Urbicide

Martin Coward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134043927
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The term 'urbicide' became popular during the 1992-95 Bosnian war as a way of referring to widespread and deliberate destruction of the urban environment. Coined by writers on urban development in America, urbicide captures the sense that the widespread and deliberate destruction of buildings is a distinct form of violence.

Using Martin Heidegger's notion of space and Jean-Luc Nancy's idea of community, Martin Coward outlines a theoretical understanding of the urban condition at stake in such violence. He contends that buildings are targeted because they make possible a plural public space that is contrary to the political aims of ethnic-nationalist regimes. Illustrated with reference to several post-Cold War conflicts – including Bosnia, Chechnya and Israel/Palestine – this book is the first comprehensive analysis of organised violence against urban environments. It offers an original perspective to those seeking to better understand urbanity, political violence and the politics of exclusion.

1 Interpreting destruction of the built environment

In my Introduction, I noted that the deliberate destruction of the built environment – embodied in the destruction of Mostar’s Stari Most – was both integral to the 1992–95 Bosnian War and widespread beyond the historico-geographical confines of that conflict. The destruction of the Stari Most itself became an iconic event that raised the destruction of the built environment onto the political agenda. And yet, perhaps paradoxically, the elevation of this event to iconic status served to deflect interest in the meaning of the widespread, deliberate destruction of the built environment towards the role that such destruction might play in the wider human tragedy of ethnic cleansing/genocide that was being played out across the Balkan Peninsula. That is, the destruction of the Stari Most was, by and large, interpreted as a symbol of the nature of the destruction of human lives and communities underway in Bosnia. In the Introduction I argued that such a reduction of the deliberate destruction of the built environment to a status ancillary to the killing of individuals was responsible for an avoidance of the question of understanding the destruction of the built environment as a form of violence in its own right. Such a failure to examine the widespread deliberate destruction of buildings as a distinct category of political violence might, I argued, be attributed to the anthropocentric lens through which conflict is customarily viewed.

I suggested, however, that Slavenka Drakulic’s ‘Mostar Bridge Elegy’ offered an understanding of the destruction of elements of the built environment that treated such violence for its own sake rather than as an adjunct to human misery (Drakulic 1993). As such, it is a reversal of the anthropocentric lens that normally inflects enquiries into political violence. Drakulic understands the destruction of a building such as the Stari Most as the destruction of the possibility of duration of a specific community. When Drakulic (1993, 15) argues that the bridge is ‘all of us’, she is pointing to the role that the building has in constituting a given community. Community, according to Drakulic’s argument, should be taken to be prior to individual identities. That is, it is only in and through belonging to a given community that a specific individual identity is constituted. For example, in destroying the bridge that constituted the possibility of duration for the plural community of pre-1993 Mostar, the Bosnian Croat Army (the HVO) was simultaneously destroying the conditions of possibility of individual identities that were Bosniac prior to being Bosnian-Croat or Bosnian-Muslim. That is, in attacking a plural community the conditions of possibility for individual identities that were not primarily determined by national affinity were also destroyed. Destroying such community and the identities it constitutes, by destroying its material foundations, is the precondition to establishing separate communities and identities.

Drakulic’s understanding of the destruction of the built environment marks a radical inversion of the usual anthropocentric lens through which political violence is viewed. According to Drakulic, we must look not to the killing and displacement of individuals to understand the mechanisms of political violence at work in the 1992–95 Bosnian War, but rather to the way in which destruction of buildings comprised an eradication of the conditions of possibility for certain individual identities. Such an assertion indicates that we must treat destruction of the built environment as a form of political violence in its own right. I suggested that such a consideration is an urgent intellectual task, given the widespread destruction of the built environment across a range of historic-geographical contexts.

The principal flaw of Drakulic’s commentary on the destruction of the Stari Most is the failure to treat the destruction of the bridge as an element of a wider deliberate assault on the built environment of Bosnia. As I noted in the Introduction, there is ample evidence for a number of campaigns of deliberate and widespread destruction of the built environment. Such campaigns are notable because it is not only historical and culturally significant buildings that are destroyed, but mundane, profane elements of the built environment as well.

Treating such violence as a deliberate assault on the built environment itself, rather than a by-product of an attack upon the inhabitants of a given built environment, requires us to recognise the widespread and deliberate nature of these attacks. I noted in my Introduction that a nascent literature has attempted such a treatment of destruction of the built environment under the rubric of ‘urbicide’. In Chapter 2 I will examine this concept, its meanings and entailments. Elaborating the urbicidal nature of destruction of the built environment will sharpen the questions at the heart of an enquiry into understanding the destruction of the built environment. Through such a conceptual elaboration, I hope to indicate the principal issues that must be examined in order for an understanding of the meaning of such destruction to be explicated.

Before turning to the concept of urbicide, however, I want to demonstrate the necessity for such a concept. Whilst my Introduction may well have established a claim for consideration of the destruction of the built environment as an event in its own right, it is still necessary to demonstrate that ‘urbicide’ is the appropriate conceptual vehicle for such a consideration. It is possible to demonstrate this through the examination of three of the principal interpretations of the destruction of the built environment as an event in its own right. These three interpretations are not self-consciously defined as such. However, within the responses to the destruction of the built environment, I have identified three common interpretative themes. These three interpretations can be defined as (a) military, (b) symbolic, and (c) metaphorical. That is, these interpretations understand urban destruction through notions of (a) accepted norms/rationales of military action, (b) the destruction of buildings as elements of cultural heritage, and (c) the metaphor such destruction provides for political analysis.

Since I began my analysis of the destruction of the built environment with the case of the destruction of the Stari Most, I will concentrate largely on the manner in which these interpretations address the destruction of the built environment in the 1992–95 Bosnian War. However, I expect that these interpretations can be extrapolated to other examples in which the built environment comes under attack. This examination will show that these three interpretations fail to grasp the meaning of the destruction of the built environment in its entirety, leading me to conclude that only the concept of urbicide is fit for such a purpose.

Urban destruction as a product of military action

Perhaps the most conventional interpretation of assaults on the built environment conceives of the destruction as either collateral damage or the result of militarily necessary actions. ‘Collateral damage’, a term that came to prominence through its use by American commanders during the 1990–91 Gulf War, refers to ‘incidental casualties and … property damage’ (Rogers 1996, 15) that results from military action. On the whole, collateral damage is viewed as an undesirable, and yet possibly unavoidable, consequence of military action. The various laws of war relating to collateral damage can be interpreted as imposing two possible obligations on belligerents in a conflict. On the one hand, belligerents should restrict all collateral damage to accidental and unintended events. On the other hand, where damage is neither accidental nor unintended, it should be justifiable according to the rule of proportionality (i.e., that the risk of incidental civilian loss of life or damage to civilian property must be in proportion to the military gain expected from such an action). This rule will, of course, mean that some collateral damage is always both sustained and acceptable in military action. Collateral damage is thus either an unintended consequence of military action or the product of actions that satisfy the rule of proportionality. In the former case, where the destruction is an accident, the laws of war cannot be said to have been violated, and collateral damage is produced. In the latter case, the additional destruction may well have been foreseen and thus to an extent intentional. However, since the destruction is judged to be in proportion to (i.e., lesser than) the importance of the military goal achieved, the destruction is said to be ‘collateral damage’ attendant to legitimate war actions.

The destruction of buildings in Bosnia could thus be seen as collateral damage generated by the military action undertaken in the 1992–95 war. According to such an interpretation, the bridges, mosques and churches, houses, public buildings and so on, would have been destroyed either accidentally or in the course of legitimate military actions and be proportional to the goals aimed at or achieved. The simplest interpretation of the idea that urban destruction in Bosnia comprises collateral damage is that it is the consequence of munitions either missing their targets, or hitting other buildings on the way to their legitimate targets. A more complex interpretation might argue that the destruction of the urban environment was attendant (but proportional) to attempts to achieve certain military objectives. That is, given the nature of the combat in the Bosnian War (a large part of which was in urban environments), military action risked the destruction of buildings. Destruction of the built environment could then be explained as the consequence of such risks. This interpretation would depend upon the idea that the military actions in which such damage occurred were seeking legitimate military gains. Moreover, it would depend on the destruction being in an acceptable proportion to these legitimate military goals.

Such an idea introduces into the interpretation of urban destruction the idea of legitimate military action, or ‘military necessity’. A narrow definition of ‘military necessity’ is found in the St Petersburg Declaration, which states that ‘the only legitimate object which states should endeavour to accomplish during war is to weaken the military force of the enemy’ (Friedman 1972, 192). A broader definition of military necessity might be ‘those measures which are indispensable for securing the ends of the war, and which are lawful according to the modern laws and usages of war’ (Lieber quoted in Rogers 1996, 4). Military necessity might then be said to be those actions indispensable for achieving the ends of a war. In respect of damage to the urban environment, it could be argued that certain buildings had to be destroyed in order to achieve certain military ends. The clearest case in which such an argument might apply is in relation to bridges.

Bridges are commonly taken to constitute military (as opposed to civilian) objects and thus are often destroyed in military conflict. A bridge, it is argued, comprises a link in communications, movement and logistics networks. In contemporary warfare, such networks are perceived to constitute a legitimate object of military action. That is, in order to weaken the enemy, or achieve the objectives of war, it is legitimate to attack the logistical structure that supports an opponent’s war effort. The destruction of a building that might only seem to have incidental military use, can, therefore, be justified as militarily necessary.

Such an argument was prominent during the NATO bombardment of Serbia in 1999. In April 1999, at the beginning of its military action against Serbia, NATO destroyed a number of bridges, including road and rail bridges across the Danube in both Novi Sad and Belgrade. The logic behind the destruction of these key bridges could be questioned on the basis that these bridges constituted civilian objects designed for civilian infrastructural purposes (principally transport and trade) and were only incidentally used by the Serbian military. As such, these bridges would not comprise legitimate targets since the impact of their destruction would fall disproportionately upon the civilian population (i.e., their destruction would not be proportionate to the military goal achieved).

In reply to such questions at press briefings, Air Commodore Wilby justified the destruction as militarily necessary, noting that:

the targets we go against are military-related facilities [such as] the highway bridges that we have been taking down recently. Of course they do interrupt the flow of civilian traffic and for that we are very sorry, but … [w]e … know that taking those bridges down, whilst it causes some inconvenience to civilians … is causing immense inconvenience to the [Serbian military and special police] units that we are trying to stop resupplying their forces down in … Kosovo with the ammunition, the fuel, and the supplies to keep up their activities.

(North Atlantic Treaty Organization 1999a)

Later Wilby clarified this statement, saying:

every target we have struck has been one that has been considered to have great military significance to affect the Serbian military or the MUP [Serbian special police units] … bridges … have been selected because they are major lines of communication and … affect resupply of those troops … So, very firmly, I would say to you that all our targets have been justifiably military targets.

(North Atlantic Treaty Organization 1999b)

The destruction of bridges and other buildings in Bosnia could, similarly, be justified according to the logic of military necessity. That is, the argument could be used that these buildings represented elements in logistical networks, and, hence, militarily legitimate targets.

Interpreting the destruction of the built environment as either collateral damage or the product of militarily necessary actions does not, however, seem very satisfactory in the context of the 1992–95 Bosnian War (or indeed any of the other cases I have mentioned). Though it may offer superficial justification for the destruction of certain buildings, it does not adequately account for the widespread destruction of built environments.

The argument that this destruction comprises collateral damage sustained in the pursuit of legitimate military objectives can be easily refuted. For the destruction to comprise collateral damage it must be either accidental or a risk proportional to, and attendant on, the achievement of legitimate military goals. If the destruction is neither accidental nor attendant to achievement of another aim (i.e., that elements of the built environment were targets in their own right), then it cannot qualify as collateral damage. For example, we could recall the testimony of the Bosnian Serb gunner interviewed by Kate Adie quoted in the Introduction. In an interview, the officer commanding the artillery that was firing towards the Holiday Inn in Sarajevo (where the press were staying) explained to Adie that they had intended to hit the National Museum behind the hotel (Riedlmayer 1995a). Here we have a clear example of military personnel rejecting the idea that the destruction of civilian buildings such as the National Museum is either accidental or an acceptable risk proportional to the achievement of military objectives. The gunner made it clear that the National Museum constituted a target in its own right.

The idea that the destruction comprised collateral damage can be further problematised through the findings of the Information Reports on War Damage to the Cultural Heritage in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina delivered to the Council of Europe Committee on Culture and Education by the Parliamentary Assembly Sub-Committee on the Architectural and Artistic Heritage of Europe. In respect of the destruction of the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo, the fourth Information Report notes

In view of the location of the Oriental Institute and the force of flame produced, it is fair to presuppose that the shelling was carried out to plan: the Institute was directly targeted. This is even more believable in view of the fact that sources have provided details of how the invaders possessed remarkably precise military maps, and it is well-known that on the occasion of sorting through the Yugoslav Army material left in its building in Sarajevo after it withdrew, maps were found which had marked on them in precise detail all the targeted objectives in Sarajevo.

(Council of Europe 1994)

In relation to the destruction of the minarets of mosques in Bosnia, the first Information Report notes that ‘[i]t may have been inevitable that mosques in a military “front” zone would be hit, but it is highly doubtful that a minaret can be brought down with a single large calibre shell, which implies a certain amount of deliberate targeting on these structures’ (Council of Europe 1993). That the built environment of Bosnia was deliberately targeted is confirmed by the conclusion of the fourth Information Report that ‘the small historic core of Mostar … was clearly targeted by the heaviest guns available to the HVO [the Bosnian-Croat Army]’ (Council of Europe 1994).

If the destruction of the buildings of Bosnia cannot be understood as collateral damage, can it be seen as militarily necessary? This argument is even easier to refute than that of collateral damage. For the destruction of all of these buildings to have been militarily necessary, they would have had to have played some form of role in the communications, transport and logistics networks of the various armies in Bosnia. There are instances in which such arguments may be credible. For example, the destruction of the central post office in Sarajevo or the modern road bridges over the Neretva in Mostar could be seen as attacks on legitimate military targets. The post office, for example, housed the central telephone exchange for Sarajevo, and thus comprised a vital element of Bosnian Army communications. In destroying it, the Bosnian Serb Army could claim it was attacking an object of significant military potential to its adversary. Similarly, some of the bridges in Mostar could be seen as supply or transport routes for military purposes and thus destruction could be legitimised.

However, the destruction of elements of the built environment is more widespread than these key buildings. In Sarajevo, for example, the Bosnian Serb Army shelled the city without any real regard for the military significance of buildings. Moreover, buildings of no military significance were regularly shelled deliberately. And the shelling covered a wide variety of buildings – housing, public institutions, cultural monuments, utility buildings – and open spaces. The National Museum, Oriental Institute, National Library and various mosques provide only a few, well-known, examples of such targeting. In Just and Unjust Wars, Waltzer describes strategy as ‘a language of justification’ (Waltzer 1992, 13). We could see military necessity in a similar light. Claims that the destruction of a target was militarily necessary are post hoc narratives that seek to justify the destruction. In cases such as Sarajevo’s central post office or the Neretva road bridges, such narratives are convincing since they can align themselves with the commonly understood meanings of what constitutes a military object or a military objective. However, in the case of the widespread destruction of the built environment in which so much damage was done to buildings that could serve no such purposes, such narratives do not really serve to justify or explain the destruction of the urban fabric.

Understanding the widespread destruction of the built environment as an instance of collateral damage or a militarily necessary action is, therefore, deeply flawed for two reasons: 1) damage was neither accidental nor proportional to the goals of the conflict, and 2) though certain buildings could be said to comprise legitimate military targets, the deliberate widespread destruction of the built environment exceeds this smaller number of targets. Despite its flaws, however, this understanding is prevalent in cases of widespread destruction of the built environment. This understanding of the destruction of buildings seeks to draw a line that discriminates between legitimate and illegitimate forms of destruction. In this way a limited number of instances are seen as products of legitimate conduct of war. The remainder are written off as illegitimate consequences of the actions of barbarians or vandals. Understanding acts of destruction as vandalism or as the barbaric ‘wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages’ (Statute of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia cited in Roberts and Guelff 2000, 569) is thus the recto of the verso of concepts of collateral damage and military necessity.

Such notions of vandalism and/or ‘wanton destruction’ are unhelpful in an analysis of urban destruction for two significant reasons. Firstly, they rest on an idea of excess that is intimately linked to notions of military necessity. In other words, ‘wanton destruction’ circumscribes all those events that, by virtue of exceeding the bounds of necessity, escape being classified as legitimate military actions. Secondly, the notion that such destruction is ‘wanton’ implies a certain irrationality and bloodlust that suggests the destruction occurred for idiosyncratic reasons localisable to a person or group.

Thus, this understanding of the destruction of buildings fails in two regards. Firstly, the category of ‘wa...