For several years after the war, the massacre in Srebrenica was a crime without corpses. The military and political leadership of Republika Srpska actively denied that the atrocity had ever taken place, concealing evidence of the crimes and their perpetrators. The post-war chapter of the Srebrenica saga is the tale of a long and painful search for the truth, with no prospects of success; for years, the survivors of the Srebrenica massacre were one of the country's most marginalized social groups. Bosnian society demonstrated, and continued to express, a predilection for holding its victims in contempt; and for a long time after the war, the international community did nothing to re-examine its own role in the Srebrenica massacre.

After years of investigation, the prosecution of the International War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) issued a series of indictments identifying the leading players in the massacre, and described the atrocity as genocide – the first genocide in Europe since World War II.

Those accused of the atrocities in Srebrenica are Radovan Karadžić – President of Republika Srpska; General Ratko Mladić – Chief of General Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska; Colonel Ljubiša Beara – officer in charge of the Army of RS security service; Vujadin Popović – officer in charge of the Drina Corps security service; Major General Radislav Krstić – commanding officer of the Drina Corps; Colonel Vinko Pandurević – commanding officer of the Zvornik Brigade; Major Dragan Obrenović – Chief of Staff of the Zvornik Brigade; Major Dragan Jokić – officer in charge of the Zvornik Brigade engineers; Lieutenant Drago Nikolić – security officer of the Zvornik Brigade; Vidoje Blagojević – commanding officer of the Bratunac Brigade; Captain Momir Nikolić – officer in charge of security of the Bratunac Brigade; and Police Colonel Ljubomir Borovčanin, commanding officer of the Special Police Brigade.

Dražen Erdemović, a member of the 10 th Sabotage Detachment, who had taken part in the massacre on the Branjevo military farm, voluntarily surrendered to the War Crimes Tribunal in March 1996. He was given a ten-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to crimes against humanity; on appeal, the sentence was reduced to five years. His was the first guilty plea in regard to Srebrenica; it was not until seven years later that there followed another two, breaking the conspiratorial wall of silence around the Srebrenica massacre. Momir Nikolić and Dragan Obrenović pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity and received long-term prison sentences.

The first Serb officer convicted of genocide was Radislav Krstić, who was found guilty of genocide by the court of first instance and sentenced to a 46-year prison sentence.On appeal, his sentence was reduced to 35 years and his crime redefined as "aiding and abetting" genocide.

Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serb authorities were continuing to deny that there had been any crimes. Worse, in the autumn of 2002 the Government of Republika Srpska, or more exactly its Office for Cooperation with ICTY, published its own special report on the "Srebrenica case." The report's conclusion was that about 1,100 people had been killed in Srebrenica in July 1995, the majority of them in "showdowns between the Muslims themselves," while the remainder were the victim of "individual acts of revenge" by Serb soldiers and "ignorance of the international laws of war."

Following the publication of the UN report on Srebrenica in 2000, the Netherlands Government publishing the findings of its own six-year investigation into the events in Srebrenica. Although the report did not state that members of the international forces bore any responsibility for the massacre, the Netherlands Prime Minister, Wim Kok – who had also been Prime Minister in July 1995 – tendered his resignation. However, the Netherlands Government rejected all claims from the survivors for financial compensation.

In March 2003, the Human Rights Chamber of Bosnia and Herzegovina ruled on a case brought by 49 Srebrenica families. The decision awarded financial compensation to the survivors and ordered the Republika Srpska authorities to reveal the fate of those victims still regarded as missing. This was just part of a total of about 1,800 cases brought to the Human Rights Chamber of BiH. In December 2003, the Government of Republika Srpska set up a Commission to investigate the events in and around Srebrenica from 10 to 19 July, which published its final report in June 2004. Operating under considerable international pressure, the Commission found that troops from the Army of Republika Srpska and members of the RS police had killed 8,731 people in July 1995. Despite certain shortcomings, the report did change the way in which the events were spoken of, if not seen, in Republika Srpska.

The operation in Srebrenica achieved its purpose: the Bosniacs of eastern Bosnia ceased to exist as a community. The number of returnees has been negligible, and their influence in political and social life is marginal. Most of the survivors are living as displaced persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina or as refugees abroad, with less and less contact with one another. More than a thousand victims found in mass graves have been buried in the cemetery of the Memorial Centre in Potočari. The search for more graves is still continuing, and several thousand mortal remains that have been discovered remain unidentified. The number of victims, both those found and those already identified, is still not final. There is little likelihood that all those who were killed on those fateful July days will ever be found and given a proper burial. The victims still lie hidden in the woods, scattered around the fields, or reburied in carefully concealed mass graves.

Other than Dražen Erdemović, not one of the direct perpetrators of the massacre has yet been charged or convicted. Nor have others who took part in the operation – particularly at middle-management level – yet been brought to justice. Some of them are still holding down jobs in the military or political structures where they were working at the time of the genocide in Srebrenica; some have even been promoted. One of the key participants in the operation, the chief of police in Zvornik, Dragomir Vasić, was for years a member of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska. It is equally unlikely that all the perpetrators of the genocide, from the decision-makers to the members of the firing squads, will be brought to justice.

The Srebrenica saga is not yet over. As time goes by, the cemetery in the Memorial Centre in Potočari will grow, but the prospects of all the victims being laid to rest there are fading by the day. Tens of thousands of orphans will continue to grow up in dysfunctional, broken families, the detritus of a community that ceased to exist ten years ago.