Srebrenica and Bratunac - how the Bosnian war is still seen differently by each of the sides involved

15 years ago 7000 Bosniak men of 'military age', meaning 15 years upwards, were killed by Bosnian Serb forces over a period of 5 days, marking the worst massacre in European history since World War 2. Commemoration of the event is usually marked with the burial of newly identified bodies. Most significantly is that this year the president of Serbia, Boris Tadić paid tribute to the victims by his presence at the ceremony held yesterday, inciting mixed feelings from Bosniaks and Serbs. Nevertheless, the Serbian government's acknowledgement of the atrocity is important for the region and avoiding a repeat of such madness ever happening again.

Unfortunately, Tadić and his brave actions are being overshadowed with Serbs who are focusing on other events. While Bosniaks and the World draw attention on the 11th July to events that happened in Sreberenica in 1995, many Serbs place greater focus on a massacre of 70 Serbs by Bosniaks in villages around the town of Bratunac, on the 12th July 1992. In commemoration ceremonies mirroring those held down the road in Srebrenica the day before, local Serb leaders strived to point out what they see as 'selective justice'. Bosnian Serb president Milorad Dodik said in a speech that he doesn't dispute that Bosniaks perished in Srebrenica, but his main point is that if the Srebrenica massacre is considered 'genocide', then equal footing should be given to what happened to Serbs in the area in 1992. Meanwhile, Serbian media on the whole has given scant reporting about the 15th anniversary of Srebrenica, instead highlighting how over 3000 Serbs were killed in the whole region of Bosnia bordering Serbia during the war.

What is important and, ultimately, worrying is what is not reported and how the 'facts' are presented. Essentially, in the Serb view of events, we have the persistent elements of victimhood, one of the core natures of the Serbian national psyche, and injustice perpetuated. Many Serbs saw, and still see, themselves as hopeless and sole victims of the Balkan Wars, like they perceive to have been in all past Balkan conflicts. They believe the World is against them and that noone understands or cares for their precarious plight. The sense that justice is selective is consistent in their belief that there is a International War Crimes Tribunal bias against Serbs (far more Serbs have been convicted for war crimes than any other Balkan nationality). However, this thinking is as delusional as their view on events.

What is hypocritical is how the Serbs accuse the World of 'selective justice' when they themselves are as selective on their view of the past. The fact constantly rammed by the Serbian media is that 3000 Serbs died during the war in the region around Srebrenica. What they conveniently leave out is that this number of deaths was spread out over a 4.5 year period. Now compare that to 7000 Bosniaks killed by Serbs in Srebrenica over 5 days in July 1995! Dodik, in his speech yesterday, alluded that the only reason why Srebrenica happened, whose number of deaths he believes is greatly exaggerated, was only in response to the earlier genocidal actions of the Bosniaks in 1992 against Serbs. So, harking to a primitive eye-for-an-eye ideal, what happened in Srebrenica was just 'self-defence'. But here the Serbs yet again display a hypocritical stance. As I reported the other day involving a drunk Serb climbing a minaret in the nearby Bosnian city of Zvornik, the Serbs, led by paramilitary thugs like the infamous Arkan, successfully 'ethnically cleansed' some cities of eastern Bosnia of Bosniaks in April-May 1992, 2 months before the massacre of Serbs in the area by Bosniak paramilitaries led by Naser Orić. Many innocent civilians of all nationalities were killed in these actions, such as the 31 Bosniaks in Bratunac killed on the 12th May 1992, but mentioning this is not good for the psyche and tarnishes what would be otherwise the victimhood status that many Serbs continue to believe and have as justification for consequent actions that, in all purposes, are best described as war crimes.

What is worrying about this is that it was this type of historical cherry-picking and black-and-white victimhood which led the Balkans into war in the first place in the early 1990s. That 15 years after such senseless destruction that the fundamentals which caused it have yet to be learnt does not provide a good perspective for the future. As is often the case in the Balkans, as time goes past, the finer details of such artrocities are blurred and embellished, an element of myth is added along with a growing sense of rage and revenge that ultimately is encouraged and exploited by unscrupulous types fuelled foremost by self-interest.

What needs to be done is that everyone must recognise that everyone suffered - parents lost children, children - parents, lives destroyed, regardless of nationality. As the first foreign minister of Macedonia said to Belgian TV in 1993, what the Balkans produces excessively is history and every Balkan nation claims that history has not been too kind to them. What I say is that all the Balkans, not just the Serbs, needs to get over the whole victim complex, admit that everyone was guilty in some way, build a new bridge over the River Drina and move on. To repeat the same mistakes as before will only lead to a path of what should far too familiar destruction.

To give a better insight into the madness of the Bosnian War, a great book to read is 'They Wouldn't Hurt A Fly' by Croatian writer Slavenka Drakulić. The chapter about the Srebrenica massacre from the eyewitness report by one of the reluctant Serb soldiers ordered to kill then is frightening but human.