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The Historiography of the Bosnian Genocide of 1992–1995 in the Work of Foreign Scholars

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The Historiography of the Bosnian Genocide of 1992–1995 in the Work of Foreign Scholars DOI: 10.5644/PI2020.186.14 The historiography of the Bosnian genocide of 1992–1995 in the work of foreign scholars Marko Attila Hoare Department of Political Science and International Relations Sarajevo School of Science and Technology [email protected] Abstract: This essay will provide an introductory discussion of the historiography of the Bosnian genocide of 1992–1995 in the works of foreign scholars. The historiography is too large for this discussion to be exhaustive. We have attempted here to provide the principal categories of relevant works while citing the most important examples of them, before dis- cussing the historiographical deficiencies and the tasks awaiting future scholars of the geno- cide. The reason for the dearth of monographs on the Bosnian genocide is that the subject is highly controversial, and any scholar who seriously studies it and expresses an opinion is likely to create enemies for themselves. There is a tendency of scholars to see the war in postmodernist terms, in terms of Serb, Croat and Bosniak “narratives”; as opposed to ob- jective truth, which discourages taking the subject intellectually seriously. Furthermore, the prevailing ideology and discourse stemming from the international administration is one of reconciliation and putting the past behind us. So there is a disincentive to study the genocide in depth; a preference for studying more liberal feel-good themes related to reconciliation, memory, transitional justice and post-war reconstruction. The Bosnian genocide therefore awaits a new generation of foreign scholars to take it seriously as a subject and explore it in detail. Key words: Bosnia-Hercegovina, Yugoslavia, genocide, nationalism, international justice This essay will provide an introductory discussion of the historiography of the Bosnian genocide of 1992–1995 in the works of foreign scholars. The historiography is too large for this discussion to be exhaustive; those seeking more extensive surveys may consult Sabrina Petra Ramet, Thinking about Yugoslavia: Scholarly Debates about the Yugoslav Breakup and the Wars in Bosnia and Kosovo1 or Quintin Hoare and Noel Malcolm (eds), Books on Bosnia: A Critical Bibliography of Works Relating to Bosnia-Herzegovina Published Since 1990 in West European Languages,2 though both these works are now dated, particularly the second. We have attempted here to provide 1 Ramet, 2009. 2 Hoare and Malcolm, 1999. 11 Posebna izdanja ANUBiH CLXXXVII, OHN 47/2 the principal categories of relevant works while citing the most important ex- amples of them, before discussing the historiographical deficiencies and the tasks awaiting future scholars of the genocide. The Bosnian genocide of 1992–1995 has had a tremendous intellectual and political impact in the world outside the former Yugoslavia. More than any other political or historical event, it has been the cause of the explo- sion in the intellectual interest in genocide as an object of study. This went along with the adoption of a broader understanding of genocide than had previously existed. Previously, the paradigm of genocide was the Holocaust: there was a widespread perception that genocide was something that oc- curred extremely rarely – perhaps only a couple of times in world history (the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide). The Bosnian genocide – particularly after the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 2001 found conclusively that genocide occurred at Srebrenica in 1995 – changed the paradigm of genocide away from an industrialised total genocide on the Holocaust model, to something potentially smaller and more frequent. Politically, it catalysed the rise of liberal interventionism: the doctrine that military intervention should be necessary to prevent and halt genocide and crimes against humanity. This found expression in 2005 with the adoption of the Responsibility to protect doctrine by the World Congress of the UN; it influenced also the Kosovo intervention in 1999 and the Libya intervention in 2011. Nevertheless, the Bosnian genocide remains poorly researched by foreign scholars. The first reason for the dearth of high-quality research on the Bosnian genocide is the legacy of the older generation of former-Yugoslav experts. The outbreak of the war in the former Yugoslavia in 1991 found Yugoslav scholars mentally unprepared, and often reluctant to face what was happen- ing. They had largely been sympathetic to Titoist Yugoslavia and had dif- ficulty acknowledging the break-up. Some were actively sympathetic to the regime in Belgrade. This was a disincentive to study the genocide seriously. One example of a study of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina by members of the older generation of scholars is Steven L. Burg and Paul Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention by Burg, which provides a narrative account of the conflict but downplays its genocidal character.3 In fact, some of the books written while the war was ongoing were written more from a standpoint of sympathy with the perpetrators: e.g. Susan 3 Burg and Shoup, 1999. 12 Marko Atilla Hoare: The historiography of the Bosnian genocide of 1992-1995 in the work of foreign scholars Woodward’s Balkan Tragedy – Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War.4 As the present author wrote in 1996, Woodward’s “seemingly scholarly style and pretence of objectivity mask effective acquiescence in Serbian war aims and a dislike of Germany, Austria and Croatia that borders on hatred”.5 Among the generation of scholars who were coming of age in the 1990s, there was also a widespread reluctance to confront what was happening. One example of this was Dejan Jovic’s study of the break-up of Yugoslavia: Yugoslavia, a State that Withered Away,6 originally published in Croatian as Jugoslavija – država koja je odumrla: Uspon, kriza i pad Kardeljeve Jugoslavije (1974–1990).7 This presented the break-up in terms of the decay of the central Yugoslav state authority, and the war in Croatia and BiH as the work of private armies arising in the power vacuum. It was wholly erroneous. Meanwhile, journalists rushed to fill the vacuum created by the absence of a scholarly response to the war and break-up. The best book on the break up and the war in BiH is still the work of two investigative journalists, Laura Silber and Allan Little, originally published as The Death of Yugoslavia8 and subsequently revised and republished as Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation.9 Using extensive primary research in the form of interviews with the key par- ticipants, including Milosevic, Tudjman and some of the international states- men, it has never been rivalled by any academic study. Another excellent work of investigative journalism is Seada Vranic, Breaking the wall of silence: The voices of raped Bosnia,10 examining the systematic sexual violence of the war through extensive interviews with victims. There have also been some good journalistic accounts of the atrocities in BiH, in particular Witness to Genocide: First Inside Account of the Horrors of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia by Roy Gutman11 and Seasons in Hell: Slaughter and Betrayal in Bosnia by Ed Vulliamy.12 These provide a good flavour of the genocide but cannot explain the historical background. Mention should be made of two serious works of investigative journalism on the Srebrenica massacre, Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a war-crime,13 and David 4 Woodward, 1995. 5 Hoare, 1996. 6 Jovic, 2003. 7 Ibid. 8 Silber and Little, 1996. 9 Ibid., 1997. 10 Vranic, 1996. 11 Gutman, 1993. 12 Vulliamy, 1993. 13 Honig and Both, 1997. 13 Posebna izdanja ANUBiH CLXXXVII, OHN 47/2 Rohde, Endgame – The Betrayal of Srebrenica,14 though the first is marred by an unwillingness seriously to critically evaluate the role of the UN in the mas- sacre. Finally, a very well researched early study of the local media’s contri- bution to the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina was provided by Mark Thompson, Forging War: The media in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina.15 Generally, however, the wealth of journalistic accounts plus eyewitness accounts by par- ticipants have overshadowed the scholarly literature. There were unfortunate cases of books on the region and the break-up by journalists that have peddled ethnic stereotypes and inaccurate clichés about them; particularly notorious in this regard were Misha Glenny’s The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War 16 and Robert D. Kaplan’s Balkan Ghosts: A Journey through History.17 Stereotypes and clichés reproduced by journalists have crept into academic discourse and proven remarkably persistent. A third contribution to the literature on the Bosnian genocide has been made by genocide scholars. Genocide studies experienced a proper emer- gence and explosion in the first decade of the twentieth century, largely due to the events in Bosnia and Rwanda. Consequently, Bosnia usually formed a case study in these general books about genocide. Notable in particular are Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing;18 Eric D. Weitz, A Century of Genocide: Utopias of Race and Nation;19 Norman Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe;20 Adam Jones, Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction;21 Martin Shaw, What Is Genocide?;22 Jacques Semelin, Purify and Destroy: The Political Uses of Massacres and Genocide;23 and others. These books were notable for the disagreements between scholars over whether what happened in Bosnia actu- ally constituted genocide or not, with perhaps the majority concluding that it had.24 The best one-chapter treatment of the Bosnian genocide was probably Weitz’s.25 However, in general the books suffered from the fact that there simply were not enough articles and monographs on the genocide to produce 14 Rohde, 1997. 15 Thompson, 1999. 16 Glenny 1996. 17 Kaplan, 1993. 18 Mann, 2005. 19 Weitz, 2015. 20 Naimark, 2001. 21 Jones, 2016. 22 Shaw, 2015. 23 Semelin, 2014. 24 Hoare, 2014: 516.
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