SLAUGHTER AT SREBRENICA: Survivors of the massacre recall their escape, writes Daniel McLaughlin in Srebrenica
Ten years after Bosnian Serbs slaughtered some 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica, survivors of the massacre converged on the blighted town yesterday amid preparations for a huge memorial ceremony and anger over the West's failure to catch all the killers.
Hundreds of Muslims arrived here after a three-day walk from Tuzla, 75 km to the north, which was the aim of their desperate trek a decade ago, when they fled into the hills above Srebrenica as it fell to the marauding forces of General Ratko Mladic.
Today thousands of people who escaped Gen Mladic's execution squads will bury relatives near Srebrenica, where international dignitaries will join them for a commemoration that has reopened many deep wounds in a still-divided Bosnia.
After the UN and NATO failed to support a vastly outnumbered group of Dutch peacekeepers at Srebrenica, Gen Mladic's men overran the "safe haven" and, after promising that the Muslim community had nothing to fear, began the systematic killing.
Sadik Selimovic, a Muslim fighter who was wounded at Srebrenica, claimed afterwards: "Mladic literally said these words - they would kill all the men and throw them in the Drina river to feed fish, and these men would never again kill Serb children in the Serb Drina valley. But they would let the women go so they can suffer." About 15,000 Muslim men and boys managed to escape to the hills. But scared, starving and disoriented, many were easy prey for Serb troops who shelled and ambushed them, or - disguised as UN peacekeepers - lured them into surrender and executed them.
"We were ambushed several times. The Serbs killed without prejudice, everyone - young or old, man or boy," said Ramo Dautbasic (37), as he walked back across hills, forests and ravines that were a killing ground, and are still littered with lethal mines.
"I wasn't wounded, but I had no shoes and my feet were hurt terribly. At the end of the march, I could hardly walk." The men who survived drank water from puddles and trenches, and ate berries and bark from the forest.
"We were an easy target and many got killed in ambushes, or crossing the roads or when they shelled us in the woods," said Dzevad Malkic (46) who took 27 days to reach safety.
"I waited for 15 days to cross a road in the village of Kamenica.
But when I saw how many people got killed trying it I turned around and headed west." For some survivors of the worst civilian slaughter since the second World War, the thought of taking to the hills once more was too much.
"I cannot even bear the thought of taking that same route again," said Mensur Hrnic (26), whose mother died as she fled. "I have nightmares about the horror of those 10 days. My father was killed and I was so badly wounded I almost lost my leg." The march began at Crni Vrh, the site of one of scores of mass graves dotted around Bosnia, where Serb soldiers and civilians tried to hide the evidence of war crimes.
Many bodies were dug up and reburied at different places by mechanical diggers, making it even harder for forensic analysts to piece together entire bodies and identify them.
International DNA experts have so far only identified the remains of a quarter of those murdered at Srebrenica, and 613 of them will be buried today at Potocari, where desperate Muslim refugees sought UN protection ten years ago, only to be abandoned to the triumphant Gen Mladic.
Some 200,000 people - mostly Muslims - died in Bosnia's 1992-1995 war, which left the country divided into Serb-run Republika Srpska and a Muslim-Croat Federation. Federal organs of power that are supposed to bring the communities together regularly fail, with hardline Serbs usually the ones to scupper initiatives.
The country's economy is in tatters and hopes of EU membership on long-term hold, but the issue that divides Bosnians most is still the fate of the men behind the war.
Gen Mladic is still on the run from the UN war crimes tribunal at The Hague, as is his wartime political chief, Radovan Karadzic.
"How is it possible they still can't arrest him? Ten years is a long time," said Mevludin Oric (35), who survived the Srebrenica massacre by hiding under the dead bodies of fellow Muslims.
"I expect Mladic, once he is in The Hague, to tell the truth, say where the mass graves are. My father is still missing."