Police Cordons, suicides, tears: Enacting posttraumatic stress disorder among war veterans in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Abstract
In 2004 a group of former combatants of the Army of the Republic Bosnia and Herzegovina treated at the psychiatric clinic in the city of Tuzla established an organization to unite war veterans suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the region and to mobilize the traumatized veterans from the 1990s war on the state level. Their main moral and political claims have represented a struggle for the “Trauma Center” (that would exclusively offer them and their families social and medical assistance) and against the current legislation that restricts a right on veterans’ benefits based on PTSD.
In this paper I discuss a particular way how PTSD is done “visible, audible, tangible, and knowable” (Mol) among these Bosnian war veterans. Focusing on “Nermin’s” appearance during a conference on PTSD held by the organization in 2007 I argue that PTSD is located in the relationship between the war veterans and the “public” (javnost) as the enactment of tendency to violence and persistence of suffering both of which cry out particular moral uncertainties present within Bosnian postwar society.
Yet this is only one of a few PTSDs in contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. In conclusion I discuss multiple enactments of PTSD and their possible implications for the debate about trauma and veteranhood in the Bosnian postwar realities.