This article addresses the causes and dynamics of spin-off violence by paramilitary groups that developed in Serbia in the early 1990s. It shows that some forms of violence that challenge the state’s monopoly come into being due to decisions of state agencies. But delegated violence easily develops a life of its own, and therefore the decisions of state leaders are not the only variable, perhaps not even an important one, needed to explain the dynamics of violence once the turmoil of war has started. In retrospect, it seems as if warfare was just an episode in the political life of militias or the political groupings behind them. Violence was just one means among others in the fight for political chances. Therefore, the emergence and the life of these groups have to be explained as attempts of single political entrepreneurs to achieve the accumulation of power through the exertion of violence.
On this dynamic more generally, and also with regard to other ways of formation of war actors, see Klaus Schlichte, In the Shadow of Violence. The Politics of Armed Groups (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009).
3.
Florence Hartmann, Milosevic, la diagonale du fou (Paris: Folio, 2002); and Norbert Mappes-Niedeck, Balkan-Mafia. Staaten in der Hand des Verbrechens-eine Gefahr für Europa (Berlin: Ch. Links-Verlag, 2003).
4.
Marija Obradovic, "Der Krieg als Quelle politischer Legitimation. Ideologie und Strategie der herrschenden Partei," in Serbiens Weg in den Krieg, ed. Thomas Brenner and Nebojsa Popov (Berlin: Arno Spitz , 1999), 375.
5.
Predrag Bjelic , "Turkish Economic Interests in the Western Balkans ," Review of International Affairs (Belgrade )56, no. 119 ( 2003): 44-53.
6.
C. Jens Reuter, "Die Wirtschaftskrise der BR Jugoslawien. Reformen im Schatten von Krieg, Embargo und schleppender Transformation," Südosteuropa43, no. 8 (1994): 478-91.
7.
Cf. John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 353 ff.; and Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy. Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), 46 ff.
8.
Cf. John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 242.
9.
Cf. the contributions in Brenner and Popov, Serbiens Weg in den Krieg; and the works of Ivan Colovic, e.g., The Politics of Symbol in Serbia. Essays in Political Anthropology (London: Hurst, 2002).
10.
It should always be mentioned in this context that Serbia and particularly the population of its capital Belgrade had a strong antinationalist opposition, which, however, as typical in these cases, lost ground due to the violent turn of politics. Furthermore, the number of desertions and other ways of circumventing military service in Serbia was considerable.
11.
I am referring here to the work of Natalija Basic and the self-documentation by veterans of Belgrade’s district Rakovica, organized under the title "On the Wings of Patriotism"; see Milisav Sekulic, Na krilima patriotisma. Borci Rakovice u ratovima od 1990 do 1999 godine (Belgrade, Serbia, 2001).
12.
Marie-Janine Calic, Krieg und Frieden in Bosnien-Hercegovina, rev. ed. (Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp , 1996), 144.
13.
Wolfgang Höpken , "Das Dickicht der Kriege: Ethnischer Konflikt und militärische Gewalt im früheren Jugoslawien, 1991-1995," in Wie Kriege entstehen. Zum historischen Hintergrund von Staatenkonflikten , ed. Bernd Wegner ( Paderborn, Germany: Schöningh, 2000), 343.
14.
Sekulic, Na krilima patriotisma, 166.
15.
Natalija Basic , "Krieg ist nun mal Krieg. Porträt eines Kombattanten," Mittelweg368, no. 14 (1999): 5.
16.
Ibid., 11.
17.
This applies to Basic’s finding (see ibid.) as well as to the author’s interviews.
18.
Thomas McKenna, Muslim Rulers and Rebels. Everyday Politics and Armed Separatism ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998).
19.
There are a number of journalists’ accounts on their role and involvement, particularly in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995. See, e.g., Laura Silber and Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin, 1996), chap. 16; or Tim Judah, The Serbs. History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), chap. 9. In these and numerous other accounts, the named militias are held responsible for the eviction of non-Serbian people from parts of Croatia and Bosnia, using various violent methods. They were, according to these accounts, actors of what was soon labeled as "ethnic cleansing." See also the indictments against Vojislav Seselj and Zeljko Raznatovic by the prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, at www.un.org/icty/indictment/ english/ses-ii030115e.htm and www.un.org/icty/indictment/english/ark-ii970930e.htm.
20.
Höpken, "Das Dickicht der Kriege," 366.
21.
Balkans Institute, War Crimes and Individual Responsibility: A Prima Facie Case for the Indictment of Slobodan Milosovic, prepared by Paul Williams and Norman Cigar (Washington, DC: New England Center for International Law and Policy, 2003), sec. IV. The role and responsibility of governmental personnel in the provision and command of paramilitaries is a central issue in the procedures of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. For this reason alone, all argument about these relations is highly political. The author of this article abstains from any stance in this case.
22.
Judah, The Serbs, 187.
23.
Source: Interview with ex-officer of the JNA, Belgrade, Serbia, October 2003.
24.
Balkans Institute, War Crimes and Individual Responsibility, III.B.2.
25.
Source: Interview with journalist, March 2003, Belgrade, Serbia.
26.
Judah, The Serbs, 184-86.
27.
Marko Milivojevic, Entries "Paramilitary/Irregular Forces," "Vojislav Seselj," "Vukasin Draskovic," "Zeljko Raznatovic," in Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia. An Encyclopedia, ed. John B. Allcock, Marko Milivojevic, and John H. Horton (Denver, CO: ABC-Clio, 1998).
28.
Silber and Little, The Death of Yugoslavia, 185, 222.
29.
Balkans Institute, War Crimes and Individual Responsibility, fn. 14.
30.
In comparative regard, it is one of the particularities of the wars in Yugoslavia that the country had compulsory military service and regular military training so that almost the entire adult population had intense military education. The strong militarist tradition has to do with the Partisan’s war victory as the foundational myth of Yugoslavia and with the security situation of Yugoslavia during the Cold War as it was perceived after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Cf. Robin Alison Remington, "State Cohesion and the Military," in State-Society Relations in Yugoslavia, 1945-1992, ed. Melissa K. Bokovoy et al. (New York: St. Martin’s, 1997), 61-78.
31.
Source: Interview with former SDG member, March 2003, Belgrade, Serbia.
32.
Judah, The Serbs, 187.
33.
The relation survived Arkans death in 2000 in various ways. Still today, Ceca does not hide her pride of being married to the war hero (cf. www.ceca-raznatovic.com), and rumor has it that quite different from any other musician, there are no bootlegs of Ceca’s songs for sale on Belgrade’s streets.
34.
Dejan Anastasijevic, "Tiger Ate Penguin" [trans.], Vreme (Belgrade), March 23, 1996.
35.
Source: Interview with former combattants, Belgrade, Serbia, March and October 2003.
36.
Cf. John B.Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 390 ff.
37.
Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriß der verstehenden Soziologie, 5th ed. (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1985) 861.
38.
Judah, The Serbs, 256.
39.
Most of the information in this section was gathered in conversations in Vozdovac in October 2003.
40.
Balkans Institute, War Crimes and Individual Responsibility, fn. 13
41.
Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 654ff.
42.
Heinrich Popitz, Phänomene der Macht (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr, 1987).
43.
Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars. Organized violence in a global era (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), chap. 3.
44.
Stathis Kalyvas , The Ontology of Political Violence. Action and Identity in Civil Wars, Perspectives on Politics1 (3): 476.
45.
For such a structural-historical approach to the explanation of politics in the former Yugoslavia, see Allcock, 2000.
46.
Maria Todorava , Imagining the Balkans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997 ).
