The futility of blood feuds

A blood feud or vendetta is a long-running argument or fight between parties—often, through guilt by association, groups of people, especially families or clans. Feuds tend to begin because one party (correctly or incorrectly) perceives itself to have been attacked, insulted or wronged by another. Intense feelings of resentment trigger the initial retaliation, which causes the other party to feel equally aggrieved and vengeful. The dispute is subsequently fuelled by a long-running cycle of retaliatory violence that goes on for years and years with many members of both families being murdered.

Originally, a vendetta was a blood feud between two families where kinsmen of the victim intended to avenge his or her death by killing either those responsible for the killing or some of their relatives. The responsibility to maintain the vendetta usually fell on the closest male relative to whoever has been killed or wronged, but other members of the family could take the mantle as well. If the culprit had disappeared or was already dead, the vengeance could extend to other male relatives.

Blood feuds are reputedly still practiced in some areas in Corsica and Italy (especially Sardinia, Campania, Sicily and Calabria), in Crete (Greece), among Kurdish clans in Iraq and Turkey, in northern Albania, among Pashtuns in Afghanistan, among Somali clans, over land in Nigeria, in India (a caste-related feuds among rival Hindu groups), between rival tribes in the north-east Indian state of Assam, among rival clans in China and Philippines, among the Arab Bedouins and Arab tribes inhabiting the mountains of Yemen and between Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq, in southern Ethiopia, among the highland tribes of New Guinea, in Svaneti, in the mountainous areas of Dagestan, many northern areas of Georgia and Azerbaijan, a number of republics of the northern Caucasus and essentially among Chechen teips where those seeking retribution do not accept or respect the local law enforcement authority.

Let me give you an example of a modern-day ongoing blood feud that is taking place in Albania.

Christian Luli, a soft-spoken Albanian 17-year-old, has spent the past 10 years imprisoned inside his family's small, frugal house, fearful he will be shot dead if he walks outside the front door. To pass the time, he plays video games and sketches houses. Since he is unable to attend high school, Christian's reading level is that of a 12-year-old's. A girlfriend is out of the question. He would like to become an architect, but he despairs of a future locked inside, staring at the same four walls. Christian's misfortune is to have been born the son of a father who killed a man in this poor northern region of Albania, where the ancient ritual of the blood feud still holds sway.

Under the Kanun, an Albanian code of behaviour that has been passed on for more than 500 years, "blood must be paid with blood," with a victim's family authorized to avenge a slaying by killing any of the killer's male relatives. The Kanun's influence is waning, but it served as the country's constitution for centuries, with rules governing a variety of issues including property ownership, marriage and murder.

The National Reconciliation Committee, an Albanian non-profit organization that works to eliminate the practice of blood feuds, estimates 20,000 people have been ensnared by blood feuds since they resurfaced after the collapse of communism in 1991, with 9,500 people killed and nearly 1,000 children deprived of schooling because they are locked inside their homes.

By tradition, any man old enough to wield a hunting rifle is considered a fair target for vengeance, making 17 male members of Christian's family vulnerable. They, too, are stuck in their homes. The sole restriction is that the boundaries of the family home must not be breached. Women and children also have immunity, though some, like Christian, who physically matured at an early age, begin their confinement as boys. Relatives of the victim are usually the avengers, though some families outsource the killing to professional contract killers.

This phenomenon has been particularly pronounced in Albania, a desperately poor country struggling to uphold the rule of law after decades of Stalinist dictatorship.

Blood feuds had all but disappeared here during the 40-year rule of Enver Hoxha, Albania's Communist dictator, who outlawed the practice, sometimes burying alive those who disobeyed in the coffins of their victims. But legal experts in Albania say the feuds erupted again after the fall of communism ushered in a new period of lawlessness.

Nearly a thousand men involved in feuds have escaped abroad, some of them applying for asylum. But even then, dozens of people have been hunted down outside Albania and killed by avenging families.

Ismet Elezi, a professor of criminal law at the University of Tirana, who advises the government and police on how to tackle the problem, said recent changes to Albania's penal code – including sentences of 25 years to life in prison for those who kill in a blood feud and stiff penalties for individuals who threaten to retaliate – had helped diminish the practice. Yet he noted some still gave greater credence to the Kanun than to the criminal justice system, often with devastating social consequences.

The younger generation is no longer looking to the older generation's codes of behaviour. However, blood feuds are still causing misery because the men stuck inside their homes can't work, the children can't go to school and entire families are cut off from the outside world."

Alexander Kola, a mediator who works to resolve blood feuds, said the most common cause of feuds is disputes over property or land. But feuds can erupt from seemingly minor affronts. He recalled a recent case in which a dozen men had been forced indoors after a male relative killed a shopkeeper who refused to sell his child an ice-cream cone. In another case, a feud exploded when a sheep grazed on a neighbour's land, precipitating a deadly fight.

Albanian sociologists said the feuds had inverted traditional gender roles in rural Albania, as women became the breadwinners of the family while the men were forced to stay home and do the housework.

Christian's mother, Vitoria, 37, said she had ordered him to remain indoors from the age of 7 after her husband and his brother killed a man in their village following a drunken argument. She said her other son, Klingsman, 7, was attending school but would soon be forced to join his brother's life of confinement. Her husband and brother-in-law are serving 20-year prison sentences for murder and yet, the family has no guarantee that the male members of their family won’t be hunted down and murdered. A mediator was asked to try to seek forgiveness from the other family, but to no avail.

Mutual vendetta may develop into a vicious circle of further killings, retaliation, counterattacks, and all-out warfare that can end in the mutual extinction of both families. Often the original cause is forgotten, and feuds continue simply because it is perceived that there has always been grounds to get even for some past insult or whatever.

Unquestionably, blood feuds has to be one of the stupidest forms of behavour that Mankind has ever indulged in. It seems to me that what these feuding families should do is have a third party mediate between the families and settle the complaints amicably so that all members of the families can walk amongst each other without being murdered.

Of course, this requires the use of their brains and quite frankly, I strongly suspect that those who advocate blood feuds in this modern era are rather shy of brain matter.