Genocid u Palestini se nastavlja s punom potporom tzv. Zapadnog svijeta uključujuči i sramotnu potporu država našeg regiona. I Srbija i Hrvatska ponovno uvode obavezni vojni rok na način koji diskriminira one koji se žele pozvati na priziv savjesti. Kreće radikalno naoružavanje Europe pod vodstvom Europske komisije i Frau Genocide Ursule von der Leyen koje će koštati oko 800 milijardi eura, istih onih milijardi eura koje nema za zdravstvo, obrazovanje, socijalu itd. Dijelimo tekst naše Laure Pejak o tome zašto je abolicija vojske neodvojiva od feminističke abolicije i oslobođenja svih nas.
On September 14, 2024, the president of Serbia announced his intention to reinstate military conscription for all young men aged between 18 and 30. With this act, President Aleksandar Vučić – whose role should in principle be largely ceremonial within Serbia’s parliamentary republic, but who has been de facto dominating Serbian politics since he took office in 2017 – blatantly bypassed all normal governmental and parliamentary procedures, clearly illustrating the increasingly authoritarian nature of the Serbian regime.
However, this move needs to be examined in a much broader context. On the one hand, it is part of a greater global and regional trend of increased militarization and rising right-wing authoritarianism. The whole of Europe is in a process of drastically increasing its military budgets, considering the reinstatement of the draft, as well as witnessing a drastic growth in tensions with neighbouring Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Israel’s war on Gaza, the rise of right-wing populists in Europe, Latin America, India, and elsewhere, military coups and growing conflicts in Africa, all paint a grim picture of a growing global militarization, and a shrinking space for non-violent, democratic and diplomatic solutions of national and international problems.
While, on the other hand, the public idolization of the military (which, along with the Orthodox church, consistently ranks as the most trusted institution among Serbian citizens) and its prominent role in Serbian politics, are also products of specific national conditions. The wars Serbia fought against its former Yugoslav co-constituent states in the 1990s led to Serbian society being entirely dominated by a militaristic nationalist fervor – resulting in mass conscription, state repression and omnipresent violence – not just by the military and the police, but also by organized crime groups and far-right paramilitary forces (which were often one and the same thing) tacitly working for the government. The terror and ethnic cleansing committed by Serbian (military, paramilitary and police) forces in neighbouring countries (as well as Kosovo, at the time still largely under Serbian control), was happening side-by-side with mass terror against Serbia’s own citizens, especially those who were against the policies of the then-current regime.
This militaristic character of Serbian society, however, was not wholly unique, nor was it an entirely new phenomenon. A similar process of militarization, creation of paramilitary forces, repression and ethnic cleansing was happening in neighbouring Croatia, whose right-wing government didn’t lag too far behind in processes happening to its then-archnemesis. At the same time, Socialist Yugoslavia itself – which was in many ways a more progressive society than the right-wing nationalist regimes that immediately followed it – was also a deeply militaristic society. Its entire national mythology was built on the glorification of war – specifically the War of National Liberation that the country’s communist movement had led during World War II. A state-sanctioned obsession with the heroism of wartime resisters permeated movies, TV shows, popular songs, comic books, children’s media, basically the entire culture of the country. This heroism, to be clear, is certainly not something to be disparaged – the bravery and actions of anti-fascist resistance fighters are still something to be celebrated, admired and highly thankful for, despite smear campaigns by later anti-communist post-Yugoslav politicians.
At the same time however, such an obsession with and glorification of war – without a deeper examination of its horrors (discussions of the Holocaust took an entirely secondary seat to the story of the resistance, despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav citizens were murdered in concentration camps) and its fundamental causes. Nationalism, the root cause of fascism and nazism, was never seriously examined in the Yugoslav public sphere, but was instead redirected towards a federalist patriotism for the multi-ethnic state, a patriotism that was no less fanatic or all-pervasive in its character than earlier (or later) ethnic nationalisms.
The militarization of the Yugoslav state also led not only to a bloated military budget – Yugoslavia consistently topped the lists of biggest military spenders in Europe, averaging around 50% of the country’s entire yearly federal budget – but to a complete dominance of military society over civilian life. Young men would lose up to two years of their lives serving the military, being trained to kill and prepared to see potential enemies, both national and political, on every side. Children as young as 12 or 13 years old would learn how to shoot from rifles as part of their regular school curriculum. A large military-industrial complex developed, which mass-produced weapons not only for Yugoslavia itself but for export to various militaristic regimes and armed groups abroad. Serbia has partially maintained this legacy (without the pretense of socialist internationalism, non-alignment and anti-colonialism that had previously guided it, at least in rhetoric), and Serbian-made arms are still being used in conflicts all around the world, from Gaza, to Syria to Ukraine.
The product of this constant glorification of war, the preparation of the populace to be ready to wage war against internal and external enemies at any moment, and the mass military build-up was an interconnected series of wars in the early 1990’s, which together comprised the largest military conflict in Europe since WW2, leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in a mindless and in the end, largely pointless inter-ethnic killing, where there were no clear victors, and whose consequences are still felt in all of our countries to this day.
The most important progressive politics that emerged in Serbia during the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s was the anti-war and anti-military movement. Feminist groups, LGBT+ activists, student groups, liberal-democrats and socialists (at least those who opposed the nominally “socialist” far-right government of the time) all had their main focus on countering this horrific crime of war being committed by the state. A specific leftist-pacifist social theory formed in the wake of this upheaval by feminist activists from organizations like the Women in Black. Some of the most notable include Staša Zajović or the late Dejan Nebrigić. Unlike the anti-war movement in the US during the Vietnam War, the Serbian anti-war movement in the 90’s garnered no illusions about ideas of national liberation, of heroic guerillas fighting an evil empire, or the promise of worldwide communist revolution. It knew firsthand that the enemies the Serbian forces were fighting against were at best only marginally more inclined towards respecting the lives of civilians or towards the creation of any sort of free society. There were no “good guys” in war (and certainly not in this one), even if there were aggressors and perhaps even lesser and greater evils. Even the promise of freedom and prosperity in liberal democracy didn’t animate many of the anti-war activists of this time. Their contacts with Western anti-war movements had, for many of them, dispelled such illusions, as had the deeply ambivalent and largely inadequate responses that governments in Europe and North America had towards the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands of people in Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo and the rest of Serbia-Montenegro itself. Most of the activists remained committed leftists, even as the fall of Yugoslavia and world communism, as well as the context of war and rising repression, meant re-examining what exactly this could mean.
The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990’s represented an entirely nihilistic, necrophilic movement of extermination – and, perhaps, that’s all that any war ever was. For the new progressive movements emerging in Serbia at this time, ending war, military conscription, the military itself and finding a way to solve conflicts nonviolently was far from an idealistic pipedream. It was a deep and unavoidable necessity, where the alternative was genocide – cultural, spiritual and, in the end, physical extermination of the society we lived in.
Militarism, the Abolitionist Movement and Where We Can Go from Here
The movement for prison abolition began in the United States as a response to a specific set of socio-historical conditions present in that country. The movement and corresponding theory have been developed through the insight of largely Black social and political thinkers (as well as the lived experiences of Black incarcerated people). The focus is on how the prison-industrial complex operates in the US and so it deals with concrete social issues that directly affect the lives of many.
And while this analysis is deeply tied to history and practices in the United States and could hardly be traced in the same way in other countries (although mileage may vary), it has still proven relevant in raising certain questions in a global context. Abolitionism has led all of us from all over the world, from various positions of marginalization and criminalization, to examine the role that police and prisons play in our societies, in our (queer, immigrant, sex worker, Roma, etc.) communities and to question their legitimacy.
The largely US-based and Black-American-led movement for abolition, in the process of advocating for these ideas, also needed to devise plausible answers to questions raised by such a movement in the eyes of “common sense”. “How would we deal with crime without prisons?”, “What do we do about murderers and rapists?”, “How can harm be prevented without a police force?”, and many others that I will not recount answers to here. The very real and inescapable necessity of ending prisons and police in the context of (Black) American lived reality led to these questions being taken incredibly seriously. And while the different potential answers to these questions aren’t final or even agreed upon by all abolitionists, they are being developed in a creative and quite rigorous process through the use of both theory as well as putting different ideas into practice, leading to answers for concrete policies we can try to implement in creating a post-prison, post-police society.
Probably the main question that we attempted to raise in organizing the Novi Sad School for Feminist Abolition was how approaches to abolition might be applied to the context of the Balkans – mainly referring to the post-Yugoslav countries, and to a certain extent other post-communist states on the peninsula – as well as what insights we, the people from this region, might have to offer in the further development of abolitionist and feminist theory. And while I believe the school itself was quite fruitful and led to us thinking in a lot of different ways about these issues in our local context, it was only later, as militarism and right-wing authoritarianism have continued to rise, both within Serbia and in the world at large, that an idea was able to crystalize in my mind of what some answers to these questions might look like.
With my above reflection on the development of both Yugoslav and global militarism that we are facing today, I wanted to see what insights might be gained from both our own experience in the post-Yugoslav space, as well as similar experiences that we are witnessing all around the world – and to apply the perspectives drawn from both the abolitionist movement and the Serbian anti-war tradition to the issues of rising militarism and repression facing our world today. The following are four key insights I would like to highlight:
- Police repression of dissent and minority populations is directly tied to an increase in international tensions.
This is a lesson that we need to carry with us as the world rearms and the role of the military becomes more dominant in society. What happened in Serbia, specifically during the 1990’s, was the rise of both a militarized, war-time state, as well as a highly repressive police state. Bosniak Muslims, who were being targeted for genocide by Serbian (para)military forces in Bosnia, were being seen as potential fifth-columnists in Serbia itself, leading to mass police violence, torture and incarceration of Bosniak citizens of Serbia. Similarly, any and all political opposition was crushed or sidelined in the name of maintaining national security in the face of supposed external threats.
We are seeing a clear repetition of this in contemporary Russia, where its war against Ukraine has justified draconian, decades-long prison sentences not just for anyone who dares question the war in the slightest, as well as crackdowns on different minority groups – most notably LGBT+ people, but also various minority ethnic groups and colonized nations as well.
Western democratic states are far from immune to these tendencies (although they have yet to be taken to such extremes there). The United States went through a similar transformation after 9/11, where Muslims were disproportionately targeted for police harassment, checks at the borders and deportations, their loyalty being viewed as inherently questionable. It also allowed the Bush regime to enact anti-protesting laws and crack down on people who were trying to express their dissatisfaction with the warmongering, conservative and white-supremacist politics it was implementing.
Even Ukraine, which is fighting a defensive war in the name of upholding “freedom, democracy and European values” in the face of Russian authoritarianism, has turned to cracking down on army deserters, trade unionists and others who are seen as disruptive to the current war effort. War against external enemies always leads to – and is sometimes even primarily an excuse for – a crackdown on internal opposition and an increase in police presence and power.
- The military and the police are two sides of the same coin.
The Serbian war against Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, and the subsequent massacres and displacement of Albanian civilians, was actually spearheaded not by the army, but by the police. The line between these two institutions eventually began to blur – as the police were given access to more and more military-grade weaponry and began to apply military tactics in “fighting terrorism”.
This clearly illustrates the extremes to which the militarization of the police can go. And Serbia is far from an isolated case. The United States police forces are increasingly becoming militarized, given large amounts of military surplus equipment, and taught to combat protestors using military tactics. And all over Europe, we’ve seen the military being deployed to safeguard borders – not from potential invaders, but rather from people who might attempt to cross those borders “illegally” – a law-enforcement role that is usually within the clear domain of border police.
- The military is an institution of racist and patriarchal dominance.
Much has been said about the racist and patriarchal nature and history of the police: they specifically target and criminalize members of racialized groups, they support and reinforce patriarchal logics in their dealings with gender-based violence, and members of police forces often perpetuate racist and patriarchal violence, both in their work and in their private life.
This same critical approach needs to be levelled at the military as well. While the mission of the police is largely to control subaltern populations within the boundaries of the state, the mission of the military forces is primarily to conquer, control and/or exterminate “enemy” and subaltern populations outside the state’s borders. In this role it is not only a racist institution, but one into whose very existence the potentiality for genocide against the racialized Other is built-in. On the other hand, when it comes to internal racial politics of the state, the military often takes one of two approaches, which, while seeming to be opposites stem from the same place of racial/ethnic oppression.
One approach is for the military to target ethnically undesirable populations for recruitment or drafting in order to reduce their number in the population at large. This logic was applied in the Serbian military during the Yugoslav wars, where members of the Hungarian minority were targeted for the draft in highly disproportionate numbers, with the idea of sending them off to die so that the multi-ethnic region of Vojvodina might be ethnically “purified”. Similar examples can be found in the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, where many of the young men sent off to die for the Russian state are disproportionately made up of Russian colonial subjects and members of other ethnic minorities; or in the US war on Vietnam, where Black people were disproportionately targeted for the draft and sent off to die.
The other approach consists of an exclusion of undesirable ethnic populations from the military, since they are viewed as inherently disloyal and thus untrustworthy to be given weapons to. This is the approach that Israel takes with its Arab Palestinian population: although they are technically allowed to serve in the IDF if they so wish, they are automatically excluded from a draft that is otherwise mandatory and near-unavoidable for all other segments of the population.
The patriarchal nature of the military can be seen perhaps even more clearly than is the case with the police. In almost all countries, men are the only ones targeted for the military draft, leading to a reification of the idea of men as inherently violent and good at killing – whereas women are weaker and in need of protection – while at the same time imposing a specific form of gendered violence onto people assigned male at birth who are forced to take part in such an institution. The military is also a hotbed of abuse – perhaps more so than any other institution – both physical, emotional and sexual. The violent nature of military life (both in the inherent acts of violence the military was created to carry out, as well as in the informal acts of violence within the military hierarchy itself) leads many to further perpetuate this violence once they come back to civilian life. Military veterans are disproportionately likely to physically abuse their spouses, as well as to be perpetrators of terrorist attacks, murders, and mass shootings.
Patriarchal violence is, of course, present in the regular dealings of the military with enemy forces as well. Mass rape of women in occupied territories, different forms of sexual violence perpetrated against POWs (both men and women), treating all civilian men as “potential combatants” and singling them out for extermination (as was the case in Srebrenica in 1995), are all just some of the examples of the deeply patriarchal violence the military inflicts against the “enemies of the state”.
In fact, the military might be the one institution in our societies that most openly serves no other purpose than to perpetuate racist, patriarchal, colonial and ethnic violence. If we are interested in dismantling these systems, ending the military needs to be a key part in this process.
- The abolition of the police and other forms of internal state violence necessitates a parallel (or even primary) abolition of military forces and a cessation of state violence against “external enemies”.
Considering the above arguments, abolishing the police and working towards a rethinking of the way we deal with crime and safety within our own (civilian) communities, cannot be uncoupled from the project of abolishing the military as well, and rethinking the way we deal with international or inter-ethnic conflicts.
A state (or even some form of non-state organization of society) that has no police or prisons, but that still maintains armed forces, is a state that is still able to kill and repress its own population when the need arises. And in fact, military repression of civilians is often a far worse prospect for a social movement than police repression. Whereas the police are (at least in principle) expected to show some restraint and have different tools of responding to dissent at their disposal, the military has one purpose and one purpose only – to murder with extreme prejudice. Such a nightmare scenario could be seen in situations such as the Assad regime’s use of extreme military force for repression of Syrian revolutionaries in 2011 onwards – which led to one of the worst civil wars in recent memory, leaving hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions displaced.
This prospect may seem distant or even unimaginable in democratic countries, but we should be aware that we are always a few missteps away from such a possibility and may even already be on a course towards just such a potential future. Opposition to mandatory conscription, increased military spending, military interventions in other countries, military alliances, to any and all preparations for the prospect of war needs to come to the forefront of our activist movements. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t oppose actions of states that are repressing their populations, disregarding human rights or invading other countries, far from it. But following their logics of war, military build-up and repression of dissent will necessarily lead to the eventual victory of the logic of such regimes. Even if such a state is defeated through military force, the virus of war and militarism will have spread and its further influence will continue to seep through the institutions created and transformed in its wake.
If we wish to imagine a world without prisons, police and borders, we must first imagine a world without war.
Suggestions for Potential Ways Forward
How then, might an anti-militarist abolitionist movement look like in practice? What are some ways that we can apply the above-mentioned goals in practice, and how might abolitionist ideas for dealing with harm, such as transformative justice or community care, help us in moving forward in our movement?
I shall sketch out a few ideas for this below. These are by no means meant to be exhaustive or final; they are merely suggestions for some of the concrete actions that anti-militarist abolitionists may take in working on the much broader goal of a world without state repression, the military, prisons, police and armed conflict.
- Applying restorative justice in war-torn communities: Communities that have been through war or are in a consistent state of conflict with one another – and specifically those which, despite those conflicts, still continue to share a broader geographical, physical and social space with each other – are places where methods of restorative/transformative justice are especially relevant in preventing further death and suffering, as well as creating space for inter-community life and organizing around shared issues. The way that we can move forward in such circumstances will inherently involve a process of accountability, (re)building trust and finding ways to overcome harm done in the past. It is necessary to not just involve individuals who have taken part in harmful behavior, but to have entire communities overcome their notions of “collective guilt” or the need for “collective punishment” for the Other, despite what may have happened in the past. Peace activists have been doing such work throughout (post-)conflict zones, from the former Yugoslavia to Northern Ireland and beyond. These are practices that abolitionists can learn from and apply, but which they can also contribute to with their knowledge and experience in applying restorative justice practices in other contexts.
- Preventing the involvement of the military in civil affairs and the militarization of the police: All policy moves that broaden the role of the military to involve any sort of “law enforcement” need to be resisted. Similarly, the use of military weapons and military tactics by the police, or the deployment of police forces in armed conflict, needs to be opposed and reversed in the opposite direction as much as possible. Not only should the police not own armored vehicles, rocket launchers, assault rifles, grenades and other military-grade equipment, but both the police and military should be brought into a process of gradual disarmament. Reductions in military armaments would ideally be done alongside deals with neighbouring/rival states as a way of building peace regionally and globally.
- Demilitarizing our own movements: While leftist movements have been instrumental in shaping the insight that the violence of the state or oppressive social forces more generally and the violence of the oppressed shouldn’t be equated, there is still much to be said about an uncritical adoption of military logics into progressive movements. The militarization of a movement leads to it becoming hierarchical, often dominated by (violent) men and can not only further isolate it from the wider community, but can lead to internal divisions escalating into deadly armed struggles, where otherwise they would have, at worst, led to a split in the movement. We have seen many such cases, both in large-scale armed marxist groups in many non-western countries, as well as in the much smaller Western left-wing urban guerilla groups of the 60’s and 70’s. And while some sort of violence for self-defense and self-preservation of oppressed communities may in many cases end up being necessary, its necessity must always be questioned and resorted to only when all other options have been exhausted. Democratic, community-based processes that include everyone (not just militants) need to always be at the center of all of our decision-making and society-building efforts.
- Advocating for non-military solutions to international conflicts: This means never treating war as an inevitability, even if armed attacks – like for example, the ones on September 11th in the US, or October 7th in Israel – have already occurred. Instead, even in such extreme circumstances of militaristic fervor, we must insist on avoiding military responses and work on advocating for a broad-based international diplomatic response, with the goal being de-escalation and – where applicable – addressing underlying issues that may have led certain members of a community to act in such a violent way. Even if a non-military response ends up being impossible, or our efforts at advocating for such solutions fall on deaf ears, we should never stop advocating for a de-escalation and ceasing of hostilities in order to return the conflicting sides to the negotiating table.
- Supporting refugees and migrants dismantling borders: The work of border abolition has long been part of different abolitionist movements around the world, especially in the EU and North America. Borders themselves are not only oppressive and racialized institutions – maintaining the global unjust division of labor and resources by preventing people from moving where they would like to live or where greater opportunity potentially awaits them – they are also a fundamentally militaristic institution. Generally speaking, nearly every border in the world was created through military conquest and had the express function of constructing an ethnically homogeneous space. Whether we are talking about the Nakba in Palestine, the “population exchanges” between Greece and Turkey, the mass exodus of Serbs from Croatia at the end of the War in Croatia, or the Partition of India, establishing modern national borders almost always involved mass suffering, death and ethnic cleansing. Maintaining border regimes is a continuation of that oppressive and genocidal legacy and something we need to actively oppose. Supporting refugees and migrants through various forms of mutual aid, sea rescue operations, resisting deportations and aiding them in defense against police, military and far-right violence is an integral part of this. On the other hand, we also need to be advocating for our countries to relax visa regimes – and in the long term, create and/or greatly expanding borderless arrangements such as those that exist in most of Europe or in Central America – while avoiding a militarization of the newly externalized borders for such open border areas, as we have witnessed happening with the Schengen zone.
- Working on building internationalist global politics and resisting nationalist hostilities at home: An important aspect of preventing conflict is ensuring the existence of just, democratic, equitable and effective international institutions, that can be used as a tool in resolving conflicts justly and building compromise instead of resorting to military “solutions”. It also means resisting nationalist rhetoric in the public discourse that attempts to paint any state as an enemy or an obstacle to the geopolitical interests of “our own” state/nation. While this certainly doesn’t apply to all criticism and actions taken to sanction states that are actively committing harm against its citizens or the citizens of other countries through war, it does mean that we must also be vigilant in recognizing the reasons why our media or government officials might decide to single out a particular state for criticism and/or sanction; while at the same time not applying a similar standard to states considered “our allies” (or even the very state that we live in) that are carrying out similar violations. Nationalist rhetoric must especially be taken seriously when it is aimed towards the exclusion of groups within our own societies. Any such discourse or actions taken against specific ethnic groups by the governenment, police, military or parapolice and paramilitary groups need to be viewed as a prelude to genocide and must be blocked, disrupted and reversed by any and all available means.
- Supporting conscientious objectors and working on campaigns against joining the military: In militarized societies where all (male) citizens of a certain age must serve the military for a certain amount of time in their lives, we need to fight for the introduction, expansion and adequate implementation of the right for individuals to refuse to perform such service on ethical grounds. We also ought to promote this idea among young people in our communities and teach them to view being part of the military in a negative light. In states where mandatory military service doesn’t exist, similar campaigns of creating a negative view of the military and dissuading potential recruits from serving (especially within marginalized, impoverished, rural or deindustrialized communities that may be disproportionately targeted for recruitment efforts) should be carried out.
- Advocating for complete military abolition: This needs to be the end goal for our movements, even if it might seem like a daunting task to take on. However, in the same way that “abolish the police” eventually became a widespread slogan in the movement against racialized police violence, so too should “abolish the military” move from being seen as the utopian dream of hippies and idealists into a space of policy that we can actually collectively demand. All of the steps outlined above – while they may be carried out in broader coalitions with other movements which may not share our goals – for us need to be placed in a broader context where the continued existence of the military (and the police, prisons and other institutions of state violence) is utterly unacceptable. While this view may be seen as fringe or “unrealistic” initially, we still need to emphasize it and put it to the forefront whenever possible. This is especially true for situations where issues around the military are raised – such as the reintroduction of military conscription, rising international tensions or an increase in military spending – which may individually be viewed as unpopular, but that our movements need to place in a broader context that expands out from them into the view that ultimately solving these issues will necessarily require abolishing the armed forces.
REGIONALNI ABOLICIONISTIČKI FEMINISTIČKI KOLEKTIV 