Many are familiar with the outcomes of the
conflicts that consumed the republics of the former Yugoslavia in the early
1990’s. Many thousands were killed, hundreds of thousands were displaced or
made refugees, and homes, businesses and even entire towns were destroyed in
the process. Yet attempting to establish a clear view of the origins of the
conflicts from the present draws attention to the multitude of forces and
factors that have been presented in an attempt to account for such origins. I
will delve into some of the many theoretical perspectives that have been
developed to understand how ethnic violence was capable in the now defunct
state that took pride in its multiethnic character. One must first understand
the nature of nationalism, as this is the touchstone idea that all theoretical
perspectives on ethnic violence emanate from. I aim to avoid a chronology of
the events, and instead I seek to provide a series of thematic debates around
some of the contested views regarding the forces that contributed to ethnic
violence. I will look to forces of a political, historical,
social/psychological, and cultural nature and critically analyse their validity.
I shall then pull together the views on certain fundamentals, such as whether
the conflict was inevitable or premeditated and if it was elite or mass led, or
a combination of both.
Ernest Gellner (Nations and Nationalism, 2006) defines nationalism as ‘primarily a
political principle, which holds that the political and the national unit
should be congruent.’ He goes on to say that sentiment is the feeling that is
aroused when this principle is either achieved or violated, and that a
nationalist movement is the sum of physical acts derived from such sentiments. Taken
at face value, Socialist Yugoslavia could not be described as the realized goal
of a nationalist given that numerous peoples, nationalities and ethnic groups
lived within its borders. Nationalism as an all-pervasive ideology has been
blamed for conflict, however, what is of more interest is how an ideology
manifested itself and how it had to fit on to a culture for it to be adopted by
its people, as Erwin Staub suggests (The
Roots of Evil, 1989). Nationalism was not new to the region prior to the
1990’s, but neither was it as ferocious as what was later witnessed. The redefining
of state boundaries in the early 1990’s along with the geographic placement of ethnic
groups within them are viewed as the watershed moment for the conflict to have
begun, and I will now turn to the first of several theoretical viewpoints that
lead towards this point and the violence being ethnic in nature.
Rogers Brubaker (in Daedalus, Vol. 124, No. 2, Spring, 1995) provides
a theory centred on the political dynamics surrounding the collapse of the
Yugoslav state. His triadic nexus
of national minorities, nationalizing states and external national homelands
portrays a relational perspective to the Yugoslav break up between these three.
Because of the ‘nationalization of political space’, since the bigger political
space has now evaporated, those constituent nations now dwell in pockets in new
states where another dominant nation now governs. Citizenship in one state is
balanced with ethno-national affinity with another. So an individual is at the
centre of the triadic relationship going on, and of two nationalisms being
played out; one in the state they reside in, and one in the ‘home’ state. Conflicts
arise because of new reconfigurations of the triadic nexus. Nationalizing
states partake in the elite-led promotion of a homogenous nation in a heterogeneous
society, where there is a large national minority who is organised yet
politically alienated. This group makes demands based on real or perceived
threats to their wellbeing, and are closely watched by elites in their
‘homeland’ who protest on their behalf for their rights. The conflict in the
former Yugoslavia should be seen in this triadic form. Three overlapping processes
consisted of nationalizing Croats both before and after independence,
disaffection and nationalist mobilisation of Croatian Serbs in the borderlands,
and the development of a belligerent homeland stance in the Serbian state
leaning on a Serbian dominated JNA to create a Greater Serbia out of the
federation. So the Croat secession wasn’t simply a response to Serb
assertiveness within Yugoslavia, but a nationalizing process by Croats. The
interplay between these three processes acted as catalysts for people to become
involved because of their perception of and reaction to events in one of the
other two processes. These were founded on representations that had to be
developed from monitoring situations in the other fields, and packaged in a way
for people to be mobilized. So although he believes the processes to be
elite-led, they had to have support from the masses. He takes the view that
after an event occurred; new perceptions or responses were triggered. So he
looks at the contexts of an event in relation to what went before it that acted
as a trigger. This created the conditions for an escalation of events, the
catalyst being the political leaders. However he looks at the process of the
break up in isolation from the processes that led to the break up.
Jack Snyder (From
Voting to Violence, 2000) believes democratisation played a role in this. He
believes that nationalism is weak prior to democratization,
and that this process actually produces nations and nationalisms. When
political leaders wish to garner support, yet not to relinquish too much power
to the citizen, they provide for partial democracy using nationalism to gain it.
The timing and context of democratization varies the nationalism that results. Exclusionary
nationalism occurs if the country is poor, the citizens lack skills to
participate in democracy, and when politicians, the media and institutions are
weak during the beginning of the process. This is what occurred in Serbia and
Croatia. In pre-conflict Yugoslavia democratization and political decentralization
led to communist elites fearing for their position, giving them an incentive
for leading popular nationalist movements. Decentralization and the
ethnofederal nature of Yugoslavia allowed these elites to use the institutions
at their disposal for this advancement. Four factors allowed for
democratization to lead to nationalism and then ethnic conflict. First, he
argues that ‘Historical legacies created the conditions from which conflict
could emerge…’ Secondly, the structure of the federal system, tying ethnic
groups to republics, was conceived in order to deal with the nationalities
question but instead it created divisions within Yugoslavia, that not only nationalists
favoured but liberals also, and became represented as a debate between Slovenia
and Croatia on one side, and Serbia and the Army on the other. Thirdly,
challenges with the economy were in tandem with the maneuverings of political
elites to gain support on the onset of a more open political system. Finally,
the media were an important factor in that the ethnic republic leaders could
monopolize as much as they could. Journalists and intellectuals who
disseminated nationalist myths aided this. But this only fed into prejudices
that were already present therefore a supply and demand scenario existed. The
only downside to this argument is that it doesn’t account for the rise of
Franjo Tudjman as President. His portrayal can be seen to mirror Slobodan Milosevic’s
conversion during democratization, but not of an anti-communist figure that
rose independently of the state structures. He was more a figure of ‘Historical
legacies’ if anything. However, Snyder does provide three more political
factors that I will now approach.
Marshal Tito’s policy of ‘Brotherhood and
Unity’ sought to erase the competing nationalist versions of World War II
history by providing a narrative that united the new Yugoslavs around a
Partisan myth versus internal and external fascist enemies. The new socialist
Yugoslav constitution developed a system of republics, most of which had a
nation tied to them. In addition to this there was the guarantee of equality of
the nations throughout the republics, for those who do not live in their ‘home’
nation. And this is where Sabrina Ramet believes Tito went wrong. In her
epilogue in Balkan Bebel she argues
that when Tito opted to tolerate the already present cultures based on a thin
‘Yugoslavism’ anchored in the Partisan myth, instead of creating a new Yugoslav
identity, he embedded the continual resurfacing of inter-group hatred from the
World War II era. Therefore the trauma of those who experienced it never went
away. Anthony Oberschall (in Ethnic and
Racial Studies, Vol. 23, No. 6, pp. 982-1001. November 2000) agrees with
her focus on the Yugoslav constitution but for a different reason. He felt that
because there was a balancing act going on to appease all the different ethnic
and national stakeholders in the country, any attempts by nationalists to alter
it would obviously focus on issues including the drawing of boundaries and
placement of peoples. But he prescribes democratization as the antidote to
nationalists employing ethnic cleavages. This is the opposite of what Snyder
argues as he placed democratization first with the rise in nationalism as the
consequence. I would agree with Oberschall that nationalists would try and
alter the borders of the republics, but his approach is set within the context
of a communist state where nationalist communists were the actors who could
affect that change, and this wasn’t the case. Democratization led to the
election of both a nationalist ‘communist’ in Slobodan Milosevic and an
outright nationalist in Franjo Tudjman. Therefore the rules of the game changed.
The borders issue became more prominent once Tudjman made the calls for
secession because they would lead to international state boundaries, not
internal republic borders. So the issue became a lot more contentious and
therefore more open to conflict. Given that republics were tied to nations,
this provided the ethnic paradigm. To add to this E. M. Despalatovic (in
Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at
War, 2000) makes the point that when Croatia was gearing towards
independence and after the HDZ had won the elections; they fired Serbian
communists – not because they were Serbs but because they were communists. So
the result of democratization was the removal of communists in the state
bureaucracy yet presented as removal of the Serbs. This feeds into Brubaker’s
argument about opportunities for political leaders to represent the other
process, here the nationalization of the Croatian state. In terms of
contributing to ethnic violence, economic issues pale into the background, but
they do add to the factors that may have left the population frustrated and motivated
to turn to nationalist politicians and be receptive of their messages.
But people were receiving messages from
other sources, namely the media, as pointed out by Snyder. Bette Denich (in
Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at
War, 2000) provides a compelling case on the lack of communication between
the numerous elites and amongst the various ethnic populations. Denich’s
argument is that there were two processes going on. First, Serb and Croatian
nationalists were arguing over the overlapping nature of their claims for
territory, which meant that they were only concerned with their own nationalist
version of truth, and not listening to others. Second, this meant that the
ordinary people weren’t listening to each other either, helped by the media’s
portrayal of events. The narratives at play, victimization and threat, fed into
those who weren’t ‘nationalist’ before. Only those not involved in an ethno-nationalist
framework were distant from it, but they were few in number. In employing
Benedict Anderson’s assertion that print capitalism played a part in the
forming of commonality prior to nation-state formation, she points to mass
media that was devolved to the republics, which carried narratives produced by
the intelligentsia’s of the republics based on the raw materials of ethnic
identity. The media in each republic therefore pushed different perspectives on
the same news to different audiences who reacted differently. The portrayal of victimization
by each media and of the ‘other’ as a threat, coupled with no actual response
to the ‘other’ only their projection of them, led to an escalation of the
perception of the ‘other’ as being a threat. Without other contrary viewpoints,
these perceptions grew and became exaggerated. Therefore the media was employed
as a tool to foster conditions on the ground that led to ethnic tensions being
raised backed by each republics leaders and intelligentsia. To link with
Brubaker’s triadic nexus argument, the communication of representations was key
for the processes to interact with each other and produce different responses
to events. So the media was complicit in fostering those conditions.
So what we had was a combination of
political forces that interacted with each other, and played off each other,
which fostered conditions for ethnic violence the former Yugoslavia. Established
political elites sought to exploit the move to democracy for their attempts to
cling on to, or reach, power in their home republics, using the existing
structure of the Yugoslav state; and the ideology of nationalism as tool to
garner mass support by communicating through republic owned media outlets. This
led to the collapse of the League of Communists as an institution and the
subsequent undermining of the Yugoslav state that had been created to unite the
nations of the South Slavs. But solely pointing to political forces leaves out
the emotional connection people at the grassroots level had and could relate
to.
Historical forces are another viewpoint
from which to understand the conditions that were created to lead to ethnic
violence. Norman Naimark (Fires of Hatred, 2001) points to both the Serbs and
Croats prior to the conflict exploiting their versions of recent ‘history’ in
order to mobilize their respective ‘nations’. ‘The Serbs in Krajina mobilized
around the threat of a new Jasenovac…’ and rested on past and present inflated
numbers of Serb deaths there during the Ustasha state. Whereas the anti-communist
Croats connected the Serbs to the communist legacy by pointing to Croat
massacres under Tito at the end of World War II. These messages were relayed by
the media, which was controlled by both Milosevic and Tudjman. These fed into
repressed memories of those who lived through them times and were thus employed
as a tool to mobilize them. He feels that the brutality displayed during the
war in Croatia had ‘to do with the history of the region since 1940 and the
urban social groups that fostered Serbian paramilitaries than it did with the
inheritance of the distant past.’ His latter point regarding outsiders coming
in to the area to stir up conflict, I will approach later. He does have a valid
point about the present use of selected (and perhaps contested) historical
facts to underpin nationalist rhetoric. But this argument doesn’t go far enough
in the sense that there is a detachment between those who lived through the
experiences of World War II and those who have grown up since; he doesn’t
account for their mobilization. Aside from factors that have been mentioned up
to now that could have motivated this group of people, Victor Roudometof (Nationalism, Globalization, and Orthodoxy,
2001) argues that it is necessary
to take into account the educational mechanisms responsible for the production
and proliferation of stereotypes. ‘As the different nationalist agendas of the
Balkan nation-states gradually became enshrined in regional historical
discourse, they inevitably found their way into songs, schoolbooks, and local
traditions.’ Thus collective memories were acted out daily and were barriers to
solving the problems of the 1990’s. Because there was no outlet to answer the
‘national question’ under communism, the 1980’s saw a revival of historical
revisionism. In the 1990’s, history was ‘renationalized’ and used as a tool for
ethnocentric propaganda. There are two links here; the first being Sabrina
Ramet who said that communism didn’t provide a vehicle to openly discuss the
traumas of World War II. But Rogers Brubaker better links the past to the
present in his triadic view of the Serbs ‘as active participants in the
intensifying conflict and as political subjects in their own right, construing
(and misconstruing) the dangers of the present in the light of the atrocities
of the past.’ This linking of the past to the present
leads on to ethnosymbolism and cultural forces in general.
Stuart Kaufman (Modern Hatreds, 2001) argues from a ‘symbolic politics’ perspective
on the cause of ethnic war. He
believes that two roots to ethnic violence are mass-led or elite-led. Developments
of three factors are crucial to reach this end, mass hostility, ethnic
outflanking by political elites, and a security dilemma. By mass hostility he
refers to an external affinity problem (i.e. a group is a majority in the
state, but a minority in the region), a history of ethnic domination, or issues
over ethnic symbols. A security dilemma can occur when these threaten other
groups, and when outbidding by extremist leaders in power up the ante on this
because of a perception of extinction on either side. So he believes that ‘If
the necessary conditions for ethnic war are myths, fears, and opportunity, the
timing of the war is explained by an increase in fear, opportunity, or
hostility justified by the myths.’ This could be down to a rise in symbolic
events or where a political opportunity presents itself, which determines
whether it is elite or mass-led. Conversely, a lack of ethnic symbolism can be
seen in areas where ethnic violence didn’t occur but had mixed ethnicities. His
judgement is that relevantly modern hatreds, found in renewed accounts of myths
and stories, inspired the killing in the former Yugoslavia, which links into
the arguments set out by Ramet, Roudometof and Naimark. Events in Yugoslavia
were elite-led, albeit with ethnic hostility already being present amongst the
masses, which ramped up the low level hostility through fears manipulated by
symbols and myths. Roudometof agrees with the power of symbols, myths and
stories that were used as mobilizing tools, and he places a time on when their
true potential was realized. After the independence of Croatia ‘the new ethnic symbolisms emphasized the explicit ethnic character
of the proposed new state.’
Although Ramet agrees with Kaufman on the
traumas of World War II being relived and that Milosevic was tapping into
already present hostility because ‘He catered to them, manipulated them, and
amplified them.’ She fundamentally believes that because these people were
culturally diverse they weren’t going to get on. So a chasm opens up here
between the idea that it was the fault of political leaders who utilized
symbols and myths of the past to conjure up ethnic hatred and violence in a
once stable society, to a fundamental questioning of the reason why these
people were ever placed in one state. The fact that different cultures were put
together in the first place almost justifies Ramets’ argument that Milosevic
(and others) had a simple task to achieve their aims, and this is where I
disagree with her assertion of inevitability. It had to be linked to other
ongoing processes at the time or else these groups would have been in conflict
before the 1990’s, and this is where Kaufman’s argument stands up to scrutiny.
However, other social or psychological
factors played a role in the path to ethnic violence. The first tranche of
these focus on predetermined characteristics that could account for ethnic
violence. Remembering Snyder’s point that nationalism was weak prior to
democratization, I return to Oberschall whose approach to ethnic violence leans
on two cognitive perspectives that Yugoslavs were meant to have had when
conducting relations with other ethnicities. ‘People possessed both frames in
their minds: In peacetimes the crisis frame was dormant, and in crisis and war
the normal frame was suppressed. Both frames were anchored in private and
family experiences.’ He points to the Tito-era as a time when the normal frame
was activated, but he links the events of World War II and the 1990’s as one of
repetition. He draws on personal history as a force for the actions of the
present, and ties this to psychological factors inherent in the people of the
former Yugoslavia. But to understand his theory he places it into the context
of the 1990’s conflict and uses it to answer the question of why a people who
lived harmoniously for forty years began to kill each other. The crisis frame
was triggered by elite manipulation in the context of a security dilemma, so
here he links to Kaufman’s theory. Benjamin Valentino (Final Solutions, 2004) narrows this notion of some form of
individual cognitive frame, experienced by a collectivity. His approach to the
cause of ethnic violence goes back to the argument of it being elite-led.
However, he believes that instead of the masses participating in a wide spread
melee, the violence was conducted by a small group of people with the rest of
the population as bystanders. Because only a few people are perpetrators they
are selected, and can be fanatics or those manipulated by elites in certain
situations. He divides perpetrators into two types, ones who are innately
biased towards violence and others who are ‘ordinary’ yet are seduced into it.
So psychological factors and social/situational ones motivate perpetrators to
violent acts. Preexisting ideological convictions or hatred alone did not
account for violence, nor can the severe brutality of some can be seen as
generic to all perpetrators. Yet soldiers carry out violence as duties from the
top of the hierarchy. His argument then is that all humans have the capacity to
kill but it is individuals who make a choice on what they wish to do. This
latter argument tied into the idea that something needs to occur for humans to
kill, such as a situation or coercion, seems to be plausible, yet does run
closely parallel to Oberschall’s cognitive frame idea that is somewhat rigid.
Looking at it from a different tangent, H.
Grandits and C. Promitzer (in Halpern & Kideckel’s Neighbours at War, 2000) point to a historically rooted patriarchal
mentality that descended from the Military Frontier, where Catholics and
Orthodox were united as soldiers. These remained up to the time of the 1990’s
conflict, including the predisposition to use force and take up arms. This went
in tandem with the use of symbols to act as triggers to draw out different
responses by reactivating historical values. This may have some weight if it
can be based less on psychological/biological foundations and more on its
penetration into local rituals and customs of communities. But to tie up the
debate on predetermined societal and psychological forces that led to ethnic
violence, I return to E. Staub, whom I quoted earlier arguing that nationalism
had to fit the already present cultures for it to succeed. His wider argument
is that that ‘Certain characteristics of a culture and the structure of a
society, combined with great difficulties or hardships of life and social
disorganisation, are the starting point for genocide or mass killing.’ He
believes that most cultures possess characteristics that have the potential for
group violence and that certain circumstances that they find themselves in
unleash it. This underlines Grandits and Promitzer’s argument if taken from my
suggested perspective. All these theories point to the circumstances of the
period in the early 1990s as the trigger for all these preordained factors to
become active, so there must be validity in their claims. However, I can only
agree with those claims that are rooted in a sense of cultural continuity such
as Staub, and Valentino to a degree, because the triggers for the violent acts
need to have a human or emotional connection for these presumptions to be
valid. Staub’s example of ‘life problems’ is one such link. Another could be
the lived experience of World War II.
Yet Staub also provides us with a temporally
linear explanation that leads to ethnic violence, as opposed to a purely
predetermined one, this being the ‘continuum of destruction’. His idea here is
that small destructive actions that become more routinely used can justify the
next destructive action, and so on. This idea assumes the collective nature of
the actions, whether they be societal or between ethnic groups. The start of
such a process can be as long as the observer or researcher wishes it to be. A
primordialist of an ‘ancient hatred’ tradition would see this stretch back
millennia. But more modern arguments place it within the last two centuries.
Brubaker’s argument regarding the impact of education places it in the 19th
century. Roudometof’s theory of collective memory places it in the wake of the
atrocities in World War II, if not before that. But what is of key importance
here is that hatred had been building up over a period of time. This can
explain two things. First the role of the bystander, and second the reason why
mass killing didn’t occur straight away.
On the former point, Valentino argues that mass killings don’t need mass support, just
indifference for it to occur. It is wrong to assume that the masses support it.
Mass killings don’t just start from scratch, but the public show negative
support by allowing legal measures and social attitudes to build up
discrimination and hatred of vulnerable social groups. So no one opposes it. Accordingly
they may support the regime but not the killing. But even if they do, he says
it may be down to propaganda and mis-information to ‘cover up’ the extent of
it. ‘Throughout the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, Belgrade sought to cover
up its atrocities or characterize them as legitimate military actions.’ So this
backs up his argument that ethnic violence is elite-led, and links to Staub’s
‘continuum of destruction’. On the latter point, the former argument backs up
the common sense idea that mass killing didn’t just spontaneously erupt, but
that the conditions had been building up and brewing for sometime. Yet, this
still doesn’t explain how it did arrive at violence. Although the war was a
conflict between Croatia and Yugoslavia backed up by the JNA, something altered
to make it an ethnic conflict on the ground in multiethnic communities. Here we
can place the idea of the role of ‘outsiders’ in fomenting trouble and stirring
up ethnic violence. Sabrina Ramet describes the events between the JNA intervening
in Croatia and the amassing of paramilitaries to fight in the war. Clashes
between Croatian militia and Serb irregulars highlight the potential for rogue
elements to act out; however, they would not without either insecurity
underpinned by nationalist rhetoric or from official orders. The latter is most
likely. Yet a result of these clashes was that Serb paramilitaries formed and
struck at towns in Croatia. So one can see how non-official combatants brought
the conflict in to the region. Or as Grandits and Promitzer see it ‘the
influence of movements outside the region developed national consciousness in
the area.’
Taking into account the many forces that
these scholars have attributed to the creation of conditions for ethnic
violence, I seek to tie up two ideas. The first is the question of whether the ethnic
violence was elite or mass-led. Many if not most of the theories point to an
element of elite-led participation. Some argue that it may be as basic as a
leader using the raw material of hostility, such as Ramet. Others developed a
more nuanced argument that included the use of the media, state institutions,
the circumstances of democratization and state collapse, along with the tapping
into the already held prejudices of the population via ethnosymbolism. But one
must concede that without the masses divided into two or more distinct groups
(whether historically or newly fashioned) then there would have been no
conflict over the placement of these people. Further to that, the build up over
years, if not decades, of hostility had to have been incubated at the community
level for the political rhetoric to resonate. So a combination of the two
approaches is an adequate answer, but this links to the second question of
whether ethnic violence was inevitable or a consequence of the series of events
that came before it. This depends on the perspective of time one takes when
looking at the events that took place through linear time. On one side you have
Ramet who argues that Tito’s failure to solve the nationalities issue at he
start of the second Yugoslavia meant it was inevitable to led to ethnic
violence. However, her approach comfortably sits at the ‘end of time’ with the
benefit of hindsight. Others take the view, such as Roudometof, that the build
up over time of hostility couldn’t have inevitably led to violence given that
they lived peacefully for forty years prior to the events in the 1990’s.
Therefore, one must place the actions of the past, in motion, into the context
of the time period just prior to ethnic violence occurring. And this is where
Brubaker and Snyder’s views become useful. This is also where intent can be
ascribed, according to some of the theorists mentioned, because of the
elite-led nature of the violence.
In conclusion, the forces that led to the creation of conditions for
ethnic violence to occur in the former Yugoslavia were varied, and fluctuated
in importance according to the theory developed. I understand the situation as
follows. Hostility was already present on the ground in the communities of the
former Yugoslavia, and had been building up over time, thanks in part to
educational institutions and the nurturing of cultural traditions. ‘Brotherhood
and Unity’ was Tito’s policy to ensure that the nationalities’ issue was dealt
with after the traumatic experiences of World War II, which were seen as
‘ethnic’ in nature. Through developments in the constitutional make up of the
Yugoslav state, the republics grew as power bases for a small elites to govern,
especially in regards to the media. With the onset of democratization,
nationalists or reforming communist leaders sought to gain (or keep) political
office. Nationalism was utilized by these leaders, using the boundaries of the
republics for their new state, and communicating effective ethnosymbolic
messages to the masses through the media, which resonated with some due to
their lived experiences in World War II. For others, the socio-economic
conditions, deteriorating since the mid-1980’s, mobilized their sense of
isolation in a state that was collapsing. A continuum of destruction developed
and became truncated in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, as nation-building
reified distinctions of who ‘us’ and ‘them’ were, especially volatile in areas
of mixed ethnicities such as eastern Croatia. A security dilemma took hold once
‘outsiders’ who used violence elsewhere in the region came into local
communities coercing people to choose sides. For fear of death, those of the
same ethnicity as the belligerents chose to take their side or become neutral
bystanders to the violence. Therefore although one can point to the forces from
history for ethnic violence, one must account for the activities of those who
led the charge of utilizing such rhetoric that didn’t stop violence escalating,
even actively promoting its use, in the period immediately prior to violence
being committed. Ultimately, though, the participation of the masses, actively
or passively, meant that the actions of the leaders could be easily justified,
as they had no mass popular opposition to contend with.
