[The question raised by Prof. Maher in this exclusive comment for our website: When did Srebrenica start being referred to as a “massacre” and, eventually, “genocide? is of the utmost importance. If it was not fairly soon after the event, what explains the tardiness to call an alleged spade a spade? Was the initial strategic purpose of Srebrenica to provide propaganda cover for the NATO/Croatian Operation Storm, which began just a month later and, in addition to a comparable death toll, resulted also in the expulsion of a quarter of a million refugees? That, at least, is the implication of former U.S. ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith’s remark that, in terms of the Bosnian conflict “endgame,” Croatia’s Operation Storm in 1995 against Serb-held areas in the Krajina would not have been feasible had not “Srebrenica prepared the ground for it, morally and psychologically”. Was the Srebrenica narrative expanded to the level of genocide and then generic pretext for “humanitarian” R2P interventions later, only when its full range as a political and propaganda tool was grasped?]
When did commentators first start using the catch phrase, “The Srebrenica Massacre [of thousands of Muslim men and boys]”? When did the “Srebrenica Massacre” story break? No reports from 11 July 1995 and the immediately ensuing days and weeks refer to “the massacre of 8,000 (or 7,000 etc.) Muslim men and boys”. At a US State Department briefing over three months after the purported event, on 27 October 1995, Nicholas Burns told the assembled reporters:
“We believe that several hundred—and perhaps as many as 1,000 or more — men and boys were separated from the refugees by the Bosnian Serb military forces. These are Muslim and Croatian men and boys. We don’t know what happened to them…” (Federal News Service)
I consulted the LexisNexis search engine for reports dated between 10 July 1995 and the end of 1995 of any massacre at Srebrenica, using the parameters:
[Srebrenica AND massacre]
[Srebrenica AND missing]
[Srebrenica AND 7000 OR 8000]
[7000-8000 men and boys]…
Not a single report in the media. The catch phrase “Srebrenica massacre” appears only months after the purported event, with seeming premonitions that something big was about to happen at Srebrenica close to this time.
11th July. Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati in a message to the UN secretary-general, has asked for immediate action to prevent a massacre of the defenceless people of Srebrenica by the Serb rebels [Islamic Republic of Iran Network 1, Teheran, in Persian].
From the Bosnian front there was no mention of a massacre having taken place in reports of mid-July 1995. For example, Chris Hedges in the New York Times of 18 July 1995 reported that thousands of armed Muslim fighters “slipped” through Serb lines under fire and arriving safe in Tuzla, held by Muslim forces (and a US garrison). 3,000-4,000 Muslim soldiers fled eastern Bosnia and crossed the Drina to Serbia to surrender to the Serbian Army for their own safety.
On 11 August 1995 Madeleine Albright, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, told a closed session of the Security Council that 2,000 to 2,700 missing Bosnians from the Srebrenica enclave might have been shot by the Bosnian Serbs.– She did not use the formulation “Srebrenica massacre”. “United Nations official estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 Muslim men are still missing in the wake of the Srebrenica and Žepa assaults.” Missing, not massacred.
The news would have still been hot when Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote an Op-Ed piece in The New Republic of 7 August 1995, under the headline: AFTER SREBRENICA. Zbig says only that something awful “might” happen, never that a “Srebrenica massacre” had occurred. That catch phrase does not appear until weeks after the alleged event. It will not be found in the press until the American-sponsored Croatian “Storm” (Oluja) on Serb Krajina in August-September 1995.
The “Srebrenica Massacre” is a hoax on a par with the Tonkin Gulf Incident (L. B. Johnson 1964). Nurse Nayirah (George H. W. Bush 1990), The Srebrenica Massacre” is a hoax on a par with the Tonkin Gulf incident (L.B. Johnson 1964), Nurse Nayirah (George H. W. Bush 1990), Sender Gleiwitz Provocation (A. Hitler 1939).
Professor Emeritus John Peter Maher Ph.D.
My dear friend Peter Maher is always on target with his evidence. That said, what seems to get lost in the media and State Department shuffle is any mention that a week after the fall of Srebrenica, John Pomfret of the Washington Post reported seeing some “4,000 men and boys from Srebrenica who made their way through the forest for safety in Tuzla.” The hideous numbers game played by the Bosnian Government and the American press is astonishingly immoral.
If indeed Pomfret can account for 4,000 alleged victims, that another 3,000 to 4,000 Muslims surrendered to the Serbian army and 8,000 were “massacred” that means 15,000+ Muslim troops were being housed in Srebrenica in violation of the “Safe-Haven” rules of engagement. We know for a fact that Naser Oric, Army Commander of the Bosnian Army and his band of goons and thugs used the safety of NATO protection to plunder and burn dozens of Serbian villages that surrounded Srebrenica. Each night they left Srebrenica to murder hundreds of Serbian women and children killing over 3,400 victims—then returning to the “Safe-Haven” for protection… The omission of these 3,400 Serbian victims continues to be totally ignored. If it is “Genocide to kill 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica” then it is equally Genocide to murder 3,400 Serbian women and children in which Naser Oric actually captured his decapitating war crimes on video that was shown to Canadian journalist, Bill Schiller who said he was forced to sit in Oric’s living room to watch his hideous slaughter that Schiller called: “Naser Oric’s Greatest Hits.”