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Yugoslavia
- was it ever ethnic war?
By JONATHAN
POWER
October 11, 2000
LONDON - It would be perhaps expecting too much for
the world to learn one thing from the Yugoslavian
imbroglio - that its ethnic wars were a figment of the
political imagination. The Balkans is not, as Robert
Kaplan famously put it, " a region of pure memory" where
"each individual sensation and memory affects the grand
movement of clashing peoples" and where the processes of
history were "kept on hold" by communism for forty-five
years, "thereby creating a multiplier effect for
violence."
If ethnic war is when "ancient hatreds" lead one
ethnic group to become the ardent, murderous and
dedicated opponent of everyone in another group this was
not it. It was,as professor John Mueller of Ohio State
University has written in the current issue of
"International Security", a situation in which "a mass of
essentially mild, ordinary people unwillingly and in
considerable bewilderment came under the vicious and
arbitary control of small groups of armed thugs". The
murderous core of the supporters of President Slobodan
Milosevic, the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and
the Croatian leader, Franjo Tudjman, were not by and
large ordinary citizens incited into violence against
their neighbours and even their families- intermarriage
especially in the communist era was a widespread
phenomenon- but thugs, soccer hooligans and street gangs,
even criminals released from jail for the purpose. They
were recruited by the politicians, first and foremost by
Milosevic, to pursue a nationalist agenda that he
believed could keep him in power at a time when it became
obvious that the Yugoslav army was disintegrating in the
early days of the first war with Croatia, with an
estimated 150,000 Serbian young men either emigrating or
going underground. In Belgrade only 15% of the reservists
reported for duty.
Once such a process is under way it is exceedingly
difficult to control. The more moderate- and usually
better educated- people emigrate away, either abroad or
to safer places. The hooligan killers inevitably attract
opportunists attracted by the fruits of war- the looting,
raping and binge drinking that is their daily fare.
Vladan Vasilijevic, an expert in organised crime, says
that most of the well-documented atrocities in Bosnia
were committed by men with long criminal records. In the
absence of alternative political leadership rank and file
citizens fall in behind them- or at least tolerate them-
especially as revenge killings from the other side begin
to take their toll. Both Milosevic and Tudjman were adept
at using their secret police to direct and coordinate the
killings in the pursuit of ethnic cleansing.
Some of these groups evolved into semi-coherent
paramilitary groups like Arkan's Tigers and Vojislav
Seselj's Chetniks. Arkan, one of the most feared war
criminals of the whole war, had been the leader of
Delije, the official fan club of Belgrade's Red Star
soccer team. Once Arkan and Seselj had established their
murderous reputations it was enough to announce they were
on their way for a village to empty of its non-Serb
residents. Yet the core of Arkan's forces never numbered
more than 200 men and at its height he never attracted
more than a thousand followers.
Even in Rwanda where the genocide was on a larger
scale and much more thorough it was a small minority that
did the real killings. Hutu extremists were substantially
in charge of the ruling party, the government bureaucracy
and the police. Yet even if one accepts there were as
many as 50,000 hard core killers and that if each of
these killed one person a week during the course of the
100 day holocaust, then the 700,000 who died were killed
by some 2% of the Hutu male population. In other words
98% of the Hutus did not kill. Of course many just closed
the door and didn't want to know but there was also a
fair number who did hide or protect Tutsi neighbours and
even sometimes stangers.
For all the horror of these recent cataclysms they
were not Hobbesian wars of all against all and neighbour
against neighbour. They were stirred by unscrupulous
politicians who relied on relatively small numbers of
evil-doers to do their bidding. In most, if not all,
societies if such thugs were licensed they could do
similar deeds. Until quite recently it was entirely
possible to imagine northern Ireland descending into
Bosnian-like chaos if the British authorities had not
been prepared for the long haul of patient policing and
political accomodation. (And even there it would have
been a quicker process if the local elected politicians
hadn't turned a blind eye when rank and file thugs did
their dirty work and if the British had been more
determined at an earlier stage to root out those within
the police and security services who worked hand in glove
with the paramilitaries.)
One only has to look at Ex-Yugoslavia's Balkan
neighbours, Bulgaria and Romania to see how ethnic
violence can be avoided when politicians are committed to
sound, non-confrontational, political policies. Even
within the former Yugoslavia the example of Macedonia
stands out as a place where political leaders have saught
to calm ethnic tensions and to smooth rough edges.
Any other explanation cannot provide an answer to how
it is that the overthrow of Milosevic came about. What
was done was done non-violently- apart from some brutish
behaviour at the radio and television station RTS- and
achieved in 24 hours what 78 days of Nato bombing could
not. It was people power- the essentially good, silent
majority, who were prepared to first vote, and second
demonstrate when they saw that it stood a chance of
success. These people have existed all along- as they did
in Poland, the land of Solidarity, Czechoslovakia, home
of the "Velvet Revolution" and the Soviet Union where
eventually Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, determined
not to shed blood.
Without doubt those who stirred these ethnic waters
must stand trial. It would be better if the Serbian
authorities took the decision to prosecute themselves.
The new president, Vojislav Kostunica, must be given the
room to manoeuvre, to consolidate his power and consult
with his people. In the end he may decide it is easier if
the legal process is carried out under the neutral
auspices of the War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague.
As for the Western nations, it is time for
soul-searching on the methods they have used over the
nine years of the Yugoslavian conflicts. They had a too
simple analysis- "ethnic war"- that ended up with
simplistic conclusions- bombing- that worked only to
consolidate Milosevic's power and, in the case of Kosovo,
precipitated the ethnic cleansing they were supposedly
trying to avoid.
I can be reached by phone +44
385 351172 and e-mail: JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By
JONATHAN POWER
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