How is it that Josip was able to keep peace at the borders? Even though it was the governmental agreement to keep peace, different extremist factions on both sides wanted the fighting to break out. Every time there was a scuffle between Croats and Serbs/Yugoslav army, however, Josip would go to the border and personally diffuse the situation. Reinhold Niebuhr offers an excellent example of why Josip was able to go into a hostile situation and diffuse the eminent fighting. "The difference between the attitudes of individuals and those of groups has been frequently alluded to, the thesis being that group relations can never be as ethical as those which characterize individual relations it is obvious that human communities have greater difficulty that individuals in achieving ethical relationships." In the border situations, there were small groups of people becoming agitated with each other. As individuals, they might not have acted the way they did. If they were to see their opponent in a bar they most likely would not want to kill him. As individuals in a society, their actions were being affected by the propaganda and fear tactics of the government factions which secretly wanted them to fight without considering the humanity in each other. Josip Riehl-Kir was able to remind the men that they were not to act without considering the effects, that they were to act as moral and right men. He was able to do this exactly because, as Niebuhr noted, individual relationships are much more ethically tempered than group relations. Josip would go unarmed to the checkpoints and convince the men, one by one, from one individual to another, to keep the peace. The power of the individual face of morality was inserted by one man and the ethical weight of that relationship was stronger than the artillery with which the factions were attempting to incite violence. It is interesting to note, however, that in this situation the relationship between two men was precisely what eventually killed Josip. He was gunned down by a comrade to whom he had recently issued a gun to use for protection. When Josip arrived on the scene, this individual shot him to death. Although individual relations are usually more ethically tempered, the designs of a larger and self-centered group often come before the needs of an individual. The extremists wanted Josip out of the way, so they had him killed one day before he was to be transferred to Zagreb away from his impending doom.

If we look at Josip's actions we see not only a man doing his job, but a man who is fighting and resisting the spread of violence in Yugoslavia. In many ways he could be likened to Gandhi. Josip was using nonviolence to fight against the violence which more powerful groups wished to spread throughout the land. According to Martin Luther King, however, Niebuhr criticized pacifism, "He argued that there was no intrinsic moral difference between violent and nonviolent resistance. The social consequences of the two methods were different, he contended, but the differences were in degree rather than kind." I find it hard to agree with Niebuhr in any way about this, especially in light of Josip. First of all, it seems ludicrous to say that there is no intrinsic moral difference between the two type of resistance. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Are we to believe that Milosevic's military resistance to the threat of the Croats was just as moral as would have been a nonviolent means to a similar end? Are we to believe that Josip, in his resistance to violence, should have just shot the Serbs and called it a diffused situation because, as Niebuhr says, there is no moral difference between the two types of resistance? The answer to all of the above is NO, Niebuhr is WRONG! If Josip would have responded with violence he would have been no different than the leaders who we now know were amoral, egocentric and who will go down, hopefully, in the history books as those responsible for an attempted genocide. Perhaps what Josip best illustrates, however, is what Gandhi termed ahimsa, the practice of living one's life in a manner which seeks to avoid causing harm or damage to other living things.

"Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward himsa A votary of ahimsa therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of himsa."

It must have been extremely hard to keep trying to peacefully resolve the most potentially deadly situations. Josip put his own life on the line out of compassion and commitment to some moral principle which has a great affinity with ahimsa. Obviously Josip was not a Hindu or trying to employ the exact concept of ahimsa, but he was most definitely a votary for peace, which is the power that negates violence and destruction. The motivation for his actions was compassion for life and for other beings. His actions cannot be understood in a vacuum of individuality. If he were to act as an island, he would never have gone near the checkpoints to personally diffuse the situations. Josip cannot be accounted for in terms of individual elements alone, but there is a social component of his personality. The precise social component of Josip's personality was his exemplification of ahimsa, his compassion for other beings, despite the obvious and unnecessary danger to himself.

This paper was written by Jay Lins, an undergraduate sociology major at Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri for a course titled 'History of Social Thought' with Professor Keith Doubt. Send queries or comments to Keith Doubt, kdoubt@truman.edu

EXTRA!

Croatia frees Reihl-Kir's killer! See the whole text by clicking here!