From Washington to Srebrenica to Dayton… Carving up the Republic of Bosnia & Herzegovina

By Francis A. Boyle, 18 August 2005

On February 5, 1994, a mortar shell struck the marketplace in the center of Sarajevo, killing 69 people and wounding more than 200. The international outrage over this wanton atrocity inflicted upon innocent people by the Bosnian Serbs was so enormous that the Clinton administration was forced to seize the initiative for the so-called Bosnian peace negotiations from the United Nations and the European Union, and thus to take the matter directly into its own hands. The net result of this American effort was the Washington Agreements of March 1994.

The author analyzed the Washington Agreements in great detail in a Memorandum of Law to the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the so-called Washington Agreements of 18 March 1994, that I prepared and submitted to the Bosnian Parliament on March 24, 1994. This Memorandum is a public document that was considered by the Bosnian Parliament during the course of their deliberations over the Washington Agreements. It was originally published on the Bosnian Computer Newsgroup Bosnet (i.e., BIT.LISTSERV.BOSNET), and later elsewhere.

Instead of carving up Bosnia into three de jure independent states, the Washington Agreements prepared the way for carving up the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina into only two de facto independent states. One such de facto independent state—consisting of approximately 49 per cent of the Republic's territory—would be designated for the Bosnian Serbs, thus ratifying the results of their ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass rape, war crimes, and torture. The second such de facto independent state was actually created by the Washington Agreements and was called a “Federation” between the legitimate Bosnian government and the extreme nationalist Bosnian Croats working for separation at the behest of the ex-communist apparatchik Croatian President Franjo Tudjman.

In theory, the so-called Federation was supposed to control 51 per cent of the territory of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Nevertheless, it was clear from reading through the Washington Agreements that its American State Department drafters contemplated that ultimately this so-called Federation would be absorbed by the Republic of Croatia; and likewise, that the Bosnian Serb state would ultimately be absorbed by the Republic of Serbia. In other words, the Washington Agreements paved the way for the de facto partition of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Serbia. That had been the longstanding plan of Tudjman and Serb President Slobodan Milosevic to begin with, going all the way back to their secret agreement to partition Bosnia at Karadjordjevo in March of 1991.

The Washington Agreements of March 1994 became the basis for the drafting and the conclusion of the Dayton Agreement in December of 1995. Indeed, the Dayton Agreement can only be understood and interpreted by reference to the Washington Agreements. In other words, despite its public protestations to the contrary, throughout 1994 and 1995 the Clinton administration actively promoted and consistently pursued the de facto carve-up of a United Nations member state into two parts, and then Bosnia's de facto absorption by two other U.N. member states.

After imposing the Washington Agreements upon the Bosnian government, the Clinton administration then fruitlessly spent the next year and a half trying to convince Serbia and the Bosnian Serbs to go along with this de facto carve-up and absorption of 49 per cent of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This would have required the Bosnian Serbs to voluntarily give up about 20 percent of the 70 percent of Bosnian territory that they had stolen and ethnically cleansed. That they proved unwilling to do until the use of military force against them by NATO in the Fall of 1995.

In the meantime, the siege and bombardment of Sarajevo and the other Bosnian cities persisted and the Bosnian Serbs continued to ethnically cleanse Bosnian towns of their Muslim and Croat citizens, with the active support and assistance of Serbia. The entire world watched and did nothing as the slaughter and carnage by the Bosnian Serb army continued relentlessly. This genocide culminated in the Serb massacres of thousands of Bosnian Muslims at the so-called U.N. “safe havens” of Zepa and Srebrenica during the Summer of 1995.

On September 8, 1995, the Clinton Administration imposed a so-called Agreement on Basic Principles upon the Bosnian government in Geneva as part of the run-up to Dayton. It was clear to the author that the Geneva Agreement constituted the next stage in the American plan to carve up the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina into two de facto independent states that had been initiated by the 1994 Washington Agreements. In order to warn the Bosnian Parliament of these machinations, I prepared a formal Memorandum of Law to the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Concerning the Agreement on Basic Principles in Geneva of September 8, 1995, dated 11 September 1995. This Memorandum was submitted to the Bosnian Parliament and considered during the course of their deliberations. It was published on Bosnet on September 12, 1995.

At about the same time, it also appeared from published reports and from my own sources that the United States government was going to impose the partition of Sarajevo upon the Bosnian government as part of the so-called “final solution” for Bosnia. This is exactly what David Owen had planned to do in Geneva during the summer of 1993. In order to head off this partition plan, I prepared yet another Memorandum of Law to the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, entitled Saving Sarajevo, dated September 13, 1995, and published on Bosnet, September 13, 1995. A Bosnian language translation of this Memorandum was published on Bosnet, September 24, 1995.

Briefly put, this Memorandum on Sarajevo resurrected the proposal that I had originally designed and drafted at the request of President Izetbegovic while serving as Bosnia's Lawyer at the Owen-Stoltenberg negotiations in Geneva during the summer of 1993: Turn Sarajevo into a Capital District like Washington, D.C., instead of partitioning the city. Although I was not at Dayton, as far as I can tell from the published sources, my proposal constituted the opening position for the disposition of Sarajevo that was presented by the Bosnian Government at the Dayton negotiations.

Fortunately, it proved unnecessary to implement my proposal at Dayton. For there the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, proved willing to concede a unified Sarajevo to the control of the so-called Federation on the grounds that President Izetbegovic “deserved it” for having courageously endured the three and a half year siege and bombardment of that capital city by Milosevic's surrogates.

On 26 September the Clinton administration imposed yet another Agreement upon the Bosnian government in New York in order to pave the way for the carve-up of the Republic in Dayton. Once again, in order to alert the Bosnian Parliament to these machinations, I drafted a Memorandum of Law to the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Concerning the New York Agreement of 26 September 1995, dated September 28, 1995. This Memorandum was submitted to the Bosnian Parliament for their consideration and then published on Bosnet, September 29, 1995.

Next, His Excellency President Alija Izetbegovic asked me to analyze the first draft of the so-called Dayton Peace Agreement that was submitted to him by Richard Holbrooke. For obvious reasons, this Memorandum of Law is and shall remain private and confidential. However, several of my basic criticisms were incorporated into the final text of the Dayton Agreement. For example, it is a matter of public record that the first draft of the Holbrooke Plan would have constituted a de jure carve-up of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That never happened!

After the public initialling of the Dayton Agreement, I was asked by then Bosnian Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey as well as by the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina to produce an analysis of the Dayton Agreement for the purpose of their formulating a package of reservations, declarations and understandings (RDUs) to the Agreement. This was done by means of a formal Memorandum of Law by me that was submitted to the Parliament of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina concerning the Dayton Agreement, dated November 30, 1995. This Memorandum is in the public domain and was published on Bosnet, December 1, 1995.

Pursuant to this self-styled Dayton Peace Agreement, on 14 December 1995 the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was carved-up de facto in Paris by the United Nations, the European Union and its member states, the United States, Russia and the many other states in attendance, despite the United Nations Charter, the Nuremberg Principles, the Genocide Convention, the Four Geneva Conventions and their two Additional Protocols, the Racial Discrimination Convention, the Apartheid Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as two overwhelmingly favorable protective Orders issued by the International Court of Justice on behalf of Bosnia on 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993. This second World Court Order effectively prohibited such a partition of Bosnia by the vote of 13 to 2. This U.N.-sanctioned execution of a U.N. member state violated every known principle of international law that had been formulated by the international community in the post World War II era.

Bosnia was sacrificed on the altar of Great Power politics to the Machiavellian god of expedience. In 1938 the Great Powers of Europe did the exact same thing to Czechoslovakia at Munich. The partition of that nation state did not bring peace to Europe then. Partition of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina will not bring peace to Europe now.

On 11 July 1996,—the first anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre of several thousand Bosnian Muslims by the Bosnian Serb army with the assistance of Serbia—the International Court of Justice issued a Judgment in which it overwhelmingly rejected all of the spurious jurisdictional and procedural objections made by the rump Yugoslavia against Bosnia's Application/complaint for genocide that the author had filed with the Court on 20 March 1993. The World Court had already rejected these same objections twice before in its Orders of 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993. But under the Court's Rules of Procedure, the rump Yugoslavia was entitled to a separate hearing and decision on these preliminary issues alone. Nevertheless, despite the overwhelming merits of Bosnia's claims for genocide against the rump Yugoslavia, enormous pressure has been brought to bear upon the Bosnian government by the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and its member states, Carl Bildt, and Richard Holbrooke, inter alia, to drop this World Court lawsuit in order to placate Slobodan Milosevic and Serbia. Why?

When I drafted all of the World Court papers for Bosnia and also when I orally argued the two sets of Provisional Measures before the Court in April and August of 1993, I was quite careful and diligent to file and plead as much material as I could that personally implicated Milosevic and Serbia in ordering, supervising, approving and condoning genocide against both the People and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I personally attacked and repeatedly accused Milosevic and Serbia of primary responsibility for the genocide in Bosnia for the entire world to see and to hear. For this reason, it has so far proved to be impossible for the United States, the United Nations, and Europe to rehabilitate Milosevic and Serbia, which they all clearly intended to do as their “man of peace” and “policeman” for the Balkans.

Bosnia has already won what is tantamount to two pre-judgments on the merits of the case in the World Court's Order of 8 April 1993 and the Court's Order of 13 September 1993, as conceded by the late Judge Tarassov in his Declaration attached to the first Order, and in his Dissenting Opinion attached to the second Order. In other words, under the leadership of Slobodan Milosevic, the rump Yugoslavia has indeed committed genocide against the People and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both directly and indirectly by means of its surrogate army under the command of two individuals already indicted for international crimes in Bosnia: Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. Nevertheless, for almost four years the entire international community refused to discharge their solemn obligation under Article I of the Genocide Convention “to prevent” this ongoing genocide against the Bosnian People that was so blatantly taking place in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina.Hence, except for the Bosnians, everyone mentioned above wants this World Court lawsuit to disappear from the face of the earth. For they are all guilty of complicity in genocide.

But there is something that the People of Bosnia and Herzegovina can do about this situation: The Bosnian People must stand up as One and make it absolutely clear to the great powers of the world, and especially to the United States and to Europe, that they will vigorously pursue to completion their lawsuit against the rump Yugoslavia for genocide. This World Court lawsuit is the only justice that the Bosnian People will ever get from anyone in the entire world on this or any other issue!

If this lawsuit is not vigorously prosecuted through to its successful conclusion, then the rump Yugoslavia and its supporters around the world, together with the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and its member states, will be able to rewrite history by arguing that genocide never occurred against the People and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this manner these great powers together with the United Nations and the European Union will be able to justify their refusal to prevent the ongoing genocide against the People and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina for almost four years despite the obvious requirements of the 1948 Genocide Convention, the 1945 United Nations Charter, and the two World Court Orders of 8 April 1993 and 13 September 1993.

As I have established in this paper, Bosnia has already won this World Court lawsuit. All that Bosnia must do now is to see this lawsuit through to its ultimate and successful conclusion. It is inevitable that the World Court will rule that the rump Yugoslavia and its surrogate Bosnian Serb armed forces have committed genocide against the People and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. At that time, the claims of the Bosnian People for genocide will be vindicated for the entire world to see and for all of history to know. After all that they have suffered, and endured, and accomplished, the Bosnian People owe it to themselves and to their children and to their children's children, as well as to all the other Peoples of the world and to their children and to their children's children, to prosecute this World Court lawsuit through to its successful conclusion.