The complex legacy of Srebrenica and why today's wars never seem to end

People light candles as others hold headscarves to symbolise the mothers of those killed to mark the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, in Belgrade on July 11. AFP

Earlier this month, the world commemorated the 30th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. The tears of the relatives of victims will not dry for as long as they live. What do they signify?

A fundamental insight is that the past is always with us, and we fail to understand details at our peril. In Srebrenica's case, 19th-century Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman imperialism triggered unrest among subject Balkan populations. This was a factor in the First World War and led to a Serbian kingdom that was re-named Yugoslavia in 1929 and conquered by Nazi Germany in 1941. The successor postwar communist republic fell behind the Iron Curtain in 1945 and fragmented into six states in 1991.

Thus, the Balkan states – like others elsewhere – have long formed and re-formed. The lesson for our 80-year-old United Nations age is that the sanctity of national boundaries is a recent innovation against history’s repeated wars over land that has strong symbolic value everywhere.

Nowadays, with 150 territorial disputes frozen, smouldering or raging worldwide, is it futile to find definitive solutions? Perhaps diplomats would be more effective, not by solving such disputes, but by getting nations to disagree in peace. The contrary winner-loser approach via international courts is usually unsuccessful, as with the many maritime disputes in the South China Sea.

Furthermore, whatever the dispute, the political economy determines outcome. The relatively stable and prosperous Yugoslavia crumbled after disruption in the 1980s. The lesson for contested corners of the globe is that this is how states are made or broken.

What about state structure? Like Yugoslavia, many federations have come and gone. The US and Switzerland are most successful. The Soviet Union was less so, and the Egypt-Syria-Libya and Singapore-Malaysia federations were short-lived. Several contemporary federated countries remain strife-ridden works in progress.

When factors of economy and democracy are stripped out, neither federations nor unitary states (such as Afghanistan, Haiti and Lebanon) are superior in terms of stability. That is worth remembering when prescribing governance models for conflicted Myanmar, Iraq and Syria.

What matters more is “ethnicisation”. Genetic variations among humans do not result in biologically defined racial differences. But social, cultural and religious variety are easily manipulated. Yugoslavia illustrated how ambitious leaders instrumentalised the scant differences between Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks.

The lesson for outsiders is to beware the challenges of stretching such fault lines, as the European Commission (now Union) did by hurrying to recognise Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia, thereby entrenching their ethnic majorities. Germany – haunted by its past Nazi role in the Balkans – led the policy to stabilise post-Yugoslav turmoil through “ethnic cantonisation”. That left multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina open to bitter warring in the early 1990s.

Misdirected bombs and bullets wreak collateral damage among nearby innocents, weaponised language triggers wider horrendous psycho-social trauma transmitted down generations

Colonial ethnicisation led to the 1994 Rwanda genocide that included a failed UN peacekeeping mission. No lessons were learnt as the Srebrenica massacre of nearly 8,400 Bosnian Muslims unfolded a year later, watched by a UN protection force. That genocides happen under public gaze and are rarely prevented is the sombre conclusion.

The quest for justice in Srebrenica provides more lessons, the first obstacle for accountability being the recognition of a genocide. This was first determined by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2004 and confirmed by the International Court of Justice in 2007. By then, the genocide was over. All genocides suffer the same slow reckoning, leaving survivors to get what comfort they can from subsequent commemorations.

One reason for tardiness is that states prefer genocide determination to be left to international mechanisms, which take time to negotiate. That allows states to avoid inconvenient implications for foreign relations, although the Genocide Convention empowers them to judge genocide cases. Germany and France have boldly done so, but selective determinations are perceived as political, undermining the universal significance of the most egregious crimes against humanity.

Meanwhile, criminal justice for genocide requires finding individuals guilty. That usually means leaders because genocide is generally an act of state or authority. Thus, guilty verdicts get misrepresented as symbolic shaming of a whole nation. This is evident now in rising global anti-Semitism because of Israeli war tactics.

After the Srebrenica verdict, Serbian nationalists felt insulted. “We are not a genocidal people” was a popular slogan. And so, denial became Serbian state policy, hampering collective healing. The country remains mired in citizen discontent with unresolved historical undercurrents, including the further “ethnicised” loss of Kosovo in 2008. Bosnia and Herzegovina also remains a fractured land.

The divisive legacy continues with the neighbouring Russia-Ukraine war, where many Serbians feel a cultural affinity with Russia while the EU supports Ukraine. Russian leaders have been indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, while Russia invokes alleged Ukrainian collusion with Nazi genocidaires during the Second World War. The discomfiting conclusion is that genocides provide excuses for future bad behaviours.

Srebrenica also left the world more divided, as indicated by the 2024 UN General Assembly vote that established July 11 as the day for commemorating the genocide. Just 84 states voted in favour while 68 abstained and 19 opposed. The horror that should have united the world has, instead, sanctioned toxic denialism. That is echoed in current controversy on whether or not Gazan suffering under Israeli attack constitutes genocide.

The stark lesson for others seeking genocide-related redress – for example, Sudan’s Darfuris, Iraq’s Yazidis, Myanmar’s Rohingya or Ethiopia’s Tigrayans – is that adversarial western judicial traditions can trigger angry pushback rather than contrite “never-again” pledges.

Such justice may seed further conflict when remembrances give prominence to a predominant category of victim while overshadowing other suffering. As with those who also suffered – such as righteous non-Jews during the Holocaust, “good” Serbs in Bosnia, Hutus in Rwanda, Buddhists in Myanmar or Arabs in Darfur. The paucity of Nelson Mandelas means that inclusive justice through truth and reconciliation is generally not favoured.

Srebrenica’s lessons are not static as each generation sees the past with new eyes including the significance of genocide. Especially in our era where wars are waged not only through drones and missiles but via words to demonise and dispirit opponents. The most potent verbal assaults deploy the language of genocide because the implicit moral censure is a powerful mobiliser of political narratives that continue in Central and Eastern Europe.

Meanwhile, the brutalities that accompany modern conflict, be it sexual violence in Darfur or starvation in Gaza, mean that victims and observers struggle to find language adequate for their pain and outrage. And so, cries of genocide get more common, regardless of the strict criteria of the 1948 Genocide Convention.

Invoking genocidal language by human rights violators and defenders alike is one reason why today’s wars never appear to end. Because while misdirected bombs and bullets wreak collateral damage among nearby innocents, weaponised language triggers wider horrendous psycho-social trauma transmitted down generations.

As the flowers laid during Srebrenica commemorations fade, their biggest message is that when there are no universal settled truths, or if narratives around the lived experiences of affected people are sharply contested, peace retreats further away.