Not that a poster as distinguished as
Soj needs defending, but...
I feel like many posters on Soj's entry Srebrenica: 10 Years Later were either ill-informed or unfair in their comments. Ill-informed both about the definition of genocide as well as the context of the dissolution of the Yugoslav state.
Poster "another American" charged that Soj's diary amounted to "holocaust denial". MT Spaces says Soj's entry is crap and that it makes DailyKos look like an inter-ethnic hate site. Steve M said that having such a diary on the recommended list was "dangerous" (I suppose he was right). Et cetera et cetera. All of these posters are, sadly, wrong. I think alot of these wrong comments stem from a lack of understanding of "genocide" - both the definition and the concept. It is clear from reading Soj's diary that Soj is not, as firenze alleges, trying to "explain away or deny a horrible atrocity".
First off, there is no good definition of genocide, and there is no definition which is totally agreed upon. I have chosen to use the definition written at the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which in 1948 defined genocide thusly:
The convention defines genocide as any act committed with the idea of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This includes such acts as:
* Killing members of the group
* Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
* Deliberately inflicting conditions calculated to physically destroy the group (the whole group or even part of the group)
* Forcefully transferring children of the group to another group
The term dates back to the 1930s, coined by Polish scholar Raphael Lemkin(Arne Johan Vetlesen - Genocide: A Case for the Responsibility of the Bystander). As Vetlesen notes in his article, in multi-national countries such as Bosnia, it is dificult to apply the term "genocide" because the definition of "genocide" implies homogeneity and a single ethnic identity, rather than multiple identities, as is the case in Bosnia.
A further problem with applying the term "genocide" to Bosnia is that Serbs were not trying to destroy a Bosnian nation or ethnic identity. They were trying to defensively create a homeland. Here I think is a crucial lack of understanding illustrated by Kossacks.
Serbian nationalism is tied in to the Serbian Orthodox Church. The Serbian Church and the Serbian state have, like many other European states, been closely linked and even controlled throughout history. The relationship between the Serbian Church and the Serbian state is well-presented by Branimir Anzulovic in "Heavenly Serbia: from myth to genocide". Even Tito, who was Communist and atheist, could not remove the Serbian Church from public life. In the 1980s, allegiance to the Serbian Church became even heavier, described by Sabrina Ramet as "fashionable" (Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia).
Serbian nationalism played on fears of victimization by the Serbian public, helped by Serbian state media (TV, newspapers and magazines). This fear of victimization was summed up by Milosevic's statement to Kosovar Serbs that "no-one should dare beat you". Serbian national culture created a fear of the 'other' through myths and literature. Distorted history of WWII, including inflated casualty numbers, also played a large part. The Croatian Ustase, a Croatian puppet government during the Axis occupation, massacred thousands of Serbs, and in the 1970s and 80s Serbian nationalists inflated those casualty numbers to create fear, giving the Serbian state more power. Also, Franko Tudjman's Croatian government in the 1980s appropriated symbols used by the Ustase, creating even further hysteria. In short, Serbs in the 1980s were extremely fearful of a genocidal campaign against them.
This is why it is extremely important to understand exactly what happened in Srebrenica and in the whole of the former Yugoslav state. Misguided fears of a resurgent Croatia bent on eliminating the Serbian nation directly contributed to the ethnic cleansing of Bosnians and Croatians from areas deemed vital to the Serbian homeland. The opposite effect also took place - Croatians, fearful of Serbian domination, retribution and attack, began preemptively cleansing Serbs from areas they deemed vital to their homeland. The Serb who (to use the metaphor of one of my professors) went to sleep in Yugoslavia and woke up in Krajina, Croatia, all of a sudden was not sure whether he would be shot for being a Serb.
Myths of oppression also contributed to massacres on both sides. Croats believed that they were singly targeted and oppressed by the Serbian monarchy in 1920s and 30s. Vuk Draskovic, a Serb was quoted by David Binder in the NYT as saying that "We Serbs are a lost unhappy tribe of Israel," an entirely logical statement to him: he believed both Jews and Serbs were victims of genocide in WWII.
To label Srebrenica a "genocide" is to heighten a rhetorical battle. Regardless of the human toll, perpetrators of genocide are always regarded as worse criminals than perpetrators of ethnic cleansing or other war crimes. Yet Milosevic and other nationalist Serbs did not, at Srebrenica or any other massacre of civilians, try to wipe Bosnians or Croatians off the face of the earth, as Hitler did to the Jews, Gypsies and others. Their goal was, instead, a Serbia which included Kosovo, Vojvodina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and any regions of Bosnia and Croatia in which Serbs lived.
The Serbian state as it exists right now has many names: "Narrow Serbia", "rump Serbia", and, three hundred years ago, the pashalik of Belgrade in the Ottoman Empire. The goal of Serbian nationalists has been to create a true Serbian nation-state, with no ethnic minorities, and encompassing Kosovo and Pec, two cities with modern historical importance to Serbian nationalism. This goal was persued via ethnic cleansing. Non-Serbs who lived in "Greater Serbia" were eliminated, whether they were shot, or became internally displaced. Bosnians and Croats were not killed or displaced because they were untermenschen, or anything like that: they were eliminated due to a combination of cold rational thinking that realized the need for a strong Serbian nation-state, and a hysterical fear and mob mentality that lashed out at an undefinable 'other'.
Apparantly many, both in the media and at DailyKos, feel that crimes such as Srebrenica aren't bad enough unless they are acknolwedged to be genocides. Defining the massacres at Srebrenica and elsewhere in the messy Yugoslav civil war as ethnic cleansing rather than genocide does not do a disservice to the victims. Many of the victims of these massacres committed only one crime - that of being born the wrong religion in the wrong place at the wrong time. Calling Srebrenica a "genocide" won't make those victims come back to life, and won't make massacres in the future any less likely to happen. In fact, it may make them more likely, as such language, when undeserved, merely increases the level of rhetoric and hysteria in modern media - something which as I just wrote above, clearly plays a role in the perpetration of such events.
Questioning whether Srebrenica is genocide or ethnic cleansing also is not "apologist". It is not hateful. It is not akin to Holocaust Denial. It is striving for accuracy. I fully acknowledge that I may be wrong, and that evidence may turn up showing that Milosevic and others in his circle fully believed that Muslims such as Albanians and Bosnians were 'human trash' and did not deserve to live. However I doubt it.
In summary: don't throw around the term "genocide" loosely, because it can create a culture and climate of fear and retribution, leading to more crimes against humanity. Also, just because an event is not a genocide does not mean it's not an absolutely despicable crime against humanity, fully deserving justice.
Please recommend this diary. I think that both it and Soj's diary yesterday will help stimulate genuine discussion. I hope that many people who read both these diaries and say "huh?" will take some time and find out for themselves what they think rather than taking my or anyone else's word for it. To help in this regard, here are some of the sources I used to write this:
Adanir, Fikret. "Balkan Historiography Related to the Ottoman Empire Since 1945." In Ottoman Past and Today's Turkey, edited by Kemal Karpat. Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden, 2000.
Anzulovic, Branimir. "Heavenly Serbia: from myth to genocide." New York University Press, New York, New York, 1999.
Binder, David. "Serbs bewail their lot in the Yugoslav federation." In the New York Times, October 24 1986, page A8.
United Nations CyberSchoolbus: "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide." Available at http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/treaties/genocide.asp.
Dempsey, Judy. "Serbia's Leader Plays The Nationalist Card." In the Financial Times, September 24, 1988.
Judah, Tim. "Kosovo: War and Revenge." Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2000.
Lampe, Richard. "Yugoslavia As History: Twice there was a country." Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, U.K., 2000.
Ramet, Sabrina. "Balkan Babel: The Disintegration of Yugoslavia from the Death of Tito to the Fall of Milosevic." Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 2002.
Ramet, Sabrina. "Nationalism and Federalism in Yugoslavia, 1962-1991." Indiana University Press, Indianopolis, 1992.
Tesanovic, Jasmina. "Diary of a Political Idiot." Midnight Editions, San Francisco, 2000.
Todorova, Maria. "The Ottoman Legacy in the Balkans." In "Imperial Legacy: The Ottoman Imprint on the Balkans and the Middle East," edited by L. Carl Brown. Columbia University Press, New York, New York, 1996.
Wilson, Duncan. "Tito's Yugoslavia." Cambridge University Press, New York, New York, 1979.
Woodward, Susan. "Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War." The Brookings Institution, Washing, D.C., 1995.