THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2025 107 On July 11, 1995, the day Srebrenica fell to the murderous Bosnian Serb army, the Prime Minister of Bosnia called me into his Sarajevo office and told me he was in radio contact with the Bosniak (Muslim) mayor of Srebrenica. The terrified mayor had asked him: “Is my city under a death sentence?” That afternoon at 1:30, the mayor radioed in again and signed off, “This is my last call. This is the end.” The end of Srebrenica, a Bosniak enclave under United Nations (UN) protection, led to a rampage by the Bosnian Serbs. They killed more than 8,300 men and boys during the next several days, the worst massacre on European soil since World War II. The head of the Bosnian Serb army, General Ratko Mladić, is now serving a life sentence on criminal charges, including genocide, arising from the atrocity. This year, the UN marked July 11 as an International Day of Reflection and Commemoration of the 1995 Genocide Srebrenica Doomed: 30 Years After the Genocide in Bosnia BY FLETCHER M. BURTON REFLECTIONS in Srebrenica. As the chargé at U.S. Embassy Sarajevo 30 years ago, I too am reflecting. This chilling anniversary has taken me back to my reporting cables and diary entries. e The State Department sent me out to Sarajevo in late June 1995 to sub for John Menzies, who had to return to Washington for his ambassadorial hearings at the Senate. His nomination honored his courageous stand on Bosnia throughout the conflict. On my journey into war-torn Bosnia, I made it as far as Split, Croatia, before orders reached me to stay put. A Bosnian Serb shell, fired from gun emplacements ringing the city, had landed near our embassy in Sarajevo, impelling the State Department to consider a full evacuation. On July 5, after the all-clear signal, the security team and I proceeded along the dirt road over Mount Igman—the same treacherous route where a few weeks later a crash claimed the lives of three American members of Richard Holbrooke’s negotiating team. We arrived in the besieged city at dawn the next morning, July 6, the day the Bosnian Serbs started their offensive on Srebrenica, about a hundred miles to the east. In 1993 the UN Security Council had declared Srebrenica a “safe area” and deployed there a contingent of UN blue helmets—the hapless Dutch battalion— numbering a few hundred strong. Over the next several days starting July 6, slowly at first, then with heart-stopping speed, the news of Srebrenica made its way to Sarajevo. e Our embassy was housed in a grand old residence. It stood between fortified government offices downtown and battered facilities of the 1984 Winter Olympics. During the war in Bosnia, embassy Fletcher Burton, a retired Foreign Service officer, served at U.S. Embassy Sarajevo from 1995 to 1997, then returned to the city for his last Foreign Service posting as ambassador and head of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission from 2011 to 2014. In 1995 a government soldier reads out the names of confirmed survivors or escapees from the fallen city of Srebrenica. UNICEF
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