Globalaffairs

Issue 7/February-March 2008
By Eva Díez Ajenjo

The aim of this article is to analyse former Yugoslavia war in regards to religion, identity and culture. The point is to unmask the forces behind ethnic or fault line wars according to the relationships of the terms discussed above. Throughout the article there is a critique to the Huntington’s analysis of former Yugoslavia war, especially with regard to the issues of culture and identity as the main causes of the strife.

According to Huntington’s predictions, the most violent conflicts will occur in the fault lines and he mentions as an example of such conflicts ‘the continuation and intensification of the fighting among Croats, Muslims and Serbs in the former Yugoslavia’ (Huntington 1993b: 188). In fact, he labels Yugoslavia war as a fault line conflict. Moreover, as for fault line conflicts, Huntington (2002) defines them as struggles between groups or states belonging to different civilizations, they occur in territories where different civilizational groups are intermixed, they are struggles for control over people and frequently the issue at stake is control of territory.

Furthermore religion and identity are the main reasons for such conflicts, these struggles have been existed historically hence it seems that they are irreconcilable through negotiations and compromise. On Huntington’s count (2002), fault line wars tend to produce a large number of casualties and refugees and in a large number of cases their escalation leads to genocide. Following Huntington (2002), the vast majority of fault line conflicts have taken place along the boundaries that separate Muslims from non-Muslims thereby he analyzes former Yugoslavia war in terms of religious conflict between Western, Islamic and Orthodox civilizations.

As for the main causes of former Yugoslavia war, Huntington (2002: 259) draws three reasons. First, the increase in Albanian Muslim population especially in Kosovo provoked a demographic shift with severe consequences for the other ethnic groups because ‘the numerical expansion of one group generates political, economic, and social pressures on other groups and induces countervailing responses’ (Huntington 2002: 259).

According to Huntington this is the reason that explains why Serbs, Albanians, and Croats slaughtered each other and why Milosevic decided to commit genocide of Albanians and turn them into second-class citizens ‘ethnic expansion by one group led to ethnic cleansing by the other’ (2002: 261). Second, the identity vacuum left after the collapse of the Soviet Union led Yugoslavs to rediscover their identities in the standbys of religion and ethnicity. Hitherto the violence of peoples did not have any commitment but since the communist collapse this violence was committed to different gods. Third, the need for the different Yugoslav states to adopt democratic procedures after the Soviet Union fall provoked the appeal to ethnic nationalism and the promotion of the independence of their corresponding republics thus intensifying fault line conflicts into fault line wars.

In market contrast to Huntington, O’Hagan (1995: 25) states that the Yugoslavian war was not simply a strife based on differences over religion, ethnicity or civilization, instead it was a conflict rooted in political and economic causes. Moreover, she warns against the risk of interpreting conflicts over economic or political issues as clashes of civilizations because in that case they will be transferred from the area of the negotiable into that of the perpetual unsolvable conflicts. In line with economy as the basic cause of the war it is interesting to mention the article of McGwire. McGwire asserts that

‘Yugoslavia was one of the states most severely affected by the foreign debt crisis in the 1980s, but its special role in NATO strategy had ensured continuing access to Western credits. However, the winding down of the Cold War removed this leverage and exposed Yugoslavia to the full rigours of IMF conditionality’. (McGwire 2000: 2)

As a consequence of Yugoslavia loss of its privileged position in the Cold War global economy a harsh competition with the newly independent sates of central Europe for Western trade was established with destructive effects on Yugoslavian economy. Following McGwire (2000), the consequent economic austerity and budgetary conflict was extremely divisive and provoked severe strains on the complex political and socio-economic structure of the federal state that accentuated nationalistic tendencies which were on the rise in Serbia, Slovenia and Croatia. ‘These strains and the economic attractions of independence for Croatia and Slovenia led inexorably to the disintegration of the federal state’. (McGwire 2000: 4)

As for political reasons, O’Hagan (1995: 21) emphasizes the modern origin of the Balkans disputes in twentieth century power politics which are based on differences of history rather than physical or anthropological racial differences. The author denies the historically cultural and ethic divides stated by Huntington. Moreover, she stresses the fact that linguistically and ethnically the inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia have much in common. Moreover as stated in other articles, identity is not a primary cause of conflict, however, it can be used so as to inflate conflicts.

In the case of Balkans war, O’Hagan (1995: 25) argues that the appeal to civilizational identity, especially in the wake of ongoing tensions, was a powerful one. Hence the author warns about the necessity to distinguish between the rhetoric of conflict and the reality of the causes of such strife. In other words, O’Hagan suggests that in the war the rhetoric of conflict such as the rhetoric of the inability of peoples who see themselves as culturally different to coexist peacefully, became the reality. Moreover, the author maintains that ‘while we should not minimize the importance of the appeal to civilizational identity, it would be misleading simply to see civilizational difference as the cause of conflict’ (O’Hagan 1995: 30) therefore she criticizes that Huntington fails to distinguish the rhetoric of civilizations from the tangible causes of conflict and that ‘to simply identify differences between parties in conflict does not necessarily help us to understand the causes of conflict. It may even, in fact, exacerbate conflict’ (O’Hagan 1995: 30).

Job (1993: 54) denies the idea of Huntington that Yugoslavia’s tragedy is a sudden result of a loss of identity due to the collapse of the Soviet Union order. On the other hand, he contends that the roots of the tragedy lie in the work of generations of nationalist ideologues, intellectuals, politicians, and clergy. They created a culture of violence and hatred full of hitherto unchallenged myths. This culture was created and propagated from different sources. The first one is founded in educational institutions, according to Job in textbooks for elementary and high schools and in reading lists at universities in Serbia the role of the country is presented in Balkan wars as exclusively noble and humane and ‘If they are accused of inflicting suffering, Serbs merely reply that they are just and virtuous avengers of far worse popular suffering at the hands of others–Albanians, Bulgarians, and Turks’ (Job 1993: 60).

The second one lies in the popular culture where as stated by Job (1993: 60), the idea of viciously hostile Albanians killing exhausted Serbian soldiers and civilians is constantly nurtured, with no mention of the violence that Serbian soldiers inflicted in return. Moreover, this culture preserves the myth of Serbs as innately the most magnanimous, straightforward, hospitable, naïve, brave, and eternally the victims of Albanians and Croats. To admit any butchery committed by Serbs is considered unacceptable because such admission is said to jeopardize the nation and to expose it to enemy’s exploitation. Likewise the education provided to Croats does not account of the abuses that the Austro-Hungarian armies, with their Croatian and Bosnian units, perpetrated against Serb civilians during the First World War.

The third source is a fearful oral tradition. Job (1993: 62) points out that this oral tradition is taught in every school and it consists of an epic and romantic folk poetry which is native to Serbs, Croats, Montenegrins, and Bosnian Muslims. It is an oral tradition full of curses on the heads of traitors and cowards and full of revenge. Moreover, the author suggests that the tradition remains very strong, especially in the countryside, where illiteracy is very widespread. The problem stated by Job is that nearly all the literature is often taught literally without any attempt to separate poetic imaginary from true events as a result the negative stereotypes of Turks and other foreigners, the cult of revenge, and the self-pity remain unchallenged. In order to illustrate this point it is interesting to quote an epic folk poem cited in Job’s article

‘Whoever is a Serb, and of Serbian seed,
And doesn’t come to fight the Battle of Kosovo,
Let him never father a child,
Neither male nor female,
Let whatever he grows never yield fruit,
Neither red wine nor white wheat,
Let him rot in evil shame till his last progeny’. (Job 1993: 64)

Hence it can be concluded that culture was not an essentially and historically constituted cause of war, on the contrary it was constructed via education, popular culture and oral tradition. Culture was manipulated according to specific interests thus it was a tool so as to escalate war events.

The fourth source consists in the role played by the Yugoslavian palanka (small town) which following Job (1993) constituted a fertile soil for bigotry. The local authorities and establishments in palankas propagate the popular culture and the idolatry of the national self and they settle the nationalist myths. As a result of the process of industrialization, urbanization and modernization an increasing migration from the countryside became instructed in the vindictive mores of palanka mentality. Job (1993: 69) suggests that in this process cities became countrified in their cultural and political life and the Yugoslav provincial culture became the worship of intellectuals.

To conclude, the scenario of the Balkans war is an economic crises provoked by a debt crisis, economic competition from the newly independent states of central Europe and budgetary conflict. These economic strains caused an exacerbation of nationalistic identities which were constructed via educational institutions, popular culture, oral tradition and palankas. These cultural identities demonise the enemies and bless themselves. Moreover, they breed more hatred and violence escalating war events. Nonetheless, culture and identity are not essential and inevitable causes of conflict on the contrary they were constructed in the modern era. Peaceful coexistence in the Yugoslavian Republic was a real fact, Bosnia and Sarajevo where taken as examples of successful pluralist societies

‘even now, under the horrors of the Serbian siege, a considerable number of Serbs and Croats have willingly remained in the city to share fighting and suffering with the Muslims. They demonstrate at least a partial survival of an ecumenical spirit, against overwhelming odds’ (Job 1993: 70).

Bibliography:

- Huntington, Samuel P. (2002) The Clash of Civilizations and the remarking of world order, London: The Free Press
- Huntington S. (1993a) ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ Foreign Affairs, 72 (3), pp22-49.
- Huntington (1993b) ‘If Not Civilizations, What? : Paradigms of the Post-Cold War World’. Foreign Affairs 72 (5) pp186-194.
- Job, C. (1993) ‘Yugoslavia’s Ethnic Furies’, Foreign Policy, 93 (92), pp52-75.
- McGwire, Michael (2000) ‘Why did we bomb Belgrade?’ International Affairs, 76 (1), pp1-24.
- O’Hagan, Jacinta (1995) ‘Civilisational conflict? Looking for cultural enemies’. Third World Quarterly, 16 (1), p19-39.

Eva Díez Ajenjo
Global Affairs Director

Global Affairs is not liable for author’s opinion