were guilty of atrocities. Richard Holbrooke was on national television telling the American people how great everything was and how everything was right on schedule. Both were huge lies. There were revenge killings all over the place. No one was meeting the deadlines that were set forth in the cease fire. Muslim terrorists were crossing the borders with Muslim refugees. Kosovo wasn’t much different. NATO turned a blind eye to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which was terrorizing and whacking Serbs. We lost of all our Serb interpreters because they fled the country in fear of their lives. And who did the KLA become chummy with? Al Qaeda.
One irony in all this is that a number of politicians who opposed Iraq supported our involvement in the Balkans because of the killing of Muslims yet Saddam Hussein killed more Muslims than the Serbs and Croats did combined. I also found the Iraqi’s far more receptive to our presence than the Bosnian Muslims. Perhaps the difference lied in the fact that the Muslims in the Balkans have a lot fairer skin than the ones in Iraq therefore our self righteous pols could sympathize with them more.