I also take your wider point about genocide and you might be interested to know in the ongoing mutual genocide claim of Croatia and Serbia that a Croatian lawyer who has assessed both cases has come to the conclusion that while both cases have little merit the Serb claim of genocide in the Krajina has slightly more weight than the Croatian one because even though far fewer people died in the Krajina than in many parts of Croatia (far less Srebrenica) which were invaded by the Yugoslav army and Serbian paramilitaries, the mass deportation of the Serb population in the Krajina and the extra-judicial, violent and legal measures taken to ensure that they could not return far better fits the central aim of genocide as an intentional act designed to destroy a population in part or in whole. This doesn’t really shed any light on the Srebrenica issue but does serve to illustrate that genocide – at least technically – does not necesarily have to involve mass killing and that mass killing is not necessarily genocide.

I don’t think that prosecuting the crimes committed in the Krajina has been that much of a priority for western politicians at all, especially the US, which is a shame because it undermines the ICTY and its good work. There is local distrust, among certain segments of the population at least, in the ICTY: why give those sectors of the population such an obvious stick with which to beat the tribunal? For what it’s worth I don’t think the court has been particularly hamstrung by the politicians’ reticence/biases, but the non-indictment of Tuđman was just a massive mistake that can never be rectified.

As for Schabas, I’m familiar with his work, though I don’t think its existence alters the fact that the overwhelming majority of legal scholars consider Srebrenica at least and possibly other crimes in Bosnia to have been genocide.

I do agree with his general point, though: that is, that the use of “genocide” to describe any event involving mass killing is to devalue the term “genocide” to the point where it becomes worthless. I just think that, with Srebrenica, there existed a clear genocidal plan that passes the tests set out in case law (i.e. that the targeted part of the population must be substantial, that its destruction must impact on the wider group, etc.).

People seem to ignore the “in whole or in part” element of the genocide convention, especially when discussing Bosnia. They imagine that to be considered genocide an attack must seek to and stand a reasonable chance of wiping out an entire group globally, and that the existence of two million Bosniaks is somehow a refutation of that.

Schabas is right to point out that the distinction between ethnic cleansing and genocide is a tricky one, and right to argue that they should not simply be equated, but I think he settles on too strict a definition of genocide to be useful; there are many others who settle on too loose a definition to be workable too, though, tossing the word around whenever there’s conflict. It’s a tough subject that realistically you have to approach on a case-by-case basis.

I’ll check out Robert Hayden too, thanks.

Sorry for the jumbled thoughts, 8am on a Sunday morning is not the best time to write these things!

I don’t want to get into a debate about the issue of the Krajina although it might be as well to point out that the Serb population there was not merely “displaced”: hundreds of Serbs including many of those too ill, too old or too frail to flee were killed in “mopping up” exercises and this was hardly the first of its kind in Croatia (e.g. the scorched earth policy and killings in the Medak Pocket in 1993, the pogrom in Gospic). I also think it is a little generous to claim that seeking accountability for the crimes in the Krajina has been a priority for western politicians and the ICTY given how long it took them to indict anyone and the obstructionism of the US administration (for very self-serving reasons, I might add) in contrast to the rapidity with which Milosevic was indicted for crimes in Kosovo (not that he didn’t deserve to be…). On the contrary, the fact that Tudjman was only indicted shortly before his death and even that being a sealed indictment is a bit of an indictment itelf. Ironically, if the international community had taken crimes against the Serbs more seriously in Croatia and Bosnia then I suspect the aftermath of the wars might have been very different and Milosevic would have found himself deprived of a very useful propaganda tool. You might be interested to know vis a vis the debate over whether Serbs were instructed by their leadership to flee the Krajina or were ethnically cleansed by the Croatian army that there was a bit of an expose in the Feral Tribune a couple of years ago when I was living in Croatia, linking at least some of the flyers calling on Serbs to flee to the Croatian armed forces ministry.

That all aside…the main thing I wanted to point out is that it simply isn’t correct to state that all legal scholars agree that what happened in Srebrenica is genocide. I don’t want to go into the complicated rationale here as to why the ICTY defined the Srebrenica massacre of 8000 men and boys to be genocide (although it had to do with the argument that the 8000 were emblematic of the whole Muslim population in Bosnia), but some leading genocide scholars were sharply critical of the decision to define it as genocide rather than as a crime of mass killing/murder: these included Professor William Schabas, widely regarded as the leading expert on legal aspects of genocide and the Chairman of the Association of Genocide Scholars (AGS). Robert Hayden, Professor of Anthropology at Pittsburgh University and a former lawyer himself, another critic, wrote an interesting article on this recently and that article with responses and comments on it by a number of other legal scholars and historians is contained in Slavic Review, 67: vol. 2, spring 2008. Worth a read.

It’s a step forward, don’t get me wrong, but the fact that even such a timorous and tentative recognition was met with significant opposition shows just how difficult the situation is.

Not so fast!

The Serbian parliament voted for an apology for Srebrenica massacre:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jlmCoiar5HMdln0nfqRekA0gSfeA

Progress is slow and painful but it is being made.

Full of lies and fantasy this article.