The Serb Volunteer Guard was a Serbian anti-communist guerrilla organization and 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." 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 Yugoslav Wars in Bosnia and Croatia. After the war broke out in the former Yugoslav Republic of Croatia in the autumn of 1991 and in the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992, Arkan and his units moved to attack different territories in these countries. In Croatia, Arkan's Tigers fought in various locales in Eastern Slavonia. The SDG, under the command of Arkan, massacred hundreds of people in eastern Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina while in the early ethnic cleansing campaigns in eastern Bosnia this unit had a major role. 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. 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.

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:

Prominent members

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.

In popular culture

Books