Serbian Paramilitaries in the Breakup of Yugoslavia

Abstract

Paramilitaries and irregular armed forces are a common feature of wars, frequently attacking civilians and causing great pain and suffering. While significant variations exist in how these units emerge and function in different conflicts across time and space, each marked by its own unique characteristics, one thing is true – paramilitaries as violent actors in conflict are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. In the former Yugoslavia, virtually every book and article written on the breakup of the country discusses paramilitaries, describes paramilitary commanders and recounts incidents in which units engaged in expulsions of civilian populations and the murder or detention of innocent men, women and children. However, there was never comprehensive research conducted on Serb(ian) units specifically, which were most numerous, and which engaged in attacks on civilians for a decade in three theaters of war: in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo. This important actor in the conflict, these units and the thousands of men in them were a common presence in war-torn areas, and thousands of victims were killed, detailed and abused by them throughout the decade. My research and dissertation primarily used the extensive archives and evidence material from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, assembled over two decades of trials, to answer important questions about these units. Primarily, this research answers the question about where, how, why and by whom these key units were established, and how did they function and transform between 1991 and 2003—between their establishment and final dissolution. The dissertation describes and analyzes the nature and purpose of these units, and the ways in which they interacted with state institutions and organized crime networks. Finally, an important contribution to scholarly understanding comes from categorizing these units and explaining how and why they perpetrated different forms of violence against civilians. This research illuminates how these units were established to boost troop numbers and provide a way for the Serbian leadership to outsource some of the violence to seemingly independent actors. The regime of Slobodan Milošević did that in order to achieve war-time goals while remaining formally detached from violence which was manifestly illegal and which caused diplomatic backlash. With this dissertation contributions are thus made to the historiography of the former Yugoslavia, research on paramilitaries as armed actors as well as on perpetrators of mass violence.