The dissolution of Yugoslavia, far from being the basic outcome of national identities emergence after the fall of Communism as political practice and ideology in the USSR, originated from a complex intersection of processes and crisis developed both within and outside the Yugoslav State. The political and ideological Yugoslav system was indeed based on a positioning between the ‘West’ and the Soviet Union, and the aftermath of 1989 clearly marked a shift in the internal balance of the State. However, it is necessary to underline that this was not the only reason leading to the breakup of the State because the Yugoslav political system itself, as it emerged after Tito’s death and the 1974 constitution, created an environment conducive to growing instability. During the 1980s, nationalist ideals grew in a context of uncertainty about the future assets of the State. Many switched from being supporters of Yugoslav Communism to being supporters of new nationalist positions. This process has been identified as a sort of compensation, given the fact that nationalism offered a new sense of belonging for many supporters of the Yugoslav political project, which was gradually withering away.
With regard to the causes of the dissolution of Yugoslavia, many arguments have been put forward, and Dejan Yovic extensively analyzed the major ones in order to elaborate a ‘Multi-factors subjective approach’ (to quote his definition), capable of merging together elements from each interpretation and exclude narrowing, one-sided perspectives.
The collapse of Yugoslavia brought about the intervention of numerous actors both from inside the former republics (regular armies and paramilitary units) and outside (NATO, UN, EU, etc.). When the tensions between Serbia and, to a larger extent, the Yugoslav authorities and the republics of Slovenia and Croatia reached a non-returning point with the 14th Congress of the Yugoslav communist league in 1990, it became clear that a new asset involving the defection of this republics from Yugoslavia was about to be established. If Slovenia could prevent a prolonged and complex conflict with the JNA (Yugoslav National Army), it was only because of the support it received from the newly reunited Germany and, to a broader extent, from Western European countries. Moreover, being Slovenia a substantially ethnic pure state, Serbia and other republics couldn’t claim part of its territories under the justification of reuniting and protecting their ethnic kins. The situation was completely different in Croatia and, more importantly, in Bosnia-Herzegovina since the first hosted Serb communities in the regions of Slavonia and Krajina, and the latter was the most ethnically mixed among the republics with the majority of the population composed of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and a conspicuous presence of ethnic Serbs and Croats. The war initially broke out between the JNA (increasingly if not completely responsive to Serbian political projects) and Croatia just to expand to Bosnia between 1991 and 1992, after the establishment of the self-proclaimed community of Herceg Bosna by Bosnian Croats and the referendum for independence from Yugoslavia that took place in 1992, despite the strenuous opposition of Bosnian Serbs, whose president Radovan Karadzic played a significant role in the following steps of the conflict. The war was marked by systematic ethnic cleansing and widespread violence against civilians perpetrated by all the conflicting parties. Particularly remarkable was the deployment of paramilitary groups trained and sponsored by Belgrade to support both the military operations of the JNA and the VRS (army of self-proclaimed Republika Srpska), whose actions were marked by selective and brutal violence against civilians.
The lack of volunteers applying for being recruited in the JNA, the general context of instability, and the widespread propaganda conveying the idea of ethnic Serb outside and inside Serbia
(i.e., in Kosovo) being under threat, among other causes, made the creation and mobilization of paramilitary units an advantageous tool for Serbian nationalists’ political project embodied by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The main aim of these units, as clearly demonstrated by a number of testimonies and investigations mainly carried out by the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia), was to subdue territories in the disputed territories of Croatia and particularly of Bosnia and Herzegovina by means of violence and terror. More specifically, they were deployed in areas where the non-Serb population was determined to stay and, therefore, needed to be exposed to particularly violent displays and acts of terror in order to be forced into fleeing. Where this wasn’t possible, paramilitaries engaged in systematic killings and deliberate acts of cruelty reaching a genocidal level in some well-known and documented cases, such as the extermination of the male population in Srebrenica (in this case, the extermination was carried out by the VRS but paramilitaries played a significant role before the Genocide took place). These units usually acted along with the VRS and the JNA, but, in some cases, and especially when non-professionalized units were involved while proceeding with the goals of conquering land and seizing territories for the Serbs, they also engaged in looting, robbery, property destruction and particularly brutal acts of violence especially against non-Serb civilian population.
Belgrade was behind the paramilitaries, fueling them with equipment and monetary rewards and providing them with strategic information to guarantee the success of their interventions. However, this link is not immediately identifiable through a cursory analysis since Serbian authorities made sure military operations and acts of violence carried out by these groups only took place outside national borders in order to construct plausible deniability. Moreover, a significant differentiation among armed groups is recognizable. The most notable difference is the level of professionalization (i.e., military capabilities, equipment, and the complexity of the chain of command), dividing this organization into at least two macro groups. Professionalized units such as the Red Berets and the Scorpions were closely linked to the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), while the Serbian State Security played the role of chief organizer in various operations involving these groups. Non-professionalized units were usually the product of political parties supporting the cause of ethnic Serbs outside Serbia, such as the Vojislav Šešelj Serbian radical party. The recruitment process for the formation of these units appears to be significantly less scrupulous with regard to physical prowess and military capabilities, thus favoring the recruitment of individuals of dubious reliability and with a penchant for violence.
Importantly, the different nature of units deployed on the ground led to different types of violence perpetrated against civilians. Both professionalized and non-professionalized units attacked villages and towns, engaged in racketeering, looting, explosions, beatings, rapings, and indiscriminate killings mainly against nonserbs, but the first were more likely to keep the violence secret, or at least not to engage in prolonged public displays of violence. This is understandable in light of the privileged status they benefitted from and the responsibilities associated with it. Non-professionalized units were, on the contrary, more often involved in both more expressive and public violent displays. As Fujii put forward in relation to the concepts described by Wikstrom and Triber of expressive and instrumental violence, this kind of action should be interpreted as <>. Engagement in violent acts by paramilitary groups served both as a way to show the new order imposed by their presence and to make the civilian population aware of what they would face in case of opposition to their will. However, especially when these acts were perpetrated by non-professionalized units, and particularly with regard to the Yellow Wasps in the Zvornik area, it often degenerated into sadistic and perverted shows aimed at inflicting not only physical pain to the victims but also emotional devastation for the victims before death and lasting psychological harm to those who survived or witnessed (who were most likely to be close relatives of the victims). Unlike professionalized units, which were often deployed distant from the place where they lived and thus didn’t engage in acts of personal violence against people they were familiar with before wartime, the violence enacted by non-professionalized units was significantly more driven by personal resentment since the deployment of these units was more likely to happen in areas the members were familiar with. Further reasons for enacting public expressive violence were the goal of humiliating the culture of the victims (especially in the case of Bosniaks) and the perpetrator’s desire to be known for the violence they displayed. With regard to this, Fujii underlines how <> which was usually not the main goal of professionalized units given their privileged status. Even if Serbs usually didn’t undergo the ordeals Bosniaks and non-Serbs in general experience, in the case of Serbian refugees who fled from the self-proclaimed Republika Srpska Krajina as a result of the Croat military operation (operation Storm), they were exposed to brutal treatment by Serbian forces and forcibly sent back to the region as fighters often without specific training. Other cases of violence against Serbs enacted by paramilitaries involved wealthy Serbs living in the disputed areas and Serbs who were accused of collaborating by any means with ethnic ‘enemies.’
After the NATO bombing, which targeted the armed forces deployed in Republika Srpska and the Dayton Agreement in 1995, professionalized units that were closely linked to Belgrade, such as the Red Berets, were integrated into the JSO, the Special Operation Unit. This, along with the half-hearted help provided by the regime to the ICTY investigations and the lack – exception made for some low-ranking paramilitary members involved in particularly efferent acts of violence against civilians- of serious investigations and prosecutions against the main actors behind the crimes against humanity perpetrated in Bosnia, clearly demonstrate that Belgrade strongly backed paramilitaries and shielded itself from being accused of direct involvement in the war.
Researchers extensively discussed the nature of crimes committed during the Yugoslav wars. Calic analyzed the concept of Ethnic cleansing, trying to assess how this differs from the concept of Genocide. What is most remarkable about her research is that, instead of trying to establish whether Genocide was committed in one case or the other, she assesses the concept of ethnic cleansing as a scale stretching from intimidation and political projects aimed at discouraging people belonging to certain ethnic groups to reside in areas in which the majority of the population belongs to other ethnic groups to genocidal practices. The main advantage of depicting ethnic cleansing in this way is that, while differentiating based on the gravity and systematicity of the crimes committed, it allows the reader to see a series of what could be considered minor events as essential in creating an environment conducive to the enactment of more efferent crimes, even to the point of Genocide.
