"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [3]

[Note: Because I'm so busy with graduate school, I'm going to be realistic about how much time I can devote to this blog on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, I'm going to continue this review as I can; sometimes I may only summarize part of a chapter just to keep things moving. I hope my readers will understand.]
Chapter 1: Bloodlines
The chapter opens with Oslobodjenje reporter Senka Kurtovic--a "Croat" who was ethnically half-Muslim, quarter-Croat, and quarter-Jewish, and whom had identified herself as "Dutch" in the last Yugoslav census to protest the requirement to declare a nationality--meeting with her Serb boyfriend, a radio announcer, the night before the now-infamous peace march of April 5, 1992, when gunmen with the SDS fired on peaceful protesters, symbolically beginning the war in Sarajevo. Senka notices that her boyfriend is distant, and when he tells her that she needs to go home, she becomes frustrated that he won't explain himself. He drops her off, and they never speak to each other again.

The rest of the chapter explains how and why religious identity is so closely identified with ethnic identity in a country where almost everybody is Slavic and few are devoutly religious. The explanation is a reasonably brisk and accurate history of Bosnia and the South Slavs (Gjelten, writing in 1996, accepted the argument that the Bosnian church was Bogomil, although I accept Noel Malcolm's argument on this point) from the early Middle Ages to the present day; his account won't contain anything new to readers of this blog and therefore I won't analyze it in depth. Suffice it to say, Gjelten understands the basic dynamic of Serb, Croat, and Muslim national identities and the historical context in which they were developed. This book was published in 1995 for a general readership--this is necessary context for the audience, and I'm pleased both that Gjelten includes it, and that he gets it right.

The chapter concludes by noting that the gunmen were arrested, and then released as part of a deal. Karadzic already comes across as the bombastic, racist terrorist he would soon prove to be. And Sanka's boyfriend? It would turn out that he had been collaborating with the SDS for some time; and he would go on to work for Bosnian Serb television in Pale. Two days after the attack, she would see him on TV, working as a news announcer and beginning his broadcast by greeting "Good evening, my dear Serb people."

"The Fall of Yugoslavia" by Misha Glenny [11]

Chapter 5: August 1991-May 1992: Bosnia-Hercegovina--Paradise of the Damned

Glenny's account of the war in Bosnia proper begins with a trip across the Sava River from war-torn Slavonski Samac in Croatia to as-yet untouched Bosanski Samac on the Bosnian side. This gives him an opportunity to note how unprepared for the war Bosnia was; not just militarily and politically, but also at the level of daily life--most people simply did not seem to really believe that the war would cross over from Croatia.

It also gives him a chance to briefly explain who the Bosnian Muslims are, and what their relation to the surrounding Serbs and Croats is. I do mean briefly, by the way, and by spending only two pages explaining how the Muslim Slavs of Bosnia and Sandzak became the Muslim nation in Tito's Yugoslavia in such a cursory fashion, Glenny raises more questions than he answers, some of which are troubling.

He essentially regards the creation of a Muslim nationality as a Titoist move to create leverage against Serb and Croat nationalism in the late 60s and early 70s. He points out that they are a nation who are solely distinguished by their religion, but ignores how much Catholicism and Orthodoxy define Croats and Serbs, respectively.

Lastly, he refers to the problems this creates under the convoluted 1974 Constitutions, which defined Yugoslavia as a federation of both constituent republics and constituent nations. He argues that republics could not leave Yugoslavia without the consent of the all nations. The objection is obvious--neither Croatia nor Bosnia had the right to leave, as the Serb nation in both republics refused to cooperate.

How Glenny will square this legal objection with Western notions of individual liberty (who decides how "the nation" feels?) and minority rights (minorities were not "nations" in the Yugoslav Constitution) will be interesting.

I am not suggesting that he is misreading the Yugoslav Constitution--I am merely curious as to whether or not he sees the same problems with it that I do; and also how he thinks the situation should have been managed. Under Glenny's logic, only Slovenia and Macedonia had the right to leave Yugoslavia, given the objections of the Serb "nations" within Croatia and Bosnia (let alone the fact that the Albanian minority in Kosova were not a "nation" and therefore lacked such rights).

"Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation" by Silber and Little [15]

Chapter 23: HMS Invincible Talks at Seas Summer 1993

This short chapter mostly concerns the ongoing talks which were held in 1993 in which the Western powers tried to push a peace plan onto the three parties they could all be coerced into signing. The theme that the international community implicitly accepted the ethnic carve-up of Bosnia continued, and the Bosnian government were increasingly being pushed harder to accept a peace plan which by this point left them with a fractured, land-locked statelet which was simply not viable as a functioning nation-state. As part of this pressure, the West had cultivated Bosniak politician/warlord Fikret Abdic as a potential rival to Izetbegovic, if only for leverage. At this point, Abdic--who had good relations with many of the nationalist Serbs in the areas around the so-called "Bihac pocket" which was his stronghold--declared his independence from the Bosnian state and established his own breakaway statelet within the borders of Bosnia.

While this was going on, the Croatian leadership was still maintaining diplomatic relations with their Serb counterparts. But while the continued possibility of a mutual Croat/Serb division of Bosnia at the expense of the Muslim plurality was ongoing, there was a contrary diplomatic track being pursued--the American pressure on the Croats to cooperate with the Bosnian government.

Chapter 24: A Question of Control The Market Square Bomb and the NATO Ultimatum February 1994

The mortar shell which killed sixty-nine people in Sarajevo on February 5, 1994 might have served as little more than a test case for how the differing parties in the war reacted. The Bosnian government was quick to express its outrage to any media outlet they could find. Radovan Karadzic was equally quick with his laughably inconsistent and illogical denials--the man had a real talent for changing his story as the facts eroded the ground under earlier disavowels of responsibility. And Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie was more than willing to lend his support for the whispering campaign among pro-Serb Westerners that Karadzic's claim that the bomb was actually planted by the Bosnian government was true. Of course, neither MacKenzie nor anyone else could come out and say such things--if they had done so, they might have been required to provide evidence. Evidence for a claim that the Bosnian government would have--indeed, could have--launched an inaccurate mortar shell into a crowded market square on a quiet day (mortars are not very accurate weapons--getting a direct hit on the first try is mostly a matter of dumb luck) in order to increase pressure on the Serbs. And for that matter, evidence that this scenario was more likely than the possibility that this mortar was simply one of the approximately 500,000 artillery projectiles the Bosnian Serb army had inflicted onto Sarajevo by that point. Such evidence was, not surprisingly, never forthcoming.

The attack pushed the international community to finally call for decisive action against the Serbs in the form of airstrikes. The Russians stepped in and pressured the West to work out a compromise. The Serb leadership, who realized that the presence of the Russians along with the UN willingness to serve as troops patroling--and therefore maintaining--the battle lines in Sarajevo--eagerly jumped on the opportunity to appear reasonable, and therefore agreed to a plan to place their heavy weapons under UN "control." Eventually, the Bosnian government--who smelled a rat--were pressured by the international community to accept this compromise.

The UN forces on the scene, led by General Michael Rose, were more concerned about avoiding air strikes than any larger strategic aims. It was typical of the mentality of the UNPROFOR leadership by this point in the war, Rose was primarily worried about the safety of the "peacekeeping" troops under his command and had little inclination to consider the larger issues of justice in the conflict. Therefore, as the Serbs continued to change the terms of the agreement and then drag their feet on complying even with that, Rose put his energies into finding ways to spin the reality in order to, in effect, "sell" the Serb actions in the best possible light. In the end, Karadzic and the Bosnian Serbs came out ahead--they still had actual control of their weapons, they still held the high ground around Sarajevo, UN troops now did some of the grunt work of manning the front lines for them, and the international community had been told that they had made concessions for peace. And certain elements within the UN were complicit in all this.

"Gaining Moral Ground" The Washington Agreement February 1994

While all that was happening, though, American diplomacy was pushing an agreement which would ultimately change the dynamic and the balance of power on the ground. This chapter summarizes the diplomatic and political actions which led to the formulation of the Croat-Muslim alliance, which was supported by the Croatian government out of necessity and moral pressure, and which was only possible with continued prodding and pressure from Washington. It was a marriage of convenience, not love, but it would work.

Regarding the Comment Moderation policy at "Americans for Bosnia"

As a general rule, I publish all submitted comments with the exception of advertising spam, because I believe it is important to let the "other side" reveal itself, as well as proving that I am confident enough in the justness of this cause to allow contrary voices to have their say on my own blog.

However, today I rejected a comment which was not from an advertiser, but rather from a blogger with a very different agenda than my own. The author, "Bengal Under Attack," wanted me to post a comment directing readers to the following link to his own blog post:

900% Growth of Islamic Population

I admit that it may seem perverse to refuse to publish a comment, and then to turn around and devote one of my own posts to the very same link. However, I want my reasons for refusing to post his comment to be clear. Given the recent events in Mumbai, and the continued threat to world peace posed by Islamic terrorism, the last thing I want to do is to provide ammunition to those who would distort my silence on this issue as either ignorance of the genuine threat we all face from Islamist terror, or even tacit support for their cause. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I could have merely noted that his primary concern is the Indian subcontinent and left it at that, but even a cursory read of his article reveals that he considers Islam--and Muslims--to be a threat in all places at all times in all situations. In the opinion of the author, Muslims are a threat to us not because of a confluence of religious fundamentalism and geopolitical realities, but simply because they are breeding so quickly. I trust I do not need to expend effort and bandwidth explaining what I think of this kind of logic.

One more thing--it is worth noting which of my now more than 400 posts the author chose to comment on. It was not a recent post; rather, it was this one from June 28 of this year:

"The Nationalist Serbian Intellectuals and Islam: Defining and Eliminating a Muslim Community" by Norman Cigar

It is just possible that the author, seeking to post in as many blogs as possible, simply did a quick search for "Islam" or "Muslim" and/or other keywords, and simply pasted the same generic comment into each link he found without regard for the content of the post he was "commenting" on. Although, in that case, I find it odd that he would have only posted in one, six-month old post on my blog--especially when one considers that I have used the label "Islam" 20 times and "Muslim" an additional 21 times prior to this post.

So one has to wonder about the agenda of an author who would search for a six-month old post examining the racist ideology supporting the genocide of a Muslim community only to link to an article decrying the higher birthrate among Muslims compared to non-Muslims. But, I would argue, one needn't wonder for terribly long.

Serbian Muslim Community Commits Act of Stupidity in name of "Tolerance"

Even as Random House caved in to fears of Muslim anger over the planned publication of a novel on Muhammed's child wife, a Belgrade publisher has taken similar action due to complaints from Serbia's Muslim community leader:

Serbia Withdraws Book amid Muslim Anger

This is exactly not what is needed; and shame on the leadership of Serbia's Muslim community for playing up fears of Muslim "anger" and outrage; not only is this a blow against freedom of speech, it only reinforces stereotypes about Islam that nationalists use against normally moderate Slavic Muslims. A very depressing and disheartening episode all around.

UPDATE:

Well, it appears that the Grand Mufti is happy with the publisher's decision to cower in the face of religious extremism:

Serbia’s Muslims Hail Withdrawal of Book*

This quote was particularly disturbing:

"Zukorlic assessed this was a good opportunity for the people, regardless of their religious beliefs, to point out the fact that there are values which are not subject to marketing and which must not be desecrated."

Freedom of thought is not possible when some ideas--and yes, some "values"--are considered untouchable and beyond criticism or discussion. This is a bad day for democracy in Serbia and for Islam in the Slavic world.

*It should be noted that, just as Serb nationalist extremists shouldn't be allowed to speak for all Serbs, it's not clear how many of Serbian Muslims actually agree with this pious asshat.

"Christ Killer, Kremlin, Contagion" by Michael Sells

The other essay from the collection The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy by Michael Sells which explicitly addresses the Bosniak Muslims is by Michael Sells, author of The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia, which I have previously considered in this blog.

At the beginning of this essay, Sells recounts the massacre of Srebrenica, and the sordid history of ethnic cleansing which led up to it, and asks the obvious question--why did the international community, knowing what it knew, stand by and do nothing? One reason, he posits, is the widespread acceptance of the myth of historical inevitability. He writes:

"...there is an interior logic to such madness. That interior logic begins with the myth of age-old antagonisms: Muslims and Christians inBosnia have been killing one another for centuries we are told. It is not only that there have been tragic conflicts in the past in Bosnia but that the root of those conflicts are inscribed into the fabric of the culture: the conflict is inevitable, and it would be a form of cultural imperialism for anyone to interfere with it. Serb and Croat militants turned this myth of age-old antagonisms into an ideology to motivate and justify their attempt to create religiously pure and homogenous Orthodox Serb and Croat Catholic states. A wider circle of writers from outside the Balkans, writing for a different audience, have advanced their own version of essential Balkan incompatibilities."

The first several pages of this essay cover the influence of The Mountain Wreath and other nationalist mythology in contemporary Serb nationalist discourse; this material would essentially be a rehash of my review of his book so I won't dwell on his excellent summary.

When he then goes on to discuss the anti-Islamic writings of Giselle Litmann, alias Bat Ye'or, and Jacques Ellul, who have essentially collaborated in the development of a particular strand of explicitly Christian anti-Islamic thought, one which proposes that Islam has at all times and all places one unchanging nature, and a violent and oppressive one at that. While Christianity allegedly can and has changed over the centuries, Islam cannot, and furthermore it is a totalitarian system which maintains sway over all its believers. Islam is incapable of peaceful coexistence or compromise. The presence of Muslims automatically means the presence of Islam, and Islam is always and everywhere a sworn foe of Christianity, Judaism, and Western cultural and political values.

While neither "expert" seems to have explicitly called for genocidal violence against Muslims, it would be expecting too much for others not to draw the obvious conclusions from such extremist rhetoric. Yet their simplistic, implacably contentious analyses have managed to obtain a certain level of visibility and legitimacy; we can thank Bernard Lewis for bringing Bat Ye'or the wider audience she had previously lacked.

The final Western "expert" on Islam Sells considers is Robert Kaplan, author of Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History, the book that famously convinced President Bill Clinton that turning his back on the Muslims of Bosnia was a sound foreign policy decision. I have only read excerpts from the book, so I was a little surprised to discover how much of this highly-praised and oft-quoted text is focused on the smells and alleged poor hygiene of Muslims in the former Ottoman Empire. It is one thing to declare that Islam is to blame for the rise of Communism in Eastern Europe (who knew?), but quite another to dismiss the entire region as an irredeemable pigsty full of surly, untrustworthy people who, well, smell bad. Of course, Kaplan might have spent so much time on the appearance and odor of places like Pristina since, like Bernard Lewis, he seemingly couldn't be bothered actually talking to any of the millions of Muslims he derides. Clearly, I need to read this book more comprehensively.

Sells concludes his essay with a discussion of the different variations of prejudiced, based on the essay "The Anatomy of Prejudice" by Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, which defines three different character types:

"The obsessional type is characterized by an ideology of filth and cleansing...The hysterical type is charactered by fear of impotence and castration...the narcissistic type is typified by sexism, homophobia, and the constricted societies they reflect and help construct."

All of the texts Sells has discussed fit each of the above characteristics; the anti-Muslim rhetoric of Serb nationalists and their Western enablers is naked bigotry of the basest kind, even when dressed up in the progressive language of "incompatible cultures" such as when the allegedly anti-feminist nature of Balkan Islam was used as a justification for a war in which the gang rape of Muslim women was a premeditated tactic of terror.

Sells concludes his essay with this powerful passage:

"When, after the Srebrenica massacre, NATO finally intervented, what it found was something less romantic than embattled Christian soldiers under perennial attack from the perennial enemy Islam. Behind the mask of civilizational clash, evil empire, and Muslim contamination it found the common tragedy of human history: victims who, contrary to expectations, had done nothing to deserve their fate and had threatened nobody. And perpetrators building their identity through a vain attempt to reject an other who was, in fact, a part of themselves."

"The Nationalist Serbian Intellectuals and Islam: Defining and Eliminating a Muslim Community" by Norman Cigar

One of the two essays from the book The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy that explicitly addresses the plight of the Bosniak Muslims. Cigar is also the author of the essential work Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing and comes to the subject with a wealth of knowledge and a clear perspective.

The gist of Cigar's essay is most likely familiar to most readers of this blog, as the influence of Serbian intellectuals and writers like Cosic, Draskovic, Karadzic, Raskovic, Plavsic, and many others is well-known to even a casual student of the last Balkan wars. Here (in line with the theme of the book), Cigar focuses on the demonization of Islam and ethnic Muslims by Serb nationalists; the opening sentences of his essay:

"Recent events in Bosnia-Herzegovina provide significant material for a case study on the impact that external images of Islam can have on Muslims as a community and as individuals. Perhaps there was no more striking aspect in this process of creating images than the role that Serb intellectuals played as they exercised their craft of developing and disseminating knowledge and engaged in political activity."

Cigar goes on to show that Serb nationalist intellectuals were consistent in creating an "in-group/out-group" mentality regarding the Serbs versus the "others." What is of note in the context of this book is how Serbs tried to play to outside (particularly Western) sensibilities by playing off stereotypes about and fears of Muslims and Islam. What is also striking is how ridiculously crude and irrational much of this "intellectual" rhetoric was. Consider this quote from writer Dragos Kalajic, speaking of the allegedly "unmanly" nature of the (allegedly "Serb") converts to Islam after the Ottoman conquest:

"..it is appropriate to point out that effeminacy and symbolic or actual homosexuality are not the only means by which to escape from a manly nature that is threatened with violence, terror, or death. The Serbian experience shows that there are many other ways of avoiding duty and responsibility stemming from too onerous a fate, which history has imposed on the Serbs. Historically, the first and easiest path of avoidance from unavoidable fate was actually opened up by the Ottoman occupation...[and] drove many Serbs along the road to treachery"

This is, of course, a load of nonsense, but it's the sort of nonsense that people like Diana Johnstone and Julia Gorin take very seriously. To say nothing of the quote from Radovan Karadzic wherein he tries to distinguish which Muslims could still be converted to Orthodoxy--apparently, religious conversion is a matter of genetics:

"When it is a question of the Serbs of the Islamic faith, there was always a great divide that determined whether they were to be more Muslim or more Serb. Those in whom the religious element predominated, and orientation toward Islam's fundamentals, were lost forever to the Serbian nation."

It goes on, but even that short quote is enough to make the obvious parallels to the Nazi efforts to determine which people in the occupied East had sufficiently "Aryan" characteristics; Cigar rightly notes that in this day and age nationalist extremists know better than to express their beliefs in explicitly racist terms, but there is really no other way to interpret Karadzic's gibberish about collective memories and achieving "that level of development to become Serbs while also having the Islamic past of their families." These are the words of a man described with no little warmth by the 39th President of the United States as I noted last fall.

Cigar's analysis is keen, but it is difficult to do this essay full credit without all the quotes he includes; the above passages are typical, but hardly exhaust the range of crackpot theorizing, pseudo-science, mytho-romantic pontificating, and sheer psychopathic lunacy on display here. Cigar convincingly demonstrates that among Serbia's intellectual elite there was a strong tendency to portray Islam as a corrosive, and thoroughly evil force which fully defines all followers of that faith; Muslims are at all places and all times defined primarily if not exclusively as members of a vicious, violent, and implacably anti-Western (and anti-Serb) movement. No wonder Samuel Huntington was so popular among them.

Said, Trumpbour, and others on Huntington and Lewis

In order to take the time to do justice to the arguments gathered against the Huntington/Lewis "Clash of Civilizations" thesis in the volume The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy edited by Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, I would first need to spend a considerable amount of time considering the questionable thesis that Huntington and others have laid out. While that might take me quite far afield from Bosnia, I don't think it would be at all irrevelant to some of the larger topics this blog hopefully touches on from time to time.

Much of the debate on the Balkan wars was framed in just such false dialectics--indeed, Huntington's book was publicly embraced by Franjo Tudjman and at least some Serbian nationalists. In the hands of such theorists seeking to fit events into predetermined grand narratives, the Bosnian war was removed entirely from its specific, local context (which was, more often than not, distorted beyond recognition at any rate through the lens of "ancient hatreds") and interpreted purely as yet another enactment of a largner, ongoing 'struggle' or 'clash.' Reductive theorists like Huntington allow Western elites to justify a dispassionate, removed approach to atrocity situations because the tragic particulars of a genocide in Bosnia or Rwanda or Sudan, while painful to watch, are little more than the inevitable symptoms of a global conflict. And Huntington and his ilk tend to regard the victims of Bosnia, for example, as being on the 'wrong side' of that greater war.

If I someday find the time, I will most certainly consider a more extended consideration of, at the very least, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order by Huntington. In the meantime, it was important to acknowledge the larger debate Qureshi and Sells' book represents before going on to review to the two or three essays which are more explicitly concerned with Bosnia.

Bosnia as a Battlefield of the "Clash of Civilizations"

I am currently browsing through some of the essays in The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy edited by Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells. The book is a multi-faceted rebuttal to the collective body of voices pushing some variation of Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilization" thesis, including V.S. Naipaul and of course Bernard Lewis.

The influence of this strain of political/cultural thought on Western responses (and non-responses) to the Bosnian crisis has certainly not been overlooked, but it certainly merits continued attention. Earlier Serb and Croat nationalist claims about the "Islamic menace" coming from Bosnia and Kosova certainly did not fall on deaf ears, but after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 Balkan revisionists and Serb nationalist apologists seem to have sensed that the audience for such rhetoric has broadened. Therefore, those of us who wish to defend the historical record cannot afford to ignore the "Islam versus the West" theorists, no matter how much we might wish to dismiss such gross simplifications as irrelevant to the struggles of the largely secular Bosniak and Kosovar Albanian populations.

A couple of the essays in this book--one by Michael Sells; the other by Norman Cigar--deal specifically with the Muslims of Bosnia, and I will consider them in some detail; first, however, I will briefly consider some of the other essays, some of which touch on issues in the former Yugoslavia, and all of contribute to the larger discussion which Sells and Cigar are participating in.

I apologize for my infrequent (and abbreviated) posting as of late; I will make a sincere effort to be more consistent and prompt in my consideration of this book.

"Muslim Identity and the Balkan State" ed. by Hugh Poulton and Suha Taji-Farouki

I have read most of the collected essays in this fine collection:

Muslim Identity and the Balkan State

Published in 1997, no doubt some of the data and interpretations are now dated; also, because the status of Bosnia was very much in doubt in late 1996 when this volume was being prepared for publication, the editors chose not to discuss the Muslims of Bosnia. Rather, this book looks at the Pomaks of Bulgaria and Greece, ethnic Turks throughout the Balkans, the Slavic Muslims of Macedonia, ethnic Albanian Muslims in Macedonia, Kosova, and Albania proper, and the Slavic Muslims of the Sandzak.

The book can be read in its entirety, or individual essays can be read independently. For a general reader intersted in gaining a broader perspective on the complexities and varieties of different Muslim communities throughout the region, this book is an easily readable resource.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [8]

CONCLUSION

Dr. Hoare concludes by briefly recounting a central theme of his book; namely, that the war in Bosnia was a war of competing--and fundamentally incompatible--ideologies. The war was, at root, political rather than ethnic--which is not to say that the "national question" wasn't important, or to deny that widespread tribal bigotry was an important factor fueling much of the resulting violence.

"Genocide in Bosnia" makes this argument forcefully and convincingly. In the final page, Dr. Hoare concludes by noting that the Partisans and the postwar Communist never completely succeeded in ridding the country of some of the baser passions and more chauvinistic political impulses. In this light, the Bosnian war of the 1990s was in many ways a continuation of the same political/ideological war that raged in the 1940s.

------------------

I highly recommend this well-documented, assiduously argued, and quite readable book to anyone interested in the development of 20th Century Bosnia as well as anyone looking to broaden their understanding of Yugoslav history. More importantly, this book is an authoritative refutation of the simplistic histories of Yugoslavia's World War II experience wielded by nationalists and their enablers. As such, this isn't just a valuable work of history, but also a substantive piece of academic activism. Dr. Hoare's book stands both as a sober piece of scholarship and a strong rationale for supporting and believing in the integrity of Bosnia-Hercegovina.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [7]

CHAPTER SIX: BOSNIA-HERCEGOVINA DEFEATS GREAT SERBIA, c. JUNE 1942-OCTOBER 1943

This is the final chapter of this excellent book, documenting the triumph of the Partisans over the Chetniks in Bosnia. This event was an important turning point in the history of Yugoslavia, but also a telling event in the national history of Bosnia itself. One of the main themes of this book is the specifically Bosnian character of the Partisan movement there, and how Bosnian characteristics and realities helped shape it. In fact, Dr. Hoare even shows that the Bosnian Chetnik movement, despite its allegiance to a "Greater Serb" ideology, was fundamentally a Bosnian movement, often at odds with the Serbian leadership (including Mihailovic himself). The culmination of the events and dynamics mapped out in the preceding five chapters is the unity and institutional strength of the Partisan movement in western Bosnia, and a string of military successes against both the NDH and the Chetniks, which solidified the supremacy of the Partisans and helped assure their eventual victory.

There is little need for a detailed summary--the narrative arc of this chapter is relatively simple and straightforward. First, the author details the temporary ascendancy of the Chetniks in eastern Bosnia-Hercegovina, which was ultimately transient for reasons Dr. Hoare neatly encapsulates:

"Yet the Great Serb project rested on shaky foundations: poor organization, primitive leaders, an administration riddled with Partisan sympathizers, a popular base that could not expand beyond the Serb minority of the population, and an often bitter animosity between its Serbian and its Bosnian adherents. The pyrrhic Chetnik victory merely set the scene for the subsequent Partisan resurgence."

And so, the avowedly provincial and self-limiting Chetnik movement would not be able to overcome its intrinsic limitations, nor would Bosnian Chetniks be able to transcend their own Bosnian loyalties in order to cooperate fully with a pan-Serb movement run by a Serbian and Montenegrin leadership.

Meanwhile, in western Bosnia, the Partisan movement--in a move driven by native Bosnian Partisans as much as by the Supreme Staff and Tito--would succeed in their greatest military triumph to date; the liberation of Bihac, which would allow for the creation of a nascent Partisan state in an area of Bosnia where it would be possible to draw a large number of Croats and Muslims into their ranks. The Partisans were then able to hold the first 'Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia' in this liberated territory; this council was an important step towards the goal of creating a truly pan-Yugoslav, multinational movement.

These developments were followed by a series of military moves as the Supreme Staff sought to move back east and take the Chetniks on; these moves were initially successful, including the great victory of the Battle of the River Neretna, during which the Partisans both managed to hold off a coordinated Axis/Chetnik/Ustasha offensive and break the back of the Chetniks (although by no means completely destroy them as a military threat). An ill-advised attempt to return to Serbia ended in the near-catastrophe of the Battle of the River Sutjeska, at which the Partisan forces had to fight desperately just to escape a fierce Axis/Chetnik attack, one which still managed to destroy fully a third of the Partisan forces involved. Yet they did escape, and survived to link up with other Partisan forces.

Bosnia was won. The Chetniks, while not finished, could not hope to prevail. And then the Italian surrender to the Allies took their forces out of the equation, leaving the Partisans free to deal with the wholly inadequate Ustasha and NDH forces in western Yugoslavia. Serbia itself would not fall to the Partisans until the arrival of Soviet military power in 1944, but by then it had long been clear who was the dominant domestic power in the country.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [6]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE PARTISANS IN WESTERN BOSNIA, c. JULY 1941-OCTOBER 1942

This chapter covers events in Western Bosnia, which became the center of Partisan resistance after the collapse in eastern Bosnia under Chetnik, Nedicite, and Axis assault. In order to explain the dynamics at work in this region, Dr. Hoare moves back in time to the period just before the outbreak of the rebellion, in order to examine the regional particulars at work in this region; and also to explain why the Partisans were ultimately more successful in western Bosnia, and why this became the heart of the movement.

These developments are covered in extensive detail; rather than summarizing them all, I will merely note that in very broad terms some of the underlying challenges for the Partisans were the same--the chasm between city and country, the political immaturity of the Serb peasant soldiers, distrust between Partisan units and Croat and Muslim peasants, competition from Chetnik-sympathetic leaders, and so forth. There wasn't a war between Partisan and Chetnik armies, but rather a competition within one disparate resistance force from competing ideologies.

The Communists realized that they needed to increase their political presence in order to combat the appeal of crude Serb nationalist propaganda, and to make other institutional changes as well. When warfare finally did break out between the two groups, the Chetniks--further removed from Serbia than those in eastern Bosnia--were forced to turn to, of all possible allies, the Ustasha and the NDH state; the alliance between the two was never very stable or wholly productive, but along with the cooperation of the Italian and German occupiers this put the Partisan forces at an overwhelming disadvantage. Yet the inevitable defeat was almost temporary; for reasons which are complex and I haven't summarized here, the Partisans had greater public support and a more developed political infrastructure than in eastern Bosnia; once Axis troops pulled out, Partisan forces were easily able to resume control in spite of having been "defeated" the the Chetniks and their allies.

In short, the Partisans were ultimately more successful because in western Bosnia they not only realized that their best hope of defeating the Chetniks and uniting the people behind them was to put their multinational rhetoric and ideals into practice, they were--for a variety of local demographic, political, economic, and social factors--actually able to do so.

By the end of this chapter, the seeds of the future multinational Partisan army are beginning to bear fruit; the Croats of the Livno area were providing a solid base of Croat support, and Croats and Muslims of Bosanka Krajina were beginning to sense that there was a real difference between the Partisans and their Chetnik opponents. Real efforts were made to restrain the bigoted passions of peasant soldiers, to educate them in Partisan ideology and the nascent dogma of what would become known as "Brotherhood and Unity", and to articulate a Bosnian patriotism which could serve as a tangible, livable counter to Great Serb propaganda.

The chapter ends with a consideration of how Partisan efforts on behalf of gender equity were crucial to their ultimate success; Chetnik ideology was conservative in all respects, while Partisan rhetoric about the equality of women and their political and cultural liberation spoke to half of Bosnia's population. This was ultimately a great advantage for the Partisans--and their opponents knew it, as shown by the frequency of Ustasha and Chetnik propaganda about "women of low morals" and such.

It cannot be overstressed how much of Dr. Hoare's book focuses on the fact that the Partisans succeeded because they were ultimately able to impose an urban, literate, cosmopolitan leadership onto an army filled with recruits from rural, provincial, conservative villages and hamlets. The Chetniks--proudly rural, anti-urban, and conservative in all ways--ceded the cities to the Partisans, as well as the potential of Bosnia's women, and they would pay for their stubborn provinicialism.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [5]

CHAPTER FOUR: THE 'LEFT ERRORS' AND THE PARTISAN CRISIS, c. FEBRUARY-JUNE 1942

This chapter details the period when the Partisans began moving away from "a Serb-oriented resistance strategy, towards one that was genuinely multinational." But the transition wasn't smooth, and even as the Chetniks held the upper hand the Partisans committed serious errors of judgment and worse as they pursued often contradictory policies.

One major problem was that, partly due to the politically unformed nature of most troops and partly because of an embrace of extreme measures implicitly condoned by a shift in policy, atrocities against Croats and especially Muslims continued apace. These atrocities were now often carried out under the aegis of eliminating fifth columnists, but in the eyes of many Partisan troops and even some leaders all Muslims were fifth columnists.

Even as these massacres were eroding Partisan support in the countryside, the increasingly aggressive and confident Chetniks were carrying out putsches in Partisan units throughout eastern Bosnia, killing the Communist leadership and assuming command of military units.

This increasing threat even drove Tito to contemplate a temporary alliance with the Ustasha, a testiment to how precarious the Partisan situation was. Meanwhile, in eastern Herzegovina, a tragedy was taking shape--while this region had, in theory, a strong Partisan presence, in reality there was disconnection between the Serb-peasant countryside and the radicalized, multiethnic urban proletariat in Mostar. The dangerous brew of Leninist extremism proclaimed by the central command combined with the politically crude consciousness of the Herzegovina Partisans to form a perfect storm of revolutionary violence--much of the infamous and tragic "Left Errors" of the war happened here. Scenes of doctrinaire Communist violence against fifth columnists real and imagined (even "future traitors") were common, and the end result was predictable enough--the Partisans in the area completely lost the support of the local population. The remnants of the Mostar Battalion were forced to hide with family, as they had no network of support whatsoever.

Under the 'Third Offensive', the Partisan resistance in east Bosnia and Hercegovina collapsed; ultimately the Partisan leadership was forced to concede that they would not be retaking Serbia in the near future, so rather than stubbornly hold out in a doomed battle, they retreated towards western and central Bosnia--the Partisan "Long March." The remnants of some units from eastern Hercegovina and Bosnia were combined and reorganized; ironically, these stragglers who had escaped from a total defeat would form the experienced, dedicated, and politically mature core of a stronger, more enlightened and ideologically coherent Partisan movement.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [4]

CHAPTER THREE: FROM SERB REBELLION TO BOSNIAN REVOLUTION, c. DECEMBER 1941-MARCH 1942

The breakdown in the Partisan-Chetnik alliance had the effect of moving both movements toward their ideological extremes; the Partisans became a more explicitly Marxist/Communist movement fighting for social revolution as well as liberation, even as the Chetniks virtually ceased all resistance activities, and instead made deals and alliances with the occupying forces while laying the groundwork for an ethnically "pure" future Greater Serbia.

The Chetniks in East Bosnia soon turned to full-fledged genocide against the Muslims of the region (Jews were also targeted), while plans for a "Homogenous Serbia" were drawn up; the ideology of the movement was now fully developed and driving events at least as much, if not more, than the current political situation. This genocide would have been much worse than it was had it not been for the fact that the Chetnik movement was not as centrally organized and controlled as the Partisans were (a fact which would ultimately favor the Partisans, although not yet).

Much of the first pages of this chapter are concerned with the attempts to build this "Greater Serbia" within the confines of Axis occupation, as well as continuing cooperation between the Bosnian Chetnik movement and the Nedic regime (which was never total). Chetnik propaganda at this point stressed the non-Serb nature of the Partisan movement, and was drenched in virulent anti-Semitic rhetoric. The irreligious nature of the Partisans was also stressed, as well as their urban and non-patriarchal ways.

The Partisan leadership came to recognize that Great Serb sentiment was their greatest enemy, and that they would have to combat it with appeals to pan-Bosnian unity and patriotism. They also realized that they had made insufficient efforts to politicize the masses, who were easily swayed by crude nationalist hate-mongering.

For awhile, the Partisan military leadership even became (unrealistically) focused on liberating Sarajevo; aside from the economic desirability of this then-unattainable goal, this fixation on the Bosnian capital revealed how the Bosnian focus of Partisan activity was morphing into a specifically Bosnian Partisan revolution and movement.

As the Partisans increased their efforts to reach out to Croats and Muslims, they also tried to keep the door open to Serbs by setting up "Volunteer" units; military units of Serbs who fought alongside Partisan units without becoming Communists themselves. This effort to allow Serb peasant soldiers to maintain solidarity while fighting the occupation ended up being more trouble than it was worth, as the loyalty and military worth of these units was always questionable; ultimately, most would go over to the Chetniks regardless.

The Partisans also broke with Marxist orthodoxy in one important way--they made great efforts to show sensitivity to and respect for religious traditions, even assigning members of the clergy to units and giving them distinctive religious insignia.

------------

There is a great deal of detail I am bypassing in this extremely brief account of this chapter; in the interests of finishing this review in a timely manner, I will continue to provide bare-bones summaries of the final three chapters as well. I cannot stress enough how substantive and readable the book is. I highly recommend it.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [3]

CHAPTER TWO: THE GREAT SERB REACTION, c. AUGUST-DECEMBER 1941

Briefly stated, this chapter covers the period when the Partisan movement tried, and ultimately failed, to achieve a military and governmental alliance with the growing Chetnik movement; this policy was driven by expediency--the reality that in the opening months of the rebellion, the vast majority of footsoldiers were conservative rural Serbs. As noted in the first chapter, the KPJ had done a reasonably good job of taking command of an uprising not entirely of its making, but there were limits to how much control cadres actually had.

This chapter details the ups and downs of this ultimately failed enterprise; the author is sensitive to the difficulties the KPJ faced even while he does not shy away from mistakes made. The details of this phase of the uprising--when the Partisans were still "riding the tiger" of a Serb-peasant uprising, attempting to take command of politically unformed rebel bands are thoroughly documented.

Roughly speaking the Partisans were between a rock and hard place; while they needed to appeal to Serb nationalist sentiment in order to maintain even nominal control over the armed rebel bands, this also meant that all too often they had to pander to the bigotry and worse of their own soldiers. This translated to Partisan acquiescence with--and occasionally participation in--atrocities against Croat and especially Muslim civilians, especially as Chetnik influence and propaganda became more prevalent in Bosnia. This often pushed Croats and Muslims into collaboration with the Ustasha, which only fed Great-Serb propaganda even more while weakening Partisan pretensions to multiethnic cooperation and unity--which at this point was little more than a rhetorical flourish.

Still, for awhile the Partisans were able to build a nascent "state" in Eastern Bosnia by cooperating with Bosnian Chetniks, who were more inclined to some sort of accommodation with the Partisans (who's ranks were mostly filled with Serbs anyway) against their common Ustasha enemy than the Chetnik leadership in Nedic's Serbian state. This delicate balance was shattered when the Partisans were defeated in, and driven out of, Serbia, and the Chetnik alliance with Nedic became obvious, as did their decision to collaborate with the fascist occupiers. This triggered a breakdown in the Partisan-Chetnik alliance in east Bosnia.

The chapter ends with a case study of sorts; because of the still-underdeveloped nature of KPJ organization at local levels and other factors, some regional branches of the Partisan movement reacted to local conditions and these extraordinary stresses through their own dynamics, usually not with good results. Dr. Hoare examines the case of the "Drvar Republic", a Partisan mini-state which ultimately fell to Italian troops. Like the rest of this very interesting chapter, the story is far too complex for me to adequately summarize without going to great lengths--I would much rather prefer to encourage you to read the original.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Marko Attila Hoare [2]

CHAPTER ONE: THE COMMUNISTS AND THE SERB REBELLION, c. APRIL-SEPTEMBER 1941

I will make no effort to systematically summarize and review the entire contents of this substantial work, which manages to synthesize a great deal of archival information, documentation, and historical data into a coherent and readable narrative without sacrificing clarity or comprehensiveness. Instead, I will very briefly summarize the general focus of each chapter so that I might communicate some minimal sense of the larger framework Dr. Hoare richly illustrates. This entire review comes with the implied caveat that I cannot hope to do full justice to the book.

--------------------

This 80-page chapter covers the initial uprising in Bosnia, which was initially a home-grown resistance to the Ustasha genocide committed by the NDH fascist regime. Because my summary will be far too brief to do justice to the themes covered in this chapter, I will take the liberty of quoting the entire opening paragraph--which serves as something of an extended thesis statement--in full:

"The Partisan movement in Bosnia-Hercegovina was the product both of long-term socio-economic developments at home and of the short-term 'accident' of foreign invasion and occupation; it involved the merger of a traditional Serb-peasant uprising and a modern urban-revolutionary movement; and it represented both a characteristic chapter and a turning-point in modern Bosnian history. The Axis powers of Germany and Italy, by destroying the Yugoslav kingdom, changed the course of Bosnian history. Their installation in power of the Ustasha regime, and the latter's genocide of the Serb population in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, unleashed a resistance movement that would take shape as the Partisans. Yet the Partisans were not simply an armed response to the new order, but a revolutionary movement of a specifically Bosnian kind."

The Axis invasion of Yugoslavia led to an occupation where the country was split into German and Italian zones of control; the Nazi leadership made sure to control the parts of Yugoslavia essential to their greater strategic aims as well as assuring control over key mineral deposits in Bosnia, for example. The Axis also set up puppet regimes, both in a truncated Serbia and in a greatly enlarged Croatian Ustasha state, the NDH.

The necessity of maintaining some degree of independence ultimately proved a boon to the resistance, as the armed forces of the NDH were inadequate for the task of successfully defeating a mass armed uprising. The creation of this "greater Croatia" in fact if not in name actually exacerbating the Ustasha's difficulties, as ethnic Croats made up just barely over half of the population of the NDH, and the Ustasha were of course only a minority faction of this bare majority.

So while the ruling party dutifully carried out their duties as Nazi allies in committing genocide against the Jewish and Gypsy minorities, the demographic realities of their new state combined with their toxic ideology led the Ustasha leadership to simultaneously pursue a policy of genocide against the sizable Serb population (Muslims being considered Croats who had converted to Islam). Whether this genocide had been planned from the outset, or was a decision that was arrived at later is a matter of debate; what is clear is that the genocide was a product both of Ustasha ideology and the circumstances of World War II but not of Croat nationalism itself.

The Ustasha genocide was brutal and savage, but limited by the military weakness of the NDH state. Dr. Hoare wades briefly into the controversy over the numbers killed both in the genocide generally and at Jasenovac specifically; no need to rehash that argument here. The relevant point is that the genocide was real, it did happen, but it was neither as efficient nor as thorough as the Holocaust both because of the lack of manpower and logistical support that the Nazi state had at its disposal, and also because it does seem that the genocide was carried out with varying degrees of ruthlessness and systematic thoroughness from place to place. The infamous Ustasha aim of (to paraphrase) killing one-third of Serbs, expelling another third, and converting the final third to Catholicism, while vile beyond measure, actually serves to illustrate the difference; one cannot fathom a high-ranking Nazi contemplating assimilating any number of the Jews of Europe.

[Note: In the interests of keeping this post at a manageable length, I will be grossly oversimplifying the narrative; my apologies to the author if I neglect any important nuances or fail to properly emphasize certain key points. Any incoherence in the following account is entirely my own, and does not reflect the much more comprehensive and well-developed account in the book]

In the meantime, the KPJ (Communist Party of Yugoslavia) was preparing and organizing for resistance, while waiting for authorization from Moscow (which would come after the German invasion). Dr. Hoare has done an admirable job of explaining the process by which the party organized, and by which connections between Bosnia's small but growing urban working class and the villages were developed and utilized. For example, seasonal timber workers were often exposed to Communist ideas while working at mills with other workers, then took those ideas home with them. Schoolteachers were another important conduit of Communist indoctrination, since they brought ideas to the villages they had picked up at universities and in cities; the author points out that educated and literate people often served as important providers of news and information in provincial isolated villages where illiteracy was common and there was little if any access to broadcast media.

Because of the unique nature of the uprising in Bosnia, Communist proclamations usually stressed Bosnian--rather than Yugoslavian--patriotism; appeals were made to all the peoples of Bosnia. This was a multinational, inclusive ideology, but it often jarred with the sentiments of the fighters in the field, and would not go unchallenged by rebel leadership.

I should note that there is a great deal of material detailing the political development of the Bosnian branch of the KPJ and its relation to the central organization, as well as a great deal of information regarding key figures involved; in the interests of brevity I will not dwell on these admittedly important aspects to the story.

The uprising, when it came, was fought largely in rural areas at first, and most soldiers were Serb peasants from the countryside; yet the majority of Bosnian KPJ cadres and leaders were urban-based, and frequently non-Serbs. The KPJ was not in a position to create this rebellion on its own, nor to completely control it. However, the KPJ was able to "ride the tiger" with an admirable degree of success and step into a leadership role once events were underway; the hard work of organizing throughout the towns and cities of Bosnia had born fruit, as the Partisans were able to provide the logistical and institutional leadership apparatus necessary to coordinate and direct disparate rebel units--the countryside needed urban centers to act as the "nerve centers" of the uprising. Hoare writes:

"Bosnia-Hercegovina created the Bosnian KPJ organization, not vice versa, and the Communists and the peasant rebels formed an organic whole."

The revolt spread across all of Bosnia, although it broke out at different times and with differing levels of success and participation, some of which was arguably due to institutional in-fighting which I won't recount now, and some of which was due to jurisdictional issues; i.e., some areas fell into a no-man's land between regional organizations. In the meantime, the KPJ was busy trying to normalize the structure of the Partisan movement; a thorough reorganization of the military and civilian institutions was carried out. The Partisan army was reordered, and the introduction of Communist insignia, flags, and other symbols was introduced. In liberated areas, governing was carried out by "People's Liberation Councils" (NOOs), which combined Communist organization with traditional village government quite effectively.

None of these potentially positive developments could obscure the central challenge to the Partisan effort at multinational Bosnian state-building--the fact that the military rank-and-file was overwhelmingly Serb. This was no matter for idle ideological speculation, either, once the the Chetnik movement became active.

"Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia" by Mark Attila Hoare [1]

Introduction: Understanding the Partisan-Chetnik Conflict

In the wake of my review of How Bosnia Armed by Dr. Marko Attila Hoare, I am now reading another excellent work by the same author: Genocide and Resistance in Hitler's Bosnia, subtitled "The Partisans and the Chetniks 1941-1943".

The Introduction begins--after briefly defining the geographical and temporal parameters of his subject--in 1992:

"The war that erupted in Bosnia-Hercegovina in 1992 involved the clash of two mutually exclusive political projects. On the one hand was the goal of a sovereign Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a state of Muslims, Serbs, Croats, and others, for which the majority of Bosnia-Hercegovina's citizens had voted and to which the Republic's leadership was formally committed. On the other hand was the goal of the partition of Bosnia-Hercegovina into separate Serb, Croat, and Muslim entities. This second goal was supported by the leadership of the principal Bosnian Serb political party, increasingly by the leadership of the principal Bosnian Croat party, and was gradually accepted de facto by the leadership of the principal Bosnian Muslim party. "

I quoted this section at length because it is noteworthy for what it does not say--that the war in Bosnia was an ethnic between different ethnic groups. No honest inquiry into the root causes of the Yugoslav wars is possible unless one first understands the ideological and political roots of the situation. One must study the past in order to understand the present; but the past cannot illuminate the present unless one is willing and able to recognize current realities.

This is important, because Dr. Hoare goes on to elaborate that while Western supporters of Bosnia-Hercegovina "argued on the basis of contemporary values--multiethnicity, democracy, state sovereignty, and human rights", supporters of the Serb nationalist project relied more on historical arguments, with an emphasis on the events of World War II. Serbs, it was argued, had sound historical reasons to fear living in a multiethnic republic they did not dominate.

The pro-Serb nationalist version of WWII history depicted it as a period of ethnic civil war between heroic, anti-Nazi Serbs fought against pro-Nazi and/or avowedly fascist Croats and Muslims. Dr. Hoare also points out that all to often, Westerners sympathetic to Bosnia reversed the ethnic stereotypes and portrayed 'the Muslims' as good and tolerant and 'the Serbs' as evil and intolerant.

Dr. Hoare argues that the reality of World War II in Yugoslavia was quite different, that members of every national group fought on "both" sides (he understands quite well that the situation in Yugoslavia during the occupation was complex and that it is often quite difficult to generalize about the loyalty and motivations of disparate military units across time and space); it is also true that many Yugoslavs were caught up in the internal war between Partisans and Chetniks without being loyal to or supportive of either side.

That is not to say that the "national question" wasn't present in or important to events in World War II; rather, Dr. Hoare notes that:

"...it is often forgotten that the national question is not just about the claims of one nation set against those of another, but about different concepts of the nation held by members of the same nation."

More specifically, it needs to be explained how the Partisans came to triumph over the Chetniks while following an ideology of multiethnic cooperation and coexistence versus the Chetniks Great Serb ideology which soon led to genocide against non-Serbs in areas they controlled. While outside observers have assumed that the answer is self-evident--the Partisans were able to appeal to all Yugoslavs, while the Chetnik appeal was necessarily limited to Serbs--the answer is actually more complex, because while the Partisan movement ultimately became truly multiethnic at the grassroots level, it began as an anti-Ustasha uprising by almost exclusively Serb peasants. How did the Partisans succeed in establishing leadership over a resistance movement of mostly provincial and often chauvinistic Serbs? Why were the Partisans originally willing and able to cooperate with the Chetniks, and why did this cooperation eventually break down? These are some of the questions Dr. Hoare addresses in this fascinating study.

Finally, Dr. Hoare is determined to show that the Partisan struggle in Bosnia was not merely an important battlefield in a larger Yugoslav resistance movement, but also the creature of a distinct "Bosnian revolution," in which an ideology of multiethnic cooperation and a Bosnian patriotism triumphed over a Chetnik movement and its diametrically opposed ideology of Serb nationalism and ethnic exclusivism; what is more, the Bosnian Partisan rank-and-file numbered thousands of ethnic Serbs who fought and died for this Bosnian revolution.

How did all this happen? These are some of the major themes of this excellent book.

"The Bridge Betrayed" by Michael Sells [11]

CHAPTER FOUR: MASKS OF OTHERNESS [continued]

The Serb Church and the Stepanic Syndrome

In Bosnia, the Serb Orthodox Church made the same mistake the Catholic Church made in Croatia during World War II; it became a servant of religious nationalist militancy. In many instances, Christian Serb clergy have supported the extremists who carried out the genocide in Bosnia and have given ritual and symbolic support to the programs of ethnic expulsion and destruction of mosques."

This section goes on to verify this strong opening statement for a very depressing and enraging several pages. Any student of the Bosnian war will know that the list of incidents and statement Sells provides--Orthodox clergy making racist claims about the true nature of Muslims, blessing troops after they had committed atrocities, visiting the sites of destroyed mosques, etc.--will be all too aware of similar incidents. Then again, this book was written in 1996; in 2008, no honest person can deny the involvement of the Serb Orthodox Church in Bosnia.

Sells closes this section by noting that Patriarch Pavle waited until very late in the war to speak out against human rights abuses committed by Serb forces, and then only in a very qualified manner, using the all-too-familiar "all sides are guilty" excuse. Sells wonders if this line of reasoning is somewhat based on the Christian notion of original sin, and if so, he posits this question:

"...if everyone is guilty, is anyone really guilty of anything specific? If everyone is guilty, is anything done to any person that is undeserved? Generalized guilt allows a convenient avoidance of the stubborn fact that in genocide, innocents suffer and their suffering is inflicted upon them deliberately."

Only Unity Saves the Serbs

Sells notes the revival of the symbol of the Orthodox cross with the four Cyrillic 'S's ('C') representing the slogan "Samo sloga Srbina spasava"; "revival" in the sense that the symbol became used more prominently and much more frequently than it had for many, many years. Sells notes that it was

"...natural for a former communist official, raised in the personality cult surrounding Marshal Tito, to move easily into another kind of personality cult."

Milosevic presented himself as the spokesman of Serb "unity"; in Serbian ultranationalism, "unity" means for one ethnic group to remain apart from and opposed to neighboring national groups, all of whom are out to get the Serbs. Rather than appealing to what is noble and expansive and welcoming in Serb culture, this slogan appeals to paranoia, fear, and hostility.

Sells rightly notes that while Milosevic later abandoned nationalist and ethnoreligious iconography and rhetoric, it most certainly does not follow that he had not tapped into genuine religious sentiments before. What follows is a short discussion of the nature of religiosity in the context of this book and ethnoreligious nationalism; as well as the varieties of modern fundamentalism and a consideration of how Serb and Croat nationalism would fit within any possible definition of fundamentalism.

Some of the "explicitly religious ideology of the violence", as he puts it, is detailed; including some of the songs Muslim prisoners were forced to sing. Sells concludes by soberly noting that we Americans--with our history of "ethnic cleansing" against American Indians, living in a country where much of the wealth was originally generated with slave labor, are in no position to claim moral superiority to Bosnian Serbs. I would like to believe that this qualification is unnecessary--it is the ideology hostile nationalism and the specific perpetrators of war crimes and genocide we are concerned with, not an entire people or a culture. Sells wants to close his chapter by returning to the example he began with--the Oklahoma City bombing by Christian white supremists. Bosnia, he implies, is what happens when civil order breaks down and the forces of tolerance, secularism, and reason are swept away by violent sectarianism, religious fanaticism, and irrationality.

"Balkan Idols" by Vjekoslav Perica [21]

CHAPTER TEN: RELIGION AS A HALLMARK OF NATIONHOOD [continued]

The Politics of Saint-Making

The Croatian Catholic Church never gave up on the campaign to legitimize and elevate Cardinal Stepinac. This section details various political moves made by members of the hierarchy to reinvent the Cardinal as a hero of the anti-fascist (and anti-Holocaust) cause. The Church attempted to reach out to Jews by simultaneously canonizing Edith Stein, a nun of Jewish descent who died at Auschwitz. However, the request to have Stepinac made a "righteous Gentile" was rejected.

In the meantime, the Serbian Church, in 1998, announced the canonization of new saints in response to the Stepanic campaign; these saints were from the World War II era and represented an effort to counter the Croat myth of Stepanic with a Serb myth of Jasenovac. The Tito-era of Brotherhood and Unity was recast by both churches as a historical aberration.

Religious Organizations and the International Peace Process

This section essentially documents one phenomena--attempts by religious leaders to play peacemakers and act as conciliatory actors in response to western pressure, especially peace activism by western (oftentimes Protestant) religious groups. A great deal of noise was made, and many leading clerics from all three of the main national churches said many of the "right" things. Yet, Perica concludes pessimistically that little came of such dialogue, and little should be expected in the immediate future. These proclamations were long on abstractions and short on concrete proposals. Lots of sweeping calls for "peace in the Balkans" without the specific language needed to promote such a peace.

Perica does note that many individual cleric from all three churches took early, principled stands against nationalist rhetoric and against the war itself; later, many others made sincere efforts towards reconciliation and ecumenical dialogue. However, they generally did so as individuals. The national churches as institutions, and groups within those churches (as well as the leaders of each church) either remained silent at best, or either actively supported nationalist politics or helped encourage fear and intolerance.

Perica concludes this chapter with the gloomy quote (from Sarajevo author Ivan Lovrenovic):

"The 1992-1995 Bosnian war may not have been a religious war. But the next one will be for sure."