MEN, WOMEN & WAR

In common with many others, HMD Response's attention was drawn to the war in the Former Yugoslavia by the media images and reports of crimes of sexual violence and concentration camps as they emerged in the summer of 1992. Whilst it may have been possible up to that time to regard the conflict as an aberration and a short though violent period of transition into a new system of government, the reports of systematic rapes and concentration camps clearly underlined a strategy, on the part of at least some of the combatants, to create deep and permanent rifts between communities and ethnic groups. The end result of this was to be the establishing of new national boundaries, the members of which had their need for citizenship underlined by the perpetration or the receipt of violence from former neighbours.

The occurrence of rape as a weapon of war in former- Yugoslavia was recognised early in the conflict and documented by the "Warburton Mission report" commissioned by the EC and published in early 1993. The EC and UN response to the Report's recommendations was the dedicating of approximately £3million to the victims of sexual assault. The report noted that women of one particular ethnic group were the main target of these assaults; they were Muslims. The first group of victims of organised, systematic rapes was then presented to the world. This was a collection of mothers and daughters who had been released from captivity. This group was photographed many times and their testimonies reported. Yet when I came across this group for the first time in 1995 they had received little or no help. They had turned inwardly upon themselves as a means of both support and preservation and had been, to some degree, marginalised from their larger community. The example serves for me as a model of how we are, on the one hand, deeply impressed by the magnitude of this type of crime and the impact it has upon the victim, but at the same time how prone we are to turn away from the victim and to allow this outrage to drift into the background of post conflict reconciliation. The awful irony for these victims is that the crime perpetrated against them is the ultimate humiliation imposed by an aggressor upon an adversary and by extension to the state to which that adversary belongs. As profoundly demoralising an insult this offence is between warring factions, the significance for the victim is not considered with any degree of continuing, meaningful concern. It has many times occurred to me that the initial reaction of the international community was of horror and the crimes themselves served to underline the seriousness of the conflict.

With regard to this particular crime and its systematic nature, there does not appear to be a case for placing it alongside other strategies for separating a region's people along ethnic lines. Rather it deserves a place of its own

However once the funding has been dedicated to the issue of systematic rape the problem was pushed discreetly out of view. It may be significant that throughout this particular conflict, I have found that amongst the programmes for which we have sought funding, the treatment of rape victims has been one of the hardest for which to attract donor's interest. Bosnia had been a multi-ethnic community with its minorities holding more in common with one another, as far as language and identity are concerned, than with either Croatia or Serbia. These communities had lived together and sometimes intermarried in a manner that, had the political situation endured as it had for the past five decades, might have been expected to proceed along the road of greater integration. How was it then that not only did neighbours war with one another but incidents of former close family friends abusing vulnerable family members of former family friends came to be documented? In view of the relative uniformity of the people of the region, in the eyes of many outside observers, and the commonplace descriptions from the indigenous inhabitants themselves of their surprise at the tensions that exploded from amidst their communities, I believe that we must look elsewhere other than historical memories of injustices past for an explanation for this region turning so violently upon itself.

We know that academics and intellectuals in both Zagreb and Belgrade did much to redefine religious groups, then co-existing within Bosnia-Herzegovina, along conflicting ethnic lines. Major elements in this exercise were the manipulation of history to re-establish past injustices and the reinventing of a common language, previously varying in dialect alone, to make it as diverse as possible and clearly identifiable as either Croatian or Serbian. With intellectual support for national differences of this kind, the military forces went about their work to annex sections of the region. In order to provide conscripted troops with the motivation to fight against former neighbors, differentiated by religion alone, it needed to create an element of hatred and alienation amongst, an often times integrated community. On the basis that the perpetrator of a crime will be as alienated by it as the victim, atrocities were instituted on a level contrived to enrage and terrorise beyond the point of forgiveness. Systematic rape played an effective role in this strategy, striking as it does at the honor and integrity of the victim and the victim's community.

I believe that the incidence of rape occurred over and above that which could be anticipated by the actions of ungoverned individuals. That it was necessary from a military point of view to draw clear lines between the communities and to establish nationalistic loyalties by means of committing appalling acts is generally recognised. So also is rape recognised in the context of former- Yugoslavia, as an instrument to that end. What is truly disappointing is the feeble recourse to justice of the many victims now left to make the best of the peace. In the end, political and military ends are satisfied by a disengagement and do not particularly benefit from reparations or justice; that is at least not in the short term.

(This paper will appear later in 1997 in a book edited by Dr. Carol Rittner, RSM. The book will be a collection of essays/ contributions made at a conference entitled Men, Women & War, held in Derry in March 1997 and organised by Dr. Rittner)