The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

The Numbers Game
are taken into account. It is common ground in reports of what happened
that there were significant casualties on both sides from these
clashes. 23 A report published in September 2002 by Republika Srpska
estimated 2,000 BMA combat deaths, in addition to some 500 BSA fatalities.
24 While some of the dead were from the BMA Tuzla brigade,
which had come out in support, the vast majority were from the very
large armed BMA column which had left Srebrenica.
It doesn’t end there. Both Dutchbat and undercover British Special
Air Service intelligence officers who were in Srebrenica when it fell said
they had witnessed bitter fighting between Muslims shortly before Bosnian
Serb forces entered the town. Descriptions suggest that around 100
may have died and that their bodies were left where they had fallen.
There are also reports that considerable numbers of Muslims died when
they crossed a minefield which had been laid by their own side. 25
Taking all these factors together, in order for 8,000 “men and boys”
from the Srebrenica safe area to have been massacred or died during the
population transfer that followed July 11, 1995, the population of this
safe area before it fell would have had to be well over 46,000—a figure
far in excess of any credible estimate put forward at any time.
There is in fact relatively little variation in the figures given in the
accounts which presume that massacres took place. They agree that the
majority of Srebrenica’s population went to Potocari (estimates range
from 24,000 to 27,000) and a minority went to the column that set off
for Tuzla (estimates range from 10,000 to 15,000). 26 The consensus
total for Srebrenica safe area inhabitants was approximately 37,000 persons
in all, made up of some 25,000 who went to Potocari, and 12,000
who left in the column.
This ties in with remarks made by the Bosnian Muslim President
Alija Izetbegovic when he was interviewed in Sarajevo by Belmin
Karamehmedovic on August 13, 1995. Izetbegovic said that “35,000
to 36,000” persons were present in Srebrenica “at the time” it fell into
the hands of the BSA. 27 It is also significant that Patricia Wald, one of
the ICTY’s judges in the case against the Bosnian Serb Army General
Radislav Krstic, estimated the total pre-fall population of Srebrenica to
have been 37,000 when she wrote her account of the case. According to
Wald, “Prior to the attack, Srebrenica was a village of some 37,000 inhabitants.”
28 Apparently, Wald was unaware that the figure 37,000
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