The Anthropology Of Genocide - WNLibrary

8
Averted Gaze
Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992–1995
Tone Bringa
This chapter examines some of the social and political structures that converged
in the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (B-H) and created a framework that enabled
certain people to commit crimes against humanity at the end of the twentieth century
in Europe. It argues that the particular kind of personalized violence directed
toward individuals because they belonged to, or were identified with, a specific
nationality or ethnic group was the expression of a politically organized attempt
at radically redefining categories of belonging. 1 This implied the redrawing of
boundaries of exclusion/inclusion (that is, excluding certain people with their
knowledge and their skills from a certain territory having a certain history, resources,
and social fabric, while including certain others). These were new boundaries both
in a physical (political/territorial) and in a symbolic sense. The criteria for who was
included and who was excluded were new, too. The violence was directed not only
toward those who because of their nationality were redefined as “not belonging”
but also toward anyone (irrespective of nationality) who resisted this redefinition. 2
I shall argue that this forced redrawing of boundaries of exclusion was the eventual
resolution of authority—a delayed transition of authority—after modern Yugoslavia’s
founder and post–World War II leader, Tito, died in 1980. This delayed
transition coincided with and was influenced by the end of communist regimes in
Europe, while the criteria according to which the new boundaries were drawn were
a legacy of the political and social structures of communist (Titoist) Yugoslavia.
Several strategies were used by the “new” power elites that came into power in
Yugoslavia after the end of the Cold War in 1989/90 in order to redefine social categories
of exclusion and inclusion (such as, for instance, “enemies” and “friends”).
Some of these strategies were directed toward members of the group that the new
boundaries were meant to include, in order to convince them of the need to redraw
these boundaries. Measures included the use of a “rhetoric of exclusion”
(such as the renaming of neighbors and compatriots as foreigners/intruders and
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