Crimesof War

In April 1992, Zeljko Raznatovic (a.k.a. “Arkan”) arrived with his uniformed militia in the east Bosnian town of Bijeljina to begin a campaign that came to be known as “ethnic cleansing.”

The town was practically undefended, and his forces set up roadblocks, arrested civilians, and went house to house seizing others. One witness saw three people get their throats slit at a checkpoint. Another saw a woman shot as she was eating burek, a cheese pastry. When Arkan was done, twenty thousand Muslims had either fled, been transported to camps, or were slaughtered.

Arkan headed a paramilitary group called the Serbian Volunteer Guard, later known as Arkan’s Tigers. A paramilitary force is a legal armed formation that is not integrated into a regular armed force. The term paramilitary, which is not a legal term, covers militias, volunteer corps, and even police units taking part in armed conflict. They are lawful combatants under international law. This means they must be under responsible command, carry distinctive signs, carry arms openly, and obey the laws and customs of war.

Like other legal combatants, paramilitaries, if fighting in an international conflict and captured, are to receive the protections of the Geneva Conventions accorded to all prisoners of war. They are to be treated decently like anyone else detained because of the conflict, that is, protected from the dangers of war, given all the food and medical care needed, and allowed outside contact through the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). Like any other force, they cannot be tried for the mere act of taking part in hostilities as combatants, but can be interned as POWs until the conflict stops. But paramilitaries, like anyone else, may be tried for war crimes they commit.

Notwithstanding their often legitimate military functions, paramilitaries are routinely deployed by governments to preserve plausible deniability and to cloud the issue of command and control. Too often, paramilitaries provide a cover for governments intent on violating international law. They also protect political leaders from direct responsibility for war crimes. But their activities are sometimes controlled under public law, and they often operate in subordination to the regular army.

In the former Yugoslavia, paramilitary forces were the primary agent of criminal violence, murdering unarmed men, women, and children, raping and pillaging, and instituting a campaign of terror with the goal of forcing all non-Serbs out of territories that historically were ethnically mixed. As officially recognized armed formations, they are indisputably subject to international law for their role in alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

A series of decrees established the role of paramilitary troops as the former Yugoslavia began to disintegrate. In August 1991, Serbia issued a decree regulating the enlistment of volunteers in the territorial defense, a paramilitary formation, which allowed volunteers to take part in maneuvers and training, thereby acquiring arms. In December 1991, the rump Yugoslav government established “volunteer” forces as an adjunct to the Federal Army. Arkan, a soccer promoter and café owner, was a close political associate of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic. Already by that autumn, Arkan, with the help of a recruitment campaign in the state-owned media, had begun rallying unemployed soccer hooligans and criminals and training them at army facilities.

Arkan thus did not operate as a free agent; on more than one occasion he even took command. UN investigators determined that Arkan’s forces worked in coordination with the Federal Army in eleven municipalities in Bosnia, and in three of those municipalities, including Bijeljina, Arkan was reported to be the leader of the joint operation to seize cities and expel their native populations. In Zvornik, at the start of April 1992, Arkan issued the ultimatum to surrender and then called in the army to begin the shelling. His trained army of killers and commandos moved into town in Federal Army vehicles. In black woolen caps and black gloves cut off at the fingers, they combed the city with prepared lists and assassinated leading Muslims.

Three years later, Milosevic referred to the volunteers as “bandits and killers.” He said in an interview they amounted to “only a couple thousand” troops, and “were totally marginal in that war.” The UN Commission of Experts said upward of twenty thousand paramilitary troops took part in the war and played a central role in the mayhem.

As for Arkan, he was indicted by the Yugoslav was crimes tribunal on charges of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, but before he could face trial he was gunned down in Belgrade in January 2000.