The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

The Military Context of the Fall of Srebrenica
tioned there, was attacked by the BSA but did not fall and the UN-
PROFOR garrison was granted safe passage across Serbia to Belgrade
even though they had actively helped the BMA solders in the town who
remained fully armed.
Ten days after the fall of Zepa, on August 4, the Croatian army
launched Operation Storm, by far the largest act of “ethnic cleansing”
in the whole war, with 250,000 Serbs driven from their homes in an
orgy of violence, rape and murder. The whole operation had been approved,
aided and abetted by senior U.S. military and political leaders.
By the end of August, General Smith had completed the deployment
of the RRF which was effectively a potent offensive artillery force targeted
on the Bosnian Serb gun emplacements around Sarajevo. On August
28, right on cue, a shell, supposedly from a BSA mortar, fell on
the Markale market place killing a number of people. As with similar incidents
before there was considerable doubt as to who had actually fired
the shell; based on a confidential interview with the sources, Cees
Wiebes writes that “American intelligence officials admitted [to him]
that the [Bosnian Muslim forces] had taken responsibility for this incident,”
and that British intelligence also “came to the conclusion that
the shelling of Sarajevo market was probably not the work of the [Bosnian
Serb forces], but of the Bosnian Muslims.” 55 Yet, if there was any
doubt who fired the shell, as usual there was no doubt who would be
blamed for the incident, and the carefully planned NATO air strikes
and RRF salvoes that ensued crippled the BSA communication systems,
ammunition dumps and fuel stores.
Under the coordinated and combined assault of Croatian, Bosnian
Croat, and Bosnian Muslim forces, the rapid disintegration of the Bosnian
Serb positions around Bihac and in the whole of western Bosnia
raised the prospect of a collapse across the entire country. As Banja Luka,
the refuge of hundreds of thousands of displaced people, appeared ready
to fall and the possibility of a bloodbath became more likely, concern
grew among the Western sponsors of these offensives that their “dogs“
were off the leash and out of control.
By the end of September the fighting was all but over and the hundred
thousand people living in the Serbian parts of Sarajevo, so long ignored
by the media, were packing their belongings in preparation for a life as
refugees in other parts of Bosnia, Serbia itself or even further afield.
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