War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning - Chris Hedges [47]
The loss of such social ties, the dependence on the state to dole out homes or property that was stolen, has an insidious effect on even the good and the just. Many must live with guilt and shame. They feel powerless. And those who have been abused and humiliated often search for those even weaker than they to vilify and blame for their predicament. In ethnic warfare this response feeds the racist cant of nationalist warlords who are with one hand thieving on unprecedented scales and with the other blaming the hapless minorities they are persecuting for the economic collapse and misery.
Displacement is one of the fundamental tools warlords and states use to prosecute a conflict. This is why ethnic leaders are so displeased when members of their minority group remain behind. The Croat and Serb and Muslim leaders in Bosnia often made secret deals to “trade” minorities, whether these families wanted to leave their homes or not. Such disruption helped fuel the conflict and sever communal ties with other groups.
“No one ever forgets a sudden depreciation of himself, for it is too painful,” wrote the Bulgarian essayist Elias Canetti. “And the crowd as such never forgets its depreciation. The natural tendency afterwards is to find something which is worth even less than oneself, which one can despise as one was despised oneself. It is not enough to take over an old contempt and to maintain it at the same level. What is wanted is a dynamic process of humiliation. Something must be treated in such a way that it becomes worth less and less, as the unit of money did during the inflation. And this process must be continued until its object is reduced to a state of utter worthlessness. Then one can throw it away like paper, or repulp it.”18
In the Bosnian town of Višegrad there is a graceful 400-year-old bridge, hewn of large off-white stones, that spans the emerald-green waters of the Drina River. The Nobel laureate Ivo Andrić centered his novel, The Bridge on the Drina, around the pumice structure, which he could see from his window as a boy. The book chronicles, over 350 years, the turbulent and often violent history of Višegrad and Bosnia. And as Andrić pointed out, the bridge has served as a kind of public theater in times of war and upheaval. Brigands and criminals were once impaled and executed on its stone flanks. “In all tales about personal, family or public events,” Andrić wrote, “The words ‘on the bridge’ could always be heard.”19
The steep wooded hillsides that plunge to the river have for centuries produced killers of appalling magnitude. During the Bosnian war the latest arose from Višegrad, Milan Lukić, along with his group of some fifteen well-armed companions. They too used the bridge as a prop to exterminate a Muslim community that had been there for centuries. Of the 14,500 Muslims who lived in Višegrad before the war, 3,000 are missing or dead. The others are scattered around Bosnia, many living in poverty in overcrowded rooms and refugee centers.
In April 1992, when the conflict between the Bosnian Serbs and Muslims began, Milan Lukić returned from Serbia to his hometown. He gathered together a group of men, including his brother Miloš, his cousin Sredoje, and a waiter, Mitar Vasiljević. Lukić, who often went barefoot, called the group the Wolves. He set about robbing Muslim homes. The plunder quickly turned to killing. On May 18, Lukić burst into Dzemo Zukić’s home and shot his wife, Bakha, in the back, according to neighbors who saw the shooting. He drove the terrified husband away in the family car, a red Volkswagen Passat. Zukić was never seen again. But the car became a harbinger of death.
The killings quickly became frenzied and common. On one occasion, Lukić used a rope to tie a man to his car and dragged him through the streets until he died. On at least two occasions, he herded large groups of Muslims into houses and set the buildings on fire. Zahra