Српске жртве Сребренице 1992-1995 - Srebrenica historical project

227context of the systematic military attacks those forces conducted from within theenclave of Srebrenica. For a part of that period (April 1993 — July 1995) by mutualagreement reached under UN auspices those forces should have been demilitarised,but as a result of international community’s unwillingness to assertitself that agreement was never implemented. Furthermore, according to the Reporton Srebrenica published in 2002 by the Dutch Institute for War Documentation(NIOD), as a result of those attacks about 8,500 Serbian inhabitants ofSrebrenica region were forcibly expelled. 21 These are not insignificant statistics.On the political level, throughout the period of these attacks the internationalcommunity had forces on the ground, such as UNPROFOR, as well asother instruments, sufficient to make it aware of what was happening and adequateto formulate an effective humanitarian response to restrain the attackers. Itfailed to do so. That failure to act strongly suggests that political considerationsdictated a critical attitude toward the conduct of one side and, parallel to that, anattitude of benign neglect toward the conduct of the other.Finally, on the legal level, if criteria that are used for the standard analysisof events of July 1995 were applied to the factual matrix of this monograph, astrong prima facie argument could be put forward that if the execution of ABiHprisoners of war in 1995 qualifies as genocide, the systematic and targeted destructionof the Srebrenica Serbian community during the three preceding yearsqualifies for the identical classification.The present monograph is an introduction to an almost totally overlookeddimension of “Srebrenica”: massive casualties and destruction suffered by thelocal Serbian population. Much additional research into the subject needs to bedone. However, even these incomplete data strongly suggest that the dimensionsof “Srebrenica” are much broader than the narrow scope of the institutionalisednarrative on that subject would convey. Srebrenica is not a mono-ethnic narrative,but a human tragedy of major proportions which affected all inhabitants ofthat region of Bosnia and Herzegovina, irrespective of their ethnicity or religion.21 NIOD Report, Part I: The Yugoslavian problem and the role of the West, 1991–1994;Chapter 10: Srebrenica under siege.