Collective Targeting of Violence and Identity Shift: Evidence from Bosnia

• In Event: New Horizons of Violence, Peace and Instability Research

Abstract

While recent findings suggest that violence during civil war can generate pro-social behavior, why do we often see group polarization based on ethnic, religious, or sectarian differences after conflict? What conditions explain why we see this in some cases, but not others? These questions matter, given that polarization complicates peacebuilding, affects post-war party politics, and may lead to a return to conflict.

Understanding how violence is targeted during civil war is essential to explaining the observed variation. Targeting is an element of an armed organization’s violent repertoire, and refers to the specificity and criteria with which they select their victims. Collective violence, that which is deliberately targeted at pre-existing identities, even if they were previously seen by individuals as unimportant, increases the salience of that group identity. However, selective violence, where armed organizations select victims based on individual behavior, or indiscriminate violence, where armed organizations use minimal or no criteria in victimizing civilians, are unlikely to provoke these responses. Where these changes are widespread, they aggregate into cleavages, the social divisions which define political competition, and these results may persist well past the initial conflict.

This paper examines evidence from the Bosnian Civil War (1992 - 1995) to test the plausibility of this theory. The case is a critical one to the literature on violence and ethnic polarization, and sees variation in how armed organizations targeted violence over space and time. Qualitative process tracing in three matched communities which differ in the targeting of violence during wartime, using life story interviews, archival evidence, and participant observation match the predictions of this theory and compare against alternatives.

Authors

• Chris Price, James Madison University

• Sule Yaylaci, Georgetown University