"Ethnic Conflict as Demobilizer: The Case of Serbia"
V.P. Gagnon, Jr.

1. Donald Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley: University of California Press,1985), p. 348.

2. See Joseph Rothschild, Ethnopolitics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), p. 97.

3. For the ethnic mobilization argument, see Horowitz, Ethnic Groups; Milton Esman, Ethnic Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). In IR literature see for example Barry Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict,” Survival, vol.35, no.1 (Spring 1993), pp.27-47; Stephen Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” International Security, vol.18, no.4 (Spring 1994), pp.5-39; Jack Snyder, “Nationalism and the Crisis of the Post-Soviet State,” Survival, vol.35, no.1 (Spring 1993), pp. 5-26; and Snyder, “The New Nationalism: Realist Interpretations and Beyond,” in Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, eds., The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp.179-200.

4. For more detailed background on Serbia in this period, and its involvement in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, see V.P. Gagnon, Jr., “Ethnicity and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,” International Security, vol.19, no.3 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 130-166.

5. The province of Kosovo was put under virtual military occupation by Yugoslav and Serbian military and police. But what is significant is the almost total lack of violent conflict in Kosovo between ethnic Albanians and Serbs on an individual level. (For statistics on the extremely low-level of inter-ethnic violence in Kosovo see report of the independent commission, Srdja Popovic, et al., Kosovski cvor: dresiti ili seci?, Belgrade: Khronos, 1990) There was also a complete lack of organized, sustained violence along these lines. And the “mobilizations” of Serbs that took place in the early to mid-1980s were organized by the Serbian regime, secret police and their allies among nationalist intellectuals (see Ivan Stambolic, Put u Bespuce (Belgrade: Radio B92, 1995), pp.168-181).

6. Of course similar arguments were made in the other Yugoslav republics, where the injustice of cultural suppression was blamed on the central authorities which were identified with Serbia.

7. For example see Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts.

8. In fact, however, by 1986 agreement had been reached between the moderate then-president of Serbia Ivan Stambolic and a new generation of Kosovo leaders; by this time inter-ethnic incidents of conflict had also dropped to near zero. Yet the rhetoric and provocation of conflict by allies of the Serbian regime and Serbian nationalists actually escalated at this point. See Stambolic, Put u Bespuce, pp.168-200.

9. For description of this kind of official propaganda before 1990, see Predrag Tasic, Kako je ubijena druga Jugoslavija (Skoplje, 1994).

10. On the activities in Croatia of Serbian guerilla groups cooperating with the Yugoslav army, see for example, War Crimes in Bosnia-Hercegovina (New York: Helsinki Watch, 1992), pp. 230-309. For confirmation from officials who were in the top Serbian leadership at the time as to official Serbia’s desire to provoke war in Croatia in this period, see Borisav Jovic, Poslednji dani SFRJ (Belgrade: Politika, 1995); Veljko Kadijevic, Moje Vidjenje Raspada: Vojska bez Drzave (Belgrade: Politika, 1993). For confirmation from guerrilla group’s leaders, see Vojislav Šešelj, leader of the so-called “Chetniks”, in BBC documentary “Death of Yugoslavia.”
Although Tudjman and some within the HDZ certainly also wanted to provoke war and undertook policies that were designed to frighten Croatia’s Serbs, others in the ruling Croatian party were seeking honest compromises, which in turn were accepted by moderates among Croatian Serbs. For this view, see interview with Vojislav Vukcevic, former head of SDS for the Baranja region of Croatia, “Vlak ce proci kroz Knin,” Srpska Rec, no.104 (August 15, 1994), pp.23-29. In any case, regardless of HDZ intentions, what is clear is that Belgrade instrumentalized the fears and concerns of Croatian Serbs, exacerbating the situation rather than attempting to resolve these issues.

11. For a summation of the official propaganda along this line, see Miroljub Jevtic, Od Islamske Deklaracije do Verskog Rata u BiH (Belgrade: Filip Višnjic, 1993). Jevtic is a self-proclaimed “expert” on Islam who has been very prominent in official Serbian propaganda about the war in Bosnia.

12. See for example speech by Dobrica Cosic, then-president of rump-Yugoslavia and one of the intellectual godfathers of the drive for a “Greater Serbia”, in Review of International Affairs, no.1005-1006 (1992), p.4.

13. Miloševic, speech at Kosovo Polje, 17 Dec 92 Tanjug (FBIS-EEU-92-244, 18 December 92, p. 38). Such denials have continued to mark official Serbian reactions to reports of massacres of non-Serb civilians, for example in Serb reports on Western coverage of the massacre of thousands of civilian men after the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serb forces in the summer of 1995.

14. As one respected polling institution noted about the influence of television within Serbia, "Television ... has very great influence on public opinion even thought its credibility is widely challenged." Vreme, 16 Nov 92, pp. 26-28, "TV's influence on the ghostly voters," Dr. Miladin Kovacevic and Srdjan Bogosavljevic. On how Serbian television managed to gain credibility, see Biljana Bakic (Masters thesis, University of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Anthropology, Spring 1994).

15. This kind of outrage on the part of Americans was what kept United States policy in the region relatively sympathetic to the cause of the Bosnian Muslims.

16. Indeed, while critical of Marxist approaches that made class the one “real” determinant of interest and discounted “ethnicity” as false consciousness, some of the literature on ethnicity in fact turns Marx on its head by positing that “ethnicity” is in fact the one real or primordial identification that motivates people with other interests, including class, being of less significance. See for example Esman, Ethnic Politics.

17. Part of this affinity would in fact be related to language; although a Croat doctor from Zagreb and a Serb lawyer from Belgrade may speak in slightly different ways, they would speak standard versions of their languages, as opposed to the "substandard" dialect of rural populations. As Pierre Bourdieu points out, the social importance of language goes well beyond "ethnic" aspects of it, and takes in social status, social position, and gender. This apparently "cross-ethnic" affinity is probably even reinforced by these non-ethnic aspects of language. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 90-102.

18. Due to its previous use of Serbian nationalist issues, the regime had alienated most of the 33 percent of Serbia’s population that was not Serb. It would therefore have to win the votes of about 60 percent of the Serb population of Serbia to win 40 percent of the total vote, enough to win a majority in parliament (due to the first-past-the post system.)

19. "Glasali ste, gladujte," Vreme, January 6, 1992, pp. 12-13.

20. Indeed, Milosevic declared, in response to the SPO's references to Serbian history, that "the past can't resolve the problems of the present," and "the past should be left to history." Speech in Niš, November 21, 1990, in Politika, November 22, 1990, pp. 1,2. For other examples see his speeches at Bor, November 1, and in Kragujevac November 27.

21. Vreme, January 6, 1992, p. 13.

22. See for example "Kompromis i ustupci korak ka rešenju," Borba, June 7, 1991, pp. 1,3.

23. On this see Mirjana Prosic-Dvornic, "Enough! Student Protest '92: The Youth of Belgrade in Quest of 'Another Serbia,'" The Anthropology of East Europe Review, vol. 11, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Fall 1993), pp. 127-137.

24. These moves were also aimed at the international community, which was debating the imposition of economic sanctions against Serbia for its involvement in the Bosnian war.

25. Nenad Lj. Stefanovic, "Spaljivanje TV-veštica," Vreme, March 21, 1994, p. 16.

26. See for example following speeches by Milosevic: 8 Dec 92, at campaign rally in Srem, Belgrade radio (FBEE-92-238, 10 Dec 92, pp. 44-45); talk to businessmen 14 Dec 92, Belgrade TV (FBEE-92-241, 15 Dec 92, pp. 50-52).

27. For example, see interview with Serbian prime minister (and SPS member) Bozovic, in Novi Sad daily Dnevnik, reported by Tanjug, 12 December 1992, (FBIS-EEU-92-240, 14 Dec 91, p. 73-74).

28. See, for example, series of Milosevic speeches in Kosovo, 17 Dec 92 in Tanjug (FBEE-92-244, 18 Dec 92, pp. 38-39).

29. See interviews with Draskovic in Vreme, November 4, 1991, pp. 9-11, and Danas, February 18, 1992.

30. On the issues of draft avoidance and desertion from the front by Serbs, see Dragan Todorovi , “To nije njihova kolubarska bitka,” Vreme, October 7, 1991, pp.24-26; Milan Milosevic, “Mars preko Drine,” Vreme, October 7, 1991, pp. 20-22; Ivan Torov, “Tko je izdao,” Danas, October 1, 1991, pp.32-33.

31. Although the prewar population of Serbian republic was only about 68 percent Serb, the 13 percent of the population which is ethnically Albanian and which is concentrated in the province of Kosovo is boycotting all political participation, and the Serbian population of the republic has been augmented by Serb refugees from Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. The figure 80 percent is a rough estimate of the proportion of Serbs among the non-Albanian part of the electorate (without refugees the figure would be 78 percent). In this paper, figures relating to "the Serbian electorate" therefore should be taken as meaning the non-Albanian part of that electorate.

32. Results in Review of International Affairs, no. 1005-6 (June 1-July 1, 1992), pp. 30-31.

33. For example in his first speech as prime minister in July 1992 Panic called for demilitarizing Bosnia-Hercegovina, declared that "there simply is no idea in this world which would be worth killing for at the end of the 20th century," stated as a priority the restoration of cooperation and trust between the new, Serbian Yugoslavia and the other former Yugoslav republics, and put most emphasis on the need for radical economic reform and true democratization. Review of International Affairs, no. 1005-6, pp. 4-6.

34. Poll by Institute of Social Sciences, cited in NIN, 27 November 92, Bogdan Ivanisevic, "Our Topic: Opposition against itself: running for the arrow," pp. 10-12 (FBIS-EEU-92-243, 17 Dec 92, pp. 45-48).

35. For election result figures, see Milan Milosevic, "Maratonci trce pocasni krug," Vreme, December 27, 1993, pp.10-14.

36. The democratic opposition bloc (DEPOS), headed by the SPO, stressed the economic, social and national crisis within Serbia, emphasized the need for peace with Muslims in Bosnia and peaceful coexistence; its campaign slogan was "So that we can live like the rest of the normal world." DEPOS's campaign literature also appealed to those who "don't want war, sanctions, hunger and ... having as your greatest happiness a visa to leave Serbia." See campaign ad in Vreme, December 13, 1993. DEPOS and the other democratically-oriented opposition parties received about 35 percent of the total vote. The one real opposition party that attempted to exploit the national question in a strategy of ethnic outbidding, the Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS), received only 5 percent of votes cast.

37. Gagnon, “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict.”

38. Thus Milosevic’s vehement denials of ethnic cleansing by Serbian forces in Bosnia. Anecdotal evidence also seems to bear this out, for example, a number of reports of Serbian soldiers who were very disillusioned when they saw that the conditions in Croatia and Bosnia in no way corresponded to Belgrade television images. (See for example AP report from Belgrade March 9, 1994 on Serbian soldier who had been in Bosnia.) In neighboring Bulgaria, public awareness of atrocities committed by the ruling communists against the Turkish minority seems to have been the major reason why, in multiparty elections in 1990, the Socialist (formerly communist) Party was so unsuccessful in using ethnic issues to mobilize voters. (personal communication with advisor to Bulgarian president Zhelev, June 1993).

39. The result was a sharp decline in popular support for the HDZ, and especially for those people in the HDZ who were most extreme on the question of Croat- Muslim relations in Bosnia. Croatia’s ruling HDZ has also consistently denied that Croat forces in Bosnia committed any atrocities, pointing instead to atrocities allegedly committed by Muslim forces. Similarly, during the invasion of Krajina in the summer of 1995, the Croatian official media vehemently denied that any atrocities against Serbs had been committed, pointing instead to how well the local Serbs who stayed had been treated by Croatian police.

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