This 1995 article from the New York Times gives a run-down of events surrounding the massacre in Srebrenica and accounts from survivors of other slaughters throughout the country. We also learn of new evidence discovered by the CIA at the time, and the weeks it took them to notice it, that drove the United States and the United Nations to serious, definitive action.
It took country-wide genocide before effective outside aid came to the
persecuted people of Bosnia. For 3 years the international community
waffled over the Bosnian War and failed to make any lasting strides in
preventing or controlling the bloodshed in the country. This essay,
written in 1994, over one year before the war even ended, details every
broken promise and half-hearted effort on the part of the United
Nations and the United States.
The widespread airstrikes Colonel Karremans had desperately pleaded for to prevent the tragedy of Srebrenica finally came on 30 August, 1995 with Operation Decisive Action. Decisive indeed. Less than a month later, after several major defeats, the Serbs began to withdraw. After a 2-month cease-fire, peace talks began on November 1, 1995. The Bosnian War officially came to a close on December 14, 1995 with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement.
It is a wonder how this war would have ended had the world's "peacekeepers" upheld their self-sworn duty sooner. But I think that can be said of all conflicts; hindsight is 20/20, after all. Even then, when tragedy is so evident, so much of an eerie reflection of past hostilities, why were they so ignorant towards it?
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