While I am aghast that this post is rising two days too late, I cannot dismiss it, for to remember – even tardily – is always preferable to forgetting.

Thirteen years ago this weekend the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, Сребреница, was seized by Bosnian Serb soldiers.

The horrors that unfolded from that day spanned one month, ended more than 8,000 lives, and unleashed the most extensive mass murder on European soil since the end of World War II.

Of the thousands that fled the war-stricken country, 5,200 refugees were under the age of five.

Two-thirds were under the age of 14.

Looking back on the stories published in the press at the time the extent of the painful tragedy floods back, and none more so than in the case of Nermin Osmanovic, then nine-years-old, whose story was recounted in 1993 to The New York Times:

The Serbs burned the house. I don’t know why they did. I had toys and books and everything there, but I couldn’t bring anything because we left so quickly. Grandma was caught when the house burned. We don’t know what happened to her. When the house burned up, we went into the woods.

Nermin’s father had died defending their village, Magasice, against Bosnian Serb soldiers during the early stages of the fighting, and so, with his mother Nezira, and his two older brothers, Nesad and Nelvir, the family trekked to Srebrenica.

For a time, they took solace in the aid packages that provided sugar, matches, coffee and chocolates.

On 12 March, a convoy of United Nations vehicles entered the valley where thousands of trapped Muslim women, children and elderly people gathered around in hopes of gaining safe passage.

As the bodies swarmed around the valley seeking survival, freedom, and sustenance, the Serbs opened fire.

Nermin recalls:

When the shells fell there were wounded people all over and children without arms and legs. One man was hit in the head with shrapnel. It blew out his brains. My mother fell right next to me. I was crying. Two men carried my mother away. I went to Srebrenica the next day with a woman. We went at night and walked all the next day.

Nermin’s mother was evacuated by the United Nations to the hospital in Tuzla, while Nermin and the younger of his two brothers found their way aboard a United Nations truck.

The true fate of Nermin and his brothers, and whether they were ever reunited with their mother (“I dream about having my mother here”, he said), remains unknown.

The scale of the massacre, the sheer demonic power to take away life that was unleashed upon the women and children seeking help is astounding, moving, and distressing even 13 years on.

As human beings we try to distinguish ourselves from animals through our ability to learn through experience and progress.

Looking at the events of Srebrenica, and before that the Gulf War, and even before that Vietnam and World War II, and then looking to the present, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine/Israel, it seems we are incapable of learning.

Humankind it seems, cannot grasp that lesson essential for life: peace.

While the victims of Srebrenica and the countless other cities, towns, and villages in the Former Yugoslavia have faded in our memories, only to be replaced by the countless victims of terrorism and the conflicts in the Middle East and Africa, we cannot forget them.

We must learn from them and try – although it might be in vain – to promote some kind of peace.

[Centre image via: jsdart]