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Satellite Views of Srebrenica: Tele-visuality and the Politics of Witnessing

The images overleaf were taken by US military satellites in July 1995. They reveal alleged mass graves sites in eastern Bosnia, and their public release by the US State Department in August 1995 initiated a UN investigation into what is now known as the Srebrenica massacre. Filmmakers, journalists, military ofcials, human rights organisations and even forensic anthropologists have tried to document the events that took place in Srebrenica in July 1995. Much of the media discourse surrounding the event has placed the blame solely upon the Bosnian Serb Army ofcers who ordered and oversaw the take-over of the UN-protected safe haven. Recent reports, however, reveal that the Bosnian Muslim Army also committed atrocities near Srebrenica (in Bratunac, for example) during the war and must take partial responsibility for conditions leading to the massacre. Since 1995 UN prosecutors have indicted 38 suspected Bosnian Serb and Muslim war criminals to testify before the War Crimes Tribunal and many of these trials are still underway (‘War Crimes Prosecutor Wants Team to Hunt Suspects’, Bosnia Today, 2 May 2001; and Graff, 2000). What has not been examined in such detail, however, is the US military’s satellite over-sight of these events. Journalists and human rights organisations have described the events that took place in Srebrenica from 6–17 July 1995 as ‘the worst atrocities of the Balkans war’, as ‘Europe’s worst massacre since World War II’ (Associated Press, ‘Rights Groups Demand Release of Srebrenica Data’, 4 April 1996; and Rohde, 1997). During this two-week period thousands of Muslim men disappeared from the UN-protected safe haven as US satellites passed overhead to monitor the region. American intelligence agencies supporting the US-NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia acquired satellite image data related to the Bosnian Serb Army’s take-over of Srebrenica, but failed to release it in a timely manner. In the age of ‘virtual war’ and in the context of the US military’s campaign of ‘Information Dominance’, the delayed circulation of satellite intelligence should itself be considered an atrocity, particularly when the activities in view are deemed ‘genocidal’ (Ignatieff, 2000). This paper critically examines American broadcast news segments containing US satellite images of mass graves and considers how state satellite intelligencebecame part of the tele-visual ‘coverage’ of the war in Bosnia. The events that occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995 could never be reduced to or contained within the satellite images that ostensibly captured and revealed mass executions unfolding on the ground below. Despite their claims to