Pardoning Holland

    The frivolity of the Serbian political elite is something that never ceases to entertain and amaze. A few days ago, the leader of the Christian Democratic Party and former minister of justice, Vladan Batic, introduced a resolution in Serbia’s parliament to pardon Holland for the conduct of its forces in and around Srebrenica in 1994 and 1995. Batic supported his proposal by arguing that such a conciliatory gesture on Serbia’s part would make the Dutch government more amenable to lifting its roadblocks on Serbia’s journey to “European integration.”
    There is, for starters, at least one formal reason why Batic’s proposal makes no sense. If in relation to Srebrenica Holland has indeed wronged anyone [and there are some who claim that it has] that certainly does not include Serbia. Therefore, in the strict sense, the issue of Holland’s hypothetical responsibility is not within the purview of Serbian jurisprudence and politics. Thus, there is no need for the Serbian parliament to take any position on it.
    But that, of course, was not even the real point of this comical gesture which Holland never asked Serbia to make in the first place and which, being [in contrast to Serbia] a self-respecting country, Holland would reject out of hand and with contempt.
    The point of it is self-motivated and spineless brown nosing of foreigners, regardless of who they might be, even if they happen to be relatively insignificant members of the coalition which is arrayed against Serbia and which occasionally strikes it with targeted blows.
    If Batic had the slightest feel for international politics, he would know that Holland represents nothing and that nothing depends on its will. The Dutch ruling circles’ hypocritical crisis of conscience in relation to Srebrenica is pure political theater for Balkan provincials. Holland is not angry at Serbia or at Bosnian Serbs because of Srebrenica; it is upset at itself because it allowed its mafia allies to first use it in the Balkans, and then to partially leave it high and dry. It is now venting its fury on the Serbs because it has already acquired sufficient experience with the Batics of this world to know that such servile sycophants are fair game to be kicked around with impunity, both individually and collectively. But in the pack of predators of which it is a member it would certainly never occur to Holland to even frown on those bigger and more powerful than itself, although it knows full well that it was they who set it up in Srebrenica in the first place. Just as half a century ago it did not occur to the obedient Dutch to frown on the leaders the “new order” in that period of history.
    The little hyena Holland eagerly paid its dues to join the pack with the big hyenas, believing that it would be going hunting with them after the weak and the helpless with an equal claim to the booty. However, when the big hyenas were composing the Srebrenica scenario, it was not part of their plan to allow anyone to even raise the issue of their own responsibility, let alone to subject it to any serious critique. That is why a portion of that responsibility—however minor it might seem by comparison to the heinous accusations leveled against the Serbs—they conveniently shifted onto the shoulders of their smaller friend. But now it is too late to return the ticket.
    We should be perfectly clear, and this is something that a political scatter brain like Vladan Batic’s probably is not even aware of. Holland did not go into the Srebrenica “demilitarized” zone operation blindfolded and without setting very precise and calculated conditions to its partners. As the Mothers of Srebrenica pointed out and most persuasively documented in their lawsuit, Holland refused stubbornly to send its battalion to Srebrenica until the UN agreed to make a most unusual concession. At Holland’s insistence, its officers were placed in key positions within the UNPROFOR chain of command, and some operational decisions could not be made without the approval of the Dutch general staff. But notwithstanding all the precautions taken by the wily Dutch, in the final analysis, at least on the moral and political levels, their partners still cynically outwitted them. In the context of the current Srebrenica narrative, Holland indisputably still looks many shades better that the thoroughly besmirched Serbs, but by its own standards it is still quite far from the pristine purity which the bigger and fiercer members of the pack reserve exclusively for themselves. Fortunately, Serbia [and the Republic of Srpska] are always there to serve as the whipping boy, whom colonial plantation owners used to beat to get some relief whenever they happened to be under stress.
    Holland’s hypocritical moral agony because, allegedly, with its 400 lightly armed soldiers it failed to accomplish what 5000 or 6000 adequately armed members of the 28th Division refused to do for themselves, reflects in full measure the insincerity and lack of principle of the fabled West, into whose ranks Batic’s resolution is designed to help pave Serbia’s way. Considering its piratical and colonial past, Holland indeed has many genuine reasons for a reexamination of its national conscience—perhaps even for collective repentance—but it hardly needs phony transgressions for moral exercise.
    One example will suffice, and it is up to the public to draw its own analogies with Srebrenica. Under Dutch colonial rule, in 1906, a rebellion broke out on the Indonesian island of Bali. It is worth noting that the inhabitants of Bali are the farthest thing from “Islamic extremists” or “Mujahedeen” but are, rather, exceptionally peaceful, almost docile, followers of the Hindu faith of Mahatma Ghandi. But there was apparently some cause for dissatisfaction. The Dutch colonial army gave them a deadline of a few hours to surrender and disperse. When that did not happen, the Dutch simply brought their cannon, opened fire on the natives, in short order hundreds of them lay dismembered and dead, and the rebellion was put down. The historical record does not reflect that it occurred to the Dutch commanders, before opening fire, to evacuate the wives and children of the Indonesian rebels.
    It would no doubt be fanciful, but perhaps nevertheless worthwhile, to speculate what the judges of the Hague tribunal might have had to say about this, had they been seized of the case, applying the same principles as, for instance, in the matter of General Krstic?