All Balkan massacres this century have enjoyed the specific approval of state organs, whose agents have usually been the instigators as well. This is not merely a case of an army commander winking to his troops surrounding defenceless women. In Turkey during the Great War, in Croatia during the Second World War and in the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war of 1992-5, the legal system was turned on its head -- murder was encouraged and approved by the state and its propaganda apparatus. Not participating in murder, conversely, was regarded if not as 'illegal' then certainly as hostile behaviour. Such events are invariably accompanied by a historical justification which can usually be boiled down to the simple formula of 'eternal enmity' between two communities. The construction of this justification by historians, newspapers and other media under state influence, however, tends to mask the real intentions of the elite.
The Balkans 1804-1999
Misha Glenny
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