Thirty years since the Srebrenica massacre: the crime of the restoration of capitalism

This July marks the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, in which Bosnian Serb military, police and paramilitary units killed around 8,000 Bosniak men, mostly civilians and prisoners of war. In terms of its scale and the number of victims, the Srebrenica massacre is one of the largest single crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This crime has become synonymous with the conflict itself and the series of war crimes that occurred during the civil war.

[Originally published at crvenakritika.org]

The disintegration of Yugoslavia

The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader context of the situation in Yugoslavia at the start of the 1990s. At the beginning of the last decade of the 20th century, the Yugoslav bureaucracy found itself under pressure from the contradictions that had accumulated over the previous decades. 

A number of factors led to a stagnation and slowdown in economic growth that prepared the ground for the gradual abolition of all the economic and social achievements of the Yugoslav revolution. These included: the impossibility of building socialism in one country; rampant corruption and mismanagement; the strengthening of market tendencies which created an ever-widening gap between – as well as within – the more developed and the less developed republics; growing tensions between the bureaucracies of the republics after Tito's death; and the pressure of world capitalism.

These factors led to an economic and political crisis in the late 1980s, which could only be resolved through a political revolution which would put power in the hands of the working class, or through the restoration of capitalism. However, without a political formation calling for a return to the original ideas of communism on the basis of Marxism, the working class of Yugoslavia could not find an adequate political expression for its pro-Yugoslav and socialist aspirations. 

The League of Communists of Yugoslavia was discredited and alienated from the masses. The Yugoslav bureaucracy had long since distanced itself from the working class and most socialist ideals. With the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the USSR, the path to market reforms as a way of maintaining the position and privileges of the bureaucracy – with the potential for them to become owners of the means of production – was too tempting. A large layer of the bureaucracy already had ties to western imperialism and aspired to live the life of the bourgeoisie in the capitalist world.

In the process of resolving the crisis, local bureaucracies each had their own vision of how to restore capitalism. What they had in common was the desire to break the unity of Yugoslav workers and undermine the numerous strikes and mobilisations of the late 1980s. Their solution was found in the nationalist and chauvinist propaganda that prepared the ground for the brutal war of the 1990s.

With market reforms and the transformation of economic relations, the appetites of the bureaucracies in the different republics grew, to the point that they could only be satisfied by violent conflict / Image: public domain

The centralism and hegemony of the Serbian bureaucracy were paralleled by the separatist aspirations of the bureaucracies of the other republics, especially in Slovenia and Croatia. Centralism and separatism fed into each other, creating the conditions for the explosive destruction of the foundations of a common federal state. 

With market reforms and the transformation of economic relations, the appetites of the bureaucracies in the different republics grew, to the point that they could only be satisfied by violent conflict. The Serbian bureaucracy, led by Slobodan Milošević, felt bold enough to try to establish itself as the dominant power over the other bureaucracies within Yugoslavia. To do this, they intended to exploit Serbia’s dominant position as the largest republic within the federation, with Serbs constituting the largest group within Yugoslavia and controlling the largest portion of the Yugoslav People’s Army.

The division of the territory and social wealth created during the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) could only be carried out by gangster methods. In ethnically mixed territories this meant fratricidal civil wars that led to the active participation of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) in the conflicts.

Although both the federal bureaucracy and the bureaucracies in the individual republics were directly responsible for the breakup of the Yugoslav state – as well as the technocrats in state-owned enterprises that had allied themselves with the profiteers, criminal scum and nationalist elements within each republic – imperialist powers played an active role in the process from the very beginning. 

While the then European Economic Community (EEC) tried to carry out the breakup of Yugoslavia and the restoration of capitalism in a more peaceful way, German imperialism openly pushed for the policy of separating Slovenia and Croatia. It was certain that such a policy in an ethnically mixed area could only lead to escalating violence, which is precisely what happened. 

American imperialism, which following the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in the early 1990s became the global superpower, also played a role. The criminal role of imperialism would continue during the war, and through its manoeuvres with the warring parties it would become an accomplice in numerous war crimes.

War in Bosnia and Herzegovina

According to official data from the 1991 census of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (SR BiH), out of a total population of 4,377,033, Muslims (today Bosniaks) made up 44 percent (1,902,956), Serbs 32 percent (1,366,104) and Croats 17 percent (760,852). Due to its ethnic mix, the SR BiH was often seen as ‘Yugoslavia in miniature’ and was considered the ‘most Yugoslav’ republic. 

According to the 1991 census, the number of people who declared themselves Yugoslavs was 5.5 percent (242,682), while the percentage of mixed marriages reached 27 percent. In addition to this ethnic composition, the ethnic borders and territorial majorities could not be easily determined. This was especially pronounced in urban areas. Even a brief overview of the data at the time showed how catastrophic the consequences of violence and war would be for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As early as 1990, nationalist parties began to form: the Party of Democratic Action led by Alija Izetbegović, the Serbian Democratic Party led by Radovan Karadžić, and the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina led by Stjepan Kljujić. In the first multi-party elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1990, these three parties ran as an ‘anti-communist coalition’ against the reformist Ante Marković and the League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Having been influenced by the events in Eastern Europe in 1992, the latter would later ‘reform’ into the Social Democratic Party of Bosnia and Herzegovina and advocate a ‘civic’ and ‘multiethnic’ solution to the crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

In the 1990 elections, the nationalist parties came out as the victors, with support for these parties being particularly pronounced among Serbs and Croats, while Muslims opted for ‘civic’ (non-nationalist) options to a relatively greater extent.

The beginning of the siege of Sarajevo interrupted a series of mass pro-Yugoslav demonstrations / Image: public domain

Both before and during the war, the ideological machinery of the nationalist parties, through the media and the church, worked to incite hatred between peoples and spread fear. This resulted in the intensification of the war crimes that were committed, and their justification by the brutality and threats of the other side. 

In particular, Serbian nationalists exerted a prominent influence with the belief that the position of the Serbian people in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina faced an existential threat. Serbian nationalists exploited the collective historical trauma of the Serbs in these areas, who had lived under the terror of Nazi collaborators in the Independent State of Croatia. The authorities in Belgrade and Serbian nationalists promoted this memory heavily in their propaganda, thus rallying the Serbian people around their policies.

With the outbreak of war in Croatia in 1991, it was inevitable that violence would spread to the ethnically-mixed territories of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the official date of the beginning of the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina is considered to be 6 April 1992. This was when the siege of Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs began. But 6 April was only the culmination of a series of violent incidents that began after the referendum on 1 March 1992, which declared the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This referendum was marked by the boycott by the Bosnian Serbs, who demanded to stay in what remained of Yugoslavia. 

The violent incidents following the referendum were mostly carried out by criminal groups. This included the murder of a Serbian wedding party on 1 March 1992, by a group led by Sarajevo-based criminal Ramiz Delalić – known as Ćelo. This period also saw members of the Croatian armed forces carry out an attack against Serbian civilians in the village of Sijekovac near Bosanski Brod. There were also attacks against Muslim civilians, for example after the capture of Bijeljina by Serbian paramilitaries loyal to infamous warlord Željko Ražnatović, better known as Arkan. .

The beginning of the siege of Sarajevo interrupted a series of mass pro-Yugoslav demonstrations, the occupation of the National Assembly building and the proclamation of the Committee of National Salvation, which aimed at preventing a fratricidal conflict. These mass demonstrations were a blow to the policies of all three nationalist parties and had to be stopped by Serbian snipers and violent attacks by criminals within the city.

What followed was nearly four years of the most brutal conflict on European soil since the end of World War II. It was a civil war fought between three sides, during which there was even a conflict within the Bosniak forces, as the central Bosniak authorities in Sarajevo fought the autonomous Muslim region in Krajina controlled by Fikret Abdić.

In the first years of the war, the Serbian side would prevail, at one point controlling over 60 percent of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The reason for this was Serbian President Slobodan Milošević's active support for the Serbian regime within Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the seizure of weapons and equipment from the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) that had been handed to the Serbian forces within Bosnia and Herzegovina (VRS) after the JNA’s withdrawal from the territory. 

This resulted in a series of war crimes by the VRS and Serbian paramilitary groups. These included the massacre in and around Prijedor in 1992, as well as numerous crimes against the Muslim population across eastern Bosnia – in Zvornik, Bratunac, Višegrad, Foča and finally Srebrenica. Alongside many other tragedies, the VRS carried out the infamous bombing of Tuzla, and the almost four-year siege of Sarajevo during which over 14,000 people, mostly civilians, died.

After the signing of the Washington Agreement on 18 March, 1994, under pressure from the USA, a ceasefire was reached between the Bosniak and Croatian forces. After that, American imperialism and the NATO pact became more actively involved in the war in order to politically, diplomatically and militarily defeat the Serbian forces. 

This was ultimately achieved with the defeat of the autonomous Serbian regions in Croatia, the ethnic cleansing of over 200,000 Serbs from Croatia, and the defeat of the areas of western Bosnia that were under the control of Serbian forces and inhabited by a majority Serb population. 

These military defeats forced the Serbian forces to make concessions that culminated in the cessation of hostilities and the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement, which was finalised on 21 November 1995, and ratified in Paris on 14 December of the same year. This ended a senseless war that claimed nearly 100,000 lives. Of the total number of victims, 66 percent were Bosniaks, 25 percent were Serbs, and eight percent were Croats. Bosniaks were the only group among whom more civilians died than soldiers. They accounted for 81.4 percent of the total civilian victims of the conflict, although they only made up 43.7 percent of the country's population. To this must be added almost two million refugees and displaced people due to ethnic cleansing and the hostilities.

The Srebrenica massacre

During most of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Srebrenica area was part of the so-called safe zone established by the United Nations in 1993. These towns and territories were placed under the protection of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR). The safe zones were mainly established in eastern Bosnia and were intended to serve as enclaves and humanitarian corridors for Bosniak refugees fleeing territories that were under military attack and subject to ethnic cleansing by the VRS. The safe zone was established around Srebrenica on 16 April 1993, while the safe zones around Žepa, Goražde, Sarajevo, Tuzla and Bihać were established on 6 May of the same year.

The Srebrenica enclave would remain surrounded by VRS units until its fall, as the troops attempted to exhaust the enclave by indirect means, such as stopping humanitarian aid convoys and supply vehicles for the Dutch battalion of the UN forces stationed in Srebrenica. Bosnian Serb forces also cut off water and electricity, further worsening the situation for the population, and by early 1995 the situation had become unbearable due to food and medicine shortages.

Inside the enclave were poorly armed units of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina under the command of Naser Orić, alongside between 50,000 and 60,000 Bosniak refugees who had been expelled to Srebrenica from other parts of eastern Bosnia. The humanitarian situation in Srebrenica rapidly deteriorated, but it did not lead to the VRS’ desired goal of getting the Bosniak population to leave the enclave. 

The Bosniak authorities in Sarajevo also did not want the evacuation of Srebrenica, as the enclave provided a distraction for a significant number of Serb forces in this part of the territory. The VRS' stranglehold on the population in Srebrenica also had political and propaganda value for Sarajevo. This led to dissatisfaction and resentment among the population within the enclave towards the Bosniak central authorities, as well as open criticism of the military leadership within the city, as a result of which Naser Orić and other commanders were dismissed. Thus, the enclave was militarily neutered directly before the start of the Serbian offensive in the summer of 1995.

On 11 July, VRS forces under the command of Ratko Mladić entered Srebrenica, which the civilian population had already fled / Image: Evstafiev Mikhail, Wikimedia Commons

The VRS began preparations for the attack on the Srebrenica enclave in the spring of 1995, acting on the directive of Radovan Karadžić. The original plan did not envision the complete capture of the enclave, but only its southern part. This was intended to cut off access to the village of Žepa, and thus reduce the territory of the enclave in a way that would make life impossible for its inhabitants. 

The offensive of the Serbian forces began on 5 July 1995. This was motivated by the VRS’ defeats in western Bosnia and the beginning of the Bosniak-Croat offensive that would culminate in Operation Storm and the fall of the Serbian territories in Croatia. The enclaves in eastern Bosnia, although poorly equipped militarily, kept the attention of a number of Serbian forces. This was a significant disadvantage at a time when military needs required the allocation of these forces to areas of western Bosnia that were threatened by the advance of the Bosniak-Croat armies.

Encouraged by the speed of their advance into the enclave, as well as the lack of an adequate response from UNPROFOR, Radovan Karadžić issued an order on 9 July to continue the operation and liquidate the Srebrenica enclave. On 11 July, VRS forces under the command of Ratko Mladić entered Srebrenica, which the civilian population had already fled. The refugees were mostly in and around the UN camp in Potočari, while smaller groups of soldiers from the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina gathered alongside civilians in the north of the enclave to attempt a breakthrough towards Bosniak-controlled Tuzla.

Over the next ten days, VRS units, police and paramilitary formations, such as the infamous ‘Scorpions’ from Serbia, would begin mass executions of Bosniak men. The bulk of the slaughter would be carried out on prisoners of war, who were captured as they tried to break out of the encirclement. This constituted around 6,000 of those killed. The rest of those killed, around 2,000 men, were those separated from the women and children in Potočari who were transferred by bus to territory controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Later, in order to hide the crime, between August and November 1995, Bosnian Serb forces moved the bodies of those killed to different graves. By moving the bodies, it became difficult to identify the victims, as well as to determine when, how and where they were killed.

In the coming months, the crime in Srebrenica would serve as an excuse for the escalation of western imperialism and NATO’s intervention on the side of the Bosniak-Croat armies and the further occupation of territory that had been held by Serbian forces. This forced the authorities in Serb-controlled Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the authorities in Serbia itself, to come to the negotiating table in late 1995. 

Under pressure from the imperialist powers, the war eventually ended with the ethnic division of the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Western imperialism used the same tactics in Bosnia and Herzegovina that it used in the First Gulf War, the wars in wider Yugoslavia, and the series of military interventions around the world in the following years. Humanitarian catastrophe, war crimes and ethnic cleansing are used as excuses for invasions that can cement the military presence of imperialist forces in a region. The same methods would be used in the case of Kosovo in 1999, and the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

The crime of Srebrenica today

The massacre of Bosniak civilians and prisoners in the Srebrenica enclave in July 1995 truly constitutes a war crime. Factors such as the organised mass executions, the separation of women and children from men, and the relocation of graves in order to hide the extent of the crime, certainly suggest that the political and military leadership of the Serb authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina knew about and ordered such actions. 

The methodical implementation of the crimes, and the number of victims, refute the arguments of Serbian nationalists and the current Serb authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, that these were isolated incidents and acts of retaliation for crimes against Serbs. It does not require the verdicts of international criminal courts under the control of imperialism to know the true nature of these crimes.

Yet for the past thirty years, Srebrenica has remained an open wound that is cynically used for political purposes by the ruling class.

On the one hand, Serbian nationalists and the regime in Banja Luka [the Serb authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina] – under the leadership of Serb nationalist Milorad Dodik – have been justifying, downplaying or increasingly completely denying the crimes committed by Serb forces and paramilitary formations in July 1995. Denial of the crimes of Srebrenica is a regular part of electoral campaigns, in an attempt to create unity among the Serb population and appease Serbian nationalists. Srebrenica is a central pillar of the myth promoted by the regimes in Banja Luka and Belgrade, that the Serbian people are subject to an unjust global conspiracy that presents an existential threat to their nation.

On the other hand, Bosniak political elites use Srebrenica not only to score political points, but also as a way to put pressure on the Serbian authorities within the country, in their pursuit of greater centralisation in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This, in the eyes of the Bosniak ruling class, is the only path to justice for the crimes committed against the Bosniak people during the war. Yet such a policy could only be achieved with the help of imperialism.

An attempt to unilaterally implement this policy would only open up new ethnic conflicts in the Balkans and potentially push the working people in the direction of another insane slaughterhouse for the narrow and profiteering interests of the Bosniak, Serbian and Croat ruling elites. 

The recent indictment against Milorad Dodik has pushed the country into its greatest political crisis since the end of the war / Image: DEMOKRATSKA STRANKA DS, Wikimedia Commons

The recent indictment against Milorad Dodik, who has been charged with defying the decisions of Christian Schmidt – the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina imposed by the Dayton Agreement – has pushed the country into its greatest political crisis since the end of the war. Imperialist maneuvering only fuels chauvinistic tendencies and feeds separatist aspirations among the Serbian and Croatian populations. This, in turn, enables both Milorad Dodik and Bosnian Croat leader Dragan Čović to present themselves as the sole guarantors of the survival of Serbs and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

By repeatedly emphasising their victimhood during the war, the Bosniak elites present themselves as protectors of the Bosniak people, while in fact they are doing so in order to defend their privileges and divert attention from economic and social misery. This additionally serves to conceal the culpability of the Bosniak wartime leadership in treating the Srebrenica enclave purely as a tactical asset and doing nothing to defend it from Serbian forces. This was done because such a horrific crime suited them politically, and won them moral superiority and imperialist support for their political and military goals in the war.

The third group to exploit the Srebrenica tragedy are the most cynical, and they are precisely the imperialist tutors of today's Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the one hand, there is German imperialism, which openly supported separatist aspirations in the early 1990s, and on the other hand American imperialism, which sabotaged efforts to achieve peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

These imperialist powers use the tragedy to distract from NATO's passivity and failure to prevent the capture of Srebrenica by VRS units. This is justified by technical difficulties and reduced visibility, but it should be recalled that in 1994 American planes prevented the capture of the Bosniak enclave in Goražde, which was then another UN ‘safe zone’, by bombing Serbian positions.

It is obvious that western imperialism needed a humanitarian crisis, ethnic cleansing and a major crime in order to justify their active entry into the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the political calculations of the imperialists, innocent victims on both the Bosniak and Serbian sides are only collateral damage used to justify war goals and control of zones of interest, territory, resources and the plunder of social wealth.

The imperialist insistence on labeling the crimes in Srebrenica a ‘genocide’ imposes collective guilt onto the Serbian people and plays into the hands of Bosniak nationalists in their desire to dominate Bosnia and Herzegovina. Last year’s adoption of the UN resolution on the genocide in Srebrenica, which was pushed by Germany, should be seen as a part of this. 

It was a miserable way for the German ruling class to wash its hands of its participation in the reactionary disintegration of the SFRY that pushed the Yugoslav peoples into a bloody civil war. It is undoubtedly also an attempt to distract from Germany’s current complicity in the Israeli regime’s genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people.

While American and German imperialism are eager to condemn the denial of the crimes in Srebrenica and characterise the crime as a ‘genocide’, at the same time they are hypocritically supporting Israel in the slaughter of the Gaza Strip and the escalation of war in the Middle East. In Germany, demonstrations in support of Palestine are banned, while at the same time the German ruling class and their political representatives are giving moral lessons about the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

While proposing resolutions on Srebrenica, both the US and Germany are diplomatically, financially and militarily supporting the Zionist regime in Israel. The US accounted for two-thirds of all imported weapons to Israel from 2020 to 2024. Today, the bulk of US aid to Israel is spent on the military. This includes a military aid agreement worth $3.8 billion per year until 2028. 

Second to the US is Germany, which accounted for almost one-third of Israel's arms imports between 2020 and 2024. The German government announced that it exported weapons worth €131 million last year, while total exports in 2023 were worth €326 million. German exports also include armored vehicles, trucks, anti-tank weapons and ammunition. The weapons that are killing men, women and children in the Gaza Strip every day come from the same people who are desperate to disguise their complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. 

While they use the Srebrenica tragedy for today's maneuvers in Bosnia and the Balkans, they morally and politically defend the Zionist criminals and their atrocities throughout the Middle East. The bloody trail of imperialism and the hypocritical rot of imperialist diplomacy stretches from the Balkans, through the Middle East and beyond.

The only way to truly pay tribute to the victims of the wars that arose from the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s is to fight for a workers' state in Bosnia and Herzegovina / Image: Michael Büker, Wikimedia Commons

We are against the Serbian nationalists who abhorrently deny the crime that the units under the command of Ratko Mladić committed in Srebrenica. But we are also against any imposition of collective guilt on the Serbian people by Bosniak nationalists and the ruling classes of the imperialist states. The imperialists want to hide their role in opening Pandora's box with the reactionary disintegration of the SFRY and pushing the Yugoslav peoples into civil war. At the same time, it is clear that nationalism and their exploitation of war crimes and collective guilt are a means of diverting attention from social and economic issues by creating division among the working class.

The only way to truly pay tribute to the victims of the wars that arose from the restoration of capitalism in the 1990s is to fight for a workers' state in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Only a workers’ state can guarantee ethnic equality through class unity and take an objective view of the facts and context of the war as part of the counter-revolutionary dismantling of socialist Yugoslavia. 

This objective view does not mean denying the fact that the Bosniak people were the victims of the greatest number of crimes and ethnic cleansing in the war. Rather, what is needed is an internationalist approach, bringing together all the peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and rejecting the hypocritical imperialist narrative of a genocide. This narrative served as a justification for imperialist intervention in the war and the creation of the current colonial Bosnia and Herzegovina under the Dayton Agreement. An internationalist approach could finally put an end to the disgusting competition over each group’s number of victims and would put an end to the attempts of politicians to win political clout from the bones of the innocent.

The revolutionary crisis in Serbia, caused by the mass movement of students and workers, has gained support throughout the Yugoslav region in recent months. Support and solidarity rallies were held in both Banja Luka and Sarajevo. This is proof that the young generations, unburdened by defeats and the traumas of war, seeing no prospect of a decent life in the Balkans, are willing to come together for a new struggle. 

In the coming period, we can expect more and more movements in our region similar to the one in Serbia that will erase all the borders of nationalist divisions and prepare the ground for a new unification of the Yugoslav and Balkan peoples on a socialist basis. Only such a struggle can erase the divisions created by conflict and war crimes.