Yugoslavia, II: Murderous Cleansing

Abstract

DESCENT INTO VIOLENCE IN THE THREATENED BORDERS The previous chapter discussed the descent into the danger zone of murderous cleansing as democratic processes degenerated across Yugoslavia. But to explain descent over the brink into violence we must turn to the armed men who first committed violence in the mixed Croat/Serb areas of the Krajina within Croatia. Later came those from the mixed Muslim/Serb/Croat areas of Bosnia, while Kosovans in 1998 and Macedonians in 2001 lagged far behind. All these conflicts fit into my third thesis: danger threatened because representatives of two rival ethnic communities made sovereign claims on the same territory, their claims being both morally plausible and achievable. One constituted the majority population in the existing state; the other constituted a local majority in particular border districts, the weaker side supported by its homeland state next door. But further descent involved not democratic but authoritarian processes. Sovereignty claims are not easy to settle. They appear as a zero-sum game: “Either you or I have sovereignty over this plot of land.” Conflict can be defused by the minority's enjoying federal autonomy within the majority's state or by consociational power-sharing arrangements at the center. Yet sovereignty immediately also involved concrete issues of military and economic power: who should have the guns and jobs? The initial flash points were in Serb-majority parts of the Krajina, where Serbs had previously provided most policemen and held most of the guns. When Croatia claimed sovereignty, it tried to bring in its own policemen.