Yugoslavia Flashcards
Ray (1999), nationalism’s flexibility
capacity to appear democratic or violent
National identity = an unstable hybrid of conflicting passions. National identity requires continual affirmation
Ray (1999), conditions for genocidal nationalism
- lie in apparently routine rituals through which ‘nations’ are remembered and constructed
- Violent nationalism may appear where transmission of collective identities is infused w mourning and traumatic memory
- Unleashed in context of state crisis, where former loyalties replaced w highly affective commitment to rectification of imagined historical wrong
Nairn (1975), nationalism
Standing back over passage to modernity looking desperately back to the past
Ray (1999), ethnic cleansing
part of the usual process through which nations formed
Right to ‘cleanse’ can almost be asserted as essential part of national formation:
Banners on anti-NATO demonstrations in Belgrade - ‘Croatia has an ethnically pure homeland - why cannot we?’
Reference here is to Croatian ethnic cleansing of Krajina Serbs, in which internat community acquiesced
Ray (1999), commonness of genocidal impulse
Genocidal impulse, to rid sacred national territory of problematic minorities, exists w/in many national discourses and practices
Nations are above all about sanctification of territory
Anderson (1993), national identity
national identities are imagined and constructed
distinction between national identity (the stuff of love and poetry) and racism
Ray (1999) - this probs not tenable
Calhoun, Bosnia
West found it hard to comprehend self-determination for the ppl of Bosnia bc they did not define themselves as mono-ethnic nation
Ray (1999), language of nationalism
- Draws heavily on discourse of rights, grounded on traditional claims to space and common identity
- Legitimates itself in terms of the Good Cause
Ray (1999), self-determination
Principle of ‘self-determination’ implicitly recognizes ethnic session
in 20th C, alleged right of a people (in the abstract) to ‘self-determination’ has overridden the rights of people qua individuals to life and security
Ray (1999), mimetic violence
When claim to inalienable territory and destiny linked to specific and incompatible claims to territorial space, potential for what Girard (1977) calls ‘mimetic violence’, where v presence of the other is perceived as incompatible w one’s own existence
Ray (1999), Serbian nationalism
claim to Kosovo grounded in myths of ‘Old Serbia’ (Stari Srbija), the birthplace of the Serbs and site of sacrifice of Count Lazar 1389
Ray (1999), Albanian claims to Kosovo
regard historic ‘ethnic line’ reaching up to the Nis and dismiss idea of ‘Old Serbia’ as fabrication legitimating genocide
Ray (1999), overview of theory of collective memory
Halbwachs (1941/1992) - questioned assumption that memory of one’s own life resides in the individual, since ways in which people remember their past are dependent on relationship to their community
Connerton - links between collective mem and public rituals
Lury - not only the remembered but also the forgotten that provides key to ‘rewriting the soul’
Watson - one group’s enfranchisement requires another’s disenfranchisement
Hacking - trauma provided point of entry into ‘psychology of the soul’ through which the forgotten could be therapeutically remembered
Billig (1997), nationalism
‘banal nationalism’ routinely inscribed into the public practice and consciousness of all nation-states
Ray (1999) - These routine dispositions can be mobilized into affectively charged movements
Rebecca West - quotes Serbian guide in ‘Old Serbia’ (Kosovo) in the 1930s
We will stop at Grachanitsa, church on edge of Kosovo Plain, but I do not think you will understand it, because it is v personal to us Serbs, and that is something you foreigners can never grasp…we are too rough and too deep for your smoothness and shallowness
Kaplan (1993), traditional blessing for Serbian new-born
Hail, little avenger of Kosovo
Durkheim, public rituals
sacred public rituals re-affirmed collective solidarity through a ‘collective effervescence’. Commemorative rites e.g. ancestor worship relived the mythical history of ancestors and sustained the vitality of beliefs by rendering them present
collective veneration affirms social solidarity
Ray (1999), commemorative speech
Commemorative speech does not admit any interrogation of its discursive properties bc its meanings are already coded in canonical monosemic forms (e.g. oaths, blessings, prayers and liturgy) that bring into existence partic attitudes and emotions
If public discourse closes of poss for critical examination of identities, deep affects can be encoded and transmitted in ways not subject to critical scrutiny
Durkheim, ‘sad celebrations’
piacular rights, fusing mourning and melancholy w sacrifice and violence
Generate anger and need to avenge the dead and discharge collective pain, manifesting in real or ritual violence
Context for piacular rites oft social crisis
Piacular rights - mourning, fasting, weeping, w obligations to slash or tear clothing and flesh, thereby renewing group to state of unity preceding the misfortune
the more collective sentiments wounded, the greater the violence of the response
battle of Kosovo Polje (Field of Black Birds)
1389
Serbian prince Lazar defeated by Turkish Sultan Murat = piacular ritual
Ray (1999), Serbian commemoration of battle of Kosovo Polje = piacular ritual
- Celebrated as ‘holy and honourable sacrifice’
- Sacrifice for Christian Europe - allowing Italy and Germany to survive by holding back the Ottoman advance
Ray (1999), Milosevic and Battle of Kosovo Polje
- Milosevic made 600th anniversary of Battle of Kosovo, June 1989, the focal point of his ‘anti-bureaucratic revolution’ to displace polit opponents w/in Serbian ruling party
- The ‘coffin’ (w the alleged remains of Lazar) toured every village in Serbia followed by huge black-clad crowds of wailing mourners
Monument to Lazar in meadow of Gazimestan
expresses vengeful sadness and defeat:
Whosoever is a Serb and of Serbian birth
And who does not come to Kosovo Polje to do battle against the Turks
Let him have neither a male nor a female offspring
Let him have no crop
Ray (1999), Albanians and Islamic minorities in Serbian nationalism
substituted for ‘Turks’
Ray (1999), civil war in Serbian and Croatian national imaginations
seen as replaying of ancient conflicts of west and east
Present genocide described as ‘Second Battle for Kosovo’
Ray (1999), negative associations provoking violence from Serbian nationalism
- Communists = mass murderers of Ustasas and Chetniks
- Croatian fascist State of 1941-5 were murderes of Serbs
- Muslims were collaborators w Nazi Genocide
- New Croatian state under Tudjman diminished extent of Ustashe genocide thus provoking further trauma-rage
Each collective participant imagined themselves victims of unavenged historical wrongs
Girard (1977), ‘violent contagion’
Arises from unresolved ‘sacrificial crisis’
Mimetic desire to acquire the wholeness of the other leads to feud between incompatible rivals
By simultaneously taking the other as model and obstacle they form ‘violent doubles’ locked in mutual destruction
Mimetic violence - desire to displace and become identical to the other - underlies all culture and sociality
Victims scapegoated by attrib to them violence just committed
Scapegoat mechanism etablishes in-group/ out-group differentiations that maintain communities’ structure and cohesion
Sacrificial expulsion is basis of all social order and ritual through which communities gain control over their violence
Ray (1999), Girard’s theory in context of collapes of Yugoslav
Provoked sacrificial crisis
Previously contained mimetic desire generated multiple violent doubles
Krajina Serbs, looking to incorp in a Serbian homeland, resists Croatia’s nationalizing desire, while Milosovic insisted the Croatia could be independent only w/o Krajina
Kosovo - Serbian minority backed by the Serbian army resists independence and the desire for unity w an Albanian homeland
Conflict in Bosnia particularly exterminatory bc was a field of multiple doubles - Serb/ Croat, Islamic/ Serb, Islamic/ Croat - Brubacker - each struggling for incommensurable spaces
Ray (1999), import of mourning and gried
constitute basis for desire for vengeful justice
Unresolved grief perpetuates stereotyped repetitions of thought and behaviour
Ray (1999), Communist rule creating conditions resulting in mimetic desire producing violence
- Characterized by situation in which centralized power undermined norms of co-operation by eliminating negotiation from public life and undermining respect for anything other than official positions, which themselves came to be discredited
- Vicious cycle - low legitimacy, low trust, increasing reliance on clientelistic and informal networks, which create ideal conditions for reinforcement of particularistic identities
Ray (1999), collapse of Communist rule creating conditions resulting in mimetic desire producing violence
- Created highly unstable situation in which past subject to deep and extensive revision
- In Yugoslavia, settling of scores w the communist period involved systematic attempts to re-draw national boundaries and undo the ethnic mix that had been created both in pre-communist Yugoslavia and in the Federation
Ray (1999), role of state crisis
Where cultural traditions of ethno-nationalism are present violent national conflict is likely to be provoked when the hegemonic nation state is destabilized by legitimacy crisis
Ensuing social dislocation and reaction-formation draws on cultural reserves, solidifies ambiguous identities and activates the ‘memory’ of nationhood
Ray (1999), violence and social life
Violence does not erupt into social life as some atavistic antisocial force but is embedded in certain kinds of routine social relationships
Ray (1999), post-genocide
inescapable conditions exist for two further irreconcilable historical memories - in the mass graves of Kosovars and the Serbian civilian casualties
Death of Yugoslavia documentary, Exec Producer Percy(1995), Tito
died 1980
35 yrs had held the 6 republics together
Any hint of nationalism crushed - policy called ‘brotherhood and unity’
7 yrs later Yug still united
DoY, Milošević on Kosovo
all our hist is in Kosovo, all our monasteries
Kosovo pre-genocide
Majority Muslim Albanians
Few remaining Serbs claimed being driven from ancient kingdom
Claims of Albanian atrocities believed
Milo sent by President to quell ethnic conflict. agreed to meet the nationalists - violating guiding principle of Tito’s Yugoslavia
M consulted trusted advisors about how to proceed - opportunity to exploit situation
Villasi, Albanian Kosovo leader - M sent private secretary and told Kosovo Serbs to fight police
DoY, Serbian TV
Created Milo legend
Saw him stand up for Serbs in Kosovo at mtg w nationalists where they were complaining about treatment by Albanians
led w item on all 3 channels
DoY, after M’s visit to Albania
accused of breaching party policy
Showdown few days later at mtg of Serbia’s top communists:
- M said crisis worse every day
- M accused Stambolić, President of Serbia (who had made M’s career), of acting like dictator and won vote to this effect
- Stam - he was carried away, enflamed explosive situation, Serbs everywhere saw as battle cry
DoY, Milosevic enflaming Serbian nationalism
Bones of King Lazar paraded round Yug, inspiring Serbs to reclaim former glory
M - we’ll stop counter-revolution in Kosovo and reform polit system. Serbia will regain rightful territory
DoY, Role of local nationalists
Solevic:
- Didn’t put him in power but made a real leader of him
Nationalists turned local discontent into pop revolution vs grey bureaucrats of old regime
Took only a word from M to finish the job
DoY, first areas of Yug to fall to Serbia
- Vojvedina
- Montenegro
- by begin 1989, M controlled half of Yug
DoY, Kosovo, Albanians strike back against M’s push
- Feb 1989, miners led strike, demanding Villasi be returned to power
- Villasi - best way to support me is to remain united, Albanians and Serbs alike
Villasi - M phoned, v aggressive, sounded v worried
- Kosovo Serbs went to Belgrade and M asked Yugoslav state council to grant him emergency powers in Kosovo
- Kucan - M said Serbs will act in own interests. If this violates constitution we don’t care
- M granted powers
DoY, Slovene defiance
Kucan, Slovene Communist Party leader:
Walked out and went straight home to Slovenia
That evening, spoke to his people - 27 Feb:
Albanians on strike are defending not just Albanian rights but defending Yugoslavia and every republic, including Slovenia
Serb TV and Slovenia
Reported that Kucan delib provocative and defending separatism in Kosovo - and Slovenia
Broadcast brought ppl of Belgrade onto streets
President of Presidency of Yugoslavia, Dizdarević, reaction to Serbian nationalist crowds in Belgrade
Talked about Yugoslavia - brotherhood and unity
Will not take path of national conflict
Brotherhood and unity
Failed to satisfy crowd
DoY, Crisis in Slovenia
Mladina, youth magazine, regularly mocked Belgrade
published transcript of Yug party mtg at which Kuchan said military official had approached Slovenia’s civilian prosecutor to report that a number of political arrests were planned and that the Army was prepared to quell any resulting demonstrations
Army obtained enough evd to put journalists on trial and send to prison
Plan backfired - turned into anti-Army/ anti-Yug happening
Kuchan forced to side w Mladina. Announced wld change Slovene constitution to keep Belgrade out of his affairs
Kosovo Serbs mobilized but blocked access into Slovenia by Croatia
M called extraordinary congress of Yug communist party following Slovenia crisis
- Slovenes put vast num of amendments
- Serbs voted all down, applauding each time
- Slovenes left congress
- acc to Croatian delegate, M desperate to stop Croats leaving
- Croat delegate - can’t accept Yugoslav party w/o Slovenes
- Croats left the congress
- beginning of Yug crisis
DoY, Croatian nationalism 1990
- Milošević = first to enflame his ppl’s nationalism
- Croatia provoked. Tudjman chosen in 1st free elections as president
- revival of checkerboard flag of fascist Croatia - Hitler’s allies who had killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs
DoY, Mesic, PM of Croatia
- We should have been more subtle and careful
- Knew we were driving away serbs who wanted to live at peace w croatia
DoY, Southern Croatia
- high Serb population
- Martic, Police Inspector, Knin - Serb police in Croatia left in no doubt would have to wear same badges and uniforms worn by Croat wartime fascists
- T sent Juric, Interior Ministry, to Knin to appease
- mob outside, serbian nationalism rife, end of Croat authority in Knin
- Serbs from Knin demanded action from Yug army (under Serb control that yr) to stop independence of Croatia - when last independent, Croatia had committed genocide and ppl rly scared (According to chairman of Yug State Council, Jovic)
- Knin Serbs left in no doubt Serbia wld help them
- Yug army ordered Croat special forces to turn back from mission to disarm Knin Serbs
- 17 Aug 1990, Knin Serbs declared no-go area for Croats
- powerlessness in face of Yug army provoked Croats arming selves - deal done in Hungary to buy consignment of weapons
DoY, Croatian arms smuggling
- T said would allow Yug army to arrest those implicated in smuggling
- Returned to Zagreb
-Passed a law giving ministers immunity
Chief arms smuggler appeared on TV - said film total fabrication
- Croat TV mocked Serbs’ impotence
- Chief arms smuggler appeared on TV - said film total fabrication
- Milosevic declared himself guardian of Yug
- Persuaded generals to mobilise army to disarm Croats
- Bosnia voted against action vs Croatia. Stymied army and the Serbs
- M announced Serbia and allies withdrawing from state council
DoY, international community complicity in Serb aggression
General met w communists
Asked if Russians wld defend if West intervened
Soviet defence minister gave details of their intelligence reports, showing Yug army safe to act w/o fear of western intervention
DoY, after Serbia’s exit from State Council
- General Kadievic hesitated, refusal to use army vs Croatia - dashed M’s plan
- T openly flaunting new weapons w/in weeks
- M+T summit to work out how to carve Yug up between them
- Jovic (M ally) - Decided to deploy troops in Serb areas of Croatia. Croats wld provoke war so we cld take those territories
- war 2 weeks later
Srebrenica - A Cry from the Grave, director Leslie Woodhead, 1999, Srebrenica now
entirely Serb
Memory of massacre erased
SACFTG, Srebrenica 1992
9000 pop. 3/4 pop Muslim
SACFTG, Srebrenica at begin of war
- War came early to eastern Bosnia and Srebrenica - only 10 miles from border w Bosnia
- British reporter - Desperate situation of thousands of Muslim refugees in the town
- Nasa Oric - Muslim warlord and defender of Srebrenica
- Cvjetinovic, Serbian Journalist - Serb Christmas day, 1993, Muslims attacked the Kravica area, did terrible things to the ppl, killing women and children
- Great pressure for army to strike back and liberate
SACFTG, UN arrives in Srebrenica
Arrival of UN general Philip Morier and his promise of rescue
Said this was protected zone
Jan 1995, Dutch UN peacekeepers arrived
UN didn’t have equipment or troop strength to enforce anything
Serbs tightened hold over area, cutting off convoys
Dutch starved of supplies, reduced to foot patrols
SACFTG, lead-up to genocide 1995
- July 9, 30 Dutch peacekeepers taken hostage by Serbs
- Egbers, from Dutch Battallion,, Serbs said long as we have these soldiers, UN won’t risk anything
- July 10, Col Karremans files request for air support
- Serbs shell Dutch positions
- UN Commander Gen Bertrand Janvier rejects request for Air Support
- Janvier finally agrees air support at 9.40pm, but thenpostpones until morning
- July 11, still no shelling, then at 9am, col Karremans told that his request for Air Support was submitted on the wrong form
- Airborne since 6am, NATO planes must now return to Italy to refuel
- Janvier authorises Air Support, 4 hours after request
- 2 Dutch F16 fighters drop 2 bombs on Serb positions. Serbs threatened to kill Dutch hostages and shell refugees
- Further Air Strikes abandoned
- 4.15pm, Mladic enters Srebrenica to claim town for Bosnian Serbs
SACFTG, genocide begins
Mlad - however old you are you will get transport Women and children 1st 30 buses coming You'll go on to Muslim territory
- Serbs began separating men aged 12-77
- 23,000 women and children deported over next 30 hours
- Serbs shell men fleeing through the mountains. Hundreds killed
- lots of soldiers lined road. Every 3-4m, two soldiers, facing route Muslims would come
- Serbs using stolen UN equipment trick men into surrender
-Kravica village, prisoners packed into warehouse
Serb soldiers fire and throw grenades into building
Hundreds die
SACFTG, Srebrenica 1992
9000 pop. 3/4 pop Muslim
SACFTG, Srebrenica at begin of war
- War came early to eastern Bosnia and Srebrenica - only 10 miles from border w Bosnia
- British reporter - Desperate situation of thousands of Muslim refugees in the town
- Nasa Oric - Muslim warlord and defender of Srebrenica
- Cvjetinovic, Serbian Journalist - Serb Christmas day, 1993, Muslims attacked the Kravica area, did terrible things to the ppl, killing women and children
- Great pressure for army to strike back and liberate
SACFTG, UN arrives in Srebrenica
Arrival of UN general Philip Morier and his promise of rescue
Said this was protected zone
Jan 1995, Dutch UN peacekeepers arrived
UN didn’t have equipment or troop strength to enforce anything
Serbs tightened hold over area, cutting off convoys
Dutch starved of supplies, reduced to foot patrols
Weitz (2003), Milošević and genocide
Genocide most likely not Milošević’s original intent
Genocide emerged at moments of extreme crisis, largely self-generated
SACFTG, genocide begins
Mlad - however old you are you will get transport Women and children 1st 30 buses coming You'll go on to Muslim territory
- Serbs began separating men aged 12-77
- 23,000 women and children deported over next 30 hours
- Serbs shell men fleeing through the mountains. Hundreds killed
- lots of soldiers lined road. Every 3-4m, two soldiers, facing route Muslims would come
- Serbs using stolen UN equipment trick men into surrender
-Kravica village, prisoners packed into warehouse
Serb soldiers fire and throw grenades into building
Hundreds die
SACFTG, Jean-Rene, Hague investigator, has built up detailed account of when killing became highly organised
- Routine of killing started July 14
- Bratunac became concentration spot for prisoners captured
- From there, evacuation starting
-1st convey transported prisoners to school, jammed into gym
Hundreds blindfolded and trucked to a field, lined up and shot
- Other prisoners to school of petcoshi
- Hundreds lined up near a dam and shot in the back
- Some executions not finished until next day
- Some wounded not finished off until day after
- More than 1000 men killed around Grbavci and Petkovci
- July 16, Bratunac transportation still going on - taken to farm for execution
- above 4000 killed in these conditions
SACFTG, July 21st and beyond
- July 21, 1st reports of massacre now emerging
- Head of UN mission in Bosnia, Yasushi Akashi, fails to report evd of atrocities
- Col Karremans calls attack on Srebrenica an excellently planned military operation, making no mention of atrocities
- Killing goes on for weeks in mountains around Srebrenica
SACFTG, total Srebrenica death toll
July 12-16, Bosnian Serb army slaughtered at least 7,414 Muslim men
Weitz (2003), nationality under Tito’s Yugoslavia
- national sentiments to be represented within each republic but wld also be entwined w communist ideology and commitment to larger entity of Yugoslavia
- For official purposes, individuals free to choose own ethnic and national identity
- 1971 Muslim became officially recognised nationality
- Initial constitutions defined the republics as the political expressions of sovereign nations, to which the ethnic groups outside the republics also linked
- Within each republic, political positions distributed according to national criteria
- League of Communists of Yugoslavia and Yugoslav People’s Army maintained cohesion of the system
- institutional structure of communist Yugoslavia sustained and developed particular national identifications
date of M’s mtg in Kosovo w local party leaders
24 April 1987
Milošević speech near battle site of Kosovo Polje
24 April, 1987
Captured essential themes of nationalism:
- Timelessness of Serbian nat ident
- Call upon heroic ancestors
- Demands upon their descendants to fulfil their duty to the nation by defending their right to live in their historic homeland
- Sense of aggrievement, that the nation being oppressed by others
- Call to violent action to redress wrongs w the promise of a better future
Prince-bishop Petar Petrović-Njegoš’s The Mountain Wreath:
- Epic poem
- Mid-19th C
- Glorified eternal struggle and ultimate redemption of the Serb people.Proverbially learned by every Serb schoolchild from the mid-19th C onward
- Story of hero Miloš Obilič, who fights alongside Serbian prince Lazar and kills Turkish sultan. Lazar faced w choice between losing life and betraying his ppl, chooses death at hands of Turks. Christian idiom - Lazar betrayed by Branković, Judas figure, and Lazar rises to heaven
- Powerful story, binding Serbian national idea to the Christian promise of redemption, but a redemption that can arrive only through struggle and martyrdom
- Also binds national idea to a defined place - battlefield of Kosovo Polje and more generally the Serb-settled lands around it
- Celebrated ethnic cleansing and violent vengeance against Muslims - ‘We put them all unto the sword’
- Mountain Wreath = one sign of emergence of modern nationalism in South Slav lands in 19th-C
Weitz (2003), nationalism under Tito’s Yugoslavia
national sentiments to be represented within each republic but wld also be entwined w communist ideology and commitment to larger entity of Yugoslavia
Weitz (2003), most extreme and exclusive strand of nationalism adopted by Milošević
Nationalism imbued w sense of aggrievement, resentment over all injustices supposedly perpetrated against Serbs by variety of forces - Croats, Slovenes and Muslims w/in the Yugoslav deferation, along w various Western powers, espp Italy, Austria, Germany and US, that supposedly had designs on Yugoslav territory and sought to destroy its form of communism
This kind of nationalist thought gaining ground in elite circles even before Milošević’s 1987 appearance in Kosovo
Weitz (2003), manipulation of recent past in nationalist discourse
- WW2 Independent State of Croatia carried out genocides against Serbs, Jews, and Roma and Sinti at concentration and extermination camps - Jasenovac most notorious. Within living memory of many
- Milošević - elevat Jasenovac to exclusively Serbian symbol, second only to Kosovo Polje
- Serbian Orthodox patriarch Easter 1991 message - called on Serb ppl to combat all done to extinguish mem and underestimate the num of our victims
Weitz (2003) Yug economic crisis
deepened late 1980s
Croats and Slovenes threatened to secede
Weitz (2003), Kosovo
Serbs dominated state institutions and repressed the Albanian Muslims
nationalist Albanians exerted pressure and violence against Serb civilians
Weitz (2003), 28th June 1989 Serbs commemorated 600th anniversary of defeat at Kosovo Polje:
- Prince Lazar’s bones carried to various monasteries around Serbia in preceding weeks - medieval pilgrimage recast in modern terms
- Processions accompanying relics became rallying point for Serbian nationalism
- Hundreds of thousands of Serbs gathered on the Field of Blackbirds
- Milošević - redemptive form of Serbian nationalism. Pledge to protect. If need be redemption of nation wld come through political violence
- By assuming Lazar’s as well as Tito’s mantle, Milošević rode wave of popular enthusiasm
Weitz (2003), categorising population
- In highly mixed regions of Slavonia and Krajina in Croatia and in Bosnia generally, partic villages or neighbourhoods simply known as Muslim, others as Serb or Croat
- Oft names ident ppl as mems of one or another group
- State records ident ppl by nationality e.g. individ identity cards
- In midst of the conflict, Serb nationalists in Prijedor (in Bosnia) ordered Muslims to mark their homes w white sheets and then to wear white armbands
-Radical simplifiers, obliterating other forms of identity, like class or locality Reduced all Muslims to a biological category from which there was no escape - had to be either driven out or killed
Weitz (2003), factors in Yugoslav collapse
- Collapse of communism and incr power of globalised capitalism destroyed Cold War umbrella that had given Yugoslavia protected and privileged place in international order
- Economy stagnated and lacked flexibility to function effectively in the more competitive global markets of the late 20th C
- According to some calculations, real personal income declined by 1/4 1979-85
- 1980s, IMP and World Bank imposed austerity measures on Yugoslavia and demanded political and economic reforms in exchange for restructuring of Y’s extremely high indebtedness
- Results = mass unemployment, hyperinflation and steep slashes in social welfare programs, as well as substantial cuts in long-sacred defense budget
Weitz (2003), Common Slav ancestry
Major South Slav groups share common ancestry
Serbs, Croats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims all descend from Slavic tribes that migrated into area of the former Yugoslavia in late Roman period
Only in course of 19th C w emergence of political struggles vs Habsburg and Ottoman domination and of nationalisms throughout Europe did religious identities become fully intermingled w national ones, so that by definition Catholic was also Croat; Orthodox = Serb
Weitz (2003), Bosnia, ethnic mix and national identity
many Slavs converted to Islam under Ottoman domination.
Nationalists from 19th C on asserted Bosnian Muslims simply wayward Serbs or Croats, descendants of those who had wrongly adopted Islam and now needed to be brought back into the fold
Weitz (2003), categorising population
- In highly mixed regions of Slavonia and Krajina in Croatia and in Bosnia generally, partic villages or neighbourhoods simply known as Muslim, others as Serb or Croat
- Oft names ident ppl as mems of one or another group
- State records ident ppl by nationality e.g. individ identity cards
- In midst of the conflict, Serb nationalists in Prijedor (in Bosnia) ordered Muslims to mark their homes w white sheets and then to wear white armbands
Weitz (2003), Yugoslav collapse
- Collapse of communism and incr power of globalised capitalism destroyed Cold War umbrella that had given Yugoslavia protected and privileged place in international order
- Economy stagnated and lacked flexibility to function effectively in the more competitive global markets of the late 20th C
- According to some calculations, real personal income declined by 1/4 1979-85
- 1980s, IMP and World Bank imposed austerity measures on Yugoslavia and demanded political and economic reforms in exchange for restructuring of Y’s extremely high indebtedness
- Results = mass unemployment, hyperinflation and steep slashes in social welfare programs, as well as substantial cuts in long-sacred defense budget
Weitz (2003), why was Yug dissolution so dangerous?
bc unlike other communist socs in Eastern Europe, no viable, democratically minded civil society had emerged that stretched across the entire country, not just among a particular nationality
Only in Bosnia did Muslim leadership, along w a few Croat and Serb allies, try to maintain republic’s multinational character - stature as the true Yugoslavia
Only Slovenes, residing in a nearly homogenous republic, demanded just secession, not an expanded territory
Weitz (2003), role of M in promoting nationalist cause
- Moved own supporters into positions deep w/in bureaucracy
- Serb leadership inflamed nationalist sentiments by staging pro-Serbian rallies
- Depicted in party-controlled media dangers faced by Serbs outside of Serbs
- Threatened military intervention if Serbian demands for greater authority within federation not (210) met
- Milošević carried out significant rapprochement w Serbian Orthodox Church, permitting Orthodoxy to be recognised as spiritual basis for national identity of Serbs
Weitz (2003), ethnic cleansing
- Serb forces, once they had taken Vukovar, separated men from women and children
- Women and children asked whether wanted to be evacuated to Serbia or Croatia
- Those who chose Serbia allowed to leave, those who chose C turned over to Croatian authorities
- Some under Serbian control taken to detention centre and stripped and beaten
- Croats retaliated vs Serbian ethnic cleansing by driving out and in some instances massacring Serbs in towns in Croatian-held territory
- By end of Nov 1991, 500,000 Croats and 230,000 Serbs had been displaced from their homes, some fled in fear, others directly forced out
Weitz (2003), international community and Yugoslavia
Shifting set of tacit alliances led to deliberate destruction of Yugoslavia, abetted by confused signals from US and outright support from Germany and other EC countries
Slovenian and Croatian independence
25 June 1991, Slovenia, assured of German support, declared independence by a nearly unanimous vote of its parliament, and Croatia soon followed w a similar declaration
Weitz (2003), outbreak of war
- JNA invaded Slovenia, bt this was sham war that lasted only 10 days
- Silber and Little - this was was a Serbian-Slovene pact, to facilitate secession of Slovenia, humiliate JNA and destroy what was left of Fed Govt
Succeeded in all three respects - Fighting spread rapidly into Croatia
- War over populations as well as territory, which became inextricably entwined w forced deportations and genocide:
-Summer and fall 1991, undeclared war raged Krajina and Slavonia
JNA, officers desperately searching for way to maintain prestige, resources, careers, was transforming into army of Greater Serbia
Weitz (2003), ethnic cleansing
- Serb forces, once they had taken Vukovar, separated men from women and children
- Women and children asked whether wanted to be evacuated to Serbia or Croatia
- Those who chose Serbia allowed to leave, those who chose C turned over to Croatian authorities
- Some under Serbian control taken to detention centre and stripped and beaten
- Croats retaliated vs Serbian ethnic cleansing by driving out and in some instances massacring Serbs in towns in Croatian-held territory
- By end of Nov 1991, 500,000 Croats and 230,000 Serbs had been displaced from their homes, some fled in fear, others directly forced out
Weitz (2003), mutual radicalisation
Serb activists on ground in Croatia as well as military and political leadership in Belgrade both pushing situation forward, supporting each other ideologically and materially
Weitz (2003), Bosnia post-independence
- December 1990 to March 1992, uneasy truceSerb nationalists deliberately sought to make Bosnia ungovernable:
- Serb deputies boycotted sessions of Parliament and challenged legitimacy of Izetbegović, leader of Muslim party and president of Bosnia
- Serb paramilitaries seized control of villages and towns and declared them Serbian autonomous regions
- JNA hd large troop concentrations and supply depots in Bosnia. Under orders from Belgrade, non-Serb officers transferred out and replaced by Bosnian Serbs. By end of Dec 1991, JNA forces in Bosnia 85-90% Bosnian Serbs
Bosnian Serb plebiscite
Autumn 1991
Demanded union w Serbia
15 Dec 1991, Bosnian Serb Assembly promulgated the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which it declared independent on 9 January 1992
Weitz (2003), Bosnian Serb nationalist ethnic cleansing
northern Bosnia:
Prijedor and other towns - Croats and Muslims allowed to leave Serb-controlled areas only after hd turned over any assets they held and hd signed documents surrendering in perpetuity their rights to their property
Some places - ppl packed into sealed trains
All over northern and eastern Bosnia, Serb paramilitaries, JNA, and Ministry of Interior forces laid siege to towns and villages, driving out Muslims brutally
Weitz (2003) International community’s feeble response pre-Srebrenica
mediation efforts oft half-hearted, haphazard, ill-conceived
arms embago imposed 25 Sept 1991 easily evaded by Croatia and Serbia hd very substantial resources of the JNA, but embargo fatally hampered Muslims and the Bosnian Republic
1992 - Security Council finally established peacekeeping force (UNPROFOR, UN Protection Force)
Enforcement banned but force needed just for delivery of humanitarian aid that was express purpose of the mission
By providing safe routes and camps for refugees - intermittently, never adequately - UN then NATO also became party to ethnic cleansing
govt leaders believed only way to end conflict was to accept creation of more homogenous entities
However, UN sanctions, passed 30 May 1992, had sent Serbian economy reeling
Weitz (2003), international intelligence
US govt and others hd intelligence reports on atrocities but tried to keep info secret to avoid being drawn into conflict
Weitz (2003), role of reporters
Roy Gutman of Newsday described scenes he 1st encountered at Serb concentration camp Manjača
Karadžić invited jounralists to come to Bosnia to see that there were no concentration camps
Gutman, along w British television news station ITN and the Guardian, broke news of horrific conditions at Omarska concentration camp, where muslims constantly beaten and tortured, and executions a regular occurrence
Soon became clear there were at least three other concentration camps, and countless smaller temp camps
Weitz (2003), Srebrenica
Now recognised as genocide by ICTY
political disaster for West and UN, which had been reluctantly drawn into conflict
point at which West finally intervened more forcefully in Yugoslav conflict
Weitz (2003) International community’s feeble response pre-Srebrenica
mediation efforts oft half-hearted, haphazard, ill-conceived
arms embago imposed 25 Sept 1991 easily evaded by Croatia and Serbia hd very substantial resources of the JNA, but embargo fatally hampered Muslims and the Bosnian Republic
International community acts more decisively
August 1995, another Serb mortar attack on Sarajevo finally led to major air strikes vs Serbian positions by mostly US planes operating under NATO command as a UN-designated force
Croatia success in war, 1995
- Late July 1995, Croatian forces w tacit (and perhaps more active) US support, swept into Krajina and Slavonia
- Serb Republic of Krajina fell
- Serbs became subject to ethnic cleansing
- Close to 500,000 Serbs fled and were forcibly deported from Krajina
Weitz (2003), forced deportations and genocide as social project
involved participation of many thousands
- Generally ethnic cleansing engineered from outside by armed units, not local residents
- Local pops quickly became complicit
- Krajina - local serbs took ovr property of Croats forced out
- When Serbs suffered similar fate 1995, Croats returned and did the same to Serbs
- Serbia made ethnic cleansing and genocide a cause not only of the state but of the population as well
Weitz (2003), impact of Dayton Agreement
- Affirmed national identity and basis of polit organisation, granting the nationalists the essence of the programs, if not in fully flowered form
- Did not prevent one last campaign of ethnic cleansing by Serbia for Muslims in Kosovo
- Kosovo no mention at Dayton - continued repression/ discrimination against Kosovars
- Kosovo terrorist attacks on Serbs
- Serbia massive response, forced deportations of hundreds of thousands, many murders and rapes
- 1999 - 78 days of NATO air strikes in response, klling 2600 Serbs - more civilians than soldiers, and destroying gd part of Serbia’s infrastructure
Weitz (2003), dehumanization
-Bosnian Muslims called balijas and dogs
- ‘Packages’
(223) Roundups and separations, w beatings - Extreme violence itself dehumanised
- dominant regime established conditions that gave individs free rein to enact sadistic tendencies
-fear essential part of killing process
Hague Tribunal reported some of soldiers at Srebenica dressed totally in black and walked around w dogs
Drina Wolves wore insignia depicting (226) wolf’s head
-Final act of dehumanisation in treatment of dead bodies. Scooped up by earth moving equipment and deposited into mass graves
Weitz (2003), Serb efforts to destroy Muslim communities
- Violent actions had political meaning - designed to terrorise the Muslim pop, so that if not killed outright, they wld flee in terror from the areas Serbs claimed as their own
- Humiliation and degradation experienced by Muslims - also forced to inflict violence upon one another - cld only destroy (225) any sense of community among them
- Hague tribunal story of prisoners made to sing Serb songs then killed
Weitz (2003), forced deportations and genocide as social project
involved participation of many thousands
- Generally ethnic cleansing engineered from outside by armed units, not local residents
- Local pops quickly became complicit
- Krajina - local serbs took ovr property of Croats forced out
- When Serbs suffered similar fate 1995, Croats returned and did the same to Serbs
Weitz (2003), rape
- UN Human Rights Commission found evd of approx 12,000 rapes, majority committed by Serbs
- systematic component of Serb nationalists’ genocidal practices
- In convicting three Serbs for war crimes and crimes against humanity, judges declared - evd shows rapes used by mems of Bosnian Serb forces as instrument of terror. Detention centre for scores of Muslim women
- Rape = social act involving large nums of men
- Girls lent or rented out to other soldiers for sole purpose of being ravaged and abused
- Rapists seem never to have been disciplined by higher Serbian authorities
- Women taunted continually
- Rape as ultimate act of humiliation - inscribing Serb nationalism in masculine terms, making multinationality completely unthinkable, bc survivors wld always carry trauma w them
Weitz (2003), Serb efforts to destroy Muslim communities
- Violent actions had political meaning - designed to terrorise the Muslim pop, so that if not killed outright, they wld flee in terror from the areas Serbs claimed as their own
- Humiliation and degradation experienced by Muslims - also forced to inflict violence upon one another - cld only destroy (225) any sense of community among them
Butler, US intelligence officer and prosecution’s military expert
- Bosnian Serbs had prime opportunity to use Muslim men as bargaining chip w Bosnian govt and international community
- But that not their intent - point ws to annihilate physically signif proport of community
Weitz (2003), diffusion of genocidal responsibility
Srebenica - Serbian bus drivers each ordered to kill at least one Muslim, ensuring wld not testify against soldiers and making killings a communal event that bound all serbs together
Weitz (2003), rape
- systematic component of Serb nationalists’ genocidal practices
- In convicting three Serbs for war crimes and crimes against humanity, judges declared - evd shows rapes used by mems of Bosnian Serb forces as instrument of terror. Detention centre for scores of Muslim women
- Rape = social act involving large nums of men
- Girls lent or rented out to other soldiers for sole purpose of being ravaged and abused
- Rapists seem never to have been disciplined by higher Serbian authorities
- Women taunted continually
Hague Tribunal
- Genocide verdict in one case
- Milošević indicted on array of charges, including genocide
- Concerted effort to kill a portion of the community satisfied the legal definition of genocide
- Presiding Judge Rodrigues - deliberate killing of around 8000 Bosnian men at Srebenica constituted genocide bc its results could only be the physical destruction of the community
Weitz (2003), explanation for diff individuals’ participation in genocide
Revolutionary transformation of state and society in context of war offered all professionals and mid-level functionaries great opportunity to assume leadership roles
Gave followers a newfound sense of purpose e.g. Arkan’s Tigers absorbing gangs of soccer hooligans
Weitz (2003), pursuit of homogeneity
Milošević and Tudjman pursued revolutionary transformation of society, seeking to create ethnically homogenous societies
Expansion, ethnic cleansing and genocide went hand in hand
Weitz (2003), racialization of Muslims
Some ideologues asserted Bosnian Muslims were ‘really’ Serbs who had adopted the wrong religion. Theoretically cld abandon Islam and revert to being the Serbs they supposedly were in essence. But on the ground, seem to have been no such cases where Muslims offered choice of conversion
For all intents and purposes, they were categorised as a race
Hague Tribunal
- Genocide verdict in one case
- Milošević indicted on array of charges, including genocide
- Concerted effort to kill a portion of the community satisfied the legal definition of genocide
- Presiding Judge Rodrigues - deliberate killing of around 8000 Bosnian men at Srebenica constituted genocide bc its results could only be the physical destruction of the community
Semelin (2003), mass crime integrated into act of war
Mass crime as extension of war
e.g. massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in France by SS division June 10, 1944, when military killed the pop of a village
Semelin (2003), mass crime
- Destruction of large segments of a civilian pop, which would first appear to be random or w/o purpose
- follows a certain rationality, albeit delirious
- Prefer ‘mass crime’ to ‘mass murder’ as an expression - the former covers broader actions
- Mass crime denies some segments of population their status as mems of a society
- Mass not only implies quantification, but fact that group of individuals falls under a global criterion e.g. nationality, ethnicity..
- Implies eliminating an amorphous group of ppl, who, bc they have lost all specific traits, have been reified into some sort of threatening globality
Semelin (2003), first of two dynamics of mass crimes
Submission of a group:
- Goal to annihilate part of a group to force the rest into submission
- Aims at capitulation of the group to impose a political will, e.g. in case of the civil war in Guatemala early 1980s
- Or, once submission attained, program of reeducation of survivors, and relationship between terror and ideology becomes central factor, e.g. in Stalin’s USSR and Mao’s China
Semelin (2003), second of two dynamics of mass crimes
Eradication of a group:
-elimination of group from a territory/ cleansing
two categories of this strategy:
- goal to annihilate part of the group so rest is forced to flee. E.g. ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia
- Goal to annihilate group completely, w/o any poss of escape. Notion of cleansing a territory secondary to that of annihilation - e.g. extermination of Jews by Nazis
Semelin (2003), Mass Crime combined w war
- Mass crime in context of military confrontation
- Conflict creates ‘favourable’ conditions for mass crime
- Notable in case w Armenians in Turkey WW1 and Jews and Gypsies WWII
Semelin (2003), Quasi-autonomous mass crime
- Mass crime still justified as reaction to perceived threat, and consequently act of war
- However, mass crime is the only act of war
- Ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia typical example
Semelin (2003), development of collective psychosis
- series of massacres perp on Balkan ppl over past 2 centuries
- Vague feeling of fear served as basis for nationalistic propaganda
- Rumour early 1980s, as reported by Paul Garde, that ethnic Albanians demanded ethnically clean Kosovo
- Serb papers - warned vs their diabolical proliferation. Fear of dem growth seemed founded - ethnic Albanians now approx 90% of pop in Kosovo
- Irrational violence can devel rationally: To annihilate fear of being destroyed, one has to hit before being it
- conviction that they were serving the highest interests of the Serb nation, polit legitimacy of tis leader, and process of submission to authority - among factors that explain how the vast majority agreed to participate in such mass crime
Semelin (2003), Yug media treatment of massacres of Ustase and Chetniks
Yugoslav media reported massacres of Ustase and Chetniks, but censored those perp by the partisans
Massacres described oft in general terms, paying homage to ‘victims of fascism’
Biased reporting did not satisfy those who, in Serbia, wanted it to be known that Ustase, who were Croats, had killed Serbs bc they were Serbs
Semelin (2003), Milošević
product of evolution of Serb soc in 1980s
Power obtained by using fear and propaganda cleverly was part of flow of history
Semelin (2003), Mass crime operations are rationally organized and based on:
- Hierarchy in structure of command between actors and their respective tasks. Fragmenting of tasks = classical technique to make individs feel less reponsible
- Sealed up theatre of operations. In restricted area, everything becomes poss and violence becomes boundless
- Culture of impunity
Based on abolition of regular social order, w its rules and taboos
Hassner, international community
Great Powers’ delays and procrastination interp by Belgrade as green light to pursue their ethnic cleansing campaign
Took passivity on Croatian situation as encouragement to engage in same kind of campaign in Bosnia
Clark, Albania
in extremely difficult conditions, civil resistance managed to postpone war, maintain integrity of the Albanian community in Kosovo and its way of life, counter Serb pressure on Albanians to leave, and enlist internat sympathy
Florence Hartmann (functional interp):
- Atrocities have strategic signification for the longer term
- Goal of ethnic cleansing = to annihilate all efforts by the diff communities to live peacefully together
Semelin (2003) techniques to stimulate perp of murder
- propaganda convincing national group that they are the victims
- rewards - warlords composed of 80% prison inmates whom M had released w (367) promise they could help themselves to possessions of the victims they were instructed to kill/ chase
- group social pressures
-dehumaniation. Terminology can negate victims’ identity.
Frequently used insult ‘son of a Turk’ puts the death of the victim w/in context of century-old battle, w its political and religious connotations
Identity of victims can be militarized - ‘NATO did sure forget you!’. Action under aegis of military power. Mass crime masquerading as act of war
Anthropologist Veronique Nahoum-Grappe (functional interp):
- ‘political use of cruelty’
- In Serbs’ case, enemy defined by blood ties that can go as far as race ties
- Physical destruction of mems of group will therefore not fulfil stated goal of eradication
- Mass rape and profanation of graves as destroying enemy’s identity
Sofsky on perpetration
- perp of atrocities no other goal than itself
- Cruelty as goal in itself
- universal dynamic of extreme violence
Semelin (2013), functional utility vs no meaning
Atrocities here clearly had functional role
Hartmann (1999), Bosnia
Conflict ran April 1992-Nov 1995
Ethnic cleansing = goal of the war
not the inability of the different ethnic groups to live together that brought on the conflict, but the political aim of separating them
Hartmann (1999), Croats entered war against Bosnia
1993
- Croats encouraged by M’s support for a Greater Croatia (which would include western Herzegovina and a part of central Bosnia, where a majority of 800,000 Bosnian Croats lived)
- Croats’ breaches of law on smaller scale than Serbs’
Special Commission of Experts, chaired by Cherif Bassiouni of DePaul University in Chicago, reported to the UN 1994:
- ethnic cleansing defined as ‘rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area’
- Carried out in former Yugoslavia by means of murder, torture, arbitrary arrest, detention, extrajudicial executions, rape, sexual assault, confinement of civilian pop, etc
- 90% crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina responsibility of Serb extremists
- 6% of Croat extremists
- 4% of Muslim extremists
Hartmann (1999), ethnic hatreds
Key factor in incitement of ethnic hatreds = media under the thumb of country’s political leaders:
- Psychological conditioning
- Disguised the conflict in civil and ethnic terms by giving impression it would be imposs for the ppl of (70) former Yugoslavia to live together in same territory
Vulliamy (1999), Bosnian Croat concentration camp, Dreteli
- Most prisoners locked away in dank darkness of two underground hangars, dug into facing hillsides
- Men locked in for up to seventy-two hours at a time, w/o food or water, drinking own urine to survive
Bosnian Croat authorities explained plan to UN High Commission from Refugees (UNHCR) at mtg in Makarska:
-Ship 50,000 Muslim men to transit camp (125) at nearby Ljubuski, and thence to third countries
Vulliamy (1999), concentration camps in former Yug
media (me included) Cautious about using term ‘concentration camp’ directly after discovery of Trnopolje and Omarska bc of assoc w policies of the Third Reich
However, correct term:
- Civilian pops literallly concentrated - frog-marched in columns or bused to locations for illegal purposes of maltreatment, torture, etc
- UN independent Commission of Experts, year long study: Trnopolje was a concentration camp, and Omarska and Keraterm ‘de facto death camps’
Vulliamy (1999), concentration camps - legal side
- unlawful confinement - grave breach of Fourth Geneva Convention
- In internal conflict, noncombatants may be interned but are entitled to humane treatment and judicial protections guaranteed by regularly constituted court
Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 regulates transfer of internees - Article 127 - shall always be effected humanely.
Detaining power should take interests of internees into account
Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 regulating transfer of internees
Article 127 - shall always be effected humanely
Detaining power should take interests of internees into account
Cohen (1999), ethnic cleansing
- More than 1.5 mil people shifted
- Most devastating burst of violence, April-August 1992, saw Serbs driving more than 700,000 Muslims from an area covering 70% of Bosnia
Ethnic cleansing = blanket term. No specific crime goes by that name, but practice covers a host of criminal offenses
Cohen (1999), illegality of forced expulsions
Even if the Bosnian War viewed as civil war, forced expulsions contravene Article 3 common to the 4 Geneva Conventions, which applies to conflict not of an international character:
- People taking no active part in the hostilities shall always be treated humanely
- Prohibits humiliating and degrading treatment, and violence
Nuremberg Charter:
-Article 6, deportation = crime against humanity
Rohde (1999), Perfidy
= making someone believe a falsehood
Bosnian Serbs’ use of UN emblems and matériel was war crime - 1977 Additional Protocol I to Geneva Conventions:
- Article 37 states ‘acts inviting the confidence of an adversary to lead him to believe that he is entitled to, or is obliged to accord, protection under the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict, w intent to betray that confidence, shall constitute perfidy’
Article 38 - explicitly prohibits the use of the distinctive emblem of the UN, except as authorised by that organization.
Bos (2006), Yug as secular
most Serbs are Orthodox Christians, most Croats are Roman Catholics, and the Bosnians define themselves
as Sunni Muslim. Since most of the population was secular, these religious differences were of rather minor significance and constituted more a form of ethnic identity. Yet, through the nationalist rhetoric spun
by, in particular, Serb and Croat cultural and political elites, the different Yugoslavs would within a matter of a decade come to be defined as completely other in terms of ethnicity
Mass Killings and Images of Genocide in Bosnia, 1941-5 and 1992-5 - Robert M. Hayden
Bosnia was also the site of far greater mass killings in 1941–5, organized and effected in ways that seem much more clearly to fit the term ‘genocide’ than does the massacre in Srebrenica. From 1941–5, about 300,000 people were killed in Bosnia, about 65 per cent of them Serbs, and 18 per cent Muslims.5 However, invocation of this larger set of ethnically targeted mass killings has been seen by many analysts, myself included, as part of the late 1980s and early 1990s nationalist political mobilization of Serbs in hostility to Croats and Muslims
In regard to Bosnia, the invocation of the term ‘genocide’ is primarily a political process that, like the ‘invention of tradition’, creates essentialized images of a supposed past to serve the pur- poses of present-day political actors. The success of such a process depends not on the accuracy with which the images reflect the events they supposedly rep- resent, but rather with how well the images invoke an emotional reaction from the intended recipients.
magnitude of the causalities: approximately 100,000 in the 1992–5 war, the majority of them Bosnian Muslims, and about 300,000 in the 1941–5 war, the majority of them Bosnian Serbs
the effort to fit the ethno-national mass killings in the former Yugoslavia into a framework defined by the Holocaust has produced systematic distortions in the ways in which the conflict has been presented.
In Bosnia specifically, decisions by international political actors, supposedly grounded in morality and informed by the rhetoric of genocide, helped struc- ture the local configuration of civilian populations and military forces in Srebrenica in 1995 that put Bosnian Serb forces in a position to engage in what was by far the worst crime of the Bosnian conflict, the massacre of thousands of Bosnian Muslim males in the last months of the war. That mass slaughter may have put, finally, some accuracy into the charges of ‘genocide’ that had been made since the very start of the conflict, thus turning ‘genocide’ from politically inspired label to self-fulfilling prophecy.
What is striking about the demise of both Yugoslavias is that intense ethno- national conflict followed. But this conflict is a corollary of the logic of consti- tutional nationalism which is openly hostile to minorities and thus also tends to produce resistance from them.20 In both cases, 1941–5 and 1992–5, the demise of the larger state that was premised on the equality and fraternity of the Yugoslav peoples (and willing to sacrifice liberty to maintain the other two) led immediately to brutal conflicts in the most ethnically mixed regions, in efforts to establish the control of one group over the territory by expelling the members of the other group
: in the mid-1980s, two serious studies, one by a Serb and one by a Croat, found that slightly over 1,000,000 people had been killed during the war period in Yugoslavia. After a discussion of these studies and consideration of a major data source not available to these writers in the 1980s, Srdjan Bogosavljevic´ derived minimum and maximum figures: 896,000 and 1,210,000, respectively.23 Using results of a 1964 registration of war victims, he calculated that about 58 per cent of these victims were Serbs, 14 per cent Croats and 5.4 per cent Muslims. Of all killed in Bosnia, 72 per cent were Serbs
economic arguments were quickly transformed into positions claiming that the writer’s separate nation was threatened by other nations within Yugoslavia. This form of argumentation was common to the first direct challenges to the premise of Yugoslavia as unquestioned good for all Yugoslav peoples, the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU, from its Serbian acronym), and the Slovenian National Program. The SANU Memorandum quickly became notorious within Yugoslav and, once the wars began, widely condemned outside of the country.34 Whether it was read or not is another matter. As Michael Mann has noted,35 the first part of it was a critique of the economic failings of Yugoslav self-management socialism and elements of the structure of the Yugoslav federation; however, the second part depicts Serbs as victims of ‘genocide’ on the grounds that they were being forced out of Kosovo – a tendentious claim, and irresponsible rhet- oric that shows, however, the political attractiveness of the ‘genocide’ label for claims that one’s own group has been victimized
Serb intellectuals asserted victimization, claiming to be the ‘new Jews’
If Croats could not easily claim to be the new Jews victimized by Serb Nazis, however, Bosnian Muslims and their supporters were able to make effective use of both parts of this polarized pair of tropes. In part their success in this effort was indeed due to the Muslims having been brutally expelled from large parts of Bosnia by the much better armed and organized Bosnian Serbs, and the dis- proportionately high casualties suffered by Bosnia’s Muslims compared to other groups, especially at the start of the war. However, the success of the Nazi trope for Serbs and that of Holocaust victim for Muslims also benefited from the temporal coincidence of the start of the Bosnia conflict with the opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the critical and com- mercial success of Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, which brought these tropes into the centre of public discourse
The assertion of a parallel with the Holocaust was explicit: ‘from Auschwitz to Bosnia’.54 Making this case involved the frequent and explicit invocation of elements of the Holocaust as the proper frame of reference for understanding events in Bosnia, especially images of concentration camps, and even holding a contest to find a Bosnian Muslim surrogate for Anne Frank.
Just before his death, Bosnian Muslim leader (and first President of Bosnia and Herzegovina) Alija Izetbegovic´ acknowledged to Bernard Kouchner that he had known at the time that these comparisons were false, that ‘whatever horrors were there, these were not extermination camps’, although he acknowledged that he had used precisely that phrase in speaking with French President Mitterrand in 1993 in an attempt to precipitate bombing of the Serbs
One effect of the establishment of Holocaust imagery as the standard for geno- cide has been to focus attention on concentration camps as the sites of the greatest horrors. In the former Yugoslavia, this imagery was adopted by Serbs in reference to the massacres in the NDH. A highly tendentious book from the late 1980s by Vladimir Dedijer exemplifies this approach: The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican: The Croatian Massacre of the Serbs During World War II.64 The ‘Yugoslav Auschwitz’ was said to be the concentration camp at Jasenovac, with the methods of murder described in great detail.
Images of concentration camps firmly linked w the 1990s events in Bosnia August 1992, when two British TV journalists delivered stories, accomp by film, of Muslim prisoners in ‘detention centres’ run by Bosnian Serbs in northern Bosnia.
Daily Mirror - emaciated Bosnian Muslim prisoner on front page, w captions ‘Belsen ‘92’ and ‘Horror of the new Holocaust’
Tudjman’s book, 1990, Horrors of War
- seems to question the total of 6 mil Holocaust victims
- asserted Jews actually controlled the internal management of the largest concentration camp in Croatia, Jasenovac, up until 1944 and thus Jews who influcted sufferings at Jasenovac on Roma and Serbs
The image problem that Tudjman’s book caused for Croatia can be seen in the favourable article on Bespuc´a in the Croatian version of the reader-edited on-line encyclopedia Wikipedia, which says that the book was translated ‘in a “cleansed” version because of its supposedly murky sections which offended the sensibilities of the Jewish community’. The article then notes that Tudjman cited Israeli and Jewish historians who problematized the numbers of those killed in the Holocaust, saying that the number was closer to 4,000,000 than 6,000,000, and that because of this, ‘and because he opened up the uncomfort- able theme of the Jewish kapos in the concentration camps (i.e. the “cooperation” between Jewish inmates with Nazi administrators …), and leaving aside the clumsiness of some of his formulations, Tudjman struck the “sacred cow” of the new Jewish national mythology ….’53 If Tudjman’s book still has this reputation in Croatia, it is easy to see why it was hard for Croatia under his leadership to dodge the Nazi label enough to pin it on other groups.
Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Sarajevo
hailed as the work of ‘the Bosnian Anne Frank’
US Holocaust National Museum opened
22 April 1993
Mass Killings and Images of Genocide in Bosnia, 1941-5 and 1992-5 - Robert M. Hayden, Srebrenica and other cases as genocide?
In regard to Srebrenica, this definition is more problematical than non- lawyers might realize. The original 1946 UN resolution defined genocide as ‘a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups’, and it was said at that time that the victim of genocide was not the individuals killed but the group.94 But what counts as ‘the group’ in this case? The Prosecution was inconsistent, referring at various times to the Bosnian Muslims, the Bosnian Muslims of Srebrenica and the Bosnian Muslims of Eastern Bosnia. The Trial Chamber agreed with the Defence that the proper group was the Bosnian Muslims, leav- ing then the question of whether the destruction of a part of that group would qualify as genocide.95 Having made this determination, however, the Trial Chamber then contra- dicted itself by saying that the killing of all members of the part of a group located within a small geo- graphical area … would qualify as genocide if carried out with the intent to destroy the part of the group as such located in this small geographical area. Indeed, the physical destruction may target only a part of the geographically limited part of the larger group because the perpetrators of the genocide regard the intended destruction as sufficient to annihilate the group as a dis- tinct entity in the geographic area at issue.96 Yet even annihilation of a small local group seems unlikely to threaten the larger ‘group as such’, already defined as the Bosnian Muslims, that is, the group itself (rather than the individuals that comprise it)
Bosnian Serb Army did not try to kill all mems of the group - only males between 16 and 60
In this connection, the Trial Chamber referred to ‘the catastrophic impact that the disappearance of two or three gen- erations of men would have on the survival of a traditionally patriarchal society’, thus incorporating into its reasoning stereotypes about Bosnian society.97 Strangely, the Trial Chamber also referred to the strategic location of Srebrenica and noted that by killing the men, the Serbs ‘precluded any effective attempt by the Bosnian Muslims to recapture the territory’98 – strange, because this rea- soning seems to acknowledge a military strategic reason for killing the men of military age. Through this reasoning, the Krstic ´ trial chamber extended the definition of ‘genocide’ from acts made with the intent to cause the physical ‘destruction of a group as such’, to covering acts made to remove an ethnic or religious com- munity from a specific territory, especially one of strategic importance
A subsequent ICTY trial chamber expressed ‘some hesitancy’ about adopt- ing this reasoning, ‘which permits a characterization of genocide even when the specific intent extends only to a limited geographical area, such as a municipality’. This Trial Chamber was ‘aware that this approach might dis- tort the definition of genocide if it is not applied with caution’.99 The Stakic´ court cited a law review article that had argued that if such a definition pre- vails, local mass killings might be taken to indicate that there was not a plan on a national level. Carrying this logic further, Tomislav Dulic´ notes that if local mass killings are defined as genocide, even the Holocaust becomes composed in part of many ‘individual genocides’, or local massacres.
At that stage, the possibility arises of seeing reciprocal or ‘retributive’ genocides when forces of antagonistic racial, ethnic or religious groups each commit a local massacre of the other’s people, even of their military forces.101 Yet at that point, what distinguishes ‘genocide’ from other ethnic, racial or reli- gious mass killings?
Appeals Chamber dismissed the Appeals, but in doing so made the issues less rather than more clear. In regard to ‘part’ of a protected group, the Appeals Chamber simply said that all that was necessary was that ‘the alleged perpetrator intended to destroy at least a substantial part of the protected group.’ ‘Substantial part’ was left undefined, but the Appeals Chamber then introduced a purely political consideration: ‘If a specific part of the group is emblematic of the overall group… that may support a finding that the part qualifies as substantial’
extraordinary statement, because it conditions ‘genocide’ on the purely political determination that even a relatively small portion of a pro- tected group is either so politically prominent or so strategically located that its removal from a territory, rather than physical annihilation, would symbolize the vulnerability of the larger group.
The question of whether genocide occurred in Bosnia became even more complicated with the decision of the trial chamber in the case of Momcilo Krajisnik, one of the most important political actors among the Bosnian Serbs from 1990 throughout the war. According to the indictment against him,106 Krajisnik had de facto control and authority over the Bosnian Serb Forces and Bosnian Serb Political and Governmental Organs and their agents, who participated in the crimes alleged in this indictment. He was indicted, and convicted, of crimes based on his political responsibility.
Krajšnik found not guilty of genocide or complicity in genocide, despite condemnations for other crimes e.g. extermination, murder
Thus far, the international legal decisions in regard to the allegations of genocide in Bosnia are ambiguous at best - only Srebrenica held to be genocide
Krstić decision seems to accept genocide as the universal phenomenon that Tudjman envisions
relativises concept of genocide to the point at which it equates conceptually the strategic killing of small nums of ppl w actual efforts at the extermination of entire groups
Mass Killings and Images of Genocide in Bosnia, 1941-5 and 1992-5 - Robert M. Hayden conclusions
What is to be gained by declaring after the fact that not only Turkey but Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, India, Pakistan etc founded on ‘genocide’?
the invocation by Serb politicians in 1990–2 of the mass killings of Serbs in the ‘Independent State of Croatia’ (and thus in Bosnia) 50 years earlier was indeed a call to mobilize the descendants of those Serbs against the descendants of those said to have killed them, in order to justify aggressive Serb political actions (and later, military ones) against those Others. But the invocation of the short-lived camps of northern Bosnia in 1992–3 and the mass killing at Srebrenica in 1995 as ‘genocide’ has equally been a call to mobilize the international community, and also Bosnian Muslims, against Serbs. The suit by Bosnia against Serbia in the ICJ is primarily a tool by which Bosniak political forces are trying to undermine the Bosnian Serbs, even to eliminate the Republika Srpska.115 Yet the war in Bosnia was driven by the rejec- tions by Bosnian Serbs and Herzegovinian Croats of inclusion in a unitary Bosnian state, and they still reject this.
politics of mutual recrimination are dangerous politics, which produced new corpses, and not only because of the actions of ex-Yugoslavs themselves
In regard to Srebrenica, a U.S. official told me that while the U.S. government knew that at the end of the war, Srebrenica would be part of the Serbian territory, they would not, ‘for moral reasons’, urge the Izetbegovic ´ government to evacuate the town. This ‘morality’ left the Muslims of Srebrenica in place,119 where they were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces a year later. This does not exculpate the Serb forces of responsibility for the mass killing, but it is discomfiting that concerns about a ‘genocide’ that had not actually taken place might have helped set the stage for these larger massacres later. Perhaps the labelling of mass killings in Bosnia as ‘genocides’ should give pause.
The term ‘genocide’ may not fit all mass killings. Invoking that term may well be a tactic for inciting hostility between the descendants of putative victims and alleged victimizers.
It may serve to preclude diplomatic efforts on supposedly ‘moral’ grounds
Finally, forcing accounts of ethnic conflict into the framework of the Holocaust distorts perceptions of the real causes and trajectories of the conflict, thus not only hindering understanding of the con- flict itself, but also obstructing efforts to establish new forms of relations between the groups involved.
Katherine Verdery
‘entire battalions of [massacre victims] served as “shock troops” in the Yugoslav breakup.’117 While her specific refer- ence in this passage is to the mobilization of the dead of World War II, her model includes those of the later wars: ‘the concern with corpses continues, as the fighting produces even more graves. Their occupants become the grounds for mutual recrimination … and means of a politics of blame, guilt and accountability.’
Tomislav Dulić (2006) Mass killing in the Independent State of Croatia,
1941–1945: a case for comparative research, Journal of Genocide Research
What happened to the Serbs in the NDH might border on genocide, but a final
answer remains a matter of establishing plausible thresholds insofar the percentage
of destruction is concerned. If one believes that the perpetrators’ aims and the level of destruction was of such dimensions that one can indeed speak about “substantial”
intended and achieved destruction, then genocide was probably committed. It
is on the other hand possible to argue that the killings served the purpose of forcing
the Serbs to flee the NDH territory, in which case what happened perhaps should
be characterized as ethnocide (or “ethnic cleansing”). Alternatively, one might
argue that the Ustasˇe initially intended but did not achieve substantial destruction,
in which case the result would be “attempted genocide.”
As for the Cˇ etniks, it is important to conclude that they wanted to “ethnically
purify” their future utopian state through the commission of massacres as well
as by forcing the undesirables out of a future “Homogenous Serbia” and—in the
case of the Muslims—Yugoslavia. Consequently, the Cˇ etnik aim was different
from the Ustasˇes’ vis-a`-vis the Jews and Roma. Using wide definitions of genocide,
one can perhaps argue that genocide was committed in the Cˇ etnik cases as well. On
the other hand, it might be claimed that neither the Muslims nor the Croats were
destroyed to an extent when it would seem plausible to speak about genocide.
Even if the Cˇ etniks had aimed at substantial destruction, which is debatable,
their inability to achieve this
There is little evidence supporting the view that the Ustasˇe initially did not
intend the killings, but along the lines of Mann’s model turned to “murderous
cleansing” after repression had failed. Instead, they began organizing the persecution
within days after coming to power and the first massacres happened in Croatia
proper in late April. Moreover, the deportations that were agreed upon with the
Germans targeted whole sections of the Serbian population throughout the
country at a time when there was no organized opposition to the regime.
Above all, the “cultural purification,” the killing of women, children and the
elderly and the destruction of the Jews and Roma—who did not pose any threat whatsoever—shows that ideology was a key factor in both the Ustasˇa and Cˇ etnik
terror.
The
importance of motives and ideology is perhaps best illustrated by a comparison
between the Ustasˇes’ attack on the Serbs and their almost total destruction of
the Jews and Roma. Since it was Jewish and Roma “race,” not their culture,
that threatened to “defile” the Croatian (including Muslim) racial stock, they
were “objectively” inassimilable in the eyes of the Ustasˇe and therefore had to
perish. The other Ustasˇa and Cˇ etnik victims could be deported or—in the case
of the Serbs—assimilated
. On the basis of empirical evidence, I posit
that the destruction of the NDH Jews was different in kind and not merely in
degree from the terror that affected the Serbs, Croats and Muslims, since the killings continued unabated until they de facto were all but extinct from Bosnia and
Croatia. In that sense, the Holocaust in the NDH indeed represented a final solution,
since it irreversibly changed the cultural and religious character of cities
such as Sarajevo and Zagreb.
Cathie Carmichael (2006) Violence and ethnic boundary maintenance in Bosnia in the 1990s, Journal of Genocide Research,
occurrence of violence that I want to examine in some detail is the often reported phenomenon of forcing Muslims to eat pork or desecrating holy places by either letting pigs roam in them or leaving pieces of pigs’ bodies there. There are many similar incidences of this type of marking of religious and ethnic boundaries. In 1992, in Novo Selo, when Bosnian Serb troops “rounded up 150 women, children and old people and forced them at gunpoint into the local mosque. In front of the captives they challenged the local community leader to desecrate the mosque…they told him to make the sign of the cross, eat pork and finally have sexual intercourse with a teenage girl… (he) refused all these demands and was beaten and cut with knives.
A second incident occurred when a Muslim returned to his house after it had been looted in 1995. He found that “(a) long stake was put in the middle of the room, resting on the window frame with a pig’s head impaled on it.
Some writers have interpreted the symbolic use of violence as primarily the reinvention of tradition. Serb anthropologist Ivan C ˇ olovic ́ employs a phrase taken from the work of the ethnographer Veselin C ˇ ajkanovic ́ ,klicanje predaka (the cheer of ancestral voices), to illustrate how the dead are summoned up to serve the political purposes of the living. 12 Croat writers Ivo Z ˇ anic ́ and Dunja Rihtman-Augus ˇ tin have also discussed the way in which tradition was effectively reconfigured and mobilized in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia
Dras ˇ kovic ́ and his contemporaries drew upon the complete litany of prejudices about Islam and the Ottoman past. Prior to the massacre at Srebrenica in Bosnia, in which thousands of Muslims men were executed and dumped in the surrounding killing fields, Ratko Mladic ́ appeared on Bosnian Serb television on July 11, 1995 (the same evening of the pig slaughtering outside the Hotel Fontana), telling viewers that the moment for revenge against the “Turks” had finally come
Of course the war in Bosnia also served to break down barriers. A Serb family who had no other source of fat cooked in lard and served bacon to a Muslim boy they were sheltering. When they explained what had happened to the boy’s father, he broke down: “Thank you so much for feeding my boy. If it weren’t for you he’d have nothing to eat.” 64 In Bosnia ethnic boundary maintenance was weak under the communist period and individuals such as Emir Karabas ˇ ic ́ did eat pork with their Serb neighbours and would probably have bought cevapc ˇ ic ˇ i of mixed pork. and beef from vendors in Sarajevo. Thus, the violence of the 1990s will certainly have created new barriers between groups and “magnified mutual gaps,” 65 making it unlikely that the surviving members of the families will ever sit down and eat together again. Violence thus destroyed 500 years of sharing the same space, even if some practices did differ
Each confessional community in Bosnia perpetrated atrocities, which were in some way linked to their religious identity or discovered ethnic boundary markers that had scarcely been observed before 1992.
Ben Lieberman (2006) Nationalist narratives, violence between neighbours and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia-Hercegovina: a case of cognitive dissonance?, Journal of Genocide Research
reports of war and flight depict suspicion, intense animosity, and even
hatred between the different peoples of Bosnia, but they also provide strong evidence
of cordial relations across ethnic and religious boundaries. This article will
argue that one key to understanding ethnic cleansing in Bosnia lies in analysing
this important contradiction. These multiple eyewitness accounts suggest that
ethnic cleansing in Bosnia was a crime of cognitive dissonance
Nationalist narratives experienced a strong revival during the last decades of
Yugoslavia, though not because of the work of any single individual or institution.
Intellectuals during the 1970s were the first to construct a narrative of eternal Serb
victimhood and selected politicians along with the media joined in during the
1980s. Jasna Dragovic´-Soso provides a detailed guide to the Serb nationalist
revival of intellectuals, most notably the Serb novelist Dobrica C´ osic´, whose
four volume epic Vreme Smrti and a later play based on part of the epic anchored
the story of Serb heroism and catastrophe from the First World War in the narrative
of the Serb as victim.40 The next and best-known step in rebuilding a Serb
national narrative came in the 1980s with commemoration of the 1389 Battle of
Kosovo, the site of a much-mythologized Serb defeat to the Ottoman Turks.
In Bosnia-Hercegovina and elsewhere in the former Yugoslavia, national hate
narratives repeatedly played a central role in generating ethnic cleansing. It is
tempting, though probably impossible, to compare the power of this particular
type of nationalist thinking as a motive for ethnic cleansing against other material
or psychological motives. However, national hate narratives should not be viewed
in isolation from such motives as the desire for loot or the possible thrill of joining
in violence. In the ethnic cleansing in the 1990s, nationalist narratives of victimization
united and blended together such other motives for attacking and driving
out neighbours of a different ethnic or religious identity
The antecedent hate structures inherent in national hate narratives made populations
more receptive to calls for ethnic cleansing, but these ideas did not simply
predispose people to consider and take up violence. In the wars in Yugoslavia,
national hate narratives acted as a powerful accelerant. It was not simply generalized
antipathy to groups of Bosnian Muslims that legitimized violent attack, but
specific narratives identifying the targeted group as traitors to a nation. Along with
leadership by activist groups or publicity, events that reinforced the themes of
these national narratives were critical in launching a final surge toward violence
and revenge in the name of the nation.
Nationalist narratives repeatedly transformed the relationship between the past
and present. They remake the past, and provide a framework for interpreting personal
experience that goes far beyond interactions of daily life.
Paradoxically,
when most powerful, they fuse together the present and the imagined historical
past while disconnecting the present from an actual personal past. For the individual, the new reality of ethnic violence created during periods of crisis is often
almost impossible to explain by reference to prewar inter-ethnic relations:
friends are enemies, and enemies are friends.
Paul B. Miller (2006) Contested memories: the Bosnian genocide in Serb and
Muslim minds, Journal of Genocide Research
nothing in the UN Genocide
Convention that says the intent to destroy a specific group, in whole or in part,
must entail murdering members of both sexes
both because of the international community’s
clear responsibility for the enclave’s fall and the Muslims’ justified
outrage that the Serbs would do the unthinkable, Srebrenica has quickly become
a preeminent symbol of the war, its tenth anniversary a pageantry of memory
attended by political leaders, journalists, and ordinary people the world over.
Whereas well through the 1970s Holocaust survivors in America, Israel, and
other countries were insensitively told to put the past behind them and get on
with their lives, Srebrenica victims, including those who survived physically,
have already become the centre of a veritable cult of commemoration. From the
parade of trucks that processed through Sarajevo bearing the remains of 610
newly identified genocide victims, to the miles of traffic heading into the Potocˇari
Memorial Complex, there seemed to be something of the spectacle to this solemn
occasion, more political rally and media event, really, than funeral. P
What worries me are the ways in which a surfeit of memory about Srebrenica
could become hardened and politicized into dogma about the past
chamber of horrors committed against Serbs in the last century. Its highlights
include: bloodied “Serb” faces with a caption indicating that Vukovar was a
Croatian crime; side-by-side beheading images from 1942 (Ustasˇa) and 1992
(Mujahadeen); recruitment posters for the Bosnian Muslim SS division in the
Second World War; and lists of Mujahadeen fighters from the last war. Utterly
devoid of context and explanation, and often completely ahistorical (the Handzˇar
SS division was formed after the majority of Ustasˇa crimes), the historical narrative
presented at Kozara is even given a title—“The three genocides against the Serbian
people in the twentieth century”—connecting not only the Second World War with
the recent conflict, but the First World War as well. The not-so-implicit subtext, of
course, is that Srebrenica could not possibly measure up to that.
The purpose of the Kozara exhibit, in short, is not to document war crimes and
human rights violations against Bosnian Serbs, which certainly did happen in the
twentieth century, particularly during the anti-Serb Ustasˇa campaign of the
Second World War. The purpose is to paint their adversaries, the Croats and
above all the Muslims, as monstrous barbarians. Certainly no kind of animals
you would ever want as your neighbours. This “museum,” in short, is not
simply another example of Serb nationalism, self-pity, and counter-memorialization.
It is a blatant appeal to a most vile racism.
The Srebrenica genocide, whether you call it that
or not (and some scholars, not including this one, don’t), was unique and tragic
enough in its own right. Turning it into the Bosnian Muslim Holocaust, in a
country which remains forty percent Muslim, seems to me to be manufacturing
a fixed and didactic narrative that leaves little room for exploring the broader
context of both the recent war and of Bosnian history generally
Ethnic cleansing in the Balkans: nationalism and the destruction of tradition - Cathie Carmichael, Askews and Holts 2002
Nationalism and creation of nation states was an ideological model that ran counter to complex traditions and daily realities for most Balkan peoples
ethnic cleansing from the 18th C
Rise of nationalisms
Dismembering Yugoslavia: Nationalist Ideologies and the Symbolic Revival of Genocide - Bette Denich 1994
During the early 1980s, a play called “The Pigeon Cave” (Golubnjaca)1 was banned after
being performed in Serbia. The drama portrays peasant life in a Dalmatian mountain village in
the region known as Krajina, where both Orthodox Christian Serbs and Roman Catholic Croats
live along the border that once divided Christian realms from the Ottoman Empire.2 In the
background of the village looms the limestone cavern that the villagers call the pigeon-cave,
which conceals pigeon nests and the skeletal remains of the villagers’ relatives who were
massacred during the Second World War. The villagers are Serbs; their relatives were massacred
by Croats from neighboring villages who had joined the nationalist Ustasha movement that
ruled the so-called Independent State of Croatia, established in 1941 under the wing of Hitler.
That Croatian state extended the Nazi genocidal policy to remove from its territory Serbs, in
addition to Jews and Gypsies. The banning of the play represented the policy of Titoist
Yugoslavia to suppress reminders of that vicious interethnic conflict, in the interests of a
multiethnic state
t was well known that a melange of anti-Communist and collaborationist fighting forces had
retreated from Yugoslavia at the end of World War II, joining the streams of displaced persons
and eventual political emigrants. But it was a dark secret that the British had repatriated tens of
thousands of these prisoners across the Austrian border, where they were executed by
Communist-led Partisan troops. Among those executed were Croatian Ustashas and home guard
recruits, along with Slovenian home guards and Serbian nationalist Chetniks. The gruesome
narratives of survivors and witnesses paralleled the descriptions of the Ustasha massacres
against Serbs (although lacking the sadistic variety of Ustasha atrocities), as unarmed prisoners
were herded into caves and shot, their deaths and burial sites to remain secret to the Yugoslav
public until 1990.32
The publication of these revelations led to the discovery of actual burial sites. In June, word
reached the Zagreb media of a cave called Jazovka. Like the pigeon-caves of massacred Serbs,
its existence had been known to nearby villagers, who now revealed the secret. The media in
Croatia published pictures of the 40-meter-deep cavern, piled with killing-field relics
The head of the renamed Communist Party of Croatia proposed a peacemaking ritual to be
performed by both Croatian and Serbian leaders at the newly found Jazovka site and at the site
of a major massacre of Serbs. Serbian leaders rejected this equation: whereas the Ustasha had
massacred whole villages of noncombatant men, women, and children, the Jazovka skeletons
included Ustasha perpetrators of those same massacres. However, the manner in which the
caves were discovered and the grim contents presented to the public effectively recast all the
murdered captives as victims, their skeletal remains being indistinguishable
In addition to emphasizing the “chessboard” emblem, the new government revived the
long-abandoned linguistic innovations of the wartime Ustasha state, issuing lists of words coined
to exaggerate the minor distinctions between the Croatian and Serbian variants of the literary
language
The linguistic revisions provided an identity marker for “good Croats,”
who were also expected to shed regional attachments in favor of a Croatian culture both unitary
and non-Serbian. Regional identities were eliminated: Dalmatia was renamed “southern
Croatia.”
5 July 25, 1990, the day that the
new government of Croatia officially took office, turned into a public ritual of division and ethnic
opposition. As the official ceremony celebrated the fulfillment of the “thousand-year aspiration
of the Croatian people for their own state,” it also ritualized the exclusion of non-Croats. Far
from separating church and state, the Roman Catholic Cardinal of Zagreb was given a role in
inauguration ceremonies co-equal to that of the republic’s new president
e emotional peak
of the ceremony held in Zagreb’s main public square was the flag-raising ceremony that replaced a flag with a red star emblem with a flag bearing the “chessboard” coat-of-arms, with
its dual meanings for Croatian nationalists, in opposition to those who associated that emblem with the Ustasha state
Trouble started when the new government in Zagreb acted swiftly to install the symbols of
its domination throughout Croatia, starting with the new “chessboard” emblem. In Knin, a largely Serbian town in the Dalmatian mountains, local policemen objected to renaming the
militia with the resurrected Ustasha term redarstvo and refused to replace the red stars on their
caps with the hated “chessboard” insignia.
These extraordinary events comprise what David Apter has called a “disjunctive moment”
of history, when relations of power are transformed through reformulations of ideology that
combine theory with myth
myth. The political effect of mythical thinking is to polarize. In a disjunctive moment, “Spectators, citizens, participants, are forced to take sides…. Events of confron
tation take on metaphorical and metonymical significance. Sequence is then interpretation.
Narrative and text combine, reinforcing each other” (Apter 1987:303).
Titoist system came to a sudden halt when the Communist party of Yugoslavia disbanded
in January 1990. The opening toward political pluralism and the effort to create “civil
society” within Yugoslavia’s republics then proceeded rapidly. During the first months of
1990, dozens of new political parties were organized
The HDZ’s ideological commitment to the Starcevii formulation of the Croatian nation
and its right to have its “own national state” was critical to the events that followed. Had a
democratic system been adopted in Croatia, ethnic dominance would not have been
realistically in doubt, considering that Serbs comprised under 1 5 percent of the population.
Insistence on the formulation that privileged Croats and excluded Serbs represented an
ideological stand from which power could be manipulated through the instrumentalization
of symbols that divided Croats from Serbs and restored the definition of Croat as non- or
anti-Serb. But dialectical models work both ways: the bifurcated ideology of Croatian
nationhood was mirrored in the extremist formulations of Serbian nationalism that swiftly
gained currency among the Serbs in Croatia, paralleling HDZ’s ascent to power
Also rediscovered was the Chetnik plan for ethnic “homogenization,”
originally designed in 1941 in response to the Ustasha genocide. The population exchanges
envisioned by World War II Chetniks would provide a blueprint for “ethnic cleansing” in
Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina during the civil wars of 1 991 and 1992
In the collapse of the Yugoslav political order, leadership was seized by those waiting in
the wings for a second moment in history, hoping to reverse the outcome of an earlier
defeat. The mass deaths of World War II, with its victims of all ethnicities, its memories lain
dormant, its grievances unrequited: these represented a reservoir of powerful emotion that
could be released in various ways
As the nationalist confrontation exploded to the surface
in Croatia, traumatic memories on both sides became instruments in the power struggle
Thus, victimhood submitted to the arena of conflict offered a key resource for those who
came forth to seize the “disjunctive moment.” Evoking the atrocities of the past, the
repressed memory of genocide like “the figure of torture [brought] together a complex of
power, truth, and bodies” (Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982:144). For both Serbian and Croatian
nationalists to knowingly revive the symbols associated with the World War II atrocities
was tantamount to releasing that disruptive “masked other,” reversing what had briefly
promised to be orderly progress toward the universalistic premises of constitutional democ
racy.44
The manipulation of ethnicity: from ethnic cooperation to violence and war in Yugoslavia - Anthony Oberschall 01/2000
Yugoslavs possessed two ethnic frames in
their minds, an ethnic cooperation and peace frame for normal times, and
a crisis frame anchored in World War II memories. Élite contention and mass media propaganda awakened the dormant crisis frame, suppressed the normal frame, and spread insecurity and fear. I explain why ethnic manipulation
succeeded, people believed falsehoods, voted for nationalists, how moderates were purged and why men in militias killed innocent civilians.
Threats
and lies that were implausible and dismissed in the normal frame could
resonate when the crisis frame was switched on: they became persuasive, were believed, and inspired fear.
In the waning days of Communism, nationalists activated the crisis
frame on ethnicity by playing on fears of ethnic annihilation and oppression in the mass media, in popular culture, in social movements, and in election campaigns.
d. Once in
ofce, nationalists suppressed and purged both moderates in their own
ethnic group and other ethnics. They organized militias who perpetrated
acts of extreme violence against innocent civilians. They conducted war
according to the crisis script. Without the tacit, overt or confused support
of the majority, the nationalist leaders could not have escalated ethnic
rivalry and conict into massive collective violence.
Survey research on ethnic relations in mid-1990 found that in a national
sample of 4,232 Yugoslavs, only 7 per cent believed that the country
would break up into separate states, and 62 per cent reported that the
‘Yugoslav’ afliation was very or quite important for them (Cohen 1993, p. 173)
On ethnonational relations, in workplaces, 36 per cent characterized
them as ‘good’, 28 per cent as ‘satisfactory’, and only 6 per cent
said ‘bad’ and ‘very bad’
In my interview with a Serb refugee one can trace how the atrocities dis- course switched on the crisis frame: ‘We were afraid because nationalists
revived the memory of World War II atrocities . . . nationalist grafti
on walls awakened fears of past memories; it was a sign that minorities
[Serbs in Croatia] would not be respected and safe’.
There was grass-roots resistance to nationalism and to activation of
the crisis frame. A content analysis of news stories in Oslobodjenje for
1990 indicates that municipalities, youth and veterans’ organizations, and trade unions repeatedly protested against ethnic polarization and
hatreds. The municipal council of Vojnic organized a rally of brother- hood and unity; in Mostar, the Youth Association and a trade union
stated that ‘there is no place for the ghosts of the past . . . we condemn
the spread of nationalist hatred’; in Glamoc and Kladanj, the Socialist
Association of Working People sent a message to nationalists Tudjman, Draskovic and Seselj that it would not participate in civil war. Veterans’ organizations in Novi Pazar, Kladanj, and Banja Luka condemned
‘attempts to break up Yugoslavia’.
was countered by the spread of populist nationalism. Oslobodjenje in
1990 is full of afrmations of national symbols and identities: the
renaming of localities; the reburial of bones of atrocity victims from
World War II; nationalist grafti on churches, mosques, monuments and
in cemeteries; ghts over ags, ethnic insults, nationalist songs, ethnic
vandalism.
Mass communications and propaganda research help to explain why
ethnic manipulation worked and why the crisis frame eclipsed the
normal frame. First, in a classic study on communication and persuasion, Hovland, Janis and Kelley (1963) found that fear arousing appeals, originating
in a threat, were powerful and effective in changing opinion and
belief. Furthermore, the most important reaction to fear is removing the
source of threat, precisely what nationalists were promising to do in
Yugoslavia. Second, studies of propaganda routinely nd that repetition
is the single most effective technique of persuasion. It does not matter
how big the lie is, so long as it keeps being repeated (Brown 1963). Third, much of what we know is vicarious knowledge and not based
on personal experience. We accept the truths of authorities and experts
Oberschall, four common views on ethnicity and ethnic violence
Four views on ethnicity and ethnic violence are common.1 In the ‘pri- mordial’ view, ethnic attachments and identities are a cultural given and
a natural afnity, like kinship sentiments. They have an overpowering
emotional and non-rational quality. Applied to the former Yugoslavia,
the primordialist (Kaplan 1993) believes that despite seemingly cooperative
relations between nationalities in Yugoslavia, mistrust, enmity, even
hatred were just below the surface, as had long been true in the Balkans. Triggered by erce competition for political power during the breakup
of Yugoslavia and driven by the uncertainties over state boundaries and
minority status, these enmities and hatreds, fuelled by fear and retri- bution, turned neighbour against neighbour
Although the pri- mordial account sounds plausible, and it is true that politicians activated
and manipulated latent nationalism and ethnic fears, some evidence contradicts
it. Ethnic cleansing was more commonly militias and military against civilians than neighbour against neighbour
In seventeen assaults
against villages during the ethnic cleansing of Prijedor district in Bosnia
in May/June 1992, we found that the aggressors wore military and para- military uniforms and insignia. In fourteen assaults, the survivors did not
recognize any of the aggressors
. The pri- mordial theory omits the fact that ethnic hatreds can subside as a consequence
of statecraft and living together.
In the second, ‘instrumentalist’ view, ethnic sentiments and loyalties are manipulated by political leaders and intellectuals for political ends,
such as state creation (Rosens 1989). For Yugoslavia, the instrumentalist
explanation highlights Serb nationalists’ goal of a Greater Serbia
(Cigar 1995), and a similar Croat nationalism (Djilas 1995). Ethnic
cleansing resulted from a historical longing by Serbs for a Greater
Serbia, with deep cultural roots. Milosevic and Serb nationalists tried to
implement it when the opportunity arose in the late 1980s and early
1990s. Greater Serbia required ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs from areas
inhabited by a majority of Serbs and the corridors linking Serb population
clusters. Although there is evidence that ethnic cleansing was a
state policy, orchestrated by the highest authorities in Serbia and the
Bosnian Serb leadership, this explanation ignores that many Bosnian
Serbs did not want secession, that many Serbs in Croatia at rst backed
moderate nationalists, and that many Serbs evaded the draft (Milosevic
1997, p. 109). The instrumentalist view assumes an ethnic consensus that
initially does not exist.
The third ‘constructionist’ view of ethnicity and ethnic conict was
originally formulated by Kuper (1977). It supplements the insights of the
primordial and of the instrumentalist views. Religion or ethnicity are
very real social facts, but in ordinary times they are only one of several
roles and identities that matter. There is a great deal of variance in a
population on ethnic attachments and identities. In the words of Linz
and Stepan (1996, p. 366) ‘political identities are less primordial and
xed than contingent and changing. They are amenable to being constructed
or eroded by political institutions and political choices’. The
constructionist view offers insights but is incomplete. How are nationality
and ethnicity constructed and eroded by political mobilization and
mass media propaganda?
A fourth model of ethnic violence (Posen 1993; Gagnon 1997) centres
on state breakdown, anarchy, and the security dilemma that such con- ditions pose to ethnic groups who engage in defensive arming to protect their lives and property against ethnic rivals, which then stimulates
arming by other ethnic groups like an arms race between states. The
driving motivations are not ethnic hatreds but fear and insecurity
a. To this arsenal of
concepts and models for generating the dynamics of ethnicization and
collective violence, I add ‘cognitive frames’. Combining all, I seek to
explain how forty years of cooperative ethnic relations ended with collective
violence and war.
Yugoslav crisis, Michael Ignatieff
Once the Yugoslav communist state began to split into its constituent
national particles the key question soon became: will the local Croat
policeman protect me if I am a Serb? Will I keep my job in the soap
factory if my new boss is a Serb or a Muslim? The answer to this
question was no, because no state remained to enforce the old ethnic
bargain.
Oberschall, Prijedor
Muslims and Serbs had lived in peace before the conict erupted
Serbs were neither a numerical minority, nor discriminated against. They
not only had a share of power, but they had the biggest share
). There was no anarchy, no state breakdown
in Prijedor. The Serbs used the police and military of a functioning
government to subdue the non-Serbs.
the Serb parallel government was not only
an instrument for seizing power from non-Serbs but of stripping the
moderate Serbs of any inuence and authority
Nationalist Mobilization and Stories of Serb Suffering: The Kosovo myth from 600th anniversary to the present - Florian Bieber 04/2002
The myth of the Kosovo battle resurfaced in mainstream Serbian political dis- course from the mid-1980s. Until 1989, it served to highlight Serbian suffering
in Kosovo, to provide a (pseudo-)historical context for Serbian migration
from the province and to legitimize the emergence of new nationalist political
leaders. The celebrations of 1989 marked the brief moment at which Serbian
nationalism appeared to have reached self-fullment in achieving its goal of
total national unity and the myth was accordingly reworked to bolster Serbian triumphialism. In the rst half of the 1990s, the myth was only of
indirect relevance for the political programme of nationalists in Serbia. With
attention turned to Croatia and Bosnia, myths and remembrance of Serb
suffering during World War II at the hands of the fascist Ustasa regime in the
‘Independent State of Croatia’ provided a more powerful ideological under- pinning for Serbian aggression and warfare in the two countries. With the re- emergence of Kosovo as a site of conict between Serbs and Albanians in
1998, however, the Kosovo myth regained relevance. Until the loss of the
province after the NATO war in June 1999, it served to compensate for the
weakness of contemporary ethno-political and legal arguments for Serbian
control of Kosovo. With Kosovo as an international protectorate, the expulsion
of Serbs from the province coupled with the persecution of Serbs remaining
in situ and the destruction of Serbian symbols such as churches and
monasteries ensured that the Kosovo myth became again what it was in the
1980s – a symbol of Serbian suffering in the province.
. First, it helped to ensure that there was little room for compro- mise with Albanian claims in Kosovo. Thus in the early 1990s some Serbian
nationalist intellectuals such as Dobrica C´osic´ and Branislav Krstic´ did begin
to contemplate a historic ‘compromise’ between ‘historical and ethnical rights’ (Bieber 2001: 247–52, 546–8). But this purported compromise would
have rested upon a partition of Kosovo that would have granted Serbs a dis- proportionately large part of the province. Second, the myth with its
celebration of loss proved instrumental for ressentiment-based nationalism
The self-perception of victimhood in Serbian nationalism provided a forceful
motivation for mobilization for the wars. As Liah Greenfeld has pointed out
‘ressentiment not only makes the nation more aggressive, but represents an
unusually powerful stimulus of national sentiment and collective action, which makes it easier to mobilize collectivistic nations for aggressive warfare
than to mobilize individualistic nations, in which national commitment is
normally dependent on rational calculations’ (
e unresolved status of Kosovo
and the plight of its Serbs, as well as the surrender of Slobodan Milosevic´ to
the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague on Vidovdan 2001, could equally lend the myth a new lease of life as part of a metanarrative of
Serb persecution if the underlying socio-economic and political motivations
behind recent Serb nationalism are not addressed in the near future
