A decade ago, a terrible tragedy was visited on the citizens of Srebrenica, a small town in Bosnia. At the height of the war over Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serb military forces systematically slaughtered all of the town's Muslim men and boys. What is worse, this massacre occurred under the eye of the United Nations. There are few more shameful episodes in contemporary history. Yet the lesson of Srebrenica -- "never again" -- might not have been learned: Genocide is once again being visited upon innocents.
Nearly a quarter of a million people were killed in the 43-month conflagration that marked the end of Yugoslavia. In July 1995, near the end of the war, Serb military forces overran the mountain town of Srebrenica. The town had been declared a safe haven by the U.N., with some 400 Dutch peacekeepers deployed to protect its overwhelmingly Muslim population. The Serbs ignored the Dutch "blue helmets," betting, rightly, that the U.N. would not authorize the air strikes that would have equalized the military equation.
Impotent, the Dutch soldiers watched helplessly while the Serbs segregated women from men and boys. They aimed to "cleanse" the territory of Muslims so that when peace was established, Serbs would not be challenged for control of the area. To do so, they killed more than 7,000 unarmed males and then discarded the bodies in anonymous pits.