Ethnic Cleansing: The Balkans

The 10-year Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts in the 1990s, which left tens of thousands dead, had the same psychiatric theories at their roots.

Serbian psychiatrist, Jovan Raskovic, in 1986, co-authored the infamous Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, which advocated the creation of a “Greater Serbia,” claiming the Serbs needed to rise above the Croat and Muslim minorities because of psychological superiority. He also founded the Serbian Democratic Party (SDS), through which he promoted his ideas of Serbian domination of all Yugoslav people. Not unlike Adolf Hitler, who had accused the Jews of depriving Germans of their livelihood, Raskovic stirred up prejudice and hatred against Croats and the Bosnian Muslims by blaming them for Serbia’s economic problems.

During the 1980s, Raskovic repeatedly denigrated the Bosnian Muslims—with Freudian terminology—calling them “anal phase” personalities and labeling the Croats “lower-level castration” types. Because of these traits, he concluded, Serbs—who manifested an “Oedipal personality”—understood authority and leadership and should reign over the peoples of Yugoslavia. [Oedipal: a disgraced Freudian notion in which the male child fantasizes about assuming leadership over the family by killing his father, etc.]

Radovan Karadzic, a psychiatrist, student and loyal friend of Raskovic, was chosen to head the SDS party. He, too, became a main instigator, and then leader, of Serbia’s war against the Croats and Bosnians. In July 1995, he was charged with genocide and crimes against humanity by the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal. He went into hiding and to this day is on the Wanted List to be tried for his crimes.

Slobodan Milosevic, Serbia’s strongman president during the Balkan war, was a 25-year patient of Karadzic. After Raskovic died and Karadzic went underground, he kept the conflict against ethnic minorities going until Serbia had to give up. He was arrested and put on trial by the War Crimes Tribunal for his role in the genocidal wars in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Together, these men orchestrated a war that resulted in more than 100,000 dead and 1.5 million being driven from their homes. But the victims were not only the dead and displaced civilians. In 1992, the world learned of “rape camps” in Bosnia where Serbs were systematically raping captured females. When victims became pregnant, they were held so they could not have an abortion. The Bosnian government reported that those raped numbered 50,000, and German observers of the conflict noted that “these rapes are a tactic of war rather than simple amusement for the soldiers; when Karadzic’s troops take a village, full-scale rape begins, and continues in subsequent prisoner camps.” These reports and many others of similar atrocities have been confirmed by victims who have appeared before the U.N. Tribunal and testified against their former tormentors.

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