I discovered this book at Chatham House library. The front cover image of Arkan with his trademark white tiger gave away a lot of the subject detail of the book. It focuses on the war of the former Yugoslavia. Later in the work we touch upon the mass atrocities in other wars such as in Syria and Rwanda and also look at the Rohingya refugee crisis and the actions of Burma. Deep analyses of all sides of the Yugoslav conflict reveal patterns and structures of the killing machines that were let loose during that conflict, very often, like Arkan’s Tigers, paramilitary non-State actors, from which the overseeing central State political authorities could distance themselves so as to absolve themselves of legal blame for some of the excesses.
It is clear that the State was still involved and indirectly participated in some of the worst violence. Often State media built up on a pedestal the heroes of the conflict, the irregular formations and their lead commanders. It wasn’t just the Serbs that had irregular formations. The Croats expanded through militia and the police and Bosnians irregulars had their ranks filled with Jihadists from far afiled, a foreign influx of seasoned, in essence, Islamic terrorists.
The Bosnian situation was dire with the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats taking leave of command from their centres and, often at odds, going to the extreme, the culmination being the Srebenica massacre where Radovan Karadžić committed the genocide of 10000 Muslim civilians. Often it was the civilian populations that bore the brunt of the mass atrocities, regular armies, in general, sticking to the script of the international consensus of the rules of war.
The author looks at how the command structures are built up to allow these atrocities and micro-examines the causes of such inhumane brutality. There is crossover between State leaders, government, army, organized crime, paramilitaries, smugglers and football hooligans. The State does not tacitly recognise the authority to act of the irregular forces and thus can absolve itself of much of the blame although in the case of Bosnian leader, Alija Izetbegović, he was so obviously attached to the Muslim Jihadists and reliant on them despite him openly presenting as a European-style leader. Slobodan Milošević was more evasive in his political grandstanding and deceptive and presented a unified front to the outside world. Here is a good quote from the book:
‘Brendan Simms exposed what he called British ‘Serbophilia’ in his unforgiving indictment of Britain’s failed Bosnia policy. He argues that what was seen as Serbian military spit-and-polish, in contrast to the ‘rag-tag’ Bosnian Muslims, helped persuade British decision makers that the Serbian establishment were people the British could continue to do business with.’
The public mood globally, after Bosnia, had shifted and in ways in which the author describes an essential way in which to avoid mass atrocities, the international public outcry caused the world to intervene so as to prevent further atrocities in Kosovo.
I enjoyed learning in detail the more intricate, if brutal elements of the conflict and it is a detailed study of what until Ukraine had been the largest conflict on European soil since World War 2. Late on in the book, the author, Kate Ferguson, goes on to look at other arenas and I feel that she could indeed have written separate books for each of these spheres.
I hope to purchase a copy of this book once I return it to the library as it will be useful for future reference.
Wez G Books 