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Serb Volunteer Guard
Serb Volunteer Guard
Српска добровољачка гарда
	Insignia of the Serb Volunteer Guard
Founded	1990
Disbanded	1996
Allegiance	Serbia; Serbian Krajina; Republika Srpska
Type	Paramilitary
Role	Anti-tank warfare; Close-quarters combat; Counterinsurgency; Crowd control; HUMINT; Guerrilla warfare; Patrolling; Raiding; Reconnaissance; Security checkpoint; Urban warfare
Size	500–1,000
Garrison/HQ	Erdut
Nickname(s)	Arkan's Tigers; Arkan's men
Colours	Red; Blue; White;
March	Arkan’s Heroes
Mascot(s)	Tiger
Engagements	Yugoslav Wars
Commanders
1st Commander	Željko Ražnatović
2nd Commander	Borislav Pelević
3rd Commander	Milorad Ulemek
4th Commander	Zvezdan Jovanović
Insignia
Colours

The Serb Volunteer Guard^[a] was a Serbian volunteer paramilitary unit founded and led by Željko Ražnatović (better known as "Arkan"). It fought in the Croatian War and the Bosnian War during the Yugoslav Wars, and was responsible for numerous war crimes and massacres.

History and organization

The SDG was created on 11 October 1990 by twenty members of the Red Star Belgrade football club Ultra group Delije Sever. The group was under the command of the Territorial Defense, a regular military in charge of the territories of Croatia populated predominantly by Serbs during the first half of the 1990s. According to historian Tony Judt, the group was one of several irregular units which "were little more than organized bands of thugs and criminals, armed by Belgrade."^[3]

The SDG set up their headquarters and training camp in a former military facility in Erdut. It saw action from mid-1991 to late 1995, initially in the Vukovar region of Croatia. It was supplied and equipped from the reserves of the Serbian police force during the War in Croatia and Bosnia.

After war broke out in the former Yugoslav republic of Croatia in the autumn of 1991 and in Bosnia in April 1992, Arkan and his units moved to attack different territories in these countries. In Croatia, the Tigers fought in various locales in Eastern Slavonia.

Paramilitary units are responsible for some of the most brutal aspects of ethnic cleansing. Two of the units that have played a major role in the ethnic cleansing campaign in BiH, the Chetniks associated with Vojislav Šešelj and the Tigers associated with Željko Ražnatović (Arkan), have been active in the Republic of Serbia as well...Arkan's Tigers have staged military training exercises allegedly designed to intimidate Albanian residents in Kosovo.^[4]
— Report of United Nations Commission on ethnic cleansing in Bosnia

The SDG, under the command of Arkan, massacred hundreds of people in eastern Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina^[5] while in the early ethnic cleansing campaigns in eastern Bosnia this unit had a major role.^[6] In autumn 1995, Arkan's troops fought in the area of Banja Luka, Sanski Most and Prijedor where they were routed. Arkan personally led most war actions, and rewarded his most efficient officers and soldiers with ranks, medals and eventually the products of lootings.

The SDG was officially disbanded in April 1996, and all of its members were ordered to join the Yugoslav Army.^[7] Besides Arkan, a notable member of the SDG was his right-hand man, Colonel Nebojša Djordjević, who was murdered in late 1996. Another notable member was Milorad Ulemek, who is now serving a 40-year sentence for his involvement in the assassination of Serbia's pro-Western prime minister Zoran Đinđić in 2003.^[8]

War crimes charges

Željko Ražnatović was indicted in 1997 by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for his command of the Guard, as the unit was allegedly responsible for numerous crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and violations of the laws or customs of war, including active participation in the ethnic cleansing in Bijeljina and Zvornik in 1992.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia charged the SDG, under the command or supervision of Željko Ražnatović with the following:^[9]

Forcibly detaining approximately thirty non-Serb men and one woman, without food or water, in an inadequately ventilated boiler room of approximately five square metres (54 sq ft) in size.
Transporting twelve non-Serb men from Sanski Most to an isolated location in the village of Trnova, where they shot and killed eleven of the men and critically wounded the twelfth.
Transporting approximately sixty-seven non-Serb men and one woman from Sanski Most, Šehovci, and Pobrijeze to an isolated location in the village of Sasina and shooting them, killing sixty-five of the captives and wounding two survivors.
Forcibly detaining approximately thirty-five Muslim Bosnian men in an inadequately ventilated boiler room around five square metres (54 sq ft), beating them while also depriving them of food and water, resulting in the deaths of two men.^[10]
The rape of a Muslim Bosnian woman on a bus outside the Hotel Sanus in Sanski Most.

Prominent members

Željko Ražnatović – SDG Commander
Borislav Pelević – Serbian presidential candidate in 2002 and 2004
Milorad Ulemek – JSO Commander
Zvezdan Jovanović – JSO Commander
Mihajlo Ulemek – SDG Colonel and media personality^[11]
Srđan Golubović - Trance DJ (not to be mistaken with a film director of the same name)

Many of the former members of "Arkan Tigers" are prominent figures in Serbia, maintaining close ties between each other and with Russian nationalist organisations. Jugoslav Simić and Svetozar Pejović posed with Russian Night Wolves, Ceca (Arkan's widow) performed for Vladimir Putin during his visit in Serbia, Srđan Golubović is a popular trance performer known as "DJ Max" and was identified by Rolling Stone as the SDG soldier kicking dead bodies of a Bosniak family in Bijeljina on a photo from 1992.^[12]

In popular culture

in the 2001 film Behind Enemy Lines (loosely based on the story of pilot Scott O'Grady during the Bosnian War), the unit appears as the main antagonists, led by the fictional Miroslav Lokar.
In the 2008 Serbian film The Tour, a group of Serbian actors go on a tour in war-torn Bosnia. Among other factions, they meet an unnamed paramilitary unit wearing insignia similar to those of the Serb Volunteer Guard. The unit's commander (played by Sergej Trifunović) is clearly based on Arkan.
In the 2012 Japanese anime Jormungand, one of the antagonists is Dragan Nikolaevich, commander of the Balkan Dragons. His looks and even his biography bear resounding resemblance to those of Arkan.
The 2012 film Twice Born is based on a novel by Margaret Mazzantini set in the background of Bosnian War.
In fourteenth episode of the first season of the crime procedural Law & Order: Criminal Intent, "Homo Homini Lupis", the suspect of the investigation is accused of raping a young girl. In the course of the detectives' interrogation, they identify the suspect as a former member of the volunteer guard due to a tiger tattoo on his back and attempt to establish a pattern of behavior by pointing to the war crimes that occurred in Bosnia.

Notes

^ Serbian: Српска добровољачка гарда, Srpska dobrovoljačka garda, SDG. Also known as Arkan's Tigers (Serbian: Арканови тигрови, romanized: Arkanovi Tigrovi) or Arkan's men (Serbian: Аркановци, romanized: Arkanovci).