ON BOSNIA'S BORDERS AND ETHNIC CLEANSING: INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS

Whilst the Bosnian conflict of the early 1990s has attracted wide attention in academic circles, few give sufficient background or provide the political backdrop for the policy of ethnic cleansing which characterized this conflict. Seeking to fill such a gap this article shows why and how ethnic cleansing was embraced as a means of homogenizing peoples in Bosnia. Focusing on exclusivist policies at the national and regional level, the analysis suggests that ethnic cleansing was a result of incompatible policies, which contested state borders, control of strategic and economic resources, and the political organization of the new state.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this article was presented at the Oxford University Balkan Society Conference `Border Crossings in the Balkans,' 17–18 May 2003. The author would like to thank Christopher Coker, Geoffrey Stern, and the two anonymous referees for their valuable comments.

Notes

1. Ethnic cleansing is not what lawyers call “a term of art,” i.e., it lacks a legal definition and also a body of case law. In the context of this article, ethnic cleansing refers to a deliberate policy designed by and pursued under the leadership of a nation (or ethnic community), or with its consent, with a view to removing an “undesirable population” of a given territory on the basis of its ethnic, national, or religious origin, or a combination of these, by using systematic force and/or intimidation. Acts of ethnic cleansing include burning of villages, rape of women, killing or imprisonment of men, torture, harassment, and other forms of maltreatment, and destruction of cultural and religious monuments. See Klejda Mulaj, “Ethnic Cleansing in the Former Yugoslavia in the 1990s: A Euphemism for Genocide?,” in Steven Béla Várdy and T. Hunt Tooley (eds.), Ethnic Cleansing in 20th-Century Europe (Boulder: Social Science Monographs distributed by Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 693–711.

2. Preventing Deadly Conflict (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, 1997), p. xvii.

3. James Gow, Legitimacy and the Military: The Yugoslav Crisis (London: Pinter, 1992), p. 62.

4. Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organised Violence in Global Era (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), p. 37. Harold Lydall, Yugoslavia in Crisis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), p. 192.

5. Strained economic conditions created serious tensions in the federal—republic relationship. Although republican governments were, in principle, economically independent, the constitution provided for taxation of richer republics in order to support funds not only for the federal budget but also for development of poorer regions, a provision increasingly rejected by Slovenia and Croatia. Conflict amongst republican leaders over economic resources, economic and political reform, and debt repayment became constitutional conflicts and then a crisis of the state itself as politicians were unwilling to compromise. Political leaders of the wealthier regions, namely Slovenia and Croatia, favored greater decentralization of power coupled with economic and political liberalization, and investment in their respective economies, whereas the southern regions, particularly Serbia and Montenegro, preferred centralization of power and a command economy along with the redistribution of wealth and resources. See Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy—Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1995), pp. 15, 40.

6. Gow, Legitimacy and the Military, p. 122.

7. Nancy Fraser, Justice Interrupts: Critical Reflections on the “Postsocialist” Condition (New York: Routledge, 1997), p. 2.

8. See Kaldor, pp. 6, 76–86.

9. The process was initiated with the 1974 constitution, which devolved considerable power to the republics. Since then the process did not reverse. See George Schöpflin, Nations, Identity, Power—The New Politics of Europe (London: Hurst, 2000), pp. 338, 356–7. For institutionalization of the national identity in the successor states see Robert M. Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic Review, Vol. 51, No. 4 (1992).

10. Kaldor, p. 79.

11. Schöpflin, pp. 43–4.

12. For a thorough analysis of elitist activities with special focus on Serbia see V. P. Gagnon, Jr., “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict—The Case of Serbia,” International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (1994/95), especially pp. 132, 140, 164; and Mark Thompson, Forging War—The Media in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Luton: University of Luton Press, 1999).

13. See for instance Ronnie D. Lipschutz, “Seeking a State of One's Own: An Analytical Framework for Assessing Ethnic and Sectarian Conflicts,” in Beverly Crawford and Ronnie D. Lipschutz (eds), The Myth of “Ethnic Conflict”: Politics, Economics, and “Cultural” Violence (Berkley: University of California at Berkley, 1998), p. 69.

14. The principle of self-determination is ambiguous and its interpretations vary. Indeed, it is paradoxical that the same principle of self-determination that served as the rationale for the foundation of the Yugoslav Federation in 1945 was invoked in the 1990s as the basis for the disintegration of that Federation and subsequently for legitimization of ethnic cleansing and ethnic wars. See Spyros Economides, “The Balkan Agenda: Security and Regionalism in the New Europe,” London Defence Studies 10 (London: published by Brassey's for the Centre for Defence Studies, University of London, 1992), p. 6.

15. The Serbs constituted the largest nation in Yugoslavia but in the late-1980s more than 2.5 million of them (out of 8.1 million) lived outside the administrative boundaries of the Serb republic, mainly in Bosnia and Croatia. Lenard J. Cohen, Broken Bonds: Yugoslavia's Disintegration and Balkan Politics in Transition, 2nd edition (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), p. 126.

16. Uti possidetis emerged in the context of the decolonization of Latin America and was later also applied in Africa. In the 1990s its application extended to the former Soviet Union, Czech and Slovak republics and the former Yugoslavia. For the latter case see, Sabrina Petra Ramet, Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to Ethnic War, 2nd edn (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), pp. 249–50, 267, 316. Rein Mullerson, “New Developments in the Former USSR and Yugoslavia,” Virginia Journal of International Law, Vol. 33, No. 2 (1993). For a detailed legal interpretation of the principle of uti possidetis see Malcolm N. Shaw, “Peoples, Territorialism and Boundaries,” European Journal of International Law, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1997).

17. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Opinion and Judgement of 7 May 1997. Case No. IT-94-1-T. Paragraphs 84–97. Printed in André Klip and Göran Sluiter (eds), Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals, Volume I, The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 1993–1998 (Antwerp: Intersentia, 1999). The cited paragraphs at pp. 309–311. See also Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić, Appeals Judgement of 15 July 1999. Case No. IT-94-1-A. Paragraphs 83–162. Printed in André Klip and Göran Sluiter (eds), Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals, Volume III, The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia 1997–1999 (Antwerp: Intersentia, 2001). The cited paragraphs at pp. 783–806. Stan Markotich, “Serbian President Focuses on Creating a Greater Serbia,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)Research Report, Vol. 3, No. 30 (29 July 1994), pp. 11–16. James Gow, The Serbian Project and its Adversaries—A Strategy of War Crimes (London: Hurst, 2003), Chapters 6 & 7.

18. Cited in Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia—Death of a Nation (London: Penguin, 1997), pp. 131.

19. Woodward, p. 212. Norman Cigar, “Serb War Effort and Termination of the War” in Branka Magaš and Ivo Žanić (eds), The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991–1995 (London: Frank Cass, 2001), pp. 208–9.

20. Using the terminology of democracy in this case is nevertheless misleading as it camouflages the fact that the logic behind the Serbian claims to territory was ethnically exclusivist. In addition, it bears emphasizing that in a democracy the citizenry do not determine the issues they are called to decide upon; do not formulate and ask questions that they themselves have to answer; nor do they establish when decision(s) should be arrived at. Instead it is the elites who propose platforms and set out agendas. See Claus Offe, “‘Homogeneity’ and Constitutional Democracy: Coping with Identity Conflicts through Group Rights,” The Journal of Political Philosophy, Vol. 6, No. 2, 1998, esp. p. 118.

21. Cited in Marcus Tanner, Croatia—A Nation Forged in War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 243. See also Cigar, p. 201. The politics of force discernible in Milošević's speech were implemented with considerable success initially in Croatia, one third of whose territory was occupied by Serbian troops by autumn 1991, marking thus, even if temporary, the forceful alteration of borders.

22. In 1991, the ethnic composition of Bosnia was as follows: 44 percent Muslims, 31 percent Serbs, and 17 percent Croats, the rest being classified as Yugoslavs and others.

23. Refer to note 17 above.

24. This strategic reasoning motivated the overruning of Srebrenica—a town just 15 kilometres from the Serbian-Bosnian frontiers—in summer 1995. See Srebrenica Report, Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 53/35 (1999), http://www.un.org/peace/srebrenica.pdf [accessed 19 May 2002]. The Serb military was also convinced about the importance of the acquisition of Bosnian territories. As the Federal Defense Secretary General Veljko Kadijević maintained in early 1992 while the Yugoslav Army began a process of maneuver and mobilization across Bosnia: “[Bosnia] by its geographical position and size [is] one of the key stones for the formation of a common state for all Serb people.” See James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will—International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (London: Hurst, 1997), pp. 33–4.

25. Silber and Little, p. 292.

26. The first in the series of such meetings following the outbreak of the war took place in the Austrian town of Graz in the end of February 1992. Here, the Serb and Croat representatives reportedly agreed in principle on a division of Bosnia which would give Croats 20 percent, Serbs 65 percent, and Muslims 15 percent of Bosnia's territory. The Graz accord failed, however, because Radovan Karadžić and Mate Boban who led the Serb and Croat delegations respectively could not agree on a number of issues including who should control Mostar. Patrick Moore, “Endgame in Bosnia and Herzegovina?, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 32 (13 August 1993), p. 19. Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (London: Penguin, 1992), p. 193.

27. Silber and Little, pp. 220, 306–7. The language of expulsion permeated political discourse in the course of the Bosnian war. A case in point was the leader of the Party of Serbian Unity and head of the paramilitary group “Tigers” that perpetrated war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and later Kosovo—Željko Ražnjatović, known by his nom de guerre Arkan—who formed an alliance with Milošević in the December 1993 legislative elections. Describing the program of his party Arkan claimed that he would work for the “unification of all Serbian lands … Serbs will never tolerate citizens loyal to another entity [as part] of their country … [T]hose who look to Tirana, Budapest and Iran should pack their bags.” “Democracy” he said in a campaign rally “was created in Serbia centuries before America was even discovered.” Cited in Lenard J. Cohen, p. 354. Similarly, Vojislav Šešelj, the leader of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party, and the founder of the self-styled Četnik army declared as early as August 1991 his readiness to expel Bosnian Muslims from Bosnia if they happened to resist Serbian suppression. See Noel Malcolm, Bosnia—A Short History, new, updated edition (London: Papermac, 1996), pp. 226–7.

28. For the latter point see Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers—Territory and State Formation in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), pp. 34–5.

29. See for instance Alex J. Bellamy, “Human Wrongs in Kosovo,” The International Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 4, Nos. 3/4 (2000). Edith Oltay, “Minorities as Stumbling Block in Relations with Neighbours,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) Research Report, Vol. 1, No. 19 (8 May 1992). Milan Andrejevich, “The Sandžak: The Next Balkan Theatre of War,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)Research Report, Vol. 1, No. 47 (27 November 1992).

30. For an insightful analysis in the context of the Arab—Israeli conflict see David Newman, “Real Spaces, Symbolic Spaces: Interrelated Notions of Territory in the Arab—Israeli Conflict” in Paul F. Diehl (ed.), A Road Map to War: Territorial Dimension of International Conflict (Nashville/London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999).

31. Glenny, p. 38. See also Cigar, p. 205.

32. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Judgement of 7 May 1997 at note 17 above, paragraph 124 at p. 317. See also Milan Vego, “The Yugoslav Ground Forces,” Jane's Intelligence Review (June 1993), p. 248.

33. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Opinion and Judgement of 7 May 1997, at note 17 above. Paragraphs 125–6 at p. 317. The composition of the military industry in Bosnia provided for particularly fierce fighting. After the fallout with Stalin in 1948, Tito concentrated the military industry and installations in the Bosnian mountainous heartland. Over 60 percent of Yugoslavia's military industries were based in Bosnia, and over 60 percent of these were situated in Croat and Muslim regions. Glenny, p. 151.

34. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Opinion and Judgement of 7 May 1997, at note 17 above. Paragraph, 106 at p. 313.

35. Tim Judah, The Serbs—History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, 2nd edition (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 170–71. Steve L. Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), p. 130.

36. Glenny, p. 151. Kaldor, p. 39.

37. The Territorial Defense Forces (Territorijalna Odbraba—TOs) were established in the Yugoslav republics in the 1970s as a result of the “Generalized Popular Defense System” following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. They were intended to provide a citizens' army in waiting, premised on the assumption that all citizens would act in case of a foreign invasion.

38. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Opinion and Judgement of 7 May 1997, at note 17 above. Paragraphs 106–7 at pp. 313–14.

39. The JNA was reputed to be the fourth most powerful army in Europe. Glenny, p. 134.

40. Milan Vego, “The Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Jane's Intelligence Review (February 1993), p. 65. James Gow, “One Year of War in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFERL) Research Report, Vol. 2, No. 23 (4 June 1993), p. 2.

41. See UNSC Resolution 752 at http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/comexpert/752.htm [accessed 10 June 2000].

42. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Opinion and Judgement of 7 May 1997 at note 17 above. Paragraphs 113–4, 118 at pp. 315–16.

43. Milan Vego, “Federal Army Deployments in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Jane's Intelligence Review (October 1992), pp. 445–9.

44. Prosecutor v. Duško Tadić. Opinion and Judgement of 7 May 1997, at note 17 above. Paragraphs 115, 118, 606 at pp. 315, 316, 410. See also Separate and Dissenting Opinion of Judge Gabrielle Kirk McDonald Regarding the Applicability of Article 2 of the Statute printed in Klip and Sluiter (eds), Annotated Leading Cases of International Criminal Tribunals, Volume I, at note 17 above, pp. 457–68. Vego, “Federal Army,” pp. 445–6, 448.

45. Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honour—Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Metropolitan, 1997), pp. 132–3. Roger Cohen, Hearts Grown Brutal: Sagas of Sarajevo (New York: Random House, 1998), pp. 192, 410–11. Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant (New York: The Free Press, 1999), p. 118.

46. Gow, The Serbian Project, p. 79.

47. Cigar, pp. 216, 235. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 245.

48. Kaldor, p. 51.

49. The Washington Agreement was reached under the auspices of American diplomacy in February 1994, and it was intended to shift the configuration of military forces on the ground to the benefit of Muslims and Croatian troops. See Silber and Little, pp. 319–23.

50. See David Campbell, National Destruction—Violence, Identity, and Justice in Bosnia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), p. 101.

51. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 39–41.

52. Over the previous year the Bosnian Serbs had declared their autonomy in large tracts of Bosnia; arms delivery had been made to Karadžić's supporters; a Bosnian Serb state was declared in October 1991; key logistic points were controlled by the JNA; and artillery troops surrounded Sarajevo in the winter months. Noel Malcolm, “Bosnia and the West—A Study in Failure,” The National Interest (Spring 1995), p. 13. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 34–5.

53. The European Community's policy on Bosnia was, of course, part of the larger EC/EU policy towards ex-Yugoslavia which, by and large, has received critical appraisals. See for instance Malcolm, “Bosnia and the West”; and Mark Almond, Blundering in the Balkans: The European Community and the Yugoslav Crisis (Oxford/London: School of European Studies, 1991).

54. Christopher Bennett, “Ethnic Cleansing in Former Yugoslavia,” in Montserrat Guibernau and John Rex (eds),The Ethnicity Reader: Nationalism, Multiculturalism and Migration (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997), p. 126.

55. Malcolm, “Bosnia and the West,” p. 7. Ramet, p. 245.

56. See for instance Campbell, p. 157.

57. Kaldor, pp. 58–9.

58. For the partition plans see Campbell, Chapter V and Leo Tindemans et al., Unfinished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), pp. 42–54.

59. The Vance-Owen Plan is the name of the peace plan designed by the EC Special Envoy, David Owen, and the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy, Cyrus Vance, which was presented in January 1993 and negotiated through to May of the same year, when the plan was eventually rejected by the Bosnian Serb parliament. This plan—likewise the Dayton Agreement—was, nevertheless, openly supported by Milošević despite the disagreement of local Serbian leaders. The latter did not disagree with the Serbian president over his ultimate goal of unifying all Serb-populated lands into a Greater Serbia. Rather, frictions arose over Milošević's piecemeal strategy for creating a Greater Serbia which involved temporarily giving up some control or influence over Serbian conquered lands, possibly in order to gain more later. See Markotich, especially p. 16.

60. Lord David Owen has provided his own account—and defense—of the Vance-Owen Plan in his Balkan Odyssey (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1995), chapter 3. See also Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 241, 309.

61. Malcolm, “Bosnia and the West,” p. 8. Lenard J. Cohen, p. 256.

62. Silber and Little, p. 389. Kaldor, p. 61.

63. The failure of the Western powers in Bosnia, however, was primarily political, not humanitarian. Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved and millions of people were fed by the UN peace keeping operations, with the annual budget of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) spiraling above $1 billion in 1994 alone. See Christopher Bennett, Yugoslavia's Bloody Collapse—Causes, Course and Consequences (London: Hurst, 1995), p. 4.