In both Bosnian and Serbian folklore, the Drina River occupies a mythic status that is difficult to explain or to overstate. Throughout most of its length, it forms the border between Bosnia and Serbia, existing as a definite boundary, geographical and political, that separates—tragically, in the view of Serbs—a population whose distribution is anything but concrete. Serbs, as with Bosniaks and Croats, have never been confined conveniently to their eponymous state; they ebb and flow across Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia, existing in an exclave here, a gradual transition there, the occasional truly multiethnic town.

In few other areas of Bosnia is this distribution and interaction more problematic and more historically cemented than in the Drina Valley. Towns like Višegrad, Srebrenica, and Goražde were multiethnic, typically Bosniak-majority, islands in an otherwise Serb sea: to those with an interest in the contiguousness of the Serb population, they were a problem, and one that needed an imminent solution.

In 1992, the VRS, the army of the Republika Srpska, formed the Drina Corps. Its express aim was to clear the Drina Valley of non-Serbs, and in the spring of 1992, accompanied by Serb police forces and local Serb sympathisers it mounted a significant offensive in the valley. This military action included shocking acts of brutality; in Višegrad, for example, Serb forces massacred 3,000 civilians and detained many more in a concentration camp where they were subjected to beatings, torture, and forced labour. The VRS was able to convince local Serbs that their Bosniak neighbours had been plotting to rise up against them; by April 1992, 95 per cent of Višegrad’s Bosniak population had fled or been killed.

Serb forces throughout the valley were pushed back, however, by Bosniak forces who were in early 1992 very much a waxing force. Throughout the rest of the year, the Bosniaks managed to keep in check the Serb territorial gains and in some instances—most notably Goražde—they made gains of their own. It was clear, though, that this situation could not last. While the entirety of Yugoslavia had been placed under an arms embargo soon after the outbreak of fighting, this affected disproportionately the Bosniak forces; the VRS were able to obtain sophisticated hand-me-downs from the Serbian-dominated JNA. By late 1992, one town above all others had come to symbolise Bosniak resistance in the Drina valley: Srebrenica.

Before the war, Srebrenica had been relatively peaceful, and interactions between its Bosniak majority and Serb minority were no more tense than in other communities in the region. Its location, however, was to prove its undoing. So close to the Serbian border, and so overwhelmingly Bosniak, it stood strikingly in the way of the Bosnian Serbs’ territorial ambitions. Accordingly, it was both attacked and defended with vigour.

By 1993, even as Serb forces made territorial gains throughout eastern Bosnia, Srebrenica remained a resolute Bosniak bastion within Serb-controlled territory. Even while it held firm in the face of Serb encirclement, though, there was concern that it would fall and in April 1993 it was declared a “safe area” by the United Nations Security Council, a move that would supposedly offer it protection from Serb aggression and prevent Serbs gaining by conquest a geographically contiguous and ethnically cleansed state.

The situation was reduced to a siege. Surrounding the enclave, the well-equipped Drina Corps brigades had tanks, armoured personnel carriers, automatic weapons, mortars, and—most importantly—a clear and well-organised command structure, with Vujadin Popović at the top reporting directly to Ratko Mladić. Inside the enclave, the disorganised Bosniak forces were mostly armed with aging hunting rifles, if they were armed at all; their command structure had long since disintegrated. The writing was, even by 1994, already on the wall.

Lieutenant Colonel Slavko Ognjenovic gave orders to the Drina Corps in early July 1994 that outlined Serb plans for the enclave. “We must continue to arm, train, discipline, and prepare the RS Army for the execution of this crucial task—the expulsion of Muslims from the Srebrenica enclave,” he wrote. “There will be no retreat when it comes to the Srebrenica enclave, we must advance. The enemy’s life has to be made unbearable and their temporary stay in the enclave impossible so that they leave the enclave en masse as soon as possible, realising that they cannot survive there.”

The next summer, Serb patience ran out. The Bosniak inhabitants’ ability to withstand the siege tactics employed by the VRS was impressive; a change of tactics was needed if Serb forces were ever to take Srebrenica. And so, in July 1995, they mounted a full-scale offensive on the enclave, intent on reducing it to at most the urban area of Srebrenica, an area thirty times smaller than the original “safe area”.

With the Serb’s overwhelming military advantage and artillery support, and with a confused UN force unable to use forceful resistance, the Serb’s advance was brief and destructive. Four days after their offensive began, they had reduced the the enclave to the town of Srebrenica. The international response was confused; not willing to risk the lives of their own troops, NATO and UN member states made it clear that a military response was out of the question. The VRS now hard carte blanche to take Srebrenica itself, and they did so on July 11.

Throughout the offensive there had been sporadic, and probably unplanned, murder and rape of Bosniak civilians; as the occupation progressed, however, an organised campaign of genocide was launched. “People are not little stones, or keys in someone’s pocket, that can be moved from one place to another just like that,” said Ratko Mladić. “Therefore, we cannot precisely arrange for only Serbs to stay in one part of the country while removing others painlessly. I do not know how Mr Krajisnik and Mr Karadžić will explain that to the world. That is genocide.”

Throughout the surrounding area, those who had tried to escape were tracked down by Serb forces and massacred. A column of ten to fifteen thousand fled north from Srebrenica and began a gruelling march to try and reach Bosniak territory; those who did not die of exhaustion or commit suicide fell prey to Serb artillery and frequent ambushes, and just three thousand of the original marchers eventually arrived in Tuzla. Throughout the July of 1995, there were similar stories around Srebrenica: men, women and children rounded up and summarily executed, their escape attempts foiled, buried in anonymous mass graves. UN peacekeepers in the area did nothing; a group of 400 armed Dutch peacekeepers were present throughout but never fired anything more than a warning shot, and allowed Serb forces to take away civilians that were under UN protection. NATO airstrikes ceased immediately after they began when Serb forces threatened the lives of NATO hostages. Unwilling to risk the lives of their own, the international community stood back and gave the VRS and its allies carte blanche. They took it.

In all, Serb armed forces along with sympathetic volunteers massacred at least eight thousand Bosniaks in July 1995. It was the final moment in a destructive three years that had left the Drina Valley savagely altered, its Bosniak population almost completely destroyed. Vujadin Popović, Ratko Mladić, Radovan Karadžić, Vojislav Šešelj and their ilk had finally achieved their aim: a purely Serb Drina Valley, linked with the Republika Srpska and Serbia itself in one geographically and ethnically contiguous entity.

Nine people have been indicted by the ICTY for their role in the destruction of the Bosniak population of the Drina Valley: Vujadin Popović, Ljubiša Beara, Drago Nikolić, Ljubomir Borovčanin, Zdravko Tolimir, Radivoje Miletić, Milan Gvero, Vinko Pandurević and Milorad Trbic. At the time, the international community stood by—paralysed by infighting, concern for domestic public opinion, and simple apathy—while a populace was utterly destroyed. Any punishment, handed down by the ICTY fifteen years after the events, can never make up for the permanent disfigurement of the Drina Valley and the inaction of those who stood idle as it happened.