Abstract
This chapter tells the story of the formation of the 17th Krajisnik Brigade of the Bosnian Army, consisting of volunteers including Bosnians from abroad and those who were expelled from the region, and who travelled to central Bosnia to fight for the right to reclaim their homes. In describing their motivation and what they went through in pursuing this goal, the chapter provides the background to the return story, and shows how civilians became soldiers and then returned to being civilians again at the war’s end, and how they were changed by their experiences, which brought a new solidarity and sense of collective purpose. I will also trace how a new leadership emerged that was crucial in providing a sense of safety for the return process.
One thing is certain: the needlessly spilled blood of Muslims is already beginning to retaliate against us. There is information that the Muslims who were expelled from the Prijedor municipality and those who left and have never done anything against Republika Srpska, are now arming themselves in Croatia and coming back to fight against us.
(Cuskic and Kliko 2010: 21)
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Notes
- 1.
For example, there was a radio station at Ljubljana University run by a Bosnian student that became a popular place where people tried to get in touch with their families in Bosnia and hear some news of those that went missing. Later, it would transmit stories of survival, and help those expelled in finding family members that were scattered across the world.
- 2.
Field notes, in conversation with a former soldier, Hifo, February, 2008.
- 3.
See summary of ICTY, reports on Prijedor: http://www.icty.org/sid/10169
- 4.
The Brigade consisted of around 6000 men and women, including those expelled from the area and some members of the diaspora, largely from Kozarac, Prijedor, Sanski Most and other towns of the Bosnian Krajina region. As the war went on, a small number of individuals from other parts of Bosnia joined them too. However, the main leadership was from Kozarac.
- 5.
A large area of Zagreb’s fairground in the southern part of the town. During the Bosnian war, many international humanitarian agencies stored their food and medical supply in warehouses at the Velesajam.
- 6.
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) transcripts: Cuskic as a witness and Croatian Vice-Admiral Davor Domazet and his detailed description how the JNA became the Serb Army, 10 Sept 1998, Blaskic case. http://www.ictytranscripts.org/TrialTranscripts/HTML/transe14/98-09-10-oed.html
- 7.
See Ed Vulliamy’s testimony at http://ictytranscripts.dyndns.org/trials/tadic/960607ed.htm
- 8.
Field notes, 26 May 2007.
- 9.
According to a soldier that fought for the town, the Serb Army was a ‘mighty army’ at the time and there was no way they could hold the positions. September, 2003.
- 10.
Around the fall of Jajce, Croatia declared that they could not accommodate more Bosnian refugees.
- 11.
In defending Karaula, they saved Travnik; however, thirty-two soldiers were badly injured and later transferred to the UK, via logistic centres, for medical treatment. Most of them remained in the UK. See Cuskic & Kliko, 17 Viteska Krajiska Brigada, 2010.
- 12.
Dario Kordic, deputy commander of HZ H-B, 1993. See http://www.ictytranscripts.org/TrialTranscripts/HTML/transe14-2/99-09-23-it.html
- 13.
Alija Izetbegovic, President of Bosnia and Herzegovina, verbal order to the 3rd Corps at the meeting in Han Bila in the autumn 1992. See Cuskic and Kliko (2010).
- 14.
See the work of American military historian, Charles Shrader (2003) A Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992–1994. His research is widely quoted by some Croats keen to claim that the conflict was precipitated by the Bosnian Army. The author uses extensively testimonies from the Hague Tribunal but also several low-ranking HVO officers in Bosnia to make a case that the predominant view of the Bosnian Muslims as the victims of the war is not based on a factual military account of the war. He argues that the Bosnian government used refugees in central Bosnia as a highly motivated and revengeful military force, due to their experience of ethnic cleansing, and was therefore the main propagator of the Muslim-Croat conflict. On the other hand, Croats are described as people who had neither reason nor motivation to embark on another war within a war.
- 15.
Bosnian General Jovan Divjak has claimed that Croats perceived the refugees as a group that wanted to take what was taken from them by the Serbs. In Magas, B. & Zanic, I. (Eds). Rat u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini 1991–1995. Dani, 1999. Also, see M.A. Hoare (2004) How Bosnia Armed.
- 16.
See Cuskic testimony: http://www.ictytranscripts.org/TrialTranscripts/HTML/transe47/04-11-22-IT.html
- 17.
See, for example, “Anonymous Hero” by Emil Habul (2000), Oslobodjenje, Sarajevo, 8 April 2000—translated here: http://www.cdsp.neu.edu/info/students/marko/oslob/oslob53.html
- 18.
See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/603420.stm for a BBC report of the massacre; Croatian journalist Ivo Skoric later unearthed details of alleged Croatian government complicity in the massacre from the archives of President Tudjman, see http://list.iskon.hr/pipermail/attack/2000-May/000711.html for details of his findings.
- 19.
Interview with a soldier of 17 KB, September 2003. Also, see ARBiH General Divjak’s similar reflection that for the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS), 1993 was a year of break. In Magas, B & Zanic, I. Rat u Hrvatskoj i Bosni i Hercegovini.
- 20.
Ibid.
- 21.
See http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/washagree_03011994.pdf for details of the agreement.
- 22.
The primary source for this chapter was the 7th Corps’ newspaper, Sloboda (Freedom), published in Travnik throughout the war. Sloboda is not available in public. I was given access to a personal archive of several former soldiers of the 17th Brigade.
- 23.
Conversation with soldiers, September 1995.
- 24.
Bosnian Serb newspaper, Nezavisne Novine, “Tracking Down The Crimes At Koricani Near Knezevo in August 1992”, 1999.
- 25.
<Emphasis Type="Italic">IS 17VKBR (1995, April 15:4).
- 26.
Sloboda, Iz pozdravnog govora generala Alagica—“Sastat cemo se mi negdje u Krajini”, p. 3.
- 27.
Ibid: 183. General Alagic argued that the fear within is the biggest downfall of any unit regardless of its manpower or technical superiority.
- 28.
Interview, Faruk, 20 September 2003.
- 29.
See Colonel Charles W. Brown, US Army, Charles C. Moskos Jr, “The American Volunteer Soldier: Will He Fight?”, Military Review, June 1976.
- 30.
Personal interview with General Mehmed Alagic, Mount Vlasic, Bosnia, September 1995.
- 31.
Interview, Faruk, 28 September 2003.
- 32.
Interview, Fikret Cuskic, 2 October 2003.
- 33.
Interview, Faruk, 28 September 2003.
- 34.
Interview, Fikret Cuskic, 2 October 2003.
- 35.
Many settled in Chicago and a small minority joined their families in the UK.
- 36.
In a Bosnian TV documentary “Fantazija” (2007), five demobilised soldiers from Tuzla talk about a feeling of being useless, relying on social services that hardly cover bills, and how they watch those who did not fight being enriched by the war: ‘as though I fought for them not Bosnia, not my family or freedom’, in the words of one soldier.
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Sivac-Bryant, S. (2016). The Army of the Dispossessed. In: Re-Making Kozarac. Palgrave Studies in Compromise after Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58838-8_2
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