How bloody are the Bloody Balkans really?

Early this morning, a local man in Tuzla, one of the main cities in the Bosnian-Croatian Federation entity of Bosnia-Hercegovina, went on a gun rampage killing six people and seriously injuring one other. Taking place in the small village of Gornja Lipnica, the man went into two family homes and a bus during his murderous spree. This is a truly unpleasant event, but unfortunately the message it will send out to the outside world will be even worse. Since it took place in Bosnia, readers who come across the story on websites such as BBC will read about murder, guns and Bosnia, collate the three themes and shake their heads with what they deem to be a knowing shame, but what those of us with a better understanding for the region will realise is nothing but patronising ignorance. It will be all too easy for people to look at a story such as this one and ask "Oh those primitive Balkan people, they don't belong in Europe, when will they ever stop killing each other?". For starters, there is no evidence yet as to whether this crime was ethically motivated, but secondly, even if it were, would this make it in any way typical of the geographical region of the Balkan peninsular? Clearly not.

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Whilst the 1990s were bloody years for Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia, these were war years, and it is fairly hard to find a long list of countries that haven't been involved in wars at some point in their relatively recent history. To further debunk the ethnic argument attributed to the region, described by people who know nothing of the history such as John Major with his "ancient ethnic hatreds", the more we look at the causes of ethnic cleansing we see that they were politically motivated rather than through any sort of primitive blood lust endemic to the region. If we accept that there were wars on, and go on to accept that they were bloody, it should therefore also be accepted that now that there are no wars in the region it is not bloody. If the shooting today in Tuzla was to indeed be shown to be ethnically motivated, although at this stage it appears this was not the case, then this would not give credence to the bloodiness of the region. This was a gun massacre, and from scouring news websites and the international sections of newspapers we can quickly build up a picture showing that the region is actually no more dangerous in this respect that other parts of the world. The motivation for the killings, whatever they might be, are not relevant since all massacres will have particular reasons and causes.

The United States does have a justly deserved infamy for gun crime, and a quick perusal of the most elementary figures shows that this is indeed with good reason, whilst any such similar claim made against the Balkan region is undeserved. In America the massacres seem to be part of a trend which repeats with worrying regularity and is matched by gun based murders, robberies and other such crimes on a daily basis. In the Balkans, whilst the gun was evidently the weapon of choice during the wars, such crimes are so rare as to be of no concern to average citizens and usually only entail mafiaesque hits against politicians, Ivan Stambolic for example, and other even more shady types, such as Arkan.

The United States can stand with blind pride as it defends the right to carry arms with one side of its face while mourning the victims of massacres such as Virginia Tech, Columbine, Waco, Thurston, Platte Canyon, Lane Bryant, Oklahoma City Bombing, West Nickel Mines... the list goes on seemingly forever. In its moment of respite it can cast a glance over the Atlantic to the filthy Balkans and question why the people there are so primitive, so prone to killing each other and why they can't just get along. It is not just the United States that has seen more than enough massacres to dispel any right to patronise the Balkans on its levels of violence. Finland is widely regarded as a country with a wonderful standard of living yet last year it saw the massacre of nine students at a school in the town of Jokela. Britain too has seen its own fair share of mass killings, the Dunblane massacre carried out by Thomas Hamilton with 18 victims and the Hungerford massacre carried out by Michael Ryan where 17 people died.

Earlier this year, Croatia saw a spree of murders in its usually peaceful Zagorje region in the north of the country. These were quickly attributed to the retired army General Ivan Korade. During his time in the army Korade had distinguished himself as a strong and respected leader and commanded the unit which reclaimed Knin during Operation Oluja. Unable to re-adapt to life outside of the army, Korade suffered from bouts of anger and was a heavy drinker, all too often ending up in brawls but seemingly receiving meagre punishments because of his respected role in the liberation of Croatia. In a bizarre chain of events, Korade killed four residents of his village, including a teenage boy, an elderly woman and his former assistant. The police were baffled and began to search for the retired General who was nowhere to be found. Sightings came in of a man fitting his description and the Croatian media became obsessed with wall-to-wall coverage of each twist in the story, speculating on motives and attempting to find reason. Once they discovered Korade's hideout deep in a forest, a special police unit descended on the area and a shoot-out took place in which one policeman was killed and Korade took his own life. Whilst this was a senseless event it should be noted that it shocked the Croatian public, showing that in no way was Korade's behaviour representative of the country as a whole. Whilst Croatia has made good efforts to look after its retired army personnel, the Korade case goes to show that there is probably a need to spend more time with those who are so affected by their former lives that they have slipped through the net that has already been cast out by the state.

We can therefore clearly see that today's massacre was a one off which will likely haunt the village in which it occurred for many years to come. This will most likely not be understood by the majority of the people who might just read the headline that a mass killing took place and presume that after having already a couple of articles about Srebrenica and Vukovar that this is just more of the same, ignorant to the fact that events such as today's killing probably happen more often in their own country than in Bosnia. With regards to day-to-day living, the Balkans are a very safe place to live, the night-time streets of its capital cities having no areas that aren't safe, compared with the shocking spate of knife-crimes that have rocked London in the last few months. Neighbourhoods such as Hackney, Camden and Tower Hamlets in London are far more threatening places to find oneself late at night than Tresnjevka, Dubrava or Crnomerec in Zagreb. Whilst the Balkans is for the most part out of the news coverage now that the wars are over, the unfortunate consequence is that outsiders will stop learning about the region. During the negative years many people became familiar with towns like Tuzla and Srebrenica and leaders like Milosevic and Tudman, albeit for the wrong reasons, whilst now that there are truly reasons to be happy about the overwhelming majority of people will have turned away. Nevertheless, if we assume that people will not change their habits then this lack of interest is far more favourable than the gory and morbid fascination which people held during the 1990s.

BBC article on Tuzla shootings

24 Sata article on Ivan Korade

New York Times article on Columbine and Virginia Tech killings