Historical Context

The Fall of Yugoslavia

Sonja Biserko, President of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia

"...It needs to be said that the international community, by which I mean America and the European Union, was actively engaged in mediation with the idea of preserving the Yugoslav framework, but it failed. A conference on Yugoslavia was held in The Hague in September and October 1991, with several sessions. At this conference, the European Union offered a document intended to preserve the Yugoslav framework by endorsing the idea of an association of states. This was originally a Slovenian proposal, later supported by Croatia. The proposal had been published in "Nova revija 57" in 1987. It was subsequently supported by other republics as well, as they were unable to find a modus vivendi with the Serbian narrative and offer, particularly in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. Both republics eventually sided with Croatia and Slovenia.

Serbia refused to sign the document, even though it was broadly consistent with its objective of keeping all Serbs under one state umbrella. The justification was that Serbs were not a minority anywhere, referring to Serbs in Croatia and elsewhere. In reality, the key reason was Serbia’s unwillingness to recognise the status of Albanians in Kosovo, fearing that doing so could undermine other strategic objectives.

Montenegro initially signed the document, but Momir Bulatović was subsequently pressured by Serbia into withdrawing that signature. What remained was a rump Yugoslavia. As I have said, such a structure was needed in order to present themselves as the defenders of Yugoslavia. The Badinter Committee was then established and issued fifteen opinions. These proved crucial in defining the future states and, among other things, established important criteria concerning the treatment of national minorities. Once a republic met the criteria established by the Badinter Committee, it could apply for international recognition of independence, which all of the republics eventually did. Kosovo also applied, but its application was rejected at that time. In rapid succession, the other republics were recognised as independent states. The moment Bosnia and Herzegovina was recognised as an independent state, Belgrade launched its offensive and, within a matter of months, Serbian forces seized more than 70% of Bosnian territory. During this initial phase, the majority of the Bosniak population was expelled from areas where they had previously formed a majority, particularly in the Drina Valley and other regions. Serbian forces retained control of more than 70% of the territory until the Dayton negotiations and the eventual Dayton Agreement..."

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Prelude to Genocide

Dr Robert Donia, Historian

"...When the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) was founded in July 1990, Bosnian Serb nationalists made it clear that their primary objective was to keep Bosnia and Herzegovina within the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. This remained their central political goal until 15 October 1991, when SDS delegates in the Bosnian Assembly recognised that they could no longer prevent Bosnia and Herzegovina from moving towards independence. On that very day, SDS leaders intensified preparations for the creation of a separate Serb state and abandoned efforts to keep the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina within Yugoslavia.

A few weeks later, on 19 December 1991, SDS President Radovan Karadžić circulated a document entitled "Instructions for the Organization and Activity of Organs of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina under Extraordinary Circumstances". Through this document, the party’s Main Board directed SDS leaders across many of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s 109 municipalities to prepare for the armed takeover of local authorities. These plans were to be activated upon receipt of a secret signal from Karadžić himself.

The document subsequently served as a blueprint for the Serb takeover of approximately 70% of Bosnia and Herzegovina between April and July 1992, carried out municipality by municipality.

Even as these takeovers were underway, and while hundreds of thousands of Bosniaks and Croats were being killed, tortured, imprisoned, or forcibly expelled from their homes, Karadžić presented the Bosnian Serb Assembly on 12 May 1992 with the Six Strategic Goals of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This policy framework, which had been developing for weeks and had already informed many nationalist actions since the outbreak of war in April 1992, marked a shift from local and regional takeovers to a broader strategic project aimed at securing Serb control over large parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The first strategic goal, described as the "separation from the other two national communities – a separation of states", functioned as a euphemism for the removal of Bosniaks and Croats from the territory envisioned for the Serb state.

Another strategic goal highlighted the particular importance of the Drina River Valley, including Srebrenica, to Bosnian Serb plans. It called for the establishment of "a corridor in the Drina Valley, that is, the elimination of the Drina as a border between Serb states..."

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