This Saturday will mark the 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Over 8000 Bosnians, the majority of whom were civilian men and boys were brutally murdered by the Serbian forces while the rest of Europe sat by and did nothing…(kind of reminds me of last summers events, but that’s been discussed on another thread).
Religion, skin colour and ethnicity aside…at the end of the day its still a human life.
I’ve read some of the harrowing eye witness accounts of some of the acts of brutality that was perpetrated and it is truly horrific!
The past cant be undone, but justice for those who suffered must prevail and lessons must be learnt…but I don’t hold much hope that we as a human society will ever learn.

I remember seeing it on the news and trying to imagine what it would be like trying to live with a sniper looking at you. Reminds me how lucky I was to grow up in the UK.
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2OSS7iuurU[/video]
The line
“Humans against killing, that sounds like Junkies against Dope”
still resonates

Shows how fragile peace is and how dangerous mad men full of hatred are.
Think before you follow.

Officially we did nothing, because of the usual UN mandate fudge. But one of my mates was there as a UN peacekeeper. The British troops officially weren’t meant to engage. A lot of them ignored that particular order though, when they saw what was going on

I work with a few Serbian (and Croatian) nationals. It was a very complex and mixed up conflict.

In any discussions about the conflict with a man who would have been of fighting age you will get, at best, cagey and vague answers. Nobody will talk of their activities or involvement in case it can in some way be turned into incriminating arguments.

In another – world you live in – comments a religious ex relative down here in Oz was disgusted by the film of the hunger games and the violence and the fact the kids/young people were killing each other to survive. I don’t know what is worse knowing it happens or hoping it didn’t.

an interesting article by Steve Crawshaw:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/srebrenica-20-years-after-the-genocide-why-the-survivors-need-closure-10373271.html

more stuff here:

Homepage

I drove in a Rally from London To Sarajevo in 2001, it was a charity thing to raise money and deliver aid.
We stayed on a Canadian run UN base, and spent some time with a UK Army REME battalion while we were there.

We had some very interesting conversations with the Army guys and the locals.. even after a few years of relative peace, the amount of anger and hatred held by the locals was amazing.
When we asked if they thought everything would be calm in the future, some of the local girls who worked in cleaning/catering jobs on the Canadian base said something along the lines of ‘No chance – we’ve got scores to settle, as soon as the UN are out of here it’ll flare up again’
Thankfully it hasn’t happened so far.

I had some of the saddest/scariest and maddest moments of my life on that trip..
From haunting, horrible stories about babies being murdered, to driving silently down the main strip in Sarajevo struck dumb by the levels of devastation.

We also went to a strip club where the doormen has Uzis, but that is a story for another time. ;o)

I’ve been visiting the FYR for a few years now and my agent is a Serb in his early 60s, very fit, pleasant and well educated in the classic mould but he won’t talk at all about the wars and he has a remarkably short fuse for a man of his age, which I take to be a Serb characteristic. He did tell me once that 80% of Serbs are taking tranquillisers and having therapy.

It’s chilling to see the old ministry buildings in Belgrade, still with big holes in them made by cruise missiles. The Serbs don’t seem to have the collective will to get to grips with them and knock them down.

I’m in sarajevo now, heading for the memorial on Saturday.

They will be burying an additional 150 or so bodies. The scale of the massacre is incredible.

It’s funny how some countries seemed better off when they were a dictatorship (as long as you didn’t disagree with the regime of course). Tito managed to keep all the nationalist feeling in check for many years, I guess.

Yup, was part of the UN out there at the time..
Not my happiest tour.
Crap pic, as it’s a pic, of a pic..

Ditto Iraq, Syria, Libya, most of Latin America and countless other countries where the status quo was destroyed. Rwanda is increasingly cited as a shining example of a modernising African nation but the country is actually a Police state.

Bad shit happens, we did nothing, leaders are weak and no backbone.

But **** war, soldiers are all baby killers and cut the defence budget because it’s evil. Also the un actions in the region were war crimes.

A horrible and traumatic bit of European history. Much like Rwanda, ought to be a reminder to us that sometimes you have to both carry and use a big stick.

A terrible failure by the UN leading to the most appalling massacre. Along with the Rwandan genocide it convinced me that the UN is pretty much a toothless talking shop.

R.I.P. What a utterly **** horrible conflict.

But **** war, soldiers are all baby killers and cut the defence budget because it’s evil. Also the un actions in the region were war crimes.

All of them? Seriously?

His last sentence might imply that he’s using sarcasm?

@Teetwo just wanted to say thank you for your service and doing a job in a situation and with a mandate which certainly wasn’t of your choosing.

A terrible time and a stain on all of us for allowing it to happen

Interesting and sobering thread thanks for posting OP

I was there too at that time on one of my 3 tours there. Not a pleasant time at all

This look familiar nick. Cant remember which tour this was taken on. I dug some old pics out the other day after watching the tv doc

Aye Mick, it does…
Sarajevo’s finest digs..
Run or Die was pretty much the catchphrase iirc..
Only to be advised, no point running, you’ll only die tired.

@Teetwo just wanted to say thank you for your service and doing a job in a situation and with a mandate which certainly wasn’t of your choosing.

A terrible time and a stain on all of us for allowing it to happen

for once i agree with you Jambalaya.

it seems this week has been about tragic anniversaries:
7/7
Gaza
Srebrenica

thoughts and prayers go to the families of the victims and to the survivors

Lol nick yeah. Wish i still my sniper alley tshirt haha

Many of the killers were dressed in UN uniforms so the fleeing muslims listened as they though they were safe.
Poor bastards.

Would there have been a different outcome if it was British rather that Dutch troops? (in the same numbers)

Would there have been a different outcome if it was British rather that Dutch troops? (in the same numbers)

I would imagine not. Being barred access by superior firepower is a fairly universal concept. The total number of UN forces in the area numbered about 400, if I recall, of which not all will be front line troops. Massively outnumbered and outgunned by the Serbian forces.

Didn’t a Dutch court in 2014 rule that the Dutch were responsible for around 300 deaths?

So maybe if some Para/RM nutters had been let loose, about all it would have done would have been to save 300 Bosnian lives at the expense of quite a few dead Brits on top of the hefty amount of dead serbs that I’m sure Brits would have taken with them. As others have stated, the serbs had a hell of a lot of firepower in the area.

Most of the fatalities during the massacre occurred when the column of Bosnians that tried to break through to Bosnian lines, got broken up by serbian infantry/arty. Once the column had been broken up, they would have been too thinly spread to ever conceivably defend properly.

Went out long after the loud stuff had finished (we weren’t regarded as ideal peace keeping troops by all accounts and-no armour). We did some tasks and gave mines awareness training to all sorts including schools. The people were ****ing bonkers; we were given a fully armed russian tank to explode as someone had one in their shed and handed it in during an amnesty…..another wasn’t happy with the BVs using a track on his land, so he just put some mines down. As you do. I do remember that relations with the Americans were not at all good, we avoided them like the plague.
Love the region though, and we holiday in Croatia quite regularly.
I might revisit the old BBC series warriors. I enjoyed that.

Nutters? Sometimes i wonder how little the things you do in life that are so hard are dismissed so easily by the few that know f all

Vile crimes, and the fact that so many of the perpetrators are/were still being hidden and supported by their public means that the attitudes aren’t far below the surface.

The main problem at that time was that the US had totally withdrawn from any meaningful UN commitments after Somalia. As such, the UN response was trying (unenviably) to police vicious and age old hatreds with one hand tied behind its back. I seem to remember one account of a white UN armored car convoy being stopped by a Bosnian Serb ‘roadblock’ consisting of one bamboo pole and a few thugs with AKs. Because they were under orders not to forcibly pass through, they had to turn back.

A very lamentable performance by the so-called international community (on a political level).

Nutters? Sometimes i wonder how little the things you do in life that are so hard are dismissed so easily by the few that know f all

Don’t take offence, it’s a term of endearment on my part. I wouldn’t call taking part in any of the Balkans campaigns, be it Bosnia or Kosovo “a little thing”.