Posted on 09/21/2003 8:34:13 AM PDT by joan
BALKAN & EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN POLICY COUNCIL
PO Box 20407, Alexandria, Virginia 22320, USA
Telephone (703) 548-1070.
Facsimile (703) 684-7476.
Website: www.StrategicStudies.org.
Contact: Gregory Copley, 703-548-1070
Srebrenica Casualty Numbers Challenged by Experts as Politicized and Ethnically Divisive
WASHINGTON, DC, September 18, 2003: On the eve of the dedication of a monument to Muslims killed at Srebrenica, in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in 1995, a group which includes a former UN official, intelligence experts, and journalists, released a statement challenging the alleged casualty number of 7,000 victims as "vastly inflated and unsupported by evidence".
They asserted that one-sided interventionist policies permitted al-Qaida forces and radical Islamists backed by the Iranian clerical government to take root during the Bosnian war, clouding the future of the region. As well, they agreed that the "memorialization" of false numbers in the monument actually appeared to be intended to perpetuate regional ethnic hatred and distrust and to deliberately punish one of the victim groups in the Bosnian civil war. Former US President Bill Clinton is expected to attend and legitimize the dedication of the monument at Srebrenica, which was constructed using one million dollars of US Embassy funds at the request of High Representative Paddy Ashdown. But former BBC journalist Jonathan Rooper, who has researched the events in Srebrenica since 1995, says that the region was a graveyard for Serbs as well as Muslims and that a monument to inflated casualties on one side "serves neither truth nor the goal of reconciliation".
Phillip Corwin, former UN Civilian Affairs Coordinator in Bosnia during the 1990s, said: "What happened in Srebrenica was not a single large massacre of Muslims by Serbs, but rather a series of very bloody attacks and counterattacks over a three year period which reached a crescendo in July of 1995." Mr. Corwin is author of Dubious Mandate, an account of his experiences during the conflict. He points out that Srebrenica, which was designated a safe zone, was never demilitarized as it was claimed to be, and that Muslim paramilitary leader Nasir Oric, who controlled Srebrenica, launched repeated attacks on surrounding Serb villages. He noted: "I was the United Nations" chief political officer in Bosnia the day that Srebrenica fell. Coincidentally, it was the same day that the Bosnian Government tried to assassinate me as I drove over Mount Igman on the way to Sarajevo."
Intelligence expert and strategist Gregory Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association and the ISSA's Balkan & Eastern Mediterranean Policy Council, accused US Ambassador Donald Hays, who serves as Deputy High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, of using the power of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) governing Bosnia "to force Bosnian Serb elected officials to sign a fraudulent document accepting the official version of events in Srebrenica. The leaders of Republica Srpska [the predominantly Serbian province of Bosnia-Herzegovina] invited the office of the High Representative to join their investigation of the events in Srebrenica. Instead they were told they were told to sign a statement drafted by OHR endorsing casualty figures they publicly disagreed with." Copley added: "It is significant in that the former US Clinton Administration fought this war unquestioningly supporting only the Croat and Muslim factions and disregarding the historic alliance of the Serbian peoples with the US. Then, after the war, the Clinton Administration failed to follow US tradition in helping to heal the wounds of war, but, rather, perpetuated ethnic divisions and hatreds. This differs from the US role in all other wars."
"Unfortunately, all of the policies and officials put in place in the region by the Clinton Administration remain. The current Bush Administration has neglected the Balkans and has, instead, allowed the Clinton policies to continue, which has meant that divisive politics continue. This, then, requires the ongoing commitment of US peacekeeping forces in both Bosnia and in the Kosovo province of Serbia."
Copley added that, according to intelligence obtained from Islamist sources, that the monument was intended to become a shrine for radical Islamists in Europe and site for annual pilgrimages. He added: "Deputy High Representative Donald Hays forced the Republica Srpska Government to issue a statement which accepted the radical Islamists" version of the Srebrenica affair, despite the fact that the Office of High Representative does not have any investigative capability of its own to make a valid assumption on the matter. As well, the International Criminal Tribunal on Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague " no friend of the Serbs " has itself not completed its investigation of Srebrenica, and nor has the office of the Government of Republica Srpska which has been working with the ICTY."
Amb.. Hays and OHR chief Paddy Ashdown forced the Republica Srpska statement merely to ensure that the opening of the "shrine" " to be attended by Clinton " would vindicate Clinton Administration policies of support for the radical Islamists." Yossef Bodansky, who has written several books on the war in Yugoslavia and also serves as Research Director of ISSA, calls the 7,000 figure "disinformation" and notes that "all independent forensic evidence points to Muslim casualties in the hundreds, possibly the low hundreds. Continued emphasis on such allegedly high numbers of Muslim deaths at Srebrenica also obfuscates the Muslim murders in that city, earlier, of Serb civilians." Bodansky also wrote extensively on the link between Osama bin Laden and the Bosnian Islamists in numerous articles and special reports and three books, including Offensive in the Balkans: the Potential for a Wider War as a Result of Foreign Intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1995), Some Call it Peace: Waiting for War in the Balkans (1996), and Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America (1999).
Rooper says that at least 1,000 Serbs, mostly civilians, were killed by forces led by Oric who did not bother to hide his crimes, even showing videotapes of slaughtered Serbs to Western journalists. Meanwhile a group of academic experts and journalists from the United States, Canada, Germany, France, Serbia, and the United Kingdom has been organized by Professor Edward S. Herman of the University of Pennsylvania to examine the evidence regarding events at Srebrenica in July 1995 and earlier, how the media reported these events, and the political role of claims about Srebrenica. It is expected that a report from this group will be available in June 2004. Rooper points out that the 40,000 inhabitants the UN used in July of 1995 before the capture of Srebrenica roughly matches the number of former residents accounted for in the aftermath. A commander of the Muslim-dominated Army of BiH (Bosnia-Herzegovina) later confirmed to parliament in Sarajevo that 5,000 BiH troops escaped largely intact to Tuzla while the UN registered some 35,632 civilian survivors.
While the capture of Srebrenica was reported in July 1995, as it unfolded, an international outcry only took place a month later, after Madeleine Albright, then US representative to the UN, held up a photo which she said provided evidence that thousands of Muslim victims had been buried at field near Nova Kasaba, 19 kilometers from Srebrenica. Excavations which took place following the war, however, yielded 33 bodies at Nova Kasaba. Two years after the event, a total of 400 bodies had been found at 20 sites near Srebrenica, an area which had seen bloody fighting over a three year period. Instead of acknowledging that there was no support for the original figures, Rooper says a various means were used to prop up the official story.
"Spokesmen for the Clinton Administration suggested that Serbs might have moved the bodies to other locations. Rooper points out that excavating, transporting and reburying 7,000 bodies was "not only beyond the capabilities of the thinly stretched, petrol-starved Bosnian Serb Army, but would have been easily detected under intense surveillance from satellites and geostationary drones.
By 1998, thousands of bodies excavated from all across Bosnia were stored at the Tuzla airport. Despite state of the art DNA testing, only 200 bodies have been linked to Srebrenica. Around 3,000 names on a list of Srebrenica victims compiled by the Red Cross matched voters in the Bosnian election in 1996. "I pointed out to the OSCE that there had either been massive election fraud or almost half the people on the ICRC missing list were still alive," says Rooper. "The OSCE finally responded that the voting lists had been locked away in warehouses and it would not be possible for them to investigate."
The inflated Srebrenica statistics are part of a larger picture that intelligence experts such as Bodansky and Copley find troubling. They say US policymakers have been slow to recognize that Bosnia is viewed as a strategic base for operations in Europe by al-Qaida and the HizbAllah. In 1993, when the Clinton Administration was strongly backing the Muslim President of Bosnia, Alija Izetbegovic, Osama Bin Ladin was regular visitor to his office, according to Renate Flottau of the German weekly, Der Spiegel. The Bosnian daily, Dani, reported that the Vienna Embassy of BiH issued a passport to Bin Ladin in 1993.
A special report by Copley, issued Tuesday, September 16. 2003. noted that Bosnia-Herzegovina Ambassador Huso Zivalj, who issued the passport to Bin Ladin, later served as Bosnian Ambassador to the United Nations in September 11. "It is becoming increasingly clear that the movement of Zivalj to the New York post just before (and his departure just after) the September 11,2001 attacks was not coincidental."
"To refer to US Bosnia policy as a success story is to disregard substantial evidence to the contrary. Instead of misplaced symbolism in Srebrenica, US policymakers need to take a hard look at assumptions which have guided US actions in the region," Copley said.
Yeah, tell that to the folks currently occupying the Serbian Krajina!
And thanks for admitting your hypocrisy as to the Yugoslavia/Bosnia questions! Funny how you have a different set of rules to apply when Serbs are involved.
No matter! They will outlive you and your KLA buddies!
Having checked your posted link, I suspect that is your real name. What clap-trap. It might be illuminating to know that the author of your cited evidence also has written that the U.S. government was involved in 9-11, stood down the air force so that the terrorist planes would not be intercepted, and invaded Afghanistan as part of a neo-colonialist plot to establish corporate rule over the world.
But, I guess if you can deny the facts at Srbrenica, its pretty easy to believe all that other stuff, too.
I hope you're right. I'd rather have a sister in a whorehouse than a brother that's a Cubs fan.
As for Racak, Although I have very little respect for HRW, the lack of a blood feud amongst the Albanians would definetly be a sure sign that it wasn't Albanian on Albanian violence. However, I believe Wraith has spoken to Albanian witnesses from Racak that do blame the KLA. Hopefully he'll chime in soon.
Well, at least the first three words of your post make sense.
Titled "The Jasharis, the Story of a Resistance," the pamphlet traces Adem Jashari's eight-year armed struggle and declares that family members were "loyal co-fighters" who were "ready for sublime sacrifice."
Jashari's wife, Adile, was the first person killed in the 1998 siege, "while taking ammunition to Adem," the brochure says. The last to die was their son Kushtrim, 13, who fell "holding the automatic gun in his hands," it says.
Unfortunately, the 12 year old at Racak was murdered, not killed incident to a fight.
Dear Mr.Lawn, thanks for the directed post on Racak and must apologize for my tardy reply, as it were my information related job has had me on the move like you would not believe. Still in the field and getting cranky but found the time to chime in.
As for Racak I would ask mark502inf to research my posts in order to get my big picture on the Racak setup. To understand Kosovo in 1999 is to understand that the KLA as far as the local Kosovar Albanian population were concerned, were under the control of the KLA PU, i.e. KLA military police, a fine collection of misfits and uneducated sadistic criminals ever to band together. Dealing with them was like being introduced to the Devil's children. Even during the Serb occupation the locals were under the heavy hand of the KLA PU. You made mention that their was no blood feud in Racak after the fact. In Kosovo no one challenges the KLA for what ever reason. Few have and are never seen again. The Racak villagers were LDK supporters which in the eyes of Hashim Thaci were the political opposition. These people were forced to defend their village. Serbs on one side villagers in the middle and the KLA taking up the high ground into the hills, in firm control of the only way to escape from the on coming Serbs. Walker an American in charge of the OSCE mission, Europe’s version of the UN? The KLA needed a massacre in order to get international support which as you know resulted in the invasion of NATO. The thing that has always bothered me is that people had to die for an excuse that the KLA conveniently supplied. The reason I know this is because the KLA tried to set up the same scenario in a village called Petrova not far from Racak. In that case the villagers were promised by the KLA that they would defend the village if the Serbs attacked. The Serbs came and the KLA failed to show. With the few guns they did have the Petrova villagers managed to get away. The villagers of Petrova were also LDK supporters, therefore fodder for the cause. With Racak the KLA learned from the Petrova attempt and made sure the Racak villagers stayed. Guns at your front and guns at your back, what a thankless situation. The villagers lost 45 men and the KLA lost 11 men who were removed just before allowing the Military observers into the village the next day to see the so called massacre. These 11 KLA fighters were buried in a village called Monaplace. Why didn’t the KLA allow the Racakvillagers to return and collect their dead while they were collecting theirs? Its because the props needed to stay for Walker’s show.
It’s the old saying, better them than us. Perception is everything and it is perception that gains public support. That’s how politicians get elected.
Again Mr. Lawn thanks for the heads up and its time you know to grab one that’s a touch above freezing…….
Regards Wraith
First, I must differ with you on the blood feud--there have been many KLA members killed due to feuds over the last few years. And as you said yourself in one of your previous posts: "good old fashioned revenge bloodshed based on family honor casts aside political views very quickly" plus "Things never really change in Kosovo as Albanians continue to kill Albanians." So, again, I believe the absence of blood feuds or killings by the Racak family members mitigates against the Alb on Alb theory.
Further, the villagers are still very bitter about the Serbs--when the court trying one of the Racak suspects came out to do a reconstruction of the crime a couple years back, the local Albanians became enraged when they saw the Serb lawyer and the entire party had to bug out.
You advanced a competing theory of what happened, but I saw nothing in your posts that refuted the known evidence; i.e. the various eyewitness reports from the villagers & the report of the team under Dr. Ranta. I had the opportunity to engage in a disucssion with Dr Ranta personally on this issue--there is no doubt in her mind as to what happened--the Albanians were murdered--not killed in a fight or executed elsewhere & then dragged in.
Finally, there was combat between Yugo & KLA forces vicinity Racak shortly before with some KLA casualties. As you said, the KLA removed those casualties. If it was a set-up, they would have left those bodies in Racak to drive up the massacre count even higher.
Wraith, thanks for a post free of histrionics.
G.O.M. Lawn. As a lifelong Detroit Lions fan, I know what bad football looks like. And I sure could recognize it watching the Bears on Monday night. Time for Ditka & Butkus to put the pads back on!
Because this would have been evidence of armed/uniformed combatants at the scene, some of whom would have been known to the Serbs.
But if the idea is that the KLA removed the bodies of their combatants, that nukes the theory held by many that the murdered farmers and villagers were really fighters.
Which reminds me, the normal KLA procedure was to evacuate & bury their own dead--not to leave them for the Serbs--I'm sure Wraith is familiar with that. Which again, further supports the non-combatant status of the dead villagers.
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