TORTURE: ASIAN AND GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES | OCTOBER 2013
waiting in line, tilting to one side. The passengers are waiting at the side of the bus. They are shouting to get the attention of the soldiers. One soldier approaches the crowd and looks at the place on the road at which the crowd is pointing with a ‘hoj hoj hoj... !!!’ Then things start happening very fast. The soldier immediately turns and starts to run after the accelerating Mercedes, while he points and waves his arms, shouting loudly. His voice and gestures are received by the other soldiers who also start to shout to the soldiers further up the MCP: Private1: hey. stop him Private2: stop him Private3: STOP HIM. STOP HIM. [they run in the direction of the GD and the UNMIK Police car] Private1: STOP HIM!!! Private3: STOP HIM!!! Private1: HE HAD A GUN!!! [Agitated, shouting, screaming, & running] The acts changed from slow dialogue to routines dominated by rapid bodily movements and shouted orders. The soldiers’ bodily routines taking over were observed to be dominated by different feelings: aggression; joy; anxiety; quick bodily movements; excited shouting of simple orders. Everybody was shouting and pointing at the car. It all happened too fast for reflection. The acts which were performed seemed to come from pre-defined concepts, which were entangled with pre-trained routines. The acts started with a shouting out “Hey. Stop him”. This shouting contained both an appeal and an order. Appeal, because of the opening “Hey”, which is the typical friendly greeting, such as in: “Hey – remember to say hello to your sister!”, A hailing to the “friend” in the combat group
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followed by an unmistakable order: “STOP him”. As the situation quickly escalated the communication was reduced to just orders: “STOP HIM!!!” This reduction can be seen as the playing out of functions, roles, and ranks, which are all intertwined with specific trained acts, words, and understandings (Kold 2011). The exclusion of the friendly hailing is important, as it can influence the attitudes of the soldiers. The ordered functional shouting, excluded alternative thoughts and actions, which could have been less alarmist: “LET HIM go . We’ll find and talk to him later!!!” Interviews A central observation of the study was that the soldiers’ answers in the interviews differed quite a bit from the observed everyday behavior. This is a normal observation in both anthropological and sociological field studies. An interview or a survey (both discourses) will not be able to completely address the habituated military every-day life of the soldiers. “There is broad agreement among social scientists that people are often unable to reliably and validly perceive and report on the causes of their behavior. People are not fully aware of the causes of their behavior – not because of Freudian psychodynamics but simply because most cognitive processes occur below the level of awareness.” (MacCoun 2006: 649) So, when soldiers try to explain their behavior they do not do so on the basis of true introspection and repeatedly fail to detect experimental factors influencing their behavior. Thus, explanations are not based on introspective access but rather on a priori common sense and lay theories. (Ibid. 649) Contrary to the interviewed answers of the soldiers, it was observed that especially the