The Yugoslavian War Crimes Reports: Not a Pretty Picture

By Lewis K. Elbinger

Apparently if you tie one end of a wire tightly around a man's testicles and the other end to a motorcycle and then drive the motorcycle at high speed, you will be rewarded with your own nation. An actual case of such cruel use of wire and motorcycles is described in the Supplemental Report on War Crimes in the Fortner Yugoslavia issued by the U.S. Department of State on Nov. 2, 1992. The reward of statehood for murderous Serbian thugs who have systematically carried out hundreds of equally cruel acts painstakingly documented in eight such State Department reports may result from the failure of responsible nations to prevent the strangling of the infant Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina in its cradle.

When Serbian nationalist leader Vojislav Seselij campaigned for public office in a suburb of Belgrade on the pledge to "gouge out the eyes of Croats with rusty spoons," he was not limiting this use of tableware to Bosnian Croats, he was not limiting the gouging to eyes, and he was not kidding. For example, one of the State Department reports documents the use by Serbian nationalists of pliers in these words: "The refugee described how the Chetniks had cut his cousin with razor blades and pulled off his skin with pliers."

Nor, according to the reports, have the Serbs stopped at gouging eyes: "He once saw about 15 corpses of young men, 18-30 years old, completely naked, with their genitalia torn out."

More unbridled Serbian nationalism is illustrated by this vignette: "In one case, the guards broke a prisoner's head with gun butts to spill the brains. Then they called the dogs to eat the brains."

The State Department reports document scenes of murder and depravity that took place almost at the beginning of the 1992 Serb invasion: "On May 29, all 174 male citizens of Divic were taken by bus to a movie theater that was part of a cultural center being used as a prison in the village of Celopek, located seven kilometers north of Zvornik ... On June 10, a 35 year old Serbian soldier ... approached a 16-year-old boy, Damic Bikic, and asked him to point out his father in the audience. He asked the father if he had any other male offspring. When the father replied that he did not, the soldier put a rifle in the boy's mouth and killed him."

The words "terrible," "horrible," and "tragic" are often heard to describe the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but even those who use such adjectives are usually unaware of the enormity of the war crimes taking place. Atrocities comparable to those carried out at the order of Adolf Hitler and Pol Pot are once again occurring as we sip morning coffee and read the newspaper. There is nothing Americans can do now about Hitler's crimes half a century ago. Americans did nothing about Pol Pot's barbarism because it occurred in a distant and seemingly inaccessible place. But Serbian genocide is going on now, in Europe, and the sordid details are cataloged in the eight reports submitted by the United States government to the U.N. secretarygeneral in accordance with Paragraph 5 of U.N. Security Council Resolution 77 1. A random sampling:

The key word in this debate is "evil.”

"In some cases, he saw a doctor who would slit the throats of young healthy people, cut out their organs and pack them in plastic bags, and load the organs into a refrigerator truck. "

"The brothers forced Alic first to drink a glass of motor oil and then to drink the urine of the other two prisoners. Alic was beaten until he was unconscious and then revived with cold water. After further beatings, Alic was forced to take his pants off. The brothers then forced Emir and Jasmin to bite off Alic's testicles. Alic died of his wounds that night. "

"A Specijalci soldier used a wooden club with metal protruding from it to kill several people. He forced internees to lick the blood from the metal studs."

"Uniformed and nonuniformed Serbian soldiers moved through the pediatric center breaking the necks and bones of the 27 remaining Muslim children, the only children left as patients in the hospital. Two soldiers forced [the witness] to watch for about 15 minutes, during which time about 10 or 15 of the children were slaughtered. Some were infants. The oldest was about 5 years old. The witness said that a Serbian surgeon, who also stood by helplessly, later went insane."

"To revive the prisoners from these beatings, guards would urinate on their heads or turn a fire hose on them."

"Prisoners were forced to eat sand, swallow their own feces, and perform sex acts on fellow prisoners."

"He also said he had seen 30 men from Donja Bioca being shot and loaded some alive into a furnace at a steel plant at Ilijas, a town north of Vogosca in July."

"After the father collapsed, he was dragged at knife point to the bunker and forced to watch as the soldiers repeatedly raped his daughter, an ordeal which lasted an hour. "

"The witness identified the most ruthless of the rapists, a man who raped 10-year-old girls `as a delicacy.'

"The Serbian guards gathered two-liter glass bottles from a nearby bottling plant. A bottle would be placed on the ground and a prisoner, trousers and underwear pulled down, would be forced to sit on it. The guards would then push down on the prisoner's shoulders until the man's buttocks touched the ground, forcing the bottle all the way up the man's anus."

"Seventeen people were forced into a local mosque. The soldiers then burned down the mosque with the people inside.”

A Few Acts of Kindness

No one should conclude from the foregoing that the reports on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia incite hatred of the Serbian people, although, in all honesty, that is one of the many emotions they can evoke. Hidden among the shocking descriptions of senseless cruelty, like diamonds in dung, are a few descriptions of kindness that, if they cannot redeem an entire people, at least forestall blanket condemnation. The quality of mercy is strained in Bosnia-Herzegovina, but even there drops trickle forth:

"Several times the employees of the clinic came under suspicion, and their lives were threatened. One of the female aides was a Serb, and she was repeatedly interrogated and told to stop working at the clinic, but she stayed. The witness believes the presence of this Serb saved the lives of the other staff many times."

"On the verge of unconsciousness, the witness was forced to clean his own blood from the floor and the walls around him. Upon completion of this `task,' the beating was resumed ... His release from the him until he was dead.'

The eight U.S. State Department reports of war crimes cited at the end of this article, and from which the preceding quotations are drawn, also report atrocities committed by both Croat and Muslim individuals. Fairness compels the observation, however, that crimes by Serbs vastly outnumber those by Croats and Muslims combined, and those by Croats considerably outnumber those by Muslims.

That said, what role do these U. S. government compilations play in the formulation of U.S. policy in the Balkans? U.S. policymakers face a difficult dilemma. How can they explain to American parents why their sons or daughters in the U.S. armed services must risk their lives protecting the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina? Aside from documentation such as that quoted, they have three means of doing so: an appeal to principle, an appeal to interest, and an appeal to judgment.

Alhos textile plant on May 20 was arranged by a sympathetic Serb soldier."

"When the witness regained consciousness, a Tmopo1je guard who had attended her school came along and broke up the gang rape."

"A Serbian nurse put him on intravenous treatment, which he believes saved his life."

"On the way from Kozarac to imprisonment at Tmopo1je, a group of Serbs threatened to kill him, his father, his brother and three neighbors. The Serbs lined them against a building wall and cocked their rifles, but were stopped by an anonymous Serb commander."

"After having been detained in Bosnian Serb camps almost continuously from May to September 1992, a 42yearold Bosnian Muslim was released upon the intervention of an influential Serbian friend."

Some Serbs paid a bitter price for helping Muslims or Croats.

"The witness managed to meet the camp secretary, a Serb, who helped her obtain food. Later she witnessed this man being beaten for helping people."

"The witness saw guards torture or kill Serbs who had hidden or helped Muslims. "

"The witness saw the soldiers gang-rape a woman whom he had known since his school days and murder her husband. A Brcko schoolteacher among the guards, an ethnic Serb, was shot dead for refusing to join in the torture and killing of this couple."

"A Serbian guard helped the prisoners by warning them that the White Eagles were returning and not to let them in. The guard then threw the key to their cell in the bushes. For having helped the Muslims, the Serbian guard was beaten and held in an isolation cell with four Muslims."

"All were afraid to release the names of Serbians who had helped the Muslims for fear of retribution against these Serbs."

Finally, there is the story of "Ljubo", an heroic Serb whose refusal to join the madness cost him his life:

“Serbian Chetniks and the Yugoslav army entered the area (near Sarajevo airport) and ordered all its residents out of the cellars in which they had taken refuge. Once outside, Serbs were told to stand in one place and Muslims in another. One Serb, a 50yearold man known as `Ljubo,' refused to be separated from his Muslim neighbors, with whom he apparently had lived peacefully for many years. [This] enraged the Serbian soldiers. They dragged him to the ground, and ... beat him until he was dead.”

That said, what role do these U.S. government compilations play in the formulation of foreign policy in the Balkans? U.S. policymakers face a difficult dilemna. How can they explain to their sons or daughters in the U.S. armed services must risk their lives protecting the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina? Aside from documentation such as that quoted, they have three means of doing so: an appeal to principle, an appeal to interest, and an appeal to judgement.

Principle, Interest and Judgment

The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe established an enlightened and prudent principle that is often forgotten in foreign policy debates: internationally recognized borders may only be changed with the mutual consent of the countries involved. A similar principle was adopted by the Organization of African Unity when newly independent nations on the continent of Africa cast off their colonial yokes.

This principle does not address injustices which some of those borders represent, but it wisely seeks to prevent redress of grievance by force of arms. Since cause for grievance is endless and, when it does not exist, can be manufactured, the principle of inviolability of internationally recognized borders is one which serves to check aggression and channel disputes toward nonviolent resolution.

Interests are notably less noble than principles, but usually more compelling. In the case of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the economic interests involved were sufficiently evident and vital to unite diverse political actors in common cause. Such is not the case in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is not clear whose financial wellbeing will be affected by failure to check Serbian aggression except for the generally negative effect that political instability has on commerce, travel and communications. The lack of clearly defined interests in this case encourages inactivity and fosters the "dithering" of which the Clinton administration has been accused.

But the judgment that such inactivity could or would lead to similar atrocities in similar situations is reason to overcome complacency. The same judgment was sufficient to prompt action in response to Iraqi aggression when passionate hand-wringing from other nations was all that Saddam Hussain expected. The evil that manifests itself today as Serbian aggression and genocide cannot be allowed to set a precedent. Modern history is replete with examples of the consequences of allowing brutality to triumph. It must not happen.

The key word in this debate is "evil. " Like "love," it is not a word often encountered in political discourse or, when encountered, is not often used correctly. Here, unmistakably, it applies. We are not talking about greedy ignorance which manifests itself as criminality, although there is plenty of that.

One's first reaction to the Yugoslavian War Crimes Reports, aside from disgust, is that murderous, aggressive nationalism is a form of mental illness. But this is not an illness that can be cured by doctors, medicine and rest.

Consider Serbian nationalist Milic Od Macve's assertion that "Serbian is the only language with which one can communicate with intelligent beings on other planets. " These people are not simply marching to a different drummer, they are waltzing away from a common human destiny. The Serbs themselves are not evil, nor are their nationalistic dreams. But their behavior in realizing those dreams goes beyond all recognized norms and enters the realm of political, social and moral nightmare.

The Clinton administration's concern with domestic policy is necessary and laudable, but someone should tap on the shoulder those in the White House whose concern stops at the water's edge and whisper in their ears, "It's the war crimes, stupid."

1 The eight reports of war crimes in the former Yugoslavia are published in United States Department of State Dispatch as follows:

First Report: Vol. 3, No. 39, page 732, issued Sept. 28, 1992, Second Report: Vol. 3, No. 44, page 802, issued Nov. 2, 1992, Third Report: Vol. 3, No. 46, page 825, issued Nov. 16, 1992, Fourth Report: Vol. 3, No. 52, page 917, issued Dec. 28, 1992, Fifth Report: Vol. 4, No. 6, page 75, issued Feb. 9, 1993, Sixth Report: Vol, 4, No. 15, page 243, issued April 12, 1993, Seventh Report: Vol. 4, No. 16, page 257, issued April 19, 1993, Eighth Report: Vol. 4, No. 30, page 537, issued July 26, 1993.

2 The Economist, 25 Dec. 929 Jan. 93, p. 29

Lewis K. Elbinger is a foreign service officer in the U. S. Department of State. 7he views and opinions expressed in this article are solely the author's and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government.