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Abstract
Existing knowledge suggests that available international mechanisms are not very suitable for dealing with interconnected international and local conflicts in terms of overcoming denial and bringing forth acknowledgment of atrocities and sufferings of people from both powerful and powerless states. At the same time this means that they are not suitable for dealing with conflicts and victimisation in a holistic and inclusive, rather than partial and exclusive, way, and for stopping the cycle of violence and bringing positive rather than negative peace. This article explores the possibility of expanding the use of restorative justice for dealing with interconnected (internal and international) conflicts from national/local to global‐level/governance. Bearing in mind Castellos’s statement about the existing gap between the space where issues are defined (global) and the space where the issues are managed (the nation‐state), the article intends to contribute to development of a theoretical framework for building new ways of dealing with both internal/regional and related international conflicts. The solutions are sought within global civil society’s potential for bringing together different stakeholders, as well as for making visible the multitude of truths and advocating change. The article deals with these problems using the case study of the Kosovo conflict and the NATO war waged against Serbia in 1999.
Notes
1. This article is an updated version of a paper presented at the International Workshop ‘New Wars, Global Governance and Law’, which took place at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL) in Onati, Spain, 13–14 May 2004. The workshop was organised and chaired by the author.
2. For the example of the former Yugoslavia, see Nikolic‐Ristanovic (Citation1999).
3. Aggression – the only crime states can commit against other states – is ‘every violation of the territorial integrity or political sovereignty of an independent state’ (Walzer, Citation1992, p. 52). The term ‘aggression’, for example, is largely used in Serbia for describing NATO intervention.
4. The main NATO commander during the bombing of Serbia, Wesley Clark, in his statement of 27 March 1999, said that ‘it was quite predictable’ that Serbian terror and violence would increase from the beginning of NATO bombing (Chomsky, Citation2000, p. 29).
5. The use of cluster bombs is a violation of international law and a war crime.
6. Some infrastructural targets, such as bridges, are easy enough to justify as military targets, while power and water are equally necessary for survival of both soldiers and civilians. Thus, as Walzer (Citation1992) puts it, ‘an attack here is an attack on civilian society. In this case, it is the military effects, if any, that are “collateral”.’
7. It is estimated that the total economic damage as a consequence of NATO bombing was US$29.6 million and that the GDP dropped 44.4% in comparison to the previous year (Dinkic, Citation1999, p. 9).
8. It is ironic that European Court of Justice rejected the claim submitted by the families of victims against NATO countries on the pretext that neither victims nor accused were under the jurisdiction of NATO countries see http://www.nuns.org.yu/srp/dosije/dem/conid=403, retrieved 15 June 2005).
9. See Suroi, retrieved 24 February 2004 from http://www.iwpr.net
10. As observed by Walzer (Citation1992, p. 104), ‘humanitarian intervention involves military action on behalf of oppressed people, and it requires that the intervening state enter, to some degree, into the purposes of those people. One cannot intervene on their behalf and against their ends.’ This is exactly what happened in Kosovo, where Albanians expected from the international community full and urgent support for their independence project. Once they started to doubt that, they turned violent against the internationals as well.
11. Suroi, retrieved 24 February 2004 from http://www.iwpr.net
12. It is worth mentioning that the entire KFOR count is 17,000 soldiers.
13. For the trend of ‘human rights conditionality’ and its contribution to the economic and policy‐making dependency of the developing world, see Chandler (Citation2002, pp.198–201).
14. This is the continuation of the international community’s policy of enhancing exclusivist political approaches in the former Yugoslavia, which started in the early 1990s. From recognition of the independence of former Yugoslav republics, through the Dayton Agreement and NATO humanitarian intervention in Serbia, to post‐conflict governments in Bosnia and Kosovo, this policy has been ‘legitimizing the perceptions of the conflict that the nationalists wished to propagate’ (Kaldor, Citation2001, p. 58).
15. This may be compared to the denial and diminishing of horrors of deaths of German civilians during the bombing by the Allies at the end of the Second World War.
16. This was later reported to be an accident, with allegations that the boys were escaping from Danish KFOR soldiers who were running after them, thinking that they were stealing something (Anon, Citation2004).
17. Also, as emphasised by Nada Golubović from the organisation Association of Women of Banja Luka: ‘[T]raumas are transmitted from generation to generation. … Three generations left their traces as a heritage to their children, maintaining the same attitudes on this’ (quoted in Braithwaite, Citation2001, p. 5).
18. Nationalist politics in Serbia has constantly increased its influence since the assassination of the Prime Minister Djindjic in March 2003, which itself was proof that the ghosts of the recent past are still alive. It was especially evident during the trial for the assassination of Djindjic, as well as in the trials of several other political assassinations, during the 2004 parliamentary elections, and in the sudden appearance and surrender of the first accused in most of the ongoing trails for political assassination and organised crime – Milorad Lukovic Legija.
19. During bombing of Serbia, a very popular one was ‘I will not forgive you Milica’ (Milica was a baby girl who was killed by a NATO bomb while she was sitting on her potty).
20. The fact is that it is only recently these links, as well as the role of the Mujahideens in the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, have started to be dealt with by the media more widely also suggests the existence of global denials and their connections with political and military interests of most powerful nations.
21. According to Carr (Citation2002, p. 6), ‘terrorism’ is the contemporary name ‘given to, and the modern permutation of, warfare deliberately waged against civilians with the purpose of destroying their will to support either leaders or policies that the agents of such violence find objectionable’. The terrorist attack in Spain in March 2004 and the consequent change in the Spanish Government and the withdrawal of Spanish soldiers from Iraq is strong evidence for this definition and the parallel between strategic bombing/humanitarian intervention and terrorism (for detailed analyses of this parallel, see Carr (Citation2002, pp. 222–256)).
22. The special role of the great powers in the field of ‘international peace and security’ is legally confirmed in the charter of the UN. This gives primary responsibility for international peace and security to the Security Council and provides that only the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China shall be the permanent members. They are known as the ‘big five’ or ‘permanent five’ since they have the right of veto. This is especially important since the UN cannot ‘bless a defensive action by its members – a collective security operation – against any aggressive move by one of permanent five, since the latter would obviously veto any resolution put before the Counsel for this purpose. The UN’s security role is thus largely confined to what are now referred to as “regional conflicts”’ (Berridge, Citation1996, p. 15).
23. The power gap between the United States as the biggest power and other less powerful countries is reflected in the way international law and international criminal tribunals function. Martha Minow (Citation1998), for example, identifies the enormous gap in time between the Nuremberg trials (starting in 1945) and the establishment of tribunals for the former Yugoslavia (1993) and Rwanda (1994). She stresses the lack of interest by the United States in establishing tribunals during the period it was responsible for war crimes, which, together with the recent American rejection of the jurisdiction of International Criminal Court, is largely understood in some countries, such as the former Yugoslavia, as sending the message that war crimes are not universally punishable.
24. Some authors suggest that a permanent international truth commission, established in the same manner as a permanent international criminal court (Scharf, Citation1996–1997), is not suitable since it will bear the same shortcomings as international tribunals and other international institutions.
25. In international relations literature, ‘governance’ is a term used by those who favour spontaneous cooperation in decentralised systems, and the term ‘government’ is used by those who propose world federalism or a global super‐state (Delanty, Citation2001).
26. For some useful ideas for further development of this concept as part of global governance based on global civil society and new global democracy, see Castells (Citation2004).