In Europe

the townspeople: ‘Do not be afraid. As from now, you are protected by the troops of the United Nations. We will not abandon you.’ The UN flag was raised in the city with a great deal of ceremony. The elated municipal government made Morillon an honorary citizen.
    In early May, the UN announced that Srebrenica was now a demilitarised safe haven. Women and children were allowed to leave for Tuzla aboard UN trucks. All able-bodied men between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five were to remain behind. Once an estimated 23,000 women, children and elderly people had left Srebrenica, however, the Muslim leader, Orić, ordered a halt to the evacuation. Any greater exodus would leave his enclave too weak. Approximately 40,000 Muslims remained behind in the claustrophobic safe haven, held more or less prisoner in this Bosnian/UN ghetto.
    Later it became clear that, by that point, all parties involved had actually given up on the enclave. The half-heartedness of the Americans andWestern Europeans can, in hindsight, be seen simply from the number of UN troops they allotted for peacekeeping forces throughout Bosnia: a total of 7,000 soldiers and officers, only a fifth of what was considered necessary. Dutchbat, the Dutch UN battalion which succeeded the Canadians as the protectors of Srebrenica in February 1994, consisted of some 3–400 lightly armed soldiers, with only 150 trained combat troops.
    The Bosnian government, too, ultimately withdrew its support from the enclave. In late April 1995, Naser Orić and his officers were transferred to Tuzla, supposedly to receive instructions in connection with the expected Serb attack. For whatever reason, Orić and his men never set foot in Srebrenica after that. From that moment, his paramilitary supporters were forced to do without his leadership.
    On 11 July, 1995, therefore, the Serbian troops led by General Ratko Mladić were able to enter the city virtually unchallenged. Under the circumstances, and after these events, their advance was entirely predictable. What no one had foreseen, however, was the drama that followed: the Muslim men were separated from the women and children, a number of them were able to escape through the mountains, and the rest were never seen alive again. In a cold-storage warehouse near Tuzla, in more than 4,000 white bags, many of those murdered are still waiting to be identified.
    Holbrookeland is a charming, mountainous area, with panoramas reminiscent of Switzerland or Austria. The higher parts of it are forested with pine, still higher up the greenery disappears beneath a heavy layer of snow. Then the first ruin looms up along the side of the road. The farmhouse looks as though God had stuck his thumb through the roof, all the way down to the cellar. A hundred metres further along is the second, half-incinerated ruin. Then a wrecked bus. Another two kilometres and there are only the skeletons of houses, scattered across the hillsides. Dužsko Tubić stops the car beside a muddy field. ‘This is where the first mass graves were found, in summer 1996. But don't hang around too long, this area can still be rather bad for your health.’ We drive past a dilapidated Dutch sentry post, then another wrecked car and a few hollow-eyed villas.
    The former health resort of Srebrenica looks desolate. The departmentstore has been boarded up, roofs have collapsed, the town square has buckled and is covered in weeds. In the stream you can still see the remains of the home-made electrical turbines from the starvation winter of 1993. On a wall beside the entrance to the former battery plant, in faded letters, ‘Dutchba’. This is where the Dutch soldiers were quartered. Inside, on the walls, there is still some graffiti: ‘A mustache? Smel like shit? Bosnian girl!
    At the moment, the building is inhabited chiefly by Serbs who have fled Sarajevo. These urban families have a hard time surviving amid these mountains. The café has been renamed 071, the area code for Sarajevo. The hospital received electricity again only two days ago. It had been without lights for three weeks, until the doctors and nurses finally paid the bill themselves. The medical supervisor: ‘The economic situation in this city is disastrous. There are almost no jobs, everyone on my staff is underfed.’ The manager of Hotel Guber – he saved the lives of a few Muslims – pleads for outside investments. ‘Our image, that's what it's all about, and that will never be fixed.’
    In the