Stop genocide early

IN FOOTAGE of the fall of Srebrenica on July 11th 1995, Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, strides past the nervous Dutch peacekeepers whose UN “safe area” he has just overrun. He hands out sweets to Muslim children, even as his soldiers prepare to round up their fathers and older brothers—all the men of fighting age. About 8,000 were slaughtered, the worst atrocity in Europe since the second world war.

Twenty years later in the dock in The Hague Mr Mladic wears the same stubborn glare. He denounces the court; in his own eyes he is not a war criminal but a defender of his people and the victim of a Western conspiracy. Many of his compatriots sympathise: a recent poll in Serbia showed that, while 54% of people accept that a brutal crime took place in Srebrenica, 70% deny that it was genocide (see article). More depressing is the fact that Russia, at Serbia’s behest, vetoed a British-backed UN resolution deploring the genocide.

The lessons of the massacre seemed clear enough at the time. Mr Mladic acted with impunity because America and NATO were deadlocked over the use of air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs. Srebrenica broke the impasse, and allied bombing led to the Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian civil war. The intervention paved the way for the UN’s adoption of the doctrine of “Responsibility to Protect”, which states that nations have a moral duty to stop genocide in other countries. Investigation of the massacre bolstered the credibility of the Yugoslavia tribunal, enhancing the case for the International Criminal Court (ICC) that followed. The European Union’s accession process, it was hoped, would knit candidate states (including Bosnia and Serbia) into a peaceful European order.

None of this has worked out as planned. Bosnia and Serbia remain corrupt and imperfectly democratic, their EU candidacies stalled. The momentum of the European project is ebbing. The ICC has proved agonisingly slow, its judgments often rejected in the home countries of the accused. After Iraq and Libya, humanitarian military intervention has acquired a dirty name (despite successes elsewhere, such as Sierra Leone). Syria’s atrocities dwarf Srebrenica’s, yet the world does little.

Even Srebrenica’s history has become more complicated. A Dutch documentary broadcast last month, citing newly released papers from the administration of Bill Clinton, charges that American spies knew of Mr Mladic’s plans weeks in advance and of the risk that many Muslims might be murdered. America, the film suggests, failed to press for air strikes partly because it wanted UN peacekeepers out of the way, to clear the field for NATO to use overwhelming force against the Serbs.

Yet the evil of Srebrenica has led to some lasting good. The Yugoslavia tribunal has jailed dozens of war criminals. Its meticulous investigations have established an accurate history of the war; the world knows what happened, even if most Serbs refuse to believe it. Without the tribunal, Mr Mladic might have had a successful political career. Instead he has spent most of the past 20 years in hiding or jail. Bosnia and Serbia are corrupt, but they have not relapsed into war. Tarnished as the EU may be, most Bosnians and Serbs still want to join it.

Sorrowful Srebrenica

Western powers share blame for the massacre. It was their half-measures that convinced Mr Mladic that he could do as he liked. Some of today’s crises, such as Syria, are like Bosnia in 1995. Those who had the power to intervene dithered and squabbled instead. Perhaps this is the chief lesson of Srebrenica: governments should heed the early signs of mass slaughter and act swiftly to prevent it. If they wait until corpses fill the TV screens and voters demand action, it is probably too late.