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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.
(See civil patrols; guerrillas;
irregulars.)
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