There are few English-language accounts of the “Battle of Bijeljina.” This is because, according to most observers of the outbreak of war in this northeastern Bosnian town in early April 1992, there was no such battle. It was a massacre, the beginning of a genocidal campaign to create an ethnically pure “Greater Serbia.” Clausewitz’s insight is redundant, because in Bijlejina, as in the rest of Bosnia, violence was not a means for the Serbs to achieve political ends, but an end in itself.
Yet Hase Tiric, who commanded the Patriotic League (PL), a Muslim paramilitary group, in Bijeljina, is quite clear about what took place there: “We lost three men in the battle in Bijeljina,” he says.
And another PL commander, Vahid Karavelic, acknowledges that, while the PL could not prevent a Serb takeover of Bijeljina and the neighbouring village Janja, it was nevertheless engaged in a holding action that helped the defence of other parts of Bosnia, such as Tuzla.
According to the International Criminal Tribunal For the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) judgement against Momcilo Krajisnik, the wartime president of the Bosnian Serb Assembly, fighting began in Bijeljina on March 31, when Arkan, (Zeljko Raznjatovic) and his Serbian Volunteer Guard entered the town and took control of town structures in cooperation with a local paramilitary group under the command of Mirko Blagojevic. On 1 or 2 April JNA reservists surrounded the town and despite some resistance Serb forces quickly took control of the town. By 4 April, Serb flags were flying from the town’s mosques. Arkan’s men were installed in the SDS (Serb Democratic Party) building and were involved in arresting members of the local Muslim SDA (Party for Democratic Action) presidency. At least 48 civilians, including 45 non-Serbs, were killed. Bodies were moved by the Serb forces ahead of a visit by a delegation of officials including Biljana Plavsic of the SDS and Fikret Abdic of the SDA. Many Muslims were then detained in barracks by the Serb authorities. In the months following the takeover, Serb paramilitary groups terrorised Muslims and in September, Serb forces, implemented a plan by the SDS, which was determined to rid the municipality of its remaining Muslims, to kill a Muslim family on each side of the town to scare Muslims away.
Witness testimony in ICTY trials such as those of former Serb Radical Party leader Vojislav Seselj, former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic and former Republika Srpska president Radovan Karadzic reveals more about the outbreak of war in Bijeljina. In late March, a Serb threw a grenade into the “Cafe Istanbul”. On 31 March at 8.15 pm, Alija Gusalic, a Muslim, attempted to throw a grenade into the nearby “Cafe Srbija”, where he said Serb paramilitaries had gathered, in retaliation and in the belief that they were about to attack Bijeljina, but was shot and wounded by one of the paramilitaries. Shooting broke out between Muslims in the Cafe Istanbul and Serbs in the Cafe Srbija. Fighting erupted elsewhere in the town between PL and Serb paramilitary groups, both of which had set up barricades.
This account is in line with Vahid Karavelic’s description of the events in Bijeljina. There was a significant PL presence in the town and it took the Serb paramilitaries four days to take it over. The Bijeljina PL was part of the Tuzla regional PL, which had been formed in November 1991. We cannot know how the Serb takeover would have transpired if there had been no resistance, but it seems highly plausible that there would have been less violence and therefore less ethnic cleansing of Muslims. Following the takeover, the Serb paramilitaries then moved south to the Muslim village of Janja in Bijeljina municipality, where there was much less resistance and a much less violent takeover. To an even greater extent than in Bijeljina, a significant Muslim population remained in the village after the Serb takeover and it was, according to a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, used by the Serbs to showcase peaceful coexistence between “loyal” Muslims and Serbs. The exodus of Muslims from Bijeljina was much less extensive than in municipalities where the PL resistance was stronger, such as Zvornik, though there were several waves of ethnic cleansing in Bijeljina in the years following 1992.
In the neighbouring municipality of Ugljevik, which had a Serb majority and a substantial Muslim minority, Muslim villages were, according to a report by Serb authorities from 16 April 1992, blockaded and forced to express loyalty to the “Serbian Autonomous Region of Semberija” in northeast Bosnia, which had been declared by the Serbs in 1991. According to one anonymous prosecution witness in the Milosevic trial, an Interior Ministry employee who witnessed the events in Bijeljina in April, “the inhabitants of all these villages voluntarily moved out in the direction of Teocak (a Bosnian government-held village in Ugljevik municipality)” in July. The HRW report describes how displaced Serbs from the villages of Potpec and Tinja in the Tuzla region moved into villages in Ugljevik, such as Janjari and Atmacici, putting pressure on the Muslim inhabitants to leave. Many of these Serbs were from areas that had been captured by Bosnian government forces in combat. Potpec, for example, was among several villages where, according to a Bosnian Army report “in the first half of July strong Chetnik strongholds were liquidated.”
In Bijeljina and Ugljevik, it is likely that the Serbs, in line with Clausewitz’s dictum, preferred to achieve their objectives unopposed. They engaged in extensive ethnic cleansing, but this was in the context of the fighting that erupted in Bijeljina town as they faced armed opposition, and later fighting elsewhere in the country that led to a large influx of Serbs into Serb-controlled areas. The claim that they were trying to create an ethnically pure state – and deliberately provoked violence to bring this about – is not borne out by events in the Bijeljina in the early stages of the war.
