The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Prelude to the Capture of Srebrenica
downtown section of Sarajevo, known as Bascarsija, killed Nikola Gardovic,
father of the bridegroom. The failure of officials of the ruling
Party of Democratic Action (PDA) to arrest the killers, who were well
known, helped set the stage for the battles that erupted the following
month.
“By organizing parties along national lines, all three communities
bear responsibility for the country’s appalling fate,” observed Misha
Glenny in The Fall of Yugoslavia. 10 The pattern was set, however, by
the Muslim faction, which was the first to organize a nationalist party,
the PDA. On March 31, 1991, a year before the civil war began, the
PDA established the Patriotic League, the first party army since the Axis
parties of World War II. All the while arms were pouring into Bosnia.
The Yugoslav National Army (JNA) began a transfer of arms to the
Bosnian Serbs. The Croatian paramilitary group—the Croatian Defense
Force—was actively arming its members in Herzegovina. The
Bosnian Muslim Green Berets were organized in the fall of 1991. According
to Izetbegovic they numbered between 35,000 and 40,000
when the conflict began. The more inclusive Patriotic League was
formed at the same time and, in February 1992, drew up a plan for the
defense of Bosnia. According to Sefer Halilovic, the League numbered
120,000 members by spring 1992. 11 Croat units from western Herzegovina
returned home following the end of the fighting in Croatia, anticipating
that war would soon break out in Bosnia. Serbs who were
mustered out of the JNA units in Croatia returned to the Prijedor area
from Croatia, bringing their weapons with them despite the objections
of the Muslim-controlled city assembly. According to Bosnian accounts,
the JNA struck a deal with Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan
Karadzic in February 1992 to create a joint Bosnian Serb - JNA command
and coordinate military actions in Bosnia. Vitomir Zepenic,
deputy minister of the interior in the Bosnian government, estimated
that 250,000 - 300,000 persons were armed, and that some 10,000
Bosnians were engaged in the fighting in Croatia. Journalists traveling
through Bosnia described evenings filled with the sound of small-arms
fire from villagers firing off their newly acquired weapons.
Both the Bush and incoming Clinton administrations portrayed President
Izetbegovic as a defender of a multi-ethnic Bosnia, a description
at odds with his strongly expressed pan-Islamic views and actions.
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