Sojourn to Night: Srebrenica

In May 2006, I made my first trip to Bosnia. I was fortunate to be traveling with Pastor Mike Poage, an old Balkan hand who was returning to Bosnia for the fourth time. We had met through our network of mission volunteers within our regional church system, and quickly became good friends. We came to Bosnia to learn at first hand how people had coped with the aftermath of the war. In particular, we came to visit the site of the infamous massacre of Bosnian Muslim men and boys that had occurred on July 11, 1995, at Srebrenica.

The fate of Bosnia-Herzegovina was the most tragic of the Balkan war. The mountains and valleys of this beautiful republic remain scarred with the charred and battered towns and villages from which at least half the population had fled, been expelled, or been killed. The United Nations (UN) Security Council passed Resolution 819, which had declared Srebrenica a United Nations “safe area” for civilians fleeing from the war. Srebrenica was one of six designated “safe areas” in Bosnia. The term “safe area” quickly became a cruel misnomer. Safe areas became some of the most profoundly unsafe places in the world. Western governments had contributed no more than 7,000 of the estimated 34,000 troops needed to implement the safe area policy.

Srebrenica itself, a town where 8,000 people had lived before the war, had swelled to some 40,000 refugees who had fled the Serbian Army from elsewhere in eastern Bosnia. After three years of being trapped by the Serb siege, and of surviving on meager supplies of UN aid, most refugees were anxious to find safety elsewhere. Left virtually on their own, Srebrenica's defenders refused to surrender. After days of probing, on July 6, the Serb shelling of Srebrenica began in earnest. The outgunned Muslim fighters could not mount a serious defense. Neither could the 370 Dutch UN peacekeepers that were stationed there to defend the designated safe enclave. Within two days, the Serbs had overrun three UN observation posts and