There can be no lasting peace without justice anywhere and far more so in the trouble prone Balkans and Bosnia in particular…
It’s been fifteen years since we huddled together in disbelief at the extent of the genocide taking place near Sarajevo where we were working our humanitarian missions. A long fifteen years. Years that take the breath away when one thinks of how much we’ve done and yet how little we’ve achieved.
Working with the UN has always been a disappointment at the end of the day. Yet on the fateful days of July when the yellow turncoats of the powerful UN garrison of the city of Srebrenica delivered the citizens to their assassins, by signing them over to the hands of the bloodthirsty and uncivilized Serbs, I vowed never again…
Srebrenica had been declared a UN safe zone, to which thousands of Bosnians – mainly Muslims – had fled during the 1992-95 Bosnian war. When the advancing Serbs asked the UN army of Dutch professionals, well trained and well armed soldiers, to give them control of the town – insanely – the Dutch agreed. These hugely equipped and well entrenched, European fighting men and protectors of the more than 30,000 civilians, simply walked away…. sealing the horrible fate of all the Peoples of Srebrenica.
The Dutch commander and his soldiers, along with their UN superiors all the way to the top – the very top of the United Nations – that were fully informed of the decision to abandon the civilians in the hands of the Serbs, are liable for the Genocide. Because they signed the death warrants for the people of Srebrenica just as surely as the murderous thugs Radko Mladic and his dogs, executed them in cold blood.
Incidentally and conveniently for the UN, Radko Mladic – the Serb architect of the massacre - has never been brought to justice and thus the complicity of the UN hasn’t been exposed in the open court yet. but that will change. Soon…
There was a lot the UN’s heavily armed and well trained professionally tough, Dutch troops could have done. Yet they did nothing.
Instead, the famously professional and effective UN Dutch contigent of army roughnecks just left. They abandoned their duty after informing and getting the consent of their superiors, after negotiations with the assassin Radko Mladic. They negotiated succesfully, to ensure their own safety, and to sign off, the certain demise of the citizens and innocent civilians who had sought shelter and sanctuary under the UN’s blue and white flag. That was the safe heaven the UN provided same as the compromised safety of the UN refugee camps of Sudan and Darfur… That infamous day of July 10th, the protectors simply fled Srebrenica leaving their victims behind.
Although, fighting and protecting the civilians – was their mandate – they shirked from that responsibility and turned tail and walked away. Yellow stains on them all for eternity. But alas these men[?] they weren’t made of the sterner stuff that makes men of those who guard Thermopylae when the history gives them their only chance to prove their metal.
And that was the chance given the UN too. And they blew it. They killed their chances for relevance and moral high ground, along with some 30,000 civilian men – old, young and even children – assassinated with primitive implements and western bought bullets. For this, the blood stain rests with the UN squarely, and their incompetence to block Evil, when all they had to do was to raise their hand and say ”Halt”. Say ”HALT” to the marauding chicken-men of the Serbian military bent on their murderous enterprise.
A few days later, we were the first people to see the extent of the genocidal massacres, amid the fury unleashed from the Evil that followed the disgraceful withdrawal of the UN forces from Srebrenica.
That was the day of my Maturity… July 13th 1995. A couple of days after the genocidal massacre of Srebrenica we walked there and saw the footprint of Evil incarnate.
Staring at Evil square in the eyes made me a man – more so than any age could make anyone. It teaches how ”Violence begets violence”. And the futility of the mass violence that characterises the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 9/11, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, human rights abuses in Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, Gaza, and international terrorism can all be understood in terms of strong psychological motivators that inevitably create and sustain cycles of violence. Violence begets violence. Always. No exceptions…
Yet visiting Srebrenica’s freshly dug mass graves my humanity revolted asking for justice. My spirit wrestled with the reality of Life and Death and anger vs Justice. Still Justice prevailed in my heart and fully knowing this to be self evident – I chose to wait. Because it is always that Justice does take time but in the end prevails – among the ruins – left behind by the unjust.
And it taught me a few lessons about the UN too and the faulty job – it always does – when the stakes are high. The endemic corruption and the ”wasta” method of favoritism in the hirings and appointments at any level of responsibility, make the UN commanders unreliable at best and often criminal at worst. With enough incompetence to put military intelligence to shame… the UN needs to reinvent itself ASAP.
That was when I understood Human Rights, not as an abstraction, but as a matter of Life and Death. Truth and Justice are always at the beginning of the issue, and when we start tearing away that fabric of flimsy cloth the blind Justice wears and we violate the truth, we best be ready for all Evils to follow. This is what happens when the UN allows unjust wars to be perpetrated by the ”mighty” on flimsy pretexts; and then Justice isn’t delivered against those leaders responsible, surely the winds of evil run through us for what seems an eternity. And even – when we return to our senses – when the untruths that manufactured the people’s consent to war, have been uncovered, and we still persist on not meriting Justice, we best be ready for the chicken coming home to roost…
Pandora’s box isn’t closed easily, once the nasty fates, and the dark winds have escaped. A bottling up again of the winds and ill humours, might be possible by the people bringing pressures upon the UN and national governments equally. People need to see how their own complacency, is interpreted and used as consent to unjust wars. And how even their consent is easily manufactured through disinformation and outright lies and raising of the passions. But the UN is still the watchdog on behalf of the global community. And when the UN is so heavily corrupted and seemingly asleep and turns tail and goes away hiding like in Srebrenica and in the eve of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we are all to suffer long term and not just the immediate victims. And it is then that all the patriotic murders occur wholesale. For this is both a moral issue and one that concerns the safety of millions. Escalating cycles of mass violence might well lead to nuclear terrorism at some stage. It is often said that the first casualty of war is the truth.
I many cases the untruth is the bellweather of war too.
Still the only antidote to this virus of corruption, is a better understanding of the truth of what wars and other forms of mass violence are really all about. And it is this education the UN is best to focus on as it looks for a mission out of it’s floundering relevance. When weapons dropped from the sky in the name of someone’s national security, create a desire for vengeful action amid the people bombed by drones indiscriminately, don’t call them terrorists. For they are just patriots fighting back for their family and home… just like the colonists fought the English King’s redcoats for their families and homes. Remember that next time the word terrorist slips through your lips. George Washington was named thus by the English too.
So these days when we want to apportion blame for Srebrenica, we shouldn’t just look at the Serbs but also at the UN commanders all the way to the top of the hierarchy. They were all complicit in the massacre and have to be held to account if they and the UN are to be trusted ever again.
Because Southern Sudan is another Srebrenica today, and next year, same as is Darfur and Gaza and Sri Lanka’s Tamil people’s towns and elsewhere. And it’s Srebrenica that teaches us a valuable lesson for the wider world: Calling others names and pointing out our differences as a prelude to justify their extermination, via war and violence, is the root of all Evil. Our lopsided western understanding is further undermined by psychological strategies, movies, television {fans of 24 beware of your brainwashing}, political simpleton agendas and demagogues, which not only cause mass agreement to engage in war but also aggravate vengeful feelings in the victims of those unjust wars. And of course due to so called ”patriot reasons”, also lead to curtailment of civil liberties and human rights in democratic societies in the name of national security. Simply, characterising adversaries as fanatics, religious extremists or terrorists, hell-bent on destroying western values maximizes public fear and prevents an understanding of the psychology behind acts of terror, thereby bolstering public support for war. Euphemisms such as “collateral damage” and “aggressive interrogation techniques” serve to hide the horrors of war and human rights abuses from the public eye. And then You have Srebrenica in the heart of Europe at the year of the Christian Lord 1995 – a five short years – before the second Millenium from his birth. Have we lost those teachings somewhere on our road to greed, addiction to energy riches and comforts?
Who but the UN, can stand idle for another massacre like this?
You and me and so many others….
Yet the UN has the professional responsibility for preventing just such atrocities. And it fails wholesale being engaged in window dressing, like Millenium Development goals and other euphemisms…. always forgetting that when the Peace is violated somewhere – it is torn everywhere. In a globalised world where images of these nasty brute and unjust wars and human rights abuses are instantly transmitted to people’s living rooms, the effects of trauma and human need for retribution cannot be discounted . Evidence suggests that even witnessing such events second-hand leads to blowback. The intelligent psychologists recognize that responses to the indiscriminate drone bombings are the failure of states like Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen and largely Pakistan too. Every time innocents like those n Srebrenica are slaughtered the cause of Peace is rendered asunder.
The UN hasn’t apportioned blame nor investigated it’s serious Human Rights violations, complicity and failure of responsibility and even collaboration in the killings of these civilians… then and even now.
It’s high time to do just that. Fifteen years have been far too much to wait for Justice. Let the flames of justice purge the sins of the UN for it is a most useful institution going forward in this uncertain world.
And that might be the purgatory the UN has to go through to become the visible Institution of Peace it’s founders aspired for it to be. This might be the crucible moment for all of them weasels hiding behind the cloaks of ”Blue”.
Don’t let the chance of the UN cleaning up it’s act go ”WASTA” again fifteen years after the facts.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
For if the UN doesn’t embark on this Justice and Reconciliation with Truth effort, they are proving the voices that call them irrelevant as correct. And History will relegate them to the dustbin and replace them with other effective Institutions. Because their consistent failures to block the mighty from making their cause right, have made our world a far worse place than if they had simply done their mission well and executed upon their simple mandate to protect the innocents.
PS2:
On the anniversary of the Srebrenica massacres, Barack Obama described the Srebrenica massacre as “a stain on our collective conscience” as hundreds of victims of the 1995 atrocity were buried and admitted the failure of the international community to protect the enclave, and said those responsible must be pursued. Let’s see if this includes the UN responsible ones…
PS3:
Hasan and Suhra Mahic, both in their 80s, were finally burying their sons Fuad and Suad after fifteen long years, now in 2010. ”I would have preferred that all of us have been killed together, then we would not have had to live through this,” Hasan said, at the burial site of Srebrenica on the anniversary of the massacre a couple of days ago.
Ramiza Gurdic was burying her son Mehrudin, alongside her husband and another son already in the cemetery. ”How can you forget, how can you forgive? I think about them every day. I go to bed with the pain and I wake up with the sadness.”
A local spiritual man said: ”Civilisation does not begin with the burial of a Bosnian. Civilisation begins with a birth of a Bosnian not afraid of the next genocide.”
And I say: Can we trust the UN to carry forward that important work?
