Once again Michael Dobbs is displaying the shallowness of his approach to Srebrenica issues, while trying to capitalize on the fact that his readers are probably even less informed than he is.

For starters, the controversial video of alleged “Srebrenica executions” was initially presented in court by ICTY Prosecutor Jeffrey Nice during the Milosevic trial on June 1, 2005. The relevant trial transcript can be accessed on the ICTY website at http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/050601IT.htm The video figures in the direct examination of witness Stevanovic roughly between pages 40277 and 40287. Since when dealing with Dobbs it is always a good idea to check, double-check, and check again, readers are advised to review the transcript first before they do anything else.

If they do that, they will notice several things. The first is that prosecutor Nice offers no foundational evidence that the video is in any way linked to Srebrenica. On page 40278 Presiding Judge Robinson asks Nice: ”Mr. Nice, can you tell us about that film?” to which Nice responds somewhat guardedly, “Yes, to a degree I will,” but he never keeps his promise. Amicus Stephen Kay then interjects: “We haven't established any foundation for this. To my mind, this looks like sensationalism. There are no questions directed to the witness on the content of that film in a way that he can deal with it. It's merely been a presentation by the Prosecution of some sort of material they have in their possession that has not been disclosed to us and then it has been shown for the public viewing without any question attached to it. It's entire sensationalism. It's not cross-examination.”

To which Judge Robinson adds: “Mr. Nice, there is some merit in that. That's why I asked what we are going to be told about the film. Who made it, in what circumstances, and what questions are you putting to the witness in relation to it?”

The foundational issues in relation to this video are never resolved. However, turning to the witness, Nice discloses what his questions are going to be: “I want your assistance, please, now or later, with the identification of and with the function of the people we can identify from this film.” [p. 40281]. Further on Nice reiterates his purpose: “They're here for identification of the unit and for examination of to whom the unit was subordinated.” [p. 40283] The individuals whom the witness is asked to identify are members of the Scorpions unit who are alleged to appear in the video.

So the first point that readers need to be aware of [but which Pulitzer Prize hopeful Michael Dobbs did not reveal to them] is that the video was played in the courtroom not to show Srebrenica executions but in order to put unrelated personal identification questions to the witness. Foundational evidence linking it to Srebrenica was never produced. The “identification” questions were probably a ploy to enable to prosecution to make the video public and to enable the propaganda machine to do the rest. The legal pretext for showing it was soon forgotten. By relentless repetition and misrepresentation [Dobbs’ blog being just the latest example] in the public mind the video became associated with Srebrenica executions.

The second point which also makes this affair highly dubious is that the alleged Srebrenica victims from the video were supposedly taken 100 km away to a completely different area of Bosnia to be executed and buried, as Dobbs also claims. But even by Dobbsian standards that is preposterous. Would anyone who is killing 8000 people in the general vicinity of their capture bother to separate just six of them and take them 100 km away in order to conceal evidence of the crime?

Dobbs must be running out of “Srebrenica genocide evidence” if he feels compelled to dramatize his claims by offering a video about which we know nothing and that, on the face of it and without corroborating material, has nothing to do with Srebrenica.

Misha is right. Everyone is getting tired of Michael Dobbs' Srebrenica claptrap. The clown Adalin's comical offers of bargain garments in the comments section here are more intersting [and ultimately informative] than Dobbs' tired rehashings of Bosnian war propaganda. Michael should get the message and get out of the Srebrenica business before he becomes as ridiculous as Adalin.

First of all: Great blog!
Second: Is there an unedited version of the video, that's referring to in the post, somewhere?

Adam Haglund
photographer
Malmö, Sweden

Poor Dobbsie is losing his scholarly, analytical cool. “Foreign Policy” readers are entitled to some intellectual honesty, and please spare us the diatribes. What "established facts" is Dobbs talking about? The authenticity of the Srebrenica video that is the subject of this blog? That was never established by ICTY because it was never put by the prosecution before the chamber as an issue to be adjudicated, as my references to the transcript clearly show. The Serbian court did try some of the perpetrators and found them guilty. That result can hardly be argued with. But it does not lend any support to Dobbs’ outlandish thesis that six people were separated out of a group of 8000 and taken a hundred kilometers away to be shot “in order to conceal evidence of the crime” committed against the remaining 7994. Dobbs apparently has a very low regard for the intelligence of his readers if he believes that they will buy that one.

I am happy to acknowledge that two plus two makes four, but it is Dobbs who is arguing that it equals five. I am sure he now regrets bitterly having approached us in our booth at the Belgrade International Book Fair last year thinking, no doubt, that he would have an easy time caricaturing someone who holds a different view. Before he came up I had never heard of him or of “Foreign Policy” and it would have been better for him if he had kept it that way. Now he has to deal with boomerangs after every posting, and it is not just from me but also others who feel encouraged by my example to enter the "state of denial" and to question his holy writ.

I suspect that Dobbs, who is apparently unaccustomed to anything less than adoring comments, will soon pull the plug on unfiltered reader responses on his blog. Let us wait and see.

But in the meantime, when arguments fail what else is left but cheap shots to divert attention? Of what significance is it who funds our NGO? What matters are the positions that we take and the facts and arguments with which we support them. Is Dobbs getting a salary from someone, or is he working for free? As for the “conspiracy theories” ploy, which happens to be the last refuge of contemporary intellectual scoundrels, I challenge Dobbs to produce one such theory that I ever suggested.

I do not advocate any theories Dobbsie, I deconstruct unsustainable, politically motivated theories put forward by others, including yourself. Nya, nya!

Thank you for broaching this topic Mr. Dobbs. This goes right to the heart of the matter.

In my view, the massacre happened because the Bosnian-Serbs believed that Nasir Oric and his men were responsible for atrocities against Serbs and that they posed an ongoing threat. They killed the prisoners in order to avenge the perceived misdeeds of Oric's forces and to elminate a fighting force that they perceived to be a threat.

Statements on the tape like telling the prisoners, "You didn't wait when you were killing Serbs" and denying them water because they had allegedly denied it to Serbs, would tend to corroborate that thesis -- but I'm not entirely comfortable using the Skorpions as an example.

General Morillon gave extensive testimony about the state of mind of the Bosnian-Serbs in the region when he testified in the Milosevic trial. He said, "I wasn't surprised when the Serbs took me to a village to show me the evacuation of the bodies of the inhabitants that had been thrown into a hole, a village close to Bratunac. And this made me understand the degree to which this infernal situation of blood and vengeance led to a situation when I personally feared that the worst would happen if the Serbs of Bosnia managed to enter the enclaves and Srebrenica."

He said, "I feared that the Serbs, the local Serbs, the Serbs of Bratunac, these militiamen, they wanted to take their ." revenge for everything that they attributed to Naser Oric. It wasn't just Naser Oric that they wanted to revenge, take their revenge on, they wanted to revenge their dead on Orthodox Christmas. They were in this hellish circle of revenge. Not only the men. The women, the entire population was imbued with this. It wasn't the sickness of fear that had infected the entire population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the fear of being dominated, of being eliminated, it was pure hatred."

I'm not sure the Skorpions are the best example we could be using here. The Skorpions were a group of criminals and mercinaries from Krajina. For the most part, the Bosnian-Serb military units based around Srebrenica were manned by Bosnian-Serb refugees who had formerly lived in the enclave. The Skorpions were outsiders, kind of like Drazen Erdemovic and the members of the 10th Sabotage Unit were outsiders.

The Skorpions are actually kind of an odd unit. They were disbanded in 1996 but reconstituted themselves in 1999 and volunteered for the Serbian MUP in Kosovo during the NATO bombing, and while they were there they massacred 19 Albanian women and children in Podujevo -- a crime for which they were prosecuted for war crimes by Serbia. One of the Skorpions, Dejan Demirovic, fled to Canada and the Canadian government took its sweet time in extraditing him back to Serbia in spite of the warrant out for his arrest.

An example of the type of thing the Serbs held Oric responsible for can be seen on videos like Popovic trial exhibit 7D00667. You can download the MPEG file from the ICTY archives and watch the video. I tried to post it on YouTube once before, but they took it down because it violated their policy on "shocking and disgusting content" ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8o7ozy3fMc ) .

The video shows the bodies of Serbs who had been massacred, and according to the narration on the video they had been massacred by Oric's forces, and you can see that some of the victims have had their throats slashed, others have had their eyes gouged out, and some have had been disembowled or had their genitals mutilated.

Videos like this, and rumors about this sort of thing, made their way around the Serbian countryside created a really terrible and hostile environment. If you download the video, you can see from the picture quality that the tape has been copied over and over again.

This is why they did what they did. This is why they massacred almost every military aged man from Srebrenica that the got their hands on. They wanted to kill the people responsible and make sure they couldn't do it again. It was a terrible crime, but it was motivated by vengance and hatred, not genocidal intent to destroy the Bosnian-Muslim ethnic group.

One question I would ask is why the Bosnian Government forced so many refugees to stay in Srebrenica against their will? Why wouldn't they let the UN evacuate them? And why didn't they try to help them when the enclave came under attack? Why did they just abandon them the way they did?

Looks like I was right about the inevitable introduction of censorship in the comments section as the number of critical responses mounts. What happened to the clown Adalin and his cheap garments offers? Has he been pushed under the bus to test the waters how readers would react? Has he been replaced now by Candytata6 for comic relief?

That was just a hypothesis and by no means a conspiracy theory. Your explanation for the disappearance of these two odd but interesting characters is most satisfactory. Everyone is relieved that this blog remains a bastion of critical inquiry and free expression.

Something must be at stake in the scene. This “thing” that’s at stake is the engine driving the reader on.

As you write/edit a new scene, be clear on one goal. I love this line in Story Engineering: “A scene that merely describes a place, or even something about a particular character, yet nothing really ever happens in the scene–no decision, no information, no action, no change or forward motion to the story whatsoever–the scene violates … storytelling principles.”

If you only deliver one piece of information to take out of a scene, then this is perfect. Less is more.

If you have Aaron realising Belinda cheated on him, and Belinda realising she made a mistake sleeping with Carter, and Carter thinking that he’s always had a thing for his best mate, Dean. A + B + C + D = confused!

Break up these goals into different scenes. That way, you can focus on the one mission,

The puzzle pieces make up one path to one goal.

plant vital subtext, concentrate the readers’ focus on what they should be paying attention to.

James Patterson is known for his mission-driven scenes–and chapters.They’ve sold him 220 million copies of his books, apparently.

However, this method might not work for you. What must work is to let your reader know the piece of information they should take out of a scene from your story. If the plants exist, if you describe a colourful room–this isn’t a scene. That’s scenery. Something must happen to drive the story forward.

And how can you end your scene on the best note? (Cliffhanger alert)

I’ll share my favourite ones that Larry Brooks shares in Story Engineering:

He would write it for Lauren, to honor her memory, the consequences of blasphemy be damned.
She was smiling, as if she knew something no one could.
He would kill Gabriel Stone himself, face to face.
Closure sometimes required a bullet to the brain.
Gabriel recognized the face, then the clothes. As he stared, the dark haired woman from the library said, “Hello Gabriel.” And then she smiled, raising a gun to eye level.

Thankyou

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Videos like this, and rumors about this sort of thing, made their way around the Serbian countryside created a really terrible and hostile environment. If you download the video, you can see from the picture quality that the tape has been copied over and over again. This is why they did what they did. This is why they massacred almost every military aged man from helpwithbaby Srebrenica that the got their hands on. They wanted to kill the people responsible and make sure they couldn't do it again. It was a terrible crime, but it was motivated by vengance and hatred, not genocidal intent to destroy the Bosnian-Muslim ethnic group.