‘Never Again?’ – Srebrenica, Gaza, and the limits of global response

Thirty years ago this month, more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were slaughtered in the small town of Srebrenica – a UN-ensured ‘safe zone’. An ensuing 30,000 men, women and children were forcibly displaced and abused by Serbian forces. As the international community scrambled to save face, Srebrenica was legally recognised as the first act of genocide in Europe since the Holocaust 40 years prior. Just one generation after the first pledging of that anaemic phrase ‘Never Again’, leaders had to promise to prevent future genocides, and only one generation since then, the phrase stands again discredited by the ongoing genocide in Gaza. This cyclical repetition of mass atrocity begs the question: what is the point of ‘Never Again’? Why are we so absurdly bad at preventing genocide that our arsenal consists of a two-word phrase alone?

Remembering Srebrenica

To understand this insipid phrase, we need to consider the increasingly frequent situations in which it is uttered and their international responses. Shamefully, however, the Balkan Wars are ignored in British education systems, so a short and stark background is needed.

The Srebrenica massacre occurred over the 11-13 July 1995, when the Republic of Srpska forces overran the UN-declared safe zone’ surrounding the Srebrenica region. Suffering under siege for two years, the town had become a refuge for over 40,000 Bosniak Muslim civilians, many of whom were driven to starvation. When the scarcely 400 lightly-armed Dutch peacekeepers withdrew from the zone on the 11 July, these emaciated Bosniak refugees were separated by gender and over 8,000 of the men were slaughtered. Eyewitness accounts of bound men being shot into mass graves and of bulldozers ploughing fields of corpses were stark repetitions of Nazi methods documented 40 years prior.

Up until and for some even during the very-publicised Srebrenica massacre, Western and specifically American leaders adopted a time-honoured and recognizably cowardly stance of “neutrality”

Alongside the men, Bosniak women were subjected to an “unimaginable campaign of sexual violence, slavery, and forced impregnation”, contributing to the 50,000 Bosniak women who were raped as a direct weapon in the Serbian genocidal effort – not an ‘unfortunate byproduct’ of war. In the ensuing days, survivors who had escaped Srebrenica were hunted down in the woods as they fled to Tulza. The most well-known case, Srebrenica, is, outrageously, only one particularly horrific chapter in the tome of ethno-religious violence following the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991.

International failure

The sheer scale of the horror surrounding Srebrenica before, during, and after the massacre should have been matched by an equally outraged and wilful international community. Had they not promised to ‘Never again’ allow such barbarism to taint European soil? Had not the aftermath of the Second World War seen the Western world lament decisions to appease, to stand by, to ignore the genocide under their noses?

Yet, up until and for some even during the very-publicised Srebrenica massacre, Western and specifically American leaders adopted a time-honoured and recognisably cowardly stance of ‘neutrality’. Independent commentators drew and drew again the similarities between Serbian actions and the Holocaust, dozens of groups, including pacifistic groups, called for military intervention in Bosnia. Yet still, Western forces did nothing, fearful of the quagmire that was intervention and dodging responsibility with claims of ‘primordial hatreds’.

For the first time in history, NATO intervened unilaterally in Kosovo to prevent genocide

That was at least until poor, old, embattled President Clinton finally felt the political pressure to act had become too damaging. With such an honourable motivation, America’s rhetoric hardened and in August 1995 a NATO Air Campaign was launched – just in time to miss a second massacre in a Sarajevan market-place. Nevertheless, the Bosnian War began to end. With the signing of the Dayton Accords by Milošević in November 1995, the last state-level Yugoslav war ended. In the aftermath of the war, however, the US-led international community again forgot lessons learned 40 years ago. Rather than publicly investigating, trying and punishing those guilty of war crimes (as at Nuremberg), many Serbian military and political elites went unpunished – and predictably went on to pursue another genocidal initiative in Kosovo.

However, the status quo had changed. The world was aware of the brutalities of the Serbian regime, and world leaders (in particular Secretary of State Madeline Albright and Prime Minister Tony Blair) were vociferous in their campaign for preventative intervention. Thus, for the first time in history, NATO intervened unilaterally in Kosovo to prevent genocide. Although ultimately the campaign was of mixed effectiveness – 1.3 million Kosovan Albanians were still expelled – it showed a change in spirit. After the intervention ended, Milošević and numerous other Serbian officials were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and soon afterwards were captured or surrendered to the United Nations. After a gruelling decade-long process, several Serbian leaders were convicted of genocide in the Hague – providing some closure to those Bosniaks murdered in the previous century. Perhaps some lessons could be learnt.

The Gaza parallel

Alas, for those with astute eyes, the parallels with the genocide in Gaza and the similarly if-not-more pathetic international response will be blatantly obvious. For those who need more encouragement, let us compare:

What unites Srebrenica and Gaza, above all else, is not simply the scale of destruction and brutality, but the inability of the international community to do anything about it. In Bosnia, a formally designated ‘UN safe area’ was transformed into a contemporary concentration camp. And the UN was unable to stop it. In Gaza, despite a plethora of United Nations Security Council and United Nations General Assembly resolutions, a bustling community has been deliberately turned into a barren wasteland – and its inhabitants reduced both by rhetoric and actions to “animals”. And the UN was unable to stop it. Worse even, UN members are actively complicit, courting indicted Israeli leaders, and continuing to send arms to Israel. International humanitarian law has been strategically and ‘contextually’ interpreted and avoided by Western leaders, often to ‘loophole’ national laws regulating arms sales.

For many, the banal indifference of Western leaders towards the suffering of the Palestinian people is a sign of the breakdown of the international system, of a weakening rules-based order that no longer has the moral compass to recognise its failings

Lessons forgotten

For many, the banal indifference of Western leaders towards the suffering of the Palestinian people is a sign of the breakdown of the international system, of a weakening rules-based order that no longer has the moral compass to recognise its failings. Pointing to the differing ultimate responses of the West to the Bosnian wars, some argue that the West has lost a post-Cold War moral mission. Yet this is ahistorical. For Srebrenica was not the first genocide after the Holocaust – nor was it the most destructive. In Rwanda, just a year before the Srebrenica massacre, over 700,000 Tutsi were slaughtered – and the UN peacekeeping force did nothing while France actively abetted the Hutus. Twenty years before this, the Khmer Rouge wiped out a quarter of Cambodia’s population – including nearly all Cambodian Viets. Again, the international community, afraid to involve itself in South East Asia after the Vietnam War, turned the other cheek. Only a direct and unilateral Vietnamese invasion stopped the genocide. Since Srebrenica, the genocides in Darfur and Myanmar have barely graced Western airwaves – despite a combined death toll nearing 500,000.

If these lessons tell us our leaders are obsessed with the nation first, then we must make these issues vital to the nation

So, what does this show? It shows that Gaza is not a new phenomenon, that the international community has been indifferent to genocide almost as long as the term has been a crime. In taking this article, I was prompted to ask what lessons the international community has learnt in the thirty years since Srebrenica. I can see two. Firstly, and unfortunately, it seems that JD Vance was right. In the ordo amoris of international leaders, concentric circles of nation, region, interests, and continent do appear to function. Genocides can be stopped, but only when interests align. Secondly, the phrase ‘Never Again’ should be confined to the dustbin of history as the biggest paper tiger since Neville Chamberlain declared peace in our time.

Justice is still possible

But we are not international leaders. If these lessons tell us our leaders are obsessed with the nation first, then we must make these issues vital to the nation. Historical precedent in the Balkans shows that when public pressure unites around a single cause, politicians change, and action occurs. The Serbian army was destroyed, the Bosniaks and Kosovans were saved, President Karadzic was indicted, tried, and found guilty of genocide. All the same wheels of justice remain open today – they just require some grease. If the current vibe-shift in the messaging of political leaders over the famine in Gaza is indicative of this realisation that Gaza matters to the nation, we may yet see Netanyahu face punishment for his crimes against humanity.