At present the Dutch Parliament is holding an enquiry into the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. It is propaganda theatre. All the witnesses have the same story to tell: the Dutch troops at the enclave did their best but got no air support. The conclusion of the enquiry is not difficult to guess. Very few people are interested in what happened in Bosnia, but since there is no Indymedia Bosnia, some background here. It is from

The logic of the war in Bosnia
 http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/bosnia.html
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The Holocaust model of Bosnia.

By far the most significant model of the war in Bosnia, the one which contributed most to support for intervention, was the idea that a Second Holocaust was taking place in Bosnia - with the ethnic Moslems in the role of the Jews, and 'the Serbs' in the role of the Nazis. By implication, this cast any intervening forces in the role of the liberators of concentration camps. It cast the opponents of NATO intervention in the role of Nazi collaborators and apologists - and that was said explicitly, especially in Germany.

Many people in the West sincerely believe in a wider 'Holocaust model of history'. In this philosophy, liberal market democracy constitutes the alternative - the only alternative - to a world of totalitarian atrocities. Its supporters believe that the avoidance of this Holocaust world fully justifies liberal democracy and the free market - and any injustice which results from their operation. The Holocaust model is intended to confer an absolute and unquestioned moral superiority on the market democracies, and on the values of the Atlantic alliance. In reality, liberalism is as much a killing machine as Nazism: at the same time as the wars in ex-Yugoslavia began, the transition to a market economy in Russia caused an excess mortality of three million deaths. It is no surprise that the supporters of Atlantic market democracy were prepared to kill in Bosnia as well.

The Holocaust model is the key to the events at Srebrenica. Since there was no mass killing corresponding to the model, one was staged at Srebrenica. There is a story that President Clinton told Bosnian President Izetbegovic, that a massacre of at least 5 000 people was necessary, in order to generate western public support for an intervention. There is no hard evidence for the story, but there is no reason to doubt it either, for the simple reason that it was true. Even without such an explicit remark, both men must have known that massive Serb atrocities could only help their political goals. That applies to the NATO as well, and to the pro-intervention lobby within each NATO state: they all had an interest in facilitating atrocities.

In chronological order, the construction of the Srebrenica massacre began with western support for the Bosnian cause, after the war in Bosnia begun. That meant support for the Sarajevo government and their generally Bosniac nationalism, for the Bosnian nationalist media (such as the Sarajevo newspaper Oslobodenje), and a limited amount of covert military aid.

With this aid the Sarajevo government was encouraged to extend its military control to areas it could not permanently defend, in particular to enclaves accessible only through corridors in mountainous areas, with roads blocked in winter. The Sarajevo government was also officially encouraged to hold on to these areas, by the suggestion of the western mediators that they could later be exchanged for full control of Sarajevo (this was later agreed at Dayton). Of these enclaves, the most inaccessible was Srebrenica, a small town with a 'Moslem' majority, in a thinly-populated Serb-majority region bordering on Serbia itself. In 1993, the United Nations declared Srebrenica a 'safe area'. The UN was the nominal authority for western intervention in Bosnia, but the de facto military and political power rested with the NATO powers operating under UN mandate. The non-NATO forces serving with the UN in Bosnia had nothing to say about policy. The Sarajevo government had already been encouraged to hold the enclave, now the Moslem population was encouraged to stay there also, although they were a target for atrocities.

The UN Protection Force, UNPROFOR, at first stationed Canadian troops in the enclave. In 1994 they were replaced by three successive Dutch UN batallions - DUTCHBAT . The political responsibility for the stationing of DUTCHBAT lay primarily with the new coalition government led by Wim Kok. The new defence minister, Joris Voorhoeve, was a former director of the Clingendael Institute - an aggressively pro-western and pro-intervention think-tank linked to the Netherlands foreign ministry. The commander of the third DUTCHBAT was Lt-Colonel Thom Karremans.

From his arrival, Karremans, on the instructions of Kok and Voorhoeve, followed a strategy aimed at creating an atrocity - the 'Holocaust' to justify the intervention. The population was encouraged to stay where they were, a sitting target. The local Bosniac militia, led by Naser Oric, was allowed to commit atrocities against the Serb population in the surrounding areas, knowing that this would provoke a Serb attack on the enclave. (The main Serb offensive was directed against Sarajevo). Karremans deliberately advertised to the Serb forces, that he had insufficient forces to withstand any assault on the enclave.

Although the Moslem population in the enclave was in acute danger, and nominally under Dutch protection, Premier Kok refused them Dutch citizenship, or even refugee status. At the same time naval and air forces of the western coalition, including Dutch naval forces, blockaded Iraq, cutting off any rescue attempt. Naval forces in the Adriatic, and air power operating from NATO bases, blocked any other 'Islamic' rescue attempt. In effect, Karremans ran a prison camp, full of people waiting to be massacred. He was not there to protect the population: he was there to arrange their deaths at the hands of Serb forces, and he did that. In 1995, Bosnian-Serb units led by General Ratko Mladic overran the enclave and massacred several thousand, mainly men of military age. Naser Oric and his men conveniently escaped. So did DUTCHBAT - they left in convoy to Zagreb, to join a victory celebration attended by Wim Kok and Crown Prince Willem-Alexander. The celebration showed a racist contempt for the lives of the victims, and this differential valuation of human life is characteristic of the democracies. If thousands of Dutch citizens had been massacred, there would have been no question of a victory party.

But in any case: Bill Clinton, Wim Kok and other NATO leaders had their 5 000 dead, the cynical 'Holocaust-in-Bosnia' lobby had its Holocaust, opposition to intervention collapsed. The Dayton accords (November 1995) led to the stationing of an occupation force, and the creation of a western protectorate in Bosnia. The governors of the protectorate decreed a free market economy, and a liberal democracy. The first has proved easier to implement than the second: the population continues to vote along ethnic lines, so the model multi-ethnic democracy is still deferred.