Abstract
During the first months of the 1992 Bosnian civil war, ethnic Serb paramilitaries played a key role in forcibly displacing Bosnian Muslims and Croats from their homes, using classic death squad methods such as killing, torture, theft, and rape. Although socialist Yugoslavia’s increasingly Serb-led Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) aided the Bosnian Serb military effort during the initial round of fighting, some of the most intense violence was done by ethnic Serb irregulars hailing both from Bosnia and from Serbia proper.1 This chapter will offer one explanation for this excessive reliance on irregular paramilitary forces during the first months of the Bosnian war. Conventional wisdom in the Western press suggests that brutal paramilitaries are inherent to “Balkan” or “Serbian” culture. Instead, I will argue that the paramilitaries’ centrality stemmed from local and international norms prohibiting Serbian military action beyond Serbia’s official borders. These limitations prompted Serbian officials to enter into a subcontracting relationship with semiprivate groups in both Bosnia and Serbia proper, which were able to use violence without directly incriminating the Belgrade regime.2
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Notes
Norman Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of “Ethnic CleansinQ” (College Station: Texas A & M University Press. 1995). 54–55.
Branko Milinkovic, “Yugoslavia: Who Is in Charge of This War,” Inter Press Service, 18 November 1991.
Andrej Gustincic, “Yugoslav Conflict Creates Bizarre Assortment of Folk Heroes,” Reuters North American Wire, 20 August 1991.
Marcus Tanner, “Assassination Divides Serbs,” Independent (London), 7 August 1991.
Tim Judah, “Kaleidoscope of Militias Fights over Bosnia,” Times (London), 30 May 1992.
Philip Sherwell, “Serbia’s Warlords Walk Tall in Benighted Bosnia,” Sunday Telegraph (London), 26 April 1992.
Audrey Helfant Budding, “Serb Intellectuals and the National Question, 1961–1991” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998); and Veljko Vujacic, “Communism and Nationalism in Russia and Serbia” (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1995).
Miroslav Mikuljanac and Gradisa Kapic, “Exiting with Trumpets and Cameras,” Borba, 21 November 1993.
Louise Branson, “Scapegoat Goes into the Dock,” Times (London), 20 November 1994. The Vuckovic brothers, who commanded the Yellow Wasps, were indicted in 1994 for war crimes by Serbian authorities. Details about their activities can be found in a Sabac District Court indictment dated 28 April 1994 (doc. #398/93). Additional information was supplied by Dragoljub Dzordzevic, lawyer for the defense, in an interview by the author in Belgrade on 31 May 1997.
Vucjak Mountain was the unit’s headquarters. Unit members reportedly wore a White Wolf patch on their left shoulder.
Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, Deadly Legacies: The Continuing Influence of Bosnia’s Warlords, Vol. 8, No. 17 (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1996), 2.
Milan Vego, “Federal Army Deployments in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 4, no. 10 (October 1992): 445–46.
Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 145–67.
Julian Borger, “Milosevic Case Hardens,” Guardian (London), 3 February 1997.
Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1992), 150. 36. “Getnik Duke,” Telegraf(Belgrade), 28 September 1994.
Cvijetin Milivojevié, “I Am Ready, Awaiting Arrest,” Spona (Belgrade), 18 December 1993, as translated in Paul Williams and Norman Cigar, War Crimes and Individual Responsibility: A Prima Facie Case for the Indictment of Slobodan Milosevic (Washington: Balkan Institute, 1996), 7.
Dejan Pavlovié, interview by author, Belgrade, February 1997. 40. Filip varm, interview by author, Belgrade, February 1997.
James Ron, “Varying Methods of State Violence,” International Organization 51, no. 2 (1997): 275–300. See also Margaret E. Keck and Katheryn Sikkink, Activists BeyondBorders:AdvocacyNetworks in InternationalPolitics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998).
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© 2000 Bruce B. Campbell and Arthur D. Brenner
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Ron, J. (2000). Territoriality and Plausible Deniability: Serbian Paramilitaries in the Bosnian War. In: Campbell, B.B., Brenner, A.D. (eds) Death Squads in Global Perspective. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108141_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108141_11
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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