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They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague book review
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With the upcoming early release of convicted Bosnian-Serb war criminal Biljana Plavšic, http://www.examiner.com/x-27426-Volusia-County-Foreign-Policy-Examiner~y2009m10d24-Convicted-BosnianSerb-war-criminal-to-be-released-by-Sweden , and the start of the case against Radovan Karadžic, http://www.rferl.org/content/Karadzic_Trial_Set_To_Open/1860926.html , a review of other war criminals from the 1990s Balkan Wars is in order. Croatian journalist and author Slavenka Drakulic does just that in her book They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (2004).
In the book, she looks into the history of several individuals accused of war crimes from the 1990s Balkan Wars, and shows how it is possible for anyone to become a war criminal; that is, there is no tell-tale trait or predisposition that may give us a clue as to who is likely to commit crimes against humanity. Besides focusing on the trial of Slobodan Miloševic, she looks at the trial of the lesser men, “…the ordinary individuals whose power did not extend beyond their village or their town borders. …It is their ordinariness that makes their crimes so shocking: the fact that the crimes…” were not carried out by regular soldiers, but by civilians: waiters, taxi drivers, and fishermen (Drakulic 2004). The war itself turned ordinary men into war criminals because of “…opportunism, fear and, not least, conviction. Hundreds of thousands had to have been convinced that they were right in what they were doing. Otherwise such vast numbers of rapes and murders simply cannot be explained – and this is even more frightening” (Drakulic 2004, 50).
The book starts off in the following way:
Once upon a time, in a faraway part of Europe, behind seven mountains and seven seas, there was a beautiful country called Yugoslavia. Its peoples belonged to six different nationalities, were of three different religions and spoke three different languages. They were Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Albanians, Bosnians and Macedonians, yet they all worked together, married each other…[and then] Yugoslavia fell apart in a terrible and bloody war…. (Drakulic 2004, 3).
In the 1980s, the Serbian intelligentsia began to dig up the past; that, according to Drakulic, we tend to forget. The fact that during the Second World War Yugoslavia was occupied or controlled by Nazi Germany – but there was also a civil war between Serbs and Croats going on as well. “In other words, there was a history of recorded bloodshed in our country, and it was easy to manipulate it in order to antagonize one another: Serbs became the enemies of Croats, Bosnian Muslims and Albanians, but at one point Croats were also at war not only with Serbs, but with Muslims as well, while Macedonians’ enemies were Albanians” (Drakulic 2004, 4).
In 1993, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was established in The Hague, the Netherlands. This was done after the international community realized that the states that emerged from the former Yugoslavia “…were unable or unwilling to prosecute their war criminals. As stated at the Tribunal, all sides committed war crimes, but Serbia committed most of them” (Drakulic 2004, 7). Persons now listed as war criminals by the ICTY were hailed as national heroes back home; arresting and extraditing these individuals became huge political issues for Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Hercegovina.
In Croatia (as well as the other republics), there has been huge opposition to the ICTY. The opponents of the Tribunal in Croatia claim that “…the Tribunal is trying not individuals but the whole of Croatia for war crimes” (Drakulic 2004, 16). Often in Croatia it is also said that the Tribunal “…was not trying merely a few war criminals but the defensive ‘War for the Homeland’ the whole Croatian nation as well” (Drakulic 2004, 171). The idea of individual responsibility has been too abstract. Communist society, like the nationalist one that replaced it in the 1990s, is a collective society; “…there is no such thing as individual responsibility because there is very little individualism” (Drakulic 2004, 86). In other words, guilt is not individualized.
This may be seen in the so-called “TV-set Syndrome,” which Drakulic uses the Croatian town of Gospic as an example. This means that “…the majority of them [in this example, the citizens of Gospic] used the war to ‘help’ themselves to TV sets and similar goods from deserted [Serb] houses. There are others who did far worse things, of course, but if you dare to challenge them and demand justice, they will say: ‘You shut up, you stole a TV set.’ As if killing a man could ever be equated with stealing a TV” (Drakulic 2004, 25). Of course this comparison is not equal to the slightest degree, but it is enough to keep mouths shut. One citizen of Gospic – Milan Levar, a Croat – did dare to speak for justice; and for this he was murdered. Milan Levar “…was the first witness for the Tribunal to be killed in revenge” (Drakulic 2004, 24). In this mindset of collectiveness, Croatia is not alone. The Serbs also have problems in dealing with the truth. From the Serb point-of-view, they are the biggest victims: both of NATO and Miloševic.
The ICTY case against Slobodan Miloševic – the former President of Serbia and of Yugoslavia – is the first of its kind. It is the first “…international prosecution of a former head of state for crimes committed while in office. He [has been] charged…with committing genocide during the war in Bosnia, as well as crimes against humanity during the wars in Croatia and Kosovo” (Drakulic 2004, 107). Miloševic died in custody before the end of his trial. The NATO bombardment of Serbia and their own war against “terrorism” in Kosovo are “…the only wars Serbs recognize….” (Drakulic 2004, 10).
Dragoljub Kunarac, Radomir Kovac, and Zoran Vukovic, a taxi driver, a waiter, and a salesman, – Bosnian-Serbs from the town of Foca [now renamed Srbinje], located in Republika Srpska – were “…the first men in European legal history to be sentenced for torture, slavery, outrages upon human dignity and the mass rape of Bosnian Muslim women as crimes against humanity” (Drakulic 2004, 46). The author describes only Dragoljub Kunarac as being “…not difficult to imagine…in camouflage uniform with a gun in his hand” (Drakulic 2004, 49). She describes the other two looking like men you could trust. The rape of Bosnian women was an instrument of terror used against the Muslim population; it was an attempt to ethnically cleanse Bosnia. If these seemingly ordinary men are capable of such horrible acts, what does this portend for society as a whole?
Very few women took part in the Balkan Wars of the 1990s, especially at the very top level. Biljana Plavšic is the only woman to be accused of war crimes – the “Iron Lady of Republika Srpska” – was one of the three highest ranking officials in Republika Srpska during the war, second only to Radovan Karadžic. Before the war, she was a professor of biology at the University of Sarajevo. What makes her case historic is not just the fact that she is the only woman accused of war crimes, but also the fact that she is the only person – political or military – to have acknowledged her own responsibility. Back in Republika Srpska and in Serbia, “…the first reaction to her guilty plea was unexpected: her plea was condemned and she was pronounced a traitor” (Drakulic 2004, 162).
Slavenka Drakulic examines other individual cases, of individuals who raped Bosnian-Muslim women and killed individuals based on their ethnic background. One man, Goran Jelisic, is a Bosnian-Serb fisherman accused of executing over 100 prisoners, most of them being Bosnian-Muslims. Drakulic states this looks like a man you can trust with anything. At his trial, the ICTY found itself caught in a very peculiar situation: as his defense lawyer pointed out, “…never before had there been a case where so many people from a victimized ethnic group acted as witnesses on behalf of a Serbian defendant” (Drakulic 2004, 66). He had helped Bosnian-Muslim friends during the war, giving them money and other supplies; at the same time, he is one of three people accused of war crimes who admitted his guilt.
These were men who were "ordinary citizens." How did they become war criminals; how do men become monsters? She states that the more she occupies herself with the individual cases of war criminals, the less she believes them to be monsters. What if "...they are ordinary people, just like you and me, who found themselves in particular circumstances and made the wrong moral decisions? What might this tell us about ourselves? ...And the more you realize that war criminals might be ordinary people, the more afraid you become" (Drakulic 2004, 168). They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in The Hague (2004) is a very informative and easy read; you do not need to have a comprehensive background on the Balkan Wars of the 1990s for this book.
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