2025/12/04 by Fedja Burić · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Balkans: History, Politics, Society #Balkan and Eastern European Studies #Peacebuilding and International Security
paper · doi:10.1080/14623528.2025.2599588
openalex publication_date 2025/12/04 · openalex created_date 2025/12/05 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
This is a micro historical investigation into a forty-eight-hour period during which Muslims prisoners from Srebrenica were interned at an elementary school in the small eastern Bosnian village of Pilica, from 14–16 July 1995. In the immediate aftermath of Srebrenica’s fall to the Bosnian Serb army (VRS) on 11 July 1995, these prisoners were transported to the Kula school in Pilica before being executed at the nearby Branjevo military farm and the Pilica Culture Hall. Using Bosnian state court documents from a trial against five members of a VRS mercenary unit that carried out most of the executions, the article focuses instead on the witnesses in the case. These are the Pilica villagers who, mostly as members of the First Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade of the VRS, guarded the prisoners while at the Kula school. Using their testimonies and statements, I explore the range of behaviours exhibited by these mostly peasant soldiers during the genocide that they did not know was occurring at the time. I argue that their actions show a lack of ideological fervour and instead reveal disciplinary and logistical failures of the VRS that are indicative of the army’s larger identity crisis. The investigation uncovers numerous acts of Bosnian Serb soldiers evading, resisting, and refusing duty, but I argue that this is a symptom not of interethnic solidarity, but rather of apathy and efforts to insulate one’s actions from criminal activity. The central premise of this article is that these actions, and those of civilian Serb villagers, show the presence of a deep emotional distance between the Serbs and the Muslim victims, a distance that is symptomatic of what I call “nationalism by indifference.” The article is thus a contribution to the growing field of micro historical studies of genocide.