Graduate School of Social Sciences

MSc International Relations

Master Thesis

Perpetrators of violence against non-combatants in the

Seeking the logic behind the incomprehensible

By Yael van Pomeren 10458743

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Under the supervision of Dr. Jana Krause

Second reading by Dr. Darshan Vigneswaran

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Word count: 21.059

Submission date: 22nd of June 2018

2 een volk dat voor tirannen zwicht

zal meer dan lijf en goed verliezen

dan dooft het licht…

-H.M. van Randwijk

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Acknowledgments

First, I want to thank my supervisor Dr. Jana Krause, both for her encouragement during the process as for her lasting patience with me and my method of working. Additionally, I express my gratitude to Dr. Darshan Vigneswaran, as he kindly accepted taking time of his schedule to be the second reader of this thesis.

Lastly, I want to express sincere appreciation, tremendous amounts of gratitude and everlasting gratefulness to whomever has helped me in these past months. Your patience, your listening ears, your time and overwhelming efforts to keep me both mentally sane, inventive and productive have been more than valuable. You know who are: Thank You.

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Abstract

What makes individuals able to perpetrate atrocities and horrible acts of violence, without preceding criminal records or systematic exposure to violence in general? This research, focusing on the War in

Bosnia and Herzegovina, aims to show both the complex situations perpetrators in which perpetrators operate, to demonstrate the role malicious regimes play in creating the conditions for perpetrators to thrive in and to prove that there should be a focus on the importance of situational factors and context, for there are no personality traits that distinguish genocidal perpetrators from other human beings. It draws upon perpetrator-based research – primarily from and Rwanda, and researches documents from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), in particular pleas and statements by the defendants.

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Table of contents

* For the purpose of maneuvering easily through the (online)document, hyperlinks are embedded within the table of contents

1. Acknowledgments ……………………………………………………………………………… 4

Abstract 5

2. Illustrations……………………………………………………………………………………... 7

3. Preface………………………………………………………………………………………...….. 8

4. Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………….. 10

Gap in the literature 11

Methodological Approach 12

5. Perpetrator-based research………………………………………………………………….. 14

6. Concepts ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 21

Ethnicity and anti-Semitism 21

Genocide and the dynamics within 24

Ethnic cleansing 29

7. Case study…………………………………………………………………………………… 32

8. Macro-level context…………………………………………………………………………. 36

Befehl ist Befehl 38

Brotherhood and Unity 40

9. Ordinary men ………………………………………………………………………………….. 44

Findings 54

10. Discussion, Limitations and Recommendations………………………………………….. 55

11. Conclusions .…………………………………………………………………………………… 57

11. Bibliography.………………………………………………………………………………...... 59

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Illustrations

1 Figure 1: The Serbian concentration camps; within this thesis, both in the body text as in the embedded statements, names of towns and villages are mentioned. Figure 1 serves as a tool to keep overview of both the conflict in general and the place of certain events in specific.

1 https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/karadzic/atrocities/map.html

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Preface

In regard to my ongoing research, many people ask me why I focus, to such an extent, on the Holocaust. The subject of this thesis is the behaviour of perpetrators in the Bosnian war, with all its mayhem and bloodshed. Why focus on the Holocaust, a totally different event, in a totally different time, by a totally different regime? To understand this paradox within this research I found the quote by French archaeologist and historian Paul Veyne to be very useful: History exists only in relation to the questions we pose it. Knowledge about a certain event depends on the varied fields of research, who have varied methods, approaches, and languages in perceiving and understanding a certain event. All these different kinds of research obtain different outcomes, therefore broadening and deepening the knowledge of one event. Within the field of studies, the Holocaust holds a historical uniqueness against all other events. According to many scholars, this uniqueness faces the Holocaust with fundamental problems of historical narration and explanation. It might even not be explained or narrated at all, withal comparing other with the Holocaust is even more off bounds.2 This research does not hold that same view; ‘the Holocaust is no more exempt from perspectival reframing than any other historical occurrence’.3 Its uniqueness reveals the overall limits and boundaries of historical interpretation.4 In comparing the Holocaust with other genocides we compare events of a similar kind (extermination) but not of a similar degree of perceived historical significance. No other genocide constituted such a historical and epistemological break as the Holocaust. The Holocaust as a foundational past, an event that represents an age because it embodies a historical novum that serves as a moral and historical yardstick, as a measure of things human. The foundational element exists in people’s subjectivity and therefore is a historical construct.5 In the West – the importance of the Holocaust is less pronounced in the rest of the world – it can be perceived as ‘ the core event of our time’. The core rupture in contemporary historical time, morality, representation and experience.6 The Holocaust is the foundational past in our age, the paradigm shift that marked the beginning of ‘our way of thinking’, the icon to which one refers and where everything relates to. [emphasis intended]

Albeit the Holocaust exists in the past, it still shocks and is part of the present. Not only new research by historians have resulted in a vast new body of knowledge regarding the Holocaust, but also new

2 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press (2012), p.3 3 Donald Bloxham, ‘Europe, the and the dynamics of intent’, Patterns of Prejudice, nr.4 (2010), p.317-318. 4 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press (2012, p.3 5 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press (2012, p.5-6 6 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press (2012, p.6

8 ways of representing the Holocaust have created a new level of understanding about the extreme event.7 New ways of thinking therefore have altered the way in which we nowadays think about an event that occurred in the past. Although the event itself did not change, the way of thinking or the additional knowledge have made the representation of the event different. Therefore it does not only exist in the past, but also in the present. These new ways of thinking may also have the effect of the Holocaust receding in the past, this sense of ‘pastness’ itself opens up new ways of understanding and interpreting the event. Although the understanding and interpretation of the Holocaust may have altered in decades following the event, the sheer fact that the Holocaust is the turning point in human history, remains unchallenged. This again is subjective, for someone living before 1933, this point of reference might have been the French Revolution of 1789. For our understanding is both dependent on its foundational past, the current paradigm, and the questions we choose to pose regarding our field of research. The association between the French Revolution and the Holocaust, together with the phenomenal concept of foundational pasts have been made by Alon Confino. His work is a must read in the field of memory studies in general and the field of in specific. For me, a researcher from the West, my point of reference is the Holocaust. I am surefooted that this event influenced me in my choice of study, thesis subject and general interest. Nothing in our contemporary thinking is not influenced by it. This insight forces me to relate the events in Bosnia to the Holocaust. Forces me to interlink the knowledge of Holocaust studies to my thesis. To be aware of the relativity of this knowledge, to understand it has altered and changed depending on the questions we posed and the knowledge we had available, obliges me to use different angles, but most importantly to shift between scopes of analysis within this research. While doing this, I accept that others may have a different view or contrasting opinions.

7 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press (2012, p.1-2

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Introduction

On the territory of the country in which I was born, shooting from firearms was usual when celebrating the birth of a male child. These shots tell you everything, what a new male member of the family means and what is expected of him - strength, protection; he should be a warrior, a soldier, the head of the family, as they say in our parts. Unfortunately, when other kinds of shooting started in the former Yugoslavia, shooting in war, it was normal for every man, every male child, to put on a uniform, take up a weapon, and go to protect his homeland, his nation, and ultimately his family. This was expected of him. This was his role, a sacred role. 8

Bosnia-Herzegovina was a centuries old mosaic of Orthodox, Catholic, and Islamic believers. The rise of nationalism brought their transformation into , Croats, and Bosnian (later ‘Bošnjaks’) respectively. 9 In the citation above, Dragan Obrenović, a Serb senior officer and commander indicted for war crimes and , reveals an image of a divided land in which violence was almost inescapable. He almost makes it seem as if the war, which broke out in 1992, was inevitable. While urban areas developed a more complex cultural landscape, the villages of Bosnia were indeed vastly Serb, Croat, or Muslim. However, ‘territorial separation appeared a possibility only after outbreak of war in 1992, with central to campaigns of territorial aggrandizement’.10 Stevan Todorović, who was a Police Chief and a member of the Bosnian Serb Crisis Staff in Bosanski Šamac, in 1992-1993, endorses this; before the war, I had not planned ethnic cleansing or persecution, nor was I aware of any such plan. Albeit he did not have these plans before the war, Todorović persecuted non-Serb civilians on political, racial and religious grounds. Over a period of eight months, Todorović beat and tortured men, and ordered and participated in the interrogation of detained persons ordering them to sign false statements. He issued orders and directives that violated the rights of non-Serb civilians to equal treatment under the law.11 The statements by Obrenović and Todorović lead to the most intriguing questions raised by the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the in a broad sense, that is to say: what made so many ordinary men, without prior convictions or simmering hatred, become perpetrators of violence against defenceless non-combatants. What stands out in the Bosnian war in particular is the amount of violence against people the perpetrators were acquainted to. How were they capable hereof? The Bosnian War has been the subject of many researches, has been analysed to a great extent, had a tremendous amount of media coverage at the time it occurred and produced countless

8 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Obrenović (IT-02-60/2). 9 Lynn M. Tesser, Ethnic Cleansing and the European Union; An Interdisciplinary Approach to Security, Memory and Ethnography, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, p.158. 10 Lynn M. Tesser, Ethnic Cleansing and the European Union; An Interdisciplinary Approach to Security, Memory and Ethnography, London: Palgrave Macmillan 2013, p.158. 11 The Prosecutor v. Stevan Todorović, (IT-95-9/1-S).

10 articles related to it. The focus on why individuals in these conflicts have been able to perpetrate atrocities and horrible acts of violence, without preceding criminal records or systematic exposure to violence in general, however is heavily understudied – a few brilliant exceptions aside. This gap in the literature is partly due to, from a comparative perspective, two main weaknesses of micro-level research in the field of political violence. Namely; an empirical focus on the Holocaust and Rwanda on the one hand and the relative absence of systematic comparison across cases.12 ‘There has been little direct study of either decision makers or direct perpetrators. Social scientists have rarely approached them’.13 The absence of sufficient research on perpetrators seems remarkable, for at a fundamental level, conflict originates from the behaviour of individuals and their ‘repeated interactions with their surroundings, in other words, from its micro-foundations. A micro-level approach advances our understanding of conflict by its ability to account for individual and group heterogeneity within one country or one conflict’.14 Next to this, especially the field of genocide studies suffers from an ‘unhealthy academic cloistering’. In particular, a lack of dialogue with kin literature on political violence.15 This thesis will integrate the concepts of genocide, ethnic cleansing and mass violence against non-combatants in general, to create a unique and comprehensive model to understand the motivations of perpetrators. Why do individuals participate in mass violence against civilians? I base this research on one fundamental assumption: people are not naturally ‘good’ or ‘bad’. These terms are vague and cannot be tested. But if people are not naturally good or bad, what makes them become perpetrators of violence? This leads to the following research question:

What makes ‘ordinary people’, without prior criminal record, perpetrate acts of violence against non- combatants?

This thesis argues that situational factors, context and group dynamics alter the state of mind of ordinary men and enable them to perform atrocities against defenceless non-combatants. In order to answer this question I have studied ICTY documents – in particular sentencing judgements –, which include pleas and statements made by ICTY defendants and moreover will further draw upon already existing literature, primarily concerning Rwanda and the Holocaust. The next section describes the methods I used and how this research will further unfold. Hereafter this thesis is divided into six sections. First, I will explain on the basis of existing literature why it is

12 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and Future Areas of Inquiry’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, nr.1 (2012), p.61. 13 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 422. 14 Philip Verwimp, Patricia Justino, Tilman Brück, ‘The Analysis of Conflict: A Micro-Level Perspective’, Journal of Peace Research, nr. 3 (2009), p. 307. 15 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and Future Areas of Inquiry’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, nr.1 (2012), p.56.

11 plausible to assume that context provides a motive for murderous behaviour within mass led violence. Second, based on the literature I propose definitions to the concepts of ethnicity, genocide and ethnic cleansing which are most appropriate for the context of the Bosnian War. Third, I present a case study of the Bosnian War. Fourth, I will provide macro-level context, these will include counterfactual explanations. Fifth, I will follow a trail of thought which has become almost foundational within perpetrator based research and will substantiate this with my empirical analysis. Lastly, I will discuss the findings and limitations of my theory next to possible alternative explanations before I move towards my conclusions.

Methodological Approach

I have executed qualitative research during the process of this master thesis. This method is focussed on a small number of cases, which has allowed me to use intensive interviews, statements and/or pleas, to be argumentative in method and to be concerned with a rounded or comprehensive account of an event.16 The selection of the case study is partly ambiguous. As a scholar, I choose my research methods partly depending of the questions I pose it, and the data that is available. The databank of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia offers a tremendous wealth of resources the Tribunal has collected over the years of its existence, from 1993-2017. The case study of the Bosnian War, both strengthened and clarified by the personal accounts of the, meticulously in-depth, ICTY- data has offered insights in the characteristics and dynamics of the real life situations of the Bosnian War. Throughout this thesis, I will use statements from defendants to illustrate that these are coherent with my theory and which therefore shows that it is plausible. I use a combination of the findings from the ICTY-data and the already existent literature to develop a model to conceptualize my theory. This theory includes five categories of argumentation of why individuals participate in mass violence, with claims about (1) collective and horizontal peer pressure; (2) deprivation and frustration and in particular the idea that hardship causes stress that is channeled into violence; (3) fear and insecurity; (4) legitimacy, perpetrators commit violence because of their obedience to or vertical relationships with superiors and (5) identity, in particular the idea that individuals harbor outgroup antipathy or in- group solidarity which would lead them to harm others.17 It is my objective to test these arguments in the case of the Bosnian War. I have explicitly omitted and dismissed psychological predispositions, such as sadism, as a general explanation for individuals to commit violence. In an addition to these micro-level explanations, the forthcoming section will postulate a theory regarding the cause of the outbreak of mass violence – a pathway to mass violence.

16 Gary King, Robert O. Keohane, Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research, Princeton: Princeton University Press (1994), p.4. 17 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and Future Areas of Inquiry’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, nr.1 (2012), p.62.

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This research focusses, on macro-level, on Serbs in general and the propaganda of Milosevic and his allies in specific. This choice has been made in part to frame the research and not to make it too broad, however I do realize this might have the implication of missing an explanation for the war as a whole. I propose others to fill this void and to further test this theory and its limitations. As a consequence of the choice to highlight the Serbian role in the conflict, the testimonies of individuals are almost exclusively that of Bosnian Serbs, with the exception of Ivica Rajić – a Bosnian Croat. His statement has been selected for it shows valuable insights in certain group dynamics and interplay between individuals. With his role within these group dynamics, he served as a counter-factual explanation. Besides are these group dynamics not strictly or exclusively reserved for Serbs, Croats or Bosnian Muslims respectively, either way. The forthcoming section will prove the ‘ordinariness’ of perpetrators, demonstrate my theory and postulate a pathway to mass violence.

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Perpetrator-based research

‘On the one hand, I carried weapons in Sušica, I wore a uniform; and on the other hand, there is the fact that there were women there, aged the same as my mother, there were children there, there were people who used to be friends of mine, whom I used to see over the years in cafes, on sports fields, and playgrounds, with whom I spent summer vacations. And when I think about all of this, it turned into a nightmare that is pursuing me these days and that I see over and over again in my sleep. The question arises why did I do all that?‘ 18

Dragan Nikolić killed nine non-Serb detainees. The oldest of his victims was a 60-year-old man whose ordeal lasted for seven days during which he was beaten unconscious on several occasions. He was relentless: regardless of the victims’ calls for the beatings to stop, Nikolić continued to punch, kick and beat the detainees with weapons such as wooden bats, iron bars, axe handles, rifle butts, metal knuckles, metal pipes, truncheons and rubber tubing with lead inside. These were not sudden ups and downs, not sheer moments of emotional frailty: Dragan Nikolić beat two detainees with iron bars, wooden bats and rifle butts for approximately ninety minutes. He also admitted torturing three other male detainees in a similar manner, the injuries inflicted by him during the beatings were in some instances fatal. Nikolić personally removed and facilitated the removal of female detainees from the hangar where they were interned, in the knowledge that the removal of the women was for the purposes of and other sexually abusive conduct. To say that he created and maintained an atmosphere of terror in the camp, is an understatement. He was terror.19 ` In , eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Serb forces drew up a detention camp for Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs; the Sušica camp. Between late May and October 1992, as many as eight thousand Muslim civilians and other non-Serbs from Vlasenica and the surrounding villages were successively detained in the hangar at Sušica camp. The number of detainees in the hangar at any one time was usually between three hundred and five hundred. The building was severely overcrowded and living conditions were deplorable.20 Here Dragan Nikolić, also known as Jenki, was commander from early June 1992 until its closure in late September 1992. Here, a normal man became able of committing heinous crimes against people he used to be his friends.

The burning question remains, both with Nikolić, his victims, their families and international society as a whole, how someone is capable of performing such extraordinary crimes. To believe, like Chalk and Johassohn, that ‘ is extremely difficult for ordinary people to carry out’ and therefore ‘requires the recruitment of pathological individuals and criminals’ would be the preferable answer to

18 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolic (IT-94-2). 19 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolic (IT-94-2). 20 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Nikolic (IT-94-2).

14 this question.21 This would imply that an ordinary human being, someone ‘such as you and I’, would not be capable of performing such atrocities, such unimaginable horror. A focus on this psychopathology of perpetrators, the idea that perpetrators possess a ‘criminal personality’ or an extraordinary personality in general, reveals more of our own personal vision on how one wants the world to work, a personal dream, then that it is a truthful reflection of reality. This way of thinking helps to create an emotional distance between ‘them’, the perpetrators, and ‘us’, ‘normal human beings’, helps to believe that these mass murderers are intrinsically different from you. This does not create answers within the reality of perpetrator behaviour, but serves emotional needs of people whom cannot cope with the ordinariness of perpetrators.22 In fact, a broad and strong consensus dominates the social sciences, more specific: perpetrator-focused research, that ‘ordinary men’ can and do commit genocidal crimes. 23 There are no personality traits that distinguish genocidal perpetrators from other human beings,24 there is nothing a priori that would predict the average perpetrators to commit violence. Heterogeneous, complex and mutability all characterize the perpetrators of mass violence. 25 The majority therewith is not composed of pathological killers, albeit a small percentage of the killers, roughly the same as in society in large, say five percent, may indeed ‘show psychopathologies that make them impervious to the suffering of others and even cause them to enjoy it’. 26 To cite Bloxham: ‘..while personal disposition and/or belief seem generally to be insufficient to forestall involvement in genocide or persecution if the ‘right’ socio-political context is in place, character and personal attitude assuredly can influence the zeal the perpetrator brings to the task..’27 This research does not focus on these zealous killers. One can imagine that pathological killers flourish during genocidal events, it lies in line with expectations. The limits of our understanding, however, are sought up when we acknowledge that the majority of operating masses within a genocide are composed of ordinary men.

21 F. Chalk, K. Jonassohn, The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies, New Haven: Yale University Press (1990), p 28. 22 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2007), p 20. 23 For instance: Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of , New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 19.; Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 426; and Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.188-189. 24 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 19. 25 Evgeny Finkel, Scott Straus, ‘Macro, Meso, and Micro Research on Genocide: Gains, Shortcomings, and Future Areas of Inquiry’, Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal, nr.1 (2012), p.62. 26 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 19. 27 Donald Bloxham, ‘The organisation of genocide: perpetration in comparative perspective’, in: O. Jensen, C.C.W. Szeynmann, ed., Ordinary People as Mass Murderers: Perpetrators in Comparative Perspective, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p 187.

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The term ‘ordinary men’ was adopted by Christopher Browning in his marvellous work regarding Police Battalion 101, which showed the effect of social context on individual choices and actions, the importance of a cultural background of shared convictions and sentiments regarding ‘other people’ on the one hand, 28 and exhibited simultaneously the ‘ordinariness’ of the perpetrators of mass violence, and how ghastly the work of killing at close range is. Something the Battalion of reserve policemen experienced when they marched thousands of Jewish civilians into the forest near Józefów and shot them in the back of the neck. For ordinary men, to be able to carry out such a shocking act of cruelty, a mental blockade needs to be penetrated. A psychological barrier also is raised when a person has to kill someone who is regarded as occupying the same ‘moral universe’ as oneself, therefore this person is entitled to the same norms of protection.29 But what is perhaps the most difficult, and perhaps the most difficult to imagine, is to kill a person who is a known one and one regards in positive terms, for ‘killing kith and kin is more than just a physical act; it is an act of social violation. It destroys not just bodies, but bonds’.30 This intimate mass killing – mass violence against one’s own neighbours, friends, and/or family – was not infrequent to the , as the example of Dragan Nikolić showed. People who before the war were neighbours, who shared coffee and drank Rakija – the popular fruit brandy, often made of plums– together, whose children played together and fell in love. These people were intimate before the war, something almost impossible to detect during the conflict.

This research aims to find ‘context and motive for murderous behaviour’. Herewith it builds upon the psycho-sociological theories – based upon the assumption of inclinations and propensities common to human nature, but not excluding cultural influences – which provide important insights into the behaviour of the perpetrators. 31 Interviews, statements and pleas before the ICTY show valuable insights in both the situations in which the perpetrators found themselves, as of the background of the individuals; in what situations did they perpetrated their atrocities, how do they look back at it, why did they do it? It enables a level of understanding within the lowest-levels of analysis and grants us valuable insights within the complex social and political influences that affect motivations of respective perpetrators. So, the aim is to understand the actions of individuals, for their reasons to perform genocide remain uncertain. Genocides are ‘performed’ by the masses, though from a rationalist perspective, popular participation in mass slaughter is baffling for conditions of peace are preferred for the masses above situations of violence. Likewise, support from the masses for elite projects of genocide or ethnic cleansing is incomprehensible, for it is the masses who endure most of the costs, and elites,

28 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, p. 35. 29 Helen Fein, Accounting for the genocide: National responses and Jewish victimization during the Holocaust, New York: Free Press (1993). 30 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.3. 31 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.221.

16 who gain most of the benefits.32 Logic therefore does not explain the isolated behaviour of the individual in the run-up towards a genocide. Therefore it is necessary to involve other ‘scopes of research’ within this research. For this aims to be a micro-level research, but what is a sole perpetrator without its group, what is a group without steering from the capital based elite?

Two of the most postulated pathways to mass violence are the models of ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘ethnic fears’. The ethnic hatred thesis views collective hatreds as an ‘integral part of ethnic group identities, which can ‘simmer’ for generations, through myth, memory or both, until someone pushes the lid of the pot, at which point, they may ‘erupt’ or ‘explode’ into mass-led violence against the hated group’.33 The ethnic fear thesis focuses not on cultural constants, but is ‘focused on elite ambitions and moves’. Elites foment mass fear of the ethnic ‘other’ using extremist media, organized riots, arbitrary arrests, and other know techniques, in pursuit of their political goals’.34 This Ethnic fear mobilizes and fuels ethnic hatred to create an antagonism between ethnic groups, in the advantage of the state. I act in accordance with Fujii and propose to view this ‘state-sponsored ethnicity’ not as an external force that acts on people, but as a ‘script’ for violence that people act out. Where a script is referred to as play, whose performance constitutes an event or a moment in daily life.35 The architects of this script are usually threatened elites in the capital, for these groups genocide, or mass-led violence in general, is perceived to be the best strategy for maintaining power. 36 It can become ‘equally or more murderous when the motive is revenge, and descend to the worst levels of slaughter when there is great fear that the survival of the enemy group might endanger the survival of one’s own group’. The most perverse of genocidal killings surfaces if a group feels that the very presence of ‘the other’, tarnishes the environment that ‘the other’ must be exterminated to make ‘normal life’ possible again.37 To achieve this, the text, or script, works as a plan to create a new social and political order, which ensures the political goals of the powerful groups in the capital. Through controlled channels, party rallies, meetings and mass media, they try to make others see this world as well.38 In this sense, a genocide, campaign of ethnic cleansing and other forms of mass-led violence against a hated group, is not a home grown project; it is sponsored and conceived by a small group of powerful extremists which want to maintain/expand their power through mass violence.39 By the creation and the dehumanization of ‘the other’, mass-led violence is explained as an instrumental

32 Rui de Figueiredo, Barry Weingast, ‘Rationality of Fear: Political Opportunism and Ethnic Conflict’, in: Barbara Walter, Jack Snyder, ed., Military Intervention in Civil Wars, New York: Columbia University Press 1999, p.262. 33 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.4. 34 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.4. 35 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12. 36 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12. 37 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), p.2. 38 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12. 39 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.2.

17 component, located in the desire of political leaders to gain power.40 For local leaders and powerholders this text, or script, is not a set of instructions or a list where they can systematically check the boxes. The script is rather an opportunity for local leadership, to express, gain or reclaim power within its communities; ‘to profit from the moment, motivated by personal, not ideological, interest’.41 To apply their own interpretations to the text, in order to get the best out of the situation given to them, for them. An example hereof is visible during the implementation of the Dayton peace agreement. This may seem as a contradiction, for a peace agreement is the end of a conflict and the broadcasting of the script marks the beginning or the run-up to a conflict. Yet, the problems the United States and NATO officials had with the implementation of the political clauses of the agreement show the opportunity conflict offers for local leadership and therefore exemplifies their willingness to accept and implement the division the script proposes – either on the basis of religion, ethnicity or social status. ‘The cease-fire holds because each of the Bosnian factions is led by authoritarian-nationalist figures, who can give an order to halt the fighting and it will be obeyed right down the line. The reason the political clauses are not being implemented is because they threaten the power bases of many of these same leaders, who have an interest in keeping Bosnia divided and the conflict defined in nationalist terms to insure their hold on power’.42 Another example of the importance of local leaders and powerholders was visible in Rwanda, where at neighbour level, the most important actors were local leaders. Local leaders who had the backing of their ‘bourgmestre’ or higher level officials were responsible for organising their communities for violence. Despite the extremist leanings of their patrons or backers, leaders where not necessarily true believers. Local leaders sought power. Genocide, in this sense, was a means, not an end. 43 In times of crises, people are inflamed with fear and hatred, driven by the insecurity and opportunity of the moment. Once these emotions are in play, they drive Serbs to kill Muslims, Muslims to kill Hindus, and Hutu to kill Tutsi. Immitigably, these steps follow each other up. Motives and interests become immaterial to the outcome, under the conditions imposed by the crisis, motives and interests converge. They become shared by all members of the same ethnic group. There is group wise identification with and disidentification from other human beings. [emphasis embedded in original text]44 This convergence is exactly the build-up the masterminds of these projects had in mind: masses of one group go after masses of the other.45 Herewith, the local leaders and powerholders fulfil the role of director of the play, written by the national-level elite.46

40 Kristen Renwick Monroe, ‘Cracking the Code of Genocide; the moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust’, Political Psychology, nr. 5 (2008),, p.701. 41 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda Cornell University Press (2009), p.129. 42 Thomas Friedman, Foreign Affairs;The Real Bosnia Debate, New York Times, May 8 1996. 43 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.129. 44 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 36. 45 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.5. 46 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.12-13.

18

Notwithstanding, a play is nothing without its actors. The director is dependent on the actors – their skills, interests and commitment level. The reasons for joining ‘the play’ are different for everyone; some of the actors are truly supportive of the cause, believe in it. Some of the actors are forced to join, or see it as the easiest way to survive the conflict. Others may have different reasons to join. The vision of the director, nonetheless, is dependent on how well the actors perform their roles. 47 State sponsored ethnicity as a script for violence, not a cause, alters our view of ethnicity. If ethnicity operates as a script, we can expect its ‘actors’ to have a differentiating response to this script; ‘perpetrators’ are not a monolithic group without distinction. Whereas this both can be between individual actors or between individual ‘performances’ by respective actors. For, an actor can be more convincing or ‘close to the text’ in some instances than another. So, where Browning and Hilberg use a spectrum of roughly three variations of perpetrators; from enthusiastic participation, through dutiful, nominal, or regretful compliance, to differing degrees of evasion.48 This research acknowledges that every perpetrator fits somewhere within this spectrum, but emphasizes the possibility of one actor shifting back and forth alongside this spectrum, differing from situation to situation. Therefore, by conceptualizing state sponsored ethnicity one can ‘disaggregate the violence and investigate the complexities and ambiguities embedded within the genocide’.49 These arguments are not meant to reduce the vehemence of the atrocities or to shift responsibility for that matter. They show how the populist appeal of politicians can incite violent passions against ‘rival groups’ and provoke those groups to take a defensive stance against opposite groups in other to defend themselves.50 That politicians can see opportunities for themselves in rallying support by creating antagonism between groups of different ethnic, religious, or class backgrounds, for instance after the fall of authoritarian or dictatorial regimes or similar power vacuums of that nature.51 Within this research by and large it is necessary to move beyond the typing of perpetrators as evil or as inhumane. By demonizing and dehumanizing perpetrators, we thereby engage in the very same processes that helped to make their crimes possible in the first place, for perpetrators often minimize and diminish their victims to help justify their behaviour.52 The most extreme form of this diminishing is dehumanization; ‘the Nazis, for example, branded the Jews as, inter alia, ‘parasites’, ‘vermin’ and ‘demons’; in ’s Cambodia, those identified by the Khmer Rouge as ‘enemies of the people’ were labelled as ‘sub-people’ (anoupracheachon); during the

47 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.13. 48 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.221; and Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims and Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933–1945, New York: Harper Perennial (1992), p. 51. 49 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.13. 50 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 45. 51 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 45. 52 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2007), p 107.

19 genocide in Rwanda, Tutsis were denounced as ‘cockroaches’ (inyenzi); and the late Serbian paramilitary leader Željko Ražnatović, better known as , referred to the Bosnian Muslims as ‘wild dogs’.’53 By emphasizing the fact that a genocide is performed by normal people, like you and me, we are forced to carry out further research into the causes, instead of simply shifting them to acts performed by psychopaths and pathological killers. We are obliged to see the perpetrators as human beings, for ‘by robbing the perpetrators of their humanity, we thus regard them in the very same way that they viewed their victims’.54 In order to understand perpetrators, a degree of empathy for them is inherent. This can be seen as an evasion, a way to shift attention from the horrors. Trying to understand the perpetrators of violence can be seen as the first step to simply forgive them for their atrocities. To explain away or to minimize the significance of by or as if by explanation. Browning parries this criticism by rejecting the old clichés that to explain is to forgive, to understand is to forgive. Explaining is not excusing; understanding is not forgiving. Not trying to understand perpetrators as human beings would make this study, and any perpetrator bases studies, impossible, if one wants to go beyond one dimensional caricature.55 About this the French Jewish historian Marc Bloch, who himself was captured and shot by the Gestapo for his work in the French resistance, wrote:

When all is said and done, a single word, understanding is the beacon light of our studies. 56

53 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), perpetrators, p. 424. 54 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 424. 55 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p. xviii Preface. 56 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p. xviii Preface.

20

Concepts

Ethnicity and anti-Semitism

The ’ definition of genocide, which is ‘the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group’,57 obliges us to think about ‘ethnicity’, or anti-Semitism or any other sort of hatred towards a minority, as the primary reason for genocide. In the forthcoming section both the problem with this focus on ethnicity, with its presumed authority over genocide in specific and mass violence in general, and the problems of the limitations in the manner the ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘ethnic fears’ models treat key concepts, such as ‘the masses’, ‘elites’ and ‘ethnicity’, will be discussed on the basis of the rhetoric as formulated by Fujii. The latter will be the outset of this section.

The ‘ethnic hatreds’ and ‘ethnic fears’ models, both take a bird’s eye view of the dynamics that support violence. From afar it is facile to perceive all political conflicts to be of an ethnical nature and concluding thereof that ethnicity is the primary source of violence, instead of one of the several possibilities among many other factors.58 Next to this, the previous sections have demonstrated the problems with perceiving certain groups as ‘a monolithic whole without distinction’, hence treating ‘the masses’ as such an undifferentiated whole conceals the distinctions within this group. Some members might be more ambitious or more passive, some might have ties with ‘elites’ and some not. 59 The tendency to view groups as to be unitary actors is a limitation perceptible in the treatment of the concept of ethnicity by the models. Members of ethnic groups are not necessarily unitary actors which behave in the same manner under conditions of threat or insecurity, nor do all its members share the same interests and goals. 60 Conjointly, ‘privileging ethnic divisions over other types of cleavages’ not only risks omitting other factors which might serve as a cause for conflict, but it comes close to accepting the ideas of hyper nationalist leaders, who require people outside of their country to believe that the conflict within their borders is ethnic rather than political. This reframing of political problems as ethnic is, according to Fujii, done with consideration and intent. For ‘deeply entrenched ethnic problems require radically different solutions than political contests’. 61 That political violence can be ethnic is well established, maybe too well established. But why people like Dusko Tadic, who was portrayed by the Defence as ‘an intelligent, responsible and mature adult raised by his parents in a spirit of ethnic and religious tolerance and capable of compassion towards and sensitivity for his fellows’62, became a perpetrator of ‘’ remains a

57 Helen Fein, Social Recognition and Criminalization of Genocide, Current Sociology, nr.1 (1990), pp.1-7. 58 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.9. 59 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.9. 60 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.10. 61 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.10. 62 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Tadić (IT-94-1).

21 conundrum. This research argues that genocidal scripts create divisions between certain groups within society, albeit based upon a distinction in ethnicity, religion or social status. Ethnical hatred did not create genocidal violence, for genocidal mass murder is politically motivated violence.63 This is also perceivable in Nazi-Germany, where it was defeat in World War I and the subsequent economic crisis which brought the Nazis to power, not Anti-Semitism.64 After that, the legitimizing and organizing of mass murder on a staggering scale was not exclusively dependent on Anti-Semitic motivation of the perpetrators and the Jewish identity of the victims; seventy to eighty thousand mentally and physically handicapped Germans; tens of thousands of Polish intelligentsia; tens of thousands non-combatant victims of reprisal shootings; more than two million Russian POWs were murdered by the organized mass murder machine of the Third Reich.65 The absence of ethnic motives to kill are also perceivable with Darko Mrđa, who was a member of the so-called ‘intervention squad’, a special Bosnian Serb police unit in the town of , Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. The absence of ethnic divisions in pre-war Yugoslavia is clear, from his point of view:

Frankly speaking, until the very last moment I believed that I would be a member of a generation that would live its lifetime in peace. I grew up in a socialist system. At school I learned about between various peoples living in my country. However, I knew that a number of my ancestors perished in the previous war. I knew about the Jasenovac camp66. However, at the time I was convinced that that was part of a distant past, something that did not concern me. I had peaceful relationships with my neighbours, Muslims and Croats. We lived together and socialised together, and I even had girlfriends that were non-Serbs. 67

Dragan Kolundžija – a guard shift commander at the notorious Bosnian Serb-run Keraterm detention camp in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 – is of the same mind: Before the war, I socialised with all people. I was friends with everyone, regardless of their nationality and faith. Even today, I have no prejudice in that respect. I am aware now that at the time I was a tool in the hands of others, and this I deeply regret.68

Political violence can be ethnic, although the citations above contradict that these actors had ethnic motives for participating in the violence. Kolundžija even considers the cause of his participation in

63 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), p.17. 64 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 44. 65 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.203. 66 Jasenovac was a concentration and in during the Second World War. It was established and operated by the Ustaše regime of Croatia, not by the Nazi’s. Although the estimates vary, presumably between 77.000 and 99.000 people died in Jasenovac. 67 The Prosecutor v. Darko Mrđa (IT-02-59). 68 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Sikirica, Damir Dosen and Dragan Kolundzija (IT-95-8).

22 violence to lie outside of his own grasp; he was a mere tool in the hands of others. This is a sharp contrast, with the image of hatred towards the targeted group, simmering for generations.

In the forthcoming section the distinction will be made between what this thesis considers acts of genocide, what as acts of ethnic cleansing and what not, in order to clarify the concepts within this study and to distinguish different actions perpetrated within the context of the Bosnian war. This will be done on the basis of both literature and a connecting case study.

23

In order to understand the behaviour of perpetrators of mass atrocities it is important to not only define what possible causes for genocide are, but also what this research considers as acts of genocide. What are the limits within we study genocide and where we begin to study, for instance, ethnic cleansing or civil war? But also; who are perpetrators of mass atrocities, who are genocidal killers and who are neither? At first sight it is easy to brand some people as victims and others clearly as perpetrators, but in the chaos of genocide, the desperation of conflict, in the midst of a devastating crisis, where people are torn between choices in order to survive, are distinctions as easily made as one might perceive it? The forthcoming section will begin to discuss the concept of genocide, afterwards the concept of ethnic cleansing, after which a case study follows.

Genocide and the dynamics within

The United Nations’ definition of genocide, ‘the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group’,69 is only applicable if one is studying genocide from a state-level view. To define if a conflict as a whole ‘qualifies’ for the predicate ‘genocide’. It does not clarify which acts can be constituted as acts of genocide. However, this does indicate the dynamics of typing certain events as ‘genocidal’ or not; the crime of genocide has two elements: intent and action. Where intentional means purposeful, it can be proven from certain statement or orders. There must be intent to destroy in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group. This is derived from a systematic pattern of coordinated acts. Intent is different from motive. Whether the motive is land expropriation, national security or territorial integrity. If the perpetrators commit acts intended to destroy a group, even part of a group, it is genocide. Genocide needs not to encompass the desired destruction of an entire ethnic group, ‘destruction of only part of a group (such as its educated members, or members living in one region) is also genocide’. This can be drawn wider: an individual perpetrator may be committing genocide even if he kills only one person, so long as he knew he was participating in a larger plan to destroy the group. Acts of genocide need not kill or cause the death of members of a group, it is for instance a crime to plan or incite genocide, even before killing starts, and to aid or abet genocide. Criminal acts include conspiracy, direct and public incitement, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the targeted group, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide.70 Therefore, this research defines genocide in broad terms – as anyone who took part in any activity that related directly to the genocide (as opposed to the civil war). These activities include searching for members of the targeted group to kill, denouncing the hiding places of members of the threatened group and raping members thereof .They do not include such activities as carrying supplies for the regime’s army, fleeing one’s home because of war-fighting or the forcible removal of members of the threatened group from their homes. The definition must be broad to

69 Helen Fein, Social Recognition and Criminalization of Genocide, Current Sociology, nr.1 (1990), p.1. 70 Gregory H. Stanton, ‘What is Genocide?’, http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/whatisit.html, accessed on June 15, 2018.

24 capture all the different ways people participated in the genocide, but narrow enough to differentiate genocidal violence from war violence – despite the fact that genocidal leaders did their best to link the two into a seamless whole – and campaigns of ethnic cleansing. 71 Within this research, testimonies of perpetrators of mass atrocities are included. Whilst within this research a distinction is made between war, genocide and ethnic cleansing, this distinction is not necessarily true for the respondents/perpetrators.72 If I mention ‘the war’, I refer to the struggle between the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and those of the self-proclaimed Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat entities within Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Herzeg-Bosnia which were led and supplied by and Croatia, respectively. For the respondents/perpetrators, acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing may be perceived as being a part of the war as a whole. Renwick Monroe describes three types of people in a genocide: rescuers, bystanders and perpetrators. Where she argues that the boundaries between rescuers, bystanders and perpetrators are more porous in reality.73 Albeit these categories are useful to typing certain actors in certain settings, genocides are dynamic, while categories are static. In dynamic settings, contexts and conditions change, sometimes in an instant. These changes, in turn, can shift actors’ relations, perspectives, motives, and identities. Static categories cannot capture these shifts.74 Therefore, whilst these typifications are inescapable – they have the natural tendency to clarify the role of actors in a given situation -, they are not more than just that; a typing of a certain actor in a certain situation. They do not distinguish between different levels of moral or legal culpability.75 Primo Levi argued that although human beings have a natural desire for ‘clear-cut distinctions’, the history of the death camps ‘could not be reduced to the two blocs of victims and persecutors. He proposes a ‘grey zone’ between simple images of perpetrator and victim, the grey zone of corruption and collaboration that flourished in the concentration camps of Nazi-Germany. From low-ranking functionaries having minuscule advantages, through the truly privileged Kapos (prisoner functionary or Funktionshäftling) who committed the worst atrocities – in the sense that they were used by the Nazis to take care of the ‘dirty work’. Perhaps the most gruesome and compelling example of the defectiveness of static categories are the Sonderkommandos. These work units were usually composed of Arbeidsjuden, who were forced under threat of their own death, to aid with the disposal of the gas chambers victims.76 In Levi’s opinion, the Sonderkommandos were National Socialism’s ‘most demonic crime’.77 Levi focussed on the spectrum of victim behaviour within the grey zone, but he suggested this grey zone

71 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.14. 72 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.15. 73 Kristen Renwick Monroe, Cracking the Code of Genocide; the moral psychology of rescuers, bystanders, and Nazis during the Holocaust, p. 422. 74 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.8. 75 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.14. 76 Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, New York: Summit Books (1989), p.36-39. 77 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p. 186-188.

25 might be applicable to perpetrators as well. Albeit the grey zone of Levi might be applicable to both perpetrators as victims, it must be perceived with caution. ‘Perpetrators and victims in the grey zone were not mirror images of one another. Perpetrators did not become fellow victims in the way some victims became accomplices of the perpetrators. The relationship between perpetrator and victim was not symmetrical. The range of choice each faced was totally different.’78

We must not examine them strictly as perpetrators, but look at the range of actions they took, both in support and defiance of the atrocities.79 An example hereof in the Bosnian War is Damir Došen. He was a guard shift leader at the Keraterm detention camp in 1992, the camp was located in a former ceramics factory and storage area complex located just outside the town of Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina. He permitted the persecutions and violence towards detainees in the camp. This included beatings, rape, sexual assaults, harassment, humiliation, psychological abuse and killing. However, the amount of aggravation was limited in light of the restricted nature of his authority, and the fact that as a shift leader he often acted to improve the terrible conditions that prevailed in the camp. Damir Došen was sentenced to 5 years’ imprisonment: I wish to say that I was in Keraterm, that I was sent there as a reserve policeman, that I spent two months there guarding innocent people who were imprisoned there. I wish to say that at that time I was young, thoughtless, that I had lost a son, that I was caught in the chaos of war and death in which I found it difficult to find my bearings. The people who are imprisoned were my fellow townspeople. They were innocent and they were suffering grievously. I tried to help them, to make it easier for them, to talk to them, to protect them. The conditions under which they were imprisoned were below human dignity. I am guilty because I agreed to be in Keraterm. I am guilty because I did not help them more. For this I am guilty before God, before those people, and before you, Your Honours. I am sorry for every man who suffered, every family that lost a family member, every child that has lost a father. I am sorry for every mother who has lost a son. I want everybody to hear my words, especially my neighbours, who were imprisoned only because they were not Serbs. Evil happened, and evil must not happen again, nor must it be forgotten. I am conscious of all this today. I'm conscious that a man, however small and impotent he may be, must not allow himself to be overcome by lack of courage and that he must sacrifice himself in such situations. This is the only way in which we can help future generations to overcome injustice and inhuman actions. I hope that the Trial Chamber will give me a chance to return to my family and to my children, to return to my neighbours of all religious and nationalities, and I hope that we will again have an opportunity to live in my town of Prijedor with my fellow

78 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p. 187. 79 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.16.

26 townspeople with whom I lived and kept company before the war. I hope that we shall live together again in harmony, as we did before the war and before the evil that befell us.80

Even though one might perceive a guard Keraterm, one of the most horrible concentration camps of the Bosnian war, who agreed to be there and carried out the tasks that were asked of him to be a horrible human beings, whatsoever. The citation above shows how people can be drawn into a situation under false pretences, not fully aware of the situation, overall misinformed or simply naïve. This does not make their choices just or better, but it does give a valuable example of the possibility of one actor shifting back and forth alongside this spectrum, differing from situation to situation. Another example hereof is Dragan Kolundžija, who was aware of the inhumane conditions the detainees were kept in. He knew they were beaten, raped, sexually assaulted and killed, but made an effort to ease the harsh conditions at the camp for many of the detainees. Kolundžija was sentenced to 3 years’ imprisonment:

I would like to add my sincere human regret. I'm sorry for all the families of the people who were in Keraterm. All my life I tried not to do unto others as I would not like to be done unto me. About the existence of the camp, I learnt only when I was assigned there as a reserve policeman. Throughout the time I worked there, I viewed all people equally, regardless of whether I knew them or not. The events that followed demonstrated that I was naive. It is true that I complained many times about the conditions for the people in Keraterm, but I see that it was not enough. It is true that I allowed of my own will people to be brought food, blankets, and clothing for the detainees, but I see that that, too, was not enough. I prevented all sorts of harm to be done to the detainees. I see now that it was not enough, although this did not happen while I was so-called shift leader. I never protected only those people whom I knew. I think I acted the same towards everyone. For all my mistakes, I bear responsibility. It is true that the massacre in Room 3 happened in the night shift, when I was on duty. God is my witness that I tried everything to save the people, to prevent the crime, but unfortunately I did not succeed against a large number of armed people. For the rest of my life, I won't be able to forget that bloody night, nor will I be able to forget all that happened to my townspeople who were unjustly contained in the . It is hard for me to remember those people in those conditions and to realise that I didn't do more for them. I never wanted to stay in Keraterm, and I did not agree with the conditions, but I believed if I stayed, I could help to lessen the evil and to ease the suffering. As an ordinary reserve policeman, or the so-called shift leader, I thought I had done all I could. 81

Around 20–21 July 1992, Room 3 at the Keraterm camp, which had previously held residents from Kozarac, was emptied. New detainees from the recently cleansed Brdo area were incarcerated. For the

80 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Sikirica, Damir Dosen and Dragan Kolundzija (IT-95-8). 81 The Prosecutor v. Dusko Sikirica, Damir Dosen and Dragan Kolundzija (IT-95-8).

27 first few days, the detainees were denied food as well as being subjected to beatings and abuse. On the day of the massacre, witnesses observed the arrival of a large number of armed persons in the camp, wearing military uniforms and red berets. A machine-gun was placed in front of Room 3. That night, bursts of shooting and moans could be heard coming from Room 3. A machine gun started firing. The next morning there was blood on the walls in Room 3. There were piles of bodies and wounded people. The guards opened the door and said: ‘Look at these foolish ‘balijas’ – they have killed each other’. A truck arrived and transported the bodies away from Keraterm, there were 128 dead bodies on the truck. As the truck left, blood could be seen dripping from it.82 This was the ‘bloody night’ Kolundžija witnessed.

This research does not focus on personality traits, because the spectrum of perpetrators is too broad; their respective motives for perpetrating mass atrocities are not the same. Plus, personality-based accounts seem to imply that perpetrator behaviour is fixed and unchanging. However, perpetrators can both be cruel and kind, roles are not fixed. This section argued that genocides are dynamic, while categories are static. In dynamic settings, contexts and conditions change, sometimes in an instant. These changes, in turn, can shift actors’ relations, perspectives, motives, and identities. Static categories cannot capture these shifts.83 Therefore this study does not rely on personality, but focusses on circumstances and context. A key explanatory factor is context, that is to say ‘the particular circumstances within which a perpetrator’s crimes were committed’. Indeed, ‘personality itself cannot be viewed in isolation from the broader social milieu’.84

82 The Prosecutor v. Milomir Stakić (IT-97-24-T) 83 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours: Webs of Violence in Rwanda, Cornell University Press (2009), p.8. 84 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 430.

28

Ethnic cleansing

The horrors of ‘ethnic cleansing’ witnessed during the war in the former Yugoslavia found worldwide attention, upon which the western media adopted the term ‘ethnic cleansing’ ( ‘etničko čišćenje’ in Serbian) as a ‘novel in their presentation of the atrocities committed there between 1991 and 1995’. 85 Not only within the media the term gained attention, but also among scholars it received awareness and they began to consider forced migration. In spite of its ‘euphemistic character and its origin in the language of the perpetrators’86, ‘ethnic cleansing’ is now the widely accepted scholarly term used to describe the ‘mass-scale, violent, and permanent removal of an ethnically defined group from one territory to a perceived external homeland’.87 Ethnic cleansing or campaigns of ethnic cleansing are always directed at a certain group, defined either through its nationality, its ethnicity or both. The objective of ethnic cleansing is to permanently remove a group from its habitat, where the decision power whether someone is part of the group or not resides with ‘the state or the institution that carries out the process of ethnic cleansing’; to declare – or prove one holds – a different ethnicity, in order to prevent removal from one’s habitat, is not possible.88 ‘Ethnic cleansing is a modern, rationally planned administrative practice that needs to be steered from above’.89 Therefore it requires a modern administration which is usually operating within the framework of a state. 90

To distinguish ethnic cleansing from genocide, Philipp Ther first denominates the spatial dimension of ethnic cleansing. Ethnic cleansing always covers large areas and often large distances, there is a precise idea of territory where the removed group must be send to – usually imagined as an external ‘true national homeland’.91 Where the opposite is true for genocide, which often happens on the spot and where a territory the enemy group could be brought to is absent.92 Ther thereafter argues that another distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide could be made on the basis of its presumed primary intent. Where ‘the main goal of ethnic cleansing was the removal of a group from a certain territory’, and ‘the main intent of genocide the destruction and ultimate extinction of a nation’.93

85 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.141. 86 Gregor Thum, ‘Ethnic Cleansing in Eastern Europe after 1945’, Contemporary European History, nr.1 (2010), p.75. 87 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.141. 88 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142. 89 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142. 90 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142. 91 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142. 92 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142. 93 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142.

29

Hereafter he cites Jan Havránek, who compared the fate of the Czech Jews and the Bohemian Germans in order to draw a distinction between the two concepts: the ethnic cleansing of the German minority mainly ended in 1945, after crossing the Bavarian or Saxonian border in poverty. The Jews were led through Theresienstadt to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. 94 Although the powerful citation of Havránek indeed shows a strong difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide, Ther is somewhat too bold in his conclusions and should be more prudent. For genocide is the attempt to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group, it is wrong to think about genocide in terms of a continuum that goes from no group destruction to complete destruction. 95 So, a nation is not required, neither is the ultimate demise of an entire group. In addition; acts of genocide need not kill or cause the death of members of a group, it is for instance a crime to plan or incite genocide, even before killing starts, and to aid or abet genocide. Criminal acts include conspiracy, direct and public incitement, attempts to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. Where I would like to emphasize the public incitement, as being a criminal act linked to genocide.96 For the use of ‘genocidal language’, to create antagonism between groups with the objective to help the unleash violence, can be seen as a criminal act and/or an act of genocide. Nevertheless, intent is inescapably an important factor within the planning of a conflict and the denouncing of a conflict as a genocide and, anticipating the next section, campaigns of ethnic cleansing. For violence against civilians is common in civil war, but not universal.97 What distinguishes this violence is, as argued above, intent and motive. Where Ther continuously emphasizes the importance of numbers in the distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide98, I emphasize the importance of the use of language. For both ethnic cleansing and genocide are orchestrated from above, are planned. To ensure that others will see the world as they do, elites broadcast their ‘vision’ through controlled channels. The difference herein lies in the intent of the message; whether the leadership stresses the importance of simply ousting the enemy group from a certain territory, or creating an atmosphere of hatred against an enemy group, to an extent where ethnic violence is glorified and groups are incited to perpetrate mass atrocities against an enemy group. In the latter case, genocide should not be dispensed too easily. Although I am aware of the protected status of genocides, certain forms of ‘orchestrated violence’ are interpreted as campaigns of ethnic cleansing to avoid accountability and involvement for and by the international community. was, correctly, interpreted as a genocide. As a consequence hereof, the failure

94 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.142. 95 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, New York: Cambridge University Press. (2006), p.4. 96 Gregory H. Stanton, ‘What is Genocide?’, http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocide/whatisit.html, accessed on June 15, 2018. 97 Jessica A. Stanton, Violence and Restraint in Civil War: Civilian Targeting in the Shadow of International Law, New York: Cambridge University Press (2016), p.5. 98 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.143.

30 of the international community to respond in a timely and response manner ensured an intervention in Kosovo to avoid a repetition of the Bosnian case.99 Genocides simply hold a different legal status than ethnic cleansing campaigns, with corresponding obligations and responsibility for the international society, to qualify a series of events as a campaign of ethnic cleansing ensures that these responsibilities expire. What both concepts however have in common is that both are instruments for elites or ’evil states’, who are willing to ‘exploit ethnic conflicts in order to meet socio-economic goals which otherwise would have been harder to reach’.100 Therefore, the ‘scripts’ of Fujii as proposed earlier are also applicable to campaigns of ethnic cleansing, for both concepts – genocide and ethnic cleansing – are located in the desire of elites to ensure certain goals. Although this research does make a distinction between genocide and ethnic cleansing, it does emphasize that both are organized types of mass violence. In which individuals can become executioners trapped in genocidal situations101, or situations of mass atrocities in general.

According to Gregor Thum, there is still too little knowledge about the complex political and mass psychological mechanisms that led to forced migrations, about the interplay between governments and populations, the role of imperialist ambitions and the radicalising impact of war, or about the interconnections between ethnic and social conflict. 102 Although this research does not fill this void, it does stresses out the importance of further research within this field. For, even with the considerable attention it drew and still draws, further knowledge is required.

In the forthcoming section I will present a case study of the Bosnian war, to demonstrate both the questionable use of language of the, in this case study Serb, leadership, as to give an overview of the conflict in which the perpetrators, who ‘speak’ within this thesis, operated and perpetrated their mass atrocities; to present the (historical) context in which the Bosnian war came into being and the context it brought with it.

99 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.161. 100 Gregor Thum, ‘Ethnic Cleansing in Eastern Europe after 1945’, Contemporary European History, nr.1 (2010), p.81. 101 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 40. 102 Gregor Thum, ‘Ethnic Cleansing in Eastern Europe after 1945’, Contemporary European History, nr.1 (2010), p.81.

31

Case Study

The Bosnian war, 1992-1995, was part of the ; after the collapse of communism, the nationalist parties won the first multi-party elections in Bosnia and formed a coalition government despite having conflicting goals: Muslim nationalists want a centralised independent Bosnia, Serb nationalists wanted to stay in, the by -dominated, rump Yugoslavia, and the Croats wanted to join the newly formed independent Croatian state.103 The republics, in their attempt to obtain independence, wanted to preserve the old borders of the federation of Yugoslavia, whereas Serbian president Slobodan Milošević and his allies wanted to revise these borders by and with force in order ‘to carve out a sphere of power as great as possible’. Slobodan Milosevic controlled, manipulated or otherwise utilized Serbian state-run media to spread exaggerated and false messages of ethnically based attacks by Bosnian Muslims and Croats against Serb people intended to create an atmosphere of fear and hatred among Serbs living in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina which contributed to the forcible removal of the majority of non-Serbs, principally Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats, from large areas of Bosnia and Herzegovina.104 This manipulation of the state-run media, and the impact hereof, is visible in the statement made by Darko Mrđa, whose worldview before the war was not affected by presupposed ethnic divisions, but this was altered through the propaganda: In the beginning of the , things changed abruptly. Radio, television, press, everything was full of threats against Serbs and against Muslims, depending on whose media it was. Suddenly we started splitting along the lines of our thoughts and ideas at the time.105 For Milošević and his allies ethnic cleansing was a means to crush actual, and potential, resistance and to secure contested territories’.106 In 1992, the Croat and Muslim nationalists form a tactical alliance and outvoted the Serbs at the independence referendum. This outraged the Serb nationalists as the constitution stipulates that all major decisions must be reached through consensus. Hereafter a sequence of events eventually lead to the outbreak of the war and the Serbs quickly assume control of over half the republic. Ethnic cleansing is prevalent within the conflict, not only in the newly proclaimed Serb Republic but it is also widespread within both Muslim and Croat- controlled areas.107 Albeit ethnic cleansing can be perceived as a cause of changing frontlines, most of the ethnic cleansing in 1991 in Croatia and in 1992 in Bosnia was pre-emptive and therefore not connected to changing front lines. Especially in northern Bosnia and along the most important railway routes and roads to Serbia, the purpose of ethnic cleansing was to achieve a military victory that

103 ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina profile – Timeline’, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17212376, accessed on June 15 2018. 104 The Prosecutor v. Slobodan Milosević (IT-02-54-T). 105 The Prosecutor v. Darko Mrđa (IT-02-59) 106 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.158. 107 ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina profile – Timeline’, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17212376, accessed on 15 June 2018.

32 would last in a manner that it would consequently result in political domination.108 The Bosnian Serbs were supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and, initially, by the Yugoslav People’s army (hereafter: JNA), the latter rapidly got replaced by the , in Serbian: Vojska Republike Srpske (hereafter: VRS), which itself was founded from the remnants of the JNA. The VRS fell under authority of Radovan Karadzic and was commanded by Ratko Mladić, under their leadership, the Bosnian Serbs lay siege to Sarajevo, controlled by Bosnian Muslims. These Bosnian Muslims, unable to break through enemy lines, set up to defend surrounding Serb villages got stuck in Sarajevo, a deadlock. This impasse did not only result in bitter fighting, but mainly resulted in many atrocities being committed.109 In 1993, the tensions rose further and the conflict became even more complex. Muslims and Serbs formed an alliance against Croats in Herzegovina, where, as a result of the fighting, the cultural capital of Herzegovina, Mostar, was destroyed. This included the Stari Most (Old Bridge) of Mostar. The bridge had graced the city since it was built by the Ottomans in the sixteenth century and was one of the most exquisite pieces of Islamic culture in the Balkans. A monument which itself demonstrated the ethnic diversity within Bosnia, the long-time mosaic of cultures and ethnicities. The destruction of the Stari Most is a powerful symbol of the destruction of ethnic diversity by the Bosnian war. This alliance of Serbs and Muslims in Herzegovina were not isolated events, as mentioned, the conflict become even more complex; rival Muslim forces fought each other in north-west Bosnia and Croats and Serbs fought against Muslims in central Bosnia. This situation can almost be perceived as a Hobbesian kind of ‘war of all against all’, it exemplifies the calculated manner of dealing with ethnic divisions. From the perspective of the Serbian leadership for instance, ethnic divisions were less of an obsession when political power was undisputed, in these cases the authoritarian regime of Milošević tolerated the existence of subordinated minorities and of ethnic mixture.110 However, if this was not the case, his subordinates were ruthless in order to establish power. This macabre form of pragmatism seems as if Milošević had the situation under control and could adapt or adjust to certain events as he wanted it. However, Serbian military power should not be overestimated, they did not have enough men to dominate the entire spectrum of the war, which is visible in the vacuum of power they often left behind and in which paramilitary units like the infamous ‘Arkan Tigers’, led by Željko Ražnatović, rose. These units, strengthened by the absence of a strong, dominant entity within the region, did most of the dirty work of ethnic cleansing. Part of the appeal the Serbian leadership had, were ‘Serbian memories of the Second World War (WW II) and a seemingly defensive nationalism, which was de facto very aggressive’. After WW

108 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.160. 109 ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina profile – Timeline’, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17212376, accessed on June 15 2018. 110 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.159.

33

II, Tito, former leader of Yugoslavia, forgot the tensions of the war. There was no word about it. No trials. No justice. Life went on, like ethnic cleansing never happened.111 The propaganda of the Serbian leadership capitalized this in the beginning of the 1990s, and made the people believe that neo-fascist Croats and Islamist Bosnian Muslims endangered their family or their neighbourhood. These strong sentiments pushed these young men into the army, in order to defend their family.112 The fact that this threat perhaps was non-existing or not real, does not imply that the threat was not perceived as such by the men who eventually answered the call. For, in most twentieth-century and even contemporary cases of genocidal violence and mass violence, the conflicts between various communities were and are quite real and threatening. This cannot excuse mass violence, as the victims of mass violence are always disproportionately targeted defenceless non-combatants who political role is minimal; but ‘simply criminalizing perpetrators’ goes beyond the point that the perpetrators may feel desperate or threatened themselves.113 Perpetrators of mass atrocities are vicious, but it is important to understand the motivations, fears, and hopes of killers.114 These acts of propaganda or incitement of the public were not exclusively reserved to the central leadership, also local leadership participated, for instance Milan Babić, the former Prime Minister/President of the government of the self-declared Serbian Autonomous Region of Krajina, Croatia, later the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina in 1991-1992. Babić participated in a campaign of persecutions against non-Serbs. He was aware that crimes such as mistreatment in prisons, , forcible transfer and the destruction of property were being committed, and he knew that civilians were being killed in the course of the forcible removal. He participated and supported the military takeover of territories, encouraging and assisting in the acquisition of arms and their distribution to Serbs to further the campaign of persecutions. He made ethnically inflammatory speeches at public events and in the media and such propaganda helped the unleashing of violence against the Croat population and other non-Serbs.115 Due to the increasing tension and possibility of a humanitarian disaster the United Nations responded with the establishment of six safe havens for Bosnian Muslim civilians; Sarajevo, Žepa, Goražde, Tuzla, Bihać, and Srebrenica.116 After a period of relative stability in 1994 a last round of ethnic cleansing occurred in 1995. In eastern Bosnia, the Serbs wanted to get rid of the remaining Muslim enclaves to ensure as much territory as possible before the peace conference would present

111 Chuck Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance; One Family’s story of the War in Bosnia, New York: Norton (1998), p.36-39. 112 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.160. 113 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), Preface xii. 114 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), Preface xii. 115 The Prosecutor v. Milan Babić (IT-03-72) "RSK". 116 Marcus Tanner, ‘Bosnia's 'Safe Areas'’, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/bosnias-safe- areas-west-sets-the-stage-for-a-human-tragedy-the-creation-of-un-safe-refugee-zones-1490291.html, accessed on 15 June 2018.

34 itself. A rational choice, with the worst massacre of the war as a consequence: the genocidal killing of eight thousand Muslim men in and around Srebrenica. The ‘safe haven’ was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces under command of General Ratko Mladic. Despite the presence of Dutch UN troops, thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys were separated from their families and massacred. This crime against humanity, this genocide, it was a way for the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs to show that eastern Bosnia was theirs. NATO hereupon initiated air strikes against Serb positions in order to help Muslim and Croat forces make territorial gains, expelling thousands of Serb civilians on the way. 117 The conflict ended with the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in Paris. It created two entities of roughly equal size, one for Bosnian Muslims and Croats; the Bosnian Federation, the other for Serbs; the Republika Sprska. Within the boundaries of this Republika Srpska, as formed within the Dayton peace agreement, lies Srebrenica. The strategy of the Bosnian Serbs worked; eastern Bosnia is theirs.118

The Bosnian War, deriving from the case described above, was a textbook example of leadership creating antagonism between ethnic groups, in the advantage of the state. The power vacuum of the implosion of Yugoslavia enabled Milošević and his allies to profit from the moment. Mass-led violence was, in this sense, perceived to be the best strategy for enlarging their power. The script indeed worked as an opportunity for local leadership, to express, gain or reclaim power within its communities. This section demonstrated the scripts of mass violence to be applicable to the Bosnian war, on the meso-, and macro-level of analysis. The forthcoming section will begin to provide further understanding regarding the scripts of mass violence, hereafter it will provide an ethical statement, after which it will conclude by providing a counterfactual explanation of my theory of scripts of mass violence.

117 ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina profile – Timeline’, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-17212376, accessed on June 15 2018. 118 Philipp Ther, ‘Ethnic Cleansing’, in: Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2012, p.161.

35

Macro-level context

Whilst using Fujii’s scripts as a concept or tool to understand genocide and ethnic cleansing – or to help perceive, understand and research them –, this research intends to broaden the concept of Fujii’s script, or to enrich the knowledge about these scripts and their applicability within the research. Genocides are dynamic, the thinking about these extreme events therefore must be dynamic as well. Although there is a clear goal within the elite – to seize or maintain power and, primarily, to create a new order within their (desired) domain–, the way in which this goal should be achieved is not as set in stone as one might believe. There is near unanimity among scholars that nothing in personality predisposes the perpetrators more than anyone else to commit their murderous acts119, as aforementioned. Micro-level actors are being influenced by circumstances and the effects of war, the so called situational factors. This research argues that this ‘importance of context’ is also applicable to macro-level actors. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, the Endlösung (Final Solution), was not yet designed in the manner that Eichmann and Heydrich eventually designed it to be. The machine-like industrial slaughterhouses for human beings in Poland were ‘invented’ or ‘operationalized’ in 1941- 1942120, a staggering 8-9 years after the instalment of Hitler and his NSDAP. Even this barbaric zenith of inhumane masterplans was mostly an accumulation of ‘ad hoc and improvised measures in reaction to challenges and opportunities that the quickly moving war theatre presented.121 According to Michael Mann, the descent into barbarism does not happen at once – mass annihilation is only rarely the act of evil men plotting the demise of an entire ethnic group: ‘not even Hitler did so’122; neither Milosevic nor Tudjman ever intended things to go so far123; the was not as coherent, organized an premeditated as is usually argued.124 The final, most terrible steps may develop quickly and in unforeseeable ways, but the conditions that make them possible do not develop overnight. Knowing how they happen can lead to awareness of the coming danger. 125 Where this research has a corresponding image of the limits to the degree of premediated and completely thought out plans, there is an important disparity. Mann argues that ‘unintentionally, plans go awry, and when milder schemes are frustrated, extreme final solutions may follow.’ By emphasizing that the plans were ‘unintentional’, Mann weakens the very existing intentions of the leadership. Yes, plans may

119 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 19. 120 Wannsee Conference and the ‘Final Solution’, https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005477, consulted on 29-5-2018. 121 Arne Johan Vetlesen, Evil and Human Agency: Understanding Collective Evildoing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2009), p.44. 122 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005), p.7. 123 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005), p.424. 124 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005), p.139. 125 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), p.9.

36 indeed go astray. The Endlösung was not premediated in 1933, but the idea of the Judenfrage was. The fact that Hitler did not have the ‘solution’ for his ‘Jewish question’ does not imply that he did not want to get rid of them. Genocides are plotted by evil men to plan the demise of an entire ethnic group. His intentions did not change, the way in which his apparatus dealt with it did. The fact that plans, schemes, actors and entire regimes are under influence and are malleable helps to understand and study a genocide and mass violence in general. Mann mistakenly perceives this dynamic nature as a possible cause for genocide. The idea of a genocide was already in place, it was the manner in which it took place that altered. The Endlösung therefore must not be seen as the starting point of the Holocaust, the ‘Holocaust by bullets’ was already ongoing and to interpret this as a ‘milder scheme’ would be shortcoming in historical accuracy on the part of Michael Mann. Nevertheless, within this thesis emphasis is placed on the dynamic nature of all actors within a genocide, campaigns of ethnic cleansing or events of mass violence in general. Neither to shift responsibility, nor to stigmatize a conflict as an event that inadvertently ‘that went too far’. The emphasis is placed to be made aware of the changing and vigorous nature of conflict, at all levels. That is the starting point of this research, the angle from which the actors in the Bosnian war will be looked at.

Concluding, all actors within a conflict of mass led violence are dynamic; macro-, meso-, and micro- level actors are all under influence; by war, new ideas, new opportunities or new challenges. People adapt, even under the worst kind of situations imaginable. No matter where in the scope of Fujii’s scripts they are situated, wars compel actors to adapt. The challenge for the human sciences within the field of mass led violence against non-combatants goes with this; to accept this problem of contingency, to accept that there are various possible outcomes of – to elaborate in the Endlösung- example – Nazi intentions and policies on the persecution and later the extermination of the European Jewry.126 To accept this contingency-problem as a given and to adapt, or adjust, the concepts within one’s respective research and to overcome this problem. Nothing within the field of mass led violence against non-combatants is set in stone; to be conscious about this is a necessity – this however does not imply that there is no such thing as the most plausible explanation. To obtain this most plausible outcome, this research must zoom-in and zoom-out, vary between the different scopes of research. For a genocide or a campaign of ethnic cleansing does exist neither without a director, nor without its actors. To understand the behaviour of micro-level actors, one must understand its macro-level ‘puppet master’.

126 Alon Confino, Foundational Pasts: the Holocaust as historical Understanding, New York: Cambridge University Press (2012), p.4-5

37

Befehl ist Befehl

“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic; that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal.” 127

However this research puts emphasis on the importance of situational factors, the significance of context and primarily the idea of ordinary men performing extraordinary crimes. It must be stressed that the ‘masterminds’ of genocide and campaigns of ethnic cleansing do not fit into this ‘mold of ordinary men’. Perhaps the most striking example in this debate is Adolf Eichmann. He is appointed as ‘the banality of evil’ by Hannah Arendt in her well-known report on the Eichmann trial, which took place in the spring of 1961. The defence of Adolf Eichmann disguised his true nature behind a façade of banality; ‘the Nazi state was a mighty machine, manned by countless nameless, faceless bureaucrats and soldiers who were no more than cogs in the apparatus, obediently and unthinkingly doing whatever they were told, without much conviction of their own, except for loyalty to the system’.128 Whilst I have many objections to the conclusions of De Swaans work, he and I both disagree with this farce put up by the defence. Eichmann had been a fanatical Jew hater, he regretted nothing, but if they had killed all ten-point-three-million Jews, then he would have been satisfied. 129 This lies in line with the devotion Eichmann had towards Hitler specifically and National Socialism in general. He was ‘fanatically ambitious’ and ‘without a trace of conscience or empathy regarding his victims’. 130 Eichmann was the mastermind of the Holocaust, responsible for the ideas behind and the testing and operationalising of the isolation, , extreme exploitation, and final extermination of millions of people. This is not banal. The title of the Banality of Evil was later corrected by Arendt. She had meant to point out the banality of the evildoers.131 The term might be correct to use within the Holocaust, but not to describe a member of the elite responsible for the script which enabled perpetrators within the Third Reich to perform the most horrible scenario in human history. The minor middlemen of the Holocaust, they are ‘the banality of evil’,132 Arendt meant to point out. To expatiate this within this research, yes, there is

127 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York: Penguin Books (1994), p.252. 128 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 22. 129 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 21. 130 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 22. 131 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 23. 132 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 22-23.

38 a certain banality in Evil. Only the gravity of this field of research commands us to deal with the utmost care regarding such a characterization. Masterminds of genocide are not banal, regimes based on terror and obsequiousness that initiated mass murder for the sake of material calculations and power hunger are anything but trite. Perpetrators of violence against non-combatants are not banal, their pre-war psychology and demographical characteristics may be perceived as ordinary, their actions however are not eligible for this. Indeed, the bureaucratic apparatus behind the Holocaust perhaps might be defined as such. But roles within a genocide are often so fluid and subject to change that this characterization is more often inappropriate than appropriate. To emphasize again, in this research I do not want, under any circumstances, give the idea that I believe that perpetrators of violence are not responsible for their actions. The sole purpose of this research is to find mechanisms and dynamics that alter or change an individual to the extent of moving from nonviolent to violent behaviour. How ‘ordinary Hamburg men’ can become perpetrators of mass violence, the most gruesome form of cognitive stretching. To paraphrase Chirot and McCauley: ‘There is evil, there is good, but we will not merely condemn those who commit evil. Rather, we are going to try understanding why evil occurs, and why almost any group of human beings is capable of both good and evil..’133

I do however accept that this is a controversial subject. Genocides and mass killings are horrific and too often are relatable to people in a personal matter. Other researchers looking at the same documents, may have different findings or even disagree with my conclusions on the whole. In the forthcoming section I will discuss the view of several authors opposing my argument, both to show an alternative view to the nature of genocide as to invigorate, and hopefully further elucidate, my own argument.

133 Daniel Chirot, Clark McCauley, Why Not Kill Them All?: The Logic and Prevention of Mass Political Murder, Princeton: Princeton University Press (2010), p.10.

39

‘Brotherhood and Unity’

“I don’t give two cents about Bosnia. Not two cents. The people there have brought on their own troubles..’134

-Thomas Friedman

It almost seems to lie within human nature; immediately after a conflict erupts, the first authors and scholars appear on the scene to pin the blame of the conflict. During the Bosnian War, New York Times-journalist Thomas Friedman took a conservative stance and explained the responsibility of the conflict to the people of Bosnia, as if they did not have enough to endure. Herewith, Friedman follows a way of thinking which strongly resembles the train of thought of the German Sonderweg these. This theory in historiography emphasizes the ‘special path’ Germany has followed from aristocracy to democracy, the endpoint of which lay in the rise of the Third Reich. This ‘special path’ not only resulted in a preference for authoritarian leadership, but – according to Sonderweg theorists – also was accompanied by special traits, or unique flaws, in the German national character. 135136 Alan Taylor argued that the Nazi regime ‘represented the deepest wishes of the German people’137, herewith implying that the responsibility for the atrocities of the Nazi regime is attributable to the German people. Goldhagen in his turn argued that these ‘ordinary’ Germans – referring to Reserve Battalion 101– simply ‘wanted to be genocidal executioners.138 Hitler’s rise to power was an expression of German national character, and because Hitler and the Germans were ‘of one mind’ about the Jews, he simply had to ‘unshackle’ or ‘unleash’ their ‘pre-existing, pent-up’ anti-Semitism to perpetrate the Holocaust.139 140 So, the Nazi Party did not shape German attitudes and behaviour after 1933, it simply encouraged Germans to do what they wanted to do all along; the ‘Third Reich was a tyranny imposed upon the German people by themselves’. The Nazi’s did not implement their version of anti-Semitism into German society, for ‘anti-Semitism does not appear, disappear and reappear in a given society. It is always present, but it ‘increases or decreases’ according to changing conditions.’141 This to begin with is a remarkable observation, for Goldhagen does not believe that anti-Semitism is present in post-war Germany. Herein implying the war cleansed Germany of its anti-Semitist roots.

134 Thomas Friedman, ‘Allies’, , 7 June 1995, opinion page. 135 A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History, Hamish Hamilton (1945), p.213-214 136 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York: Simon & Schuster (1960), p.236. 137 A.J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History, Hamish Hamilton (1945), p.213. 138 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1996), p279, p.185. 139 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.193. 140 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1996), p.399, p.443. 141 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1996), p.39, p.43.

40

Furthermore, the phrase ‘ordinary Germans simply wanted to be genocidal killers’ implies that the experiences Reserve Battalion 101 had when they were send to Eastern Europe did not have influence on their behaviour, it was already present before. When the Battalion arrived on the Easter front, there they were charged with the gruesome task of extermination. But is it even plausible to suggest that this change in wartime situation and context did not alter the attitudes and behaviour of ordinary Germans in Eastern Europe? 142 Although not the entire German people actively participated in the large-scale assimilation of the Jewish minority, Goldhagen does place the responsibility hereof with the German people in general. For even if one was not actively involved in the assimilation of the Jews, they did nothing to stop it: ‘their silence should be interpreted as approval’,143 strengthened in this by Léon Poliakov, who argued that ‘even if not all Germans supported the Holocaust, it was ‘tacitly accepted by the popular will’’.144 Herewith not realizing that these wartime situation altered the living conditions of the German people. In times of war, people change their behaviour. For the most common strategy that people follow during wartime is neutrality, not unequivocal support for one side over another.145 Silence does not equal approval, as Chip Gagnon in his work on the Balkan wars explained: many people chose silence as ‘the least evil’ option.146 War creates fear, and fear did not push them – the people – into violence, but lead people to further retreat ‘into the private sphere’.147 People act according to the circumstances, a war creates dangerous circumstances, people react by shielding themselves, and their loved ones, from these dangers. Therefore, to become more self-centred is not only an act of self-defence, but foremost a mechanism to survive. I refuse to label or interpret this as an act of Evil. People react differently to the same incentives; Saul Friedländer described ‘onlookers’ in contrast to ‘activists’.148 Where the majority of the German population became an ‘onlooker’ in reaction to the anti-Semitic measures by the Nazis. It is true that these measures were widely accepted, under the condition that they were carried out in an orderly and legal manner. Violent events – which did not meet these conditions – for instance the Kristallnacht did receive a negative

142 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.202-203. 143 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust, New York: Alfred A. Knopf (1996), p. 439-440, p.592. 144 Michael Marrus, The Holocaust in History, Key Porter: Toronto (2000), p.86. 145 Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War, New York: Cambridge University Press. (2006), p.5- 7. 146 V.P. Gagnon Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War; Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (2004), p.27. 147 Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1987), p.372. 148 Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews; The Years of Persecution, 1933-1939, New York : HarperCollins (1997), p. 298, p. 327-328.

41 response.149 But, the fact that anti-Semitic measures were accepted did not mean that ‘ordinary’ Germans would approve, or even participate in, the mass murder of European Jewry, this cannot serve as a predict that the ‘onlookers’ in the build-up to the war would become the genocidal killers of the Endlösung of 1941-1942. What can be concluded is that the general population was ‘apathetic’, ‘passive’ an ‘indifferent’ for the fate of the Jewish minority.150 Something which lies in line with the conclusions of Gagnon on the Balkan War, where the people were pushed into the private sphere in reaction the violence, not because they supported the goal, but in order to protect themselves. At which a surplus of attention to the private sphere resulted in an indifferent reaction to the fate of a threatened minority. To cite Kershaw: ‘the Road to Auschwitz was built by hatred, but paved with indifference’.151 So, if these ‘evil-regimes’ do not represent the deepest wishes of the people, how do they emerge? In an attempt to shift the blame for the rise of these regimes from 'the people' elsewhere, Zygmunt Bauman has published a reflection on the Holocaust, which core message is that ‘the Holocaust is not some aberration of contemporary civilization’, but ‘a characteristically modern phenomenon that cannot be understood out of the context of cultural tendencies and technical achievements of modernity’.152 Modernity has a drive toward more rationality, which does not only tend to promote ‘humane and lawful modes of social existence’. It also facilitates the rationality for the excessive violence and the absence herein of any morality or ethics. 153 Mann argues that there is something in modernity that releases this particular evil on a mass scale: democracy. It hides in us, in almost all of us: ‘we are almost all capable of such evil- perhaps even of enjoying it.154 ‘Modernity’, this broad phenomenon encompasses almost everything within contemporary society. The causes for genocide or mass violence therefore of course lie within those boundaries, for everything studied by Human Science lies within those boundaries. A broad concept as ‘modernity’ itself does not explain anything, for it encompasses too much. This tendency to spread the blame and pin the guilt, not just on the regimes and their killers, but on the entire era to which they belonged is a strange evasion of responsibility. The responsibility of genocides and mass violence in general lies with national level

149 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.200. 150 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p. 200. 151 Ian Kershaw, ‘The Persecution of the Jews and German Public opinion in the Third Reich’, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook, nr.26 (1981), p.288. 152 Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1989), xiii, p.28. 153 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 41. 154 Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: explaining ethnic cleansing, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005), p.9.

42 masterminds, the architects of the scripts, who can be perceived as ‘cold-blooded people intent on a cost-benefit calculus rather than benighted fanatics’.155

Hitherto, this thesis has argued that mass led violence is orchestrated from above. Campaigns of ethnic cleansing, genocides or mass violence against non-combatants is a calculated manner for evil regimes to maximize their gains within situations that offer opportunity. In the forthcoming section, the scope of research will shift to individual actors within these conflict, to understand how ordinary people commit extraordinary crimes and if the claims of this research, that situational factors, context and group dynamics alter the state of mind of ordinary men and enable them to perform atrocities against defenceless non-combatants are true within the boundaries of the Bosnian War.

155 Mario Ferrero, ’The Rationality of Serb Leaders in the Bosnian War’, Defence and Peace Economics, nr.1 (2017), p.62.

43

Ordinary men

Or: ‘how ordinary people commit extraordinary crimes’

The prevalence of violence… does not mean that our species has a death wish, an innate thirst for blood, or a territorial imperative. There are good evolutionary reasons for the members of an intelligent species to try to live in peace.. Thus while conflict is a human universal, so is conflict resolution.156

If the perpetrators of genocide are not exclusively pathological killers, but in fact ‘ordinary men’, perhaps implies that our species as whole is ‘pathological’, has some kind of an innate thirst for blood, a natural desire to kill. Samuel Marshall, in his work Men against Fire, sheds a different light on the nature of human beings. He found out that of an infantry-unit, which engaged the enemy in a fight, only twenty five percent actually fired a shot. So seventy five percent of the soldiers, did not fire or would not persist in firing against the enemy. 157 These men are not cowards or deserters; they will face the same danger, but will not fight. Marshall held post-combat mass interviews with approximately four hundred infantry companies which fought in the Pacific and in Europe in WW II. On average, not more than fifteen percent of the men had actually fired enemy positions or personnel with rifles, carbines, grenades, bazookas or machine guns during the course of an entire engagement. Taking into account the dead and the wounded, assuming in their numbers the same proportion of active firers as among the living, the figure did not rise above twenty to twenty five percent of the total for any action. This can be deduced to the statement that it does not lie within human nature to kill, that a human being in fact has a natural repulsion against killing. But if killing is not explained by the pathological psychology of individuals nor by the nature of our species as a whole. What does explain the atrocities performed within conflicts of mass led violence? In this section it is a necessity to continuously change scope. Building on the arguments and way of thinking of the previous sections, it lies within expectation that group dynamics alters the behaviour of individuals and context influences both. Therefore, this section will begin with a trail of thought which has become almost foundational within perpetrator based research, the argument follows a fixed itinerary beginning with the Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures. Subsequently, it continues with the Stanford Prison Experiment of Philip Zimbardo. After which this standard procedure will be redeemed by the interpretation of these researches. Milgram and Zimbardo have been cited, quoted and used countless of times and perhaps may be perceived as no longer

156 Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, New York: Viking (2002), p.58. 157 S.L.A. Marshall, Men against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command, New York: William Morrow & Co. (1947), p.50.

44 applicable to contemporary research. Nonetheless, it offers tremendously valuable insights and works as a concept from which the idea of this research has started and this thesis further builds upon.

During the , after World War II, the issue of superior orders as a defence for war crimes arose. This ‘Nuremberg defence’ became famous by the German phrase ‘Befehl ist Befehl’ – an order is an order. The overlords of the Nazi regime, who ‘exerted themselves for years to see millions of people deported from home, worked to death in slave camps, and finished off by bullets or poison gas’,158 used this as a camouflage strategy to avoid responsibility and to dodge prosecution. These devoted and fanatical henchmen of Adolf Hitler were obsessive anti-Semites, and therefore this defence can be stigmatized as a façade to dodge responsibility. But can this plea to be not held guilty for actions ordered by a superior officer or an official be valid for perpetrators lower in rank? This ‘obedience to authority’ – deference simply as a product of socialization and evolution 159 – was tested in a series of, now famous, social psychology experiments by Stanley Milgram. Milgram tested ‘the individual’s ability to resist authority that was not backed by any external coercive threat’160 The naïve volunteer subjects, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, were instructed by ‘the experimenter’ – a scientific authority figure who was in charge of the session. The volunteer drew a slip of paper which assigned them to the role of ‘teacher’ in what they believed was ‘a scientific study of memory and learning’ - to see what the effect of punishment is on a subject's ability to memorize content. The other individual, who arrived simultaneously with the volunteer, who drew slips together with the volunteer and was assigned the role of ‘learner’ in this ‘learning experiment’, was an actor and accomplice of ‘the experimenter’. The volunteers were led to believe that they simply assisted in this ‘learning experiment’, whilst they themselves were the actual subject of the experiment. The ‘teacher’ was instructed to inflict a series of electric shocks to the ‘learner’. This actor/victim responded to the fake shocks by carefully programmed ‘voice feedback’- complaints, cries of pain, calls for help, and finally fateful silence. In the standard voice feedback experiment, two thirds of Milgram’s subjects were ‘obedient’ to the point of inflicting extreme pain. 161 162 Since Milgram conducted his study three months after the Eichmann trial, the trial both was a cause for the research as it was the event to which the results were linked to. Are the actions of perpetrators of mass atrocities explained by deference to authority? As Milgram commented: ‘After

158 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 20. 159 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.171. 160 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.172. 161 Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, New York: Harper and Rowe (1974), p.13-26. 162 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.172.

45 witnessing hundreds of people submit to the authority in our experiments, I must conclude that Arendt's conception of the banality of evil comes closer to the truth than one might imagine…That is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process…While there are enormous differences of circumstance and scope, a common psychological process is centrally involved in both [my laboratory experiments and events in Nazi Germany] ‘.163 However, several variations on the experiment offered different outcomes. If the actor/victim was concealed in order to avoid the subject to hear or see the actor/victim, obedience was much greater. If the subject could both hear and see the victim, submissiveness to the extreme fell to forty percent. If the subject had to ‘touch the actor/victim physically by forcing his hand onto an electric plate to deliver the shocks’, compliance fell to thirty percent. If a non-authority figure gave orders, obedience was none. If the subject did not himself inflict the shocks, but performed a supplementary task, obedience was nearly total. If the subject did not operate alone, but was part of a peer group – consisted of actors- who staged refusal to the authority figure, a tremendous amount, ninety percent, of subjects joined their peers and refrained from continuation. If the subject had complete discretion regarding the administration of shocks, all delivered consistently a minimal shock, a few sadists excluded. If ‘the experimenter’ did not directly surveil , many subjects ‘cheated’ and delivered lower shocks than the experiment set as a guide, even though they were ‘unable to confront authority and abandon the experiment’. 164 Milgram made direct reference to the similarities between the manner in which people behaved within his research as they did under the Nazi regime. ‘Men are led to kill with little difficulty’.165 He however was aware of the difference between the two situations. For, the outcomes of laboratory experiments must not be directly applied to real life situations, either way.166 Milgram’s subjects were not indoctrinated to believe that the victims were lesser beings or devaluated in any manner. Besides, Milgram’s subjects knew the ‘learners’ would not endure permanent psychical damage by the shocks. We cannot know with certainty if these men would perform in a similar manner outside of an artificial laboratory setting, a laboratory research simply does not hold that much authority. To participate in a research where one is aware of the limits of their actions, is something completely different than destroying human life in a setting that is far from artificial, but in fact very real. Nonetheless, the mutual reinforcement of authority and conformity seems to have been

163 James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2007), p.108. 164 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.172. 165 Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View, New York: Harper and Rowe (1974), p.7, p.177. 166 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 26.

46 clearly demonstrated by Milgram.167 The phrase ‘if the situation demands it, everyone is a murderer’ might be a bridge too far, but what does stand out is the ‘tacit and unquestioned faith in the goodness of science and its contribution to progress’. To act, simply because a person of authority tells you to do it. These findings offer valuable insights in human nature and are, to some extent, reducible to real life situations. For instance in the case of Sikirica; who was a security commander at the Keraterm detention camp in Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. He was aware of the inhumane conditions at the camp and he also knew that detainees were being beaten, raped, sexually assaulted and killed. Sikirica failed to prevent outsiders coming into the camp to mistreat detainees. He also killed one of the detainees in the camp by shooting him in the head. Sikirica was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. He explained that: when the war broke out, we had to go where we were told to go. We didn't have much choice. We could either obey orders, refuse to obey them, or desert. I was sent to Keraterm, although I would have preferred to go somewhere else at the time, because to go and work in Keraterm was the worst thing that could have happened to me.168

Where especially the perceived sense of absence of choice stands out. Sikirica had the idea, whether reasonable or not, that he had no choice. The people he refers to had such authority over Sikirica that he complied without consent. This submission to authority was also exhibited by Darko Mrđa, who desired peace and had a number of plans for his future; ‘the last thing on my mind was war and bloodshed’.169 But, in late spring 1992, I ended up in the intervention platoon of Prijedor Police. My neighbours and friends, Muslims, had to leave. I escorted and provided security to several convoys leaving Prijedor. I cannot say that Muslims fared well there, but I know that most of them reached their destination safely. In the morning of the 21st of August, I was told that I had to escort another similar convoy, we separated two busloads of military-aged men. They were killed at Koricanske Stijene between Skender Vakuf and Travnik. I participated in separating and killing these innocent people. I have sincere remorse with respect to that, and I wish to offer my sincere apology to all the victims and their families. I did not commit this because I wanted to commit this or I enjoyed doing this. I did not hate these people. I did it because I was ordered to do so. My commander, who enjoyed great respect and had a lot of authority, was present personally and issued these orders. In those moments, I could not muster up enough courage to disobey the order. I can tell you now what would have happened had I refused to carry out the order; I assure you that they would have killed me right then.

This obedience to orders out of fear of dire punishment as an explanation of perpetrating atrocities has a general problem; refusal to obey to kill unarmed civilians does not result in inevitable dire

167 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.175. 168 The Prosecutor v. Sikirica et al. (IT-95-8). 169 The Prosecutor v. Darko Mrđa (IT-02-59).

47 punishment. The punishment that on occasion does result from such disobedience is not compatible with the gravity of the crimes these men were asked to commit.170 Howbeit, the men present at the time did not know the punishment would not be so dire, they did not have the benefit of hindsight we have. For these men, it is perfectly possible that, at the time, they felt as if the consequences of disobedience would be death. This ‘putative duress’, undoubtedly accompanied with threats and taunts by ‘comrades’ who found more zeal in the task at hand, does explain the notion of Darko Mrđa that his superiors were planning to liquidate him in the case of refusal. Browning outlines the picture of zealous officers responsible for imposing this ‘putative duress’. This however is not necessarily true, as the case of Ivica Rajić shows. Rajić was a commander of units of Bosnian Croat soldiers based in Kiseljak, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993. He commanded forces that attacked and looted the village of Stupni Do, which resulted in the murder of at least 37 Bosnian Muslim civilians and the destruction of the village. The forces Rajić commanded also attacked the nearby town of Vareš and detained about 250 Bosnian Muslim men, physically and mentally abusing their families and other inhabitants, and sexually assaulting the women. 171

I knew that a large number of people that were under my command had suffered a personal loss, a loss of their family members or homes. I knew that there were people with their human faults. However, it was impossible for me to predict how each of them was going to react under war circumstances. I carried out my tasks with the people I had under my command, not the people I wish I had under my command. I never ordered a crime to be committed. I only ordered the implementation of what was necessary in terms of our operations. The attack launched by the BH army on Vareš lasted for several days. It was already ongoing. The HVO Vareš –Croatian Defense Council or ‘Hrvatsko vijeće obrane’ – asked for assistance, and in following orders, the orders given to me by my superiors, I did everything in my power to do what I could to save the situation. Unfortunately, certain individuals and groups did not respect the instructions received from their superiors and in that very difficult and unforeseeable development of events a crime took place. I would like to say that I did not order that crime to take place nor did it take place with my knowledge but it did happen. It was affected by individuals and groups to which I was superior.172

The citation above shows the limits of Milgram’s ‘obedience to authority’. Also without an authority figure compelling individuals, or giving them the sense that they were compelled, individuals and groups perpetrated atrocities. Even with their superior commander telling them not to. So, although Milgram’s obedience by authority, or the lessons learnt thereof, might work as an explanation in some

170 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.170. 171 The Prosecutor v. Ivica Rajić (IT-95-12). 172 The Prosecutor v. Ivica Rajić (IT-95-12). 48 instances of violence against non-combatants, there are more dynamics that influence the behaviour of perpetrators within a conflict of mass led violence.

For this research emphasizes the importance of situational factors over individual psychological characteristics it is almost inevitable to be concerned with Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford prison experiment. Zimbardo randomly divided a group of student volunteers into ‘prisoners’ and ‘wardens’ and placed them in a simulated prison. Although psychical violence was barred, it took only a few days for the students to ‘act according to script’173, with prisoners behaving in a submissive manner and guards producing ‘rapidly escalating brutality, humiliation, and dehumanization’.174 Zimbardo concluded that the prison situation alone was a sufficient condition to produce ‘aberrant, anti-social behaviour’.175 The eleven guards displayed a spectrum of behaviour; about one-third displayed a behaviour which can be described as ‘cruel and tough’. They seemed to enjoy the power which they were rewarded and constantly discovered new forms of harassment. The majority of the guards, the middle group, were ‘tough but fair’, they ‘played by the rules’ and did not seek manners to mistreat prisoners. Only two out of eleven guards became ‘good guards’, who did not punish prisoners and even provided the prisoners some small favours. 176 Zimbardo cancelled the experiment ‘before it would all have gone too far’. How the experiment would have ended therefore remains a mystery, perhaps the participants would have found a way to stop the escalation or perhaps they would have continued on this ‘slippery slope’. Similar to the Milgram experiment, it must be taken into account that it was an experiment and it cannot directly projected upon real life situations, however it does provide us with meaningful insights. Zimbardo concluded after his Stanford prison experiment that: ‘any deed that any human being has ever committed, however horrible, is possible for any of us.’177 And, ‘the line between Good and Evil, once thought to be impermeable, proved instead to be quite permeable’.178 In contrast to Milgram’s ‘obedience to authority’ the Stanford prison experiment general theme was ‘conformism to the group’. Interaction within the group may lead to the use of violence – or its rejection.179 Wherein, actors adopt the norms and rules of a given community, and as such are embedded in social environments, ‘which not only constrain and provide incentives to act, but also

173 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 31. 174 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.168. 175 Craig Haney, Curtis Banks, Philip Zimbardo, ‘Interpersonal Dynamics in a Simulated Prison’, International Journal of Criminology and Penology, nr.1 (1983), p.69-97. 176 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.168. 177 Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil, London: Rider (2007), p.211. 178 Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil, London: Rider (2007), p.195. 179 Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘Socialization and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.5 (2017), p. 592.

49 reshape interests and identities’.180 Therefore, when contemplating group dynamics as an explanation for ordinary men to become perpetrators of mass violence, not only dynamics as peer-pressure should be taken into account, but also the aforementioned process of socialization. For group dynamics can alter the way the actors within perceive their surroundings and themselves. The latter will be the subject of the forthcoming paragraph. What we can derive from Zimbardo’s experiment and studies of group dynamics afterwards is that ‘killing produced groups, and groups produced killings’. 181 The sense of ‘people tend to do evil because of where they are, not who they are’, can be seen for instance with the Hilfswilliger, willing helpers, who were recruited among the Soviet prisoners of war, POWs, from the border zones and herewith spared an almost certain death by starvation. They were ordered to exterminate Jews and partisans and did what they were told, and were as murderous as or worse than the German troops.182 This can also be noticed within the powerful, and one of the most complete and accurate, statement of guilt of Dragan Obrenović, the acting commander of the Infantry Brigade. Obrenović was convicted for persecutions carried out through the murder of hundreds of Bosnian Muslim civilians, committed in and around Srebrenica:

There was no choice. You could be either a soldier or a traitor. At the beginning of the war, it seemed as if the war and all it brought with it was impossible, that this wasn't really happening to us, and that everything would be resolved within a few days, and that finally our generation would have a chance. We didn't even notice how we were drawn into the vortex of inter-ethnic hatred and how neighbours were no longer able to live beside each other, how death moved into the vicinity, and we didn't even notice that we had got used to it. Death became our reality.

Unfortunately, it became everyday reality. Who before that could have believed that the horrors of war would have become everyday reality? Who could have believed that they could become a part of our lives? Surrounded with horrors, we got used to them and went on living like that. Among those horrors, things happened that were done by people who knew each other, people who, until yesterday, had lived almost as family members together. In Bosnia, a neighbour means more than a relative. In Bosnia, having coffee with your neighbour is a ritual, and this is what we trampled on and forgot. We lost ourselves in hatred and brutality. And in this vortex of terrible misfortune and horror, the horror of Srebrenica happened.

In our wartime sufferings, no one has come out as the winner; everybody is suffering now. On all sides, there is still pain. What has won the victory is misfortune and unhappiness, as a consequence of blind hatred. The spirit of this unhappiness still hovers over our Bosnian hills, which have suffered so much, and it will take years to wipe out the traces of this horrible war and to have smoke rise again

180 Jeffrey T. Checkel, ‘Socialization and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.5 (2017), p. 592. 181 Lee Ann Fujii, Killing Neighbours (2009), p.154. 182 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p.35.

50 from people's chimneys, from the hearths, and maybe decades will have to pass before the wounds in people's souls are healed. If my confession, my testimony, and my remorse, if my attempt to face myself contributes to the quicker healing of these wounds, I will have done my duty of a soldier, a fighter, a human being, and a father.183

Although one might argue that it is in the interest of Obrenović to diminish his personal responsibility over the crimes executed in and around Srebrenica and to put emphasis on the role of circumstances above personal traits. However, to put emphasis on the role of circumstances does not imply it takes away responsibility from the perpetrators, Obrenović himself strengthens this by stating that ‘my testimony and admission of guilt will also remove blame from my nation because it is individual guilt, the guilt of a man named Dragan Obrenović. I stand by this. I am responsible for this’.184 It shows the limitations of explaining perpetrator behaviour solely by focussing on personal traits, for the war is far more than an accumulation of individuals and individual behaviour; it is a dynamic state of euphoria. The testimonies before the ICTY also show a strong sense or general feeling of being trapped inside these situations e.g. with Dražen Erdemović, a soldier in the 10th Sabotage detachment of the Bosnian Serb Army in July 1995. He participated in the executions of hundreds of unarmed Bosnian Muslim men from the Srebrenica enclave: I have lost many very good friends of all nationalities only because of that war, and I am convinced that all of them, all of my friends, were not in favour of a war. I am convinced of that. But simply they had no other choice. This war came and there was no way out. The same happened to me. 185 Erdemović was one of the first people to enter a guilty plea before the Tribunal because he ‘wanted to help the International Tribunal understand what happened to ordinary people like myself in Yugoslavia’.

To explain how people are capable of performing atrocities, Ervin Staub created the concept of the ‘continuum of destruction’; a principle of habituation through action. According to Staub ‘genocide and mass killing do not directly arise from difficult life conditions and their psychological effects. There is a progression along a continuum of destruction. As part of this progression, victims are devalued, there is a reversal of morality—so that killing those perceived as ‘different’ comes to be seen as justified—and ‘perpetrators change and become more able and willing to act against victims’. So, when ‘the other’ is devaluated and described as ‘different’ or even as a threat to you and/or your surroundings, it becomes easier to kill. When this occurs, there is ‘a progression along a continuum of destruction’; if you have performed atrocities, when you are surrounded by atrocities and in fact the performance hereof is glorified and encouraged, the sense of what ‘is normal’ changes. You progress along the continuum of destruction towards the point where killing ‘the other’ is regarded as ‘normal’ or regular.

183 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Obrenović (IT-02-60/2). 184 The Prosecutor v. Dragan Obrenović (IT-02-60/2). 185 The Prosecutor v. Dražen Erdemović (IT-96-22).

51

Although this is plausible to some extent, this ‘slippery slope’ does not reflect the fact that a perpetrator can both be kind and cruel186. The behaviour of someone can actually shift between certain situations; it does not take into account the dynamic nature of genocides. However, the ‘continuum of destruction’ may be applicable to macro level actors – regimes or elites. Whilst the chiefs of a regime or the leadership just underneath, may have brief instances of being both good and evil. Or may sometimes show a dash of humanity, for instance SS man Muhsfeld of the Birkenau crematoria – infamous for inventions of cruelty during his daily ration of slaughter- whom, faced with the miraculous survival of a sixteen year old girl, briefly hesitated before he ordered the death of the girl, but quickly left before the ordeal was carried out. How horrible his actions and sadistic his nature, this hint of humanity shows the defects of the continuum of destruction on individual actors. However, these shadows of humanity generally do not apply for a regime as a whole. The stories of merciless reprisals on the last days of a conflict are unfortunately almost uncountable. This ‘path dependency’ of genocidal regimes invigorates the applicability of the ‘continuum of destruction’ for macro-level actors. Although Staub’s concept does not take into account the dynamic nature of genocides, his concept does provide valuable insights into changing perceptions on what is ‘normal’. The notion that ‘over a stretch of time an encompassing social situation may transform the dispositions of the people who live through that period’. 187 This can be made clear on the basis of the explanation of a paramilitary soldier, who was a member of Arkan’s Tigers, a Serbian paramilitary group who were responsible for a great number of atrocities in Bosnia. The young man lived a ‘normal life’ before the war, but why did he join this violent group and perpetrated crimes with them? He said: ‘It was war. And during war everyone was doing bad things. Bad became normal.’ 188 This changing perception of what is normal is also perceivable with Ranko Češić, who was a member of the Bosnian Serb Territorial Defence near Brčko, Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of a special police team at the Brčko police station in 1992. One of his tasks was to arrest specific non-Serbs and bring them to the police station or to the Luka Detention Camp for interrogation where he beat, humiliated, and murdered detainees. In total he admitted killing 10 individuals, two of whom died as a result of beatings and eight other were shot dead. He stated: ‘Looking back in time after so much time has elapsed since I committed those crimes, there is an enormous difference between my state of mind now and then. Now I would never do the things I did then, the things that took place in a time of euphoria, a time when all human dignity was abolished.189 Stewart explains this change in moral by pointing out that ‘after months of sustained fighting, war and death had become people’s reality, a fact

186 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 421. 187 Abram de Swaan, Killing Compartments; The Mentality of Mass Murder, New Haven: Yale University Press (2015), p. 34-35. 188 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 431-432. 189 The Prosecutor v. Ranko Češić (IT-95-10/1)’.

52 that changed the entire moral dimension of a land and its people. In some, the human spirit was completely transformed: what would have once been considered atrocious was now considered commonplace.’190 This ‘moral drift’ or ‘reversal of morality’191 can result in the change in perception of behaviour. Behaviour or actions one before considered wrong may be perceived as ‘right’ or ‘justified’ after months of sustained fighting, war and death. Ranko Češić continues his remark about another morality at the time of the conflict– in contrast to his state of mind during the court case– by stating that: ‘I will do anything to bring back the past and not to do what I have done. Since this is not possible, all that is left for me is to feel the deepest remorse for what I have done.’ 192 Robert J. Lifton concluded that the Nazi doctors of Auschwitz were able to do what they did because they repudiated their actions, assigned them to ‘another self’. The ‘Auschwitz self’ existed next to their ‘original self’, which remained unaffected by what they did during their work. Lifton branded this living with two selves as ‘doubling’; one ‘self’ did not know what the other ‘self’ did.193 With regard to the different state of mind, or altered morality, a distinction should be made between, on the one hand, the soldier habituated to violence, numbed by the act of killing or bitter by loss of a close friend in combat. Therefore becomes even more frustrated by the enemy, which after a while becomes less and less human and therefore causes the soldier to be more susceptible to have their revenge at the first opportunity. And on the other hand the men who carry out ‘atrocity by policy’194. In contrast to aforementioned the soldier, which was deposited in a mania through frustration and embittered by the war and its downsides, their actions are perpetrated from a calculated starting point. Their brutal behaviour originated not from wartime brutalization, but from orders from above. Therefore, the context of war must be taken into account.195 ‘Atrocity by policy’ creates a psychological distancing that facilitates killing, something which is applicable to, or has served as a key in the behaviour of, the majority of the perpetrators from the Bosnian War whose testimonies have been treated in this thesis.196 The idea that people are able to perpetrate atrocities when this psychological distancing is in place is consistent with the notion of mass-led violence as an instrumental component, located in the desire of political leaders to gain power. The idea that these campaigns of violence are rationally planned administrative practices that need steering from above. This ‘atrocity by policy’ puts ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances in which they are able to distance themselves from their victims

190 C.S. Stewart, Hunting the Tiger: The Fast Life and Violent Death of the Balkans’ Most Dangerous Man, New York: Thomas Dunne Books (2007), p.182. 191 Janine Natalya Clark, ‘Genocide, war crimes and the conflict in Bosnia: understanding the perpetrators’, Journal of Genocide Research, nr.4 (2009), p. 431-432. 192 The Prosecutor v. Ranko Češić (IT-95-10/1) 193 Robert J. Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide, New York: Basic Books (2000), p. 419-428. 194 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.161. 195 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.161. 196 Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, New York: HarperCollins (1992), p.162.

53 to such an extent that it results in ordinary men becoming perpetrators of violence against non- combatants.

Findings

This section began with a trail of thought that commences with the ‘obedience of authority’-research of Stanley Milgram. I have found this ‘legitimacy’, obedience to or vertical relationships with superiors, as an explanation of perpetrators to commit violence with perpetrators within the Bosnian War. In their statement both Duško Sikirica and Darko Mrđa made it clear that the main reason for their actions and atrocities, their involvement in the conflict in general was because of vertical relationships with superiors. They felt as if they did not have an alternative choice in these situations. Darko Mrđa stated in addition that he had acted in fear. He felt insecure about is safety if he did not comply with the orders to kill. Although it is hard to find out if this is true, it is plausible that at that moment, in the context of murder and despair, he felt that way. This is not an excuse for his actions, but it is a conceivable explanation. The argument thereafter continued with the explanation of collective and horizontal peer pressure as an explanation of mass violence. This ‘conformism to the group’. The idea that interaction within the group may lead to the use of violence – or its rejection, is less visible, at least directly, within the statements and pleas. Where the cases of Dražen Erdemović Dragan Obrenović (but also again the case of Darko Mrđa) have shown that conformism to the group, can work as an explanation of individuals becoming able of mass violence. Within the case of the Bosnian War, or within this research in specific, this conformism to the group can be combined with ‘deprivation and frustration’ as an explanation. Where actors adopt the norms and rules of a given community, are embedded in social environments, which not only constrain and provide incentives to act, but also reshape interests and identities. Inter-group dynamics altered the image of the individuals. What was real became altered within the group; something which especially perceptible with Dražen Erdemović and the anonymous paramilitary soldier of Arkan’s Tigers.

Within the statements of the defendants I have not found prove or evidence which may lead in the direction of identity as an explanation of mass violence. Perhaps it is visible with Dragan Obrenović, who perceived his role in the war to be a ‘sacred role’. Or, again, with Darko Mrđa who felt as if ‘suddenly we started splitting along the lines of our thoughts and ideas at the time’. Both their statements can be perceived or explained as being an illustration of ‘the idea that individuals harbor outgroup antipathy or in-group solidarity which would lead them to harm others’. I have chosen not to do this within this research. The evidence for this is too limited, to say with the data I have researched, and to treat it as such would be a case of projecting favorable outcomes to a study, and I refuse this. Lastly, the idea that hardship causes stress that is channeled into violence is for me so clearly present and so openly present in all of the embedded statements and in already existing research that I

54 feel obliged to mention it again. But hardship has influence on all abovementioned explanations. Hardship again cannot be an excuse, for non-combatants are always dishonestly targeted, but it is present in every situation I have studied. To conclude with the words of Stevan Todorović: War is hell.197

Discussion, Limitations and Recommendations

Words can hide, just as silences can reveal.198

My results have shown that there is nothing a priori that would predict the average perpetrators to commit violence. However, there are several factors that can influence the validity of my theory. Because of the very nature of my sources, statements and pleas before a Tribunal, it is necessary to contemplate the influence certain external forces have upon the data. A person on trial, standing before a Tribunal, which will decide on the future of his life, has benefits if the Tribunal regards his plea in positive terms. Therefore ‘conditions in the present shape what people are willing to say about violence in the past; what they have reason to embellish or minimize and what they prefer to keep to themselves’.199 Lee Ann Fujii gives a striking example hereof in the case of her field research in Rwanda, where she spoke with Angélique, a Hutu woman who was targeted because her mother was a Tutsi. After the war, hardship and struggle filled her life, because other Tutsi survivors denied she was a survivor. This made Angélique ineligible for the benefits the government had promised to genocide survivors, which included housing and assistance with school fees. But, Fujii soon found out that her story did not add up, certain things did not seem right. The more Fujii probed, the sketchier and more vague the story became. Angélique was not telling the whole truth, her testimonies hinted at the value she placed on being recognized as a ‘survivor’ and a ‘victim’. For in post-war Rwanda, being a ‘survivor’ places a person almost on top of the social hierarchy, a hierarchy she herself was dangling at the bottom of. 200 Fujii uses this example to demonstrate the importance of meta data – rumours, inventions, denials, evasions and silences201 –, where she puts emphasis on how this should influence the researcher actually carrying out the field work. Where the value of narrative data does not lie solely in their truthfulness or accuracy; it also lies in the meta-data that accompany these testimonies. 202

197 The Prosecutor v. Stevan Todorović, (IT-95-9/1-S). 198 Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Shades of truth and lies: Interpreting testimonies of war and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.2 (2010), p.239. 199 Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Shades of truth and lies: Interpreting testimonies of war and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.2 (2010), p.231. 200 Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Shades of truth and lies: Interpreting testimonies of war and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.2 (2010), p.235. 201 Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Shades of truth and lies: Interpreting testimonies of war and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.2 (2010), p.231. 202 Lee Ann Fujii, ‘Shades of truth and lies: Interpreting testimonies of war and violence’, Journal of Peace Research, nr.2 (2010), p.231.

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However, this is also applicable for this research and should therefore be taken into account. A perpetrator of violence against non-combatants has every reason to minimize the effects he had on the atrocities committed. Be that as it may, as a social scientist this should always be taken into account. For it is unfortunately – or very fortunately – not possible ‘to look into someone’s head’. People will always keep things behind and we will never get the full truth. I have assumed statements made under oath, from people who have shown sincere regret. For me, as a social scientist, this suffices. However, the fact that I did not pose the questions the defendants responded to, I was not present at the time of the Trial, I did not myself spoke to them, therefore did not get the opportunity to assess the meta-data of their statements or pleas. If I was present at that time, this research might have dealt with different questions, have alternative answers or explanations. Although I have argued in my Findings that individuals in the Bosnian war were able of perpetrating atrocities because of situational factors, context and group dynamics and in fact four of five explanations, formulated in my methodological approach, were visible in statements made by defendants before the Tribunal. The very nature of my data forces me to acknowledge that these statements can be interpreted differently by others. In my opinion, they illustrate my arguments and fit within the theory, this may not be the case to someone with a completely different opinion regarding explanations for perpetrator-behaviour. The implications of my theory are not just considerable, they are a grave concern – or should be. We live in a world were conflict and war are omnipresent. Opening the papers without messages of death and terror are exceptional, and therefore precious. The case study of the Bosnian War has shown what malicious governments with a hunger for power are capable of. The feeling of intangibility these governments or elite groups have enable them to perceive mass violence as a cost- benefit calculus in which they favour the most ‘fertile’ outcome, herewith omitting any form of humanistic. These seemingly ‘untouchable’ regimes must become ‘touchable’, for if these regimes have the feeling as if no one can harm them, many more instances, of elites creating the conditions for ‘ordinary men’ to become perpetrators of mass violence against non-combatants, will appear. For this research I have studied statements and pleas made by defendants in the period before their trial. Albeit most of these confessions and pleas of guilt have been made a considerable time after the conflict took place, for future research I recommend to research these men after their imprisonment. Is it possible to return to society? A society turned over by atrocities that they committed. How do they look back at the conflict, their involvement in the atrocities performed herein, now they returned home? Are they accepted within their old commonalty, or is their role damaged beyond repair? And if the latter is true, what implications does this have for their image of the conflict? Has their return to society altered the way in which they think about an event that occurred in the past?

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Conclusions

In this research I have attempted to explain that situational factors, context and group dynamics alter the state of mind of ordinary men and enable them to perform atrocities against defenceless non- combatants. The existing literature has shown that there are no personality traits that distinguish genocidal perpetrators from other human beings, but individuals participate in mass violence because of collective and horizontal peer pressure (‘conformism to the group’); deprivation and frustration, in particular the idea that hardship causes stress that is channeled into violence; fear because of insecurity, legitimacy, perpetrators commit violence because of their obedience to or vertical relationships with superiors (‘obedience to authority’) and identity, in particular the idea that individuals harbor outgroup antipathy or in-group solidarity which would lead them to harm others. In the case of the Bosnian war, I have shown that the perpetrators of atrocities in the Bosnian War, as indicated in their statements before the Tribunal, participated in the violence against non- combatants because of ‘obedience to authority’, ‘fear and insecurity’, ‘deprivation and frustration’ and ‘conformism to the group’. The latter I have extended by involving the process of socialization within, herewith explaining the influence group dynamics can have on the altered sense of morality of perpetrators of mass violence. For identity as an explanation of mass violence the data was insufficient. Next to this, The Bosnian War was a textbook example of leadership creating antagonism between ethnic groups, in the advantage of the state. The power vacuum of the implosion of Yugoslavia enabled Milošević and his allies to profit from the moment. Mass-led violence was, in this sense, perceived to be the best strategy for enlarging their power. The scripts of violence worked as an opportunity for local leadership, to express, gain or reclaim power within its communities. These scripts of mass violence created conditions in which ‘ordinary men’ became trapped in situations of mass violence. In this sense, the leadership has consciously, with intent, made efforts to induce these men to become perpetrators of mass violence. The feeling many of the defendants portrayed by stating that they were dragged into these situations of mass violence. This is not done by stating that injustice is done to them, but the sense that the war ‘happened to them’. That awareness was replaced by a state of euphoria. I personally believe that the results of this thesis have no influence on the responsibility or the ‘blame’ or guilt perpetrators of mass violence have. For it both is a dangerous path to cross the lines of judicature, as it never was the objective of this research to minimize the vehemence of the atrocities. It merely wanted to find explanations for the behaviour of perpetrators. The only thing I do want to emphasize is the responsibility we all have to discourage regimes to minimize human lives and suffering to a cost-benefit calculus. The consequences if regimes turn to scripts of violence in order to create a new social and political order, to ensure political goals, are appalling.

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The results of this thesis fit within the field of perpetrator-based research. Personality or culture does not play a role in my explanation of mass violence against non-combatants. I do however have tried to break to the ‘unhealthy academic cloistering’ of the field of genocide studies in particular and the field of mass led violence in general. I have tried to create ‘a dialogue’ with kin literature on political violence and have tried to read, research and place myself as widely as possible within the frames of political violence. I can only hope that my endeavours have been fruitful.

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63

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