The tragic massacres which are taking place in Pakistan and Sri Lanka are related to Srebrenica in a way that may not immediately be apparent.
    They both represent human catastrophes of epic proportions, with verified numbers of victims greatly exceeding the most extravagant claims that have been put forward for Srebrenica. In the case of Pakistan, the victims are Moslem, just as were those of Srebrenica in July of 1995. The provisional totals of these slaughters make it clear that each of them is a Srebrenica multiplied by several orders of magnitude and there is little dispute that the majority of the victims at both locations are civilians. In Sri Lanka, the brutal suppression of the Tamil Tigers has claimed an estimated 20,000 lives.[1] The equally merciless fighting in the Pakistani region of Swat has cost about 100,000 lives, while 2,3 million people have been left destitute and homeless.[2]

    The slaughters in Central Asia, though many times greater than the wildest Srebrenica claims, have elicited only moderate interest and barely a word of condemnation from the “international community,” which as we know usually keeps a strict moral account of those things. Moslem victims in Pakistan are dismissed as collateral damage resulting from the eagerly awaited offensive against a fearsome enemy which is regarded as nothing less than a mortal threat to Western civilization. The Tigers and their civilian supporters for a variety of reasons are not deemed worthy of the otherwise very sensitive “community’s” moral indignation, so their corpses shall simply be left to rot on the Ceylonese beach with minimal publicity. An attempt at the UN Human Rights Council to pass a mildly censorious  resolution was effectively squashed by the Sri Lanka government. [3] Case closed, on both accounts.
    These recent events carry a very pertinent message for the Bosnian parties, and for one of them in particular. It is that those who shape opinion and perceptions in this world operate not on moral facts or mathematical figures, but on flexible and thoroughly amoral strategic interests. The mathematics of both Pakistani and Sri Lankan tragedies should command  outpourings  of outrage of an intensity at least equal to those that now occur whenever Srebrenica is mentioned. The moral realities of those two situations should stimulate at least as much interest and indignation, in particular considering the fact that the innocent victims of slaughter and mass displacement in Swat Valley are Moslem exactly like the innocent victims of Srebrenica. But they do not. However, Bosnian Moslems would be extremely foolish and shallow were they to take this as evidence of their continued privileged position in the “international community’s” official hierarchy of victims.
    Just as we pointed out a few weeks ago, before the human toll in these two conflicts began to approach epic levels, those who had the facilities to create the saga of Srebrenica [not Bosnian Moslems, of course, nor their autistic, provincial leadership] also have the power to unceremoniously unmake it. They are the exclusive judges of whether or not Pakistani Moslems or Sri Lankan Tamils will be accorded Srebrenica status, or even decent acknowledgment of their suffering and losses, regardless of how many more of them than Srebrenica Moslems might have bled to death. By the same token, they have it also exclusively within their power to determine just for how long the Srebrenica saga will be allowed to carry on in its present form. Bosnian Moslems would be extremely ill advised to stake their political fortunes and to rest their moral claims on the illusion that their distant mentors are anything but very temporary and notoriously  unreliable strategic partners.
    By virtue of history and geography, facts which are unlikely to change soon, the only permanent and reliable strategic partners Bosnian Moslems do have are their Serbian neighbors. In the great game of international politics, where Balkan players of course have no voice, the remote Pakistan that not long ago was so foolishly extolled by Mr. Izetbegović while he openly disdained his neighbors of the same heritage and stock, is slated to soon be no more. Those who have the power to undermine and soon to fragment such a seemingly mighty Moslem state, with all its exotic potentials, shall face little difficulty in disposing of Bosnian Moslems when it shall suit their whim and strategic advantage to do so. They certainly will not be morally deterred in their intention by how many nishans are in the meantime hurriedly erected in Potočari, or whose bones are interred underneath.
    The wise course for Bosnian Moslems to follow is to realistically reconfigure their policy. That means making peace with people that they have no choice except to live with. In moral terms the benefits of such a peace are beyond estimation, but its price is still very economical even in political terms: it requires no more than showing decent respect for other people’s sacrifices and acknowledging their suffering, while renouncing one’s own will to dominate. Srebrenica is a litmus test of whether such a courageous decision to accept equity and reality can be taken within the community of Bosnian Moslems. Their alternative is to sooner or later meet the dire fate of their Swat Valley coreligionists in Pakistan, but this time unnoticed and unlamented.         
    
[1] Reuters, June 8, 2009
[2] Al Jazeera, May 27, 2009; http://news.antiwar.com/2009/05/26/rights-group-hundreds-of-thousands-of-trapped-swatis-face-catastrophe/
[3] The Guardian, May 28, 2009. Actually, it was the presumed victims, the Tamils, whom the cynical UN resolution called to account for, allegedly, using civilians as human shields and thus causing their deaths. (The UN Human Rights Council was apparently sympathetic to Sri Lanka president’s bizarre argument that although there were  “casualties…without them you cannot rescue the people.” London Telegraph, May 21, 2009)