yugoslavias implosion

The policy of ethnic cleansing had a strategic logic, as well as a political
logic, and it was carried out in a consistent pattern. The idea was simply
to establish an area along the Drina and Sava rivers, which would
make continuous the areas inhabited by Serbs in Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro,
and Croatia, to facilitate the contacts between those groups.
The logic of the strategic purpose was also inevitable in its outcome. As
the Serb population in those areas was much less than the non-Serb
population, it behoved that logic to remove the population, which was
inimical simply because there weren’t enough people of the dominant
group to be able to control those who were not. So, rather than risk
having, if you will, an inimical or enemy group at your back, the strategic
dictates were to ethnically cleanse them. The tactics were simple.
The tactics were really very simple and rather simplistic. The tactics
were simply to engage in the type of violence that would cause people to
leave, after many had suffered and been killed, with the fear of what
might happen to them and with the terrorizing effect that it created. In
fact, it is very telling that in 80 percent of the rape cases that we investigated,
the acts of rape were done with the purpose of enhancing the
element of shame and embarrassment of the victim, of her family, and
of the community, so as to create a terror-inspiring effect that would
cause people to flee and not to return. 299
About eighty paramilitary formations took part in the Bosnian
war, some of them fighting as part of the rs Army (albeit operating
under Belgrade instructions), others independently. As in Croatia,
every Serbian municipality in Bosnia set up an emergency committee,
usually consisting of the local chief of police, the party secretary,
and a military representative of the formation stationed locally.
The cleansing was started by the Army and completed mostly by the
299 U .S . Congress files, April 4, 1995 . http://ftp .fas .org/irp/
congress/1995_hr/genocideinbosnia .html
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