“As the world is contained in a grain of sand, so the war in Bosnia is contained – in its barbarity and the disinclination of the ‘civilized world’ to stop it – in the massacre at Srebrenica.... On July 11, 1995, the hesitations, half-solutions, and compromises on which Western, and above all, American policy had been based for almost five years stood revealed for what they were, cast into relief by the spectre of seven thousand murdered Muslim men.... The hapless Dutch, terrified, bitter, and resentful, were playing out the logical conclusion of an empty policy – a politics of gesture.... So when the time came, and Ratko Mladic’s men stormed into the ‘UN-protected safe area,’ the promised air bombardment never arrived. The statesmen of the West stood as supplicants before the conquering General Mladic, asking only that their soldiers not be harmed.... The critical correction to the map of Bosnia represented by the fall of Srebrenica, and the bloody way it came about, would in the end lead the West to take the steps necessary to arrive, four months later, at the flawed peace of Dayton. Under these accords, the guns would finally go silent; and the UN ‘safe area’ of Srebrenica would be left in the hands of the Serbs. As for the Muslims, only their bodies remained.”

Mark Danner, January 2000, “What Went Wrong?,” essay on the BBC documentary, “Srebrenica: A Cry from the Grave,” which was
broadcast on PBS. For the full text of Danner’s essay, see the link to the documentary on www.pbs.org Danner wrote several articles on the war in Bosnia and the betrayal of Srebrenica for the New York Review of Books, which are available are on his website:
www.markdanner.com