SUMMARY
In the context of the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s conflict with the government of Bosnia, Bosnian Serb forces resorted to large-scale use of one-sided violence. The conflict in Bosnia during the 1990s popularised the concept of ‘ethnic cleansing’, in other words the violent and forced expulsion from homes of specific ethnic groups. All sides in the armed conflict in Bosnia made use of this strategy, but the Bosnian Serbs to a higher degree than the other warring parties.
The massive use of violence against civilians in wartime is sometimes reduced to being a side-effect of war itself, or to being isolated (yet large-scale) acts carried out by opportunists that avenge a historical wrongdoing or who are severely traumatised. Explanations for the one-sided violence in Bosnia during the early 1990s also contain these factors.
One set of explanations holds that the outbursts of ethnic violence were the consequence of deep-rooted historic animosities and pent-up inter-group hatred between Bosnia’s ethnic groups, which surfaced when the protection of state structures crumbled as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia dissolved. In other words, the spurts of mass violence were to be seen as a series of chaotic events played out along a deterministic line of historical repetition, based on the fact that the peoples of the Balkans had ‘always’ resorted to such means in times of troubles. Such explanations also focus on the trans-generational character of negative stereotypes.
The exclusionist nature of the nationalism that ran high amongst the groups in Bosnia (in part as an effect of elite manipulation) in the conflict was another factor that may have precipitated the possibility of executing killings and expulsions on such a grand scale. Since nationalism is in essence based on perceiving one’s ethnic kindred as being allies, it follows naturally that any other persons are different, giving rise to dangerous currents of exclusion and differentiation between peoples.
Other explanations state that it is likely that many civilians were killed due to personal conflicts, local fears of the other group’s intentions and outright material gain for individuals and communities.
Thorough studies of the ethnic cleansing in the conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina have also pointed to there having been strategic and political gains to be made also from the ‘top-down’ initiation of large-scale killings of civilians. Thus, there exists evidence that the murder of civilians in Bosnia was part of the general battle-plan of the Bosnian Serb faction (as well as the other participants in this conflict) so as to reach its planned political end-state.
In the Bosnian context the acquisition of territory for the Bosnian Serbs was crucial for a number of reasons. Firstly, the capture and consolidation of territory was vital in order to secure supply lines into Serbia and into the Serbian Krajina enclave. Bosnian Serb forces thus sought to capture such strategic territory so as to enhance their war effort. Secondly, capturing swathes of territory was crucial in order to create a contiguous territorial entity that could compose a viable Serbian-inhabited state when the war ended, and also as a means to create a united defensible landmass. Thirdly, the conquest of territory was seen as a highly useful bargaining chip with the other competing actors.
Independent of which explanation for the violence one chooses to believe, some notable traits of the one-sided violence can be discerned. Commonly, during or after the capture of territory Bosnian Serb forces would oftentimes resort to ethnic cleansing in the areas they controlled. Multiple reasons for this can be found in the literature on the Bosnian conflict, the most prominent ones in strategic terms being the wish to establish an altered ethnic demographic reality (useful for building viable states) and attempts to wipe out potential resistance from hostile ethnic groups which could threaten strategic positions behind one’s battle lines.
The nationalist nature of the conflict in Bosnia led to the Bosnian Serb forces targeting almost exclusively members of the two other prominent ethnic groups in Bosnia; the Croats and the Bosniaks (who are Muslim). Overall, the Bosniaks were the most targeted group, not due to a higher level of animosity between Serbs and Bosniaks, but simply because the territory mainly sought after by the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina was inhabited mainly by Bosniaks.
Ethnic cleansing by the Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and their affiliated Serbian irregulars took the form of large-scale massacres (such as in Srebrenica) and executions, murders, rape, looting, forced expulsion and the burning of villages, towns and cultural heritage sites belonging to Bosniaks or Bosnian Croats. In besieged towns such as Sarajevo many civilians were also shot to death by snipers, or targeted by artillery or mortar shelling.
The largest waves of ethnic cleansing took place in 1992 and 1995, during successful Bosnian Serb offensives in and around Eastern Bosnia, Posavina, Prijedor and Doboj in 1992, and the Drina Valley, Zepa and Srebrenica in 1995. The years 1993 and 1994 saw considerably less attacks on civilians, primarily since the Bosnian Serbs had by then achieved most of their war aims; with the exception of capturing the Bosniak strongholds in eastern Bosnia that fell in 1995 and were followed by the aforementioned atrocities. One-sided activity ceased when the Dayton peace agreement was signed and hostilities ended.
The Serbian Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and their affiliated Serbian irregulars first became active as a one-sided actor in UCDP data in 1992, when the one-sided violence resulted in over 25 civilian deaths. The threshold was reached in May that year after thousands of civilian prisoners were killed in the Luka camp in Brcko, in northern Bosnia.
