The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

The Military Context of the Fall of Srebrenica
met the SDA Muslim leader, Alija Izetbegovic. He refused to meet the
Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, either in Pale, where the Republika
Srpska assembly was based, or even across the river Miljacka in
the Serbian part of Sarajevo. Whether a deliberate snub or mere incompetence,
the result was to confirm to the Bosnian Serbs that the
UN, the supposed “honest broker,” could not be trusted as impartial.
This conclusion also became clear to the Krajina Serbs when on December
9 1994, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution which
expressed its alarm that the “ongoing situation in the Serbian-controlled
parts of Croatia is de facto allowing and promoting a state of occupation
of parts of the sovereign Croatian territory,” and, even more incredibly,
called upon the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to cease its
“activities aimed at achieving the integration of the occupied territories
of Croatia” into the FRY. 13 Brendan O’Shea describes well the shock
that accompanied the Serbian reaction:
Of course the Krajina was occupied territory. It was ‘occupied’ by
people whose ancestors had lived there for hundreds of years, and even
the most basic examination of the 1991 Census, or any one of a plethora
of maps illustrating ethnic distribution in the Balkans, would have left
this matter in no doubt whatsoever. 14
This motion came a week after the signing of the Zagreb Economic
Agreement between the Krajina Serbs and Croats, aimed at increasing
co-operation regarding utilities and transport. It clearly gave the upper
hand to the Croats and had already caused divisions among the Krajina
Serbs’ leaders over how far the Croats could be trusted. The UN vote
now suggested that the Croats would be supported in their increasingly
menacing threats to “reintegrate” the UN Protected Areas with or without
Serbian consent and, by implication, with or without the Serbs who
lived there.
At the same time, there were reports of Croat troops active within
Bosnia, forcing the BSA up the Livno valley to open up an eastern approach
to the Knin, the capital of the Croatian Serbs’ Autonomous Region
from across the Bosnian border. No international rebuke was
forthcoming.
On December 12, near Velika Kladusa, in far northwestern Bosnia,
during fierce fighting, a UNPROFOR armoured personnel carrier was
hit by a Serbian missile and four Bangladeshi peacekeepers were injured,
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