From Neighbors to Aggressors: Serb Women in Besieged Sarajevo

• In Event: Challenges in Researching Mass Violence in the Former Yugoslavia

Abstract

When Sarajevo was besieged by Bosnian Serb forces, Serbs inside the city found themselves vulnerable to retributive violence due to their ethnic association with the aggressor. This paper explores the social and moral decline of Serb women from the status of “neighbor” to the status of “aggressor, ” two local terms that mirror the moral categories of the victim-perpetrator dichotomy. Through the narratives of Serb women, this paper explores how retributive violence became thinkable and permissible at the level of the apartment-block, and also how violence was sometimes averted.

Author

• Jelena Golubovic, Northeastern U