Mirsad Tokača’s Bosnian Crime Atlas

A few days ago[1], Mr. Mirsad Tokača, director of the Sarajevo Research and Documentation Center (RDC), announced that on November 4 he is planning to unveil the results of several years’ work: “The Bosnian Crime Atlas.” Mr. Tokača’s institution, with the assistance of the Norwegian government, has been working for some time to set up a comprehensive data base about missing persons as a result of the 1992—1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina from all the ethnic communities. Our NGO, Srebrenica Historical Project, supports Mr. Tokača’s efforts and considers it on the whole quite invaluable for an objective determination of facts about some essential segments of the Bosnian conflict.

One of RDC’s important contributions to getting closer to the truth of wartime events is its determination of the war’s total casualties. They believe that the true figure is just under 100,000 for all three ethnic communities. That is in marked contrast to the reckless propaganda exaggerations while the conflict was still in progress, when some factually unsupported “estimates” reached 250,000 or more victims, with predominant emphasis on one of the contending ethnic communities.

Tokača’s Center not only debunks such irresponsible figures, and not only does it offer a breakdown of victims by ethnic affiliation which roughly corresponds to that community’s share in the total BH population, it does more than that. By an approach which appears to be scientifically irreproachable, it raises serious issues about a number of “sacred cows” from the recent Bosnian war.

And one more thing. As Mr. Tokača claims, one of his project’s major achievements is the creation of a “comprehensive and reliable data base” about each person killed in the war, by name and by place and manner of death, which “will be accessible to every citizen.”[2]

As part of his effort to ensure an impartial approach to these complex and often very sensitive issues, Mr. Tokača has demonstrated that he has had the courage to take on even the principal public protagonist of a methodology which is diametrically opposed to his, Mr. Amor Mašović, of the BH Missing Persons Institute. About Mr. Mašović and the work of his organization, Mr. Tokača had the following to say:

“There is nothing as easy as manipulating with victims. I expected much more from the BH Missing Persons Institute, but it is obvious that politics is dominant there, not professionalism. The search for missing persons must be detached from political influence and no politician, whoever he might be, has the right to come and tell them what to do. But there is plenty of that in the Institute, and in the various commissions before that, and that affects the victims’ families,” Tokača said. He pointed out that the Institute is in need of reorganization and that experts, not persons involved in politics, should be in charge of it.
“The present leadership of the BH Missing Persons Institute should be dismissed because that institution is filled with people who are deeply involved in politics. It is indicative that on the eve of every Srebrenica commemoration a new gravesite is found. Without disputing that there may be gravesites, the question remains why wait for July 11 for it to be opened or discovered?” Tokača said. [3]

It is difficult to formulate any effective objection to these thoughts. But when seen from a chess player’s perspective, Mr. Tokača’s moves—though truly perfect if viewed in isolation—could also be interpreted from another quite interesting angle.

Merely by throwing a glance at the chessboard the experienced Grand Master identifies his weakest pawns, which he knows that he will lose for sure in the course of the game. His strategy is not to save them at any cost but—on the contrary—he sacrifices them without hesitation in order to save the piece that he truly values.

An experienced and sophisticated man such as Mr. Tokača (in contrast to a local politico of Mr. Mašović’s caliber) must have grasped quite a while ago that in the long term most of the crude wartime propaganda fables were unsustainable. But whoever has a surname without the suffix “-ić” and who discards those fabrications thereby gains enormous credibility which he can then invest in his highest value asset in the political war. That is one of the fundamental principles of successful disinformation.

The attached graph, taken from the website of Mr. Tokača’s Center[4], suggests the answer to the question what high value political asset that might be. That graph reflects with impeccable fidelity the trend in the number of victims for all the years of the war. Between 1992 and 1995 the declining trend is clear and unidirectional. That is entirely consistent with the known facts: the fiercest clashes occurred at the beginning, in 1992, and that explains why that is the year when the war claimed the greatest number of victims. After that, when the fronts stabilized, there were fewer and fewer victims. The accurate Mr. Tokača depicts that faithfully in his graph, but there is just one exception which says it all and therefore provokes an avalanche of questions. That is July of 1995, in other words: Srebrenica. For that month, the graph shows an upward spike which should represent about 8000 victims, a phenomenon which is quite extraordinary in light of indisputable trends for the war when viewed as a whole.

Grafik

Killed and Missing in Srebrenica (1992-95)

Were Mr. Tokača known for covering up his professional deficiencies and gaps in his arguments with intemperate rhetoric, as is the case with Mr. Mašović and others of the same ilk, this discrepancy between declared principles and specific results would not even attract attention. But it does, precisely because it stands out.

Since he took upon himself the obligation to place before the public a comprehensive atlas of crimes where each victim will have a special place, not as a cipher but as a person endowed with a name, in a case of such capital significance as Srebrenica Mr. Tokača cannot now evade carrying out honestly his own principle.

Does RDC, headed by Mr. Mirsad Tokača have personalized data, and that mean first and last name and other relevant details, for each Moslem victim of Srebrenica in July of 1995? Only two answers to this question are possible: Yes and No. There is no use pretending. If the answer is „Yes,“ then the public presentation of the Atlas on November 4 will be an ideal opportunity for Mr. Tokača to present to the world his sensational list of 8000 Srebrenica victims.

If the answer is „No“ (or polite silence, which is the same) then we would advise Mr. Tokača to refrain in the future from criticising Mr. Mašović and his more than dubious and politically contaminated methodology. Otherwise, it really would be as they say in English: The kettle calling the pot black.

[1] Politika (Belgrade), 8. October 2009.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Glas Srpske (Banja Luka), 12. October 2009.
[4] The graph may be found on the site of the Research and Documentation Center, http://www.idc.org.ba/presentation/research_results.htm. See: Srebrenica - municipality of suffering, graph no. 3.