Yugoslavia Flashcards

Question

Ray (1999), civil war in Serbian and Croatian national imaginations

Answer 1

seen as replaying of ancient conflicts of west and east Present genocide described as 'Second Battle for Kosovo'

Answer 2

- 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

Answer 3

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

Answer 4

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

Answer 5

constitute basis for desire for vengeful justice | Unresolved grief perpetuates stereotyped repetitions of thought and behaviour

Answer 6

- 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

Answer 7

- 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

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

Violence does not erupt into social life as some atavistic antisocial force but is embedded in certain kinds of routine social relationships

Answer 10

inescapable conditions exist for two further irreconcilable historical memories - in the mass graves of Kosovars and the Serbian civilian casualties

Answer 11

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

Answer 12

all our hist is in Kosovo, all our monasteries

Answer 13

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

Answer 14

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

Answer 15

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

Answer 16

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

Answer 17

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

Answer 18

- Vojvedina - Montenegro - by begin 1989, M controlled half of Yug

Answer 19

- 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

Answer 20

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

Answer 21

Reported that Kucan delib provocative and defending separatism in Kosovo - and Slovenia Broadcast brought ppl of Belgrade onto streets

Answer 22

Talked about Yugoslavia - brotherhood and unity Will not take path of national conflict Brotherhood and unity Failed to satisfy crowd

Answer 23

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

Answer 24

- 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

Answer 25

- 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

Answer 26

- We should have been more subtle and careful | - Knew we were driving away serbs who wanted to live at peace w croatia

Answer 27

- 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

Answer 28

- 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

Answer 29

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

Answer 30

- 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

Answer 31

entirely Serb Memory of massacre erased

Answer 32

9000 pop. 3/4 pop Muslim

Answer 33

- 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

Answer 34

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

Answer 35

- 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

Answer 36

``` 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

Answer 37

9000 pop. 3/4 pop Muslim

Answer 38

- 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

Answer 39

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

Answer 40

Genocide most likely not Milošević's original intent Genocide emerged at moments of extreme crisis, largely self-generated

Answer 41

``` 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

Answer 42

- 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

Answer 43

- 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

Answer 44

July 12-16, Bosnian Serb army slaughtered at least 7,414 Muslim men

Answer 45

- 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

Answer 46

24 April 1987

Answer 47

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

Answer 48

- 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

Answer 49

national sentiments to be represented within each republic but wld also be entwined w communist ideology and commitment to larger entity of Yugoslavia

Answer 50

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

Answer 51

- 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

Answer 52

deepened late 1980s Croats and Slovenes threatened to secede

Answer 53

Serbs dominated state institutions and repressed the Albanian Muslims nationalist Albanians exerted pressure and violence against Serb civilians

Answer 54

- 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

Answer 55

- 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 ```

Answer 56

- 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

Answer 57

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

Answer 58

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

Answer 59

- 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

Answer 60

- 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

Answer 61

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

Answer 62

- 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

Answer 63

- 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

Answer 64

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

Answer 65

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

Answer 66

- 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

Answer 67

- 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

Answer 68

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

Answer 69

- 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

Answer 70

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

Answer 71

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

Answer 72

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

Answer 73

US govt and others hd intelligence reports on atrocities but tried to keep info secret to avoid being drawn into conflict

Answer 74

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

Answer 75

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

Answer 76

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

Answer 77

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

Answer 78

- 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

Answer 79

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

Answer 80

- 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

Answer 81

-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

Answer 82

- 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

Answer 83

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

Answer 84

- 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

Answer 85

- 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

Answer 86

- 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

Answer 87

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

Answer 88

- 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

Answer 89

- 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

Answer 90

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

Answer 91

Milošević and Tudjman pursued revolutionary transformation of society, seeking to create ethnically homogenous societies Expansion, ethnic cleansing and genocide went hand in hand

Answer 92

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

Answer 93

- 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

Answer 94

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

Answer 95

- 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

Answer 96

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

Answer 97

Eradication of a group: -elimination of group from a territory/ cleansing two categories of this strategy: 1. goal to annihilate part of the group so rest is forced to flee. E.g. ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia 2. 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

Answer 98

- 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

Answer 99

- 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

Answer 100

- 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

Answer 101

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

Answer 102

product of evolution of Serb soc in 1980s Power obtained by using fear and propaganda cleverly was part of flow of history

Answer 103

1. Hierarchy in structure of command between actors and their respective tasks. Fragmenting of tasks = classical technique to make individs feel less reponsible 2. Sealed up theatre of operations. In restricted area, everything becomes poss and violence becomes boundless 3. Culture of impunity Based on abolition of regular social order, w its rules and taboos

Answer 104

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

Answer 105

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

Answer 106

- Atrocities have strategic signification for the longer term - Goal of ethnic cleansing = to annihilate all efforts by the diff communities to live peacefully together

Answer 107

- 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

Answer 108

- '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

Answer 109

- perp of atrocities no other goal than itself - Cruelty as goal in itself - universal dynamic of extreme violence

Answer 110

Atrocities here clearly had functional role

Answer 111

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

Answer 112

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'

Answer 113

- 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

Answer 114

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

Answer 115

- 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

Answer 116

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'

Answer 117

- 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

Answer 118

Article 127 - shall always be effected humanely Detaining power should take interests of internees into account

Answer 119

- 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

Answer 120

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

Answer 121

= 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.

Answer 122

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

Answer 123

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'

Answer 124

- 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.

Answer 125

hailed as the work of 'the Bosnian Anne Frank'

Answer 126

22 April 1993

Answer 127

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

Answer 128

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.

Answer 129

‘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.’

Answer 130

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.

Answer 131

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.

Answer 132

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.

Answer 133

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

Answer 134

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

Answer 135

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

Answer 136

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

Answer 137

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.

Answer 138

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.

Answer 139

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

Answer 140

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

Yugoslavia Flashcards

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