The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

CHAPTER 3
The Military Context of the Fall of Srebrenica
Tim Fenton
At the heart of the mass media’s portrayal of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina
(hereafter Bosnia) lies a patent contradiction: Repeatedly we were
told that the Bosnian Serbs had a mighty military machine bristling
with heavy weapons while their Muslim opponents were depicted as
helpless civilians with next to no weaponry. At the same time we were
assured that the Serbs were absolutely ruthless, with a genocidal intent
not seen since the Nazis, and who had no respect for civilians as noncombatants.
Had this description been remotely accurate the Bosnian Muslim
population would have been wiped out in a matter of days with the
Bosnian Serbs in control of the whole territory. In fact the war lasted
three and a half years, with the front lines static for most of this period,
and, using the official estimates by members of the Office of the Prosecutor
at the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague (ICTY), the
Bosnian Muslim death toll was probably less than 70,000 of which 47%
were soldiers. 1
Now, more than fifteen years later, references to the war in Bosnia
are still common in the media and, almost always, mention is made of
the fall of Srebrenica, as if this had been the climax or focus of the conflict.
There is scarcely ever a word about the military context in which
that episode took place. When one looks at the entire military picture,
the capture of Srebrenica was not only unexpected, it was also clearly not
a primary goal of the Bosnian Serbs, who faced much graver dangers
elsewhere.
What follows sets out to describe briefly the Bosnian Serbs’ actual
military situation in Bosnia (and to a lesser degree in the Krajina region
of Croatia), especially concentrating on the early months of 1995 leading
up to the fall of Srebrenica in July.
The source material for the military events described here is largely
derived from two valuable books that cover aspects paid scant attention
in the vast acreage of work that the conflict has already generated. They
are used solely as a record of military events and it is not suggested that
any interpretation I have added is shared by the authors.
66