The Fall Adam LeBor
"Complicity with Evil",
11/2006
Book Chapter
As spring moved to summer, General Mladić squeezed Srebrenica hard. The Serbs humiliated the United Nations. They blocked the passage of all fresh food, dairy products, flour, and meat. No ...engineering equipment, spare parts, or fuel reached Dutchbat, and the soldiers lived off combat rations. The health of those trapped inside the enclave further deteriorated—the sticky heat of a Balkan summer was a perfect breeding ground for cockroaches, fleas, and lice. The Serbs prevented any troops from entering or leaving after 26 April. Dutchbat was 150 soldiers short. Day by day the sense of impending disaster grew. Those living
A Safe Area Adam LeBor
"Complicity with Evil",
11/2006
Book Chapter
The video begins with an Orthodox priest blessing the Serb paramilitaries before they go forth. They stand in a row, AK-47 assault rifles in their hands, red berets atop their shaved heads. Flanked ...by two giant black flags, the priest brushes the soldiers’ heads with a handful of greenery as they file past. The date stamp shows that it is 7:30 P.M., 25 June 1995, a few days before the Serbs’ final attack on Srebrenica.
The recording then cuts to a road in eastern Bosnia. It is a warm, sunny day, some time after the capture of the town. The
If there is a sense of shame among Secretariat officials for the United Nations’ failures in Srebrenica and Rwanda, it is not a career hindrance. Those implicated have been neither penalized nor ...demoted. The most conspicuous example is Kofi Annan, head of the DPKO during both the Bosnian war and the Rwandan genocide, who was afterward promoted to secretary general. Once Annan took office, on 1 January 1997, he quickly found new posts for his protégés. Shashi Tharoor, the DPKO team leader on Yugoslavia, was appointed Annan’s director of communications and special projects. In 2001 Tharoor was promoted to under—
Introduction Adam LeBor
"Complicity with Evil",
11/2006
Book Chapter
I first encountered the United Nations in the summer of 1992, at its headquarters in Zagreb, capital of the newly independent state of Croatia. I presented a UN official with a letter from the ...newspaper for which I worked, theTimes(of London), my passport, and two photographs. In return, she issued me with a small piece of plastic about two inches by three, emblazoned with a blue stripe marked “Press,” and the emblem of the United Nations, a globe encircled by two olive branches, symbolizing a peaceful world. I was now officially accredited to UNPROFOR, the UN protection force
A Meager Reckoning Adam LeBor
"Complicity with Evil",
11/2006
Book Chapter
The video shows the Scorpions ushering the prisoners forward one by one, as though they were about to enter a room or climb on a bus. Azmir Alispahić, the sixteen-year-old boy who wanted to be a ...doctor, trembles as he watches the men line up. The prisoners walk ahead, stop, stand still; the Serbs shoot each in the back. The men lurch forward as the bullets hit them, then crumple into the long grass. One man twitches several times before he lies still. After the Serbs have shot four of the men, they untie Azmir and another prisoner and order
