G E N O C I D E B Y P L E B I S C I TE The Bosnian Serb Assembly and Social Construction of ‘Turks’ in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Emir Suljagic P​ ublished by October, 2020

1

Content

Abstract 3

Introduction 3

Genocide as Social Reality 5

Social Construction of Genocide 7

Re-conceptualizing Bosniaks 8

Bosniaks as “Outside the Political Community” 13

Bosniaks as Existential Enemy 15​

Bosniaks as Sub-humans 17

The Assembly and Genocidal Intent 19

Conclusion 21

2

Abstract

Based on an extensive archival research and content analysis, this article focuses on the role the Bosnian Serb Assembly played in the process of socially constructing Bosniaks as “Turks” during the period between October 1991 and December 1995, within the context of the genocidal policies pursued by agencies, institutions and organs under the assembly. The article argues that the assembly—both its individual members, as well as an institution—played a central role not only in deciding upon policies that ultimately led to genocide, but also in the process of reconceptualization of Bosniaks as cultural aliens whose very existence presented a mortal threat to the existence of the Serb people.

Introduction

The town of Srebrenica fell on 11 July 1995 to the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) troops under the command of Ratko Mladic. Around noon on that day, Mladic and his entourage entered the town. With the town centre in the background, Mladic posed for the cameras and said:

“Here we are, on 11 July 1995, in Serb Srebrenica. On the eve of yet another great Serb holiday, we give this town to the Serb people as a gift. Finally, after the Rebellion against the Dahis​1,​ the time has come to take revenge on the Turks in this region”.2​

More than four years earlier, in December 1991, Rajko Dukic—speaking in the capacity of the President of the Executive Committee of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS), at the head of the rebellion whose ultimate expression would be the genocidal operation in Srebrenica—addressed the separatist assembly that had been established few months earlier. In commenting on what he saw as the arrogance of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) and Croat political leadership in the country, Dukic stated: “If they continue with this kind of behaviour, I am convinced that December 21, 1991 will be the beginning of the Rebellion against the

Dahis”​3.​ It is highly unlikely that Dukid and Mladic ever discussed or strategized this rhetorical approach prior to either statement. Yet, Mladic in 1995 echoed Dukic’s words from 1991, when the genocidal violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina seemed at worst a very distant and improbable prospect. Thus, it would seem obvious that Mladic’s pronouncement was deeply embedded in the Serb “knowledge” about Bosniaks and in the conceptualization of the “Turk” constructed by the Serbian political and academic elites. The fact that Dukic and Mladic used the same frame of reference and that this frame of reference was sustained over the course of three and a half years is at the centre of this study.

1 Rebellion of the Serbs against local Ottoman rulers in Serbia in 1804 and 1815. 2 Prosecutor v. Ratko Mladić, Judgment, 22 November 2017, p. 1257; See also Lee, C.H. Julian, Halilovich, Hariz, Phipps, Peter, Sutcliffe, Richard and Landau-Ward, Anni, 2019, Monsters for Modernity: Glob​al Icons for our Critical Condition. Kismet Press: ​ ​ London, pp. 109-123. 3 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 4 ​ Session, December 21, 1991, p. 38-39, Rajko Dukić ​ 3

As the dissolution of Yugoslavia dramatically accelerated, the Serb members of the Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina held a meeting on the premises of the parliament building in

Sarajevo, on October 24, 19914​ .​ The outcome of the meeting was the establishment of an illegal parallel and distinct legislative body, the so-called Assembly of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina—a coup d’état​ by all legal standards—declaring openly that the Serbs would “remain in Yugoslavia” whatever the outcome of the crisis would be​5​. In the four years that followed, the Bosnian Serb Assembly would act as supreme law-and-decision making body in part of the Bosnian territory held by the VRS. Along its formal members, the assembly was often attended by the SDS functionaries as well as the party cadres in the executive branch (both of its own parallel government in the form of the Serb Autonomous Areas or

SAO6​ ​ and the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and later the Government of Republika Srpska).

Ideological allies from Serbia and abroad, including members of Serbia’s royal Karadjordjevic family and dignitaries of the Serb Orthodox Church, were also in regular attendance. Even though the media was often prohibited from attending certain sessions—in whole or in part—all sessions were meticulously recorded.

4 Seventy-two MPs were members of Radovan Karadžić’s Serb Democratic Party, one a member of the far-right Serb Renewal Movement whereas four came from the left-leaning Alliance of Reformist Forces, a party established originally by the last Prime minister of Yugoslavia, Ante Marković. Report on the Work of the People’s Assembly of RS from October 1991 to October 1992, Pale, October 1993, page 3 5 Report on the Work of the People’s Assembly of RS from October 1991 to October 1992, Pale, October 1993, page 3; See also ​ The Decision Establishing the Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Official Gazette of the Serb People in BiH, January 15, 1992, Sarajevo 6 Initially, the assembly was masquerading as part of the political and power structure of the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But as part of the process of disassociation of the Serb community from the seceding republic both politically and territorially, SDS established a number Serb Autonomous Region (Srpska Autonomna Oblast/SAO) – variously referred to as oblast or region (both literally mean district and were used interchangeably) – at first using the existing legislation allowing ​ municipalities to form associations based mostly on economic grounds. In fact, the entities that would become building blocks of Republika Srpska started out inconspicuously enough as a network of “communities of municipalities” or “community of self-managing municipalities in the other.” The true motive behind their formation was concentration of power away from the central government of the Bosnian state. The following SAOs were established: Autonomous Region of Krajina (Western Bosnia), Autonomous District of Herzegovina (South and Southeastern Bosnia), Autonomous District of Romanija-Birč (Eastern Bosnia), Autonomous District of Semberija (Northeastern Bosnia), and finally Serbian Autonomous District of Northern Bosnia. “Decision on Verification of the Proclaimed Serb Autonomous Districts in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Official Gazette of Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, No. 1, 15 January 1992, page 8

4

Genocide as Social Reality

The point of departure of this article is the assertion that reality is socially defined. However, as Berger and Luckmann underline, the essence of socially constructed reality is not necessarily in what are the “historically available conceptualizations”, but in the individuals and groups with whom the definitions of the reality are embedded​7.​ It is for that reason that at the centre of this analysis is one of the main definers of reality: a political class, elected in a legal, multiparty and democratic elections, that found itself at the centre of both a secession and a genocidal enterprise, making decisions on war and peace, life and death.

There are several important reasons for placing the Bosnian Serb Assembly at the centre of the analysis in the context of Bosnian genocide. First, whereas it pays due attention to the role of elites in genocides, expands both definition of the elite as well as the understanding of their ability to maintain control of social and political factors; VRS, for instance, numbered near 200.000 men throughout the conflict, while SDS maintained firm control of the governmental machinery throughout the genocidal enterprise. Whilst authors such as Benjamin Valentino are right in assuming that “the impetus for mass killing usually originates” from the elites, the Bosnian Serb Assembly could in no way be described as a “small group of powerful political or military leaders”​8.​ On the contrary, the assembly had 83 members, most of whom attended the majority of the sessions and discussed the details of the policy of extermination9​ ​– sometimes even bragging about their criminal actions. In addition, the Bosnian Serb Assembly was “who is who” of the Serb political and academic elite, and “several PhD holders, university professors, ten doctors, as many writers, three lawyers, ten economists and many professors, engineers, an innovator (…) a priest and a president of university”1​ 0​.

Likewise, the actions by the Bosnian Serb Assembly show that elites sometimes arrive at decisions to pursue genocide as a result of strategic​11,​ rational choice, as Midlarsky emphasizes1​ 2​; at other times, however, these elites may also engage in the processes of social construction which ultimately result in genocide. This is done discursively, when elites create new social realities, reconstruct “the identities of

7 Peter Berger and Thomas J. Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”, Penguin Books, 1991, London, p. 134 8 Valentino, Benjamin A. “Final Solutions: Mass Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century”, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2004, p. 2 9 Report on the Work of the People’s Assembly of RS from October 1991 to October 1992, Pale, October 1993, pp. 18-19 10 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, p. 50, Petko Čančar ​ 11 A key example of the Bosnian Serb Assembly capacity to pursue genocidal policies as a strategic choice is the decision on “Six strategic goals of the Serb people” in Bosnia and Herzegovina the language of which aimed to present comprehensive political and territorial settlement of the “Serb question”: establishment of state borders separating the Serb people from the other two ethnic communities; setting up a corridor between Semberija and Krajina; establishment of a corridor in the Drina River valley, that is, elimination of the Drina as a border separating Serb states; establishment of border on the Una and Neretva rivers; division of Sarajevo into Serb and Muslim parts and establishment of effective state authority in both parts; ensuring access to the sea. “Decision on Strategic objectives of Serb people in Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Official Gazette of Republika Srpska, No. 22, November 26, 1993, p. 866 12 Midlarsky, Manus. “The Killing Trap: Genocide in the Twentieth Century”, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005, p. 84 5 other actors, and construct the meaning of the relationship between themselves and other actors”​13.​ Just as in selecting the policy of genocide itself, the end result in this case too is genocide.

Additionally, in constructivist terms, the article looks at the Bosnian Serb Assembly as both an agent of social construction and a product of social construction itself. The assembly, like any other institution, was the sum of rules and social practices that best suited the purpose for which it was established​14​. As a social actor, the assembly possessed its own institutional identity; at the same time, it was also a ​function of collective identity, operating within a specific “socially constructed world”1​ 5.​ Agents act on the basis of meanings which they ascribe to other actors, actions, and situation. These meanings constitute a network of interpretation which develops as the result of intersubjective processes of social interaction and mutual interpretation​16.​ This dynamic is informed by the socially available “stock of knowledge” which is coextensive with what is knowable, and is transmitted interpersonally and across generations through discourse and interactions in everyday life1​ 7​.

Finally, one of the key reasons to put the Bosnian Serb Assembly at the centre of this study is to show how genocidal intent crystalized within that forum at the outset of the political enterprise of RadovanKaradzic. As Edina Becirovic argues in “Genocide on the Drina River”, it was the Serb elites that shaped the genocidal intent as well as policies, and the transcripts of the assembly leave little doubt about it​18​.

This article posits that the Bosnian Serb Assembly played a crucial role in the reconceptualization of Bosniaks by seeking its own institutional legitimation, and the new order through the creation of a symbolic universe that, in order to be maintained, had to get rid of all those with a “different history”​19.​

In addition to being “social products with a history” and presenting themselves as “full-blown and inevitable totalities”, symbolic universes also order history and “locate all collective events in a cohesive unity that includes past, present and future”, establishing a common memory for all the individuals within the collectivity and a common frame of reference “for the projection of individual actions” in the future​20.​ Vital to that process is language, as an instrument that bridges “different zones within reality of everyday life and integrates them into a meaningful whole”. Language is capable of “constructing symbols that are highly abstracted from everyday experience, but also of ‘bringing back’ these symbols” and presenting them as objective elements of everyday life2​ 1​.

13 Maureen S. Hiebert, Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crisis, Identity, (New York, Routledge, 2017) p. 10 14 Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood“ „Making sense, making worlds“, Routledge, London, 2013, pp. 4-6 15 Peter Berger, Identity as a problem in the sociology of knowledge, European Journal of Sociology, Vol. 7, 01, May 1966, pp. 111 16 Blumer, Herbert. „Symbolic Interactionism – Perspective and method“, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1969, pp. 2-6 17 Peter Berger and Thomas J. Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”, Penguin Books, 1991, London, pp. 56-84 18 Bećirović, Edina. “Genocide on the Drina River”, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2014, p. 12 19 Peter Berger and Thomas J. Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”, Penguin Books, 1991, London, pp. 122-126 20 Peter Berger and Thomas J. Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”, Penguin Books, 1991, London, pp. 113-120 21 Peter Berger and Thomas J. Luckmann, “The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge”, Penguin Books, 1991, London, pp. 53-55 6

Social Construction of Genocide

In order to understand social construction as part of genocide, it is necessary to adopt a broader theoretical approach to genocide than that provided by the legal framework. While the legal definition of genocide may suffice for the purposes of criminal prosecutions, the nature of judicial proceedings precludes such a narrow definition from shedding light on how genocide unfolds2​ 2​, or from explaining the social and political processes leading up to or following the killing. Raphael Lemkin, the originator of the term, did not envision genocide to mean “the immediate destruction of the nation,” except when accomplished by wholesale murder of every single member of the nation, an enterprise that is hardly feasible. Lemkin took a far more comprehensive view of genocide, conceiving of it as intended “to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups… disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence” of the group in question. Genocide, according to Lemkin unfolds in two overlapping phases: destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group, and the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.2​ 3

The point of departure for the purposes of this article is understanding genocide as embedded in “shared beliefs and understandings as well as shared actions.” Daniel Feierstein’s approach to genocide as a technology of power seems especially cognate, insofar as it defines genocide as a: “social practice… that aims: 1) to destroy social relationships based on autonomy and cooperation by annihilating a significant part of the population; and 2) use the terror of annihilation to establish new models of identity and social relationships among the survivors.”​24

The process of social construction is informed by history. Social construction and representation are instrumental both in positioning the victim in relation to the perpetrator, as well as in constructing the identity of the perpetrator. In as much as social construction imposes a new identity on the victim, it can also be used to alleviate the collective guilt of perpetrators.​25​ Social representations, in the form of narratives, shape reality “through a process of selective interpretation, biased attribution, restricted assessment of legitimacy and agency, and by privileging certain historically warranted social categories and category systems above other alternatives.”​26

22 In the sense of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide, genocide “means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such : (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the crime of Genocide, United Nations – Treaty Series, available at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2078/volume-78-i-1021-english.pdf; accessed: February 20, 2020 ​ 23 Lemkin, Raphael. „Axis Rule in Occupied Europe “The Lawbook Exchange, New Jersey, 2008, p. 79 24 Feierstein, Daniel. „Genocide as a Social Practice: Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina's Military Juntas“, Rutgers University Press, 2014, p. 14 25 James H. Liu and Denis J. Hilton, “How the past weighs on the present: Social representations of history and their role in identity politics””, British Journal of Social Psychology (2005), 44, pp. 537-556 26 Gail Moloney and Iain Walker (Eds.) “Social Representations and Identity: Content, Process and Power”, Palgrave, New York, 2007, Liu, James H. “A narrative theory of history and identity: Social identity, social representations, society and individual”, p. 87 7

Re-conceptualizing Bosniaks

The reconceptualization of identity refers to the process whereby the victim group is constructed as: a) “lying outside the political community;” b) “an almost superhumanly powerful enemy whose continued existence threatens the very survival of the political community;” and paradoxically c) as sub- or non-human​27.​ In the process, the members and leadership of the assembly, as the article will show, availed themselves of a wealth of imagery and heritage—i.e. social structures—to draw on in re-conceptualizing Bosnian Muslims. From the early 19​th ​ century to the formation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia to the Second World War, “the Muslims in the Balkans sometimes became viewed as a kind of ethnic ‘fifth column,’ left over from a previous era, who could never be integrated successfully into the planned future national states”.2​ 8 ​ By the end of the Balkan Wars in 1913, 62 percent of the Muslim population living in the Ottoman Empire in Europe had been forcibly removed.2​ 9 ​ As Carmichael argues, marginalization of the Muslim communities during the century-long retreat of the Ottoman Empire from Europe draws on older prejudices dating back to the Middle Ages and the struggle against “the Turk”, but it became “an important part of self-identification for the Balkan Christians” and continued to characterize their culture throughout nineteenth and twentieth century3​ 0​. Similarly, Petrovic argues that

Serbia’s initial steps toward statehood were made in “sharp opposition to the Ottoman political and cultural heritage and open hostility towards Muslim believers.”​ ​31 ​ Furthermore, he claims [​ ​ethnic​] “cleansing” of the “Turk” was a way of connecting to the past, redeeming historical sins and laying the groundwork for future victories.​32

To that end, it is worth quoting a telephone conversation between Dobrica Cosic, the preeminent Serb nationalist and later president of the rump Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with Radovan Karadzic, the president of SDS and the subsequent president of the Republika Srpska:

“You are completing a historic process (…) simply, there are two concepts, there is uniting of the South Slavs and there is uniting of Serbs (...) the unity of the South Slavs has historically failed but uniting of Serbs has not. Historically, it is now to be completed or perish (...) and the bottom line is that that has been our ideology since Karadjordje.”3​ 3

27 Maureen S. Hiebert, Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crisis, Identity, (New York, Routledge, 2017) pp. 12-13 28 Cathie Carmichael, “’Neither Serbs, nor Turks, neither water nor wine, but odious renegades’: The Ethnic Cleansing of Slav Muslims and its Role in Serbian and Montenegrin Discourses since 1800”, Steven Bela Vardy and T. Hunt Tooly (Eds.) in Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (New York, Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 71. 29 McCarthy, Justin. “Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of the Ottoman Muslims, 1821-1922”, Darwin Press, New Jersey, ​ 1995, p.164 30 Charmichael, Cathie. „Ethnic Cleansing in the Balkans: Nationalism and the destruction of tradition“, Routledge, London and New York, 2002, pp. 21-22 31 Petrović, Vladimir. “Etnicizacija čišćenja u reči i nedelu”, Hereticus, 1/2007, pp.15-16 ​ ​ 32 Ibid 33 International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Prosecutor v. Momčilo Krajišnik, Exhibit P64A.185.1 8

In the years prior to the dissolution of Yugoslavia, Serbian orientalists3​ 4​, academics specializing in Islam, contributed to re-enforcement of social boundaries between Christian Serbs and their Muslim Bosnian neighbours by constructing a stereotype of Muslims as a foreign, inferior and threatening factor. At a later stage, this stereotype would also provide a rationale for the perpetration of genocide. Miroljub Jeftic and Darko Tanaskovic, two of the Serbian intelligentsia’s most prominent experts on “the Muslim question,” saw “evidence” of Islamic fundamentalism and jihad at every turn. Their commentary, which was peddled as “expert analysis” by the Serbian establishment, amounted to nothing more than racist rants against Bosnian Muslims. Jeftic claimed that the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina were prepared to wage jihad against the state, whereas the zenith of Tanaskovic’s expert career consisted of mocking the dietary requirements of Muslim recruits in the Yugoslav National Army, who were forced to consume pork or eat only bread, in the absence of any other alternative food.​35

When the Serb elites set out to destroy Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, they drew on a “repertoire of contention” informed by a successful history of genocidal policies. “The Turk” still occupied an important place in the imagination of Serb political class. Islam was, therefore, the element of the Bosnian Muslims’ identity that lent itself most to reconceptualization. It was used by the Serb elites, and in this particular case by the members of the assembly as the permanent motif in the process of construction of Bosniaks as a mortal threat that must be physically removed from the projected Serb states on the ruins of Yugoslavia.

As a result, the Serb political class in Bosnia and Herzegovina, epitomized in the assembly, reacted to the possibility of independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina as an attempt to restore the Ottoman Empire. In the process of construction of such reality, they saw their actions as continuing the efforts of de-Ottomanization or de-Turkification of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Even the use of the term “ethnic cleansing” was not accidental. Petrovic argues that the use of the term “cleansing” was relatively widespread during the Serb armed rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in the 19t​ h​ century—mainly to describe the treatment meted out to the Ottoman Muslims at the hands of the Serb rebels3​ 6​—and later in relation to pacification measures undertaken by the Serbian army during the Balkan Wars of 1912. Ethnicization of the term “cleansing” became more salient during World War Two in the efforts of the Nazi-satellite Independent State of Croatia and the Chetnik movement to carve out “ethnically pure” territories in Yugoslavia​37.​

34 Some of Jeftić’s views are to be found in “Islam: džihad ili samo rat?”, NIN, 10 January 1988, pages 20-22 and “Džihad i ​ ​ Jugoslavija”, NIN, 10 July 1989, pages 65-67; for a sample of Tanasković’s writings about Islam see “Radikali protiv Jugoslavije”, NIN, 8 April 1990, pages 10-14 and “Između Kurana i kazana”, NIN, 25 June 1989, pages 22-23 35 Cigar, Norman. The Role of Serbian Orientalists in Justification of Genocide against Muslims of the Balkans, Institute for ​ ​ Research of Crimes against Humanity and International Law, 2000, Sarajevo, page 23 36 See also Cathie Carmichael, “’Neither Serbs, nor Turks, neither water nor wine, but odious renegades’: The Ethnic Cleansing of ​ Slav Muslims and its Role in Serbian and Montenegrin Discourses since 1800”, Steven Bela Vardy and T. Hunt Tooly (Eds.) in Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe (New York, Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 71-80 37 Petrović, Vladimir. “Ethnicization of cleansing: Scholarly legitimization of repression”, Hereticus, 1/2007, p. 15-30; see also ​ ​ Slobodan Milošević: Road to power (The Eighth Session of the LCS CC Serbia 20 years later 1987–2007), Vladimir Petrović, “Extremization of Yugoslav political discourse from Tito’s death until the Eighth Session”, Institut za savremenu istoriju, Beograd Centar za proučavanje evropskog susedstva Univerziteta Stirling, Beograd – Stirling, 2008, p. 88 9

There is little doubt that members of the Bosnian Serb Assembly saw themselves as partaking in the historical process, or more precisely completing the historical trajectory started in 1804 by Petar Djordjevic Karadjordje, the leader of the First Serb Uprising. At the 24​th ​ session of the Assembly, held in Bijeljina in January 1993, commenting on one of the many rounds of negotiations brokered by the international community, Dragan Micic stated that the moment had “historical importance”, because

“we are approaching the end of 200-years long (…) liberation struggle of the Serb people”​38.​ Aleksa Buha, who went on to become the “foreign minister” of the unrecognized Bosnian Serb entity, said at the 10​th session of the makeshift parliament that:

“Between the civic state proffered by the masquerading Islamic fundamentalism and the Ottoman Empire such as lives in the historical memory and sub-conscience of the Serb people, there can only be an equality sign”3​ 9​.

Karadzic himself commented at the parliament sitting in March 1992: “I think that God himself led us along the road we needed to follow to attain our freedom after 500 years”​40​. Even more explicitly,

Karadzic claimed in July 1992 before the assembly that:

“We have reached the point to have a state (…) a magnificent state that could be part of an alliance of Serb states, with which the Serbs would finally end the First Serb Uprising, that is, its two centuries’ long fight for freedom and state”​41​.

In November 1992, within the context of a debate on a Draft Law on holidays, Momcilo Krajisnik, the chairman of the assembly, went as far as saying that the day of the First Serb Uprising should have remained as one of the holidays in the Bosnian Serb held territory:

“There should be a continuity of Serb uprisings, that was some kind of connection, which is why we took the First Serb Uprising (…) and this is the Third Serb Uprising”​42.​

Finally, it seems as if the Bosnian Serb elites shared that view with the Serb elites at large. Veselin Djuretic, a member of Serb Academy of Science and Arts was invited, among others to speak at the ceremonial session of the assembly on January 9, 1994, the third anniversary of the formation of Republika Srpska. Djuretic took the podium and said that “what has been happening in the past couple of years is the continuation of what began in 1804”, adding:

“From then on, until a few years ago, we were passing through pain and misfortune, we were crossing through difficulties, through international arrangements at our expense, through delusions of Yugoslavism, through delusions in the name of Communism. Today, it is our turn to finish what we had not finished when we should have finished it.”4​ 3

38 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, p. 28, Dragan Mićić 39 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 10 ​ Session, March 11, 1992, p. 41, Aleksa Buha 40 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 14 ​ Session, March 27, 1992, p. 11, Radovan Karadžić 41 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 17 ​ Session, July 24-26, 1992, p. 14, Radovan Karadžić 42 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 22 ​ Session, November 24-26, 1992, p. 71, Momčilo Krajišnik ​ 43 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ceremonial session, January 9, 1994, p. 2, Veselin Đuretić 10

Bosniaks as “Outside the Political Community”

In the backdrop of the reconceptualization of Bosniaks as lying outside the political community – and, implicitly outside the same moral universe – was the a​ ntemurale​ myth the notion that Serbs are part of “some larger and allegedly superior cultural entity that enhances its status vis-à-vis other groups who do not belong.” More to the point, the ​antemurale​ myth “stresses not only that the group is an integral part of the true civilization, but also that it represents its very outpost” sacrificing itself “in order to save the larger civilization of which it is a part.”​44

The implication of this phenomenon, which Milica Bakic-Hayden refers to as “nesting Orientalisms”, is that the "real" identities of persons or groups – in this case both, the Serbs and Bosniaks – are the reified religious and cultural "essences" to be found in the pre-Yugoslav past​45.​

In an appeal to the “Montenegrin people” adopted at the first session of the assembly, that was introduced by Karadzic personally and adopted unanimously, the assembly warns the Montenegrin political leadership:

“The objective of the Catholic and the Islamic international is to conquer the Montenegrin coast and drive the Orthodox Slavs from the Mediterranean, with the aim of pushing Montenegro into the shallow waters of history and destroying the Montenegrin essence. Our generation in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and

Herzegovina and the Serb borderlands is guarding all that makes us a historic people.”​46

That Karadzic’s views chimed with the views of some European leaders who referred to​ the events in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 as the "painful but realistic restoration of Christian Europe" or that

Bosnia “does not belong” (to Europe)​47​ is less relevant. It is worth mentioning though, that the transcripts of the Bosnian Serb Assembly show one of the leaders of the member-states of the then European Community (EC) making comments along those lines. Prime-minister of Greece, Konstantinos Mitsotakis came to Bosnia and Herzegovina and appeared before the Bosnian Serb Assembly in an effort to persuade the leadership to accept Vance-Owen Peace Plan. In his speech he heavily criticized the EC’s decision to recognize Bosnia and Herzegovina as a mistake that ​led to the creation of “a Muslim state (…) in the heart of the Balkans and of Europe”4​ 8.​

Karadzic, as well as other speakers, however, kept bringing up this motif throughout the next three and a half years.

44 Pal Kolsto, “Introduction: Assessing the Role of Historical Myths in Modern Society,” in Pal Kolsto (Ed.) Myths and Boundaries in Southeastern Europe, London, Hurst and Company, p. 20 45 Milica Bakić-Hayden, „Nesting Orientalisms: The Case of former Yugoslavia”, Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 917-923; The Antemurale Christanitatis (The Bulwark of Christendom) myth and nesting orientalism phenomenon is common ​ to Croatian nationalist perception of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Bosniaks. For more, see: Emir Suljagic, “The Role of Croatia in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Antemurale Christianitatis as a Policy of Choice” in Insight Turkey, Vol. 2 (Spring 2019), No. 2, pp. 23-35. 46 st Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1 ​ Session, October 24, 1991, p. 14/1, Radovan Karadžić ​ 47 Branch, Taylor. “The Clinton Tapes – Wrestling History in the White House“, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2009, pp. 9-10 48 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30 ​ Session, May 5-6, 1993, p. 46/2, Konstantinos Mitsotakis ​ 11

Already in March 1992 Milan Novakovic warned his fellow members of the assembly of the role played by

Turkey, whose ultimate design was the expansion “from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China”​49.​ In May

1992, at the 16​th ​ session that is impossible to underestimate in terms of consequences, Karadzic neatly tied the escalating violence into the idea of taking part in a clash of civilizations. Labelling the brutal “cleansing” of the Drina River valley as “tensions and conflict”, he claimed the cause of the violence was the Bosniak interest in the Drina River “​ because it would give them good possibilities to be supported by the Islamic countries, especially Turkey, if they establish a ‘Green Transversal’ through Sandzak, Kosovo and the Albanian part of Macedonia, and thus become a stronghold of Islamic, primarily Turkish, interests in Europe”5​ 0​. In January 1993, Vlado Kovacevic, another MP, described the Serbs as facing a “two-headed dragon” that “has opened his jaws over the Serb people in order to swallow it, to destroy it, to wipe it off the face of the earth. Both heads, the Islamic one as well as the Vatican one is equally dangerous for us”. His further comments also show that the different elements of the process of reconceptualization are not sequential, but often overlap. In portraying what he saw as the bleak prospects of Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a unified state, he described it as imprisonment “in the dark realm of Islam, in the sheepfolds where there is no, there cannot and must not be place for the people and nations of the historical culture and nation-building qualities”​51.​

Nikola Herceg, in the same vein, complained of the European ingratitude in the face of the sacrifice the Serbs were making on its behalf: “​As the last bulwark against the penetration of Islam into Europe, ours is a humiliating position in the Europe of today”5​ 2​. Vojislav Kupresanin pointed out that European ingratitude had deep roots: “​For hundreds of years we defended Catholicism against the Turks and their penetration towards Vienna and no one ever thanked us for that”5​ 3​. In February 1995, as the international pressure for a peace settlement increased, Karadzic elaborated to the assembly the main reason for failure of previous peace initiatives and peace plans:

“Nobody has ever offered us any other option but to disappear, to abolish our state, to accept a joint state with (Alija) Izetbegovic, or, rather, with the Muslims and the Croats, and they clearly told us so at the cocktails and lunches: ‘Gentlemen, it’s because we don’t want to accept the existence of an Islamic state in Europe!’, which means we were sacrificed so that such a state wouldn’t exist, so that it would be mixed, which means that we’ve wasted our own lives and the lives of our generations to neutralise the Islam, so that Europe could be a community of happy Christian peoples, while we guard its walls, as a kind of a moat filled with filthy water, with no other purpose to its existence but to neutralise Islam. We haven’t accepted this”​54.​

However, the exclusion of Bosniaks from the new community – a polity being created for Serbs only, rather than for all Serbs as was the case with Yugoslavia – went hand in hand, along civilizational lines,

49 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 10 ​ Session, March 11, 1992, p. 36, Milan Novaković 50 ​ th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16 ​ Session, May 12, 1992, p. 36, Radovan Karadžić 51 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, p. 26, Vladimir Kovačević 52 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, p. 46, Nikola Erceg 53 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, p. 11, Vojislav Kuprešanin 54 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 49 ​ Session, February 13, 1995, p. 78, Radovan Karadžić ​ 12 with presenting them as alien, foreign and Asiatic. Savo Knezevic, and Orthodox priest and member of the SDS, denied the legitimacy of the President of Bosnia and Hercegovina “by quoting what [Petar Petrovic]

Njegos said to his ancestors from Asia”5​ 5​. All members of the assembly regularly referred to the Bosniaks as “Turks” and used different labels for a unified and civic Bosnia and Herzegovina: “Islamic vilayet”, “Islamic state”, “Jamahiriya”, etc. Petko Cancar from Foca – who would later personally present to the assembly a law changing the name of the town to Srbinje​56​ – referred to centuries of coexistence of

Bosniaks and Serbs as “centuries-old Islamic storm and hatred”, while calling a sovereign Bosnian state in its pre-war borders a “Vatican-Persian forgery”​57.​ In July 1993, as the assembly was discussing whether to grant the UN forces permission to deploy in Gorazde, one of three Bosniak enclaves in Eastern Bosnia, Srdja Srdic, an MP from Prijedor, once again emphasized the alleged Asiatic origin of Bosniaks:

“If they want to leave Gorazde, do not accept to be loyal and do not accept our authority, let the gentlemen follow their president Alija Izetbegovic, that is, to Asia Minor and farther. ... Pakistan. Let them go where they belong”​58​.

Radoslav Brdjanin, the leader of the Serb Autonomous Area of Krajina and assembly member ominously echoed Srdic’s views:

“As for the well-intentioned Muslims, if there are any of them who are of such kind, they should revert to the religion of their grandfathers. As for those who do want to create the Islamic State, they can negotiate about this subject in Geneva today, but I think there is enough space in Pakistan”​59​.

Vojislav Maksimovic, a Sarajevo University Professor before the outbreak of conflict, and the President of Deputies’ Club (the equivalent of a parliamentary party whip in Western democracies) blamed “the growing Asiatic contagion” for the outbreak of violence, adding that Serbs, unlike Bosniaks are not “an

Asiatic sect, sawn by an erratic wind across the Balkans”​ ​60.​ In addition, Maksimovic also referred to

Bosniaks as “renegades and apostates from our faith”6​ 1,​ merging two different threads of exclusionary discourse: accusing Bosniaks of being both at the same time, heirs to an Asiatic conqueror and former Serbs who had converted to Islam.

Finally, in January 1993, the Bosnian Serb Assembly held a formal debate on whether or not the Bosniaks were in fact a nation. The debate was initiated by a member of the assembly who proposed “that we deny

55 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 4 ​ Session, December 21, 1991, p. 46, Savo Knežević ​ 56 At its 36th Session, the assembly adopted the Law on Change of the name of the Municipality and Settlement of Foča. As part of ​ the procedure preceding the adoption of the legislation, Čančar took the floor and addressed his fellow deputies: “The bill before you is aimed at abolishing after 474 years the Turkish loan word and for the most Serb Srbinje to be given a Serb name. This is indeed befitting the nation of Saint Sava and the Nemanjić lands, from which I hail.” Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and th Herzegovina, 36 ​ Session, December 30-11, 1991, Petko Čančar, p. 22/2 57 ​ th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 26 ​ Session, April 2, 1993, p. 15, Petko Čančar 58 rd​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 33 ​ Session, July 21-22, 1993, p. 30, Srđa Srdić 59 rd​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 38 ​ Session, January 17, 1994, p. 15, Radoslav Brđanin 60 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, pp. 15-16, Vojislav Maksimović ​ 61 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1st Extraordinary Session, August 3, 1994, p. 19, Vojislav ​ Maksimović 13

Muslims as a nation,”​62 ​ whereupon another assembly member posited that Bosniaks were merely “Muhammedans of Turkish provenience and nothing else.”6​ 3 ​ These pronouncements were received enthusiastically by all in attendance. The matter was finally settled by Momcilo Krajisnik, the President of the assembly, who suggested, “Let’s say ‘a religious group of Turkish orientation’” and in a final vote, summarily concluded:

“Can we now make up our mind and take position that the Muslims as a nation are the communist creation. We do not accept this artificial nation. We believe that the Muslims are a sect, a group or a party, of Turkish provenience”.6​ 4

The proposal was adopted unanimously.

62 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, p. 28, Vojo Kuprešanin 63 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, p. 30, Savo Knežević 64 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, p. 31, Momčilo Krajišnik ​ 14

Bosniaks as Existential Enemy

As with the process of exclusion of Bosniaks from the political community, the process of reconstructing them as an existential enemy and threat often had Islam at its centre. Radovan Karadzic believed that there was no future for Serbs in the same community with Bosniaks. In one of his numerous rants about the failure of the European political class to understand the sacrifice it asked from the Serbs in the summer of 1992, Karadzic also painted a picture of the what the consequences of continuing to live with Bosniaks would be:

“Europe does not want and must not allow for an Islamic state to be created here, that is our great problem, that is our greatest problem. They want to keep us and the Croats in one unitary state so that we control the Muslims, and we cannot control the Muslims in such a unitary state. We know very well what the fundamentalism is and that we cannot live together, there’s no tolerance, they quadruple through the birth-rate, and we Serbs are not up to that. Not only are the Serbs not up to that but the Christians in Lebanon are not up to that Oriental mentality stemming from Islam. Therefore, we cannot do that. Neither Serbs nor Croats together can control through the birth-rate the penetration of Islam into Europe, since in five to six years Muslims would make 51 % of the population of unitary Bosnia”​65.​

Nedjeljko Rasula of Sanski Most, as part of the parliamentary debate on whether to accept the Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP) in May 1993, said of the Bosniaks: “It says in the Qur’an that it is holy to kill infidel. An infidel is anyone who is not a Muslim, let us not forget that”​66​. Karadzic himself also portrayed the Serb relationship with Bosniaks often, intensely and in stark and existential terms. Advocating against the adoption of VOPP, Karadzic warned that the conflict was not “a dispute with good neighbours”, but “a conflict between us and the greatest enemy”, who would “absolutely move to eradicate us”​67.​ Srdja Srdic of Prijedor chimed in by saying that “the Turk will only extend you a hand, if he cannot cut off your hand”​68​.

Karadzic went further in “prophesizing” that the Serbs would end up as “dhimmis, i.e. second and third rank citizens”, if they were to end up in a common polity with such an enemy​69​. In the same breath he elaborated that for Muslims there was no such a thing as a good Serb:

“There is no Serb who is good for them (...) Simply, a Serb cannot ever be good enough for a Muslim. (…) It is a big effort to equalise everything, everything to be Islam. That is in the nature of Islam”7​ 0​.

Slobodan Bijelic, a member of the assembly and high-ranking SDS dignitary, joined by stating that continuing to live in the same state with Bosniaks would be equal to “packing the Serb people (…) into

65 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 17 ​ Session, July 24-26, 1992, pp. 87-88, Radovan Karadžić 66 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30 ​ Session, May 5-6, 1993, p. 4/2, Nedjeljko Rašula 67 st​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 31 ​ Session, May 9, 1993, p. 16, Radovan Karadžić 68 st​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 35 ​ Session, October 2, 1993, p. 46, Srđa Srdić 69 st​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, p. 4, Radovan Karadžić ​ 70 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 46th Session, November 9-11 and November 23, 1994, p. 27/2, ​ Radovan Karadžić 15

Islamic reservations and doom them to decades of squabbles, bloody clashes and friction with their fundamentalist jailers”7​ 1​.

In what seemed a moment of triumph, at the Ceremonial session of the assembly on the third anniversary of the moment the runaway assembly proclaimed Republika Srpska, Karadzic once again reached for the imagery of struggling against an all-powerful enemy, claiming that the Serb “national being”, while open to Western influence, “knew how to recognise ancient danger posed by the toxic, all-destructive Islamic octopus that skilfully takes on various guises, but which is, with all its variability and ambiguity, constant in its irreconcilable poisonousness toward the Serbian Orthodox being”​72.​ In refuting the Contact Group

Peace Plan in 1994, Karadzic’s criticism was aimed at the unacceptable concessions that the Serbs would have to make to “our irreconcilable enemies and exterminators”7​ 3.​ Dragomir Kerovic, an SDS member from Lopare, North-eastern Bosnia, for his part called upon “definitively settling the scores with

Muslims, once and for all”​74.​ Nedjeljko Rasula asked the assembly to support the military destruction of the enclave of Bihac, in the process obviously defining not only the population of the enclave but Bosniaks as such as a snake: “It is because, believe me, the snake that is cut into two parts will have one part looking for a person to bite him, the person who did not hit it on the head. That is how it is with the

Turks”​75​.

In the spring of 1995, as the Bosnian Serb military began to lose its military initiative, especially in the central and western part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Karadzic reminded the assembly of the zero-sum nature of the conflict and tried to mobilize it for one final determined effort in the face of an indomitable enemy:

“This is not an ordinary war where power is lost or the system is lost or changed, this is one where all is lost, all roots are lost. They would pull out and cut down our every single plum tree, as they have done.

They would overturn our every grave. Where they set foot, there’s no place for the Serbs anymore”​76.​

Once again, applause ensued.

The assembly remained consistent in portraying Bosniaks as a mortal and deadly enemy to the bitter end. In December 1995, as it became obvious with the signing of the Dayton Peace Accords that after three and a half years of brutal siege the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo would be reintegrated as one city, and that the Bosnian Serb Army had all but lost it, Vojislav Maksimovic bitterly complained that “we just simply need to accept the factual situation and literally hand over ourselves into the hands of our executioners”​77.​

71 st Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, p. 30, Slobodan Bijelić ​ 72 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ceremonial session, January 9, 1994, p. 4, Radovan Karadžić 73 nd Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 42 ​ Session, July 18-19, 1994, p. 10, Radovan Karadžić ​ 74 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 46th Session, November 9-11 and November 23, 1994, p. 97, ​ Dragomir Kerović 75 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 46th Session, November 9-11 and November 23, 1994, p. 11/2, ​ Nedjeljko Rašula 76 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 50 ​ Session, April 15/16, 1995, p. 93, Radovan Karadžić 77 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 56 ​ Session, December 17, 1995, p. 25, Vojislav Maksimović ​ 16

Bosniaks as Sub-humans

The end of 1994 was a trying time for Radovan Karadzic, if the escalation of his rhetoric in the assembly is to serve as any indicator. The military balance of power was changing to the disadvantage of the Bosnian Serb Army, and the punishing international sanctions began to cause cracks in the pyramid of personal power that he had built over the previous two years. In the 46t​ h​ sitting of the assembly, Karadzic felt it necessary to underscore the inevitability and preventive nature of the conflict which was now changing course to the detriment of the project of Republika Srpska:

“And I realised why, the Muslims wanted to change the Constitution during these two years and for their halasa ​ to come off age and within two years they could get over 50 percent of votes in the Parliament (…)

We would disappear”7​ 8​.

Halasa​ is a loan word from Turkish and may be translated as ​mob ​ or ​scum​79​. But, Karadzic was by no means alone in constructing Bosniaks as debased and subhuman—savages that cannot be allowed even self-rule. Vojislav Maksimovic, for instance, expressed the view that “Muslim greed is a characteristic of their physical being” and is immense8​ 0​. At the May 1992 session in Banja Luka, Milan Novakovic from Bijeljina commented that based on his “lifetime of experience and what [he had] seen in the last month” Bosniaks “co-operate best when Serbs are in power. That is what they react to best. When there is Serb authority in place, then there is peace in the house”​81.​ Velibor Ostojic, at the time Minister of Information in the

Government of the Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina8​ 2​, concurred that when it came to the

Bosniaks “we know what kind of masters they make”, but also “what kind of servants—respecting the authority and awaiting what we will feel like saying”. Bosniak humanity was brought into question on a regular basis, fabricating their lack of group identity and a sense of belonging to a distinct ethnic group. This was Karadzic’s intention in July 1992, when he recounted how allegedly “many Muslims are coming and asking to be converted to Christianity”, since “some of them have been Muslims for hardly 200 years, that’s a very thin layer”​83.​

Savo Corda, an SDS deputy from Glamoc, simply claimed that Bosniaks are not a people at all. By stating that they are not people, Bosniak humanity was called into question, since only humans could form such communities; and in fact, only by forming such a community, any social group could be qualified to enter humanity. He then went on to elaborate that “they are degenerates”, worse “than the Turk himself”, a

78 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 46th Session, November 9-11 and November 23, 1994, p. 27/2, ​ Radovan Karadžić 79 Amira Hadžagić. „Najfrekventniji orijentalizmi u okolini Gračanice i Gradačca“, Gračanički glasnik, No. 36, November 2013, pp. 100-105 80 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 38 ​ Session, January 17, 19934 p. 24, Vojislav Maksimović 81 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16 ​ Session, May 12, 1992, p. 25, Milan Novaković ​ 82 The decision to change the name to Republika Srpska was adopted in August 1992, at the nineteenth session of the Assembly. The name was chosen by simple majority voting from a list of names that also included Western Serb Republic, Western Republic of Serbia, Republic of Western Serbia, Central Serb Republic, Serb State, Republic of Western Serbs, Serb Democratic Republic, Saint Sava Democratic Republic and Republic of Slavija. Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 19th Session, ​ August 12, 1992, pp. 32-33 83 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 17 ​ Session, July 24-26, 1992, pp. 89-90, Radovan Karadžić ​ 17 people “established by the Decision of the Central Committee (of the Communist Party)”8​ 4.​ Miladin

Nedic, along the identical lines, called for ending the negotiations which were formally ongoing with the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, because only “a people can talk to a people”, whereas Bosniaks

“themselves proved that they are not a people”​85.​ In an environment that was often competitive and where speakers tried to outdo one another in finding ever more offensive ways in which to define and describe Bosniaks, Momcilo Micic probably carried the day at the 34​th ​ session of the Bosnian Serb Assembly. In a manner characteristic of the many rants by many numerous members of that assembly, Micic proposed that the Serbs needed to settle the war diplomatically at that moment rather than fight it out, precisely because of the ability of their opponent to debase itself:

“We have an opponent who wants to live in a tent, who will make a spinach pie with a spoon-full of flour and a hand-full of grass and brag about what a good lunch they had. We stand no chance”​86.​

Karadzic also spoke in similar terms in January 1994, using an interesting literary reference to underscore the fact that it was their Islamic heritage itself that made Bosniaks unhuman. Karadzic contrasted the Christian humanness to the unhuman tenacity of the Bosniaks:

“They are like worms. Ivo Andric (a BiH Nobel Prize-winning writer) says that: ‘A Turk is like that, you can cut him like a worm, and he would still be moving, while a Christian is like slivers of glass, you hit him in the centre, and he breaks into pieces’”8​ 7​.

Even in the highest echelons of the Bosnian Serb military, the view that they were fighting an inferior opponent had established firm roots. However, as the US-brokered Washington Agreement took hold and even the trickle of arms and supplies that was allowed to reach Army of BiH began to show on the battlefield, the Serb high commanders began to be repeatedly asked by the assembly members about the growing number of, albeit tactical, military defeats. In answering one such question, Milan Gvero, who was eventually convicted for crimes against humanity in 2010, could only come up with the explanation that Bosniaks were simply not smart enough to orchestrate a strategic rather than mere tactical victory:

“On the contrary, it is an enemy, which is skilfully managed, which organizes things in a proper manner and makes the meaningful plans of the combat activities and time will tell that the brain behind it is neither Turkish, nor Turkifiers’, nor Muslim”8​ 8.​

84 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, pp. 15-16, Savo Čorda 85 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 25 ​ Session, January 19-20, 1993, p. 24, Miladin Nedić ​ 86 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 34th Session, August 27-29, September 9-10, September 29-October 1, ​ 1993, p. 29, Momčilo Mićić 87 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 37 ​ Session, January 10, 1994, p. 80/2, Radovan Karadžić ​ 88 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 46th Session, November 9-11 and November 23, 1994, p. 81, Milan ​ Gvero 18

The Assembly and Genocidal Intent

General Ratko Mladic had no dilemmas or misgivings about what was being asked of him. In May 1992, in the same session of the assembly at which he was appointed the commander of the military apparatus inherited from the Yugoslav People’s Army, Mladic made this abundantly clear:

“Therefore, we cannot cleanse nor can we have a sieve to sift so that only Serbs would stay, or that the Serbs would fall through and the rest leave. Well that is, that will not, I do not know how Mr. Krajisnik and

Mr. Karadzic would explain this to the world. People, that would be genocide”8​ 9​.

Throughout the war, until the signing of Dayton Peace Agreement in late 1995, the assembly remained a safe place where its members, as well as other speakers, could freely discuss violence—past as well as future—including specific acts and policies aimed at the annihilation of Bosniaks. A speaker at the fourth session of the assembly, identified only as Vukic (most likely Radislav Vukic, member of the SDS Executive

Board and a “coordinator” for the region of Banja Luka9​ 0​) issued a more than thinly veiled threat. In an obvious and all too common allusion from the Serb nationalist repertoire, he stated that “there will be another Serb uprising and there will be massive bloodshed in which some nations, that have been subsequently created, will disappear altogether”​91.​ In May 1992, Dragan Kalinic—a medical professional with a social-democratic background prior to1992 who would serve as a Minister of Health in all the subsequent Karadzic’s governments—openly called upon “eliminating and liquidating” Bosniak elites​92.​

In November 1992, Srdja Srdic, a deputy from Prijedor (which by the time had already been “purged” from Bosniaks and Croats) bragged that its non-Serb population was “sorted out and packed in hard package where they belong”9​ 3​. This less than cryptic point about killings and mass graves was also applauded by other members of the assembly. Despite the rhetoric of the Serb victimhood, the assembly members also had no qualms about the one-sidedness of the violence. Thus, at the start of 1993, Vojislav Kupresanin ruminated about the missed opportunities to crush the Bosniaks: “We had aviation, howitzers, tanks, cannons, but what did Muslims have? Some guns, some machine guns that they bought from the Serbs and home-made guns”​94.​ On the other hand, in April 1993, Branko Simic complained, of the disorderliness of the process of deportation and lack of “unique criteria or legal acts” regulating the process of uprooting hundreds of thousands from their homes. Simic also praised the deportation system organized in the town of Banja Luka, which had established a kind of one-stop-shop deportation process as opposed to other towns where the process was less centralised:

“I think that the Banja Luka municipality did the best thing. Only three documents are required for the non-Serb citizens to move out of Banja Luka. The Ministry of National Defence adopted 14 legal acts

89 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16 ​ Session, May 12, 1992, p. 29, Ratko Mladić ​ 90 ICTY, Prosecutor v. Radovan Karadžić, Judgment, March 24, 2016, p. 28 91 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 14 ​ Session, December 21, 1991, p. 55, Vukić ​

92 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 16 ​ Session, May 12, 1992, p. 14, Dragan Kalinić 93 nd​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 22 ​ Session, November 23-24, 1992, p. 37/2, Srđa Srdić 94 th​ Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 24 ​ Session, January 8, 1993, p. 19/2, Vojislav Kuprešanin ​ 19 concerning the displacement. According to the law, even the payment of PTT services is required before one can leave the territory of the RS. On the other hand, some military commands impose their own criteria. Some of the municipalities even charge the bridge toll. For instance, in Bosanska Gradiska, Muslims pay 100 German Marks per person to cross the bridge. That is called a bridge toll. Gentlemen, if only the RS (Republika) Srpska) had enough money, we would pay them to go away”​95.​

This not only illustrates the level of detail that the assembly members—both individually and institutionally—had access to, but also an awareness of the criminal nature of the enterprise. Much in tune with this comment, Miroslav Vjestica of Sanski Most advocated against accepting one of many attempts to broker a peace agreement on the basis that it would allow return of refugees:

“That means that (…) people will be going back to Veliki Babic and we will have to compensate everything we destroyed and burned and 17 mosques that we flattened”​96​.

Mladic, in the meantime, appears to have grown into the role he was assigned to by the assembly in May 1992. At the beginning of 1994, while submitting a report on the state of the Bosnian Serb military to the assembly, he stated: “My concern is not that they will create a state. My concern is to have them vanish completely”.​97 ​ Dobrivoje Vidic of Prnjavor paralleled the general’s views when he took the podium in session in November 1994 and exclaimed: “We have to destroy Muslims!”9​ 8.​

In October 1995, the assembly held its session in Banja Luka, in an almost desperate attempt to restore the morale of the Serb population which at that point feared a joint attack of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Croatian Army. One of the topics that came up in the debate was the fall of the UN Safe Area of Srebrenica and its aftermath. As part of the debate, Karadzic took the floor and candidly claimed responsibility for the events of July 1995:

“I stood behind the plan for Zepa and Srebrenica (…) I personally supervised the plan without the knowledge of the Main Staff (…) I happened to run into General (Radislav) Krstic and advised him to go straight into town and to pronounce the fall of Srebrenica, and later we will chase the Turks in the woods. I approved the immediate task and the radical task and I don’t regret it”​99.​

95 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 27 ​ Session, April 3, 1993, p. 20, Branko Simić ​ 96 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 34th Session, August 27-29, September 9-10, September 29-October 1, ​ 1993, p. 22, Miroslav Vještica 97 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 37 ​ Session, January 10, 1994, p. 34, Ratko Mladić ​ 98 Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 46th Session, November 9-11 and November 23, 1994, p. 24/2, ​ Dobrivoje Vidić 99 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 54 ​ Session, October 15-16, 1995, p. 109, Radovan Karadžić ​ 20

Conclusion

There are many possible perspectives on the Bosnian Serb Assembly and much to be learned from the body of knowledge it produced—including its adopted legislation, decisions, resolutions, declarations, and meticulous transcripts of its sessions and debates. The records and transcripts from the assembly sessions offer tremendous insight into various aspects of the war that the Bosnian Serb and Serbian political class waged on Bosnia and Herzegovina. For example, Dobrica Cosic’s recommendation that the Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP) be accepted on the grounds that it promised an end to the very “concept of that state of Bosnia and Herzegovina”​100​ reveals, among other things, that dismantling the state of

Bosnia and Herzegovina was one of the primary aims of the Serbian nationalist project. It also indicates that the real centre of gravity for the Serb elites in Bosnia and Herzegovina was located in Belgrade. The tensions that began to develop between Karadzic and Mladic in the autumn of 1994, additionally indicated a previously unknown degree of control that Belgrade maintained over the Bosnian Serbs throughout the 1990s.

A constructivist analysis of the genocidal violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina which places the assembly at its centre also offer a variety of theoretical insights that may be relevant even outside of the Bosnian context. There is a need to seriously reconsider some existing preconceptions about the nature of elites, and the extent of their role in reconceptualization of the victim. There are also implications for our understanding of genocidal intent—how it crystalized over time within the context of institutions. Although the Bosnian Serb Assembly was, in legal parlance, a conspiracy, it did not operate in secrecy. While some of its work was off limits to the public, it remained, throughout the war, a relatively open institution which operated in full view of the Bosnian public. As an assembly, this was a necessity. Yet, all the while, it engaged in developing legislation and policy directly connected to the challenges of organizing a government in the midst of the perpetration of genocide. Eventually, dozens of people had to be involved in the logistics and preparation of each assembly session, many of which were held outside the Bosnian Serb capital. In short, there is a need to reconceptualize and expand the notion of elite, on the one hand, as well as introduce the possibility that genocidal intent may be outlined in a great detail in a relatively open manner, under a veneer of self-styled legality, that may be useful in the study of other historical episodes of genocide.

Constructivist approach is probably best capable of explaining the resurgence of the “Turkish” motif in academia and the media during the years leading up to the war and in the course of the war itself. This phenomenon was a reflection of the “body of knowledge” in Serbian society—the pre-existing framework through which Serbian elites chose to interpret and construct the Bosniak identity as the Other. The decision to conceptualize Bosniaks as “Turks” was a strategic and rational policy choice made on the basis of known cultural resonance. The assembly not only construed the enemy, but also created

100 th Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 30 ​ Session, May 5-6, 1993, p. 12, Dobrica Ćosić ​ 21 and implemented very specific policies aimed at eradicating “the Turk”​101​. In this way, its members manufactured a social reality which eventually metastasized into a legal reality. As this article demonstrates, the crystallization of genocidal intent in the case of the Bosnian genocide was inextricable linked to the simultaneous discursive reconceptualization of the intended victim. Only by producing the reality in which their present campaign was a continuation of the earlier struggle for national liberation from the Ottoman Empire was it possible to make a political decision to kill thousands of people and uproot and eradicate hundreds of thousands more. Thus, through its reconstruction of the victim and its role in managing and directing the violence, the Bosnian Serb Assembly played a central role in the genocidal process in Bosnia and Herzegovina from its outset to its very end.

101 Lee, C.H. Julian, Halilovich, Hariz, Phipps, Peter, Sutcliffe, Richard and Landau-Ward, Anni, 2019, Monsters for Modernity: ​ Glo​bal Icons for our Critical Condition. Kismet Press: London, pp. 109-123. ​ 22