Mass Atrocities and the Police: A New History of Ethnic Cleansing in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Between April 1992 and December 1995, more than 100,000 people were killed in the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The terrible atrocities committed in this period have been much discussed and studied and many prosecuted as acts of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity. But so far, the academic scholarship has focused on the role of the military in these events. This has come at the expense of considering the polices role, which Nielsen here demonstrates as crucial. Nielsen traces the origins of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina to the police and associated paramilitary groups. Nielsen makes this ground-breaking case by drawing on a host of confidential archival sources, academic research and practical experience as a widely cited expert witness in the most notorious of the war crimes tribunals. His innovative new history sheds light on wider issues regarding the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the Balkan wars and the region today.

Reviews

Based on extensive new documentation and the authors own expert testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Mass Atrocities and the Police illuminates the sometimes neglected yet seminal role played by the police in the mass atrocity crimes committed during the Bosnian war. Meticulously researched and convincingly argued, the book charts the construction of an ethnic Serb police force in Bosnia and its repurposing by the Bosnian Serb political authorities as a leading vector of ethnic cleansing, often in collusion with notoriously brutal paramilitary units. Nielsens account of the descent of an institution responsible for the protection of the civilian population into mass crime adds a poignant new dimension to the tragedy of the Bosnian conflict, as well as to the story of its fragile peace. * Jasna Dragovic-Soso, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK *
The break-up of socialist Yugoslav federation has been characterised by the mass scale violence against the civilian population. The existing scholarship on the perpetrators of these human rights abuses has focused largely on the role of regular armed forces and the paramilitary organisations. This insightful and meticulously researched book shifts the focus towards the police. Axboe Nielsen shows convincingly that the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina was spearheaded by the Bosnian Serb police forces. The book relies on the primary data analysis from ICTY and the Bosnian Serb polices own documentation. Axboe Nielsen explores the key processes through which the police was involved in perpetrating, accommodating or tolerating mass atrocities committed against the non-Serb population. This is an important study that offers a novel interpretation of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. * Sinia Maleevic, University College Dublin, Ireland *

Author Bio

Christian Axboe Nielsen is Associate Professor of History and Human Security at Aarhus University, Denmark. He has worked as an analyst at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and has appeared as an expert witness in international and domestic criminal and civil cases.