by Sheri Fink
While this assessment may be somewhat reassuring to the internationals, giving the Serbs the crossroads is an unacceptable idea to the Srebrenicans. In the absence of Naser Orić, the commander of the Bosnian Army’s Twenty-Eighth Division in Srebrenica, his chief of staff, a thirtynine-year-old former Yugoslav Army officer named Ramiz Bečirović, takes charge. Badly injured in the helicopter crash in April, he has only recently emerged from his bedridden state.
Bečirović communicates with Orić by coded telex. He asks the Dutchbat battalion commander to return the weapons surrendered by the Srebrenicans in 1993 so that Srebrenica’s decommissioned soldiers, who now occupy shadow positions near the U.N. observation posts, can defend against the Serb assault. Srebrenica has perhaps 5,000 potential soldiers, but, even with the recent furtive helicopter deliveries of small arms and supplies from Tuzla, not enough weapons to arm all of them. The Dutch have only 250 minimally equipped infantry soldiers on the ground. The Serbs, whatever their numbers, are likely to be well armed. The Dutchbat officer consults with his superiors about the Bosnian commander’s request, noting that the Serbs haven’t breached the enclave borders. For now the answer is no.
* * *
AS A TRAINED NURSE, Christina Schmitz has an urge to help in a more practical way than sending updates to MSF headquarters. Yesterday, the Dutch medical team promised her that today she could pick up some blood to transfuse a girl with end-stage leukemia. Christina throws on a flak jacket and helmet and heads for the main U.N. compound in one of the “soft-skinned” Land Cruisers to keep her commitment to the girl and her family.
She arrives safely, but the Dutch disappoint her. A transfusion won’t save the girl’s life, and in light of a shortage of blood bags and the increased risk of injury the soldiers face now that Srebrenica is under attack, they’ve decided to reserve what supplies they have. They’ve inventoried their remaining medical supplies and concluded that if a few Dutch U.N. soldiers are heavily wounded, there will barely be enough to treat them. They’ve stored away an emergency “iron ration” of medicines and supplies, enough to operate on and treat thirty soldiers with varying types and degrees of injuries, in a bunker that can support an operating theater.
Christina returns to Srebrenica empty-handed. A few hours pass, and then she has to ask the Dutch for help again. A woman has arrived in the hospital with a penetrating chest wound. A collection of blood and air beneath the covering of her lungs is collapsing them, decreasing the oxygen level in her blood. Ilijaz tries to stabilize her condition by inserting a chest tube to drain the blood and air. But without the services of a full intensive care unit to keep careful track of her blood pressure and blood oxygen saturation, he fears that she could die. The Dutch have such an ICU, and Ilijaz asks Christina to request that they take the injured woman into their care.
This time, Christina sends the request by telex. She receives a reply from a Dutchbat surgeon who, like her, has just recently arrived in the enclave:
“With our sincerest apologies we are not able to treat your patient, because of lack of I.C. capacity and material.”
Christina knows that Srebrenica Hospital, though it lacks the sophisticated monitoring equipment the patient requires, has plenty of supplies. She could send whatever the Dutch need with the patient. By the time the response comes in, though, other crises have hit, and she doesn’t pursue the case. She is peeved, though. She lets MSF Belgrade headquarters know about the incident and comments that if the Dutch soldiers can’t do anything to protect the population they’re here to protect, they could at least take some patients. Keeping all their supplies for themselves and refusing to take patients is, in her opinion, unethical.
“That will mean also that if Daniel or myself are in need for urgent medical care, they will refuse…. For the time being their only aim is to protect themself.”
A colleague from MSF Belgrade writes back to assure her.
“If either you or Daniel would be in (trouble) I do not think there will be a problem. I am sure they will help. It has always been the case in all the countries I have been to.”
Christina manages to find a positive side to Dutchbat’s suspension of its medical activities. She tells headquarters that it’s an opportunity for MSF to reaffirm its neutrality by initiating a new, more distanced involvement with the U.N. military forces.
* * *
SREBRENICA AWAKENS FRIDAY, JULY 7, to a quiet, overcast morning. In the bunker beside the hospital, the MSF telex comes to life, spitting out a message from Dutch medical personnel stationed at the U.N. B Company compound near the soccer pitch. They ask for information about yesterday’s civilian casualties. The death toll, at least among people who made it to the hospital, was four, and more than a dozen were treated for injuries.
Before noon, the phone in the MSF house rings. Christina stares at it, surprised. In the two weeks she’s been here, she never even thought to pick it up and see if it worked. Apparently some sort of internal phone exchange exists for emergencies. The voice on the other end says there are wounded people close to Potočari who need help. Can she come? Again, it’s dangerous to venture out in anything less than an armored vehicle given the recent military assault, but Christina can’t imagine not trying to help people knowing they are hurt. If the shelling keeps up, she thinks, MSF will need an armored personnel carrier. She and one of the local drivers put their heavy flak jackets and helmets back on and set out in an MSF Land Cruiser to pick up the injured. She finds two casualties opposite the Dutchbat compound—one with minor injuries and the other with a life-threatening head wound—and drives with them back to the hospital.
Why didn’t someone ask the Dutch to help them, given that it was an emergency and they were much closer to the Dutchbat hospital? Christina doesn’t know.
Srebrenica remains quiet throughout the rainy day. Perhaps it’s the weather, or maybe the Serb military has decided not to pursue whatever objectives it had in mind. Whatever the case, in spite of the recent shelling and the rain, Srebrenica’s streets are full of people who cannot bring themselves to stay inside their hot, overcrowded dwellings. It surprises Christina that parents let their children play outside. The two MSF expatriates and the local doctors take advantage of the quiet moments, too, to finally sit down for lunch.
Around 6 P.M., the hospital shudders with the force of repeated explosions; sixteen artillery shells crash into the center of town. The injured come pouring into the hospital, among them one of Ilijaz’s good friends, a big-boned twenty-six-year-old teacher, organizer of the schools in wartime Srebrenica and an original member of the ragtag troops Ilijaz helped put together to defend his village. The teacher’s body is ravaged by shrapnel wounds. Holes as wide as two inches pepper his chest, abdomen, and buttocks, leaving nothing for a surgeon to open and everything for him to close.
Ilijaz has to leave another patient with chest wounds and puts his best friend, the instrument technician Naim, in charge of sewing the wounds closed. Then, he makes it his first priority to support his injured friend’s breathing, relieving the tension on the man’s damaged right lung by inserting a tube into his chest to drain it of air and blood. Ilijaz turns to the abdomen, which is bleeding heavily. Over the next several hours, he repairs an injury to a major vein, sews a rupture in the urinary bladder, and cuts out several lengths of damaged intestines, which will die if left in the abdomen. Then he painstakingly stitches the healthy ends of intestine back together, creating an anastemosis and leaving an opening to drain outside the skin in a colostomy.
One and a half liters of blood transfused, numerous liters of fluids infused, and nearly five hours later, at 10 P.M., Ilijaz finally completes the operation successfully. The moment he finishes, he goes weak-kneed and nearly faints. His friends in the operating room grab hold of him and help him to the doctors’ lounge.
Christina tries to convince Ilijaz to get some sleep with her and Daniel in the cellar she calls “MSF’s bunker.” He refuses. Like a good captain, he won’t a
bandon his ship. The 450-square-foot shelter, filled with a handful of canvas mattresses and the MSF desk, telex, and radio, has nowhere near enough room for all the hospital staff. If Ilijaz leaves them, he thinks, they might panic. He won’t even use the bulletproof vest and helmet Christina gave him, because when he put them on once, everyone’s eyes bugged out with fear.
The medical staff work until midnight, and Christina later reports the day’s toll to headquarters: seven wounded, five of them severely, and one woman dead. Three of the injured die over the next twelve hours. Ilijaz is about to break down, she writes. Srebrenica “desperately” needs an MSF surgeon.
* * *
THE ATTACK HAS GONE ON FOR TWO DAYS NOW, and the Dutchbat commander again speculates on its possible goals in a report to his superiors in Bosnia. The Serbs’ aim is to reduce the number of U.N. forces and/or either “eliminate” or “neutralize” Srebrenica’s forces. With the Serb army’s limited manpower, he predicts, it won’t be able to conquer the enclave in the short term. However, the shelling of urban areas, attacks on the U.N. forces, and blockage of aid and resupply convoys concern him enough to conclude with an “appeal on behalf of the population of the enclave of Srebrenica.” He asks for assistance by all means: ground and air. There is no response from U.N. Protection Force leadership.
* * *
SERB FORCES GREET SREBRENICANS the next morning, Saturday, July 8, with two shells sent crashing into the center of town. Over the next few hours, they score nearly three dozen more hits in town and many outside it. Shortly after 11 A.M., Serb forces in the south of the enclave begin firing a T-54/55 battle tank and howitzers in the vicinity of the U.N. Foxtrot observation post they targeted two days ago, hitting positions held by Srebrenica soldiers some 200 yards in front of the post. The terrorized Dutch soldiers inside the small, sandbagged structure are instructed by superiors that they may not evacuate.
Around 1 P.M. the Dutchbat commander at the U.N. base in Potočari contacts his superiors in Sarajevo to again request close NATO air support. Before there is any response, one tank round and three shells tear into the defense wall of the observation post, ripping out a hole a tank could drive through. Dutch soldiers watch as Srebrenica soldiers abandon a trench in front of the U.N. post and retreat 100 yards behind it. A Serb tank then crosses the trench and stops 100 yards in front of the U.N. post, firing to the west. A firefight ensues between the Serbs, who assault the new Srebrenican positions with small arms, grenades, and mortars, and the Srebrenicans, who respond with small-arms fire. The Dutch, caught in the middle with a non-functioning anti-tank missile atop their observation post, have an AT-4 shoulder-launched anti-tank rocket at their disposal. They do not fire it.
The Dutch company commander, fearing for the lives of his men, orders them to withdraw instead of responding militarily and increasing the tension. Serb soldiers waving white flags approach the post and jubilantly order the Dutch soldiers to leave without their weapons. The Dutch pile into an armored personnel carrier and speed downhill toward Srebrenica. Moments later, they brake to a halt. Several Srebrenicans stand before them at the foot of the hill, blocking the road to prevent their retreat.
By pulling out, the Dutch are violating tacit assurances that they would hold their observation posts for seventy-two hours under fire and collaborate with the Srebrenica soldiers to defend the safe area. What the Bosnians want is to prevent a repeat of last month, when the Dutch gave up observation post Echo and allowed the Serbs to occupy part of the enclave. But the Dutch soldiers suspect that the Srebrenicans blocking their route may wish to use them as a shield against the Serbs. They radio their company command post to report that the men barricading the road appear to be armed with rifles but not anti-tank weapons. The commander orders the unit to proceed. The driver rams through the barricade, and, as his soldiers duck for cover beneath the APC’s armored plating, they hear a muffled explosion. The tall gunner on the turret above them, slow to withdraw, crumples into the APC, bleeding from the head below the rim of his now-displaced helmet. The soldiers apply first aid as the driver rushes toward the Dutchbat hospital in Potočari. When the injured soldier arrives, doctors cannot resuscitate him.
The killing stuns and angers the Dutch, and the consequences unfold quickly. A unit of about twenty Serb soldiers overtakes a second observation post—Uniform—close to the first, forcing its six Dutch soldiers to hand over their equipment. Faced with five Srebrenica soldiers when retreating, this time the U.N. personnel return to their post and give themselves up to the Serbs, who take them into custody in Bratunac.
Meanwhile, the chief of staff of the U.N. Protection Force in Sarajevo, who has received the Dutch commander’s request for close air support, holds off from sending an application through to higher levels of command. He gives various reasons to various parties: peacekeepers’ lives are not directly threatened; air strikes might disrupt sensitive, ongoing political negotiations between a European envoy and the Bosnian Serbs; technical problems are preventing identification of specific targets; and some of the criteria necessary for air strikes have not been fulfilled.
Throughout the afternoon, Serb forces fire artillery and mortar rounds at several locations and launch at least two rockets toward the city. Christina reports hearing more than one shell a minute. Around 4 P.M. she hears airplanes in the hazy sky above, and wonders whether NATO air strikes will follow. They don’t. Two British Jaguar fighter jets have been sent by NATO to overfly the enclave. They stay about a half hour and fly away in advance of approaching bad weather and indications that Serb forces are setting up an SA-6 anti-aircraft battery. A Red Cross truck waiting at the northern border of the enclave, with 30,000 messages for those trapped inside, also turns around, returning to Belgrade.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Sunday, July 9, 1995, Christina reports to her headquarters that the townspeople, including the local MSF staff, are “quite tense and shocked, spreading a lot of horrifying rumors… it is not easy to calm them a bit down.” She is struggling to keep the hospital a neutral zone, free of soldiers, uniforms, and weapons. Her colleague, Daniel, the Australian generalist on his first mission for the organization, has decided to leave if Dutchbat does, and Christina asks that headquarters prepare to replace him.
Three to four thousand refugees pour into town from dwellings in the south of the enclave near the overtaken observation posts. Srebrenica’s municipal president asks Christina to inform the outside world that Srebrenica is in danger and needs to be saved. He requests that she formally end MSF’s ongoing strike against non-essential work in order to assist some of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of displaced people who’ve sought shelter in the schoolhouse. She agrees, on the condition that MSF’s logistician, who has been drafted by the Srebrenica military, is allowed to return to his job.
In the morning, Serb forces capture the last observation post in the southeast of the enclave, OP-Sierra. The Serbs now control an important part of the Srebrenica-Skelani road—the major route into Srebrenica from the south. The eight U.N. soldiers manning the observation post are disarmed, and they consent to being taken to Serb territory. On the way, one manages to use his radio to report seeing Serb mortars, anti-aircraft weapons, a tank, and artillery located on strategic hills just east of the enclave. These positions offer a shooting view straight into the heart of Srebrenica.
Although none of the Dutch commander’s requests for close air support have been approved in Zagreb, NATO planes on a routine “air presence” mission appear overhead at 8:15 A.M. Forward air controllers on the ground, who mistakenly assume the pilots are on a bombing mission, warn them: “Get the hell out of here; they’re holding some of our guys.” The Dutch commander doesn’t want to provoke the Serbs while his observation post crew is in Serb hands nearby.
Srebrenica soldiers fight furious Serb infantry assaults on their lines in the east and south. The Serbs appear to be pushing toward a strategic mountain in the south, Mt. Kak, and in the afternoon, the
y take an observation post on the way, OP-Kilo. Under pressure, the personnel of OP-Delta—between OP-Kilo and the strategic mountain—also abandon their post. The Dutch have now lost all observation posts in the south of the enclave. The Bravo Company commander sends five soldiers in an armored personnel carrier to check the situation of civilians stranded in a shelter project in the southeast. On the way, the driver stops to urinate. As he does his business out the vehicle’s open hatch, Serb soldiers capture the Dutch crew.
Meanwhile, back at the hospital, the doctors and nurses treat eight casualties from the center of town with shrapnel and blast injuries, to the ceaseless accompaniment of explosions. Shelling prevents Christina from making her trip to assess the situation at the schoolhouse.
In the afternoon, the team of three U.N. military observers reports that Bosnian Serb army aims may be widening because of lack of opposition. The Serbs will continue until they achieve their goals, the observers predict, and they are in a position to overrun the enclave if they wish.
The observers are more right than they can know. In the evening, President Karadžić, apparently emboldened by the lack of a significant military response from the Bosnians or NATO, authorizes the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army to capture the town of Srebrenica.
* * *
WHENEVER ILIJAZ HAS A SPARE MOMENT, he walks across the street to join meetings at the post office, which serves as the local Bosnian army headquarters (the U.N. military observers stationed here have left for the relative safety of the Dutchbat base). He learns that Srebrenica’s meager defenses to the south have evaporated. The Srebrenica forces are in disarray, with Serb tanks advancing to less than a half mile from the city before nightfall. Srebrenica soldiers try but fail to neutralize one of the tanks firing into the city. The untrained soldiers have difficulty firing the complicated “Red Arrow” rocket-driven missiles recently smuggled into the enclave and give up after three attempts go astray. Srebrenica’s war president sends messages to the Bosnian president and the commander of Bosnia’s armed forces, saying that the command structure of the Srebrenica division is collapsing and can no longer prevent Serb forces from entering the enclave. He proposes a meeting with military and political leaders of the Serbs to raise the possibility of opening a corridor for free passage of the population to Bosnian government–controlled territory. He receives no reply.
