Amoral Communities

Collective Crimes in Time of War

Mila Dragojević

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781501739828, 9781501739828
• eBook ISBN: 9781501739842
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In Amoral Communities, Mila Dragojevi? examines how conditions conducive to atrocities against civilians are created during wartime in some communities. She identifies the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders as the main processes. In these places, political and ethnic identities become linked and targeted violence against civilians becomes both tolerated and justified by the respective authorities as a necessary sacrifice for a greater political goal.

Dragojevi? augments the literature on genocide and civil wars by demonstrating how violence can be used as a political strategy, and how communities, as well as individuals, remember episodes of violence against civilians. The communities on which she focuses are Croatia in the 1990s and Uganda and Guatemala in the 1980s. In each case Dragojevi? considers how people who have lived peacefully as neighbors for many years are suddenly transformed into enemies, yet intracommunal violence is not ubiquitous throughout the conflict zone; rather, it is specific to particular regions or villages within those zones. Reporting on the varying wartime experiences of individuals, she adds depth, emotion, and objectivity to the historical and socioeconomic conditions that shaped each conflict.

Furthermore, as Amoral Communities describes, the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders limit individuals' freedom to express their views, work to prevent the possible defection of members of an in-group, and facilitate identification of individuals who are purportedly a threat. Even before mass killings begin, Dragojevi? finds, these and similar changes will have transformed particular villages or regions into amoral communities, places where the definition of crime changes and violence is justified as a form of self-defense by perpetrators.

1

THE MAKING OF AMORAL COMMUNITIES

What context is conducive to collective wartime crimes? How does such a context form? In this book, I show how the context in which the perpetrators believe that their actions are not going to be penalized and that their actions are acceptable is created on the local level in some communities.¹ It is a context in which moderates, or those who wish to prevent such crimes, are excluded for putting their desire to protect all civilians, regardless of their identity or political orientation, ahead of the security-related needs that are presented by their leaders as more pressing concerns in time of war.² This is the context that I conceptualize as amoral communities. Instead of punishing the perpetrators of criminal acts so that civilians and prisoners of war are protected under all circumstances, the leaders in power place more emphasis on resolving a political crisis, winning a war, or eliminating those defined as enemies (Anderson 1983; Esposito 2011; Foucault [1978] 1990; Haleem 2012). In amoral communities, violence against civilians not only is tolerated by the authorities but also may be covered up or presented as a necessary sacrifice or the result of random accidents, given the need to respond urgently to a security crisis or a war. Furthermore, in such communities, it is not necessary for the government to send its own armies because the local population is disposed to take part in the violence.

Collective Crimes in Time of War

Rather than assuming that individuals are targeted on the basis of identities that existed before the rise of political conflict that escalated into violence, I define collective crimes as wartime targeting of individuals and their immediate social and cultural environment on the basis of newly created identities that merge a particular political identity with a particular ethnicity, referred to in this study as a political ethnicity. I show how political ethnicities were created in some communities through several complementary processes of ethnicization, such as the exclusion of moderates and the production of borders, as well as by the use of violence as a political strategy.³

The term collective crimes is closely related to the concept of genocide, defined by Raphael Lemkin as “acts of barbarity” and “acts of vandalism” and included in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by Resolution 260 A (III) of the UN General Assembly in 1948 (Lemkin 1933). The intersection of political and sociological elements of the concept was recognized by Lemkin.⁴ Scholars of mass ethnic violence showed that it is possible to “eliminate ethnic groups if their culture disappears, even if there is no physical removal of persons” (Mann 2005, 11). Hence, in the concept of collective crimes, it is crucial to include the act of destruction of cultural property that is symbolically connected with a particular political or ethnic group, such as cemeteries, churches, books, and the like.

I build on Lemkin’s notion that political groups should be included in the conceptualization. This idea is not new; other scholars have also included the targeting of political groups in conjunction with the term genocide. For example, Barbara Harff defines both genocides and politicides as “the promotion, execution, and/or implied consent of sustained policies by governing elites or their agents—or, in the case of civil war, either of the contending authorities—that are intended to destroy, in whole or part, a communal, political, or politicized ethnic group,” and in politicides, “groups are defined primarily in terms of their political opposition to the regime and dominant groups” (2003, 58). I depart from Lemkin and Harff, however, by placing political groups at the center of the analysis and showing how religious, ethnic, or racial identities become relevant only after the political adversaries in a given conflict have already been identified.⁵ Rather than employing the term intentional, as used by scholars of genocide, I include acts categorized as targeted violence. In the use of either term, the act of violence is categorized as intentional or targeted after it has occurred. In order to prove that the action was intentional, however, it is necessary to consider documents and other evidence that proves that a particular action was planned.⁶ For many of the acts of violence against civilians, unfortunately, such evidence does not exist, while the evidence proving that civilians were targeted may be deduced from a combination of factors, such as the nature of the act (killing, forced displacement, torture, rape, destruction of religious sites, etc.), the circumstances under which the act took place (the deliberate bombing of a residential community or other civilian location, such as a bomb shelter or hospital; massacres of civilians in particular villages, etc.), and the characteristics of the victims. Thus, I prefer to use the term targeted violence in my analysis.

In the literature on violence against civilians, the definitions that come the closest to the definition used in my study are provided by Kristine Eck and Lisa Hultman (2007, 235) and Laia Balcells (2017, 21–24). Eck and Hultman distinguish “one-sided violence” from other forms of violence, as it “encompasses only those fatalities that are caused by the intentional and direct use of violence” as a result of “the use of armed force by the government of a state or by a formally organized group against civilians which results in at least 25 deaths per year” (2007, 235). Balcells distinguishes direct violence and indirect violence, and defines the former as the form of violence “carried out with light weaponry … in a ‘face-to-face’ type of interaction” (2017, 21). Furthermore, Balcells argues that direct violence “involves individual identification of victims, but it can also involve executions en masse” and it is “shaped” by “the interaction between the armed groups and local civilians” during the war (21). In a similar way, in Eck and Hultman’s definition of one-sided violence, “intentional killings” includes “any action that is taken to deliberately kill civilians” and excludes deaths that occur, for example, when noncombatants are caught in crossfire, while “direct deaths” includes deaths caused by “bombing or shooting” and excludes “deaths caused indirectly by an ongoing conflict, mainly due to disease or other health problems” (2007, 235). In my work, the elements of the identification and targeting of certain civilians over others in a given community are the most relevant in these scholars’ definitions. However, the concept of collective crimes, as employed in my study, is broader,⁷ as it also includes the forced displacement of civilians, arrest, torture, rape, and the destruction of cultural property.

This brings us to another key characteristic of the definition of collective crimes that is employed in this study: crimes occurring over the course of war, as well as crimes occurring immediately before or after the war, are included (Shaw 2007, 155).⁸ Even though I consider collective crimes to be tied to a war, defined as a violent political conflict, like Shaw, as well as Eck and Hultman, I also acknowledge that particular acts of violence are one-sided. One of the difficulties when analyzing collective crimes in some wartime contexts may be in distinguishing between combatants and noncombatants. In wars, such as the war in Croatia, where former members of the same community participated on opposite sides, it may be difficult to determine with certainty whether a person was a civilian or a combatant or, in some cases, even whether a person was a perpetrator, a collaborator, or a victim. By placing the analysis of collective crimes in the wartime period, it becomes possible to gain a better understanding of the situations in which the same individual may transition from one to another of these categories. As Virginia Garrard-Burnett (2010, 168) shows in her study of violence in Guatemala, it is assumed that violence, and political violence in particular, constructs warring sides’ identities. Specifically, as Garrard-Burnett argues, violence “constructs people who might once have been friends, neighbors, even kin, into intractable internal enemies” (168). This is one of the principal reasons for my decision to examine collective crimes in the wartime context.

Amoral Communities

In addressing the question of the conditions under which collective crimes in war occur, it is necessary to consider state-level processes taking place before, as well as during, the time that collective crimes occur. I build on theoretical insights put forward most compellingly by scholars of nationalism,⁹ ethnic violence,¹⁰ and political, or sovereign, power¹¹ to develop the concept of amoral communities. It was inspired by a number of scholarly contributions to the field of nationalism, but most directly by Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities,” defined as “nations” whose members share a certain “image of their communion,” and as communities that are sovereign, or free to govern, within their territorially limited space (Anderson 1983, 6–7). The amoral communities are the “imagined communities” under the condition of war, in which the use of unlimited violence with the aim of eliminating external and internal enemies is justified by the necessity to protect the image of a nation-state as a representation and extension of a human life (Anderson 1983; Esposito 2011; Foucault [1978] 1990; Haleem 2012). In this image, a nation, like a human body, is defined by a certain physical space, but a nation’s life is seen as worthy of sacrifice in part because it is potentially eternal, unlike a human life.

The use of violence in such communities is seen amorally, as a medical or surgical necessity, rather than as a crime, because the “enemy” or the “other” is seen as the source of the threat to the survival of the community (Esposito 2011). In that way it is akin to, but also different from, Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” (Arendt [1963] 1996). Conceptually, it is similar in that individuals under the conditions of an amoral community are not free to act based on “ethical reflexivity,” or individual moral values (Amoureux 2015, 30; Haleem 2012, 35). It is different because the concept of amoral communities directs the analysis away from the individual-level characteristics of people, or potential perpetrators of violence, toward greater understanding of the local context, or the conditions that make it possible for a community of diverse people, in terms of personal, political, or ethical values, to transform itself into a community where former neighbors would turn against one another (Forti 2015; Haleem 2012).¹² The alternative to the amoral community is simply a community where this type of mass violence remains inconceivable by local residents, rather than an ideal type of community, such as a “moral community,” defined by Seyla Benhabib as “a community of interdependence” where it is possible “to settle those issues of common concern to all via dialogical procedures in which all are participants” (2002, 36). While such a community would be a highly desirable one, another study would be needed to establish which conditions may be conducive to its creation.

Within a single state, amoral communities may coexist with communities that categorize the use of violence against civilians as collective crimes and continue to value human life even under the conditions of war. For this reason, I look at the subnational level of analysis and consider the national-level conditions only as a set of political factors that are necessary, but not sufficient, in explaining why collective crimes occur in some areas and not in others within the same state and during the same war.

In states in which state formation is accompanied by the processes of the “ethnicization of statehood,” the state-level context is favorable to the exclusion of ethnic minorities (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013; Straus 2015; Wimmer 2001). Indeed, when ethnic groups are excluded from political power in a given state, either through limits in access to state power or through recent loss of state power, internal conflict is more likely to occur (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013). In such states, the ethnic or racial minorities may be seen as the threatening “other.” The exclusion may take different forms, ranging from subtle forms of discrimination to the most extreme forms, such as genocide, ethnic cleansing, or mass violence against the ethnic minorities (Cederman, Gleditsch, and Buhaug 2013; Mamdani 2001; Mann 2005; Straus 2015; Wimmer 2001, 2013). What makes the violence in this context particularly pervasive is that the processes of state formation, self-determination, and democratization have shifted the political power from the elites to the regular citizens (Foucault [1978] 1990; Mamdani 2001). It is the citizens of those modern states who decide who belongs, or who is one of “us,” and who is an outsider, or who is seen as a threat to “our” lives. Michel Foucault argues that genocide was made possible in modern states precisely “because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the race, and the large-scale phenomena of population” ([1978] 1990, 137). The survival of a nation-state, in turn, just as the survival of a nation-as-a-body, is equated to the survival of the state’s population, or the population that claims the legitimacy of their own political power within the territorial boundaries of the state (137). This represents a change from the time when wars used to be “waged in the name of the sovereign,” or the monarch, to the period when wars “are waged on behalf of the existence of everyone” (137). The goal in this situation becomes not only a political victory over those who are defined as enemies in the war but also their elimination (Esposito 2010, 2011; Foucault 2003, 256; Girard 1972, 266).¹³ Giorgio Agamben (1995) builds on Foucault’s thesis, presented here, to argue that phenomena like genocide are not just “exceptional” cases but rather that such acts of violence are possible in any state where the “state of exception” becomes the norm through the legal framework on which the particular state is constituted. Even after the wartime violence entailing genocide or ethnic cleansing ends, the protection of the nation-state does not end because existential threats continue to be perceived by the nation’s guardians (Hajdarpašić 2015).

An act of preemptive violence against individuals who represent a threat to a community in a crisis, or during the “state of exception,” would constitute a defensive act. In amoral communities, such an act of violence is not only tolerated but also justified, even if it “completely disregards the humanity of the other,” as argued by Irm Haleem, who convincingly criticizes the logic of justice in the “Just War Doctrine” that categorizes an act of political violence as “ ‘moral’ as long as it is argued to be a product of ‘necessity’ and ‘supreme emergency’ ” (2012, 128). The community that perceives the threat, thus, may justify turning against its members by claiming a need to protect itself preemptively. Given these inconsistencies in the arguments justifying the use of political violence, particularly in cases in which it may be more difficult to distinguish the perpetrators of violence or the militants from civilians in particular communities, I use the term amoral, meaning an absence of any morality or justice, in the cases in which violence against some human beings, however their status may be defined, is not considered as a criminal act.

At least two questions remain, however, that scholars have not directly addressed: (1) How is the “state of exception,” or the situation of crisis in which crimes would be tolerated, constituted in some places and not in others within the same nation and during the same war? and (2) How does a certain group of individuals or identity within a given body politic become a threat?

These questions are particularly important in the context of a theory that applies to democratic political systems in which, as mentioned earlier, the sovereignty represents the power of the people, or of the state’s citizens. Related to the second question, if the leaders seeking to constitute amoral communities, or communities in which crimes against certain members of the community who are perceived as a threat would not be considered as crimes, claim to be representi...

Table of contents

• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The Making of Amoral Communities
• 2. Evidence of Amoral Communities
• 3. The Exclusion of Moderates
• 4. The Production of Borders
• 5. Memories and Violence
• 6. Violence against Civilians as a Political Strategy
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index