The Srebrenica massacre: the worst atrocity committed on European soil since the Second World War

Before the Bosnian War broke out, Srebrenica was just a small secluded town in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. Very few people outside of the Balkans had even heard of it. But all that changed over the course of a few short days in July 1995 – and for the most terrible of reasons.

Srebrenica had been changing fast in the months before it became the focus of the world’s attention. By 1995, it had morphed into a large refugee camp surrounded by hostile forces. Some 40,000 people had been forced to flee there as a consequence of the violent break-up of the country of which Bosnia was part: Yugoslavia. Displaced by a vicious Serb-led ethnic cleansing campaign, those refugees largely consisted of the rural, Bosnian Muslim (or Bosniak) population of eastern Bosnia.

War had come to Bosnia in late March 1992, a year or so after two other republics – Croatia, very violently, and Slovenia, much less so – had seceded from the multi-ethnic Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Shaken by the violence in Croatia between the Croat majority and Serb minority, the international community was soon even more appalled by events in Bosnia. “Almost overnight the republic broke apart,” one UN official on the ground noted. Large swathes of territory in the east, north and north-west were ethnically cleansed by Serb paramilitary forces, supported by the Serb-dominated regular Yugoslav Army.

After six weeks, by late May 1992, Serb forces controlled 60 per cent of the territory of Bosnia, even though their ethnic kin made up only just over 30 per cent of the population, as against 43 per cent Bosniaks and 17 per cent Croats. Those Bosniaks unable to flee abroad found themselves crammed into a landlocked central rump. The capital, Sarajevo, was besieged. In the west, an enclave around Bihać still held out. So did several pockets in the east, centred on Goražde, Žepa and Srebrenica.

The violence in Croatia had alerted the international community to the need for intervention on behalf of the civilian population. In January 1992, a UN Protection Force had deployed to monitor a UN-negotiated ceasefire in Croatia. After the war spread to Bosnia, it extended operations to the new battleground. The countries contributing troops to the UN Protection Force were, however, extremely hesitant about getting embroiled in the war. They believed that they faced a conflict driven by “ancient ethnic hatreds” over which they would struggle, at the cost of a massive effort and high casualties, to get control. They limited themselves to attempting to deliver humanitarian aid, deter hostilities through their presence and offer their good offices to the warring parties to negotiate a peace accord.

All three activities proved highly frustrating. Military weakness and a deep sense of injustice made the Bosniak government intransigent and fearful of ending up with front lines that solidified into permanent borders. The Serbs, now fighting in Bosnia under the guise of an independent Bosnian Serb Republic with a Bosnian Serb Army, felt their ethnic ‘liberation’ project was incomplete, especially with the pesky enclaves in their rear areas. Not only did Bosniak forces launch armed foraging expeditions from them, but their government rejected any and all suggestions to evacuate or trade the territory. On the sidelines hovered the revanchist Croats who also harboured ill-disguised expansionist designs on Bosnia.

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Lightly armed and with their governments ever fearful of getting caught up in hostilities, the cautious UN Protection Force troops had little deterrent effect. Aid delivery depended on the whims of the warring parties and was constantly sabotaged. And absent the threat of external armed intervention, successive peace plans came to nought.

Bosnian Serb forces gradually whittled down the Bosniak enclaves. In February 1993, they launched a major offensive towards Srebrenica. In the middle of winter, with no food and medical supplies getting through and under daily shelling, a humanitarian disaster quickly unfolded for the tens of thousands of people who were pushed into a smaller and smaller area.

Fearing eastern Bosnia was about to be ethnically cleansed, the UN Protection Force commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, French general Philippe Morillon, made his way to Srebrenica. On 12 March, surrounded by a sea of desperate women and children, he announced from the balcony of the post office in Srebrenica: “You are now under the protection of the UN forces… I will never abandon you.” A week later he managed to get the first aid convoy to reach the town since November 1992.

Morillon’s very public commitment ratcheted up the pressure on a hesitant UN Security Council to come up with some kind of plan to protect the besieged Bosniak population. When the Serbs resumed their attack, the council declared Srebrenica a “safe area” on 16 April 1993. The UN Resolution bought Srebrenica a respite. A small unit of Canadian peacekeepers (later replaced by a Dutch battalion) now entered the enclave and, intermittently and never in sufficient quantities, humanitarian aid trickled in.

The situation satisfied no one. The Serbs had let Morillon and the Canadians in because they expected the safe area to be demilitarised and eventually evacuated, helped by the appalling living conditions in the enclave (to which Serb control over the influx of humanitarian aid greatly contributed). The Bosniak government refused to contemplate either disarmament or evacuation because doing so made it complicit in the ethnic cleansing of its own people. The Dutch UN troops – undersupplied, underarmed and under-appreciated by Serbs and Bosniaks alike – were caught in the highly uncomfortable middle. An uneasy stalemate ensued.

Slowly, however, the political and military balance began to change. The recalcitrant Serbs found themselves defending very long frontlines, trying to hold on against Bosniak and Croat forces that were arming with covert international (primarily US) help.

After two years of deadlock, in a bid to rationalise frontlines – and with it, strengthen their negotiating position – the Serbs finally decided to clean up the map and seize the eastern enclaves. The campaign was a carefully planned undertaking. On 8 March 1995, the president of the Bosnian Serb Republic, Radovan Karadžić, signed a directive ordering his army to prepare an operation to “create an unbearable situation of total insecurity with no hope of further survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica and Žepa”. In late June, they began a PR offensive to legitimise impending action. On 24 June, Karadžić’s army commander, General Ratko Mladić, complained about the failed demilitarisation and continued raiding by Bosniak forces from Srebrenica. If nothing was done, Mladić would be forced to take matters into his own hands. Three days later his spokesman took the international press, including The New York Times, to the village of Višnjica, raided the day before. No international reaction followed. Five days later, the final touches were put to the military plan of attack. On 6 July, the Bosnian Serb army opened fire on the ‘safe area’.

The Serbs skilfully exploited the UN’s fear of escalation and indecision. They kept their ultimate objective in doubt for as long as possible. Initially proceeding slowly on a limited front with limited forces, they made it appear that they wanted to make a point (once again) about the failed demilitarisation and were not intending to take the whole enclave by force.

The lightly armed 400-or-so Dutch troops had limited means to resist anyway. Their main heavy weapon of last resort was calling in Nato airpower support. However, this weapon was largely neutralised by political hesitation to employ it in sufficient quantity after the Serbs took a number of Dutch soldiers hostage from exposed observation points in the opening days.

Nato’s weapon of last resort against the Serbs was airpower. However, this was neutralised by political hesitation

By the evening of 9 July, Serb forces had inched their way forward to the outskirts of Srebrenica town. They were poised to take the enclave. The next day Nato aircraft took on standby positions over the Adriatic. The Serbs paused. When the planes ran out of fuel and returned to base, they advanced. Dutch troops in their white-painted peacekeeping vehicles then tried to block them by directing small arms fire over the heads of the attacking forces. By now, the day was ending and the Serbs paused again.

A night of feverish activity ensued on the UN side. The Serb objective was clear. Surely, large scale air support was warranted to save the safe area? But what about the possibility of Serb artillery opening up on the defenceless, already panicking population in the enclave in retaliation? What would happen to the Dutch UN soldiers being held hostage? Did not the whole of the UN Protection Force now risk getting embroiled in all-out war with the Serbs?

Eventually a decision was taken for a show of (some) force. A substantial strike package of aircraft took to the air in the early morning, but due to hesitation and confusion in communications, they returned to base by late morning, unused. The Serbs advanced again. As Srebrenica was about to fall, a hastily scrambled pair of F-16s appeared overhead and dropped two bombs. The Serbs issued a swift ultimatum threatening to shell the population and kill the hostages. Further air attacks were called off. The ‘safe area’ had fallen.

Some 40,000 refugees had been forced to flee to Srebrenica as a result of the violent break-up of Yugoslavia

The Dutch now faced the question of what to do with the 40,000 refugees in their care. The majority fled to the main Dutch base at Potočari, several kilometres north of Srebrenica. In the high heat of summer, lacking food, water supplies and sanitation facilities, the next stage in the humanitarian tragedy unfolded. The peacekeepers let several thousand into their compound, an old battery factory, but could not really care for them properly. Many more thousands had to be kept outside the wire, unwillingly, unprotected and fearful of their fate.

Overwhelmed, the Dutch commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Thom Karremans, sought help from the Serbs. In the evening of 11 July, he met twice with General Mladić. The obvious way forward was to organise an orderly evacuation of the refugees. Mladić gladly obliged. In a sign that a carefully prepared operation was getting into gear, only a few hours after Serb soldiers arrived in Potočari in the late morning on 12 July, a fleet of some 60 buses turned up to transport the Bosniak refugees out. Mladić also appeared in person (and was filmed) assuring the refugees they were safe: “Don’t be afraid, just take it easy… No one will harm you.” At three in the afternoon, the first bus left for Bosnian government held territory.

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Worrying signs soon became noticeable, however. The Dutch who had planned to accompany the transports to ensure the safety of the deportees were largely prevented from doing so. They also noticed that relatively few men had fled to Potočari. Those who had were separated from the women and children and prevented from getting on the buses.

Serb military personnel actively searched for what they claimed were ‘war criminals’, a category that seemed to comprise all men, old, young, even disabled. Dutch soldiers witnessed incidental executions of men taking place around the compound and observed larger groups of men – later estimated to have been some 1,700 in number – being transported to nearby Serb-held Bratunac.

The deportation from Potočari was complete by 7pm the next day, 13 July. Some 23,000 people, virtually all women and children, arrived in Kladanj and Tuzla. There the absence of the men was also noticed. What had happened to them?

Fifteen thousand Bosniak men had in fact decided to flee the enclave in a desperate attempt to reach Tuzla by traversing enemy-held territory. In the night of 11 and 12 July, they began the fateful trek from the north-west corner of the enclave. The Bosnian Serbs had not expected this and it took them some hours to notice. But when they did, their action was swift. Although the territory was generally thickly forested, the Bosniaks had to cross open ground around two roads on the way to safety. During the 12th, Bosnian Serb forces started deploying at close, regular intervals along these roads. By late afternoon the next day, they thought they had already captured some 6,000 men.

The exhausted, dishevelled, deadly fearful prisoners were assembled in several places, including a football pitch in Nova Kasaba, a meadow in Sandići, a warehouse in Kravica and a school in Bratunac. Some were executed there, the majority were transported to execution sites further afield. That happened once the buses that had deported their women and children became available. Since the women were driven along the same road the men had to cross, some had seen their menfolk at the collection sites.

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By the 16th, almost all the captured men, some 8,000 in total, were dead and buried. Despite all the signs, the realisation that something terrible had happened was not immediate. The Bosnian Serbs had completed the deportation and massacre in double-quick time because speed was of the essence to stymie any international reaction and possible intervention. The mere absence of the missing men seemed to prove little without the physical evidence of dead bodies. Still, US intelligence analysts began to scour spy plane and satellite imagery for evidence. An intrepid Christian Science Monitor reporter, David Rohde, surreptitiously made his way in mid-August to one possible site identified in photographs: the Nova Kasaba football field. He discovered the first shallow mass grave, with documents scattered around and a decomposed leg still sticking out of the recently disturbed soil. The story began to get out.

The growing realisation that a terrible fate had befallen the missing men and boys from Srebrenica finally stiffened the resolve of the international community to force a settlement to the war. At the end of August, an Anglo-French-Dutch Rapid Reaction Force broke the three-year siege of Sarajevo and Nato aircraft began to extensively bomb Bosnian-Serb targets. The intervention brought all the warring parties to the negotiating table at Dayton in the US. An accord was signed on 21 November and the fighting in Bosnia ended.

To date, more than 7,000 bodies have been exhumed and identified. Most now lie buried in a specially dedicated memorial cemetery in Potočari. The search for the remaining missing and their identification goes on to this day in eastern Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is undertaken by various international organisations with support of the Bosnian government.

Some 50 of the men responsible for the genocide have been convicted by the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and Bosnian and Serbian courts. The most senior perpetrators, including Mladić and Karadžić, are serving life sentences.

Why did the Bosnian Serbs commit so heinous a crime? The question of motive
is not settled. Some think that General Mladić gave the order in a fit of pique, angry at being surprised by the Bosniak men’s attempted escape, and denied a formal surrender. Many more believe that somehow extreme violence is part and parcel of war and especially ethnic war.

Neither theory seems completely plausible. The deliberation and organisation with which the genocide was executed suggest a high degree of design and intent. The speed and efficiency with which the Bosnian Serb forces switched to mass murder mode and the apparent absence of any principled objections by the officer corps involved further underlines this.

In seeking a rationale for the genocide, in addition perhaps to a bureaucratic mindset of following orders, the better answer may be sought in an ideology, widely shared among the Serb military and politicians, that saw the world as divided between competing and antagonistic races. A supposedly naturally existing enmity was taken to justify extreme means to ‘defend’ one’s own race. In the case of Bosnia, that did not necessarily mean committing genocide in the sense of the complete physical elimination of the ethnic group seen as foreign and threatening. It did envisage, however, the group’s complete and permanent removal from the territory that the Serbs claimed as theirs, through extremely violent and systematic persecution and, if necessary, mass murder.

What the Bosnian Serb leadership sought to achieve by killing the men was to make the “survival or life for the inhabitants of Srebrenica” and the rest of eastern Bosnia impossible. By killing the Muslim men they sought to assure that the deported women and children would never return.

For the Bosnian-Serbs, the agenda was to establish an ethnically pure territorial state

That goal was to a large extent achieved. Few surviving Bosniaks have returned to their former homesteads. Srebrenica, and most of eastern Bosnia, is now part of the Republika Srpska, the republic promulgated at the beginning of the war to unify the Serbs in Bosnia. Its borders largely follow the frontlines of late 1995.

Finally, why did the international community not properly protect the ‘safe area’ and stop the genocide? A major reason is that it mostly failed to recognise the conflict for what it was. It could not fathom the extent to which war crimes, up to and including genocide, were a deliberate and calculated means in the pursuit of an extremist political agenda. In this case, that agenda was to establish an ethnically pure territorial state – and in pursuit of that agenda the people of Bosnia would pay a terrible price.

Jan Willem Honig is visiting professor in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He is the author, together with Norbert Both, of Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (Penguin, 1996)

This article was first published in the August 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine