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The Serbs not only vehemently deny encouraging mass rape but also deny that such rapes have even occurred. Croats and Muslims have also denied such practices. The Balkans reverberate to this counterpoint of denial, a victim symphony of outraged innocence. Radovan Karadzic, who is a poet and a psychiatrist as well as the ruthless commander-in-chief of the Bosnian Serbs, tries a reverse approach. He says soldiers on all sides are committing rape. He sounds the note of bogus fatalism that is also a kind of blessing of rape: "It is tragic. But these dreadful things happen in all wars."
The first indications began to emerge last summer, when Muslim and Croat victims described mass rapes by Serbs to the International Red Cross and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. The women -- some escaped to Croatia, some still living in Bosnia, some in concentration camps -- all told of being forcibly taken by Serb troops, often to temporary "camps" in inns, hotels, schools, town halls and even restaurants. There they would be raped by a procession of Serb soldiers, then either released or sent to one of the larger concentration camps in Bosnia. Other women have been repeatedly raped in their own homes by Serbs, and some were reportedly killed afterward. A number of pregnant victims ended up in Croatian hospitals as refugees, awaiting the birth of unwanted children. Some of the victims are said to be held by Serb soldiers until they give birth.
In the past few months, there have been reports of Muslim and Croat soldiers committing mass rape, but the cases have been less well documented. Says a senior E.C. official: "The Red Cross, the U.N. and we know that some mass rapes have been committed by non-Serbs. The information has come from similar sources: the victims."
In December the E.C., at its summit meeting in Edinburgh, expressed its outrage at "these acts of unspeakable brutality." So did the U.N. Security Council. The E.C. summit appointed a 12-member team, which found mass rape had been committed "in the context of expansionist strategy" -- that is, ethnic cleansing. The investigators reported that "daughters are often raped in front of parents, mothers in front of children, and wives in front of husbands." David Andrews, a member of the commission, who was at the time Ireland's Foreign Minister, said it was clear that rape had "become an instrument, not a by-product, of war."
How does rape work as a weapon of war?
In the Balkans ethnic purity is a primitively overriding value. Bosnian Muslims believe that the mass rapes are intended to break down their national, religious and cultural identity. In part, they assume, the Serb objective is to use rape and enforced pregnancy as a form of revenge and humiliation. Says Mark Wheeler, a lecturer on modern Balkan affairs at the University of London's School of Slavonic and East European Studies: "The idea of nationality in the former Yugoslavia is based on descent, and the greatest debasement is to pollute a person's descent."
Neatly done: mass rape achieves ethnic cleansing through ethnic pollution. Serbs do not care about the fate of the children of rape: they are not Serbs but of mixed blood, therefore debased. Mass rape contaminates the gene pool.