More than 20 years have passed since the Srebrenica massacre. Today the place where the first European genocide since the Second World War occurred looks like a ghost town struggling to get back on its feet.
Update of 4 April 2022
Srebrenica is a small town in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the civil war in the former Yugoslavia, which began at the end of March 1992, this enclave witnessed one of the worst massacres to take place in Europe since the Second World War. In July 1995, around eight thousand Muslim men and boys were killed by Serbian military forces led by General Ratko Mladić, while women, children and the elderly were deported. The episode forms part of the period of Yugoslavia's disintegration that began with the declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia in 1992.
Before the Srebrenica massacre, the town had been declared a "safe haven", meaning a demilitarised zone. For this reason, during the massacre it was under the control of the United Nations Protection Force (Unprofor), present with around 600 Dutch peacekeepers. Despite this, on 11 July 1995 the Bosnian Serb army managed to take the town after a six-day siege. In the following 48 hours, the soldiers carried out the massacre without any obstacle.
What is commonly referred to as a "massacre" is in reality a genocide, as established by the ruling of 19 April 2004 issued by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. General Mladić was arrested on 26 May 2010 after years as a fugitive and sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 November 2017. The other person responsible for the massacre is Radovan Karadžić, who was at the time president of the Republika Srpska, the Serb Republic of Bosnia, one of the two entities into which Bosnia is divided. The other is the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Karadžić was also arrested, on 21 July 2008, and sentenced to 40 years in prison on 24 March 2016.
Although the war is over (a fact not always clear in the West), in the Balkans there is a situation of tension that has yet to subside. The necessary military presence of the European Union and Nato in areas of acute tension such as Bosnia and Herzegovina itself, Kosovo and Macedonia reveals a condition of profound uncertainty and an enduring potential for risk in relations between the different ethnic groups.
In Srebrenica, in particular, the situation is far from resolved. After the genocide, the small Muslim enclave was forgotten by everyone. Srebrenica remains politically confined to the eastern extremes of Republika Srpska, a few kilometres from the border with Serbia. Geographically it lies in a mountainous and rugged region that prevents it from becoming a destination for commerce and tourism, which was once strongly supported by the presence of spa facilities.
Operations at the large metalworking factory in the town have never been restored, and unemployment far exceeds 50 per cent. Families who returned after the end of the war are unable to secure an income. For this and many other reasons, the common view of the enclave — perceptible from the accounts of Westerners who have been there — is that it is a "ghost town".
After the Srebrenica massacre, the condition of Bosnia and Herzegovina in general is a mirror of a country that never truly recovered from the civil war of the 1990s. A country continually subjected to external and internal pressures that prevent it from returning to a life of civil coexistence, even twenty years on. To succeed in this endeavour it is essential to embrace the memory and invest in the richness of a multi-faith and multi-ethnic past — one certainly not free of conflict, but undoubtedly unique within the European cultural landscape.