Reflections on They Would Never Hurt a Fly

Reflections on They Would Never Hurt a Fly: War Criminals on Trial in the Hague by Slavenka Drakulic

Summary from Publisher's Weekly:

What causes people to participate in genocide? Respected Croatian journalist Drakulic (How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed) set out to explore the psyches of the people who turned her former country, Yugoslavia, into a killing field in the early 1990s. Observing them on trial for war crimes before the International Tribunal in the Hague, Drakulic depicts the perpetrators, from Radomir Kovac, who raped young girls, to the delusional former Serb president Slobodan Milosevic, often from the point of view of the perpetrators themselves. The novelistic imputation of imagined thoughts can be distracting. Nevertheless, with a few exceptions, the snapshots are powerful and horrifying: they include a chilling description of the slaughter at Srebrenica through the eyes of a reluctant Bosnian soldier forced to kill or be killed, and a portrayal of an entire town's complicity in the murder of a Croatian militiaman after he courageously testified before the tribunal. Drakulic's analysis of why people choose evil—fear, opportunism, propaganda, lust for power and identity, historical grievances—offers little that's new, and her conclusion—"if ordinary people committed war crimes, it means that any of us begs the question of why some found the courage to say no. But her focus on the perpetrators and their apparently inexplicable moral choices forces us to face the questions of good and evil these crimes raise.

I found it fascinating to try to get inside the minds of and understand the thinking of people who committed war crimes. This book challenged me and made me uncomfortable, and also made me worry about the state of Bosnia today. For example, I know that political corruption such as that described in the chapter about the death of Milan Levar, the Croatian war witness, is still rampant all around the former Yugoslavia today. There are still people who do not know and who won’t accept the truth, and even now “the Croatian state is still indecisive, the international community is indifferent, and public opinion remains silent” (37). When the people in power are the same as the perpetrators or are involved in conspiracy about what happened, how can there possibly be any progress?

I also think the book is very important because I couldn’t agree more with Drakulić’s conclusion that we need to stop thinking of war criminals as purely evil non-human monsters lest we fail to acknowledge that we too have the capacity to act in similar ways. It’s a terrifying thought – what does it take to make an ordinary person act in such an extraordinary way? Drakulić wonders if perhaps war can turn people with “criminal personalities” (55) into criminals who can rape and murder. However, there would have to be “thousands upon thousands of men committing such acts,” (56) and Drakulić feels it was more likely that “the war itself turned ordinary men – a driver, a waiter, and a salesman, the three accused were – into criminals because of opportunism, fear, and not least, belief” (56). She states that the either the hundreds of thousands of perpetrators actually believed what they were doing was right, or there is no explanation for the rapes and murders, and I’m not sure which side of the disjunct is scarier.

How do these things happen? As Drakulić asks, “how does our neighbor become our enemy? How do we internalize the enemy, and how long does it take to do so?” (97). She states that at the time of the Srebrenica massacre, the “Serbian propaganda machine, especially television, had been demonizing the enemy—Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and Albanians—for almost ten years” (97). This notion of the power of propaganda is especially terrifying to me. There are people in Serbia who genuinely do not realize what happened in Srebrenica because of what their media has told them. How responsible are we for the nationalist attitudes we have been fed by our news stations? Where do we draw the line between thinking independently and total skepticism over everything the media tells us? I typically have a fairly strong faith in the reliability of the media (perhaps because my parents are both radio journalists) that this book made me begin to sincerely doubt.

The ideas that Drakulić presents in the chapter on Slobodan Milošević about recreating history and revising facts to fit a political agenda struck a chord with me, because I’ve seen history being rewritten in Bosnia today. In the summer of 2005, our group attempted to hold a “friendship camp” in Srebrenica for the first time. When we arrived at the school, no children were there, which is far from the norm – we are usually greeted at the bus by a throng of eager faces. We went inside the school building to wait while our trip coordinators spoke with the school director. Hanging on one wall was a large painting of the town with small portraits on either side. The town in the painting had several Orthodox churches but not a single mosque, though the painting was obviously depicting a time long before the war, a time in which the majority of the population was Muslim. One of the portraits hanging next to the Mosque-less painting of the town was of a great Serbian author who revolutionized Serbo-Croatian language. The caption under the painting was printed in Cyrillic and English, not in the Serbo-Croatian in the Latin alphabet. One of the interpreters came over to look at the painting with me, and pointed to the caption and said “That’s wrong. It says ‘He is the greatest author of our nation,’ but he was from Serbia, and our nation is Bosnia.”

For the only time in all of my trips to Bosnia, I felt highly uncomfortable and very out of place. I got a very bizarre vibe from the school, and I stepped outside because I felt so uncomfortable. I approached another of my team members about it, an adult woman named Donna, and asked her if she felt the same way. She agreed with me, and said that it was because we were seeing history being rewritten before our eyes. (The school director claimed to have been confused over the date and apologized for his “mistake,” but I have a strong suspicion that his mistake was intentional, and that he did not want us--and our Muslim interpreters--there. The next year, there was a new director at the school in Srebrenica and we held a successful camp there, though there was only one Muslim boy in attendance.)

I scared myself reading the chapter about Dražen Erdemović, because though I hope that I would rather die than shoot innocent civilians, I really can’t say whether I would be willing to give up my life in such a situation. Over the summer I had a dream that scared me in a similar way. I was in the middle of intense preparation for my part of NJ Synod’s display about the Bosnian War at the ELCA National Youth Gathering. I was responsible for information about Emsuda Mugajić and concentration camps and for coordinating workshops about our Bosnian interpreters’ war stories and a war simulation game.

I don’t remember all of the details, but I dreamed I was in my old high school, and a friend ran up to me and told me I had to go outside to the field. There were masked men with guns outside, and they had lined all the students up and were screaming at us, telling us to get down on the ground and cover our heads. I felt absolutely terrified as I took my place in line with the other students. A man started walking down the line of students, poking random students with the butt of his gun and yelling, “YOU! GET UP AND COME WITH ME!” I knew that the students he picked were going to be taken to a wall and shot by a firing squad, with no chance of escape. As he walked down the line, I could only think one thing – don’t pick me, don’t pick me, Dear God, please let him pick anyone but me.

The man tapped me with his gun, shouted a number, and dragged me to my feet. I felt panicked and I couldn’t breathe. All I could think was “this cannot be happening, not to me – I have so much potential, so much before me, I haven’t lived my life yet . . . I still need to go to graduate school and become a philosophy professor, I can’t die now!” I woke up, and I was very upset, not by the dream itself but by my reaction in the dream. I was terrified of death, and I would have done anything to avoid it – to the point of wishing that the guard would take someone else, would just take anyone but me. I also, for the first time, stopped to try to imagine what it would really be like to be in an ethnic cleansing situation, and I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it. I didn’t like the way I responded in the dream at all, and though I know it was a dream, it made me wonder how I would respond in a similar real life situation.

The Shadow

This is a short story I wrote in the fall of 2007.

There was so much noise in the hot, smoky room, people singing and cheering and laughing and cursing. I was dizzy and my head felt heavy from so many shots of slivovic. Dragan stumbled over to me, his face red and glistening with sweat.

“Hey, Miro!” he slurred, pouring me more rakija. “You’re a good man, you know that? You came to our unit three months ago and you were a simple farmer boy from some backward little village . . . and all you knew how to do was plough fields . . . and feed cows . . . and milk chickens.” He slung an arm around me and leaned his face in closer. “And now, now you are a man! You’re a soldier like the rest of us!” He raised his glass and shouted, “Here’s to you, you crazy peasant son of a bitch!”

“Živjeli! Cheers!” I clinked my glass with Dragan’s and downed the fiery brandy. The room span around me, I put a hand against the wall to steady myself. I felt myself slide against the wall, and I realized I was sitting on the dirty floor. I closed my eyes and started to think of home, and of the girl. Soon, I was lost in the world of my own thoughts.

There was an old widow who lived in my town and told the villagers’ fortunes in exchange for knick-knacks and food. Everyone knew her only as Mother Sofija, and all the village kids were afraid of her, because they heard stories that she liked to steal bad children and eat them for breakfast. Mothers would cluck their tongues as she passed and shake their heads in disapproval. My own mother would cross herself and tell me “Miro, look away before she gives you the evil eye! That woman practices the Devil’s art!”

But I had always been the bravest of the boys my age, and I was not afraid of anything. I was famous for taking any dare offered to me, from leaping off the roof of the barn to slipping a live frog in the church collection plate and risking Father Pero’s wrath. So when Branko dared me to go to Mother Sofija and have her tell my fortune, I couldn’t refuse. It happened eight years ago in 1985 when I was only fourteen, but I can still see it perfectly in my mind.

It was summer, and I found Mother Sofija sitting on the bench at the edge of the town square where she liked to rest in the warm months. I opened my mouth to speak, and she put a wrinkled finger to her lips.

“Shh, child, don’t talk. What did you bring me?”

Looking around to make sure no one was watching me, I handed her a basket of fresh eggs from our farm. She accepted it wordlessly, and grabbed my hand. She started humming to herself and tracing the lines in my palm, analyzing every dirt-caked finger.

“Oh child, this is very special, very special, yes. I see your destiny is not yours alone. The thread of your life is tangled with another’s, all wrapped up and tangled, yes. She will change your life, this woman you are destined to meet. I do not see where your destiny goes, no, it is not easy, but when you meet her, she will possess your thoughts and your days for the rest of your life. She will decide who you are and how your life plays out, yes, she will.”

I was shaken out of my daydream and back to the present when I heard a crash and a shout next to me. I cracked an eye open and saw broken glass and spilled liquid on the ground. It didn’t matter, there was more where that came from. The commander had given us a special treat tonight. I felt my head slump over, and I drifted off to sleep.

I am dreaming. I am in my hometown again, in the big hilly field behind old man Ivanović’s farm. The air is clean and crisp and fresh; everything is quiet, and the world is at peace. The sun glares into my eyes, and I squint into the brilliant light. I see a person standing at the top of a hill. The figure is shadowed, but I knew it has to be the girl. I start running towards her.

“Hello!” I call. “You, there, wait!”

The woman stops. I catch up to her, and she turns to face me. She has light brown hair that falls to her waist, and she looks at me with piercing blue eyes. There is a dark brown beauty mark on her cheek. She is dressed in a simple blouse and skirt, and she is beautiful. I have seen her in recurring dreams ever since my encounter with the old widow, and whenever I dream of her I know she is the destiny Mother Sofija saw for me. Something about her haunts me, captivates me, makes me dream about her even during my waking hours, though in my dreams I am never able to speak to her or learn anything about her.

I was jolted awake by a smack on the back of my head. I woke with a start, panicked and disoriented with an ache in my head and tightness in my throat. The electric lights in the room felt like they were burning me. Someone shook me.

“Miro, you slug, get up! Party time is over, we have orders to go outside!”

I used the wall to steady myself and stand up. Everyone in the room was adjusting their uniforms and making their weapons ready. It was still dark outside.

“What are we doing?”

“Shut up and get ready, farmer,” Dragan replied. “We have some refugee scum we need to move.”

I followed the rest of my unit outside into the chilly night air, unusually cold for summer. I guessed from the sky that it was probably about four in the morning. My feet felt unsteady and my mind was hazy, and I knew I was still drunk from the night before. We lined up in very sloppy attention outside the abandoned school building we were using as our temporary barracks, and our commander paced up and down in front of us.

“Alright, boys!” he shouted. “I hate to break up your party, but we’ve got some trash we need to get rid of. A bus full of refugees from the local village is having engine trouble, and we need to make sure the filthy Muslim bastards all get onto the other bus so they can be relocated and be out of our town.”

An overly zealous member of our unit saluted and shouted “Sir, yes sir!”

The commander started laughing, a rich, hearty laugh. “That’s right my boy, you show the others how excited they should be.”

The commander kept talking, but I was tired and distracted, and I couldn’t focus on what he was saying even if I tried. I started thinking about what it would be like when I was done with my service in the army, how proud my mother would be, and how I would be a war hero in my town. That Miro always was the bravest, they would say, and even the grandmothers would be proud of my honor and courage and service to our people.

I realized that two buses had pulled up in front of the barracks. The door of the first bus opened, and a line of people filed out of it. I saw only shadows; it was too dark to see any of their faces or features. A few of my fellow soldiers lined the refugees up in a row in front of the other bus, prodding them with the butts of their guns. I saw the people start to board the bus, watched them through some kind of fog as if they were a dream or I was seeing them in slow motion. I was hungry, and I started thinking about the stew my Aunt Mirjana makes at holidays, how it tastes so spicy and delicious, and the warm crusty bread that goes with it, and the sweet pastries we have for dessert . . . .

“Petrović!” The commander shouted. “Miro! Are you listening to me? Look at me, boy!”

I was startled out of my daydream. “Yes, sir!” I yelled, worried because I hadn’t been paying attention. “I’m listening, sir! Ready to follow orders, sir!”

The commander laughed again. “Alright, you drunken smart-ass, let’s see how tough you can be.”

I noticed that all of the refugees were on the bus already, except one. The commander grabbed hold of the figure, dragged it away from the bus towards the middle of the field.

“Okay, Petrović,” the commander said. “This here God-damn Turk spreads lies about us, tries to write to the newspapers and stand up on the street corners and say that Serbia has no right to what we know is ours . . . my superiors have warned me about this Muslim son of a bitch, and said it’s in our best interest not to have people spreading lies about us. You know what you should do.”

“Sir?”

“Kill the Turk.”

It was like I had floated outside of my body and was seeing myself as another person. I was the bravest. I had never turned down a dare, never in my life, and this was more than a dare, it was an order. I had to. I was tough, I could do this, I was a soldier, I had to follow orders, and it didn’t matter anyway, I was just shooting at a shadow, there was no face, there was no person, this was just another refugee like so many others, but more than that, even, this person was dangerous, was a liar, was a traitor, had to be gotten rid of, in our best interest, and even so, it was just a shadow, nothing else, it didn’t matter, I had no choice, I was a real man now, a soldier, a city boy, an adult, I was tough, and fierce, and it’s just a shadow . . . .

I aimed my gun and curled my finger around the trigger. I don’t remember what happened in the next few seconds, but I heard a high-pitched scream and a thud. I realized my eyes were shut and I was breathing heavily.

When I opened my eyes, the Commander was laughing again, that same hearty laugh. “God, you can take the boy out of the farm but you can’t take the farmer out of the boy, look at your face! He’s a good shot, though, a damn good shot, you got the sucker right in the chest. It’s cold, boys, we’ll deal with the body later. Nice work, gentlemen, nice work!”

The Commander and the other soldiers were starting to go inside. Slowly, I walked over to the body that was lying on the ground. I started to panic, couldn’t catch my breath. The body on the ground wasn’t a shadow, wasn’t a figure, it was a person, a human being, an actual person with family and friends, a person who used to breathe and think and feel. I walked over and stood above the body in the darkness, suddenly feeling sober and acutely aware of my surroundings. I knelt on the ground and leaned in to look at the face of the person I had shot.

She had light brown hair and piercing blue eyes and a beauty mark on her cheek.