Srebrenica | Darko Bandic

In the past few years, this blog looked back at over 900 photos. Many are famous. A few are indelibly iconic. But only a handful could claim they have changed the course of history. This was one such photo.

I have written before about the messy disintegration of Yugoslavia, a topic which still is a thorny and polemical subject to write about (if comments are anything to go by) two decades after the events. In a few days in July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces massacred around 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica, which was supposedly under the UN aegis. We stood idly outside, our rhetoric changed from ‘Never again’ to ‘Once More’.

Darko Bandic, a freelance Croat photographer working for AP, recalled the above photograph he took near the annihilated town:

I had arrived at this massive makeshift refugee camp in Tuzla early in the morning, around 5.30am. Tens of thousands of distraught women and children had poured into the camp the previous day.

Just as I was about to enter the camp, two or three young girls told me they had spotted a woman hanging from a tree in the woods. They took me to her. I was actually a bit confused. I didn’t know exactly what to do. From the direction I was walking I could see her face, but obviously I didn’t want to shoot that. I shot just a couple of frames, then went back to the UN guard. I remember he was a Swedish soldier and I told him what I had seen. He said: ‘For now, let’s take care of the ones who are alive.’

I saw so many really awful things in Bosnia’s war, that was just yet another of them. I did wonder what horrific things must have happened to her to drive herself to take her own life. But I never found out. I never even knew her name until a year later.”

Her name was Ferida Osmanovic and her photo soon appeared on front pages all over the world. It was a metaphor for the Unknown Victim of the Balkan wars: faceless, defenseless, humiliated. At their Oval Office meeting, Vice President Al Gore told President Clinton, “My 21-year-old daughter asked about this picture. What am I supposed to tell her? Why is this happening and we’re not doing anything? My daughter is surprised the world is allowing this to happen. I am too.” His outrage was shared by many UN officials, NATO and US Army’s top brass.

President Clinton, whose initial comments on Srebrenica were lawyerly (‘the fall of Srebrenica undermined the UN’s peacekeeping mission’), was pushed towards an intervention by Gore. On the Capitol Hill, Senator Diane Feinstein was equally vehement; in a memorable speech, she used the photo to underline the plight of raped and murdered civilians in the war zone.

By July, the UN had given its military forces the authority to request airstrikes without consulting civilian UN officials. A comprehensive air support for other safe zones and retaliatory air strikes by NATO were launched against the Serbs. The bombing campaign finally brought the Serbs to the negotiating table in November 1995, when the Dayton Accords put an end to three and a half-year long Bosnian War.

[For details of Ferdia’s surviving children, the Guardian story here.]

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The most striking thing about the photo — and Srebrenica massacre — was that it happened in 1995, exactly a year after the Rwandan genocide. My memory of both events is vague, but I saw them on CNN daily growing up. In fact, they were amongst my first memories of the world outside my family. They have shaped who I am today. No one — but especially no children — should see similar horrors unfolding, firsthand or otherwise.

Auschwitz. Srebrenica. Rwanda. Congo. Syria.

The list goes on.

Serbia’s Atrocity, Holland’s Shame

A Toast to Fratricide: Mladic (left) drinks with Karremans (middle)

I have previously covered the events leading to Srebrenica Massacre. This post continues the discussion.

In the days following the massacre, American spy planes flew over Srebrenica, and took photos showing the ground in vast areas around the town had been removed — a sign of mass burials. Early reports of massacres appeared here and there as the first survivors of the long march from Srebrenica began to arrive in Muslim-held areas a few days later.

The international community was horrified, but the Dutch — who previously enjoyed high reputation as peacekeepers — were almost unperturbed; when the Karremans Garrison which left Srebrenica to Ratko Mladic and his band of butchers returned to Zagreb, they were welcomed back by the Dutch crown prince and prime minister. As the news of the massacre became widespread, the Dutch newspaper the Telegraaf featured a photograph of twelve cheerful Dutch soldiers in Novi Sad, enjoying a post-hostage meal provided by the Serb government on 24th July. “A toast to freedom” read the headline, and the article now ironically reads, “Their dedication shows once again how well-equipped for its task the Dutch military is, when it comes right down to it”.

In the late 1995 — this after Miguel Gil Moreno, Dusko Tubic and David Rhode had covered and photographed the killing fields of Srebrenica — Karremans was promoted to the rank of colonel. More shockingly was the fate of a roll of film shot by a Dutch soldier, with photographs of the events in Srebrenica, which was destroyed in a darkroom in an action the Dutch parliament deemed as a “cover-up” by the Defense Ministry.

On 13th July, just before the massacre, a girl fetching water for her family in Potocari found nine bodies in a stream across the street from the UN base. A Dutch warrant officer Be Oosterveen was approached by a young local, who led him and another soldier towards the bodies. The Dutch soldiers both videotaped and photographed the bodies. However, the videotape was later destroyed by Dutch soldiers under orders from an officer because it also had video of top-secret Dutch air defense equipment. The photographs were “accidentally destroyed” during their development in a military film-processing lab.

Considering all this, the Netherlands’ fight to make Serbia’s EU accession dependent on the capture of Ratko Mladic seems pompous and ironic. Mladic, who was finally caught yesterday, was mainly responsible for Srebrenica (and many other atrocities during that excessive and brutal war), but the Dutch garrison, which wanted to go home; the UN high command, which wanted to end enclave problems in eastern Bosnia; and the Bosnian army which saw no value in protecting strategically unimportant Srebrenica must also share some of the blame. Srebrenica was a sad episode; it is a dark stain of Europe’s history, made all more tragic because it could have been averted.

Prelude to Srebrenica

From 6th to 8th July 1995, Bosnian Serb forces had laid siege to the Srebrenica enclave, where tens of thousands of Muslim civilians had taken refuge from earlier Serb offensives in north-eastern Bosnia. Lt. Col Thom Karremans was commanding 600 Dutch/UN troops in Srebrenica, which had very little fuel and food. The bureaucracy delayed his call for support of UN Headquarters in Sarajevo, and when help (in the form of Dutch F-16s) arrived it was too little, too late.

The Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic entered Srebrenica, accompanied by Serb camera crews. In the evening, General Mladic summoned Colonel Karremans to a meeting at which he delivered an ultimatum that the Muslims must hand over their weapons to guarantee their lives. During the meeting at the Bosnian village of Potocari (above) on July 12, 1995, Karremans was defensive and submissive, excusing himself from ever requesting air strikes against Bosnian Serb forces, claiming the decision was made by higher authorities based on information he provided. In a Serb military recording, a frightened and timid Karreman was seen virtually pleading for the life of his troops during negotiations with Gen. Mladic. After this Karremans was filmed raising a glass with Mladic (above left).

Following the negotiations, on Friday, July 21st, 1995, Karremans and UN left Srebrenica. On the farewell, Colonel Karremans accepted gifts from General Mladic, smiled, shook his hand and departed. Although he managed to negotiate the leaving of Muslim women, he had failed to prevent the Serbs from rounding up and killing 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys. It was Europe’s worst civilian massacre since World War II.