Revenge and reprisal violence in Kosovo

Dr Michael J. Boyle is a Lecturer in International Relations and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St Andrews.

Abstract

One of the most often reported but under-studied phenomenon in post-conflict states is that of revenge violence. While such violence is widely acknowledged to occur after wars, it is often dismissed as epiphenomenal to the central problem of restoring order and good governance in the state. This paper seeks to refocus attention on this phenomenon and challenge the way that it is normally portrayed as a normal, almost incidental consequence of armed conflict. It develops an ideal-type distinction between revenge violence and its strategic mirror, reprisal violence. While revenge violence is premised on a judgement of individual responsibility for a prior act of harm, reprisal violence is driven by an assumption of collective guilt. This paper argues that these two types of violent activity—one expressive and the other strategic—are often intermixed in post-conflict states. Moreover, the interplay between them provides political cover for those who would employ violence to achieve strategic or political goals, while lowering the risks involved when doing so by attributing it to revenge for wartime atrocities. In effect, the fact that revenge and reprisal violence are mirror images of one another can serve to explain and subtly justify the use of organised violence against disadvantaged groups in post-conflict states. This paper examines the validity of this heuristic distinction through a within-case analysis of violence in Kosovo from 1999 to 2001 and identifies the policy consequences of this distinction.

Acknowledgements

This article is drawn from my doctoral dissertation entitled ‘The Prevention and Management of Reprisal Violence in Post-Conflict States’, unpublished, Cambridge University, 2005. I am particularly grateful for to Professor Paul Cornish for his supervision. An earlier draft of this paper was developed while I was a post-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University. For comments on an early draft of this paper, I would like to thank Marie Bescanon, Kelly Greenhill, Rachel Gisselquist, Sean Lynn Jones, Nathan Paxton, Robert Rotberg and Monica Duffy Toft. I would also like to thank Astri Suhkre, Mats Berdal and the participants at the Chr Michelson Institute workshop on post-conflict violence for their insights on this subject. All errors and omissions remain my own.

Notes

Dr Michael J. Boyle is a Lecturer in International Relations and Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence (CSTPV) at the University of St Andrews.

 1. Sabrina Tavernese, ‘As Iraqi Shiites Police Sunnis, Rough Justice Feeds Bitterness’. The New York Times, 6 February 2006; and Mariam Karouny, ‘Sunnis Build Up Their Own Militia in Iraq’. Reuters, 6 February 2006.

 2. Fearon, ‘Iraq's Civil War’; Boyle, ‘Bargaining, Fear and Denial’.

 3. Orth, ‘Rwanda's Hutu Extremist Genocidal Insurgency’.

 4. See respectively Paris, At War's End; Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; Mani, Beyond Retribution; and Minow, Between Vengeance and Forgiveness.

 5. The concept of reprisals has been studied extensively in international law, but has not yet been applied to intra-state conflict. On reprisals, see Albrecht, ‘War Reprisals in the War Crimes Trials’, 590; Oppenheim, International Law, 561; Von Panhuys, Role of Nationality, 106–113; and Bowett, ‘Reprisals Involving Recourse to Armed Force’, 3. On the strategic use of revenge killings during wartime, see Balcells, ‘Rivalry and Revenge’.

 6. Horowitz, Deadly Ethnic Riot, 89–94.

 7. This is particularly the case due to extensive under-reporting of the data.

 8. The acronym UCK comes from Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves—the Albanian name for the Kosovo Liberation Army (occasionally referred to in English as the KLA). Because UCK is the name most commonly used in witness reports, it will be used here.

 9. On revenge in international politics, see Lowenheim and Heiman, ‘Revenge in International Politics’; Waldman, ‘Revenge without Rules’; and Harkavey, ‘Defeat, National Humiliation and the Revenge Motif’.

10. Elster, ‘Norms of Revenge’, 862.

11. The distinction between expressive and instrumental violence comes from Gurr, Why Men Rebel. On emotions see also Crawford, ‘Passion of World Politics’.

12. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 17–39.

13. Hamlin, ‘Rational Revenge’; and Boehm, Blood Revenge.

14. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 75–84.

15. Horowitz, Deadly Ethic Riot, 194–224.

16. ICG, Who's Killing Whom

17. Horowitz, Deadly Ethnic Riot, 102–109.

18. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 62–68.

19. , ‘Revenge as Sanction and Solidarity Display’; Gould, ‘Collective Violence and Group Solidarity’.

20. Boehm, Blood Revenge.

21. Waldman, ‘Revenge without Rules’.

22. Boehm, Blood Revenge, 165–173.

23. This definition of ‘strategic’ is drawn from Boyle, ‘Explaining Strategic Violence after Wars’.

24. The problem of opportunism complicates this straightforward distinction. In theory, an armed group could choose to facilitate or encourage revenge attacks which achieve its strategic goals, in essence providing subsidies for actions which achieve positive externalities for the group. Here it will be considered reprisal violence if the perpetrator engages in the act, or directly facilitates another actor to do so.

25. Mark Kukis, ‘Ethnic Cleansing in a Baghdad Neighbourhood’. Time Magazine, 25 October 2006.

26. This is the phenomenon of polyvalent communication, in which two distinct groups received different messages from the same violent act. See Tilly, Politics of Collective Violence, 176.

27. For more on hidden transcripts and communicative context unavailable to outsiders in the culture, see Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance.

28. Hoffman and McCormick, ‘Terrorism, Signalling and Suicide Attack’, 246.

29. Hoffman and McCormick, ‘Terrorism, Signalling and Suicide Attack’, 246

30. Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence, 40–61.

31. On the purposes of violence after wars, see Stedman, ‘Spoiler Problems in Peace Processes’; and Boyle, ‘Explaining Strategic Violence after Wars’.

32. For instance, BBC News, ‘Liberia Hit by “Revenge” Attacks’. 31 March 2004.

33. Alissa J. Rubin, ‘Revenge Killings Fuel Fear of Escalation in Iraq’. The Los Angeles Times, 11 September 2005.

34. Uniacke, ‘When is Revenge Wrong?’.

35. Cottingham, ‘Varieties of Retribution’; Walker, ‘Even More Varieties of Retribution’.

36. ICG, Who's Killing Whom, 3.

37. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 287.

38. Quoted from Schwander-Sanders, ‘Enactment of Tradition’, 114.

39. ICG, Who's Killing Whom, 3. KFOR reports that the breakdown of murder victims is as follows: 145 ethnic Albanian, 135 Serb and 99 others. Amnesty International reported a KFOR-recorded murder total of 414 by 10 December 1999, with 150 ethnic Albanian victims, 140 Serbs and 124 people of unknown ethnicity. See Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 3.

40. ICG, Who's Killing Whom, 3. While this figure represents the total leaving Kosovo, it is unclear how many left under threat of violence and how many left on their initiative.

41. According to the Independent International Commission on Kosovo, Kosovo Report, there were 850,000 returning Albanian refugees, 500,000 Albanian Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), 200,000 non-displaced Albanians, 200,000 Serbs and 50,000 other minorities in Kosovo's population.

42. UNMIK CIVPOL, ‘Offence Statistics by Motive’. Unpublished, 2001–2002.

43. The data is drawn from OSCE municipal profiles at: http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/municipal_profiles/ [accessed 26 May 2003], calculated by author.

44. Kosovo's crime rate far exceeds that of a comparable conflict-prone European territory of the same approximate population size (1.5–2 million). A tally of six major crime totals in 2001—murder, attempted murder, aggravated assault, rape/attempted rape, arson and intimidation—reveals that Kosovo's total (2,402) far exceeds that of Northern Ireland (624). Source: UNMIK and unpublished Home Office documents.

45. European Commission, Emergency Assessment, 21.

46. European Commission, Emergency Assessment, 21

47. Human Rights Watch, Under Orders, 9.

48. Human Rights Watch, Under Orders, 7.

49. Human Rights Watch, Under Orders, 9.

50. OSCE, Second Assessment, 7.

51. OSCE, Second Assessment, 7

52. OSCE, Preliminary Assessment of the Situation (covering November 1999 to January 2000), para. 80.

53. OSCE, Second Assessment, 8.

54. OSCE, Overview of the Situation, 4.

55. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 71.

56. OSCE, Preliminary Assessment, 3.

57. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 71.

58. See Human Rights Watch, Under Orders, 8–9.

59. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 65.

60. See Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 5.

61. For evidence, see the annual OSCE reports on the status of minorities and Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes.

62. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 69.

63. Kalyvas, Logic of Violence.

64. The UNMIK CIVPOL Annual Report noted that the reporting of rape often increases directly with an increase in confidence in the police because women are convinced that the police will not dismiss their claim and will give the crime appropriate attention. For this reason, an increase in reported rapes cannot be equated with an increase in rape in absolute terms. See UNMIK, CIVPOL Annual Report 2000.

65. Unpublished UNMIK crime data.

66. OSCE, Overview of the Situation of Ethinic Minorities in Vosovo, 3 November 1999, 5.

67. OSCE, Second Assessment, 8.

68. Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 12.

69. Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 17.

70. OSCE, Preliminary Assessment, para. 78.

71. Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 14.

72. Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 14

73. Amnesty International, Prisoners in Our Own Homes, 14

74. ICG, What Happened to the KLA?.

75. The Serbs also had their own parallel structures, particularly in Mitrovica. Local Serb politicians maintained close links with Belgrade, and politico-criminal groups like the Bridge Watchers controlled access to the northern half the city.

76. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 68.

77. OSCE, Overview, Executive Summary, 1. The Nis Express bus attack was one of the most brutal incidences of reprisal violence in the post-war period. On 16 February 2001, a remote-control bomb was detonated under the so-called Nis Express bus, which took Kosovo Serbs to Nis in Serbia proper, as it neared the Albanian majority town of Podujevo. Seven were killed and 43 injured in this attack.

78. Human Rights Watch, Under Orders, 2; and ICG, Who's Killing Whom, 2.

79. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Killings and Refugee Flow.

80. Quoted in O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 46.

81. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 62.

82. Quoted in O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 53.

83. See Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts; and West, Black Lamb.

84. Quoted in O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 52.

85. Interview with Andrea Gentile, Kosovo Desk Officer, Mission Management Section, Civilian Police Division, Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UN Headquarters, New York, 15 April 2003.

86. See Schwander-Sanders, ‘Enactment of Tradition’, 114–116.

87. Interview with Steve Bennett, Kosovo Police Service School, Vushtri, Kosovo, 2 July 2002.

88. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, 99.

89. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 44.

90. O'Neill, Kosovo: An Unfinished Peace, 46.

91. ICG, Who's Killing Whom, 6–7.

92. The spoiler model often assumes that combatants will resume fighting if they have not achieved their wartime goals. But in fact most combatants never achieve all of their wartime goals. The open question is what percentage of the total goals that they have is sufficient to satisfy them and provide a disincentive for future violence.

93. Interview with Christopher Decker, OSCE Headquarters, Pristina, Kosovo, 28 June 2002.

94. Interview with Paul King, Chief, Internal Investigations, UNMIK CIVPOL, CIVPOL Headquarters, Pristina, Kosovo, 20 March 2003.