The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

The Military Context of the Fall of Srebrenica
BSA officer in their quarters, effectively taking them hostage. The same
thing happened in the central Bosnian city of Gornji Vakuf. This reflected
a general desire on the part of the SDA Muslim side to ensure
that the COHA didn’t develop into a lasting peace. Their antagonism
to the COHA arose partly from the fact that the Serbs had initiated it,
but also because the SDA had, for a considerable time, been planning
to achieve their goal by manoeuvring the “International Community”
into intervening on their behalf, a strategy that was, as things turned
out, only a matter of months from being achieved. Furthermore, the
SDA Muslims saw a resumption in fighting as inevitable because they
would not countenance an agreement which resembled any sort of partition
of Bosnia. Less than one year later, with many more thousands of
his people dead, Izetbegovic signed the Dayton Peace Agreement, which
effectively partitioned Bosnia.
On January 12 1995, Franjo Tudjman, the nationalist leader of Croatia,
announced that he was giving the UN forces in the UNPAs notice
to quit the country by March 31. The next day, Foreign Minister Mate
Granic claimed that the Croatian army was now strong enough to retake
the Krajina by force. International reaction was muted, especially
if one compared this to what an equivalent statement from Belgrade
would have elicited. The U.S.- and German-approved flow of arms and
training to the Croatian army had evidently yielded results.
In the first serious breach of the COHA, on January 13, the Bosnian
Muslim 5th Corps, operating from within the Bihac “safe area,” attacked
Serb positions, inflicting 120 casualties and gaining significant
ground. Nevertheless, Karadzic prevented BSA General Milovanovic
from retaliating—presumably on the basis that the Serbs would gain
credit for honouring the COHA. The general was reported to have attempted
to resign because of the poor conditions that his troops were
in but Mladic intervened to stop him—a clear indication that the BSA
was already in a severely weakened state, even before the influx of new
equipment to their foes.
On January 20, an Iranian cargo plane had to divert to Budapest due
to bad weather in Zagreb. The cargo, labelled as “humanitarian aid,”
was almost certainly arms. Many such planes had been flying in and
out of Croatia. Some of the arms were taken by Croatia itself but a large
portion was flown-on into Bosnia. 18 All this was specifically prohibited
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