A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (69 page)

3. If this account is accurate, there may be no survivors of the men rounded up in Srebrenica. We should redouble efforts to see these men. If the Serbs refuse access, the implications are obvious.

4. Again, it is riot too late to prevent a similar tragedy at Zepa. Zepa's defenders valiantly continue to hold on. Undoubtedly they realize the fate that awaits them.They should not be abandoned.

The cable had no effect on UN or NATO policy toward Zepa, which surrendered two days, later. Most of the men there who entrusted their fates to the Serb authorities were murdered.

Immediately after receiving Galbraith's cable, Secretary Christopher dispatched Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Shattuck and Assistant Secretary of State for Refugees Phyllis Oakley to Tuzla to verify the survivors' claims.The United States was far quicker to debrief survivors and witnesses than it had been in Charles T'wining's days at the Cambodian border. Shattuck prepared a detailed report on the basis of two days of interviews with a dozen Muslim refugees, including two survivors of mass executions-a teenage boy, and a fifty-five-year-old crippled man. Shattuck reported back to Washington: "It is impossible at this point to estimate accurately how many have been killed, but clearly that number is very substantial. The accounts that I have heard ... indicate that there is substantial new evidence of genocide." Yet knowing that the United States did not intend to deploy ground troops, bomb unilaterally, or immediately rally its European allies into multilateral action, the only recommendation Shattuck mustered was that further war crimes indictments be issued at the UN criminal tribunal that had been set up at The Hague."'

Shattuck's findings finally prompted a serious review of U.S. intelligence data for evidence of mass executions. Since the Muslim survivors had supplied Shattuck with the precise names and locations of alleged killing sites, the CIA could scan the aerial photos that its satellites had snapped over the past few weeks with geographic coordinates in mind. On August 2, 1995, a CIA imagery analyst stayed up all night examining the hundreds of aerial photos around the small village of Nova Kasaba near Srebrenica. He noticed severe discrepancies. In one spy photo several hundred prisoners were gathered at the neighborhood soccer field where the Dutch had spotted them. Several days later the prisoners had vanished and four mounds of earth, testaments to fresh digging, appeared nearby. The National Intelli Bence Daily reported this evidence on August 4, and Albright pressed for its public release. At a closed session of the UN Security Council on August 10, Albright presented enlargements of the photographs that showed the movement of earth.The evidence indicated these were mass graves:

• newly disturbed earth where refugees were known to have been;

• heavy vehicle tracks where there were none shortly before;

• no apparent military, industrial, or agricultural reason for such tracks or disturbed earth;

• multiple, confirming reports from refugees; and

• no vegetation on the site.

Albright concluded, "The Bosnian Serbs have executed, beaten, and raped people who were defenseless. They have carried out a calculated plan of atrocities far from a battlefield and with the direct involvement of high-level Bosnian Serb Army officials.There can be no excuse."" Albright declared:

Innocent lives remain at stake. Some 10,000 civilians from Srebrenica and around 3,000 from Zepa are missing and unaccounted for. Some may be in hiding. Some may be in detention. Some are most certainly dead. We have a responsibility to investigate, to find out what we can, to see that those in hiding are granted safe passage; that those in detention are well-treated or released; that the names of those who died or who have been killed are made known to their families; and that those responsible for illegal and outrageous activities are brought to justice.

Something evil had transpired, but even those most prepared to believe the worst could not have believed how evil.''

No amount of wishful thinking or reenergized U.S. diplomacy could change a most grisly fact: In the month since Srebrenica had fallen, and mainly in the ten o.ays after the Muslim surrender, Ratko Mladic and his associate Radislav Krstic had overseen the systematic slaughter by ambush or execution of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.

It would not have mattered if the United States had predicted precisely when the Serbs would attack Srebrenica. Zepa fell more than a fortnight after Srebrenica in plain view of the international community, revealing that the will to confront the Serbs was absent in the face of full knowledge. "The failure was not an intelligence failure," says Assistant Secretary Gati. "Ethnic cleansing was not a priority in our policy....When you make the original decision that you aren't going to respond when these kinds of things happen, then, I'm sorry, but these things are going to happen"

The United States tried to defend its intelligence and its policy failure. This was difficult. Clinton officials were reluctant to admit they knew the Serbs were going to do what they did and yet had done nothing about it. But to admit that they had not predicted the Serb onslaught revealed other weaknesses. Several weeks after the Serb victory, the State Department circulated a "bottom lines" memo, which supplied officials with press guidance. When challenged, U.S. officials were to say the United States knew no more in advance than the United Nations about any Serb plan to take the enclave, and it did not have evidence of Bosnian Serb troop movements. One U.S. official scribbled a reminder to himself in the corner of the memo that Srebrenica had been besieged for nearly three years and the Bosnian Serbs could have launched a military attack at any time. "We did assess that all of the eastern enclaves were indefensible unless reinforced by ground units and supported by close air support," the note said. On the question of the likelihood of atrocities, U.S. officials were urged to fudge their response by saying, "We did not have any information on any [Bosnian Serb] intent to commit atrocities against the Muslim defenders or population of Srebrenica.We did know of the possibility of such activity given the history of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.."" State Department and White House officials and others deplored the "failure," the "tragedy," and the "imperfect reality." But they were careful not to accept responsibility for the demise of the enclave, as they did not want to own the problem, which showed no signs of subsiding.

A few days after Srebenica's fall, White House spokesman McCurry entered into an exchange with a reporter over whether the United States was ashamed:

McCurry: I think everybody in this government has consistently said that it's a devastating situation and nobody is satisfied with the performance of those who have been entrusted with the will of the international community to keep the peace.

Reporter: But do we feel-do we accept the fact that we bear some responsibility for what happened?

McCurry: There's no way to assess responsibility for all the tragedy that is Bosnia.You have to look back over the work of this administration, the previous administration; frankly, you've got to look back into decisions taken by many governments in many different places."

Meanwhile, State Department spokesman Burns claimed that the administration was working behind the scenes with its European allies to develop a military strategy. Moreover, he said, much as had U.S. spokespersons during the Rwanda genocide, that the United States was providing an additional $5 million to deliver food, shelter, and water to "meet immediate needs in Srebrenica..";' Burns stressed that the United States was on the ball. "We will meet any request that they give to us," he continued, "because we do feel a sense of urgency.""

But feeling a sense of urgency and acting urgently were two different matters. In order for the Clinton administration to act on its feeling, the war in Bosnia would have to become caught up in American domestic politics. It was Bob Dole, the seventy-two-year-old, wisecracking Republican senator from Kansas, who brought Bosnia home.

Aftermath

Bob Dole, the Senate majority leader, had been committed to a more activist U.S. foreign policy in the Balkans since 1990, when he had watched Serb police maul the throngs of Kosovo Albanians who had come out to greet his American delegation. Dole's own witnessing had sparked a sustained engagement with the region. His chief foreign policy adviser, Mira Baratta, a Croatian American attuned to Serb aggression, spurred him on further. Dole had been consistently critical of U.S. policy under Bush and Clinton. By the summer of 1995, he was regarded as the chief Republican challenger to Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election. Thus, he was well positioned to make the fall of Srebrenica a subject for American poli- tics.This was the first time in the twentieth century that allowing genocide came to feel politically costly for an American president.

All along, the central criticism of U.S. policy made by human rights advocates, engaged members of Congress, and dissenters within the State Department had been that it was timid. The central criticism of the same policy made by UN officials and America's European allies was that it was rhetorically tough, practically weak or indifferent, and thus doing more harm to the Bosnian Muslims than if the United States had stayed uninvolved entirely.

A shift in U.S. policy had been in the works even before Srebrenica's demise. Indeed, by the spring of 1995, it was already clear that the UN peacekeeping mission in Bosnia could not survive. In mid June, at a Bosnia briefing meeting with his senior advisers, President Clinton had been testy about the way the United States had floated along without a policy. It had allowed nationalists in the Balkans to dictate the course of change. "We need to get the policy straight," he had snapped, "or we're just going to be kicking the can down the road again. Right now we've got a situation, we've got no clear mission, no one's in control of events."{' Most outside observers thought the president was in control.

After Mladic conquered Srebrenica on July 11, the pressure on Clinton to do more came from a number of sources, both domestic and foreign. First, congressional criticism, which had always been harsh but never overwhelming, rose to a fever pitch. With Dole's leadership, it culminated in a decisive congressional vote for a unilateral lift of the arms embargo against Bosnia's Muslims, which would likely necessitate a U.S. military role in withdrawing UN peacekeepers. Thus, for the first time in the three-year war, the maintenance of the status quo seemed destined to draw U.S. troops into the Balkan theater. Second, journalists, activists, former administration officials, and others who had likewise badgered administration officials on and off throughout the war erupted in unison, making life unbearable for those in the White House defending American nonintervention. Third, disgusted by America's partial engagement, European leaders began publicly slamming the adnunis- tration for its pusillanimity and hypocrisy. The Serb seizure of Srebrenica and the ongoing war in Bosnia gave rise to a crisis of American leadership.

Congressional Pressure

In early January 1995, nearly three years into the war, and two years after he had teamed with Senator Biden to try to get the Pentagon to arm the Muslims, Dole had introduced a bill to the U.S. Senate calling for the lifting of the arms embargo. He had spoken about it quite combatively throughout the spring of 1995. Even before the events of the summer, Dole had won the support of many Democrats on Capitol Hill who saw the bill as a way to voice their dissatisfaction with Clinton's Bosnia policy. Tired of the administration's delays, Dole was determined to bring the bill up for a vote in July."

That it was Bob Dole who cared about Bosnia presented President Clinton with a problem. On the surface, Dole did not seem a particularly formidable presidential candidate. He had run twice before, both times when Yugoslavia was still a single country, and had fared abysmally. But now the combination of Dole's own war experience, his apparently nonpartisan commitment to the Balkans, and the ghastly images of Srebrenica's petrified refugees gave his voice a heightened authority.With the UN mission in Bosnia collapsing, the American political establishment seemed ready to listen. Dole's bid to lift the embargo against the Muslims did not just represent another clash between the executive and the legislature over foreign policy. It was a clash between a presidential incumbent and his challenger. Clinton was loathe to look weak in front of American voters.

Clinton made other arguments. Just as the Reagan White House had argued during Galbraith's sanctions crusade against Iraq, Clinton insisted that foreign policy should not be made on Capitol Hill. But his real fear was that Dole's initiative would force him to send U.S. troops to Bosnia. The president had publicly promised to deploy U.S. ground forces only if there was "a genuine peace with no shooting and no fighting" or in the "highly unlikely" event that British and French peacekeepers attempted to withdraw and were "stranded and could not get out of a particular place in Bosnia.."" European governments had made it clear that they would withdraw if the U.S. Congress ever lifted the embargo.Thus, if Dole's initiative passed, it would nearly guarantee that Clinton would have to follow through on the commitment he had made to his NATO allies to help extract their blue helmets. Clinton had been avoiding sending U.S. ground forces to the Balkans from his first day in the White House. He was certainly going to do all he could to avoid a humiliating extraction mission on the eve of his hid for reelection.

Clinton was haunted by the secret NATO withdrawal plan, known as operation 40-104. It committed the United States to deploying some 25,000 troops as part of a 60,000-troop NATO extraction force. As one senior administration official told the New York Times on July 8, three days before Srebrenica's fall," If you were to ask the President and his senior advisers what their greatest fear in Bosnia is, they would give the same answer: (Operation] 40-104" '' This fear had caused Clinton to begin arguing ahead of Srebrenica's collapse that the United States needed to "bust its rear" to get a peace deal settled. Otherwise, he feared, a U.S. deployment would be "dropped in during the middle of the campaign. "'