In October 1995, Human Rights Watch issued a report on events that in July 1995 took place in and around Srebrenica. The report is remarkable for its glaring omissions (e.g. the systematic and often lethal violation of the human rights of the Serbian residents of Srebrenica during the preceding three years, which evidently escaped HRW’s attention) as well as a version of events in July 1995 which purports to be documented but is based completely on information from anonymous and unverifiable sources.
With all its obvious defects, however, the HRW account is noteworthy for accentuating casualties suffered by the 28th Division column during its breakout from Srebrenica to Tuzla, rather than executions of prisoners, as the principal cause of human losses after the fall of Srebrenica. HRW does not deal with the issue of how the considerable combat casualties, which its anonymous informants describe, can be attributed to anyone as a war crime.
Eventually, of course, they did get it right. In its Srebrenica verdicts, the Hague Tribunal realized the inoperability of the column approach, downgrading column combat casualties and inflating execution figures. So did the Sarajevo authorities, whose military and intelligence analysts failed to notice “Srebrenica genocide” for a whole year after it allegedly happened.
- “Balkan Battlegrounds” — a CIA account of the conflict in the Former Yugoslavia
- Lt. Col. Vinko Pandurević’s July 15 1995 Special Combat Report