Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Polity on the Brink (Postcommunist States and Nations)

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA Emerging from communism in the early 1990s, the new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was immedia...

Author: Franci Friedman

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BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

Emerging from communism in the early 1990s, the new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was immediately embroiled in devastating ethnonationalist conﬂict. Now an international protectorate, the choices of its elites may well propel Bosnia either to a stable future, integrated into an expanding European entity, or to a future ﬁlled with insecurity, conﬂict, and adversity. This volume assesses current conditions in Bosnia, as well as the prospects for stability in a country torn between nationalistic elites on the one hand and the desires of important regional actors for control of Bosnia on the other, with a fractious international community overseeing the matter. Friedman controversially denies that the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution are a necessary product of ancient ethnic hatreds, contending that Bosnia and Herzegovina was once the quintessential multiethnic, multireligious community and could be again. Containing chapters on the country’s history, economics, international relations, and politics, this book will provide social scientists with an accessible overview of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina. Francine Friedman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ball State University, USA.

POSTCOMMUNIST STATES AND NATIONS Books in the series

Volume 1 BELARUS A denationalised nation David R. Marples Volume 2 ARMENIA At the crossroads Joseph R. Masih and Robert O. Krikorian Volume 3 POLAND The conquest of history George Sanford Volume 4 KYRGYZSTAN Central Asia’s island of democracy? John Anderson Volume 5 UKRAINE Movement without change, change without movement Mara Dyczok Volume 6 THE CZECH REPUBLIC A nation of velvet Rick Fawn Volume 7 UZBEKISTAN Transition to authoritarianism on the silk road Neil J. Melvin

Volume 8 ROMANIA The unﬁnished revolution Steven D. Roper Volume 9 LITHUANIA Stepping westward Thomas Lane Volume 10 LATVIA The challenges of change Artis Pabriks and Aldis Purs Volume 11 ESTONIA Independence and European integration David J. Smith Volume 12 BULGARIA The uneven transition Vesselin Dimitrov Volume 13 RUSSIA A state of uncertainty Neil Robinson Volume 14 SLOVAKIA The escape from invisibility Karen Henderson Volume 15 THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST The last frontier? Sue Davis Volume 16 CROATIA Between Europe and the Balkans William Bartlett Volume 17 BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA A polity on the brink Francine Friedman

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA A polity on the brink

Francine Friedman

First published 2004 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2004 Francine Friedman All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Friedman, Francine, 1948– Bosnia and Herzegovina : a polity on the brink / Francine Friedman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Bosnia and Hercegovina – Politics and government – 1992 – 2. Nationalism – Bosnia and Hercegovina. 3. Bosnia and Hercegovina – History – Partition, 1995. I. Title. DR1752.F75 2004 949.74203–dc22 2003015884

ISBN 0-203-49507-1 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-57043-X (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-27435-4 (Print Edition)

To the memory of my beloved mother, Muriel Ruth Teitelbaum Edelman z” l

CONTENTS

List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgments List of abbreviations

1

xi xiii xv xvi

Introduction

1

The roots of conﬂict

5

The setting 5 The early years 6 The Ottoman period 8 The Austro-Hungarian period 10 Bosnia in the First World War 12 The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 13 The interwar period 14 The Second World War 18 Communist domination 21 The economic decline of Yugoslavia 27 2

The dissolution of Yugoslavia

34

War in Slovenia 35 War in Croatia 38 War in Bosnia and Herzegovina 41 International involvement in Bosnia 45 3

Post-cold war domestic politics and political prospects The Dayton Peace Accords 60 Ethnic-based representation and elections 72 ix

59

CONTENTS

War criminals and The Hague 76 The media 77 Refugee return 78 IPTF 82 Brcˇko 83 Role of religion within the political system 83 Corruption of the political and social system 84 4

Bosnia’s economic performance and outlook

92

Effects of the war 92 Forecasting Bosnia’s economic future 93 Bosnia’s economic position 94 Privatization 99 The ﬁnancial sector 99 The environment 100 The rural–urban dimension and industrialization 101 Corruption 103 International ﬁnancial assistance to Bosnia 104 Republika Srpska 108 Herceg-Bosna 108 Economic prospects 109 5

Bosnia’s future prospects: international relations and inter-national relations

111

Bosnia in the post-cold war era 112 United Nations 115 Bosnia and the Western allies 115 Bosnia’s relations with its neighbors 118 Bosnia’s relations with Muslim states 119 Inter-nationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina 120 Nationalism 120 National identity in Bosnia 121 Concluding thoughts 123 Notes Bibliography Index

126 176 186

x

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 3.1 Entity government structure in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

63

Tables 1.1 1.2 1.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8

Bosnian population, 1815–1910 Urban population of Bosnia Bosnian population, 1921 census Bosnia’s GDP, 1997–2000 Bosnia’s GDP/capita, 1997–2000 Bosnia’s foreign trade balance, 1998–2001 Federation and RS foreign trade balance, 1998–2001 Bosnia’s foreign trade with neighboring countries, 2001 Bosnia’s foreign trade with non-neighboring countries, 2001 Bosnian trade position, 1998–2001 Bosnians in the European Union states

xi

9 9 15 95 95 97 97 97 98 99 108

PREFACE

The viability of Bosnia as a legitimate and sovereign state is widely questioned. Bosnia’s economy and social life have been devastated by war. Differential rates of natural increase and rural–urban and inter-state migration have inﬂuenced, and not always positively, Bosnia’s social structure. Its political life has been dominated by nationalistic parties held in check by external international actors. This volume assesses the current conditions in Bosnia as well as future prospects for stability in a country torn between nationalistic elites on the one hand and the desires of important regional actors (Croatia and Serbia, in particular) for control of Bosnia on the other, with a fractious international community overseeing the whole matter. Composing this book has been difﬁcult for many reasons, both personal and professional, not least of which is observation of the exceedingly slow progress made by Bosnia toward becoming a viable, democratic nationstate. However, the challenge did bring some pleasure, as I have been able to discuss Bosnia with many insightful and knowledgeable people, whose views and perspectives inform these pages, both overtly as well as subliminally. A number of people have been particularly generous with their time and their ideas: James Gow read and commented on early portions and versions of the manuscript. I have also beneﬁted from discussions about various aspects of this volume with John B. Allcock, Robin Alison Remington, Mustafa Imamovic´, Sˇac´ir Filandra, Jacques Paul Klein, Haris Silajdzˇic´, Robert Donia, Dubravko Lovrenovi, Jakob Finci, John Clark, Tadej Labernik, and Boris Tihi. I alone am responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation in this book. My publisher, Routledge, has been most tolerant by granting me extensions to the deadline for ﬁnishing this volume. I am very grateful. Part of the research for this book was conducted at the Library of Congress and was facilitated by the staff of the European Reading Room. Finally, moral support was provided during the writing and research of this book by my family, without whose encouragement and willingness to turn a blind eye to my acts of omission on the home front would have xiii

PREFACE

made this endeavor impossible. Especially important to me was the enthusiasm of my mother, who passed away shortly after I returned from a trip to Bosnia, and who never wavered in her conﬁdence in me. I dedicate this book to her memory with my deepest love, gratitude, and admiration.

xiv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The publishers and author would like to thank The Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe for granting us permission to reprint Figure 3.1, which originally appeared at http://www.rec.org/REC/Programs/REREP/BERCEN/PDF/CountryReports/ Bosnia/Annex2.pdf.

xv

ABBREVIATIONS

ARBiH AVNOJ CFSP COMECON CPY DPA EBRD EC EU FRY GAO HDZ HR HVO ICFY ICG ICTY IEBL IFOR IMF IMRO IPTF JMO JNA JNS KM LCBiH

Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia Common foreign and security policy Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Communist Party of Yugoslavia Dayton Peace Accords European Bank for Reconstruction and Development European Community European Union Federal Republic of Yugoslavia General Accounting Ofﬁce (US government) Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union) High Representative Hrvatsko vijece odbrane (Croatian Defense Council) International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia International Crisis Group International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia Inter-entity Boundary Line Implementation Force International Monetary Fund Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization International Police Task Force Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija (Yugoslav Muslim Organization) Jugoslavenska narodna armija (Yugoslav People’s Army) Jugoslavenska nacionalna stranka (Yugoslav National Party) Konvertibilna marka League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina xvi

ABBREVIATIONS

LCY NDH OHR OSCE PIC RS RSK SAO SCMM SDA SDP SDS SFOR SNSD SRT UNESCO UNHCHR UNHCR UNMBiH UNPROFOR USIA VRS WEU ZOS

League of Communists of Yugoslavia Nezavisna drzˇava Hrvatska (Independent State of Croatia) Ofﬁce of the High Representative Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Peace Implementation Council Republika Srpska Republika Srpska Krajina Srpska autonomna oblast (Serbian Autonomous Province) Standing Committee on Military Matters Stranka demokratske akcije (Party of Democratic Action) Socijaldemokratska partija Bosne i Hercegovine (Social Democratic Party) Srpska demokratska stranka (Serbian Democratic Party) Stabilization Force Stranka nezavisnih socijaldemokrata Republika Srpske (Alliance of Independent Social Democrats) Srpska Radio Television United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural Organization United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights United Nations High Commission for Refugees United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina United Nations Protection Force United States Information Agency Vojna Republike Srpske (Army of Republika Srpska) Western European Union Zone of separation

xvii

INTRODUCTION

The Corcyraeans were engaged in butchering those of their fellow citizens whom they regarded as their enemies: and although the crime imputed was that of attempting to put down the democracy, some were slain for private hatred, others by their debtors because of the moneys owed to them. Death thus raged in every shape: and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go: sons were killed by their fathers and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it . . . Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War (III.81)1 A tree is the product of its seed. Today is rooted in yesterday. In the Balkans, that yesterday is at least as important as today; for some it is more real than tomorrow. Robin Alison Remington2

For many who have observed the travails of the Balkan area, the tragedy of the Yugoslav wars3 of dissolution in the 1990s can be explained by the concept of ancient ethnic hatreds.4 Thus, former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli’s description of the area continues to resonate with them: No language can describe adequately the condition of that large part of the Balkan peninsula – Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina and other provinces. Political intrigues, constant rivalries, a total absence of public spirit. Hatred of all races, animosities of rival religions and absence of any controlling power.5 That attitude signiﬁes a belief that the history of this area is replete with periods of ethnic conﬂagration that simply culminated at the end of the twentieth century in the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia. Other analysts suggest structural weaknesses. One example is represented by the “security dilemma”: A state must amass enough power to become secure; 1

INTRODUCTION

however, when that power becomes so great that it threatens the security of others, the state’s security may in turn become endangered, as its enemies begin to fear its strength.6 The theme underlying this book differs signiﬁcantly from that oftrepeated deterministic argument that Yugoslavia was doomed from the outset because its ethnic groups were always basically antagonistic. Here it is noted that historically Serbs, Croats, and Muslims sometimes fought on the same side to repel foreign invaders7 and that certain regions of Yugoslavia were historically socially and religiously diverse. Thus, the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution are not necessarily a product of ancient ethnic hatreds. What hatreds there may have been were simply a product of twentieth-century tensions that were continuously stoked. Instead, in the ambiguity of the post-communist world,8 Yugoslavia was a victim of groups of greedy political and economic elites who were able, by means of the cynical manipulation of the media, to incite popular insecurities and fears.9 Stuart J. Kaufman put it a little differently: “War results from a process in which extremist politics and insecurity mutually reinforce each other in an escalatory spiral.”10 The result was that otherwise unassuming individuals were mobilized to engage in such nefarious deeds as ethnic cleansing.11 Proponents of the ancient ethnic hatreds idea seem to suggest that Yugoslavia’s multiethnic, multireligious populations were simply biding their time until the communist overlord that suppressed their ability to live aggressively nationalistic lives passed away, and they could then seek revenge on the “others” among whom they had been forced to dwell. However, despite its socialist underpinnings, Yugoslavia had spent much of the post-Second World War era cultivating relations with not only the communist and the capitalist blocs, but also with the underdeveloped countries who became part of the non-aligned bloc. Yugoslavia was a relatively porous society with open borders since 1955 and a fairly accessible economy because of its loan negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Community (EC, now the European Union or EU), and other international economic agents. Therefore, Yugoslavia seemed to be a singular success story in Eastern Europe and should only have had increased possibilities for prosperity. Instead, in 1991, Yugoslavia began to implode as political elites encouraged ethnonationalism “by a mixture of historical imagining and current discontent, exacerbated by memories of the suppression of religious and ethnic expression under communist rule.”12 Furthermore, the end of the cold war, which culminated in the collapse of the Soviet Union, had a negative impact on Yugoslavia in that one of Yugoslavia’s strengths, its important strategic position for both the East and the West, was nulliﬁed. In place of Yugoslavia appeared ﬁve new countries, to date, one of which was forced to ﬁght for its very existence. This volume is about that imper2

INTRODUCTION

iled country, Bosnia and Herzegovina, which arose from the agony of the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia) is often used as an example of the primordial theory of ethnicity since perhaps the most shocking of the recent conﬂicts occurred there. The argument in this book, however, is that it was the very diversity of Bosnia that made it a target of those politicians who needed conﬂict in the region to solidify their positions in power after the collapse of communism. Bosnia became a target because of its illdeﬁned ethnic identity and because the Yugoslav disputes could more easily take place upon its multiethnic and multireligious stage.13 This book discusses the external and internal political and economic forces that are shaping the future of contemporary Bosnia. The sub-title of this volume, “A Polity on the Brink,” thus refers to the possibility that Bosnia may again become “an unbreakable weave of religious and cultural–civilizational differences of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism”14 – or not. This was not an easy volume to complete, because one must try to do justice with a snapshot view to a situation that lends itself more easily to a time-lapse series. Nevertheless, the attempt had to be made with the results using the following structure: Chapter 1 focuses on Bosnia’s historical foundations. As the thoughts that open this section suggested, contemporary Bosnia cannot be understood without some comprehension of the impact that its earlier history has had on the dynamics of the present-day state. Bosnia has not had an independent existence since the medieval era. After that period, it was always a part of some larger entity, during which time mostly nonconﬂictual interactions existed among the various peoples of Bosnia. It would be well to recall that no ethnically motivated armed conﬂicts arose within Yugoslavia until the 1990s (except, of course, those occasioned by the external interventions of fascists during the Second World War), and only then under the constant pressure of a ruthless and insidious media campaign that played on primal fears that had little factual basis. These considerations make imperative, then, an overview of Bosnia under imperial rule. In particular, the historical tensions between the Serbs and Croats over their own respective borders, as well as distrust stirred up by outside powers for their own ends, are relevant. Chapter 2 scrutinizes the collapse of Yugoslavia at the end of the twentieth century. It focuses in particular on Bosnia’s subsequent embroilment in a conﬂict featuring ethnic cleansing, wholesale forcible population movements, and a reluctant and often impotent international community attempting to ensure that the conﬂict did not spread across the borders of the South Slav state and infect vulnerable minority populations in other areas of Europe. Chapter 3 discusses Bosnia’s domestic politics, particularly the prospects for success of the contemporary federal structure established 3

INTRODUCTION

under the Constitution agreed upon as Annex IV of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, more popularly known as the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA). It discusses the issues that could unite – or divide – Bosnia, such as elections, refugee returns, structure of the government and armed forces, among others. Chapter 4 addresses the postwar economic landscape, including a consideration of the contemporary economic outlook of Bosnia in light of the international involvement in its reconstruction. It brings up to date the effects dealt with in Chapter 1 of the deleterious economic situation of the former Yugoslavia prior to its collapse and Bosnia’s role within Yugoslavia’s economic structure. These are important themes that help to explain the vulnerability of Yugoslavia in the post-communist era and the increased ethnic tension that economic stagnation produced. Chapter 5 analyzes the Janus-faced future of Bosnia. On the one hand, Bosnia must navigate carefully in its quest for international legitimacy and secure borders. The continued contradictory demands and exigencies of the major European actors and the United States, so obvious during the recent war, still complicate Bosnia’s immediate and long-term future. Thus, the ﬁrst part of this chapter explores the external inﬂuences on contemporary Bosnia in its search for a new, less precarious existence in the twenty-ﬁrst century. But Bosnia’s inhabitants hold various ethnic identities. Therefore, while seeking international legitimacy, Bosnian elites also continue to explore the “appeal of separating into ethnic nation-states that were incompatible with geography.”15 The second part of this chapter then reiterates that the root of the ultranationalism that led to the atrocities of the recent war lay in the exploitation by nationalistic political leaders of the various ethnic groups within Yugoslavia. The particular enemy of the nationalist forces was heretofore multiethnic Bosnia. Furthermore, as will have been argued in the preceding chapters, the tragedy that befell Bosnia, as well as Yugoslavia as a whole, was enabled by a number of economic, political, and international factors that were largely present in, and even precipitated by, the former communist system and state structures and that coincided most unfortunately in the 1990s. When these factors were added to the trumpeting of “ancient ethnic hatreds” by the indigenous nationalists, the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia ensued. These two competing impulses continue to bedevil Bosnia as it seeks its place in the postwar era. The choices of its elites may well propel Bosnia either to a stable future, integrated into an expanding European entity, or to a future ﬁlled with insecurity, conﬂict, and adversity. In this respect, then, Bosnia is a polity on the brink.

4

1 THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

Geopolitics, historical happenstance, and brutal realpolitik have shaped Bosnia. However, in order to understand Bosnia’s history and its signiﬁcance for its contemporary situation, one must remember at least two things. The ﬁrst thing to recall about Bosnia – about the whole South Slav experience, as a matter of fact – is that the ancestors of its major actors, the Serbs, Croats, Muslims, and others, entered the Balkans in about the sixth century, and at that time they were not differentiated into those various ethnic groups. History had yet to sunder their connections or to create national divisions among them. During the medieval period it was difﬁcult to differentiate Serbs from Croats, although contemporary politicians and intelligentsia have tried to do just that in order to justify their claims to certain territories. Only in the nineteenth century would such terms as “Serb” or “Croat” take on greater signiﬁcance to the populations to whom these terms applied than their local or regional identities.1 The vagaries of history would gradually differentiate them in regard to certain linguistic niceties, religion, and social custom, but the South Slavs seem to have originated from the same general area of the world and thus were not mutually exclusive aliens to each other. The second important key to understanding Bosnia is that after a rather short medieval interregnum of independence, indeed of Bosnian empire, and until the last decade of the twentieth century, it has been the subject of one or another greater power: the Ottoman Empire; Austria-Hungary; the Serbs, who dominated the ﬁrst Yugoslavia; the Croatian fascists in the Second World War; the communists in the post-Second World War era; and currently the international community, as a protectorate. While Susan Woodward has observed that “having a history of overlords is not the same as needing” an overlord,2 nevertheless, Bosnia has not experienced much autonomy since that early period.

The setting Bosnia’s geographical setting has had an immense inﬂuence on its historical and socio-political development. The area of the former Yugoslavia 5

THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

was approximately the size of the state of Wyoming. While the territory of what was Yugoslavia has been in the crosshairs of history since its ﬁrst habitation, no area has been more so than its “heart,” Bosnia and Herzegovina, although at the time of this writing Macedonia is beginning to come into contention again for that dubious honor. Bosnia has been threatened by conquest throughout its history and has been fought over by competing empires spouting opposing ideologies or nationalist aims. Its forbidding mountainous terrain successfully deterred some would-be conquerors and repelled the less-hardy ideologues and proselytizers, thus marking Bosnia as a transitional area. However, it was also long an economically active region, even from Roman times, which made it a prize possession. Mining of copper, lead, arsenic, silver and quicksilver, salt, and especially iron ore dominated the economy, although the manufacture of knives, swords, and leather goods and the fur trade constituted Bosnia’s production. Sarajevo was then an internationally known trade center.3 As an important European continental gateway to the Middle East,4 the Balkans,5 nevertheless, were considered somewhat peripheral to Western Europe. However, with the collapse of communism, the geopolitics of the region exerted strong inﬂuence on Yugoslavia, marking it as a “shatterbelt.”6 Bosnia, in particular, was affected. As was wryly observed, “When the Berlin Wall came down, it fell on Bosnia-Herzegovina.”7 Thus, European politics have inﬂuenced Bosnia, just as Bosnian politics have inﬂuenced Europe. As a matter of fact, as the coming pages will illustrate, one might easily agree with John B. Allcock that the Balkans have, throughout history, been the stage upon which European countries have played out their larger conﬂicts.8

The early years The early South Slavs migrated throughout the Balkan Peninsula, possibly from Iran (as indicated by linguists studying their tribal names).9 They farmed the land, creating small organized communities, and then increasingly larger entities, intermarrying with the local population. Christianity was introduced into the Balkan Peninsula beginning around the seventh century, but only in the ninth century did missionaries from Rome succeed in converting the indigenous inhabitants of what we now know as the Croatian lands. Missionaries from Byzantium, such as Cyril and Methodius, successfully preached the gospel to the lands we currently call Serbia also during the ninth century. However, because of its mountainous, and, thus, fairly impenetrable areas, it is unlikely that either of the rites represented by the missionaries was able to supplant totally the pagan religious practices of remoter areas of Bosnia. While the region lay between the two major areas of missionary work and likely produced many devoted 6

THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

Catholics and Orthodox in Bosnia, Bosnia’s faith was probably not ﬁrmly linked with either Rome or Constantinople. During the early Middle Ages, however, Bosnia gradually drew closer to the Catholic Church. Franciscans were permitted to set up a Bosnian mission, and most rulers of Bosnia were at least nominally Catholic. Nevertheless, it appears that even at this time a proportion of the Bosnian population was following a rite that could not be considered precisely Catholic. As a matter of fact, Hungary continued to declaim the Bosnian Church as heretical, using what it deemed to be Bosnia’s ﬂawed religious rites as an excuse for launching periodic crusades to try to incorporate Bosnia ﬁrmly into its possession. According to John V.A. Fine, Jr.,10 the Bosnian Church appears to have been a religious organization that reﬂected the imperfect missionary work in the remoter parts of Bosnia, although many scholars argue that the predecessors of today’s Bosnian Muslims were instead members of a heretical group known as the Bogomils.11 Bosnia experienced a succession of external rulers from the middle of the tenth through the late twelfth centuries. Byzantium, Charlemagne’s Franks, Croatia, Montenegro (then called Duklja), Serbia, and Hungary all brieﬂy conquered parts of Bosnia but left little impression on the local populace. However, at the end of the twelfth century, Hungarian control over Bosnia was ﬁrmly established in the person of a ban or governor. This ban, however, served at the pleasure of the Hungarian monarch less and less and became increasingly independent. Herzegovina (Hum), under Serbian rule for a large part of the medieval era, was acquired by Bosnia’s Ban Stephen Kotromanic´ (1322–53) in the mid-fourteenth century. He opened copper, silver, gold, and lead mines there, which helped to make Bosnia an economically viable unit. Bosnia’s independence was solidiﬁed when in 1377 Ban Tvrtko (1353–91) proclaimed himself King of Bosnia and Serbia (although he and subsequent Bosnian rulers controlled very little Serbian territory). During Tvrtko’s reign, Bosnia expanded southward toward the Adriatic and became a very powerful state within the region, taking advantage of Hungarian and Serbian weakness in the face of continued Ottoman onslaughts. However, Tvrtko’s death spelled the end of Bosnia’s strength and independence. While Bosnia did not dissolve into statelets, the unity that had been forged previously was lost. This meant that Bosnia was easy prey for those who wished to dominate it. In the early ﬁfteenth century the Ottoman Turks began to nibble at the edges of the Bosnian lands. Having defeated the Serbs in the late fourteenth century, the Turks were able to extend their inﬂuence into Bosnia relatively easily. Finally, in 1463 Bosnia fell to the Ottoman Empire, introducing a third religion, Islam, into the Bosnian mix of Catholicism and Orthodoxy.12 7

THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

The Ottoman period The medieval Bosnian state had enjoyed long periods of autonomy. When it was conquered by the Ottoman Turks in the ﬁfteenth century, it was initially only loosely incorporated into the imperial structure. Bosnia’s borders remained relatively stable as a province of the Ottoman Empire.13 The structure of the Ottoman Empire exerted major inﬂuence on the development of Bosnia in general, as well as on the relationship among its various inhabitants in particular. The largely rural Bosnian area learned to accommodate the urbanized Ottoman feudal society with some difﬁculty. The kmets (serfs) were mainly Christians and, as feudal dependents, were unable to own land. Only persons of the Muslim faith could acquire and inherit land and other property or work for the state as soldiers or scribes, or as merchants with state protection for their goods. The Bosnian Muslims generally controlled the land for the Empire, receiving in return a fair amount of discretion in local matters. Some heavy industry ﬂourished in Bosnia under Ottoman rule, and there was some textile manufacture, although it was weak. But, in general, Bosnia under Ottoman rule was uneven in its industrialization,14 particularly as it lacked essential infrastructure, domestic markets, and a skilled labor pool. While some Muslim nobles arrived in Bosnia with the invading Ottoman Turks, most Bosnian Muslims were indigenous Islamicized Slavs. Islam was open to people of any national background, so those who wanted to protect the family lands, or who desired to acquire social, political, and ﬁnancial advantages, became Muslim. Furthermore, those whose allegiance to the Christian churches was minimal anyway might have found the dynamic and well-ordered organization of Islam tantalizing. Whatever the individual reasons for Islamization, it is important to remember that most of those who became Muslims in Bosnia were originally indigenous Slavs – from the same gene pool as those who remained Christian under Ottoman rule. Within the Ottoman Empire, religion, not national identity, was the most important personal deﬁning feature. Thus, any popular tensions during the years of Ottoman rule were not the result of ethnonational hatreds. The Christian population was permitted a measure of self-government under Ottoman rule through the millet system. Under their own leaders, who were considered agents of the Ottoman administration, the Christian population was organized into self-governing communities for religious, social, administrative, and legal purposes. Requiring little social loyalty from their kmets, the Ottoman Turks permitted the Christian population to solidify around these leaders and their own rituals, allowing the growth of what would later become national particularity. The Muslim population of Bosnia, on the other hand, was subject to Shari’a law and, along with the privileges of being a part of the ruling aris8

THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

tocracy because of religious afﬁliation, was subject to the rules of the Ottoman administration. This situation ﬁnally caused the Bosnian Muslim population to suffer a crisis of loyalty. On the one hand, their religious afﬁliation was the source of their inﬂuence and privilege within Bosnia, and, as such, was the foundation of loyalty to the Ottoman regime. On the other hand, their base of power was within Bosnia proper. Eventually, when the Ottoman Empire was already in decline in the eighteenth century, the Bosnian Muslims rebelled against Ottoman attempts to alter agricultural practices and to reform the socioeconomic, military, and administrative systems in their region through the Tanzimat and later reform programs. Muslim feudal landowners in Bosnia created private armies to protect their properties and privileges. Bosnian Muslim resistance became allied with the increasingly militant restiveness of the nonMuslim kmets, who were infected with nationalistic fervor that was manifested in a number of anti-Ottoman rebellions in the nineteenth century. External forces, however, were also at work to weaken the Ottoman Empire. Serbia had already gained increasing autonomy from the Ottoman Empire. Peasant rebellions in the early nineteenth century Table 1.1 Bosnian population, 1815–1910 (in thousands) Year

Population

Year

Population

1815 1820 1851 1857 1864 1869

675 720 1110 1190 1250 1270

1871 1875 1890 1900 1910

1260 1340 1450 1670 1900

Source: Michael Palairet, The Balkan Economies c. 1800–1914: Evolution without Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 11–12, 20.

Table 1.2 Urban population of Bosnia as percent of total population Year

Percent

Year

Percent

1864 1879 1885

17.7 11.5* 11.7

1895 1910

13.2 13.0

Source: Michael Palairet, The Balkan Economies c. 1800–1914: Evolution without Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 26. Note *Palairet blamed the downturn in urbanization on the Austro-Hungarian occupation, during which Muslims left Bosnia in large numbers “partly because of limitations on land rights, partly because of an abrupt decline in urban commerce” (The Balkan Economies, p. 31).

9

THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

culminated in its grant of freedom from Ottoman rule in 1878 by the Congress of Berlin. The Serbian quest for independence had been long and arduous and had ﬁred the aspirations of Serbs throughout the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, when autonomous Serbia supported the anti-Ottoman kmet uprisings within Bosnia, many kmets, whose territorial aspirations were frustrated under the Turks, considered Serbia the epitome of freedom. They yearned to unite with Serbia outside of Ottoman rule. Many of the Serbian political elite deemed Bosnia to be Serbian land since there were so many Serbs living there15 and aspired also to encompass Montenegro, Kosovo (Old Serbia), Vojvodina, Croatia’s Serb-populated Krajina,16 and Macedonia (Southern Serbia). The realization of the Greater Serbian dream, however, was prevented by the machinations of the great powers. They feared both the destabilizing effect of the sudden destruction of the Ottoman Empire, as a result of the successes of the peasant liberation movements, and a concomitant growth of Russian inﬂuence in the Balkans. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, therefore, the great powers decreed that European stability would be maintained by the slow and managed dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, disregarding the desires of the indigenous population.17 Bosnia was given to Austria-Hungary, not to Serbia, to ease its access to the Dalmatian Coast and to slow Serbian expansion within the Balkans. Habsburg rule was a fairly prosperous time for the Bosnians who lived under a limited constitutional parliamentary system. However, AustroHungarian policies also sowed the seeds of rivalries that would eventually ﬂourish in the last decade of the twentieth century.

The Austro-Hungarian period When Austria-Hungary marched into Bosnia in July 1878, it was met by a determined Muslim resistance. Guerrilla forces harried the troops, many of whom were of Croat extraction.18 Only after suffering more than 5000 casualties19 were they able to consolidate their occupation by the end of that year. Muslim resistance resulted from the expectation that the Habsburgs would champion the cause of the heretofore disenfranchised and landless Christians who had just emerged from the Ottoman yoke. However, the Joint Imperial Ministry of Finance, appointed to administer the territory as a crown possession in order to avoid conﬂict between the Austrian and Hungarian parts of the empire under its control, was able to keep peace in the land by continuing the Ottoman-era feudal landholding practices and structures of administration. Those Bosnian Christians who could not purchase land remained tied to the service of the Muslim landowners – to the satisfaction of the latter and the frustration of the former. Agrarian capital supported Bosnian commercial banking and large-scale industry, although Bosnia’s economic 10

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growth under Austria-Hungary was uneven.20 Under Habsburg governance Bosnia supported several signiﬁcant brown-coal mines, which, when added to the centuries-long iron mining, made Bosnia a signiﬁcant mining industrial area, a condition that lasted well into the twentieth century. Its forests also proved to be a factor of enrichment for Bosnia, although neither mineral nor forestry exploitation were sufﬁcient to propel Bosnia into signiﬁcant economic development.21 Michael Palairet placed Bosnia’s level of development by 1910, despite its structural economic weaknesses, as between that of Hungary and the Balkan states, and claimed that Bosnia was as productive as Italy.22 On the other hand, Bosnia was fairly isolated from the rest of Austria-Hungary in regard to its railway system and was “dependent upon marine communication.”23 In 1906 a new agricultural system was introduced that did not give as much governmental support to the Muslim landowners. The connection between the annual dues paid by the landowners to the state and to the landowners by their kmets was sundered. The landowners had to determine their dues from the kmets directly, which increased tensions between the two classes. The Muslim landowners were disaffected by this policy and many increasingly opposed the Habsburg administration. When a military law requiring Muslim service in the Habsburg army was issued, many Muslims emigrated from Bosnia to Turkey, although some had economic reasons to leave also, such as commercial competition from the Monarchy’s products.24 The uprising of 1882, resulting from this law and from the dissatisfaction at their lot by Serbian peasants in Herzegovina, saw the joint action of Serbs and Muslims against the Habsburg government. A Habsburg military unit comprised of Croats put the revolt down.25 Attempting to augment their inﬂuence within Bosnia, the bureaucrats played off the Serbs, Croats, and Muslims against each other. Concerned that nationalistic pressures from surrounding lands would infect its Bosnian territories, the Habsburg administration determined to make Bosnia invulnerable. A policy of bosˇnjasˇtvo (“Bosnianism”), one indigenous Bosnian population, was ofﬁcially touted to try to immunize the local population against the scourge of nationalism. The Bosnian Muslim populace, considered to be basically anational and merely members of a religious community, were the ﬁrst targets of this policy. It was believed that, if the Bosnian Muslims accepted this Bosnian self-identiﬁcation, their Bosnian Serb and Croat neighbors might also identify themselves by their Bosnian locality rather than by ethnic claims such as were being encouraged by external Serb and Croat nationalist activists. The policy of bosˇnjasˇtvo, however, was not actively accepted by Bosnian Serbs, Croats, or Muslims. In fact, the machinations of the Habsburg administrators caused a backlash of sorts. Nationalism soon became a powerful force among the minorities within Austria-Hungary, particularly 11

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plied by independent Serbia, which claimed to speak for AustriaHungary’s Serbian population, and, to a lesser extent, by Croat nationalists. But nationalism also began to infect the heretofore anational Bosnian Muslims, although not to the degree experienced by the Serbs and Croats. The Bosnian Muslims attempted to protect their Muslim religious privileges within the Austro-Hungarian Empire by coalescing communally. This closer union in turn created a greater sense of communal selfidentiﬁcation and a concomitant differentiation of themselves from the Ottoman Turks that would eventually blossom in the late twentieth century into a nationalism to counter the aggressive nationalisms of the Bosnian Serbs and the Bosnian Croats. Eventually, the effects of aggressive Serbian nationalism would encourage Austria-Hungary to pursue a war against Serbia that would embroil much of the world as the First World War. Another nineteenth-century movement, known as Illyrianism, attempted to forge in the popular South Slav mind a bond based on their common origins and culture and closely related languages that would obviate the countercurrents that years of living under opposing empires had generated.26 That movement of linguistic nationalism and its later manifestation as jugoslovenstvo (“Yugoslavism”) was supported by such disparate elites as the Slovenian leader Anton Korosˇec and Bosnian Reis ul-ulema (the supreme Muslim religious leader in Bosnia) Dzˇemaludin Cˇausˇevic´.27 Croatian intellectual yearning for South Slav unity, merged with the Serbian pursuit of a homeland for all Serbs after its independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878, eventually culminated in the creation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918. Habsburg annexation of Bosnia in 1908 further stimulated the political consciousness of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, all of whom were to some extent excluded from full participation in the political life of the empire because of language or economic inadequacy.

Bosnia in the First World War The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir apparent to the Habsburg throne, by a Bosnian Serb28 was the spark that encouraged Austria-Hungary to try to extinguish Serbian national aspirations for good. Growing unrest in their Slavic lands worried the Habsburgs, and the regime was determined that the secret societies, student movements, and other sources of turmoil would be destroyed. In order to do this, AustriaHungary confronted Serbia with maximum demands for restitution for the assassination that Serbia could not honor. Austria-Hungary, supported by Germany, pushed Serbia, backed by Russia, into a “preventive” war to forestall the establishment of a South Slav entity. Serbia suffered cruelly from the war, with as much as one-fourth of its 12

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civilian population dead.29 First World War battles occurred only brieﬂy in eastern Bosnia, and after 1915 Bosnian soil was left untouched, although mining activity in Bosnia escalated, aided by the Axis use of prisoners of war.30 However, the Bosnian population was drawn into the war to support different sides, usually based upon their locality rather than any ethnic orientation. Approximately 10,000 Bosnians perished or were wounded in the ﬁghting during the First World War,31 but there was more than a 2 percent deﬁcit (amounting to more than 40,000 people) between the 1910 and 1921 censuses.32 South Slavs were pitted against each other as Croats (and Serbs from Croatian lands) fought in the Habsburg army against the Serbs from independent Serbia. Violent anti-Serb demonstrations by Bosnian Muslims and Croats were reported in Sarajevo.33 In areas of Bosnia bordering Serbia and Montenegro, Serbs were persecuted and interned, despite public denunciation of these activities by Reis-ul-ulema Cˇausˇevic´ and others.34 Nevertheless, while many Bosnian Serbs ﬂed across the border to join the Serbian army’s ranks, along with some few Bosnian Muslims and Croats,35 several Bosnian Serbs could also be found in Habsburg ranks during the war, side by side with Bosnian Muslims and Croats (including one Josip Broz, who later became known as Tito).36

The Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes Having lost the First World War, the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires dissolved into a number of small, mutually hostile units, the genesis of the term “Balkanization.” The great powers, citing the Wilsonian ideal of the right of self-determination of all the “imprisoned” national groups, then proceeded to allow the creation of the multinational Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes from pieces of the decomposed empires.37 The major European powers likely expected that this new creation would serve as a stable buffer zone between Serbia and other non-South Slav remnants of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so that their grievances would not ignite a further conﬂict. The various signatories of the 1917 Corfu Declaration,38 describing the new South Slav state, had different ideas about the structure of the newly formed Kingdom. Their attitudes reﬂected their different historical legacies as well as the ensuing ambivalence of these groups in regard to their participation in the creation of and allegiance to the Kingdom.39 For really the ﬁrst time in history, the Serbs and Croats became direct antagonists. For the Orthodox Serbs, the Kingdom ofﬁcially proclaimed on December 1 1918 was simply the realization of their dreams of Greater Serbia, into which all Serbs, including those still living in Croatia and Bosnia, would be gathered. For the Serbs, the name of the state reﬂected merely three branches of one tribe (the so-called “tri-named nation”). The Serb 13

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domination of the Kingdom through their royal dynasty, military, and bureaucracy in a unitary state seemed only just. As a member of the victorious Allied coalition, it would have been more likely anyway that Serbia’s demands were met than those of the other South Slavs, whose participation in the Austro-Hungarian armies put them on the losing side of the war.40 The Croats41 and Slovenes, however, wanted the Kingdom to be a federal structure that would unite all of the South Slavs on the basis of equality. Having honed political and parliamentary skills during the Austro-Hungarian era, the Slovene and Croat elites did not expect to be treated as Serbian subjects. Bosnian Muslim aspirations, apparently not given great consideration by early thinkers about the Yugoslav idea,42 extended mainly to maintaining religious and social institutions, such as the ability to educate their young;43 to preserving Bosnia’s historic borders; and to retaining control of their landholdings. The latter was quite difﬁcult during at least the ﬁrst ten years after the First World War due to widespread postwar Christian peasant violence against Muslim lives and property. Three types of plans were proposed for the structure of the new state. Croats and Slovenes wanted a strictly federal state; some members of the interwar Yugoslav Committee and the Bosnian Muslim leadership, among others, proposed a basically centralized administration with some decentralization and regional autonomy; and the Serbs insisted on full centralism and unitarism. While most of the parties envisioned some kind of Bosnian autonomy, the Bosnian Muslim elites insisted that Bosnia be given full territorial integrity, at minimum, keeping at least Musliminhabited areas under a single administration.44

The interwar period A variety of political parties quickly reﬂected the various issues of the Kingdom’s national groups, as well as intra-national differences. The Serbian Radicals, led by Nikola Pasˇic´, supported the centralistic Serbian state and found its base mostly within the former independent Serbian lands. Serbian Democrats had a large base of support among the Serbs of the former Austro-Hungarian areas, including Bosnia. However, many Bosnian Serbs were highly sympathetic to the Serbian Agrarian Party, which focused on land reform and agrarian relations, issues which particularly bedeviled this area because of the heavy Muslim control of land.45 The Croats were less fractured, most of them belonging in the interwar period to Stjepan Radic´’s Croatian Peasant Party. Rural Croats in particular joined this party because it favored radical land reform that would see the land in the hands of those who worked it. Some urban Croats, as well as urban members of other ethnic groups, 14

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Table 1.3 Bosnian population, 1921 census Orthodox

Muslim

Catholic

Jew

Others

Total

829,360

588,173

444,309

12,051

16,567

1,890,460

Source: Mustafa Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava Bosne i Herzegovine (Sarajevo: PIKOK, 1999), p. 353.

joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) in such numbers that it controlled 58 seats in the Constituent Assembly, making it the third largest party in that body. However, it was driven underground in 1921. Bosnian Muslims, who comprised close to one-third of the population of Bosnia (see Table 1.3), were largely represented by the Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija (Yugoslav Muslim Organization, or JMO). In the November 1920 elections for a Constituent Assembly to decide the structure of the Yugoslav Kingdom, the JMO garnered most of the Muslim vote, winning 24 seats.46 This made the JMO a signiﬁcant political player. The JMO was reasonably successful for a time in protecting the Muslim community’s socio-cultural perquisites, although two other goals were difﬁcult to attain. The Agrarian Reform instituted after the First World War destroyed the large estates as almost 3.2 million acres of land were distributed to almost 250,000 peasants.47 Finally, the JMO was hard pressed when it came to parrying attempts by the Serbs and Croats to acquire Muslim declarations of Serb or Croat nationhood, respectively. These machinations related to Serb and Croat efforts to dominate Bosnia by acquiring a majority control through Muslim acquiescence to one or the other’s blandishments. The JMO continued to support the existing political order, as that was the locus of their privileges and power. It increased Muslim political leverage to a point greater than their numerical strength within the country, but it refused to allow its coreligionists to be forced into a communal declaration of Serb or Croat nationhood (although some Bosnian Muslim elites did, in fact, call themselves Croatian or Serbian Muslims). Instead, Bosnian Muslim elites determined to maintain Bosnian Muslim political independence, even while the JMO supported the Serb-dominated government in order to elicit whatever social, religious, and cultural advantages it could for the Bosnian Muslim community. The Serbian parties supported what came to be known as the Vidovdan Constitution, passed on Vidovdan (June 2848) in 1921. The Constitution created a centralized state dominated by the Serbian monarch, military, and bureaucracy.49 Serbian parliamentary weakness was ﬁnessed by alliances with the Slovenian People’s Party and the JMO. The JMO traded its support of the Vidovdan Constitution for two concessions. First, the 15

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Bosnian Muslims asked for greater compensation to Muslim landlords when their large estates were divided by the state in the agrarian reform promulgated by King Alexander starting in 1919. Their second demand was for preservation of Bosnia’s historical boundaries (protected by a provision known as the “Turkish article” [Article 135] of the Constitution). Furthermore, at least until 1924, Bosnia was the only area permitted to retain a Provincial government administration. Thereafter, it was subject to the same strict centralization as the rest of the Kingdom. Tensions between the centralizers (Serbs) and decentralizers (Croats and Slovenes) grew until they peaked with the murder of Radic´ in 1928 by a Montenegrin parliamentary deputy. The assassination brought a demand for a newly federalized Kingdom from Radic´’s successor, Vladko Macˇek. The King responded to these demands and the ensuing public unrest and political paralysis50 by proclaiming the suspension of the Vidovdan Constitution and the Parliament and the creation of a royal dictatorship in 1929. The monarch would exercise full legislative and executive power aided by “obedient politicians and submissive military people,”51 and the legislature was abolished. Coalition politics ended as political parties were dissolved. Eventually only non-nationalistic parties were permitted to contest elections, beginning in 1931, essentially leaving only the one governmental party, the Jugoslavenska nacionalna stranka (Yugoslav National Party, or JNS), in the running. Henceforth, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes would be known simply as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia (the land of the South Slavs). This name reﬂected the attempt to impose on the rival ethnic groups the concept of jugoslovenstvo, one South Slav nation, by destroying the traditional national-historical provinces. The common heritage of the various groups, not their differences, would be stressed. The new Yugoslavia was divided into nine administrative districts (banovinas) that patently ignored historical and ethnic boundaries.52 Bosnia, too, was stripped of the territorial concessions to maintain the thousand-year territorial wholeness of Bosnia and Herzegovina so dearly won by the JMO for its support of the Vidovdan Constitution. Bosnia’s population was dispersed into four banovinas, the Drinska, Vrbaska, Primorska, and Zetska. The Bosnian Muslims, previously forming a plurality in the former Bosnia, were now a minority with the Serbs forming a clear majority in the Drinska, Vrbaska, and Zetska banovinas and the Croats dominating the Primorska banovina.53 The dictatorship also extended to the social and economic realms. Activities of the various religious groups, including the election of their leaders (especially the Orthodox Patriarch and Islamic Reis-ul-ulema), were governed by royal legislation. The Orthodox Church maintained a privileged position within Yugoslavia by serving Serbian interests. Rela16

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tions with the Catholic Church in Bosnia were governed by the VaticanAustro-Hungarian Concordat of 1881, because the Vatican and the Yugoslav Kingdom were unable to conclude a satisfactory agreement.54 In 1930 the King pensioned Reis-ul-ulema Cˇausˇevic´, who had vigorously protested the religious reforms, and replaced him with the more tractable Ibrahim E. Maglajlic´.55 Alexander’s attempts to pacify Yugoslavia only further enraged the Croats, as well as others who resented the unitary state. Croatian ﬁrebrands created the Ustasˇe, an ultranationalistic paramilitary group led by radical Croat politician, Ante Pavelic´. The Ustasˇe and radical Serbian groups clashed frequently and violently. Alexander eventually relaxed some of the more repulsive measures of the unitary government. The quasi-parliamentary government, not directly elected, was permitted some consultation with the King but, in the end, was little more than a rubber stamp. The nationalist passions, however, were too heated to accept these token moves. On October 9 1934, while on a state visit to Marseilles, King Alexander was assassinated by the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO), associated with Ustasˇe forces and encouraged by Italy and Hungary. Alexander’s cousin, Prince Paul, became part of a regency for the minor heir, Peter II. Elections to the Yugoslav Parliament held in 1935 resulted in the formation of a new government. In effect, the January 6 dictatorship of King Alexander that had been based on integral Yugoslavism ended. Milan Stojadinovic´ formed a government party, the Yugoslav Radical Union, which merged the Serbian Radical Party with the Slovenian People’s Party of Anton Korosˇec and the JMO.56 While Stojadinovic´ attempted to arrive at a modus operandi with the Croats, the Croat nationalists were not appeased. Nor were the Serbs happy with his attempts to placate the Croats, especially through a Concordat with the Vatican. His successor, Dragisˇa Cvetkovic´ became prime minister in 1939. He renewed efforts to come to an understanding with the Croats. Discussions between Cvetkovic´ and Macˇek about increased autonomy for Croatia within the Yugoslav Kingdom produced the Sporazum (Agreement), signed on August 26 1939. This agreement dispensed with the idea of Yugoslavism, ofﬁcially acknowledging the separateness of the Serbs and Croats. The Sporazum also established a Croatian banovina, whose lands included traditionally Croat-inhabited lands, but also Herzegovina and some other territories historically part of Bosnia, without regard to the preferences of the Bosnian Serbs and Muslims living in those areas. The enlarged Croatian banovina was given wide discretion to control most of its own provincial matters. This revision of the 1931 Constitution was the deﬁnitive end to the previous conception of national and state unity of the South Slavs. However, even the realization of most of 17

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Croatia’s demands did not appease the radicalized and alienated Croat nationalists. Serbs, too, resented this new structure, particularly the fact that more than 850,000 Serbs were now included in the new Croatian banovina. Serb nationalists demanded a speciﬁcally Serbian banovina. Slovenia, too, would have been given its own entity had not the Second World War intervened.57 Bosnia’s historical, political, and constitutional existence was not acknowledged in these state alterations. Widespread protests, especially among the Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia, greeted these events, with some demanding autonomy for Bosnia and Herzegovina.58 Thus, these new constructions did not really solve the territorial questions bedeviling interwar Yugoslavia. The intra-Yugoslav tensions created by the joining of seven different legal systems, as well as different economic and other structures of peoples whose history had kept them apart for so long, was exacerbated by the difﬁcult economic conditions suffered in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s.59 A sense of the differences between the regions in the Kingdom is apparent when examining the differential development between those areas that had been part of the Ottoman Empire and those that were part of the Habsburg Empire. For example, while former Habsburg areas like Croatia and Slovenia had between 50 and 65 kilometers of railway lines per 1000 square kilometers, areas like Serbia (including Macedonia and Bosnia [only latterly part of the Habsburg Empire]) contained between 20 and 35 kilometers.60 Furthermore, the Vrbaska banovina (i.e., western Bosnia) still maintained one of the highest birthrates in the world in a severely primitive area.61 Yugoslavia’s economic problems were increasingly tied to the international economic situation, which was none too stable. Most damaging to Yugoslav interests was the precipitous drop in the international demand for agricultural goods, Yugoslavia’s best source of foreign trade revenue, providing more than half of its exports.62 Right before the Great Depression, Great Britain and France withdrew ﬁnancial credits from Yugoslavia. Reeling under the worsening economic situation, Yugoslavia found its prosperity dependent upon German economic penetration of the Balkans. Yugoslavia’s military industry was located primarily in Bosnia, which gave Bosnia a direct connection with interwar Germany.63 However, Germany’s fascism was not popular anywhere in Yugoslavia, so that when Germany attempted to exert political control over Yugoslavia, the populace rebelled.

The Second World War Bowing to unremitting German pressure on Yugoslavia, and because all of Yugoslavia’s neighbors were by then allied with Germany, Prince Paul 18

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signed a cooperation treaty with the Tripartite Axis forces on March 25 1941. However, a popular uprising two days later supported a coup by the military and by old Serbian political parties. With the help of British intelligence ofﬁcers,64 a national unity government was installed under the minor King Peter II and headed by General Dusˇan Simovic´. Amid huge anti-Axis demonstrations in Serbian cities and smaller ones in Bosnia and other areas, Hitler rejected conciliatory policies proposed by the new government and invaded Yugoslavia on April 6 1941 without a prior declaration of war. After an eleven-day rout, Yugoslavia surrendered unconditionally on April 17, the King and the government having already left the country for exile in London on the 15th. Yugoslavia was divided among the Axis conquerors. Italy occupied Kosovo, Montenegro, and Dalmatia. Italy, Hungary, and Germany divided Slovenia. Serbia became a German protectorate, and Bulgaria controlled Macedonia. Croatia came under an indigenous fascist government as the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna drz ˇ ava Hrvatska, or NDH). Ustasˇe leader Ante Pavelic´, governed the NDH, although nominally Croatia was ruled by the Italian Duke of Spoleto styled as King Tomislav II. By July 1941, Bosnia was absorbed into the NDH as an integral part of the new fascist state. Germany maintained a military presence in Bosnia to secure certain important railway lines and access to the most important natural resources and other communication lines in Bosnia. Prisoner of war labor increased Bosnia’s mining production, which was useful for boosting the Axis war effort and Bosnia’s wartime economy.65 On the other hand, Bosnian agriculture was almost destroyed in many areas because of the toll of ﬁghting in Bosnia, as well as the increasing resistance of the peasantry to German produce requisitioning and to the deportation of peasants for forced labor elsewhere.66 The NDH was a potent blend of German and Croatian fascism, the consequence of which was a steady stream of atrocities. Most Jews and Roma (Gypsies) were transported to concentration camps where few survived. The program for the Serbs living in the NDH was more nuanced. A third were to be exterminated, a third deported, and a third voluntarily or forcibly converted to Catholicism.67 The Bosnian Muslims had a more ambiguous position within the NDH. On the one hand, they were considered to be “Aryans,”68 Croats who practiced another religion, “the purest of all Croats.”69 The NDH was considered to be an entity with two state religions, Catholicism and Islam. Therefore, the Bosnian Muslims were not slated for forcible conversion to Catholicism, although their ethnic uniqueness was denied. A number of Muslim elites even declared themselves to be Croats. Furthermore, a Muslim SS division, called the Handzˇar (Scimitar) Brigade, was created and became notable for its anti-Serb cruelty. On the other hand, many Bosnian Muslims publicly protested against Ustasˇe atrocities70 and fought 19

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against the fascists when it became clear that, despite Croatian promises and inducements, the rule of law did not exist for anyone in the NDH. At one point, some Bosnian Muslims even appealed for protectorate status under Germany so that Bosnia could escape NDH rule.71 Resistance to fascism in Yugoslavia was far more complex than in most of the other countries in the region. Almost immediately, anti-fascist forces arose to attempt to wrest Yugoslavia from the foreigners’ grip. However, Yugoslavia’s defenders had multiple agendas. Arrayed against the fascists and their Ustasˇe compatriots were two major ﬁghting forces. The Cˇ etniks, nationalistic Serbian guerrilla units, were composed mainly of the remnants of the royal Yugoslav military. Led by a general staff colonel, Drazˇa Mihailovic´, they conceived of their role as a force that would be ready to seize political power and reinstate the royal government when the fascists withdrew. Thus they were not always vigorous opponents of the invading forces, choosing instead to husband their strength for the battle for postwar control of Yugoslavia and to rid the area of local enemies, such as Bosnian Muslims in eastern Herzegovina, eastern and northern Bosnia, and parts of the Sandzˇak.72 The Partisans, on the other hand, were a multinational force headed by communist leader Josip Broz Tito. They welcomed anyone who would ﬁght the fascists.73 The Partisans actively engaged the invaders. They also fought against the Cˇ etniks and the Ustasˇe for the right to choose the postwar form of Yugoslavia. While the Ustasˇe were trying to eliminate Serbs, Jews, and Roma from the NDH, the Cˇ etniks were killing Croats and Muslims. As the Partisans liberated parts of Yugoslavia, they created institutions to govern those areas. Four rebel oblasts (districts) (Bosanska Krajina, Herzegovina, Eastern Bosnia, and Sarajevo) were created in liberated territories of Bosnia, serving as the seed of what would later become the postwar Yugoslav federation. The commonly accepted interpretation of Yugoslavia’s wartime experience is that the Second World War was fought on at least three different levels in that land. The ﬁrst was the anti-fascist struggle. The second was the inter-ethnic civil war, which mainly pitted Serbs against fascistsupporting Muslims and Croats. The third was the battle between the royalists and the communist-dominated Partisans for the right to dictate the shape of postwar Yugoslavia. Bosnia was the center of Yugoslavia geopolitically, and, not coincidentally, the center of the Partisan-led national liberation war during most of the Second World War. Many of the most important battles occurred in Bosnia, and the Partisan command and two corps of Bosnian ﬁghters resided in Bosnia for thirty of the ﬁfty months of Yugoslavia’s war against the invaders.74 Furthermore, signiﬁcant political events occurred in Bosnia, particularly the meetings of the Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). And in the middle of it all was Sarajevo, 20

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through which Partisan couriers came and where many intelligence services were located.75

Communist domination Post-Second World War Yugoslavia was decimated and fractured. It emerged from the war with a much reduced, impoverished, and traumatized population. More than a million Yugoslavs had died in the war and millions more were either wounded or disabled. Bosnia, in particular, lost a heavy percentage of its population, accounting for almost one-half of Yugoslavia’s war deaths.76 Battleﬁeld deaths were huge, but adding to the loss was the fanatical cleansing of Serbian areas by the Croatian fascists. Bosnia’s Jewish and Roma populations were almost completely wiped out by the Ustasˇe. The postwar era in Yugoslavia was dominated by the CPY after a brief Allied-sponsored period of coalition government with members of the former royal government exiled in London. Since the Partisans had, almost alone, completely defeated both their domestic and foreign enemies, they proceeded, again alone, to try to pull together the disparate war-torn lands into a cohesive nation-state. The administrative structure was based on the model proclaimed at the November 1943 AVNOJ meeting. The Serb-dominated monarchy was delegitimated in favor of a republic based on the Partisan territorial organizations. The various ethnic groups comprising the Partisans had supported this resistance group largely because of Tito’s commitment to recognize the separate sovereignty and self-determination of the various Yugoslav ethnicities in a federal system. At that time in Yugoslavia such a plan boded well to resolve the national question and undermine Serbian hegemonic aspirations. Tito and his compatriots were determined that they would rule over a united communist land. Marxism would be the unifying ideology to bind together the disparate ethnic groups into one South Slav state. To that end, the communists instituted a series of Soviet-style policies that would reconstruct the Yugoslav infrastructure, superstructure, and a docile populace. With the banishment of the king and the interwar political parties, the CPY was able to rule without interference. The new regime ﬁrst purged domestic enemies. Any remaining anti-Partisan forces and indigenous collaborators were either summarily executed or put to work in forced labor brigades. One estimate was that perhaps as many as a quarter of a million people died in the repression of the immediate post-Second World War period as Tito began to construct a socialist Yugoslavia.77 Signiﬁcantly, after the war there was little or no public discussion about the atrocities of the Second World War, in which all national groups had 21

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participated as aggressors as well as victims. The imposed silence on this topic artiﬁcially quashed what might have been a healthy grieving process. The Titoist motto of “Brotherhood and Unity” was meant to sweep all those issues away, perhaps even to negate the previous separate histories of the various Yugoslav areas in an attempt to bind the South Slavs together in a communist state. Authoritarian policies would prevent these issues from arising again. The communists imposed their model on a warweary country, and popular desires were not consulted. The lack of popular consensus on the structure and identity of postwar Yugoslavia would later erupt into inter-ethnic tensions. Yugoslavia assiduously followed a Stalinist model in the early postSecond World War years. In 1946 it adopted a constitution remarkably like the Soviet Union’s 1936 model. The constitution promised many civil rights to the populace. For example, the various constituent national groups formed into a federation had the right of secession. However, it was assumed, as in the Soviet Union, that the Yugoslav nations had freely chosen to live together in the Yugoslav state and that no socialist nation, therefore, would choose to leave the union unless coerced by patently non-socialist forces. On the other hand, all individuals within Yugoslavia were granted rights of citizenship, both within the state-constituting nations of which they were a part and as individuals within their own republic. While all the proper federal institutions were created and their powers enumerated, it became clear that all power ﬂowed from the CPY led by Tito and his colleagues. Six republics were created, most of which reﬂected by their names the titular majority population within their borders. The republics occupied more or less their historic borders, but Serbia was singled out for special attention by the communists. Two autonomous provinces, Vojvodina and Kosovo, were created within Serbia’s borders to reﬂect the presence of large and fairly tightly clustered minority groups of Hungarians and Albanians, respectively. Serbia’s power within Yugoslavia was further weakened when Macedonia (heretofore sometimes referred to by Serbs as “Southern Serbia”) became an independent republic. The exception to this neat federal creation was Bosnia and Herzegovina. Its territory, with at least as ancient a historical and territorial identity as Serbia and Croatia, became a Yugoslav republic. Unlike the other republics, however, Bosnia had no titular nation to dominate its decision-making apparatus. With a large number of Serbs, Croats, and Muslims scattered throughout Bosnia, that republic was truly multinational. This mixture of people made Bosnia’s status a matter of some concern during the wartime discussions about the postwar composition of Yugoslavia. Some in the leadership favored giving Bosnia autonomy within the Yugoslav federation, but, in the end, Tito decided that Bosnia should be an equal republic within Yugoslavia. This would obviate Serb 22

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and Croat mutually exclusive and contradictory claims on Bosnia and subtract one potential source of conﬂict within the Yugoslav federation. The Bosnian Serbs and Croats dominated Bosnia’s political relations in the early years of the Yugoslav federation. The other large community, the Bosnian Muslims, was considered to be only a religious, not a national, unit, and thus had none of the perquisites that other national groups possessed within Yugoslavia. In the end, the Bosnian Muslims played the same role as during the days of the Yugoslav Kingdom – an object of rivalry between the Serbs and Croats. Bosnia’s decision-making apparatus reﬂected this multiplicity, and coalition games were often played within Bosnia, with the Bosnian Muslims the targets of Serb and Croat blandishments. One of the aims of the CPY program was agrarian reform, designed to permit peasant control over the land they tilled. A Soviet-style ﬁve-year plan was announced in 1947 that initiated a severe collectivization of agriculture. The resulting dislocation of the private farming system caused near starvation in the cities in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Former large landowners, including the Catholic Church and many Bosnian Muslims, greeted this reform with dismay as their holdings were dispersed. Nevertheless, the CPY was determined to reward those who had aided the Partisan movement and to end the agrarian problem in Yugoslavia once and for all. At the same time, at least at ﬁrst, some government control over agriculture continued so that Yugoslavia could remain self-sufﬁcient in case of enemy attack.78 A second CPY aim was the rapid industrialization of Yugoslavia. This meant to the rulers of Yugoslavia that the less-developed regions of Yugoslavia, including Bosnia, would receive a disproportionate share of centrally managed development funds to even out the disparities between poorer and wealthier regions of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia’s slavish devotion to these Soviet-type policies in the political, economic, and even cultural realms began to change when in 1948 Yugoslavia was drummed out of the Cominform, the Soviet-dominated communist grouping that Stalin created to manage relations among the states of the Soviet bloc. The fact that the Yugoslavs were isolated from the rest of the communist states because Stalin considered them disloyal and apt to follow independent policies rather than the course he had chosen for them encouraged them to pursue their own “road to socialism.”79 The stand against Stalin became a unifying symbol for Yugoslavia to take the place of being a part of the international communist movement. To that end, the Yugoslav communists began in the 1950s to introduce “socialism with a human face.” While never publicly belying their communist beliefs, they moved rapidly away from the Soviet model of communism and instituted programs to decentralize the Yugoslav economic and political systems. 23

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During Tito’s rule, Bosnia, not to mention Yugoslavia as a whole, was able to become a fairly prosperous, open, albeit still communist, area. However, Yugoslavia’s domestic policies more or less excluded mass political participation and pluralism.80 For most Yugoslavs, such elements as personal occupation and the attendant social status, rural or urban residence, or public or private sector activity were the major status symbols, not ethnic identiﬁcation or political participation. Status and ethnic identity could be mutually reinforcing – particularly in poorer areas of mixed ethnicity. National self-identiﬁcation became important only where “criteria for rationing scarce jobs drew on traditional loyalties.”81 Where Titoism recognized the importance of ethnicity and ethnic selfdetermination, it was without a concomitant dose of democracy. Indeed, during the 1950s and early 1960s there was a push to create an integral identiﬁcation, known as Yugoslavism, to thwart any nationalistic tendencies. In contrast to the Soviet brand of central control over the means of production, Yugoslav leaders introduced workers’ self-management. They were determined that worker control would answer the Marxist criticism of worker alienation from the means of production under capitalism. Workers’ councils were created in most factories, and enterprises were given an ever-increasing amount of authority over conditions in the workplace and micro-industrial decision-making. Self-management also provided for a greater decentralization of politics. The federal government and the centralized CPY, renamed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in 1952, gradually lost much of their power and authority to the republic and other lower levels of government and party. This played out in different ways in the various republics. For example, the Bosnian LCY (LCBiH), created in 1949, was initially dominated by Bosnian Serbs because the Croat and Muslim areas of western Herzegovina had been strongly inﬂuenced by the Ustasˇe and thus were suspect. Later the national balance in the party became more pronounced.82 Conservatives, who favored recentralization of the economic and political spheres, dominated in underdeveloped Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina.83 Workers’ self-management in internal politics was matched on the international scene by Yugoslavia’s unique foreign policy. After the shock of the Cominform Resolution, the West extended its protection against Soviet aggression to Yugoslavia and assisted it to prosper economically through trade and aid relations. By the 1960s Yugoslavia’s viability depended on this access to foreign credits and capital markets, proffered by the West to protect Yugoslavia’s strategic position in the Balkans and its independence. In return, the West received Yugoslav assistance in its containment of the Soviet Union by denying the latter inﬂuence in the Mediterranean and in Greece and Italy.84 24

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However, socialist Yugoslavia was still kept at arm’s length by the West because Yugoslavia remained a communist country, albeit not in the Soviet mold. Tito understood that Yugoslavia’s only chance for independence during the cold war, where every territory was liable to become a reason for Soviet–American conﬂict, was to maintain its self-reliance and not to cleave too closely to either alliance, while receiving support and largesse from both. To that end, and particularly as a result of the Warsaw Pact intervention in Czechoslovakia in 1968, he created a system of local civilian militias. These territorial defense forces would serve as autonomous military units to resist invasion in guerrilla fashion if the federal armed forces succumbed to superior invasive militaries. The strategy was that these territorial defense forces would, if necessary, retreat to the defensible central portion of Yugoslavia, mainly Bosnia, from which their resistance would be directed. For that reason, a good proportion of the critical defense industries, airstrips, and strategic stockpiles of food, supplies, and weaponry were located within Bosnia, which had some of Yugoslavia’s most forbidding terrain and richest mineral deposits. The West refused to welcome Yugoslavia wholeheartedly into its European institutions, such as the Marshall Plan, which would have permitted it to be included early on in the growth of Western Europe. Similarly, the Soviet Union would not allow Yugoslavia membership in the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). Yugoslavia was thus forced to ﬁnd beneﬁcial associations elsewhere in order to avoid international isolation. Beginning tentatively in the mid-1950s and thereafter more aggressively, Yugoslavia followed a policy of non-alignment, meaning to be more or less neutral between the West and the Soviet bloc. This policy was ﬁrst implemented in tandem by Tito, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, and India’s Jawaharlal Nehru. By uniting against the cold war blocs, this group of lessdeveloped and less powerful countries was able to inﬂuence international politics to a certain extent, trading their support for one or the other bloc in return for development funds and other concessions. The fact that in 1969 the Bosnian Muslims were recognized as a separate ethnic group, and they had been permitted to practice their religion freely, made Yugoslavia appear to good advantage among the many Muslim-dominated nonaligned countries and gave Tito much stature in that group. In this way, Yugoslavia was able to exert an inﬂuence on international politics far greater than its size and wealth would ordinarily have permitted. This success of Tito’s Yugoslavia has been attributed to his ability to maintain a post-Second World War domestic consensus, which in turn created domestic security. Yugoslavia’s unity was a product of the strength of the major integrating levers of society – the party, the army, the federal government – which together attempted to preserve Yugoslavia’s international position, its constitutional arrangement, and its social order and concept of citizenship.85 Militating against this integration, however, was 25

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the increasing decentralization of Yugoslavia’s political and economic spheres. From the late 1950s and early 1960s, power was gradually transferred from the federal to the republic governments and from the central apparatus of the LCY to the republic apparatuses. As the republic elites gained more power, they “began to instigate nationalism as a means of obtaining support and legitimacy within the borders of their own jurisdictions.”86 All issues were seen through the ﬁlter of national self-interest, which inevitably fragmented Yugoslav society along national lines. Increasingly selﬁsh, ethnically based economic policy undercut the basis for civil society. The delegitimization of the policy of Yugoslavism in the 1960s resulted in a greater ethnic identiﬁcation, even as “ethnic distance,” the lack of acceptance of members of another ethnic group in a variety of relationships, began to increase.87 The problem was, however, that the republics, again with a single exception (Slovenia), also housed large “minorities,” which opened up the painful subject of ethnic/territorial re-delineation within republics. With so many communities that were mixed ethnically, there were many people with minority status within Yugoslavia, depending on their place of residence. But some people resented being a minority. Many Serbs, in particular, rejected minority status within Croatia and Bosnia, perhaps because they feared that they would be treated as badly as the Serbs in Serbia proper treated the minority Kosovars.88 Serbs in mixed population areas felt that their status would be degraded, particularly when coupled with the triumphalism of new ethnic elites.89 Not only were citizens expected to identify themselves ethnically for census purposes, but political and economic decisions, more and more centered in the republics, were also taken on the basis of what was good for the ethnic group, not necessarily the federation as a whole. Thus, the “Croatian Spring” of 1971–72, in which Croat demands for greater economic, social, and political liberalization were publicly and forcefully aired, was at least in part a display of Croatian resentment at having to support the poorer regions. The resulting constitutional reform of 1974 turned the country even more toward political and economic decentralization. The 1974 federal constitution created a confederation that was supposed to prevent the disintegration of the country by responding to demands for local autonomy. Actually, however, the constitution legalized “particularization.” In effect, it provided legal ground for the competition between and eventual subsequent secession of the republics, which was fueled by political rivalry among their power elites.90 Instead of destroying the nationalistic urges that had led to an attempt by Croatian nationalists to force faster decentralization on the system in the early 1970s, the 1974 constitution was based on their demands, which “interrupted Yugoslavia26

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wide economic and institutional ties.”91 Unlike the other republics, however, Bosnia expressed its multiethnic make-up by having a collective presidency, composed of two members each of the Serb, Muslim, and Croat community and one self-declared Yugoslav.92 The tendency toward decentralization promoted autarky at the republic level, which stultiﬁed economic efﬁciency. Each republic now had its own central bank, constabulary, educational system, and judiciary. Yugoslav unity had already been drastically undercut by the monopoly of the LCY over the political sphere, which discouraged non-party members from becoming involved in politics at all. A worsening economic situation tangled with the national question, which also undercut the cultural sector. The balance of civil society was also dragged into the miasma as small differences between Serbian and Croatian and various regional dialects were emphasized by nationalists in order to halt their convergence into a single Serbo-Croatian language.93 Religion, too, became involved in the mix, especially from the 1970s on. Atheistic though the country was purported to be by dint of its communist orientation, nevertheless, self-identiﬁcation by religious afﬁliation remained strong. As a matter of fact, Allcock claimed that “the actual effect of state policy with respect to religion has been to emphasise the speciﬁcally religious lineaments of national identity, ensuring that, with the eruption of conﬂict in an ethnic framework, it would also have a religious colouring.”94 Thus, as religious freedoms became fully recognized toward the end of the communist era, religious institutions became increasingly active also in the political sphere and a “crucial source of populist nationalism.”95

The economic decline of Yugoslavia While “ancient ethnic hatreds” is a commonly stated rationale for the descent of Yugoslavia into war, in reality the causes are many and varied. The collapse of communism in Eastern Europe meant the end of the bipolar international system that had provided the structure for the international post-Second World War order. As a result, Yugoslavia’s critical role between the two ideological camps disappeared. Yugoslavia’s economic decline was also an extraordinarily important element. Yugoslavia’s strategic signiﬁcance, particularly as it affected its economic ties to alternative markets in the East and to the underdeveloped areas, and the importance of its independent foreign policy, were thus undermined, and no new bases for security and domestic political and economic viability replaced them.96 The post-Second World War emanation of Yugoslavia as a modern, economically advancing socialist state is no more. The recent Balkan war has reduced most of the successor states to economic dependencies on the 27

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periphery of the world economy.97 But this situation was prefaced by an economic crisis becoming increasingly visible in Yugoslavia in the 1980s. The Yugoslav economy was less stable than it appeared during the 1980s. On the one hand, it was obvious that Yugoslavia was modernizing. One indicator was the declining agricultural population: in 1948, 73 percent of the population was rural, but by 1981 only 27 percent was agrarian.98 Furthermore, the populace had free medical care, a very high literacy rate (over 90 percent), and an average life expectancy of 72 years.99 The economic and political decentralization of the 1960s and 1970s, which was apparently a reformist victory, in the end set up a conﬂict between reformists and conservatives over their economic vision of Yugoslavia and made reform incredibly difﬁcult.100 The conﬂict took on nationalist overtones as ethnic particularism became the tool that national elites wielded in order to forward their own agendas.101 Thus, when the global recession of the late 1970s hit Yugoslavia particularly hard because of its reliance on an export strategy and its large foreign debt, radical reform was more urgent but less possible. A conservative backlash set Yugoslavia up for stalemate in decision-making and competition among the various republic elites for scarce resources and power. The response to increasing unrest and what seemed to be organized opposition was an attempt to return to centralized political control in various parts of Yugoslavia. According to the World Bank, Yugoslavia’s gross domestic product growth between 1960 and 1980 was 6.1 percent. But the differential between regions was considerable. On the other hand, widening gaps within the country in degree of industrialization and modernization and level of productivity produced massive tensions in Yugoslavia that were also reﬂected in differing levels of employment and other demographic factors.102 Thus, while Slovenia’s GDP per capita in 1989 was 196.8 percent of the federal average, Kosovo’s was 25.66 percent. Bosnia’s per capita GDP had declined from 95.5 percent in 1952 to 67.92 percent in 1989, ahead of only Kosovo and Macedonia.103 The attempts to redress this imbalance by forced redistribution of resources led to resentment by the more advanced regions, which believed they could use the resources to better effect. The poorer regions demanded more assistance from the wealthier regions causing a spiral of resentment. In fact, all of the eight units complained bitterly that they were being economically exploited in one way or the other by the other seven.104 The resulting conﬂict over how to restructure pitted the wealthier regions against the poorer areas. Slovenia and Croatia favored a rapid transition to a full market economy, while the other republics, led by Serbia, desired a mixed economy with some aspects of marketization but also many features of the communist type of political management of the economy to aid the poorer regions to catch up to the wealthier ones. The economic stresses already felt by Slovenia’s and Croatia’s attempts to 28

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boost their size of the economic pie, as they argued that Yugoslavia received more beneﬁt from money invested in their advanced economies than it received from investing in the depressed regions of other areas of the country, increased tremendously at this point.105 Bosnia’s economic position was an anomaly in Yugoslavia. In the ﬁrst ﬁve-year plan, Bosnia was considered underdeveloped and thus received tax subsidies from the richer republics. In the second ﬁve-year plan it was not considered underdeveloped, but in the third plan it was again subsidized.106 Bosnia’s wealth lay in natural resources, such as coal, timber, iron ore, and hydro-electric sources. Bosnia, and the other poorer republics, supplied the more industrialized republics of Croatia and Slovenia, as well as Vojvodina, with raw materials. The proﬁts of the latter soared because of their manufacturing investment, while the gap with the poorer republics widened. As Yugoslavia’s economy declined, especially in the oil shock of the 1970s, Bosnia and the other poorer republics suffered. In fact, “levels of unemployment were highest in Bosnia-Herzegovina.”107 The decentralizing reforms of the 1970s exacerbated the Yugoslav economy’s structural weaknesses and its emphasis on industrialization made it a major energy importer, although it was able to satisfy half of its needs domestically.108 After the “second oil shock” of 1979, during which it became obvious that Yugoslavia could not easily pay for its energy imports, Yugoslavia’s sense of economic security worsened. Dependent for balance of payments relief upon remittances sent home by foreign workers, Yugoslavia was unable to use these funds effectively for investment instead of consumption109 as it had to scramble to cover the sudden dramatic outlays for energy imports. Furthermore, these remittances decreased in the 1980s and foreign workers began to come home, which stressed the Yugoslav employment market.110 Unemployment in even the most prosperous republics soared in the 1980s. In Bosnia, the stress presumably was greatest in the rural areas, as more than 70 percent of the Bosnian foreign workers were from agricultural families.111 The rethinking of the political character of Yugoslavia in transition to a multiparty democracy split Yugoslavia.112 Like the rest of the European communist regimes, Yugoslavia had the choice of retaining some form of “communism-after-communism,” or creating a new open, pluralist society with democratic institutions and a free market economy.113 Should the latter solution be chosen, however, totalitarian rule and the power of the old political elites would have to be relinquished. Reluctant to give up their domination of society, they turned to ethnic nationalism as a substitute for the failed communist ideology. Social and economic problems were increasingly seen as the fault of other nations within Yugoslavia and beyond, thus conﬂating political and social problems in nationalism.114 Thus, the economic crisis in turn altered the potentially modern social relationships within the society, turning them into bonds of clientilism 29

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based on ties of blood, religion, ethnicity, and region, not globalism, civic society, or other modern connections.115 These relationships were pursued in order to protect the interests of the ruling elites from having to compete with external opponents who were economic threats or internal opponents expressing popular disaffection with falling living standards.116 Thus, the conﬂict that dissolved Yugoslavia was mostly a result of the stresses caused by the transformation of a socialist society to a market economy and democracy.117 The political conﬂict between central and regional governments over economic resources became conﬂicts over principle.118 Enterprises, especially those in the large electric, petroleum reﬁnery, machinery, engineering and chemical industries, as well as many banks, were forced into bankruptcy and dismantled, causing many workers to be laid off.119 Many workers who were not laid off were simply not paid as their enterprises strove to avoid going into bankruptcy. Furthermore, imports ﬂooded Yugoslavia, ﬁnanced with IMF-granted borrowed money, which increased Yugoslavia’s external debt immeasurably. This, when added to an abrupt rise in interest rates and input prices that the Markovic´ agreement imposed on Yugoslavia’s enterprises, meant that domestic producers could no longer afford to produce goods for the Yugoslav market.120 Thus, the population soon found itself impoverished. The aspirations of the various political leaders, forced to face the possibility of losing their grip on power and the wealth fostered by it as communism withered throughout Eastern Europe, trumped any of the popular desires for a democratic post-communist existence for Yugoslavia. Their political legitimacy in the post-communist era began to appear insubstantial at best. The Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia policies of Slobodan Milosˇevic´ and Franjo Tudjman, leaders of their respective republics, spelled the end of the halcyon period when the possibility of nationalist conﬂict was more or less controlled. These new ethnarchs121 were proponents of a collective rights type of policy, in which heterogeneity is anathema. For them, power and legitimacy was lodged, not in all citizens of a state but only in a subgroup of the state deﬁned by ethnic identity or religion, or by the amalgamation of the two. The new breed of ethnonationalists accept membership in the political community if one is not “of alien origin.”122 They based their policies on idealized versions of their own group’s past and often a demonization of other antagonistic, or simply “alien,” groups.123 They intended to create impossible geographical versions of the ideologies by attempting to fashion homogeneous nationstates out of hopelessly heterogeneous regions. This undercut the concept of citizenship in that membership in a group, usually deﬁned according to ethno-religious or other communal principles, was more important than the Western notion of individual identiﬁcation with the state as a citizen.124 Guarantees and procedures for human rights and free debate about the future of Yugoslavia to turn it into a stable, pluralistic democracy 30

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were sacriﬁced for political gain. These unsettled conditions culminated in the Serbian drive to dominate Yugoslavia after the death of Tito. Serbian national goals were expressed in the unpublished but widely circulated Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, where the Serbian nation’s economic, cultural, and political abuse at the hands of the communists was described and deplored.125 Exclusionary nationalism then became the tool utilized by the authoritarian-populist leadership made up of bureaucrats and professional military126 to emphasize the differences between their own group and the other groups and thus to promote their own narrow interests. But this nationalism in Serbia, as well as Croatia and other areas, “only became a mass movement in response to military actions by the [JNA] in 1991.” Until then, some people were ambivalent about the nationalist road in Croatia and Bosnia, and even in Serbia.127 The pre-war economic crisis that played a large role in the collapse of Yugoslavia was also a result of Yugoslavia’s shaky position within the international economic arena. While Yugoslavia found itself active in market relationships with the West, from which it borrowed capital and imported advanced technology and parts, it also was able to work with the communist bloc and the underdeveloped world, with which it traded arms, construction projects, and manufactured goods and in return received strategic resources, such as fuel. Yugoslavia thus enjoyed a ﬂexibility that a ﬁrm foothold in one or the other markets would have denied it. However, Yugoslavia became increasingly dependent on Western technology, spare parts, and trade credits so that it suffered a trade imbalance when Western demand for its products weakened in the late 1970s. Yugoslav foreign debts simultaneously rose between 1973 and 1980 to 283 percent.128 In the 1980s, industrial growth gradually reached zero percent and then lower in 1990.129 Economic decisions were made based on political/national motives turning the Yugoslav economic decisionmaking scene into a zero-sum game.130 This situation was reﬂected in the banking sector, which was decentralized so that local enterprises had good relationships with banks. Investment decisions were thus not made on realistic judgments of economic efﬁcacy and efﬁciency but rather on calculations of political capital. If a national group did not win, it mattered not if Yugoslavia gained. Thus, the communist leadership’s economic policy, corruption, and greed served to delegitimize communist rule. In order to retain their power and their access to wealth, the elite turned to a nationalist agenda as communism became discredited, along with its purveyors. After Tito’s death in 1980 the Yugoslav government had to start repaying the money it had borrowed from Western banks and the IMF in the 1960s and 1970s. Since some of that money had been mismanaged, repayment led to hyperinﬂation. Prices for goods rose, yet incomes fell. All 31

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Yugoslavs began having trouble paying their bills. In the early 1980s numerous strikes and demonstrations signaled growing discontent with the socialist system of Yugoslavia. By 1982, Yugoslavia’s foreign debt was $17.9 billion.131 In this period of global stagﬂation, which was characterized by slowed economic growth and a devaluation of its wildly ﬂuctuating currency, Yugoslavia could not easily service that debt, despite the macro-economic restructuring program adopted beginning in 1980.132 The timing of this policy was auspicious. When nationalist tensions were beginning to build to a boiling point, simultaneously the bulk of the Yugoslav population was forced into a situation where the country’s foreign debt had to be serviced at ruinous rates. This, coupled with a devaluation of the dinar, decreased the standard of living of the average citizen of Yugoslavia. In times of economic stress, political stability and social tolerance are stressed immeasurably. This was clearly the case in Yugoslavia. The West’s insistence on a debtrestructuring agreement only served to aggravate Yugoslavia’s economic malaise, increasing the tensions between the central government and the governments of the republics and autonomous provinces,133 as Yugoslav investment collapsed.134 Industrial production fell from its 1966–79 average of 7.1 percent per year to ⫺10.6 percent in 1990.135 Unemployment in some of the underdeveloped regions may have exceeded 50 percent. There were permanent shortages of such essentials as gasoline, detergent, coffee, and electricity. Between 1987 and 1990 Yugoslavia had one of “the highest strike rates in the world.”136 The IMF and other international creditors demanded that an increasingly shaky Yugoslavia make major structural reforms to its economy if it wanted further support. Yugoslavia’s federal system no longer worked to the beneﬁt of its constituents, but rather to the beneﬁt of its international creditors. Prime Minister Ante Markovic´ had been elected in order to curb the runaway inﬂation of the 1980s and to introduce radical economic reforms to Yugoslavia. His vision was to introduce a gradual transition to a market economy through steady privatization of the social property. When he met with President George H.W. Bush in the fall of 1989, Markovic´ agreed to a ﬁnancial aid package to save Yugoslavia’s economy. Yugoslavia was to receive debt relief as per a 1990 IMF Stand-by Arrangement and a World Bank Structural Adjustment Loan. In return, Yugoslavia would dismantle the self-management system, cut the state budget by limiting transfer payments to the republics and autonomous provinces, and redirect those funds toward the servicing of Yugoslavia’s external debt. But economic reforms such as those demanded of Yugoslavia by foreign creditors and Western governments often require governments to reduce their own powers sometimes at a time when the demands on governments to protect civil order and to provide stability in the midst of rapid change 32

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are increasingly greater. The proposed Markovic´ plan would have adversely affected most Yugoslavs, creating explosive social conditions: large-scale unemployment among young people and unskilled urban dwellers; demobilized soldiers and security police looking for private employment; thriving conditions for black market activities and crime; and ﬂourishing local and global trafﬁc in small arms and ammunition. A sense of community under these circumstances is highly prized, but not because of the historical persistence and power of ethnic identities and cultural attachments, as the ethnic conﬂict school insists, but because the bases of existing communities have collapsed and governments are radically narrowing what they will or can provide in terms of previously guaranteed rights to subsistence, land, public employment, and even citizenship.137 The negative response to the Western-imposed austerity plan was expressed immediately in Yugoslavia. The Serbian government, which relied on transfer payments as a poorer republic, rejected the Markovic´ plan, as did more than a half a million Serbian workers, supported by Yugoslavia’s trade union movement.138 The Prime Minister had introduced a completely convertible dinar in a relatively short time to a weak economy, which rapidly drained the Treasury of foreign exchange. Furthermore, he was hamstrung by the absence of labor and capital markets, a commodity market alone not being conducive to creating a modern market economy.139 Western support of Yugoslavia during this transition was lackluster at best. Yugoslavia’s Kosovo policy was deemed by the US Congress to violate human rights provisions. The Congress then voted to deny Yugoslavia American economic assistance. While the amount was only $5 million, Yugoslavia was automatically also barred from receiving World Bank, IMF, and other credit market loans, to devastating effect.140 The economic crisis that crested in the late 1980s and early 1990s is thus widely considered a major cause of the ensuing war.141

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2 THE DISSOLUTION OF YUGOSLAVIA

With the communist era internal balance of power slowly being shattered by ethnic politics, the actual opening salvo of the wars of Yugoslav dissolution may have been the April 1987 remarks by Slobodan Milosˇevic´ in Kosovo Polje, where, prompted by a Serbian mob fearful of the Albanian majority in Kosovo, he promised that “no one has the right to beat the people.”1 As the “protector” of Serbian ethnic rights, his rallying call to Serbs was to reassert Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo and Vojvodina, which the 1974 Constitution had made almost totally autonomous from Serbia, and to reassert Serbia’s primacy within Yugoslavia. The militancy with which Milosˇevic´ attacked the Kosovars alarmed the other republics, particularly the Slovenes, who believed that they “were next.”2 Furthermore, after engineering a “soft coup” in Serbia to control the politics of that republic, raiding the Yugoslav treasury on behalf of Serbia and to deny funds to the other republics,3 as well as stripping the Autonomous Provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo of their autonomous status in direct contravention of the 1974 Constitution,4 Milosˇevic´ had introduced his own people into important positions among the Serbian populations of Bosnia and Croatia.5 Throughout the former Yugoslavia, the new republic leaders could not agree on a mutually acceptable form for the Yugoslavia of the 1990s. Since Tito’s death, all was going wrong in Yugoslavia: inﬂation was soaring, selfmanagement was not living up to expectations, and the foreign infusion of capital that Yugoslavia had lived on during the Titoist era was drying up. Unfortunately for Yugoslavia, the three institutions that were to obviate such problems as this (the military, the party, and the government) did not survive in their assigned integrative role during the chaos of the post-Tito era. When Tito died, the consensus that had guided Yugoslavia since the Second World War was lost and could not navigate Yugoslav safely through the ensuing economic, social, political, and constitutional crises that beset it in the 1980s.6 Cross-republic alliances among elites disappeared, even among members of the supposedly overarching LCY. The populace, which had not developed the ability to recognize such manipula34

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tion of their emotions, were ﬂung into the maelstrom of war when old grievances were paraded as living history. Slovenia, in particular, was advantaged in regard to Western markets and had a population with the know-how to create a market economy, because of its aggressively independent and more liberal thinking, in contrast to some of the other regions of Yugoslavia.7 Thus, Slovenes, as well as the more Western-oriented Croats, feared Milosˇevic´’s grasp for power and favored protecting their prerogatives and changing Yugoslavia into a confederation, even while the Serb leadership was demanding a tighter, Serb-dominated federation. Macedonia and Bosnia were caught in the middle, not wishing the federation to collapse, but also not favoring a new federation dominated by Serbia. They attempted to broker a deal between the federal and confederal positions and to moderate each side’s views, but to no avail. Partisans of Greater Serbia8 (which included the Serbian nationalists and the Serb-dominated military), Greater Croatia, and an autonomous Slovenia undermined Markovic´’s reformist agenda, which had given some promise of reshaping Yugoslav society.9 Nationalist agendas, openly pursued in the late 1980s and early 1990s, were reﬂected in changes to republic constitutions to assert sovereignty that made the federal government “increasingly irrelevant.”10 With the collapse of the government in January 1990, the LCY also disintegrated. When multiparty elections were held throughout Yugoslavia beginning in Macedonia in November 1990, nationalistic parties overwhelmingly won throughout Yugoslavia. In Bosnia, the three major ethnic groups each ﬁelded a party that represented that constituency in the parliament. Of the 240 seats, the Bosnian Muslim Stranka demokratske akcije (Party of Democratic Action, SDA) captured 86 (35.8 percent), the Serbian Srpska demokratska stranka (Serbian Democratic Party, SDS) 72 (30 percent), and the Croatian Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ) 44 (18.3 percent), reﬂecting the relative percentages of the respective ethnic populations in Bosnia. Thus, “given the chance to vote as Bosnians, the population of Bosnia and Herzegovina chose instead to vote as Muslims, Serbs and Croats.”11

War in Slovenia Slovenia was anxious to sunder ties with post-Tito Yugoslavia. Its leaders desired closer contacts with Western Europe and seemed to believe that their captive market in Yugoslavia was worth less than the possibility of being accepted into West European organizations like the EU and NATO. Furthermore, Milosˇevic´’s cavalier treatment of heretofore autonomous Kosovo and Vojvodina seemed to be an omen of future Serbian attempts at domination of the important functions of the Yugoslav state, such as the military, the police, ﬁnances, and diplomacy.12 Finally, the large-scale 35

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printing of money by Serbian government ofﬁcials without consultation with the other republics angered Slovenia, as well as Croatia.13 All of these problems coalesced into a desire by some of the Yugoslav republics to seek independence from the federation. In the end, as Gow suggested, the issues at the center of the crisis that befell Yugoslavia were “statehood, sovereignty, self-determination and, effectively, the meaning of ‘nation,’ as well as the identity and future of particular nations.”14 The way these issues were perceived by all the involved actors, especially by the international actors, drove the succeeding developments. Croatian leaders were also eager to afﬁrm their sovereignty, which they did on June 25 1990, seeking quasi-statehood, if not actual statehood, and chaﬁng under the increasingly onerous Serbian demands on the more prosperous areas within Yugoslavia. The Croatian republic ﬂagrantly displayed symbols obnoxious to the Croatian Serbs, reminders of their victimization at fascist hands during the Second World War. The ˇsahovnica (the checkerboard pattern on the Croatian ﬂag, also used by the Ustasˇe during the Second World War) became a part of the new Croatian ﬂag, and the kuna, the same unit of money introduced during the days of the fascist Independent State of Croatia, was adopted as legal tender. While Croatian leaders pointed out that these symbols were also used in their medieval past, the fears of their Serbian compatriots remained. The 1990 Constitution of the Croatian republic altered its former language on citizenship with regard to minorities. The formal constitutional status of the Croatian Serbs, comprising 12 percent of the population in Croatia,15 appeared to them to be downgraded,16 and their response was violent. In January 1991 Knin-based Croatian Serbs created the Serbian Autonomous Province of Krajina (SAO Krajina).17 Serbian paramilitary bands aided by units of the Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslavenska narodna armija or, JNA)18 began to patrol, citing a feared reoccurrence of Croatian atrocities like during the Second World War. However, they also enlarged the SAO’s territory in an attempt to make it predominantly Serbpopulated. Through expulsion and extermination of non-Serbs, almost one-third of Croatia was included in the newly formed Republika Srpska Krajina (RSK). The implicit, if not explicit, meaning of this maneuver was that the new borders of post-cold war Yugoslavia would be based on demographics, not on the communist-delineated borders of the postSecond World War era. Croatia and Bosnia, of course, would be most affected by this policy as many Serbs lived within their borders. When Serbia blocked the normal rotation of Croat Stipe Mesic´ to be President of the Yugoslav Presidency in May 1991, it was clear to Croatia and Slovenia that the Serbs would not respond to their call for a looser federation or confederation. Slovenia and then Croatia rejected Serbian threats of violence if they disturbed the functioning of the Yugoslav state.19 The West, and the United States in particular, did not favor the destruc36

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tion of the Yugoslav federation. US Secretary of State James Baker III had expressed such a sentiment on June 20 1991 when he visited Belgrade.20 This utterance was taken by the Serbs as a “green light” to do whatever it took to keep Yugoslavia united. While Slovenia’s absence from the state would not have been terribly signiﬁcant for Serbia in terms of ethnicity, for Slovenia is fairly homogeneous, nevertheless, Serbia attempted to keep the putative Serb-dominated and largely Serbpopulated federation together by force. However, when Slovenia determined to leave the federation, with Croatia close behind, the political balance was altered, which irrevocably damaged any chance that the remainder of the federation could once more coalesce. The war began on June 26 1991, the day after Slovenia’s declaration of independence. The JNA, which metamorphosed into a Serbian army as many non-Serb soldiers left the JNA to join the units of their own ethnic groups, put up a token show of force in response to Slovenia’s declaration of independence by occupation of border crossings. The JNA brought tanks into Slovenia, bombed the Ljubljana airport, and killed dozens of Slovenians before withdrawing.21 While the EC was in the throes of trying to create a common foreign and security policy (CFSP), Germany was threatening unilateral recognition of Slovenia and Croatia, whose demands for self-determination struck a chord in the country that had itself just been reunited upon the fall of the Berlin Wall.22 The EC sent its Troika (foreign ministers of the country holding the EC presidency and the ministers that preceded and would follow him in that ofﬁce) to Yugoslavia to negotiate a ceaseﬁre between the JNA and Slovenia. The agreement also included the following: provision for resolution of the aforementioned presidential crisis whereby the Serbs had blocked the normal rotation of the presidency; an EC patrol of the Slovene border with Yugoslavia; a return of the JNA to barracks. Finally, both Slovenia and Croatia agreed not to actively pursue their quest for independence for another three months.23 With an eye to strengthening the still young CFSP in preparation for the Maastricht Summit in December 1991, the European countries through the EC’s crisis management initiatives took the lead in trying to resolve the Yugoslav problem. While the European countries feared economic upheaval and refugee inﬂuxes resulting from violence in Yugoslavia and wished to protect their trade routes between Greece and other EC countries,24 the US saw no immediate vital American interests in that region and as much as acquiesced to European leadership in resolving this conﬂict.25 However, EC efforts were unsuccessful and, violence having occurred, the situation was altered: the Slovenes (and Croats) were more determined than ever not to remain in a Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, and the JNA, which had been humiliated by the Slovene territorial forces, was in an increasingly difﬁcult position.26 37

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War in Croatia Serbia’s quest for an ethnically homogeneous Greater Serbia then led it into conﬂict with an independence-minded Croatia over the Croatian lands in which lived many Serbs (mainly Western and Eastern Slavonia and Krajina). In Bosnia, the Serbs desired eastern and northwestern Bosnia (which later became Republika Srpska).27 In preparation for Serb incorporation of Serb-inhabited lands in Bosnia in 1991, the Bosnian SDS declared autonomy for Herzegovina (on September 12), (Bosnian) Krajina (on September 16), Romanija (on September 17), and Northeastern Bosnia (on September 19). These “Autonomous Regions” would jointly declare independence from Bosnia and be incorporated into a new, Serb-dominated area of Bosnia.28 The military strategy that Milosˇevic´ pursued to attain Greater Serbia was strikingly similar for the wars against Croatia and Bosnia (and, as a matter of fact, later in the decade, Kosovo). First, through intimidation and coercion, non-Serbs were cleared from the portions of territory the Serbs claimed. This strategy, in itself, reﬂected the ultimate Serbian aim – to rid lands it claimed of non-Serbs, not through direct combat but through violence against innocents in order to terrorize them into migrating and thus removing the potential for later unrest.29 The European response to this bloodshed in Croatia was ﬁrst to attempt to quell the ﬁghting with diplomacy in the summer and fall of 1991. In September 1991, the EC appointed Lord Peter Carrington, former British foreign secretary and NATO secretary-general, as its special emissary to Yugoslavia. He convened an EC Conference on Yugoslavia at The Hague on September 7 in an attempt to keep Yugoslavia uniﬁed and prevent all-out war. Carrington was determined that there should be a political agreement among all the republics for a new federal Yugoslav structure. He developed a plan that proposed giving each constituent unit (republic) of the former Yugoslavia whatever level of sovereignty it wished to have, in the manner of a confederacy, with a common currency, foreign policy, and other linkages, but with the areas dominated by non-majority ethnic groups to be monitored by the international community. While the heads of most of the Yugoslav republics accepted Carrington’s proposals, Milosˇevic´ rejected them, insisting that the Yugoslav nations, not the republics, were the legal constituent units and should control their respective territories. His deﬁnition of “nation” included all members of a particular ethnic group; a program based on Yugoslavia’s republics, on the other hand, would have included all citizens within that political community.30 The Carrington plan went nowhere. While the British seemed to consider all sides equally guilty of the turmoil in Yugoslavia, which meant to them that no one should intervene,31 Germany was bent on rapid recogni38

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tion of Croatia (and Slovenia) without ﬁrst ensuring that their minority populations would be accorded civil and human rights. Germany favored branding Serbia an aggressor, particularly when the JNA began bombing the Croatian cities of Vukovar in August and Dubrovnik in September. The Serbs considered Germany’s active stand against them an indication of renewed German expansionism, this time using the EC as its instrument, which had been frustrated during the Second World War.32 The UN Security Council had announced an international arms embargo against all parties in Yugoslavia in September 1991,33 which made it difﬁcult for Bosnia (and marginally less so for Croatia) to acquire arms and which guaranteed Serbian weapons superiority. In October, with diplomatic initiatives having borne no fruit and the moratorium on the Slovene and Croatian declarations of independence ending, three EC members that were also on the Security Council requested UN assistance in ceaseﬁre and peacekeeping negotiations. The UN appointed Cyrus Vance to help mediate between the Serbs and the Croats to stop the ﬁghting, while Lord Carrington pursued a political settlement on behalf of the EC. On January 2 1992, a ceaseﬁre between Croatia and Serbia was signed, and on February 21 a United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) of 14,000 troops was deployed in the region, with headquarters in Sarajevo. Its mission was “to create the conditions of peace and security required for the negotiation of an overall settlement of the Yugoslav crisis.”34 Its immediate mission was to arrange and maintain the Serb–Croat ceaseﬁre. At that time, Serbia held almost a third of Croatian territory and was not unwilling to have peacekeepers preserve these areas from Croatian attacks. The Security Council passed a large number of resolutions, some based on Chapter VI of the UN Charter on the paciﬁc settlement of disputes, and many on Chapter VII on enforcement measures. Often these provisions were in conﬂict with each other, which “constrained UNPROFOR’s scope for responding” to Serbia.35 Furthermore, according to Security Council Resolution 770, UNPROFOR’s mandate was extended to protect humanitarian efforts and the “safe havens” in Bosnia (see p. 53), using any necessary means, under wartime conditions with only light arms and loose coordination. Its secondary mission was to serve as a stabilizing presence in Bosnia in hopes that war would be avoided in that arena.36 However, it soon became apparent to those on the ground that those objectives were at odds with each other.37 UNPROFOR’s mission had been peacekeeping in order to protect the international community’s humanitarian activities. With only light arms and an inability to use force except for self-defense, UNPROFOR had little ﬂexibility. However, the peace-keepers themselves soon became endangered by the antagonists who would use UNPROFOR for revenge or as human shields against NATO airstrikes. Thus, the humanitarian 39

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issues became inextricably bound with the military/political issues. This weakened the ability of the international community to pursue either aspect efﬁciently: “UNPROFOR failed because of the contradictory nature of its mandate: to help distribute relief as well as protect civilian areas. The UN could not guarantee the consent of the warring parties, nor could it prevent them from dictating the nature of the engagement.” Illequipped and with an inappropriate mandate and schizophrenic command structure, UNPROFOR was drawn into situations to which it could not adequately respond.38 At this point, the question of recognition of the independence of the various republics seeking it rose to the fore, as Germany argued that such a step would end the violence and force Serbia to accept a peace settlement.39 Other EC members – correctly, it turned out – feared that this would only exacerbate the situation, especially for Bosnia. Bosnia’s President Izetbegovic´ expressed anxiety that the EC was moving so fast on the recognition track that Bosnia would be forced to seek independence prematurely if it were not to be subsumed in a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia.40 The recognition issue was largely about whether the communistdelineated internal republic borders would become international borders. The international community, if it chose to intervene, could become involved both in the settlement of frontier issues and in the conduct of the war. Sanctions against the aggressors and provision of armaments decisions thus became international issues. Pursuant to the solution of this issue, the European Council of EC Foreign Ministers asked that the Badinter Advisory Commission to the EC Conference counsel it about the appropriateness of the petitions of the Yugoslav republics for recognition in line with the Council’s guidelines, norms of international public law, as well as the Yugoslav Constitution, which provided for the secession of the republics. The Badinter Commission asserted that sovereignty belonged to the various republics,41 not the ethnic groups or nations of the former Yugoslavia. Thus, “the issue in Yugoslavia was not secession but dissolution.”42 Only Slovenia and Macedonia ﬁtted the Badinter-designated criteria for independence: governmental control over their territory and attempts to protect minority rights. The Commission, therefore, recommended that their independence be recognized. Croatia, on the other hand, had not satisﬁed all the EC’s guidelines for recognition.43 However, Germany insisted on recognition for Croatia as well as Slovenia. The other Western powers acquiesced, albeit unwillingly, and the independence of Slovenia and Croatia was recognized on January 15 1992.

40

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War in Bosnia and Herzegovina With the seeming disposition of the initial intra-Yugoslav disputes, the Bosnian situation became the focus of diplomatic efforts. Bosnia’s position was unenviable. For centuries Bosnia had inhabited the same frontiers, whether it was as a kingdom, a province, or a republic, surviving intact under the guarantees of a variety of protectors. The Titoist prescription for distribution of power among the three major national groups in Bosnia in the end worked against its unity. Bosnia was historically multiethnic and relatively tolerant, as its ﬁgures for intermarriage, particularly in the urban areas, demonstrate.44 However, when the Titoist ideological blanket was lifted from the country, nationalism and regionalism were ﬁnally allowed expression. Bosnia’s three state-forming groups could not agree on a formula that would meet each of their needs. The Bosnian Muslim political leadership was determined that Bosnia’s status would be equal to that of Serbia or Croatia, and thus was willing to consider solution of the Yugoslav tensions in any way that brought about that end – whether it be a federal, confederal, or other type of solution.45 However, barring this situation, the attitude of the Bosnian Muslim leadership was that Bosnia would have to become an independent state if Slovenia and Croatia declared their independence. To do otherwise would be to become a part of a rump Yugoslavia that was simply Greater Serbia. The Bosnian Muslims did not want to leave Yugoslavia, but they, too, did not want to be sublimated in Serbia’s Yugoslavia.46 With the collapse of communism, the leaders of the three ethnic groups dominating Bosnia were free to jockey for control over that republic.47 As with siblings, three is a notoriously difﬁcult number to keep peaceful. The Serbs believed that the Muslims and Croats were ganging up on them; yet at one point the Serb and Croat leaders secretly came together to create a plan for a dismembered Bosnia, leaving the Bosnian Muslims with no viable homeland (see p. 42). The other Bosnian groups were uneasy with Izetbegovic´’s call for a one-man, one-vote situation in Bosnia, which would have ensured Bosnian Muslim dominance.48 The Bosnian Serbs did not want to live in an independent Bosnia that would separate them from Serbia proper. The Croats were split between those who desired a united Bosnia, led by Bosnia’s HDZ leader, Stjepan Kljuic´, and the “Herzegovina lobby,” which supported cantonization and had close ties with Croatian President Tudjman. Kljuic´ was forced to resign and the Bosnian HDZ was then led by Mate Boban, who favored cantonization. The Bosnian Croats wanted a close relationship with Croats in Croatia proper and did not wish to be part of a Serb-dominated rump Yugoslavia.49 Fearing that Serbian (and Croatian) military attention would soon focus on Bosnian territory, in October 1991 Izetbegovic´ had requested that the 41

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international community provide preventive international troop deployments, but the international community did not respond either institutionally or individually. The Bosnian Muslims did not take formal steps to prepare for resistance to Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb attacks on the integrity of the state until summer 1991.50 According to one Bosnian Muslim analyst, the Bosnian political leadership did not believe that the JNA would join in military actions against Bosnia, even while it appears that the Bosnian Serb members of the JNA were being sent back to Bosnia in case there was war.51 The UN-imposed arms embargo against all Yugoslav areas further disadvantaged Serbia’s opponents, particularly Bosnia, in mounting a defense against the Serbs.52 Unbeknownst to many at the time, Tudjman and Milosˇevic´ had already fashioned a compromise that would have divided Bosnia between them.53 This was the plan they ﬁnalized in 1991 at Tito’s hunting lodge in Karadjordjevo after a series of meetings.54 Serbia and Croatia appeared determined to split what was left of Yugoslavia between them once homogeneous Slovenia had declared its independence. Bosnia, with its ethnically mixed populations, would be partitioned between Croatia and Serbia, with perhaps a small spit of land given to those Bosnian Muslims who did not wish to live in either Croatian or Serbian Bosnia.55 This would solve the Bosnian Muslim question that lay between them in their attempts to divide Bosnia “equitably.”56 The Muslim call for multiculturalism opposed the narrowly nationalistic plans of the Serb and Croat leaders. Violence continued apace. On January 8 1992, Bosnian Deputy Prime Minister Hakija Turajlic´ was seized from a UN armored vehicle and shot dead by Serb gunmen in front of his French military escorts.57 In February 1992, the Lisbon Conference, presided over by Carrington and José Cutilheiro58 of Portugal, was enjoined to ﬁnd a comprehensive solution to the problems facing Bosnia. Two principles were to be followed: that Bosnia’s borders would not be altered and that all three of the major groups in Bosnia would be considered in the attempt to delineate the constitutional structure of Bosnia without resort to war.59 The approach of this subconference became the concept of “cantonization;”60 that is, as per a Serbian idea, that the division of Bosnia into three units be based on ethnicity. The fact that Bosnia’s demographic pattern could be likened more to a crazy-quilt than to three or so homogeneous areas made that plan unworkable, although the conference probably entertained the idea in principle to avoid Serbian attacks on Bosnia.61 As a matter of fact, a plan and map published by the SDS in December 1991 showed that Serbian control of a number of “Autonomous Regions” would mean that Serbian cantons would control approximately 70 percent of Bosnia.62 From February 29 to March 1 1992, a referendum, recommended by the Badinter Commission to clarify the desires of the populace, was held in 42

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Bosnia to determine its future structure. Bosnian Muslims and Croats voted decisively that they were “in favour of a sovereign and independent Bosnia-Hercegovina, a state of equal citizens and nations of Muslims, Serbs, Croats and others who live in it.”63 Bosnian Croats, particularly those from Herzegovina, believed that they would eventually be able to secure wide-ranging autonomy from the Bosnian government and thus favored this prescription to counter the possibility of a Serbian drive to create a Greater Serbia that would also include one-third of Croatia and at least part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.64 Bosnian Serbs, who comprised almost one-third of the total population of Bosnia, according to the 1991 census,65 boycotted the referendum. They were so encouraged by the JNA, whose airforce dropped leaﬂets denouncing the balloting, and the SDS, which announced the boycott and, through its militias in the “Serbian Autonomous Regions,” prevented the provision of ballot boxes in the areas it dominated.66 Serbian nationalists were galvanized into action when it became obvious that, as a result of the referendum, Bosnia would declare independence and sunder its land from what remained of the former Yugoslavia. Bosnian Serbs declared the independence of a Serb Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, led by SDS party head Radovan Karadzˇic´, in April 1992.67 Meanwhile, in mid-March the Lisbon Conference produced an agreement among the Bosnian Muslim, Croat, and Serb leaders to divide Bosnia into three ethnically based cantons. The subsequent repudiation of this agreement by radical Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban and then Bosnian President Izetbegovic´, with the support of US Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman,68 indicated that war was imminent. American interest in the fate of Bosnia accelerated thereafter. On April 6 1992, the EC recognized the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, followed on April 7 by the US. Only one month had elapsed since Sarajevo, the capital city of Bosnia, had seen its streets barricaded. Only one day before, Serb forces had seized Sarajevo’s airport and besieged the police academy. War shortly preceded the declaration of independence in Bosnia as Serbian and Croatian paramilitary forces sought to annex portions of its territory in the spring of 199269 and Croatian forces began to grab land in April 1993. By early 1992, the JNA had exited Croatia and Slovenia. Remnants of the former regular JNA and republic-based territorial defense units in Bosnia became the Vojna Republike Srpske (Army of Republika Srpska, or VRS), still closely consulting its parent organization and supported by the Serbian state.70 This Bosnian Serb army, comprising up to ninety thousand men by March 1992, was manned by those Serbian ofﬁcers and men who had been born in Bosnia.71 The Bosnian Serbs cleansed those Muslim opsˇtinas (districts) that blocked the union of all Serbs who 43

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had previously lived in isolated parts of Bosnia.72 In relatively short order, the Serb forces controlled almost 70 percent of Bosnia’s territory73 but had difﬁculty in totally conquering and integrating the Serb-populated areas of Bosnia. The nationalists in Herzegovina also had separatist ambitions. Led by Mate Boban, President of the self-styled Croatian Community of HercegBosna until the end of 1993, Bosnian Croats had complained bitterly about their fate under Tito.74 During Serbia’s aggression against Croatia, many Bosnian Croats fought with Croatia. They also set up self-defense groups in Bosnia against JNA incursions before the Bosnian government had mobilized a defense. While the Croatian Defense Council (HVO) fought under the ˇsahovnica, many Muslims fought with the HVO during this time, lacking any other organizational structure with which to defend Bosnian lands from the JNA.75 However, the creation of Herceg-Bosna’s institutional structure soon became more than a defense against JNA incursions. It became obvious that the purpose was to build a separate, independent Bosnian Croat state and to deny Sarajevo’s power over its territory. The Croatian Army began its ethnic cleansing of Bosnia on April 5 1992 with its seizure of Bosanski Brod, but in 1993 Croatia began an open land-grab in Bosnia after abandoning its alliance with the Muslims.76 Not all Bosnian Croats were sympathetic to the maximalist demands of the nationalist Bosnian Croats. For example, Stjepan Kljuic´ called Mate Boban a traitor for his willingness to trade Croatian-dominated lands for autonomy by accepting the partition of Bosnia envisioned in the Cutilheiro Plan.77 Those who opposed the Boban vision were in favor of a united Bosnia as the best way to represent the interests of all Bosnian Croats.78 However, such a vision was symbolically destroyed when Croatian guns blasted the sixteenth-century Mostar bridge in November 1993 that had united the Muslim and Croat sections of the city.79 There may have been as many as eighty-three different paramilitary organizations operating within Bosnia during the war, according to a 1994 UN report.80 Some Serbian paramilitary units operating in Bosnia were composed of criminals, such as Arkan (Zˇeljko Raznjatovic´) and his “Tigers” and extreme nationalists such as Vojislav Sˇesˇelj and his “Cˇetniks.” These units were supported by “‘taxation’ of humanitarian assistance from abroad, by black market activities of various kinds, and through loot from the displaced population.”81 As a matter of fact, their successes were aided by the Security Council’s economic blockade, which devastated the lives of the majority of common people while allowing the criminalization of the economy. As a result, the ruling elites on all sides proﬁted, even while they assumed the guise of patriots for their selfsacriﬁcing endeavors.82 The Bosnian army was not ofﬁcially organized until May 1992, two weeks after the war had begun. Until then the Bosnian leadership inform44

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ally coordinated what capabilities it had in an approach called the Patriotic League.83 Localities were responsible for their own defense, which made for some interesting situations. For example, Sarajevo was defended at one time by a group led by two criminals, called Caco and C´elo.84 Tuzla and Bihac´ were defended by Patriotic Leagues in which workers at the larger enterprises in the area were mobilized as soldiers and supported by “taxation” of humanitarian assistance and by local taxes. Like the Serbian and Croatian militaries, who were aided by Russians and Italians, respectively, the Bosnian Muslims were also supported by external forces: Afghan mujahedin and other Muslim volunteers.85 Bosnia’s difﬁculties lay not only in purchasing arms but also in actually acquiring them, relying, as it often had to, on Croatian goodwill, which, during a large part of the war, simply was not there. The Bosnian Army thus captured many of its heavier weapons and through a variety of means acquired the more portable weapons. Serbia, on the other hand, had already denuded Bosnia of its arms before the conﬂict and mobilized Bosnian Serbs so that, equipped by the JNA, they were able to gain a distinct advantage early in the conﬂict.86 In terms of military strategy, some analysts contend that most of the ﬁghting was not between the militaries but consisted of soldiers killing or otherwise ethnically cleansing civilians,87 which meant that the front lines were constantly shifting. An OSCE report concluded that all sides were guilty of atrocities; however, the Bosnian government was deemed to have refused to engage in systematic ethnic cleansing.88 On the other hand, Human Rights Watch released evidence that both Serbia and Bosnia had chemical weapons capabilities during the war, whether they were used or not.89 While the war was ﬁerce, so was the opportunism – both economic and military. There were many instances of cooperation across military lines to purchase military assistance or commercial goods.90 Furthermore, “the delivery of humanitarian aid, which was based on negotiation among the various groups, was carefully controlled. If too little was allowed through, the paramilitary groups would lose their sources of ‘taxation.’ If too much was allowed through, black market prices would fall.”91

International involvement in Bosnia The international community has been criticized extensively for its role in not preventing the outbreak of the Bosnian war. For example, journalist Elaine Sciolino suggested that Western action in any of at least four incidents might have prevented the war. Had the US in the person of James Baker not publicly favored continuation of a uniﬁed Yugoslavia (which seemed to give Milosˇevic´ “permission” to attack Slovenia); had the US been more insistent that the newly emerging post-cold war European 45

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states guarantee minority rights; had Germany not precipitously pushed for recognition of Croatia’s independence without ensuring civil and human rights for Croatia’s Serbs; and had there been a stronger Western reaction to the Serbian bombardment of Dubrovnik, possibly the Bosnian war would have been averted.92 Other opportunities for positive Western intervention also existed. Be that as it may, the West’s ambivalence in the face of Serbian intransigence did not discourage the ethnic cleansing and other atrocities that occurred. The initial NATO response to Serbian attacks on Bosnia was to do nothing. There was some confusion as to the post-cold war role of NATO. On the one hand, the end of the cold war had raised a notion among the West European countries that, in line with their increasing economic integration, greater political and foreign policy actions should also be taken in tandem. Believing that their new-found unity would permit a demonstration of their ability to settle the Balkan debacle, Europeans agreed that “the hour of Europe has dawned.”93 But the Europeans were not of one mind on solutions to the Balkan problem.94 After all, this was the ﬁrst time since the 1956 Suez crisis that the United States was not in the lead, in one way or the other, on an issue of Western security. Following domestic considerations as well as historical imperatives, West Europeans suggested different approaches to the problem. Germany, like the United States, considered the Serbs to be the aggressors, while France, Great Britain, and other Europeans, possibly with an eye to countering Germany’s inﬂuence in the post-cold war world, were more inclined to spread the blame around to the other South Slavs, too. Some Europeans believed that they were witnessing a civil war in a country not in NATO’s sphere of action.95 This ambivalence within the Western alliance meant that the United States and Western Europe dithered over who should take the lead in resolving the Bosnian problem.96 For all their differences, the Europeans had more in common with each other for most of the war than with their American ally. In spite of the difﬁculty of the recognition question and its impact on the evolution of CFSP, Yugoslavia was an opportunity for Germany to begin its transformation from humbled penitent to responsible giant in the framework of European policy. Furthermore, France and the UK, traditionally distrustful of each other even as allies (especially from the British side), began to form an axis for military-political policy and activity in the European context, which was likely to have major ramiﬁcations for the future development of the European organizational structure (the EU, the Western European Union [WEU], and NATO), as well as for European and Mediterranean security in general. This emerged after both countries made sizeable deployments of armed forces to the region in support of UN Security Council Resolutions. The two were thus able to dominate the debate on the use of force because of these troops. 46

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The American administration, anxious for domestic reasons to reduce its military commitments in Europe and to encourage Europe to play a bigger international role, “was equally concerned that the Europeans should accept the task of stabilising Yugoslavia.”97 The Bush Administration, preoccupied with the looming election year and with the Persian Gulf War wherein there was an obvious threat to US interests in “oil, Israel, and the whole new world order thing,”98 was stymied by the problem of disorder in the Balkans. President Bush was unable to articulate a compelling American interest in the Balkans, particularly as there was no longer great power rivalry in Europe to rivet America’s attention.99 The United States was also concerned with NATO’s credibility when faced with a threat to peace in its own backyard. American policy on Bosnia became, to all intents and purposes, that made by NATO and the UN.100 The United States decided to act as part of a multinational humanitarian force but would not commit ground forces.101 Russia’s policy toward the Yugoslav dissolution was rather similar to the initial American aversion to the break-up of Yugoslavia, if the rationale was not. Facing the possibility of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Soviet ofﬁcials emphasized the importance of a single, independent Yugoslavia to the Balkans and to European stability as a whole over the siren call of nationalism.102 Like the United States, Russia worried that “Western acquiescence to Yugoslavia’s disintegration into ethnically based states might serve as a precedent for ethnic groups in Russia to rise up against Moscow, risking widespread chaos in a region rich in nuclear weapons.”103 While Russia could act occasionally as a patron of the Serbs in a role as protector of people of like faith, nevertheless, at this point in time, the Russians had no interest in having anything but cordial relations with the West. However, when Gorbachev was replaced by Boris Yeltsin upon the fall of the Soviet Union, Russian policy began to favor the concept of national self-determination.104 Thus, in February 1992, Russia recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, more than two months before American recognition. Furthermore, one thousand Russian troops were included in UNPROFOR’s peacekeeping contingents sent to patrol the Serb-occupied Krajina region of Croatia. This represented “the high point of Moscow’s pro-Western foreign policy.”105 Thereafter, the Russian view of the Yugoslav wars of dissolution began to differ from that of the United States (and some of America’s European allies, especially Germany). While the United States demonized Serbia to some extent,106 Russia, seeking to maintain its status as a world power, often sympathized with the Orthodox Serbs who were viliﬁed in the West. Russia considered the conﬂict to be a series of civil wars with no one party more to blame than any other.107 Therefore, Russia became unalterably opposed to the use of external military force in the Balkans. Similarly, the Russian prescription for solving the Balkan conﬂict 47

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differed from that of the United States. Fearing the increased American involvement that a proactive Western policy in the Balkans would encourage, Russia was willing to consider peacekeeping and the pursuit of a political settlement. The United States, on the other hand, believed that Russia was able to inﬂuence Serbian elites to end the conﬂict, but simply refused to do so. Unopposed Serbian aggression would make a deal with Serbia increasingly difﬁcult.108 Russia’s adamant opposition to external military intervention in the Balkans seemed to the West just to prolong the agony in the former Yugoslavia. Despite its growing attempts at a common response to the Bosnian conﬂict, the EC was unable to stem the violence of the Bosnian Croats and the Bosnian Serbs; the newly recognized Bosnian government was attacked from both sides. The UN, which had declared an arms embargo against all sides in the Yugoslav conﬂict, took no responsibility for protection of the Bosnian government,109 even though, by passing Resolution 713 to deny an inﬂux of arms into the region, “defence and security matters with respect to [Bosnia] became the business of the Security Council.”110 On June 6 1992, a contingent of UNPROFOR111 peacekeeping troops was authorized to be sent to the Sarajevo airport to facilitate delivery of humanitarian supplies to counter the effects on the civilian population of the Serbian siege of Sarajevo, but the Serbs did not turn control of the airport over to the UN until the end of June. Their relinquishment came in the wake of the surprise visit of French President François Mitterand to Sarajevo, which shamed the international community (both the EC and the UN) into action.112 Until then the international community had been ﬁguratively wringing its hands about the lack of options for dealing with the Bosnian problem. For example, although the European governments widely blamed Serbia and its strongman, Slobodan Milosˇevic´, for the humanitarian catastrophe and naked power grab in Bosnia, by May 1992 the most serious action taken was the withdrawal of Western ambassadors from Belgrade. In August 1992, the Security Council voted to allow the use of military force, if necessary, to ensure that humanitarian assistance reached Bosnia’s citizens. American and European response to this resolution was uneven at best and demonstrated the confusion in those capitals about what the issues were and whether there should be external intervention (and, if so, what form it should take). In that same month, talks on the fate of the Balkans were convened in London under the co-sponsorship of the EC and the UN, represented respectively by Lord David Owen and former US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. The London Conference created a permanent organization, the International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY), to address humanitarian, weapons control, and other issues. The warring parties all signed an agreement to end the ﬁghting in the former Yugoslavia, lift the 48

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siege on Sarajevo, and permit international personnel to take over certain governmental functions and ofﬁces.113 Cooperation from the warring parties was minimal at best. It was not until September 1992 that the UN formally denied rump Yugoslavia’s right to occupy the Yugoslav seat of the UN, the ﬁrst time the Security Council had ever taken such a step against a sitting member. Rump Yugoslavia would have to reapply as a new member and convince the Security Council that it was a peace-loving country.114 Economic sanctions against rump Yugoslavia were still only being discussed. Additional relief support was deployed as UNPROFOR II in September 1992115 to support the UNHRC’s mandate to deliver humanitarian supplies.116 Intermittent ﬂights meant that Sarajevo, not to mention other areas of Bosnia, was not sufﬁciently provided with needed food and medical supplies.117 While the Serb attacks against Muslims escalated, UN forces were also threatened. In response, the UN enacted economic sanctions against Serbia for supporting a war against an independent state. Russia supported UN diplomatic actions, including the arrival of UNPROFOR. NATO gradually became involved in the conﬂict in a peacekeeping role, beginning in fall 1992 with its deployment of warships in the Adriatic to enforce the arms embargo. Thereafter, NATO forces increasingly enforced the UN Security Council’s no-ﬂy-zone over Bosnia, also endorsed by Russia, as long as the UN approved any military action – the so-called “dual key” strategy.118 The implications of the differing perspectives of the major international actors played out in the proposed solutions to the problem. European leaders saw separation of the various Bosnian ethnic groups as the only solution.119 Germany, for example, wanted to protect its economy from the negative effects of an inﬂux of refugees. Britain sought inﬂuence in the situation commensurate with its self-perception as a major international actor, while the French worried about maintaining the European balance of power.120 France’s policy on Bosnia was also driven by a fear of unrest among its large Muslim population should the Serbs conquer the Bosnian Muslims, as well as its determination that NATO, in which it had not actively participated for a long time, be dominated by the UN in this conﬂict. These considerations then posed the dilemma of whether to pursue peace or justice in the Balkans. As Troy McGrath succinctly put it: to restore justice to Bosnia would be to somehow restore the homes to the Muslims, Croats, and Serbs who previously owned them, and to give them back their former lives. Only this could be viewed as a reversal of the “ethnic cleansing” which so reviled the outside world, and which served as justiﬁcation for external intervention.121 49

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For the United States, however, the dilemma presented by the collapse of Yugoslavia was the clash of two principles that had dominated the postSecond World War era. The dissolution of Yugoslavia faced off the doctrine of self-determination with the ideal of maintaining intact post-Second World War boundaries and states. The Bush Administration seemed to understand that diplomacy alone would not alter the calculus in Yugoslavia; only military force would capture the attention of the nationalists in Yugoslavia who were driving policy. However, Bush did not believe that the American people would permit their soldiers to be put in harm’s way to impose a peace on people whose country most people had never heard of before and where the United States did not seem to have an immediate well-deﬁned interest.122 This attitude was reﬂected in Bush’s claim that the war in the Balkans “is a complex, convoluted conﬂict that grows out of age-old animosities.”123 It was also exhibited in his repeated request to his national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, to explain the issues of the Yugoslav conﬂict124 and the infamous quip in June 1991 by James Baker that “We don’t have a dog in this ﬁght.”125 The US, which had strongly wanted Yugoslavia to remain united in the ﬁrst place,126 initially looked upon Bosnia as a humanitarian problem, not as a victim of external aggression.127 Herein, the United States faced the potential of a fractured Western alliance. Brieﬂy, the dilemma for the West and the United States was the following: if the West intervened militarily in the Yugoslav crisis, the United States, in particular, would not be permitted to spend the post-cold war peace dividend on domestic economic recovery. Furthermore, if Western associations such as NATO became involved in out-of-area situations, there was the risk of a thoroughgoing discussion of NATO’s role in the post-cold war era. The United States resisted posing the question of whether NATO was really necessary anymore with the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, could the West hazard the potential spread of this regional conﬂict to infect other areas where national minorities chafed at majority rule? And could the West afford to ignore genocide in Europe after the atrocities of the Second World War? Meanwhile, candidate Clinton was excoriating the Bush Administration for weakness in the face of aggression in the heart of Europe and for acquiescing to massive human rights violations.128 He promised, if elected, to send arms to the Bosnians for defense and to launch air strikes against the Serbian aggressors.129 President Clinton did not honor his campaign pledges for two years.130 Two contradictory impulses characterized his administration: to end the war so that the killing would stop, but not to reward aggression. Furthermore, while still desiring that the Western alliance forcefully address the Bosnian crisis, the United States was unwilling to commit ground troops. However, the type of response the United States sought in order to end 50

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the war would only have been available with American troops, as European forces were not then equal to the task.131 The two years of Clinton’s not dealing with the problem of disintegrating Yugoslavia, on top of the Bush Administration’s ignoring of the problem, meant that the time when a relatively small amount of diplomatic and military costs would have been exacted from the West passed.132 But the Clinton Administration discovered that, “without being fully aware of it,” the United States was committed by an earlier presidential decision that the US would intervene militarily in Bosnia with other NATO forces if UNPROFOR needed assistance in exiting Bosnia.133 Clinton was thus forced to acknowledge a prior and long-standing American commitment to support its European allies, who were to take the lead in resolving the Bosnian conﬂict, in that “if they got in trouble and had to get out, we would help them get out.”134 The Clinton Administration’s policy was more aggressive than had been Bush’s policy. The United States viewed the conﬂict as Serbian aggression against Bosnia. The US had intervened militarily against Iraq for just such a rationale, but the Bosnian situation strained American foreign policy. Clinton’s response to the Balkan conﬂict was still based on the Bush-era principle that no American military forces would be deployed in the Balkans absent a formal peace settlement. Thus, the United States advocated “peace-making” forces, preferably European, supported by American airforce sorties. Western Europeans, on the other hand, favored a traditional “peacekeeping” policy, whereby Western forces would intervene in the conﬂict, separate the warring parties, and facilitate peace negotiations. The contradiction between the two viewpoints was illustrated by the proposal of the American “lift and strike” policy, which required the lifting of the UN arms embargo against Bosnia to allow it to acquire arms to defend itself and American-ﬂown NATO air strikes against Serb positions.135 This policy, which meant that American troops would not need to be committed on the ground, was summarily rejected by the Western allies in early 1993. The Western allies, who had 14,000 peacekeeping troops already in Bosnia in UNPROFOR, feared for their safety should “lift and strike” be carried out. However, “lift and strike” also provided difﬁculties for the United States. The prospect of “Americanizing the war” à la Vietnam was not popular in the United States, particularly as it risked alienating American relations with its Allies.136 Furthermore, the immediate result of lifting the embargo would be the withdrawal of the UN peacekeepers, who ran the danger of becoming hostages of the Serbs or victims of the American strikes.137 Finally, a unilateral violation of the UN-imposed embargo might encourage others to thumb their noses at UN strictures. On the other hand, the victims of aggression needed a more level playing ﬁeld to resist their tormentors successfully and to seek a just settlement. Clinton’s decision was made even more difﬁcult by a newly emboldened Congress, 51

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which voted to end American participation in the UN-imposed arms embargo on Bosnia.138 Implementation of “lift and strike” was postponed as the US and European allies negotiated the arms embargo question (with the United States favoring canceling it and the Europeans for its continuation). Finally, the United States favored the reversal of Serbian territorial gains. The Western Allies considered the violence to be a civil war and wanted to wait for it to cool down before intervening. The Europeans believed that only a political settlement among all the parties would end the ﬁghting, which meant, of course, that territorial adjustments based on Serbian aggression would have to be accepted. The peace proposals The UN–EU-sponsored Vance–Owen Peace Plan was announced on January 30 1993 at the ICFY in Geneva. The basic idea of this plan was to retain a sovereign Bosnia within its present boundaries, while its interior would be divided into ten quasi-autonomous territorial units based on national criteria. The Serbs would receive three areas with a Serb majority, the Croats two with a Croat majority, and the Muslims three with a Muslim majority. Sarajevo would remain the capital and be the tenth unit, on the order of Washington, DC. All three national groups would share power in Sarajevo. A weak central government would control foreign policy and the frontiers. Most other matters would be subject to provincial decision-making. The Bosnian Croats under Mate Boban were pleased with the plan, which deeded them a uniﬁed territory bordering Croatia. The Bosnian Muslims rejected the plan on the grounds that it ratiﬁed the Serbs’ aggression and, in effect, abolished a legitimate government of a sovereign state;139 however, they publicly accepted the plan, possibly ﬁguring that the Serbs’ rejection would destroy the plan anyway and, thereby, Bosnia would gain some diplomatic advantage. Despite Milosˇevic´’s endorsement and Karadzˇic´’s signature, the Bosnian Serb parliament overwhelmingly rejected the plan in April 1993, as the Serbs would have had to relinquish 39 percent of their wartime territorial gains,140 would be the dominant ethnic group in only three of the ten designated areas, would control no Bosnian industrial centers,141 and would not receive the uniﬁed territory bordering Serbia that they demanded.142 The United States did not publicly embrace the Vance–Owen proposal.143 Some observers thought that there was covert although reluctant acquiescence to the plan in the absence of alternative proposals, as long as American troops were not required to police the agreement. The inconsistency of American policy, however, meant that others were convinced that the US was fatally unhappy with Vance–Owen for many reasons. For example, some recog52

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nized that the plethora of internal borders called for in the plan would be difﬁcult to enforce without massive external policing.144 The other major area of fall-out sparked by Vance–Owen was the fullscale war between the Bosnian Croat (HVO) and the Bosnian (ARBiH) armies. This situation accelerated the transformation of the Herceg-Bosna Croat Community “from its ofﬁcial role as a temporary organization for Croat self-defense, into the speciﬁcally sectarian, anti-Muslim entity with pretensions to full statehood that many of its champions had covertly intended it to be,” even though for a long time a signiﬁcant number of the forces of the HVO were Muslim. There were even instances of HVO cooperation with Serbian forces.145 But by September 1993, the ARBiH was defeating HVO forces.146 A year later it was also routing Bosnian Serb forces. American meetings with Russia, France, Britain, and Spain produced the “safe havens” policy whereby UN peacekeepers protected by American air power would ensure the safety of the inhabitants in Srebrenica, Sarajevo, Gorazˇde, Zˇepa, Bihac´, and Tuzla.147 In April and May 1993, the Security Council authorized UNPROFOR to resist with force continuing Serb attacks against civilians. A further 7500 troops were given to UNPROFOR to secure the “safe havens,” although the Secretary-General had requested 34,000.148 This posed the anomaly of a lack of manpower just at the time when the UN mandate was altered to allow it to use force. Thus, when the Serbs attacked these sites, the UN policy was shown to be bankrupt, and the populations of these cities were not adequately defended by the UN. Clearly, the UN peacekeepers were outmanned by the Serbs, and the commitment to safeguard these cities was abandoned with tremendous loss of civilian life perpetrated by “ethnic cleansers.” An example of the “safe areas” dilemma was Bihac´. A Muslimdominated piece of territory near Croatia’s border, Bihac´ was surrounded by Serb-controlled Croatian land across the frontier and Bosnian Serbcontrolled territory within Bosnia. The Bosnian Army launched an attack against Bosnian Serbs from within the designated “safe haven.” The counter-offensive, conducted by Bosnian Serbs, Croatian Serbs, and antigovernment Muslims in the area under the leadership of Fikret Abdic´,149 was crushing and the “safe haven” at Bihac´ was heavily bombarded and penetrated by Serb forces. UNPROFOR and NATO Close Air Support were unable to prevent the Serbs overrunning large parts of the “safe area.” The international diplomatic community did not fold in the wake of the collapse of the Vance–Owen Plan. Owen later advanced the so-called European Plan in July 1993 with Vance’s successor, former Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg. This plan was designed to adjust the Vance–Owen Plan toward a confederation with three national units, giving Bosnia an outlet to the sea at Plocˇe. The Bosnian Muslims did not acquiesce because the plan smacked of the creation of Greater Serbia and 53

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Greater Croatia and, like Vance–Owen, seemed to legitimize the results of ethnic cleansing. The Western policy after Vance–Owen was dropped became one of containment of the conﬂict so that it did not destabilize the rest of the Balkans. The ambivalence among the Western allies was reﬂected in the schizophrenia of the international response and the disconnect between the diplomatic goals (a peaceful settlement) and the humanitarian objectives (a just settlement). Susan Woodward termed the February–March 1994 period a “psychological divide,” during which a number of events coincided to create among the Western powers a determination to reach a political settlement to end the war in Bosnia. Those events included “a major power confrontation at a NATO summit, the arrival of a civilian head for UN forces on the ground and a new military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and a tragic massacre by mortar ﬁre in a market in central Sarajevo” on February 5.150 The market massacre, in particular, galvanized the UN to order punitive bombing raids on Serbian positions encircling Sarajevo.151 A military and political stalemate in early 1994 enabled the March 1994 Washington Agreement, a United States-sponsored ceaseﬁre, to halt the ﬁghting between the Croats and the Muslims. The Agreement, in the end, altered the course of the conﬂict without the United States having to contribute ground troops to the effort. It also “represented the ﬁrst shift in the strategic balance against the Serbs,”152 and permitted the Muslims to obtain arms via Croatia, with the Croats “exacting a ‘fee’ of as much as 33% of the arms transported.”153 The creation of a Muslim-Croat Federation154 of ethnic-based municipalities, which would eventually join independent Croatia in a ﬁnancial and economic confederation, was also brokered. Also in March 1994, a ceaseﬁre was signed between Croatia and rebel Serbian forces controlling one-fourth of Croatia’s territory. In April 1994, NATO’s ﬁrst-ever bombing mission was carried out by American pilots against Serbian positions in Bosnia. The contradiction experienced by the Western Allies both to use force and to avoid its use155 existed in regard to the differing rules of engagement followed by the UN and NATO. While its rules of engagement permitted NATO soldiers to mount offensive combat operations, UN peacekeepers could only shoot when ﬁred upon. It also illustrated the increasing tensions between the two organizations with NATO chaﬁng because the UN permitted it only symbolic and thus ineffectual strikes against the Bosnian Serbs.156 The formation of the Contact Group (including initially representatives of the US, Russia, France, Great Britain, and Germany and later Italy, Canada, and Spain), announced on April 26 1994, was an attempt to harmonize policy perspectives among the often contentious great powers and streamline decision-making. As a result, while ostensibly the UN and the EU were members of the Contact Group,157 in effect they were sidelined.158 54

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A ceaseﬁre between the Bosnian Serbs and the ARBiH then ensued. Now the search for a political settlement of the issues could begin in earnest. While the Bosnian Serb forces enjoyed initial victories amounting to the capture of approximately 30 percent of Croatian land and 70 percent of the territory of Bosnia, by 1993 it became increasingly obvious that their forces were overextended. Their defensive capabilities, not to mention morale, began to suffer.159 At the same time, the Croatian and Bosnian forces were rejuvenated because of illegal arms shipments and force reorganization,160 including quiet American involvement in the funneling of arms to the Bosnian government army from Iran via Croatia.161 In November 1994 the United States unilaterally ended its participation in the arms embargo.162 The resulting shift in tactics addressed the three primary criticisms of international intervention until then: that there had been insufﬁcient willingness to threaten the use of military force to support negotiators in pressing parties for a political settlement; that disunity among the major powers had allowed warring parties to play one off against the other; and that the sole remaining global power, the United States, had not been sufﬁciently engaged in the problem.163 The Contact Group had been constructed to heal breaches among the great powers. These clashes had allowed the protagonists in the Bosnian drama to exploit divisions. Milosˇevic´, while ostensibly cooperating with the Contact Group and with Lord Owen, the lead negotiator, vigorously lobbied his sympathizers in Moscow. The Bosnian Serbs, too, played the Orthodox card, which meant courting popular opinion in Russia, Serbia, Greece, and other Orthodox nations. The Bosnian government’s central goal was to get the United States involved militarily. The ﬁve great powers themselves, wishing the problem would go away by itself, placed the entire matter into the cumbersome UN machinery, which found itself in the uncomfortable position of having to deal with an internationally recognized nation-state, Bosnia, and an illegal construct, the Pale-based Republika Srpska (RS), on an equal basis.164 The Contact Group forwarded a plan in July 1994 that would award 51 percent of Bosnian territory to a Muslim-Croat Federation and 49 percent to the Bosnian Serbs.165 When the latter rejected the plan,166 Milosˇevic´ broke logistical and ﬁnancial ties with them in August 1994.167 This decision to end political and economic support of Pale’s war effort in Bosnia signaled that Milosˇevic´’s future became tied more closely with preserving his domestic power base and placating the international community than with propagating the war in Bosnia. Karadzˇic´’s position, by 55

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contrast, became linked even more strongly to perceived adherence to the ultranationalist banner.168 Similarly, as commander of Bosnian Serb forces, Ratko Mladic´’s stature was based largely on the conflict itself. Resolution of the conflict, barring a clear cut Serb victory, would undermine the very bases of his authority.169 At this point, Russia began to support Milosˇevic´ strongly as “the leader of the peace party.”170 The Russians saw the Serbian break with the Bosnian Serbs as an exculpation of Serbia’s unilateral guilt as only one of two parties attempting to help their compatriots across the border in Bosnia. Russia tilted toward Serbia accordingly. Russia was able to secure a Serbian agreement to withdraw heavy weaponry from the Sarajevo environs in return for a 1400-man Russian deployment to prohibit the Muslims from securing those positions themselves. Meanwhile, former US President Jimmy Carter was able to secure a ceaseﬁre in negotiations with Karadzˇic´ in December 1994.171 Facing a military alliance between Bosnia and Croatia in summer 1995,172 and following the recapture of Krajina in fall 1995 by Croatian forces, the Bosnian Serbs were under great military pressure. They soon lost much of the captured Bosnian territory, which ﬁnally forced them to the peace table.173 But not before their forces answered the May 1995 exodus of Serbs from Croatian territories with the “ethnic cleansing” of Bosnia’s eastern enclaves of Srebrenica and Zˇepa. While thousands of men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serbs, many more thousands of women, children, and the elderly were expelled from these villages. Dutchbat, the UN peace-keepers from the Netherlands, with neither a mandate for countering aggression nor the military means or air support to do so,174 looked on, served as hostages against international military action,175 or even aided the aggressors.176 Because the West was humiliated by Serbian attacks against UNprotected “safe havens” and the capture of Sarajevo’s airport, it determined to follow a tougher line against the latter, including air strikes. With the American Congress urging a stronger response to the Bosnian Serbs, the United States became more active in Bosnia during the summer of 1995, thereby seizing control over Western policy-making from the UK and France. If American soldiers had to go to Bosnia, it would be to implement a peace agreement, not to cover the removal of UNPROFOR.177 Thus, in May 1995, NATO planes began bombing strategic targets in Bosnian Serb-held territory. The Western bombing in May 1995 was targeted against the ferocity of the Bosnian Serb attack on civilians and to forestall Croatian entry of the war against the Bosnian Serbs. However, when this initiative failed to bring the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table, the West seemed to back down measurably: 56

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Having failed to stop the assault on Bihac because it could not bend the wills of Britain and France, the United States concluded that it was more important to re-establish unity in NATO. But to do so, the leader of the alliance had to take a back seat to its junior partners, Britain and France.178 Also in May, however, Croatia easily swept the Serbian forces from West Slavonia and Krajina179 (and later at the peace talks was able to secure an agreement for the return of East Slavonia in the succeeding one or two years).180 Bosnian government forces also launched a successful offensive against the weakened Bosnian Serb military. In June 1995 the Allied Rapid Reaction Force was created. The London Conference authorized massive air strikes against Serb forces in July 1995, and the resulting NATO air war only shortly preceded a ceaseﬁre and then the negotiation of the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA). The air strikes signiﬁed a hardening of Western purpose in the Balkans, which may have signaled the warring parties that it was time to negotiate an end to the conﬂict. However, other factors also emerged simultaneously that may have affected the timing of the end of hostilities. The formation of the Bosnian-Croat Federation in 1994, as well as the increasing effectiveness of the Croatian army, bolstered by tacit agreement with the West to become more aggressive and retake the Krajina and northern Bosnia,181 and a growing willingness in Belgrade to negotiate an end to the hostilities may also have produced the desired effect. NATO began its “Operation Deliberate Force,” consisting of air raids and artillery strikes against Bosnian Serb military positions, on August 31 1995;182 it lasted until the siege of Sarajevo was lifted on September 14. The bombing was a response to the shelling of a Sarajevo marketplace by artillery that the Bosnian Serbs had refused to move and had used to besiege Sarajevo for three years. But, more importantly, the NATO action was an attempt to force the Bosnian Serbs to the negotiating table. The Bosnian Serbs retaliated by capturing more than thirty UN peacekeepers to serve as hostages.183 Most of the UNPROFOR forces had left Bosnian Serb dominated territory, which removed some of the Bosnian Serb leverage for preventing international force. Increasingly weakened, the Serbs were forced by Federation troops to withdraw from a large proportion of their conquered territories so that they controlled close to 49 percent of the Bosnian territory (as per the Contact Group Plan).184 The air strikes stopped on September 20 1995 when the Serbs agreed to negotiate. The geostrategic alteration caused by the Bosnian and Croatian territorial gains created the opportunity in summer 1995 to negotiate peace. Facing strong international pressure, the Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims agreed to a ceaseﬁre in October 1995 and to negotiations mediated by the United States in Dayton, Ohio, at Wright Patterson Air Force 57

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Base. The United States invited the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs (represented by Serbia’s Slobodan Milosˇevic´ because Karadzˇic´ and Mladic´ had been indicted for war crimes and could not travel for fear of arrest),185 Croats (represented by Croatian President Franjo Tudjman), and Muslims (through their leader Alija Izetbegovic´) to Dayton to hammer out a comprehensive solution to the ethnic conﬂict in Bosnia.186 On November 21 1995, a peace agreement was initialed in Dayton, and on December 14 the Accords were formally signed in Paris.187 Out of the former Yugoslavia emerged ﬁve new countries: Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was, in effect, divided between a Federation of Croats and Muslims on the one hand, and Republika Srpska for the Serbs on the other.

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3 POST-COLD WAR DOMESTIC POLITICS AND POLITICAL PROSPECTS

Some analysts divide termination of a conﬂict into two distinct parts. The ﬁrst part, of course, consists in stopping the killing. This could include such elements as putting down weapons and separating forces, for example. However, stopping the ﬁghting is a separate operation from making peace, removing the incentive for re-engaging in war, and making the peace selfsupporting. These latter steps involve “permanently stopping the war by changing [the] critical expectation” that the war could resume.1 This chapter assesses Bosnia’s future prospects for peace by examining those structures and functions of the new Bosnian state created by the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, better known as the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA), that, if they worked, would dispel the belief that war in the region could be resumed.2 It also considers the likelihood that Bosnia can be reconstructed into a viable, independent state, the issue most likely to confound the domestic – and international – actors attempting to implement the DPA. In writing and then implementing the DPA, the international community became engaged in the post-cold war phenomenon of peace-building, or the more widely used term “democratization,” meaning the institutionalization of long-term, liberal democratic political solutions to conﬂict situations. In this regard, Bosnia may be looked at as a test case of the efﬁcacy of international intervention in the political, economic, social, legal, and cultural realms of a conﬂict-torn country, a topic that is particularly noteworthy as the war for regime-change in Iraq begins, at this writing.3 The issue of democratization is proving to be a difﬁcult one in most of the countries of the former communist bloc, including Bosnia’s former opponents, Croatia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY).4 According to Timothy D. Sisk, only two broad solutions for ethnic conﬂict management exist, failing coercion: partition or democracy.5 Bosnia is, in some respects, a partitioned state, with the Croats and Muslims on one side and the Serbs on the other. However, the great powers have forced these two Entities to operate in proximity to each other and to deal with 59

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common issues together in such a way that no one national group is hegemonic. The lands of the former Yugoslavia contain a citizenry with little democratic experience. The people in the successor states are generally dominated by elites the majority of which do not wish to share the fruits of their post-communist successes with the citizenry at large, as they must do under a democratic regime. The elite bargaining that democratic institutions encourage, coupled with an educated, tolerant populace that actively participates in the public life of the society, is emerging only with difﬁculty in that area, and particularly in Bosnia.6 And the pluralistic model may be the only kind of society, that can prevent a recurrence of the conﬂicts that sundered the former Yugoslavia.7 Thus, the democratic culture that must be created to realize a democratic society is only slowly (if at all, some might argue) being created in Bosnia and Herzegovina. This framework was not really a product of Bosnian consensus; it was imposed on them by the international community and guaranteed by their neighbors, FRY and Croatia. The international community intended to bring this type of polity about through external supervision. A one-year transitional international administration would govern until the ﬁrst elections, at which time Bosnia’s new state organs would begin to function while international organizations and internationally appointed individuals would guide Bosnia’s economy, judiciary, and human rights institutions for ﬁve or six years. Thereafter, it was believed, Bosnia would have become a viable democratic state able to conduct its own affairs with increasingly less international interference. This was the essence of the Dayton Peace Accords.

The Dayton Peace Accords The eleven articles of the NATO-enforced DPA8 provided the structural and institutional framework for the reconstruction and reorganization of the devastated postwar Bosnia in two pages. An additional eleven annexes, wherein the details of postwar Bosnia’s governance were laid out, provided for various mechanisms to promote democratization, to protect human rights, and to aid in the economic development of the region. The amount of access given the international community into Bosnia’s reconstruction and governance in a document binding in international law makes the DPA and its annexes an extraordinary document. The powers of the Bosnian state were rigidly described, whereas the capabilities of the international community in regard to Bosnia were very ambiguous and, therefore, subject to ﬂexible interpretation.9 Articles I and II of the DPA pledged the signatories10 to adhere to recognized principles of international law enshrined in such documents as the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act, among others. Furthermore, 60

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the signatories were bound to comply with the provisions set forth in Annexes 1-A and 1-B.11 These annexes detailed the military aspects of the peace settlement. Conﬁdence-building measures included reduction of arms to stabilize the region,12 removal of all foreign forces (except those speciﬁcally sponsored by the international community), and establishment of a multinational military component to implement the military portions of the DPA, controlled by the NATO-led Implementation Force (IFOR) (later the Stabilization Force, or SFOR). Article III stated that the signatories agreed to the inter-entity boundary lines (IEBL) and agreed to submit the Brcˇko situation (see p. 83) to international arbitration, as set forth in Annex 2. Article IV pledged the signatories to endorse the election procedure, to be monitored by the OSCE, presented in Annex 3. In Article V, the signatories endorsed Bosnia’s Constitution, as laid out in Annex 4. The Constitution can only be amended by the international community, not by Bosnia. Furthermore, the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and all associated Protocols would have priority over all other laws in Bosnia. Articles VI and VII required the signatories to agree to the establishment of an arbitration tribunal to settle disputes between the two Entities that would comprise Bosnia. Also agreed upon were a number of commissions: the Commission on Human Rights to be implemented with the help of the OSCE, the Council of Europe, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCHR), and the European Court of Human Rights;13 the Commission on Refugees and Displaced Persons, managed by UNHCR; the Commission to Preserve National Monuments, administered with the assistance of UNESCO; and Bosnia and Herzegovina Public Corporations to handle such functions as utility and communication functions, assisted by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), as detailed in Annexes 5–9. Articles VIII and IX required the signatories to endorse the arrangements made by the DPA, including cooperation in the investigation and prosecution of war criminals and the civilian implementation provisions of Annex 10 under the Ofﬁce of the High Representative (OHR) and the International Police Task Force (IPTF), the latter implemented by the UN, of Annex 11. Article X provided for the mutual recognition of sovereignty and international borders between FRY and Bosnia, while Article XI stated that the DPA became legal upon the signature of the parties to the agreement. Bosnia and Herzegovina was to be a democratic state, sovereign within its present borders but with much “political engineering” by the international community.14 Consociational features15 were applied to Bosnia by the DPA, which also created federal and confederal institutions. Furthermore, a link between the Bosnian Constitution and international law was created through the United Nations Security Council, which adopted a 61

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resolution in December 1995 transferring authority from UNPROFOR to IFOR (Resolution 1031). Bosnia was divided into two Entities, one dominated by the Bosnian Serbs (Republika Srspka, hereafter RS), the other by a coalition of Bosnian Croats and Muslims (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), with Sarajevo to be the “capital and seat of the . . . common institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”16 This division of Bosnia is uneasy, however, as the 1100 kilometer-long (860 miles) IEBL between the Federation and RS is not a stable, sovereign border. Nor is there an ofﬁcial frontier between the Muslim and Croat communities within the Federation. Thus, there is no de jure partition of Bosnia. Annex 4 called for the establishment of a number of central government institutions: a Presidency, Council of Ministers, Parliamentary Assembly, Constitutional Court, Central Bank, and Standing Committee on Military Matters. The DPA created a very weak central government for Bosnia, giving those powers to the Entities that were not speciﬁcally granted to the central government. The speciﬁcally enumerated powers for the central government are limited. They include “foreign trade, customs, and monetary policies; ﬁnancing republican institutions and external debt; immigration, refugee, and asylum policy and regulation; international law enforcement and law enforcement between the component ‘Entities’ of the republic; establishment and operation of national and international communications facilities; inter-Entity transport; and air trafﬁc control.”17 The three-person Presidency of Bosnia is based on national and territorial exigencies. Thus, the Presidency consists of a Serb directly elected by the citizens of RS and a Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat both directly elected by citizens of the Federation. Decisions by the Presidency are supposedly by majority, but the disapproval of a policy by the representative of any one of the ethnic groups on the grounds of vital interest would effectively block a decision. A two-chamber parliamentary system was created. The House of Peoples has ﬁfteen delegates: ﬁve Serbs appointed by the RS legislature and ﬁve Croats and ﬁve Muslims appointed by the Federation legislature. At least three delegates of each national group must be present for a quorum. The forty-two member House of Representatives is comprised of fourteen members of each ethnic group, with a majority of elected members constituting a quorum. Both chambers must approve all legislation. Only when a representative of one of the ethnic groups declares a measure to be destructive of a vital interest must it be subjected to a special vote by the House of Peoples, with a majority of the delegates of all three national groups present and voting. The upshot of these provisions is, as Julie Mertus described it, that “the present compromise grants any national group the power to make the central government unworkable.”18 In fact, a report by the International Commission on the Balkans 62

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submitted that “the adoption of presidential, rather than parliamentary, systems in some Balkan countries tends to reinforce centralized authoritarian features, as does the subordination of the state administration to ruling-party whims . . . control of the media . . . by ruling parties leaves the opposition without a voice, while intense nationalism undermines the development of political pluralism.”19 Much of the governmental business, therefore, is undertaken at the Entity level (see Figure 3.1). Each of the Entities was granted its own president, legislature, and military. In RS, the former two institutions would serve as the result of free and democratic multiparty elections, although indicted war criminals would not be allowed to hold public ofﬁce there. The president nominates the prime minister, who is then approved by the unicameral National Assembly. The National Assembly also appoints the sixteen ministers that serve in the RS government.20 That 140member body is also responsible for nominating the ﬁve RS members for the Bosnian House of Peoples. The Federation President is appointed by the two-house parliament, with a Muslim and a Croat as president and vice-president, rotating roles annually. The Federation House of Representatives has 140 members, directly elected by voters, while the sixty-member House of Peoples, whose delegates are evenly divided among Croats and Muslims, is appointed by canton governments. The assemblies of the ten Federation cantons, as well as municipalities in the Federation and RS, are directly elected by their respective voters. Finally, the two Entities each have their own army, police force, energy and telecommunications systems, and defense ministries,21 as well as separate educational, healthcare, and pension systems. The central government, which controls no army, police, or judiciary, and is dependent upon the Entities for its funding, has very Government of Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Federal Statistical Institute

Ministry of Defense

Federal Meteorological Institute

Ministry of Internal Affairs

Ministry of Transportation and Communication

Federal Institute for Public Health

Premier

Ministry of Trade

Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport

Ministry of Justice

Ministry of Social Welfare and Refugees

Ministry of Finances

Ministry of Health

Ministry of Ministry of Physical Planning Physical Planning and Environment Environment and

Ministry of Energy, Mining and Industry

Ministry of Agriculture, Water Utility and Forestry

Figure 3.1 Entity government structure in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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little inﬂuence over these subsidiary governments. And the Entities, likewise, have little incentive to support the work that the central government does. The problems and inconsistencies inherent in this approach to Bosnia’s governance are many. Among the most egregious is that only consensus is acceptable in such a government. This is the same formula that did not work in post-Tito Yugoslavia. The international community explicitly recognized ethnic politics as the norm in Bosnia. Thus, until recently, by law, neither Serbs living in the Federation nor Croats or Muslims in RS were eligible for the Presidency. This meant that “a self-styled ‘Bosnian’” (for example, Muslim mother, Serb father) is also not eligible.22 Progress toward creating an independent and effective judiciary has been very slow. The judicial system is largely an Entity responsibility. There is little cooperation between the two Entities on legal matters or between Muslim- and Croat-dominated areas of the Federation. The judicial system created by the DPA was compromised by the dual problem that many of Bosnia’s qualiﬁed jurists emigrated during the war. Their place was taken by political appointees with few qualiﬁcations. The local judiciaries also suffered from weak professional standards and low pay. Judicial independence was impaired by the interference of political elites in the judicial process, including in the selection of judges.23 Law enforcement bodies often ignored judicial rulings. Organized criminal groups, often linked with local political leadership, were able to intimidate local judiciaries and prevent the appearance of indicted national party leaders in the courts to account for their actions. The judiciary was thus early deemed “institutionally incapable of effectively administering justice.”24 As a result, in July 1998 the UN Security Council established an international monitoring board to monitor the Bosnian judicial system.25 To stymie the politicization of the judiciary, the power of judicial appointment was taken out of the hands of the political parties and given to local selection boards. In December 2000, a judicial review commission was established to oversee the judicial appointment process. The Commission on Human Rights, consisting of a Human Rights Ombudsman and a Human Rights Chamber, was created to provide Bosnian citizens with a legal structure through which to seek individual legal relief due to postwar violations of human rights by the state or its constituent Entities. The Chamber has fourteen judges, two each from the Federation’s Croat and Muslim communities and two Serbs from RS, all of whom have been appointed by nationalist-controlled parliaments.26 The other eight are European jurists appointed by the Council of Europe for ﬁve-year renewable terms. This measure was taken to ensure that differences among the Bosnian judges would not paralyze the court.27 However, the involvement of a number of different international bodies for the pro64

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tection of human rights in Bosnia meant that the impressive provisions in the DPA were not necessarily well implemented, particularly as the police, at least initially, were the major violators of human rights in Bosnia.28 Implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords The two major areas covered by the DPA were the establishment of a stable ceaseﬁre and arms control regime within Bosnia and the provision of a constitutional order for Bosnia’s post-conﬂict polity. Implementation of the military portions of the DPA was to be undertaken separately from the civilian parts.29 The DPA’s military objectives were rather easily accomplished, meaning that there has been no more war since the signing of the DPA. However, more than seven years after that act, its civilian portion has not been satisfactorily implemented. Military implementation of the DPA When IFOR succeeded UNPROFOR on December 20 1995, blue berets were replaced by green helmets and by a more robust deﬁnition of the mission. IFOR was created by the Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and provided for in Annex 1-A of the DPA.30 This Annex called for a cessation of hostilities, withdrawal of foreign forces, redeployment of forces behind the IEBL, placement of heavy weapons in designated cantonments, and demobilization of the more than 300,000-member warring militaries and paramilitaries of the Bosnian Federation and RS so that the civilian portions of the peace plan could be implemented in a more secure environment.31 IFOR was granted total military control over Bosnia, and the IFOR commander was given ﬁnal authority on the ground to interpret all military aspects of the DPA, as well as to assist in the implementation of the civilian provisions.32 In some respects, IFOR’s more than 50,000 heavily armed troops from the NATO countries and eighteen other states looked like an occupying army because of its extensive powers. Operationally, IFOR was really a cross between a peacekeeping and a peace-making force. The peacekeeping component consisted of inserting forces between the Bosnian combatants to maintain a ceaseﬁre while negotiations for peace were concluded and implemented. Indeed, the IEBL was quickly and easily stabilized, providing a two-mile zone of separation (ZOS) that IFOR heavily patrolled.33 However, IFOR was administered by NATO under the command of an American general, not the traditional peacekeeping controller, the UN. Furthermore, IFOR was quite large and heavily armed, unlike most other peacekeeping forces historically, and contained American forces, which were to remain in Bosnia for one year.34 IFOR’s collateral support tasks consisted of assisting the United 65

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Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the lead humanitarian agency; rebuilding war-destroyed infrastructure, such as roads, railways, bridges, and airports; and demining efforts.35 IFOR also assisted the OSCE in ensuring that elections be held on September 14 1996 by providing logistics and transportation capacity. In December 1996, a stabilization force (SFOR) succeeded IFOR. SFOR’s primary task was to consolidate IFOR’s achievement of preventing a renewal of conﬂict while continuing to provide a secure climate within which the civilian-led rebuilding of a civil society could proceed. Perhaps the best, clear-cut success of the DPA so far has been in the creation of military stability in Bosnia. However, SFOR’s security success has been uneven at best.36 The minimal cooperation by the Entities toward the rapid return of refugees and the confusion about SFOR’s role in arresting indicted war criminals reduced its effectiveness, at least initially, in implementing the letter of the DPA.37 SFOR (and IFOR before it) has been criticized for not immediately severing “the link between military control [by the various national armies and paramilitaries] and political jurisdiction,” leading to almost a “division of spoils” of Bosnia.38 Nevertheless, SFOR’s Bosnian presence, currently with 17,000 troops from thirty-four countries,39 has given Bosnia a long period of uninterrupted peace in the military sphere. The ultranationalists who created the instability in Bosnia in the ﬁrst place still retained inﬂuence in Bosnia, so NATO attempted to dismantle their control mechanisms. With SFOR’s coercive power as subtext, the West, particularly the Americans, gradually became more assertive in trying to gain compliance with important DPA provisions: arresting indicted war criminals, helping create an alternative Bosnian-Serb power center to that of Radovan Karadzˇic´ in Pale, imposing rules on ofﬁcial media in Serb and Croat areas, taking over TV transmitters by force and jamming broadcasts from the air,40 protecting refugees and displaced persons trying to return to homes in strategic areas such as Brcˇko and its surrounding villages.41 Annex 1-B committed RS, the Federation, Serbia, and Croatia to substantial reductions of heavy weapons and called for a system of conﬁdence and security-building measures between the two Entity armies, including the exchange of information and inspections. These provisions have been largely implemented, but mostly due to the persistence of the international community rather than a real willingness of the parties to cooperate. The international community successfully pushed the two armies to reduce their defense budgets and military personnel by 15 percent by the end of 1999, with additional cuts at future intervals. Mutual inspections for arms 66

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control oversight among the formerly warring parties were regularized in 1996 and 1997.42 However, successfully policing a ceaseﬁre does not itself lead to a selfsustaining peace that would eventually permit the total withdrawal of SFOR.43 The Western attempt to push for increased cooperation between the Entity militaries and greater integration between them, with the hope of eventually merging them, has been much less successful. Military Liaison Missions called for in Annex 1-B were not created until July 1998 and were hurt by the lack of a genuine spirit of cooperation. One of the control mechanisms instituted by NATO, based on a provision of Annex 4, is the Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM), which consists of the Presidents of Bosnia and their respective military advisers, the Ministers and Chiefs of Defense of both Bosnian Entities, and some national and international observers. This committee did not begin to function effectively until July 1999, still without the resources and authority needed to coordinate the activities of Bosnia’s armed forces.44 The Bosnian Muslim leadership favored a united Bosnia in military and other spheres, in part because the Bosnian Muslims have not had a regional protector. However, a key obstacle to integrating the Bosnian militaries is that national political parties and leaders do not wish to give up de facto control over “their” armies. While the American “train and equip” program,45 facilitated as a military stabilization measure by the private military consultant company Military Professional Resources, Inc., successfully gave the Federation forces a feeling of greater security by creating a balance of power to deter further aggression by Serbian forces, it largely failed to integrate the Croat and Muslim forces into a united Federation army, one of its key goals. Bosnia thus still has, in effect, three armies with no effective oversight capability by the Bosnian state. Below the level of the Federation defense ministry and the highest levels of command (which are at least nominally integrated), the Federation army consists of a Croat army controlled by the HDZ46 and a Bosnian Muslim army dominated by the SDA.47 Similarly, the RS leadership rejected surrendering control of the RS army, viewing it as the ultimate guarantor of RS’s security. Another goal of the DPA military implementation, perhaps better realized, was to undermine the military ties created during the war between the Bosnian forces and Arab states, particularly Iran,48 and to remove the mercenaries from Bosnia, particularly the mujahedin from Islamic countries. During the Bosnian war, perhaps as many as 4000 ﬁghters came from throughout the Muslim world to defend Bosnia’s independence.49 However, the continued presence of anywhere from 500–4000 militant Islamic volunteers unsettled Bosnian citizens, both Muslim as well as nonMuslim. The mujahedin claimed that Bosnia “is a Muslim country, which must be defended by Muslims,” during the early days of implementation of the DPA.50 67

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A provision in the DPA speciﬁcally addressed this situation, ruling that foreign ﬁghters must leave Bosnia. Most of the mujahedin left Bosnia by mid-1996.51 However, the Bosnian government allegedly circumvented the DPA banning of some of these individuals by making them citizens with Bosnian identiﬁcation cards and passports and allowing their marriage to local women, while quietly expelling most of the remaining Arab mujahedin, although with much reluctance, especially on the part of former president Alija Izetbegovic´.52 Thus, between 150 and 200 Iranian soldiers and several hundred other mujahedin, perhaps even 400 ﬁghters, allegedly remained in Bosnia after the ﬁghting.53 Furthermore, reports surfaced that more than two hundred Iranian intelligence agents inﬁltrated an American program to train the Bosnian Army in cooperation with pro-Iranian elements within Bosnian intelligence.54 A number of these foreigners began to promulgate an anti-Western brand of Islam wherever possible, some of which took root, particularly among the younger, unemployed Bosnian Muslim population. Their presence is evident in occasional parades in Sarajevo boasting green ﬂags with Arabic writing and shouting of slogans in Arabic.55 In the wake of the September 11 tragedy and as part of its “War on Terror,” Bosnian support and action was elicited by the US of the newly elected non-nationalist and moderate coalition in Bosnia.56 The US feared that Bosnia could become, in the words of a former senior State Department ofﬁcial, “a staging area and safe haven.”57 Some of the former ﬁghters remaining in Bosnia were accused of being al-Qaeda operatives and that some staffed Arab-backed charities that were fronts for antiWestern terrorist activities. In March 2002 ninety-four Arabs living in Bosnia, who had illegally acquired Bosnian citizenship, were relieved of their passports.58 Six Arab mujahedin, the so-called “Algerian Six,” were accused of planning terrorist attacks, in conjunction with al-Qaeda, against the American embassy in Sarajevo and American troops stationed in Bosnia. The six men, originally from Algeria but later either Bosnian citizens or permanent residents, were arrested by Bosnian ofﬁcials in October 2001. The Bosnian courts found no grounds for prosecution. The Bosnian Human Rights Chamber, created by the DPA, ruled that, since there was not enough evidence to hold the six men,59 they should not be deported. In 2002 Bosnian ofﬁcials representing the moderate, non-nationalist coalition governing Bosnia at the time handed them over to American ofﬁcials anyway under strong American pressure.60 The men were then deported to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002,61 amid a near riot as young people from Muslim youth associations, outraged feminists, human rights activists, and even the Bosnian Helsinki Committee protested the deportation of the six Algerians.62 As the Croat and Muslim military establishments remain segregated 68

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within the Federation, so are the intelligence establishments.63 This has become a major stumbling block for inter-Entity integration because both sides have increasingly enlarged their security apparatuses; for example, SDA’s secret intelligence service may have had as many as 1500 employees in 1996.64 Civilian implementation of the DPA65 A unique characteristic of the Yugoslav wars of dissolution was the overwhelming inﬂuence of the major multilateral international organizations in the conﬂict (the UN, the EU, OSCE, NATO, etc.).66 International involvement in Bosnia became even greater when the war ended as a series of institutions, peopled by international civil servants, was created to implement the civilian portions of the DPA. Shortly after the DPA was initialed in Dayton in November 1995, a Peace Implementation Conference was convened in London to replace the ICFY and mobilize international support for the DPA. The December 1995 meeting established the Peace Implementation Council (PIC), composed of ﬁfty-two countries and twenty-one non-governmental agencies involved in either ﬁnancing, providing troops for, or directly administering operations in Bosnia. The Steering Board, the executive arm of the PIC, consists of representatives of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United States, the Presidency of the EU, the European Commission, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, represented by Turkey. The most visible of the international institutions created to manage the peace in Bosnia was the Ofﬁce of the High Representative (OHR), which was established by Annex 10 of the DPA. The High Representative (HR) was appointed by the PIC Steering Board and endorsed by the UN Security Council. Based in Sarajevo, with regional ofﬁces in Banja Luka, Mostar, and Brcˇko, the OHR’s mandate was to monitor the implementation of the DPA and promote the full compliance by all parties, and to coordinate and mobilize the international community’s contributions to civilian implementation.67 That made the HR “the interpreter of last resort of the Dayton Agreement’s civilian provisions”68 and the liaison with the international community’s military forces in Bosnia (now SFOR). This would prove to be an extraordinarily difﬁcult job, particularly given the unwillingness of the local partners to cooperate. There have been to date four HRs. The individual personalities and governing styles of the various HRs, as well as the differing circumstances during their tenures, including a gradual expansion of the regulatory powers of the OHR by PIC,69 have produced a rather uneven record of successes in the pursuit of Bosnia’s democratization. Carl Bildt, co-chair of the steering committee of the ICFY and former 69

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Swedish Prime Minister, was designated HR at the London Peace Implementation Conference in December 1995. Bildt was not considered a dynamic administrator who would challenge the Bosnian ultranationalists to live up to the DPA. He did not, or could not, forcefully implement the more difﬁcult provisions of the DPA, especially with regard to ensuring the equality of the various ethnic groups throughout Bosnia because of the existing political and legal environment. Therefore, the Bosnian political apparatus initially was subject to paralysis and nationalist domination. Nevertheless, Bildt can be credited with beginning the establishment of Bosnia’s democratic framework and with sponsoring small conﬁdencebuilding measures and preventing any serious outbreaks of violence. He also ensured that the indigenous actors continued to participate in the political process. Bildt’s successor, Carlos Westendorp, a former Spanish ambassador to the UN, became HR on June 20 1997. Bildt had taken ofﬁce at a time when the international community was still feeling its way in Bosnia. For example, while the goal of rapid disbursal of economic aid may have eased the postwar transition for Bosnia’s inhabitants, on the other hand, critics say that nationalist leaders thereby received more resources to be directed toward achieving their own goals, which in the long run increased the misery of the population. In response to this conundrum, the OHR became increasingly aggressive. The PIC Steering Board at its Sintra, Portugal, and subsequent Bonn meetings in 1997 gave the HR more extensive powers than his predecessor had. Westendorp was given explicit right to use the “ﬁnal authority” clause (Article V of Annex 10 of the DPA), which gave the HR “ﬁnal authority . . . regarding the interpretation” of the DPA in regard to its civilian implementation.70 Thereafter, the HR could actually remove obstructionist ofﬁcials, even though democratically elected, and issue binding decisions when the responsible Bosnian institutions could not or would not make appropriate decisions. This, of course, placed the OHR in the role of a quasi-legislative, as well as executive, body to govern Bosnia.71 For more than a year, the OHR was forced to assert its will against unwilling partners to undertake such necessary tasks as disbanding the wartime military structures, reconstituting and retraining viable police forces, and setting up the trappings of a stable society. As a result of the expansion of his powers, Westendorp took a more direct approach to implementation of the DPA than Bildt had and imposed certain decisions on recalcitrant parties to break deadlocks. For example, OHR created a ﬂag for Bosnia when there was disagreement among the Bosnians. Westendorp also imposed a license plate design that would mask the Entity origin of an automobile (to forestall inter-Entity violence). Bosnian daily life became somewhat easier because of Westendorp’s decisions. However, he ruled by ﬁat. Westendorp was unable to form cooperative relations with the indigenous ruling elite or to win over public 70

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opinion. Bosnian citizens thus did not yet feel that they were partners in the political process or that they bore some local responsibility for Bosnia’s democratic transformation. Nevertheless, the Westendorp regime attempted to exert leverage to force the separated communities to cooperate with each other, sometimes with less than salubrious results. For example, in the 1998 RS elections, US-backed Biljana Plavsˇic´, the president of RS, was defeated by Nikola Poplasˇen, leader of the extreme nationalist Serbian Radical Party, the Bosnian branch of Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Sˇesˇelj’s party.72 Although a nationalist herself, Plavsˇic´ was willing to follow a more moderate path in order to induce the international community to invest economically in RS.73 The Bosnian Serb electorate rejected the strategy, explicitly stated by US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, that they “decide whether this country will be a country that prospers from trade and investment or a country that stagnates in isolation.”74 Apparently, the inhabitants of RS rejected the “implicit deal,” described by a European diplomat, that their standard of living would improve and their Entity would not be a diplomatic pariah if they would begin to think like Europeans, not nationalist zealots.75 Poplasˇen was publicly and actively opposed to the DPA and favored RS’s uniﬁcation with Serbia. His actions in ofﬁce were described by NATO Secretary-General, Javier Solana, as “consistent abuse of his authority and . . . obstruction of the implementation of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina.”76 Subsequently, Westendorp ﬁred Poplasˇen in March and appointed the more moderate Milorad Dodik as Acting President of RS. Many, however, questioned whether the undemocratic removal of a democratically elected leader was sending the proper message to the electorate of Bosnia.77 This action appeared to undermine the attempt to create a civil society achieved by eliciting local cooperation through reconciliation. Westendorp’s ordering of society from the top down only strengthened the role of the nationalist elites with whom he had to deal to elicit local compliance, rather than permitting civil society to ﬂourish. On the other hand, the OHR attempted through the use of pressure to implement legislation that would enable healing. For example, the OHR exerted economic persuasion to prevent elites from using property rights legislation to cement national division.78 The third HR, Wolfgang Petritsch, an Austrian diplomat with Slovenian roots, arrived in August 1999. Impelled by the activist American Ambassador to Bosnia, Thomas Miller,79 his tenure was much more dynamic than that of the previous two HRs. He is credited with attacking some problems that had bedeviled Bosnia since the early postwar days and removing many obstructionist politicians from ofﬁce in 2002. Most importantly, he discharged the ultranationalist Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency, Ante Jelavic´, for actively pursuing Bosnian Croat self-rule. 71

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Petritsch, cooperating with moderate Bosnian politicians, was instrumental in the passage of an Election Law in August 2001, which led to Bosnia’s acceptance into the Council of Europe in April 2002. The result was that the Bosnian government was able to organize the ﬁrst postwar elections (for October 2002) whose arrangements were not totally controlled by the OSCE. Finally, based on rulings of the Bosnian Constitutional Court, Petritsch insisted on the erasure of provisions in the constitutions of both Bosnian Entities that had blocked many citizens from participating in the political process due to ethnic identity. The Mrakovica–Sarajevo Agreement of March 27 2002 was negotiated largely by representatives of both Entities under Petritsch’s auspices. The achievements of these measures will depend on the will of the new Bosnian government80 and the fourth HR, Lord Paddy Ashdown of the United Kingdom, a British peer who formerly led the Liberal Democrats. He took ofﬁce in May 2002. His appointment as chair of a cabinet composed of the heads of a number of international organizations involved in Bosnia’s democratic transformation altered the character of the OHR. With even greater powers over international activity in Bosnia, his appointment also included the role of Special Representative of the European Union. After January 2003, this role included responsibility for policing Bosnia, formerly the job of the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMBiH), whose duty under Jacques Klein ended in late 2002. Ashdown has continued the judicial reform process, including reappointing judges and prosecutors in a depoliticized atmosphere, restructuring the Bosnian court system, and introducing new civil and criminal procedure codes. The success of the OHR in implementing the civilian portion of the DPA has been erratic. The fact that the HR and SFOR each controlled implementation of different parts of the DPA meant that no one agency was fully responsible for its success. The result was that conﬂicting objectives were pursued by the various actors, making it apparent that the international community had no clear overall strategy for achieving a vibrant civil society in Bosnia.

Ethnic-based representation and elections The West was determined to hold elections as soon as possible after the shooting stopped in order to give Bosnia at least the veneer of pluralism.81 OSCE’s role was to organize and supervise all facets of these elections.82 This mandate included the protection of the human rights of Bosnia’s inhabitants. Signiﬁcantly, an American Ambassador, Robert Frowick, was at the helm of the Bosnian mission. The ﬁrst Bosnian state, Entity, and cantonal elections, held on Sep72

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tember 14 1996, were problematic, as each side sought advantage by exploiting loopholes in the electoral rules.83 For example, Bosnians were permitted to vote in areas outside of their pre-war residences or “in the municipality in which they intend to live in future,” which permitted electoral engineering and ethnic gerrymandering for control of desired areas. Many people feared violence if they crossed the IEBL to vote, particularly as there were instances of intimidation of opposition candidates throughout Bosnia. As ﬂawed as they were, the elections produced the predictable results that each of the nationalist parties won an absolute majority among its own constituents. Thus, the three nationalist parties, the Croat HDZ, the Bosnian Muslim SDA, and the Serb SDS dominated at the polls, producing, unsurprisingly, ethnically based results.84 While some modest attempts were made to boost the chances of more moderate, multinational political parties, there were no discernible results.85 On the other hand, the municipal elections held on September 13–14 1997 (and the later parliamentary elections in RS on November 22–23 1997) ran more smoothly, because the international community was able to control, in effect, who the candidates were and who could vote where. These elections also were dominated by the ruling nationalist parties, which captured most of the council seats. However, the international community was able to manipulate the RS election of a parliament that would support a so-called “moderate Serb,” Biljana Plavsˇic´, in her presidency and in her choice for prime minister, Milorad Dodik. An inﬂuential member of Radovan Karadzˇic´’s SDS party, which had helped to start the war in Bosnia, Plavsˇic´ was the President of RS from 1996 to 1998. As such, she worked with the international forces sent to implement the DPA. She was unabashedly nationalistic,86 but, when pressed, declared that she was not a separatist, which set her apart from the harder-line nationalists in Pale who would not support the two-Entity structure set up by the DPA.87 Western support of such a politician could only be uneasy. Throughout the period of early postwar elections in Bosnia there appeared to be no political space in contemporary Bosnia for anyone not following a seriously nationalistic agenda. For example, again there was the question of people such as Biljana Plavsˇic´. The 1998 elections for the presidency of RS, in which the populace ﬁrmly rejected her Westernbacked candidacy in favor of the ultranationalist Nikola Poplasˇen, seemed to demonstrate that the Bosnian Serbs considered Western intervention and “encouragement” of reintegration through the vehicle of aid an insult to their sovereignty. Reintegration was sidestepped with the appearance of only nationalist candidates from nationalist parties on most ballots throughout Bosnia. This, in effect, disenfranchised large groups of people who were not nationalistically oriented. 73

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The hopes of the international community suffered a setback with the results of the April 2000 municipal elections. In RS, the SDS was victorious. In the Federation, the HDZ and SDA dominated, although the moderate, multinational Socijaldemokratska Partija (SDP) of Zlatko Lagumdzˇija did make a surprisingly good showing.88 The SDP favored implementation of the DPA, market-oriented economic reform, the return of refugees to their former homes, greater accountability of the government to its citizens, and increased transparency of government decision-making. In neighboring Croatia, an anti-Tudjman coalition had been victorious in the January 2000 elections. The effect on Bosnian politics became apparent when the new Croatian government reduced funding to the HDZ and the parallel Croatian power structures in Bosnia. Croatian President, Stipe Mesic´, who had disagreed with Tudjman over Croatia’s role in the Bosnian War, distanced Croatia from the previous regime, as well as from Croatian nationalists in Bosnia.89 Remarks during his visit to Bosnia in May 2000 indicated that Croatia would no longer support the existence of the Herceg-Bosna para-state.90 When, in the spring of 2001, voting rights for the Croatian “Diaspora” in Croatian elections were canceled, HDZ power in Croatia was effectively reduced, as was the inﬂuence of the Bosnian Croats on Croatian politics.91 In FRY, too, the people opted for a more liberal, reformist path; yet the Bosnian electorate again selected nationalist parties, speciﬁcally going against the wishes of the international community to see a multiethnic polity emerge. In the third general election in November 2000, the international community was disappointed again because the HDZ and the SDS achieved a better result than had been widely expected, and the SDA was only narrowly defeated by Lagumdzˇija’s SDP. The SDS won the presidency, vice-presidency, and a large number of National Assembly seats in RS. Bosnian Croats largely supported the HDZ, as usual. However, the Bosnian Croat situation within Bosnia had been altered when the OSCE changed the rules for the November 2000 election of the members of the Federation’s House of Peoples. Previously, the representatives in the House of the Peoples were elected by the Cantonal Assemblies through two national caucuses: the Croats determined the Croat members of the upper house of parliament in the Federation, while the Bosnian Muslim members picked their own representatives. According to the new OSCE regulation, however, the Croat and Muslim members were to be elected by the Cantonal Assemblies as a whole and not by their respective national deputies. The HDZ considered this new ruling a threat to its own role in the Federation and to the adequate representation of the Bosnian Croats. They feared that the Bosnian Muslims would use their overall majority in the Federation to elect Croat members who might not aggressively represent Croat interests. Although the HDZ secured a sufﬁcient number of seats in 74

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the cantons to avoid this situation, in the predominantly Croat areas in Herzegovina the HDZ lost votes.92 Thus, the overall outcome of the elections led to a substantial reduction of the power of the HDZ. The HDZ then left the Federation institutions, and on March 3 2001 the Croat National Congress in effect declared Croatian self-government by establishing an “inter-cantonal council.” In the wake of the call by the HDZ for Croat soldiers to desert the Federation army and other Croatian nationalist policies contrary to the letter and spirit of the DPA, the HR took the opportunity to exclude those ofﬁcials from ofﬁce who had obstructed the DPA implementation since its inception. Thus, on March 7, HR Petritsch removed the president of the HDZ, Ante Jelavic´, from his post as the Croatian member of the joint Bosnian presidency. Subsequently, when the Herzegovacˇka Banka refused to cooperate with international auditors, SFOR intervened to permit a restructuring of the bank. SFOR’s action against the Bank, which supported the HDZ and appeared to ﬁnance the institutions of Croatian selfgovernment, was met with HDZ violence and hostage-taking,93 because the economic interests of the party and its leadership were threatened by the change of government in Bosnia and the more assertive policies of the international community in Bosnia.94 The OHR appears to have been somewhat successful thereafter in its attempt to dismantle the highest courts and the prosecutors’ ofﬁces in the so-called Herceg-Bosna and replace them with a uniﬁed Cantonal Court and Cantonal Prosecutor’s Ofﬁce in July 1999.95 The inﬂuence of the nationalist parties was also imperiled by the broader constitutional developments in Bosnia. The Constitutional Court had taken the signiﬁcant decision in July 2000 to declare unconstitutional those parts of the Entity constitutions that named the respective nations as the constituent nations of the Entities. As a result, both Entities were forced to alter their constitutions to speciﬁcally include all three major ethnic groups as constituent nations.96 Extensive post-election coalition building among ten moderate and multinational parties in the Federation led to the creation of the Democratic Alliance for Change.97 Led by the SDP, together with allied parties in the RS and Federation, Alliance victories yielded sufﬁcient seats in the Federation, the RS, and at the joint level to form governments and diminish the role of the three nationalist parties.98 The result of this election appeared, indeed, to be a bettering in certain respects of the life of many Bosnians. For example, through intensive negotiations between Federation and RS ofﬁcials, the outlines of a national identiﬁcation card for all of Bosnia was crafted, although in the end, the HR had to impose it. The fact that ofﬁcials of the two Entities did most of the negotiating surrounding this issue was an important step. However, on the negative side, RS politicians remained mostly hard line, 75

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while even Lagumdzˇija’s government was not able to rid the lower levels of government of ethnic partisanship, in order to attain greater accountability and transparency throughout the government. The October 2002 elections, administered by Bosnian authorities with strong input by the HR and international community representation on the Electoral Commission, was of mixed success for the international community. The voter turn-out of 54 percent was adequate to elect the Bosnian presidency, the RS president and vice-president, the Federation House of Representatives, the RS National Assembly, etc. Voters chose among ﬁfty-seven political parties, nine coalitions, and three independent candidates. Cross-Entity voting increased as twenty-seven Federationbased parties ran in RS and twelve RS-based parties competed in the Federation. The results of the elections have been interpreted in a variety of ways. First, it became apparent that the HDZ and SDS still garnered the most votes. However, their support declined signiﬁcantly from previous elections. Most striking was the surge in popularity of the moderate Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), which threatened the monopoly of power of SDS in RS. Most media attention was given to the collapse of the Federation Democratic Alliance for Change, led by the SDP, before the elections, although the party’s failure to govern effectively since the last election may have been the main reason for its defeat. Furthermore, according to an ICG report, returning refugees and diaspora refugees were able to affect Bosnian politics, such that, for example, Federation-based parties were able to win 17 percent of the seats in the RS National Assembly.99

War criminals and The Hague In response to the ferocity of internecine violence in the former Yugoslavia, known as “ethnic cleansing,” the Security Council utilized Chapter VII of the UN Charter on maintenance or restoration of international peace and security to pass Resolution 827 in May 1993, which authorized the creation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).100 Located in The Hague, the ICTY was meant to prosecute individuals indicted for violations of international human rights laws, such as crimes against humanity and other war crimes. The idea was to avoid the negative consequences of collective guilt by the various populations involved in the Yugoslav wars.101 Indicted war criminals were supposed to be turned over by the governments wherein the indictees lived or traveled. Richard Goldstone, the ﬁrst chief prosecutor for the ICTY, considered the Tribunal’s work as “the difference between peace and an intermission before the next round of hostilities.”102 The Security Council further passed Resolution 1031, which authorized 76

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all member states whose citizens were part of the IFOR contingent to comply with the arrest warrants issued by the ICTY. There is some controversy as to whether IFOR and SFOR were obligated by their mandate to seek and arrest indicted war criminals.103 Within Bosnia, the lack of trust among the three major ethnic groups was particularly obvious with regard to the lack of cooperation with the Tribunal.104 During the ﬁrst few postwar years, neither the responsible governments nor IFOR actively brought suspects into ICTY custody. In fact, many of the most notorious indictees lived openly and continued to exert inﬂuence on Bosnian political life. Some of the indictees were those with whom the international community had to negotiate in order to contain the war. Others were in power in the areas that were the destinations of returnees, who then felt that their lives would be in danger should they attempt to return to claim their former homes. Gradually, however, SFOR became more active in apprehending indictees, although the two most notorious, Radovan Karadzˇic´ and Ratko Mladic´, still remain at large, even at the time of this writing. The ICTY was early criticized for being egregiously anti-Serbian, particularly by Serbs. As a result, it began to try to take a more balanced approach to the war crimes trials; but in the eyes of many it remains ﬂawed. After all, as an ICG report stated, “War crimes in one entity or canton are still hailed as acts of heroism in another.”105 Therefore, justice takes on a different complexion depending upon in which area of Bosnia one resides.

The media Since the media in Yugoslavia were controlled by the LCY, they were not “observers of political developments, but the instruments of the actors in those developments.” In fact, the media served in certain respects as a channel of communication between the political elite and its constituents.106 In the negative part of this role, the media contributed to deﬁning an ethnic identity, which excluded others, while reinforcing tensions. Thus, the media were necessary to prepare the populations within Yugoslavia for war. The media since the war, as before and during the war,107 has been utilized as a political tool by the ruling regimes within Bosnia to consolidate their power. The international community intervened repeatedly to ensure that nationalist media were stiﬂed and only media expression that reﬂected the multiethnic point of view of the international community ﬂourished. Furthermore, there has been some growth of alternative media, particularly within the Federation, although in the western part of RS some alternative media also exist, aided largely by international largesse.108 77

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For some, this policy was an example of media pluralism; for others, however, such a policy indicated a questionable interpretation of freedom of expression and other democratic norms.109 Furthermore, the international community initially undercut the creation of a dynamic independent media by hiring many of the talented younger journalists into the international organizations for more generous wages than local media could afford.110 Eventually, however, a regulatory framework has emerged to monitor and enforce regulations and license media outlets. In 1998, the OHR established the Independent Media Commission, which set standards for and licensed Bosnian broadcast media. Nevertheless, journalists still sometimes face harassment and pressure from nationalists and organized crime ﬁgures. Appeals to ethnic hatred in the media are less widespread than in the past, but journalistic standards generally remain low.

Refugee return The return of refugees is a thorny problem and is likely to long remain so. At the end of the war, between one-half and two-thirds of Bosnia’s inhabitants did not live where they had lived before the war. A report of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development estimated that 540,000 Bosnian Serbs (39 percent), 490,000 Bosnian Croats (67 percent), and 1,270,000 Bosnian Muslims (63 percent) were dislocated by the war, with approximately 1.2 million inhabitants having ﬂed the country during the war.111 Factoring in other dislocated people, the UNHCR estimated that at the end of the war 2.7 million people had been displaced from their homes.112 Because ethnic cleansing in all its facets was the most pernicious element of the war, inevitably the international community has expended a tremendous amount of time and treasure attempting to reverse the process.113 The inclusion of Annex 7 (Agreement on Refugees and Displaced Persons) in the DPA was meant to ensure every Bosnian refugee the right to return home. This has been a major focus of international effort. The UNHCR was designated to ensure the right of return by refugees and internally displaced people. It also undertook the ancillary tasks of feeding, clothing, and doctoring the displaced and coordinating humanitarian assistance to the refugees and other humanitarian organizations. UNHCR also assisted population movement by not allowing interference, presumably by those who would attempt to refuse entry to those wishing to go home. This was not an easy task for the agency as the issues of refugee return were not simply humanitarian ones, but also had major political, security, and economic implications.114 Difﬁcult enough as it has been to implement the right to return to their own homes, it is also a major focus of internal nationalist opposition. The nationalist elites attempted at every stage to forestall refugee return in hopes that partition would become the default condition. 78

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Furthermore, UNHCR was not widely welcomed in postwar Bosnia because of its wartime activities. When the West’s humanitarian and political objectives did not coincide, UNHCR’s humanitarian activities were compromised by its association with the UN and UNPROFOR’s military activities. For example, when ethnic cleansing occurred in Bosnia, UNHCR was forced many times to save lives by assisting people to become refugees, thereby making the organization seem complicit in ethnic cleansing.115 Refugee ofﬁcials, while hopeful that more refugees would be permitted to return to their homes, were skeptical because “anyone who has not gone home in two years’ time will probably never do so.”116 There was good reason to suspect that this was an accurate assessment of the situation, despite determined efforts by host countries to send their refugee populations home.117 The leaders of Croatia and Serbia inveighed against a renaissance of a multinational Bosnia and encouraged their cohorts in Bosnia to obstruct refugee returns.118 In fact, it was fairly easy to mobilize the displaced persons, who were occupying the homes of those who went abroad during the war or were killed, against returnees, as they in turn would be again displaced.119 Furthermore, the return problem in Bosnia was made even more sensitive by the fact that during the war many of the intellectual elite left Bosnia, and, in particular, Sarajevo during the siege. Many of those who remained were SDA supporters and, as such, not likely to be removed from the dwellings they occupied in favor of the returning owners. The SDA leadership would not willingly weaken their power base merely to rehouse those who ﬂed Bosnia during the war. Nor did SFOR (or its IFOR predecessor) take all necessary moves actively to provide security for returnees120 or guarantee freedom of movement.121 Some of the constraints against returns were removed by SFOR and the newly trained police force. But, as of February 1998, only 208,000 of the more than 1.2 million Bosnians who left Bosnia during the war had returned. And of the more than one million Bosnians who were displaced internally and remained in the region during the war, only 222,000 returned to their home cities, and usually to where they were in the majority.122 By mid-1999, only 600,000 of the 2.2 million displaced Bosnians had returned to their pre-war homes, and only one-sixth of that number had reoccupied homes in areas where they would be an ethnic minority.123 At the end of 1999, more rather positive movement was seen in the refugee situation. UNHCR declared that in the ﬁrst four months of 2000 more than 11,000 refugees spontaneously returned to their homes in Bosnia where they were part of the minority population. That is more than four times the rate of return during the same period in 1999. The unwillingness of Alija Izetbegovic´ to turn Muslim refugees out of houses they now occupied despite court orders was a further setback for 79

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the DPA policy of return. However, it appears that in 2002 more than 100,000 Bosnian refugees returned to their pre-war homes, which made the total of returnees to that date approximately one million. In 2002, the ICG reported that more than 360,000 Bosnians had returned to live in areas where they were not in the majority. Furthermore, ofﬁcial ﬁgures show that approximately 900,000 people have returned to their pre-war homes.124 On the other hand, more than 1.2 million still have not returned, and perhaps will never return.125 As yet, fewer Croats and Muslims have reclaimed their homes in RS. On the other hand, Serbs were more or less forced to take up residence in the economically desperate RS. RS had inherited almost 200,000 refugees from formerly Croat and Muslim-dominated areas and received little or no assistance from the international community because of the obstructive policies of its leaders. Nor did FRY assist materially. Their settlement in FRY would have increased employment and other economic problems, which meant that the Bosnian Serbs’ natural destination was closed to them. As a matter of fact, FRY lost approximately 75,000 of its non-Serb citizens to Bosnia, particularly those ﬂeeing from the Sandzˇak and the fear that they might be ethnically cleansed.126 On the other hand, the situation in RS may be stabilizing very slowly in small ways. For example, Prijedor’s moderate Serb leadership, anxious to obtain foreign aid (growing even more elusive because of Kosovo and other drains on international purses and attention), stopped obstructing reconstruction of Muslim houses. Elected Muslim ofﬁcials were able to take their seats in the municipal government. Further ﬂedgling steps were also taken in other areas of RS, such as in Kozarac.127 Similarly, few Serbs returned to the Federation in the ﬁrst few years after the war. By August 1999 only 30,000 non-Muslim refugees had returned to Sarajevo. Sarajevo’s population had by then fallen to 350,000, two-thirds of its pre-war numbers. Only 5 percent of its inhabitants, under 20,000, were Serbs in 1999.128 Another issue worrying political elites was the dwindling of the Croat population in Bosnia, from 17 to 10 percent.129 As a result, the international community instituted a number of programs aimed at increasing refugee returns. One of these programs, UNHCR’s Open Cities Initiative, seemed to begin to bear fruit. The project directed international assistance funding to cities or municipalities “where reconciliation between ethnic communities is possible, to declare publicly their willingness to allow minority groups to return to their homes and participate as full members of the community.”130 Fifteen cities in RS and the Federation had been so recognized by mid-1999. However, an ICG report suggested that the program was not signiﬁcantly encouraging returns. In most of these cities, less than two hundred, and in some situations less even than a hundred, minority returns occurred.131 The most hopeful part of the refugee problem appears to be the return 80

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of some Serbs to parts of Croatia and even to Sarajevo, belying nationalist propaganda that no Bosnian Serbs would live where there were Muslims.132 Bosnian Croats, too, seem to be returning to their homes and some Muslims to their homes in RS, which has challenged the assumption that they favored partition and national separation. Instead, the presence of the international community (and especially SFOR), the 2000 Croat elections that produced a victory for opponents of ultranationalism, and encouragement by the Bosnian Muslim government to returnees seem to have resonated with the refugees, some of whom had waited for eight years to reinhabit their homes. Some of the credit for the change of heart among the refugees is also given to a more aggressive OHR. For example, returnees were given greater rights toward repossessing their homes by a new propertyrestitution rule. And in November 1999, OHR dismissed twenty-two Bosnian ofﬁcials who were obstructing the returns. This move demonstrated a renewed determination to follow the letter of the laws for property restitution. The irony of the accelerated return situation lies in the fact that the most recent inﬂux of refugees began to occur just when the international community was beginning to withdraw from their Bosnian commitments.133 This was particularly worrisome in eastern RS where there was no donor funding for returnees.134 The returning Bosnians need both reconstruction funding and security. Under international pressure, property laws in both the Federation and RS were altered in 1998 to permit returnees to reclaim their property according to DPA strictures outlined in Annex 7. The returnees also needed employment, which is hard enough to come by for those who stayed, much less for returnees. Friction among the two groups over lack of employment opportunities has created some reluctance to welcome returnees. These and other more subtle forms of resistance, such as problems in “obtaining social welfare, medical care, identity documents, pensions, and the resolution of their housing situation,” have made many former Bosnian residents reluctant to return.135 Furthermore, returnees face particular problems aside from the pervasive unemployment of Bosnia. An ICG report suggested that returnees suffered from ﬂawed privatization, nationalistically inclined education systems, discrimination in accessing utilities, healthcare and pensions, as well as intimidation of “minority” returnees, abetted in some cases by local police, prosecutors and courts.136 Until the issue of returnees is dealt with cooperatively by the citizens and elites of both Entities, this problem, along with the impediment of the indicted war criminals not being turned over to The Hague for trial, will effectively undermine the potential for reuniﬁcation that underlay the DPA. Thus, there has not been enough movement in this arena to claim 81

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that Bosnia is on the road to being reunited. A major reason for this lack of success is that the peace process was constructed around those leaders and political movements who had begun and prosecuted the war in the ﬁrst place. Rather than encouraging political movements among those who were anti-war and non-nationalistic, the DPA cemented the hold of the warmongers and ultranationalists over Bosnian politics. While not surprising, since only the three national movements could control the three national armies, nevertheless, the consequences for Bosnia’s future are unfortunate. This has meant that an ethnic approach to politics and to the deﬁnition of citizenship has left little room for the type of pluralism and tolerant multinationalism that, given a chance to ﬂourish, might encourage a wholesale return of refugees and prevent future Balkan conﬂicts.137

IPTF The International Police Task Force (IPTF), part of the UNMBiH, was created by Annex 11 of the DPA. It was mandated by UN Resolution 1088 to bring Bosnian police forces into line with Western standards. The IPTF was, therefore, to ensure security and maintain law and order, especially by conducting investigations into possible police abuses and human rights violations. It was also charged with training, assisting, and monitoring the police forces throughout Bosnia in order to assist in their reformation and restructuring. The conﬂict between assistance and monitoring (including telling the HR if the police refused to cooperate) was apparent and may have limited IPTF’s success in achieving its mandate. The consent of the Federation police to work with IPTF and their willingness to engage in Muslim-Croat joint patrols was easier to achieve in some areas than in others. Violence in the early years of the state was often blamed on criminals or mass outbursts, but “most incidents clearly enjoyed the support of authorities and local security forces.”138 Gradually, though, the task of regularizing and depoliticizing what were previously nationalist-based forces into civil servants doing their job in a nondiscriminatory, democratic fashion became easier, at least in the Federation, although not in RS. Progress in reforming Bosnian police forces has been mixed, because police were sometimes used by ruling nationalist parties to carry out and maintain ethnic cleansing and to harass political opponents. The IPTF did succeed in restructuring and reducing police forces and providing needed professional training. However, ethnic integration of police forces was very slow. Police chiefs in RS were unwilling to hire Croat or Muslim ofﬁcers, particularly if they were former refugees. Similar resistance to minority recruitment and integration was found in some Croat majority areas, including Mostar. Police in these areas were unwilling to protect returning 82

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refugees from minority ethnic groups and dragged their feet in investigating crimes against them. IPTF did not have a mandate to conduct policing duties and could not ﬁll this void. Being lightly armed, the IPTF had to rely on SFOR for protection against disgruntled citizens and police forces. SFOR helped at times to control crowds at ﬂashpoints, but it could not ﬁll the policing gap by itself. Thus, the weakness of the Bosnian police, despite IPTF training, was that they were “managed through state ministries of the interior and [were] oriented toward internal security functions for the state more than policing for the population.”139 Furthermore, the IPTF was criticized for occasionally putting good relations with local police forces still dominated by nationalist parties above ensuring human rights140 and minority refugee returns. The IPTF function was turned over to the EU in December 2002 as UNMBiH was decommissioned.

Brcˇko The issue of Brcˇko loomed large during the early days of the creation of the Bosnian state. Both the Muslims and the Serbs claimed this town, strategically located in the narrow Posavina corridor that connected the eastern and western parts of RS. With a pre-war plurality of Muslims and, after ethnic cleansing, a postwar absolute majority of Serbs, Brcˇko posed a dilemma. For RS, the issue was that, if they lost Brcˇko, RS would cease to exist, as it would be cut in half. For the Muslims, losing Brcˇko would have meant sanctioning ethnic cleansing while also denying the Federation access to the Sava river, which secured for the Federation access north to Europe and lessened its vulnerability to its Croat Federation partner. Controlling Brcˇko would give them an alternative access to the outside world if the Croat-controlled coastal route were cut. The Bosnian Croats alone did not care over much about the disposition of Brcˇko. They would have been able to support the RS position if a partition of Bosnia had ensued; however, they would also have been in a position to support the Bosnian Muslims if the issue became one of demography.141 In March 1999 the Brcˇko status issue was settled by international mediation. It became a self-governing district not controlled by either Entity. On the one hand, progress toward real integration of the district remains slow. On the other hand, the Bosnian Muslim long-term political strategy to weaken or break apart RS through non-political means (legal arbitration) was stymied.

Role of religion within the political system Religiosity in Bosnia has always been a difﬁcult concept to measure. Particularly in the ﬂuid years after the death of Tito when studies were 83

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attempted, it was often difﬁcult to ascertain exactly how much of the population was devotionally committed as opposed to identiﬁed nationally through religion. Religion then was “mostly hijacked by radical nationalist or sectarian politicians to increase their own legitimacy.”142 Postwar studies may show a similar confusion, particularly as many religious leaders were compromised during the recent war. Bosnian Muslims usually “wear their faith lightly.”143 Thus, unsurprisingly, anecdotal evidence in Sarajevo suggests a rejection of the newly mobilized Muslim clergy and their attempts to control social forms within the Muslim portions of the Federation. Yet, throughout Bosnia, there is an evident “de-secularization” as Gordon N. Bardos termed it. The largely secular urban population, which yearns for democratization, instead is receiving a steady dose of desecularization of the political and social landscape. Clergy of all the major religions are becoming far more active in the political sphere, as well as in the social and cultural spheres, for example, promoting religious education in the schools.144 The signiﬁcance of the renewed role of clergy throughout Bosnia is that the age-old centrality of the position of priest or mullah, except during the communist era, is reviving in Bosnia as an important source of political legitimacy for the nationalist leadership.145 Much of the aid coming into Bosnia from abroad is from Muslim countries, but in the form of mosques. The mainly secular Muslim population in the urban areas resents that aid is being given for such underutilized resources when what they really need is capital investment to promote employment.146

Corruption of the political and social system On July 29 1999 a summit meeting creating the Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe was held in Sarajevo. Its self-imposed tasks were to create conditions for the implementation of democracy and human rights; economic reconstruction, development, and cooperation; and increased regional security in order to integrate that area more easily into European institutions, particularly the EU and NATO. After more than seven years of international protection, Bosnia still has not resolved a number of major political issues. These include corruption of a political system dominated by ethnically controlled parties, the lack of independent police and judicial systems, and the growing segregation of schools and religious control over curricula.147 The Bosnian polity is still not politically uniﬁed. Mono-ethnic domination in various areas of the country still passes for a political framework. In contemporary Bosnia there is little room for anyone who does not follow a national agenda, as politicians seem to consider Bosnian politics a zerosum game. That is, where there is a gain, it is for one’s own national group 84

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and against competing national groups – for land, power, inﬂuence, etc. – not for the democratic process. Should people of other national groups succeed in returning and regaining their former lands, competing national groups consider that their own power might be compromised. This has been a major reason for the reluctance to permit returnees of an ethnic group into areas dominated currently by another ethnic group. Furthermore, there appears to be little room for compromise as anyone within the ethnic group who preaches pragmatism or reconciliation is considered a traitor to his own people.148 Furthermore, the achievement of pluralism and economic liberalism in postwar Bosnia is being undercut by the corruption of the political and economic systems. The ethnically deﬁned political parties still control decision-making within the administrative, judicial, and economic organs of Bosnia. All three of the major national groups have also taken steps to maintain a cultural distance. Each ethnic group maintains its own schools with curricula that “reinforce ethnic hatred, blame the other groups, and glorify their own mythology,” leading to a type of ethnic indoctrination.149 In October 1999, the OHR completed the ﬁrst phase of its plan to remove objectionable material from all textbooks, trying to bring Bosnia up to the accepted European standards; but progress is slow.150 A recent study by the US General Accounting Ofﬁce (GAO) bluntly stated that “endemic crime and corruption is impeding the successful implementation of the economic, political, and judicial reform goals of the Dayton Peace Agreement.”151 Most worrisome appears to be the continuation of wartime networks specializing in smuggling, tax evasion, and trafﬁcking in women and stolen automobiles,152 and even narcotics trafﬁcking.153 International ofﬁcials responsible for overseeing implementation of the DPA have acknowledged that “a complex web of interrelationships exists between organized criminals and government ofﬁcials.”154 Nepotism and bribery supplement what can be gotten from networking – “from friendships to those of a political and often criminal nature.”155 Illegal institutions are a particular problem in the Federation, especially in Croat-controlled areas. These institutions, as well as corruption and crime for the beneﬁt of nationalist political parties, corrupt politicians, and criminals, receive funding from many sources, including smuggling, diversion of customs revenues and other criminal activities. The parties also control key ﬁrms, including utilities, which harms prospects for economic reform and foreign investment. Organized crime thus remains a critical problem in Bosnia. The power of these groups derives in part from close connections with political elites – a legacy of the war. The division of Bosnian society exists also in terms of a chasm between the haves, allied with those in power, and the have-nots, which means everyone else. Since many of those who started and prosecuted the war in the ﬁrst place are still in power in many areas, and are supported by the 85

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international community, there is little chance for this situation to alter in the near future. In fact, the corrupt elites appear to cooperate in the best tradition of cross-cutting cleavages across national groups to maintain their own respective power positions.156 The corruption and fraud in the ﬁnancial and political community scares investment away from Bosnia.157 Furthermore, it impoverishes an already poor country. The Bosnian state is dependent upon the Entities for its ﬁnances, as each Entity controls all the taxes and duties collected on its own territory,158 but Entity business is largely under criminal control. And the criminal arena is the only place where inter-ethnic business is done freely.159 Thus, in order to create a viable political and social system it may be necessary to transform the underlying structure of Bosnian society so that pluralism and transparency are established in the political and economic systems and a rule of law is created. The international community has taken on this task and has made some headway, but the corruption and ethnically driven political system vigorously resist that metamorphosis. And, indeed, such an outcome is stymied in certain respects by the internationally imposed DPA. As a report issued by the International Commission on the Balkans declared: “With respect to Bosnia, the Dayton settlement is inherently contradictory.”160 Critics have suggested that the DPA itself obstructs the peace it sought to impose because it instituted a system based on group rights and ethnic representation. Like the Titoist system of emphasizing the national question and national selfdetermination when deciding issues of importance, ethnopolitical separation is intrinsic to the DPA, which emphasized the importance of the national leaders and solving problems according to national interests. It does not work toward creation of a non-nation-based civil society but fosters a legitimate separate development of the various areas.161 Furthermore, the DPA did not ever really deal with the issues that caused the initial tensions leading to the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, particularly the tension between the rights of the individual and those of the collective, as well as the clash between the right of ethnic groups to self-determination and the international community’s desire to maintain the territorial integrity of existing states.162 While urging the restoration of the multinational character of Bosnia, the structural forms set up by the DPA in reality preserved the territorial separations achieved by force during the recent conﬂict and have not discouraged the various national groups from pursuing different visions of Bosnia. The Federation was constructed in order to counterbalance the Bosnian Serbs within Bosnia, but the Croats and Muslims have yet to establish the type of trust that would create a true federation. The two sides had two different ideas about the purpose and structure of their Entity. The Bosnian Croats viewed the Federation as a union of the two separate communities of Muslims and Croats,163 while the Bosnian Muslims considered the Federa86

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tion as a community of two constitutive peoples, an integral whole that is differentiated from its neighbors.164 Thus, the Bosnian Croats and Muslims, comprising the Federation in Bosnia, have been termed “partners on paper only.”165 The Bosnian Constitution speciﬁcally recognizes the existence of the constituent ethnic groups, which gives them constitutional standing. Therefore, it is not surprising that the wide republic powers are held hostage by the constituent ethnic groups, which can veto or delay federal initiatives. Positions of inﬂuence are inevitably ﬁlled based on ethnic membership, which means that governmental representatives and parliamentary representatives, representing their own ethnic groups, control decision-making. Policies like this have, until recently, eliminated the participation of non-nationalists in politics, even though the original goal of these policies was to marginalize the nationalists so that their political base would disappear. Until relatively recently, therefore, the postwar election results reﬂected the DPA bias toward the nationalists. The DPA did not discourage the Bosnian Serbs and Croats from contemplating an eventual division of Bosnia into three parts, despite an attempt “to revive co-operation on the model of earlier coalitions during the interwar period and under Austro-Hungarian rule in the early twentieth century.”166 The DPA provided for the right of the Entities to maintain “special parallel relationships with neighboring states consistent with the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina.”167 This could be construed by unremitting nationalists as an incentive for the Bosnian Croats and Serbs to work harder to develop those ties than to develop strong ties with Sarajevo. Furthermore, even the very creation of RS seems to many to have ratiﬁed the results of the Bosnian Serbs’ ethnic cleansing,168 even though the DPA also included a provision stating that both Bosnia’s neighbors, FRY and Croatia, have accepted the obligation to abjure conﬂict with Bosnia and to aid the international community in the democratization of the entire Balkan area. With the international community having forced the three dominant Bosnian ethnicities into a convoluted system of governance, it is not surprising that there has been resistance on the ground to the full implementation of the DPA. Unfortunately, the international community had no clear plan to force the obviously unhappy elites of the three nations to comply with any features that went against their own interests. The international community squandered its political capital and its ability to coerce the Yugoslav elites through its control over entry into regional and international organizations by its lack of a clear-cut plan for postwar Bosnia’s reintegration as a viable member of the international community. Instead of Bosnia becoming an increasingly viable nation-state, the international community has been forced to continue, and even increase, its involvement in the domestic governance of the country. 87

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Bosnia’s recovery may have been hampered also by the fact that its rebuilding has been overseen by multiple international actors, all of which have their own ways of operating, as well as their own priorities. This could only create turf wars encouraged by “difference in organizational mandates, even to the point of contradiction; different methods of ﬁnancing, forms of governance, and lines of accountability; distinct organizational cultures; and divergent conceptions of what constitutes legitimate forms of international engagement.”169 As with any such turf wars, political bargaining sometimes is the deﬁning mode of operation rather than a rational assessment of the needs of the subject. An egregious example was the decision that the HR would always be European, served probably by one American and one German chief deputy,170 without mention of the suitability of alternate candidates from different locations. And unilateral interventions continue unabated, as the OHR intervenes to impose regulations to resolve the myriad issues that continue to burden Bosnia. Despite these problems, there are some victories: internationally monitored and approved elections have been held at various levels throughout the country; a good number of refugees are returning to the country, if not their own homes; and Bosnia’s infrastructure is being repaired. Most importantly, there has been no ﬂare-up of war. The regularization of free and fair elections with parties based on interest rather than national group would assist in the deepening of democracy by forming the institutions that would share power. However, the insistence of the West – and particularly the United States – on proceeding with quick elections revealed an unfortunate emphasis on the forms of democracy at the expense of its substance. The argument was that elections would jump-start the joint institutions and put people into political positions so that reconstruction of Bosnia could begin. However, the Bosnian situation seems to have “demonstrated an unfortunate propensity to use elections as a convenient means of declaring the international community’s involvement to be a success. Western diplomats, either cynical or naive, have forgotten that, absent certain key preconditions, elections are as divisive as they are unifying.”171 Implementation of election results has also been a problem, particularly when ethnic minorities were elected to local governments in areas from which they were expelled. In general, election results have seen the slow erosion in support for the nationalist parties, but nationalists remain very strong, particularly in RS and Herzegovina. However, the lack of organized opposition forces to those who control the power in society already meant that only the old power elite, who had already beneﬁted both politically and economically from the war, would be able to win the elections, at least for the ﬁrst few years after the war, the time when the character of the Bosnian State was being formed.172 The election results in Bosnia suggest that the goal of democratization 88

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was more or less sacriﬁced for expediency and outward appearance. Bosnia may simply not have been ready to hold elections, as the elections have, more or less, been divisive rather than unifying. LCY apparatchiks for the most part are still in control in Bosnia through the nationalist parties, even though the Communist Party itself was discredited with the fall of the Soviet Union. They still dispense patronage and allocate goods and services to their cronies, just like during the days of communism.173 Anecdotal evidence in Sarajevo, for example, suggested that leading members of the SDA were able to purchase luxurious villas for the same price that regular citizens spent on single-bedroom apartments.174 Critics of international policy in Bosnia say that most progress has come as a result of international community browbeating or direct intervention. They argue that the international community has so far largely failed in its goal of encouraging local leaders to “accept ownership” of reform. Therefore, lacking a real domestic constituency, this “progress” is not selfsustaining. One key structural problem is the persistence of the nomenklatura system, which persists because of a lack of strong, active popular support for change. An additional challenge is creating new, democratic structures to replace the old ones. The DPA itself may stand in the way of this, given the weakness of central authorities and the way the country is organized on the basis of ethnicity. To counter that criticism, Western legal bodies like the American Bar Association have been working with legislators to draft laws on such issues as investment and privatization, which may be the key to economic development in Bosnia, if only because state-owned enterprises provide substantial funding to the ethnic-based political parties.175 Only when a stable legal and political framework is mounted and adhered to can Bosnia begin to function on its own. The arrest and transportation of indicted war criminals will encourage this endeavor. Sven Alkalaj, former Bosnian Ambassador to the United States, stated that “in the areas where nationalists and war criminals are not, there are excellent working relations. Here, laws are being abided, customs are paid, taxes are paid, and people respect the law. There are no incidents. In those pockets of the country controlled by nationalists, we see a total black market.”176 One of the most important consequences of the DPA was the subsequent international effort mobilized to restore normal daily life to Bosnia and to facilitate communication between the previously warring national groups. In some areas the results have been quite good. When one visits Sarajevo, for example, one sees some sign of the former devastation in the form of battered buildings, but one’s impression is of a bustling European city rebuilding and rebounding. Foreign troops are many and obvious, but they do not provide a threatening presence. The formerly rival ethnic armies, on the other hand, are not that visible. Public services such as gas, electricity, and water among others have 89

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been repaired and goods seem fairly plentiful in the stores and markets. The nationally neutral license plates permit easy travel between the Federation and RS. A research poll conducted by the US State Department’s Ofﬁce of Research in October 1999 indicated an upswing in Bosnian acquiescence, although not enthusiasm, for adherence to the DPA provisions. While the Bosnian Muslims remained the most supportive of the DPA, Bosnian Serbs indicated at least partial satisfaction with the political conditions as they stood then. Bosnian Croats were least satisﬁed. Both Bosnian Serbs and Croats would prefer to join FRY or Croatia, respectively, but, with the international community blocking that possibility, at least for now, remaining a part of Bosnia and Herzegovina is considered acceptable.177 However, eight years after the end of the war, Bosnia is still subject to the political engineering of the international community. Bosnia’s executive and legislative power still resides largely in the hands of the OHR, while the mandates of the international organizations and nongovernmental organizations within Bosnia continue to be extended beyond the original time-frame. The seeming lack of commitment by the political elites of all the ethnicities dominating Bosnia to a viable political framework bodes ill for the Bosnian polity. The international community sought to counter the baleful inﬂuence of the nationalists by imposing rules and regulations when the responsible local parties would not cooperate. But imposing democracy by relaxing due process sends a ﬂawed message to Bosnians about short-term victories at the expense of accountability. The reliance on the international community to force all parties in Bosnia to cooperate is an uncomfortable way to ensure the tenable existence of Bosnia as more than an international protectorate. The international community, as it stands now, must remain in Bosnia for quite a long time to ensure peace and tranquility there. Thus, the international guarantors of Bosnia did not conﬁgure the constitutional structure of Bosnia so that they could detach from Bosnia in a timely manner, leaving behind a strong state that was based on a political consensus between the elites and the people they governed.178 The localism of the politics in the lands of the former Yugoslavia are an anomaly in this era of globalization and economic interdependence. Until there are major political parties that can draw support from all sectors of society, from Croats, Serbs, and Muslims, based on ideological considerations rather than on national membership, Bosnia retains the potential for inter-national conﬂict. Should Bosnia fail to establish the strong, viable institutions it requires to construct a democratic society, only more misery may await. While donor fatigue appears to have hit the Western countries pledged to rebuild Bosnia after the war, Muslim countries continue to send money to Bosnia, albeit more in the form of elaborate mosques and Islamic schools than in 90

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the kinds of economic investment that is needed to revive Bosnia. The greater the external religiously driven inﬂuence within Bosnia, the more certainty there is that the multiethnic future many Bosnians still aspire to will not come to pass. And we will really not know for quite a while whether the international community was successful, as most commentators agree that at least a generation or two must elapse until democracy is considered secure.179 The international community will probably have long forgotten its commitment to Bosnia by that time and may little note what the outcome of its political engineering became. If the US believes that a stable Europe is in its own national security, it must do more to ensure Southeastern Europe’s prosperity and safety. A signiﬁcant step in that direction would be to avoid suborning Bosnia’s rule of law as expressed in its Constitution, and, in fact, to encourage Bosnian ofﬁcials to take on more responsibility for policy formation and implementation, while the international community slowly begins to decrease its inﬂuence over decision-making. To whatever extent that Bosnians believe that their leaders are puppets of the US, as indicated to some by the aforementioned debacle of the Algerian Six, or that the international community is not particularly committed to its stewardship of Bosnia’s transition to democracy, as some interpret HR actions, the legitimacy of any moderate democratic government will be undermined and the political advantage will return to the extremists.

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4 BOSNIA’S ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND OUTLOOK

The devastation wreaked by the recent Balkan wars is particularly evident in Bosnia. Before the war, particularly in the late 1970s, Bosnia’s economic future was relatively rosy. Although Bosnia was not one of the most prosperous areas within former Yugoslavia by far, nevertheless, it had signiﬁcant economic potential. Unlike some regions in Yugoslavia, Bosnia’s growth rate was solid, increased by the 1984 Olympic Games in Sarajevo. Bosnia’s per capita income was more than $2000, and the republic appeared to have a positive international reputation with regard to its engineering skills, as well as its production of furniture, chemicals, and raw materials.1 Its industrial sectors of steel and metallurgy, engineering, chemical, textile and apparel, leather goods, and wood processing enterprises accounted for 45 percent of Yugoslavia’s GDP, with industry and mining making up more than 50 percent of Bosnia’s GDP in 1990.2 The economically chaotic 1980s, however, saw Bosnia’s GDP per capita sink 32 percent below Yugoslavia’s national average.3 Most of Yugoslavia’s regions suffered somewhat during the turmoil caused by the argument about whether to pursue marketization or retain a communist-like political management of the economy, coupled with the different proposals about how to reshape the country in transition to multiparty democracy that split Yugoslavia. The war then eliminated much of Bosnia’s pre-war economic advantages. Now Bosnia has the dual problem of being in transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy and from being part of a communist country to a modern European market economy.

Effects of the war Bosnia’s pre-war population was more than 4.3 million. During the conﬂict, an estimated 200,000 Bosnian civilians and 60,000 soldiers died, 174,000 were injured, approximately 2.5 million of Bosnia’s citizens were displaced,4 and more than a million went abroad, including a high proportion of the most skilled workers, the most experienced company managers, and the intelligentsia. In Sarajevo alone, 10,500 were killed and 60,000 92

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wounded during the 1000-day siege; 150,000 people left the city either during the war or in its aftermath. RS was inundated by 150,000 Serbs escaping from Krajina and Western Slavonia during the August 1995 Croatian drive to retake those areas formerly captured by the Serbs. By the end of the war, Bosnia’s population had shrunk by one million from its pre-war total. The population slide apparently continues. According to the latest population ﬁgures available, the Federation’s population dropped slightly from 2,808,000 in 1999 to 2,801,000 in 2000. On the other hand, RS’s population rose from 1,448,000 in 1999 to 1,469,000 in 2000.5 Bosnia’s infrastructure was extensively damaged, including all the railroad lines, seventy bridges, 2000 kilometers of roadways, airports, gas and electricity, and telecommunications.6 More than two-thirds of the total housing and capital stock, as well as infrastructure for social services (hospitals, schools, etc.), was either destroyed or damaged. Rebuilding or repairing buildings may in the end amount to as much as $10.8 billion.7 Its per capita income dropped to below $500.8 During and immediately after the war, industry may have operated at between 5 and 10 percent of its pre-war capacity.9 Coal-mining, for example, continued throughout the war, although its output fell from over 18 million tons in 1990 to around 1 million in 1994. Bosnia’s timber was less valued than before globally, as much of it was ruined by metal fragments from the war.10 Agricultural land was devastated by the existence of landmines after the war,11 and at the end of the war approximately 80 percent of the population was dependent upon international food assistance.12 Alongside the physical destruction, most of the functions of urban living were disrupted. The destruction of the economic base was augmented by the extensive damage to historic and cultural sites, where attempts had been made to erase evidence of multiculturalism both in the cities and in the rural areas.

Forecasting Bosnia’s economic future Depending upon to whom you refer, at least two different pictures of Bosnia’s economic future are forecast. As Vesna Bojicˇic´ and Mary Kaldor succinctly put it: on the one hand, the public sector is destroyed and replaced by a humanitarian economy, supported entirely from abroad, based on handouts, in which nobody is paying and no-one works, and in which beneﬁciaries experience repeated humiliation. On the other hand, the new market economy is largely criminalised; it consists of a “gangster economy,” made up of loot and pillage, black marketeering, arms trade, drug trade, etc. These two types of 93

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economy feed on each other, perpetuating a material basis for ethnic nationalism. Both types of economy radiate outwards. The humanitarian economy radiates outwards through refugee networks, and the gangster economy through various Maﬁa rings and other transnational criminal networks.13 On the other hand, Bruno de Schaetzen, Resident Representative for the IMF in Bosnia, expressed cautious optimism about Bosnia’s future, stating that “Bosnia is not a basket case,” if compared to other transitional postSoviet states like Albania and Moldova.14 He cited slow and steady positive changes that indicated that he was cautiously optimistic about Bosnia’s economic future. The problem with forecasting Bosnia’s economic future is that hard source data upon which the forecasts rest are totally suspect. There is a very new and rather small all-Bosnia statistical agency. Until that agency becomes responsible for the gathering of accurate economic data, that task still falls to the Entities (and Brcˇko). The Entities’ statistical bureaus do not have standardized forms for gathering, analyzing, and reporting data, which makes it extraordinarily difﬁcult to suggest with any conﬁdence an economic forecast for Bosnia. Nevertheless, the IMF has applied its best ﬁltering techniques to the Entity-supplied data and has come up with a credible, if not totally accurate, statistical view of Bosnia, which will now be reviewed.

Bosnia’s economic position The latest statistics obtainable for Bosnia’s economic position at the time of this writing were the IMF’s preliminary ﬁgures for the year 2000. The data released by the Federation to the IMF was considered slightly more reliable than that presented to the IMF by RS, because the Federation has moved faster than RS in regularizing its statistical data gathering.15 Bosnia’s GDP stands at around 40 percent of its level before the recent war and appears to be declining (see Tables 4.1, 4.2). The budget deﬁcit in 2000 was estimated to be 2.8 percent of the Federation’s GDP and 3.8 percent of RS’s GDP. Disturbingly, according to former HR Carlos Westendorp, postwar Bosnia may be spending more than one-fourth of its GDP on its military.16 The central government retains control over “customs, monetary policy, international ﬁnancial obligations, and interentity infrastructure such as transport, communications, and energy. The entities had responsibility for tax and customs administration as well as any economic and social policies not explicitly given to the center.” Most importantly, the central government receives its ﬁnancing from tax and customs revenues collected by the Entities and thus has no independent source of revenue, which, not surprisingly, weakens the central government and its prospects for playing a role in the uniﬁcation of Bosnia.17 94

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Table 4.1 Bosnia’s GDP (in millions of US dollars) 1997

1998

1999

2000

Federation Republika Srpska

2841 932†

3183 1062†

3356 1202*

3161* (prelim) 1209*

Total

3773†

4245†

4702†

4451†

Source: IMF Statistical Appendix for Bosnia, February 11 2002. www.imf.org and Bulletin of the Central Bank of Bosnia, January–December 2001, p. 46. Notes *The January–December 2001 Bulletin of the Central Bank of Bosnia, however, stated that RS had a GDP in 1999 of $1346 million and $1290 million in 2000 (p. 8). † Figures from the Bulletin of the Central Bank of Bosnia, January–December 2001, p. 46. www.imf.org.

Table 4.2 Bosnia’s GDP/capita (in US dollars)

Federation Republika Srpska

1997

1998

1999

2000

1774 661†

2000 743†

2187* 830*

2392* (prelim) 823*

Source: IMF Statistical Appendix for Bosnia, February 11 2002. www.imf.org Notes *The ﬁgures in the January–December 2001 Bulletin of the Central Bank of Bosnia are signiﬁcantly different than those in the IMF tables. For example, according to the Bank, the Federation’s GDP/capita in 1999 was $1195, dropping to $1129 in 2000. On the other hand, the Bank published much higher ﬁgures than the IMF for RS, which in 1999 was recorded with per capita GDP as $929, falling to $878 in 2000. † Figures from the Bulletin of the Central Bank of Bosnia, January–December 2001, p. 46. www.imf.org.

It is widely believed that economic investment in Bosnia may be the only way to reintegrate that country, as Bosnia’s stability may ultimately rest on its economic health. If that is the case, the future is rather grim for Bosnia. By 2000, the private sector was producing only 35 percent of GDP in Bosnia, in large part because privatization of formerly socially owned property proceeded very slowly and new ﬁrms were not being created rapidly.18 Both Entities only reluctantly and with pressure by the OHR adopted laws on privatization in 1998.19 Industrial production slowly climbed after the war so that by 1999 it had reached a little over onefourth of its pre-war level, employing about one-quarter of the people it had employed before the war.20 The Zenica steel mill is currently producing, as are other sectors, such as construction, optics, etc.; however, their technology is outdated.21 All operable sectors of military industry continued production, albeit only marginally, compared with the scale and range of production before the war. Also recovering, although slowly, is industry that produces primarily for the local, not the international, market.22 95

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Before the collapse of communism, Bosnia’s substantial military industrial capacities were directed toward the East European market. Under the communist regime, Bosnia had been the site of a large percentage of Yugoslavia’s defense plants.23 Now that the Warsaw Pact is gone, the relatively low quality of Bosnia’s defense industry product, which was directed mostly to producing Eastern bloc arms, does not make it an imminent competitor in the contemporary arms market.24 Nor is the remainder of Bosnia’s industry likely to be internationally competitive in the near future, as it is mostly either communist-era or wartime technology.25 The postwar level of heavy industry was only 5 percent of its pre-war level.26 Power generation was at about 78 percent by 1999 and cellular technology had greatly increased telecommunication levels in Bosnia. A majority of the roads, railroads, and bridges were made operable, and by 2002 Sarajevo sported a new, modern airport, with funds donated by the Dutch government and the EU.27 Hospitals, schools, and the power grids were also repaired to a workable extent throughout the country.28 Bosnia currently grapples with the lowest employment rate of any Central European economy in transition.29 Unemployment at the beginning of 2000 was high in both Entities of Bosnia. In the Federation, the unemployment rate was 40 percent; in RS 50 percent.30 Mirza Hajric´, Foreign Policy Adviser to the Bosnian President, stated in March 2000 that unemployment in Sarajevo was more than 50,000, while the total of Sarajevo’s employed is only 110,000.31 The population is largely unable to ﬁnd meaningful employment (if any employment at all). This situation is exacerbated, ironically, by the international community’s employment of educated professionals, who ﬁnd it more lucrative to lend their skills to well-paying jobs sponsored by aid administrators, such as drivers, translators, etc., instead of ﬁnding work in their regular professions.32 They can earn between $460 and $1500 in those capacities. If one adds to that the fact that approximately 750,000 Bosnian refugees continue to live in other European countries, the resulting brain drain has been dire.33 Thus, according to Peter Singer, the new growth in the economy lay in the servicing of the international community and the wealthy strata in Bosnia, not in rebuilding the overall economy.34 A “peace dividend,” therefore, is not being realized by the majority of Bosnians. Nor is Bosnian society necessarily gaining from the inﬂux of international personnel. Chris Bennett of the ICG pointed out that “every day, more foreigners pour in to do every conceivable task, and the more they do, the less the Bosnians do for themselves.”35 Bosnia’s economy is also experiencing deﬁcits in other sectors. For example, the IMF ﬁgures for Bosnian agriculture show a steadily declining income (in its ﬁgures for Agriculture, Hunting, and Fishing) from 583 million KM in 1997 to an estimated 482 million KM in 2000.36 Agricultural production, which used to account for 9 percent of the GDP and employed over 23 percent of the population,37 has thus fallen drastically. 96

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Bosnia’s foreign trade position is increasingly difﬁcult as its trade balance since the war has continued to run a severe deﬁcit. Exports overall were signiﬁcantly outweighed by imports in all sectors with almost all of its trade partners. Table 4.3 describes Bosnia’s overall foreign trade transactions. Breaking the trade transactions down by Entity illustrates the differential entry of the Federation and the RS into world trade (Table 4.4). Bosnia’s foreign trade relations with its neighbors in 2001 showed, with only one exception, a negative balance (Table 4.5). On the other hand, the IMF, showing combined Federation and RS ﬁgures, described a slowly emerging upward trend over time in Bosnia’s export, as well as import, position (Table 4.6). Table 4.3 Bosnia’s foreign trade balance (in millions of KM) Total volume of trade exchanges

1998

1999

2000

2001

Exports Imports Trade balance

⫺1043 ⫺5120 ⫺4077

⫺1375 ⫺6048 ⫺4673

⫺2265 ⫺6582 ⫺4317

⫺2370 ⫺7062 ⫺4692

Source: Central Bank of Bosnia, Godisˇ nje izvjesˇ c´ e, 2001, p. 28.

Table 4.4 Federation and RS foreign trade balance (in millions of KM)

Exports Federation RS Imports Federation RS Trade balance Federation RS

1998

1999

2000

2001

⫺ 619 ⫺ 424

⫺ 950 ⫺ 425

⫺1430 ⫺ 835

⫺1747 ⫺ 599

⫺3728 ⫺1392

⫺4459 ⫺1589

⫺4852 ⫺1730

⫺5114 ⫺1697

⫺3109 ⫺968

⫺3509 ⫺1164

⫺3422 ⫺895

⫺3367 ⫺1098

Source: Central Bank of Bosnia, Godisˇ nje izvjesˇ c´ e, 2001, p. 28.

Table 4.5 Bosnia’s foreign trade with neighboring countries, 2001 (in KMs) Country

Export

Import

Balance

Italy FRY Germany Croatia Switzerland Slovenia Austria France Hungary

515,136 456,833 326,918 234,006 228,650 170,476 80,546 21,659 326,304

929,991 521,050 735,596 1,075,698 206,462 917,001 397,479 94,051 1,668,782

⫺414,855 ⫺64,217 ⫺408,678 ⫺841,692 22,188 ⫺746,525 ⫺316,933 ⫺72,392 ⫺1,342,478

Source: Central Bank of Bosnia, Godisˇ nje izvjesˇ c´ e, 2001, p. 28.

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Table 4.6 Bosnia’s foreign trade with non-neighboring countries, 2001 (in KMs) Country

Export

Import

Egypt

5,578,337 539,551 6,117,888 118 0 118 31,881 0 31,881 1,854,623 184,788 2,039,411 815,866 254,923 1,070,789 270,839 3858 274,697 330,211 0 330,211 23,502 68,900 92,402 222 0 222 25,681 109,613 135,294 61,623 0 61,623 3,713,020 0 3,713,020 16,506 18,915 35,421 2713 0 2713 261,216 10,195 271,411 205,504 161,233 366,737

902,517 0 902,517 3,864,031 85,620 3,949,651 396,997 144,346 541,343 948,355 0 948,355 7,498,367 73,387 7,571,754 287,964 0 287,964 2,685,106 36,698 2,721,804 28,362,547 455,088 28,817,635 8195 0 8195 27,627,761 3,686,105 31,313,866 45,506 0 45,506 58,294 0 58,294 1,743,565 90,890 1,834,455 1,299,856 0 1,299,856 173,637 0 173,637 4,099,781 0 4,099,781

14,543,838

84,574,613

Federation RS Bosnia India Federation RS Bosnia Indonesia Federation RS Bosnia Iran Federation RS Bosnia Israel Federation RS Bosnia Jordan Federation RS Bosnia South Africa Federation RS Bosnia South Korea Federation RS Bosnia Qatar Federation RS Bosnia China Federation RS Bosnia Kuwait Federation RS Bosnia Libya Federation RS Bosnia Malaysia Federation RS Bosnia Pakistan Federation RS Bosnia Saudi Arabia Federation RS Bosnia UAE Federation RS Bosnia Total Bosnia

Source: Federalni zavod za statistiku FBiH i Republicˇki zavod za statistiku RS.

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Table 4.7 Bosnian trade position (in millions of dollars)

Bosnian exports Bosnian imports

1998

1999

2000 (est.) 2001 (est.)

⫺ 697 ⫺2656

⫺ 649 ⫺2502

⫺ 732 ⫺2348

⫺ 857 ⫺2299

Source: IMF Statistical Appendix (February 11 2002), www.imf.org.

Bosnia inherited one-sixth of pre-war Yugoslavia’s foreign debt, which amounted to $1.9 billion. International creditors reached a series of rescheduling agreements with Bosnia based on IMF and World Bank strictures. However, the foreign debt still remains signiﬁcant and, as donor assistance begins to decrease, Bosnia will probably ﬁnd its external debt obligations increasingly onerous (Table 4.7).

Privatization As noted earlier, privatization in Bosnia has been very slow. Only 1.4 percent of the Federation’s state-owned property had been privatized by the beginning of 2000.38 Since refugee return has not been wildly successful, it has been necessary to go slow with privatization so that those who wish to come back and claim their assets are not denied that possibility by a fait accompli.39 However, the privatization that has been accomplished already has had a very problematic impact in Bosnia. Joint venture activity is being pursued, although the lack of privatization laws limits that type of activity, as foreign investors do not know what rules obtain for the purchasing of, or sharing ownership in, Bosnian enterprises. Privatization has not been able to spur enough new economic activity to compensate for the fact that the former elite and wartime black marketeers who already possessed the funds to buy formerly state-owned property were the ones to beneﬁt most.40 While Bosnia receives per capita one of the largest amounts of foreign aid in the international arena, it also sports a large amount of corruption.41 Charges of misappropriation of international aid have been rife since the end of the Bosnian war. This has made it even more difﬁcult for Bosnia to attract foreign development investments, as mechanisms to control corruption are not securely established in Bosnia (see Chapter 3).

The ﬁnancial sector The IMF appointed Bosnia’s ﬁrst Central Bank governor. In order to provide an aura of credibility and neutrality, Bosnia’s Constitution stipulated that this governor not be a citizen of Bosnia or a neighboring state at least until 2003. The Central Bank’s functions were limited for the ﬁrst six years of its existence to acting as a currency board to stabilize the 99

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND OUTLOOK

Bosnian monetary system, but not to extending credit by creating money. In June 1998 the new konvertibilna marka (KM) was issued, as speciﬁed in the DPA,42 existing side-by-side with the more popular German mark until it was superseded by the euro. The EBRD became custodian of the Commission on Public Corporations, which supervises all public sector operations such as energy, water, postal services, transportation, roads, etc., while it also oversees the privatization of state-owned assets.43 The Communist-era system of “payment bureaus,” which charged interest on deposits rather than paying out interest and through which citizens had to pay their bills and taxes, was eliminated in 2001. Their functions were transferred to the commercial banks, thereby making such transactions more transparent and eliminating an additional factor that had discouraged external investment in Bosnia.44

The environment The Bosnian environment in the postwar era is problematical. Even had there not been a war, Bosnia would have suffered from the environmental disregard practiced by the communist regime. Approximately half of Bosnia’s land was agricultural, with something like 300,000 hectares suffering some environmental damage.45 As the leadership of the former Yugoslavia attempted to force an agricultural society to become an industrial stronghold, Bosnia, as a central industrializing area, became extraordinarily polluted. Unbridled mining and industrial expansion made the Bosna river, like other rivers and streams, “an open sewer.”46 Air quality was abysmal and indiscriminate deforestation denuded vast areas. The war left an environmentally troubled area devastated. Serbian attacks on industrial plants released large amounts of hazardous materials, and water supplies and sewage plants were severely damaged.47 Pressing environmental issues make the prospect of Bosnian recovery all the more difﬁcult. Furthermore, preservation of the water supply and conservation of Bosnia’s resources do not seem to be priorities of the postwar Bosnian government. Since Bosnia contains 75 percent of the river catchments of the former Yugoslavia,48 Bosnia’s water conservation policies are important for its future, for itself, as well as for the region. But postwar sanitation services and water policy are nonexistent or primitive in most municipalities.49 Interestingly, the recent war gave Bosnia’s water and air quality a boost, allowing the polluted rivers an opportunity to rejuvenate and air quality to recover. In the postwar era, however, heavy urbanization, with renewed industrialization and more private cars, has attacked the air and water quality again. Indiscriminate deforestation is again a possibility that will sidetrack Bosnia’s regeneration of forests. 100

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If anything could lead to closer collaboration between the Federation and RS, it is the looming environmental disaster. Controlling river quality, for example, is an inter-Entity concern. The environmental concerns pose dire problems shared by both Entities and that can be resolved only by both working in tandem.

The rural–urban dimension and industrialization Bosnia and Herzegovina’s major surge of industrialization began under the Austro-Hungarian Empire, when Benjamin von Kallày, Joint Minister of Finance from 1882 to 1903, decided to boost the economy of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to avert national tensions and keep Bosnia stable. Kallày was successful in attracting ﬁnancial backing for his Bosnian project from the monarchy. He constructed railway and road networks throughout Bosnia and encouraged the growth of competitive wood export and iron industries. Modern communications networks were also constructed during his administration. There was a dual impact, however. Access to some markets improved, but, at the same time, Bosnia was inundated by superior products from outside the region, which had a negative effect on the local artisans and craftsmen.50 Urbanization in Yugoslavia was slow if compared with other parts of Europe in the early twentieth century,51 although the resulting urban–rural divide was not uncommon internationally. However, this difference was important in the case of Yugoslavia. The historical conﬁguration of the area that became Yugoslavia was such that there was a “historical association of cities with ethnic difference,”52 so that the cities and the villages were identiﬁed with different ethnic groups. The result was an intensiﬁed urban perception of the countryside as peopled by an ignorant and backward populace, while the rural dwellers looked upon city folk as foreigners and oppressors.53 The formation of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes did not alter this division. The urban elites did not succeed in making common cause with the peasants, even though they used their issues to garner support. The post-Second World War structure of Yugoslav society also had an important impact on Bosnia. The overwhelmingly agricultural society of early twentieth-century Yugoslavia disappeared as peasants were drawn into the industrial sector. The Communist Party, ideologically a party of the urban proletariat, attempted collectivization of agriculture after the war, which could not be construed as anything but an attack on the peasantry. The abandonment of collectivization did not materially better the peasant’s situation, as Allcock pointed out, since the CPY apparently foresaw the peasantry merely being folded into the proletariat.54 However, the new working class did not necessarily lose its rural 101

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND OUTLOOK

characteristics. Until the recent war, only 20 percent of Bosnians lived in urban areas.55 Thus, according to Schierup, the working class took on a number of new features reminiscent of the south-Slav tradition of closed, corporate egalitarian village communities; it was submissive and humble towards state power to which it had always been tied as taxpayers and soldiers, but sufﬁciently far from the state to conserve a measure of internal autonomy.56 Thus, a signiﬁcant part of this new labor force never strayed far from its agrarian roots. Reforms seemed to favor the more advanced urban-based members of the population over the semi-rural components. The latter, becoming marginalized by structural changes in both the industrial and agricultural sectors, became increasingly disaffected by the “reforming state bureaucratic” elite and were more driven toward the leaders who spoke in nationalist rather than economic terms.57 Bosnia was a prototype of this problem. Although there were pockets of real productivity in Bosnia, its rural areas were neglected and backward,58 creating a differential in modernization and wealth within the republic. Since these rural areas tended to be dominated by ethnic minorities, their frustrations and resentment came to be represented, in the era of ethnonationalist parties, in sharply nationalistic terms.59 This continued handling of the peasant situation by urban thinkers without peasant input led to a rural “sense of exclusion, suspicion and even hostility” against Yugoslavia’s “urban-centred ‘system,’” which, according to Allcock, “can be regarded as having played an important part in the genesis and course of the struggles surrounding the break-up of the former federation.”60 This led some commentators to argue that the Yugoslav wars were in reality a “revenge of the countryside” against the urban population (sometimes portrayed as the violent or barbaric Serbs and Montenegrins against the cosmopolitan Croats).61 The nationalists were by this time controlling much of the republic politics, which meant that republic politics became politics on behalf of one’s own nation, not the country as a whole. Republic elites fought for their own political autonomy and their republic’s economic autarky, which produced in Yugoslavia a stagnating economy. The quasi-confederal 1974 Constitution emphasized the role and power of the republics against the federal government, with the latter constantly losing ground and inﬂuence and unable to please all the ethnic groups with the decisions about intragovernment distribution of power to the various ethnic groups. Education became decentralized like the economic and the political spheres, and young Yugoslavs were often instructed in terms of their national identity rather than as members of a unique country. 102

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When many Yugoslav workers were unable to ﬁnd work in Yugoslavia they went abroad. They were the most cosmopolitan and educated people, those most likely to uphold the pan-Yugoslav values. They left behind the less-educated folk, more vulnerable to the appeal of nationalism.62 Thus, the rural–urban divide could be exploited by the nationalists to pursue territorial goals.63 The recent wartime dislocation of Bosnia’s population meant that a signiﬁcant number of village people were forced into the cities and towns. There continues to be evidence that, even as rural folk have moved into urban centers, the distance in social and cultural norms between urban and rural people remains large. Urbanites can be overheard, for example, pointing out which of the passers-by are formerly rural inhabitants, even though the casual observer can discern no visible differences.64 Thus, one of the dominant features of urban life in postwar Bosnia appears to be the ruralization of the cities. Consequently, the rural element has become currently “one of the main pillars of Balkan nationalist authoritarianism.”65 The rural element has shown the strongest support of any group for the nation-based political parties, while the more educated urban dwellers were more likely to vote for opposition parties.66 Since it is unlikely that the rural element will quit the cities in any large numbers due to the perception of an easier and more secure life in the urban setting, it is likely that the nation-based parties will continue to dominate Bosnian political life in the near future at least.

Corruption The postwar Bosnian economy is still rife with corruption, because of the lack of ﬁnancial transparency and budgetary accountability.67 This corruption is one of the hold-overs from the communist past. Communist leaders were able to exert maximum control over the economy, which, of course, led to widespread corruption. Little has changed since the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, except occasionally the names of the major players. Thus, the national parties that dominate in certain areas still retain the communist-era right of controlling who is named to the highest management positions at large economic enterprises. Those named, of course, “do what they are told.”68 There is no accounting, no transparency in the companies or the government. There is just control by the nationalist parties. With this party control of the economy seems to come an automatic linkage with organized crime.69 The irony of the corruption issue within Bosnia is that organized crime is perhaps the only Bosnian structure that is truly multinational. Organized crime links with government ofﬁcials helped to alleviate some of the shortages during the war, and these ties have been maintained, perhaps strengthened, during the peace. This has become an obstacle to Bosnia’s development in the postwar era. 103

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The effect of corruption on the Bosnian economy is tremendous. Almost half of Bosnia’s economy is underground, which means that customs and tax evasion is rife. Since each ethnic group controls its own public utilities, the leaders are able to set arbitrary prices and then use extra monies to fund their own political parties and politicians. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of corruption has prevented investors from freely investing in Bosnia, which means that Bosnia’s eventual building of a selfsustaining economy is a long way off.70 While a number of anti-corruption initiatives were ostensibly undertaken by the Bosnian and Entity governments,71 none of these efforts has been successful, mainly due to the lack of political will of the Bosnian governmental units. According to the ICG, much of the corruption is caused by “the existence of unreasonable and irrational tax codes and business regulations that force much economic activity underground.”72 But allegations of corruption and siphoning of funds for elite projects and political favors are rife, although denied by local ofﬁcials.73 As a result, Bosnia received only $160 million in private investment between 1997 and 1999.74 However, Congressman Benjamin Gilman, Chairman of the US House International Relations Committee, issued a report detailing the disappearance of large amounts of the international aid sent to Bosnia since 1995, including public funds to pay for tombstones for the victims of Srebrenica.75

International ﬁnancial assistance to Bosnia The foregoing account of Bosnia’s economic problems stemming from the recent war, as well as from its position within a socialist economy just beginning a transition to a market economy, illustrates why Bosnia continues to be a political and an economic protectorate of the West. Furthermore, as the following ﬁgures illustrate, this situation is unlikely to change in the near future. Members of the EU, the United States, and other countries and agencies involved in Bosnia seem to have acknowledged that the post-Dayton Balkans demand a monetary commitment that is generous and of long duration, if the neighborhood of the EU is to continue to be stable.76 Five major donor conferences co-chaired by the European Commission and the World Bank, sharing responsibility for procuring and coordinating aid for the reconstruction of Bosnia, were held from December 1995 through May 1999. These conferences garnered $5.25 billion in pledges from more than ﬁfty countries and ten institutions.77 Figures for 1996 showed that the aid tendered from external sources was having a positive effect on many, although certainly not all, sectors and regions of Bosnia. Its economy grew by 40 percent in 1996, with industrial output reaching 15 percent of the pre-war level. Wages and pensions 104

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND OUTLOOK

grew while unemployment fell to 60 percent, as did the proportion of the population depending on humanitarian aid. International aid as of 1998 totaled more than $5 billion, of which $760 million was from the United States and approximately $1.2 billion from the European Union.78 That equaled approximately $1000 per Bosnian.79 The reconstruction aid was used to recondition 90 percent of the roads, bring electric power generation up to 80 percent of its pre-war level, achieve 90 percent of the pre-war level of Bosnia’s water supply, and repair 15 percent of RS’s and 30 percent of the Federation’s housing.80 Other aid was also forthcoming. The international donor community provided humanitarian assistance, as well as aid in rebuilding damaged housing, infrastructure, and commercial activity.81 For example, the Saudi Supreme Commission for the collection of donations for Muslims of Bosnia and Somalia sent almost $400 million in 1997 in the form of food, blankets, and other emergency materials, while continuing to support hospitals, schools, and orphanages across Bosnia.82 And in June 1999 the Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe was launched to underwrite internal and economic reform as the region sought “to develop a shared strategy for stability and growth.”83 Only FRY was excluded, until Slobodan Milosˇevic´ was removed from power. However, the international efforts, based on the ideals of achieving “lasting peace, prosperity and stability for South Eastern Europe”84 appear to have been eroded by the apparent endemic corruption within the region. The international community has been criticized for its handling of the postwar Bosnian ﬁnancial situation. One critic bluntly stated that “the former Yugoslavia has been carved up under the close scrutiny of its external creditors, its foreign debt has been carefully divided and allocated to the republics.”85 Furthermore, like the Western creditors insisted on in Russia, some of the aid money paid to Bosnia was earmarked for servicing Bosnia’s external debt, without which no more loans would be forthcoming to Bosnia. Much of the aid money going to Bosnia was thus not being used for reconstruction at all.86 In fact, according to Michel Chossudovsky, Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia have entered into agreements with the international ﬁnancial community that will burden them with debt well into the twenty-ﬁrst century, forestalling signiﬁcant domestic reconstruction and permitting extensive penetration of their economies by foreign creditors. Bosnia and Herzegovina was also similarly stripped of its economic and political sovereignty by the international community.87 The aid question has also been controversial in regard to determination of its recipients. The international community decided to tie its economic assistance to achievement of the political goals of the DPA. Thus, only those parties who had agreed to cooperate with the international community in the implementation of the provisions of the DPA were permitted to receive the aid. The donors from the EU in particular insisted that their 105

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aid was conditional upon meeting democratization criteria, such as multiparty elections and liberal market reforms. This, of course, led to differential support of some goals that made political but not economic good sense. In some cases, the achievement of some needed humanitarian programs was held hostage to political goals.88 Thus, for example, areas controlled by the Bosnian Croats, which also received aid from Croatia, seemed to be recovering from the war at a more rapid pace than areas governed by the Bosnian Muslims or the Bosnian Serbs. Critics of the conditionality approach pointed out that forcing elections immediately after the end of the war would simply strengthen the hold of those nationalistic parties and leaders who had just ﬁnished prosecuting the war, as other, potential non-nationalistic elites would have had no time to build party machines to compete in elections successfully. Furthermore, the rapid institution of liberal market reforms without safety nets or other social constructs to protect the postwar population would simply further impoverish the population and institutionalize inequality and unemployment.89 Such a forced liberalization, absent requisite moderating forces to protect the population, would simply perpetuate the peripheral position of the lands of the former Yugoslavia relative to the contemporary postindustrial countries that are driving economic globalization. The counterproposal was to work ﬁrst to build a national consensus for democratization, taking into account indigenous conditions to help the South Slav lands to achieve the structural economic transformations that would enable their economies to be more easily integrated into the modern sectors of the global economy. The model for this proposal was the post-Second World War Marshall Plan for Western Europe or EC support for Southern Europe in the early 1970s.90 Nevertheless, conditionality was the policy generally followed by aid donors. Since the Federation had agreed to those terms, most aid went to that Entity. RS, led by unreconciled nationalists, was more or less ignored.91 Thus, RS received only 2 percent of the total international assistance during the ﬁrst two years after the war, because of the refusal of its leadership actively to implement many important provisions of the DPA. RS leadership had even boycotted the November 1997 donor conference.92 However, when the nationalists were replaced in the Bosnian Serb regions with a more moderate government, aid began to arrive there too. Thus, in early 1998, the EU expressed its willingness to send approximately $6.42 million to the newly elected RS government of moderate Milorad Dodik. Placed in a special account managed by the OHR, the money would temporarily ﬁnance salaries in the Entity that had not been paid since December 1 1997.93 On the other hand, little aid was given directly to the separatists in Pale. Thus, in 1997, unemployment in the areas controlled by the Pale group was 90 percent as compared to less than 50 percent in areas accommodating to the implementation of the DPA.94 106

ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND OUTLOOK

An additional problem with the implementation of the aid agreements is what has become a competition between NGOs, through which aid is being channeled to Bosnia, to prove their efﬁcacy.95 Providing what sometimes appears to be an alternative or even rival governmental structure to Bosnia’s central, regional, and local government institutions, the more than two thousand NGOs now extant in Bosnia have taken increasing responsibility for Bosnia’s redevelopment. One observer remarked that this situation forces NGOs “to seek spurious technical solutions, rather than cooperating for long-term goals.”96 Further aggravating the aid climate is the fact that aid is often directed to local agencies and ofﬁcials, most of whom owe their ofﬁces to the patronage of the dominant ruling parties. This tends to undercut those persons and parties who are nonnationalistic and might be counted on to attempt to create a civil society, as they have no base from which to make representation to aid donors. The increasing donor fatigue by the international community toward Bosnia may lie in part in the large outlay already expended during and right after the Bosnian war. The military operations were very expensive. The 55,000 IFOR soldiers came from forty-two countries, 28,000 from Europe and 18,000 from the US. The UNPROFOR operations between 1992 and 1996 cost $4.8 billion. This does not include the Americanﬁnanced Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) surveillance missions and the naval patrol in the Adriatic. American military costs for operations in Bosnia came to almost $10 billion as of March 2000.97 The EU may have spent more than $200 million just for its salvage operation in Mostar.98 Europeans provided over 70 percent of the total budget for Bosnia’s civilian reconstruction and peacekeeping efforts, while approximately 80 percent of the peacekeepers are European.99 Furthermore, the burden on the neighboring countries to honor the sanctions regime against Serbia may have been as much as $35 billion.100 Nevertheless, the international military effort has been successful in that the ﬁghting is over and most of the armed forces have been demobilized. UNHCR alone spent more than $1 billion per year, excluding the cost for UNPROFOR,101 for its humanitarian effort in providing shelter, food, and basic necessities in order to pursue its mandate to assist “refugees according to the international laws of asylum, statelessness and refugee status.”102 Almost 13,000 relief missions were ﬂown by American, French, British, Canadian, and German, and others’ transport planes delivering more than 600,000 metric ton of goods worth more than $1 billion. These ﬁgures do not take into account the efforts of other institutions, both private and public. Furthermore, the West has had to stand the cost of the inﬂux of more than two million refugees ﬂeeing from the Balkans, in the largest European refugee movement since the Second World War. Germany received more than 400,000 refugees, three-fourths of which arrived from Bosnia. 107

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Table 4.8 Bosnians in the European Union states Country

Population

Austria Belgium Denmark Finland France Germany Greece Ireland Italy Luxembourg Netherlands Portugal Spain Sweden United Kingdom

88,609 6000 21,458 1350 15,000 342,500 4000 886 8827 1816 25,000 n/a 1900 60,671 6000

Total

584,017

Source: UNHCR, Bosnia and Herzegovina Repatriation and Return Operation 1997 (Geneva: UNHCR, 1997), p. 5.

Austria accepted 80,000; Sweden 50,000; Italy 22,500; and Denmark 20,000 (see Table 4.8). Still, by 1998, almost 1.7 million Bosnians were living either in someone else’s house, refugee accommodations, or abroad.103

Republika Srpska While the economy of the Bosnian Federation remains in poor condition, the economic condition of RS is even more serious. Its main trading partner, FRY, was almost paralyzed economically as a result of the conﬂict over Kosovo. Since 70 percent of RS’s exports regularly went to FRY, that Entity has shared in FRY’s economic woes. Previous to the conﬂict over Kosovo, economic activity between the two territories was not terribly good anyway as the Yugoslav dinar was devalued. Since much of RS’s business used the dinar rather than the Bosnian KM, RS was hit hard by FRY’s instability.104

Herceg-Bosna The control of the political and economic arenas of the territory ruled by the illegal para-state of Herceg-Bosna has been a difﬁcult problem to resolve. Domination of Western Herzegovina, especially the lower Neretva valley, would have allowed Croatia to control a very high proportion of Bosnia’s trade and to control surface access to tourism’s Medjugorje, had a modus vivendi between Croatia and Bosnia not ensued.105 The 108

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Neretva estuary is also a very productive agricultural area. A triangle of seventeen municipalities extending between Jajce, Sarajevo and Jablanica commands the main rail links Sarajevo–Metkovic´ and Sarajevo–Zenica, which would regulate Bosnia’s entire rail network. It also encompasses a high proportion of Bosnia’s power generation capacity, especially the hydro-electric facilities near Jablanica, along the Vrbas and the Rama, the coal and iron ore resources near Zenica, and related manufacturing capacity, including the Lasˇva valley.106 The aforementioned visit to Bosnia by Croatian President Stipe Mesic´ may have relaxed the “economic colonization” of the area by Croatia.107 Nevertheless, “Herceg-Bosna” was, at least initially, if not still, thoroughly integrated into the Croatian economy. The region was part of the Croatian energy network, shared the pension and insurance systems with Croatia, as well as the mobile telephone system in parts of Bosnia. The Croatian kuna was a preferred medium of exchange.

Economic prospects Evaluating Bosnia’s economic performance is difﬁcult because of the wartime devastation, as well as the current involvement of the international community in its reconstruction. In order to get a truer reading, however, Bosnia cannot be compared to the rest of the international community at large. Rather, a more relevant comparison would be to other postwar and postcommunist societies. According to Cousens and Cater: [in] comparative macroeconomic indicators for twenty-seven central and eastern European countries, Bosnia ranked as follows in 1998: twenty-ﬁrst in GDP, seventeenth in GDP per capita, seventh in consumer price inﬂation, and ﬁrst in GDP growth per year. Although these standings are not indicative of stellar economic performance and are skewed somewhat by low postwar economic benchmarks and large infusions of international funds, they nonetheless could be construed as respectable results for a country undergoing two major transitions at once.108 The impact of international economic aid has been mixed. It has been successful in rebuilding much of the country’s shattered infrastructure. According to the UN Secretary-General’s former Special Representative, Jacques Klein, the postwar achievements in Bosnia are signiﬁcant. As of mid-1999, more than 300,000 soldiers were demobilized, and 1600 mineﬁelds cleared with the destruction of more than 48,000 mines. Houses, schools, and airports were reconstructed or repaired. GDP was up by onethird of its pre-war level and wages more than tripled.109 In fact, in 1997, 109

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the Federation, at least on paper, had the world’s fastest-growing economy.110 However, this growth soon slowed as economic reform remained relatively unimplemented. Bosnia remains in economic difﬁculty even while the West is increasingly showing signs of donor fatigue. While Bosnia has experienced economic growth, the focus of international aid efforts has now shifted toward creating a single economic space in Bosnia, enabling private sector growth. However, economic reform progress has been halting, in part due to foot dragging by corrupt Bosnian leaders. Labor restiveness grows as impatience with reform rises. In 2000 alone there were 340 strikes, as well as demonstrations over the late or non-payment of pensions.111 A number of observers suggest that international aid to Bosnia will decline over the next few years. Given Bosnia’s dependence on such aid and the slow pace of economic reform, “withdrawal” symptoms may occur. These could include increasing public disorder or a nationalist backlash. Increasing disorder could further strengthen organized crime groups, especially in RS and Herzegovina. A report of the ICG concluded that: Bosnia’s leaders and their foreign helpmates still face an enormous challenge: to create an economically viable, self-sustainable and governable country with a true common market, functioning institutions, effective and affordable administrations, and a modern, comprehensive economic and legal framework underpinned by the rule of law. Without these things, the business environment will remain unattractive to foreign and domestic investors alike, and Bosnia’s European future will remain in jeopardy.112 However, optimists say that there could be a positive effect. Economic hard times helped trigger the defeat of ultranationalist regimes in Serbia and Croatia. If the international community has unwittingly been propping up nationalist regimes with aid and electoral legitimacy while condemning them publicly, then hard times might lead to regime change in Bosnia too. Thus, if the international community is skillful, it can support a democratic opposition and other democratic institutions while delegitimizing ruling nationalists.

110

5 BOSNIA’S FUTURE PROSPECTS International relations and inter-national relations

Bosnia’s future stability is not necessarily a given thing. On the one hand, Bosnia has not yet achieved international legitimacy and secure borders. As a protectorate of the international community, in fact if not in name, Bosnia’s stability is, according to one perspective, in the hands of the international community more than that of its own elites. The continued contradictory demands of the international actors controlling Bosnia’s daily existence, particularly those from the EU and the United States, ensure that Bosnia’s immediate and its long-term future will remain complicated for quite a while. Also important are the confused and divided perceptions of the area held by the various regional actors. Bosnia’s associations with Croatia and FRY, both perhaps still nursing territorial ambitions with regard to Bosnia, are of special importance. The danger that Bosnia still faces from these two states makes it even more dependent on the continued goodwill of its guarantors. This chapter also reﬂects on the role of distant but potentially inﬂuential actors, such as Muslim states throughout the world. While there is little evidence that foreign Muslim states played a monumental role in the Balkan wars on the side of the Bosnian forces, the inﬂuence of such countries on the development of the Bosnian state is still a factor. All of these inﬂuences on a vulnerable Bosnia as it makes its way in the twenty-ﬁrst century toward the status of a legitimate and viable nation-state are explored in the ﬁrst part of this chapter. The war that led to Bosnia’s independence, however, involved the clash of ethnic identities, at least in part. The Yugoslav ideal of “Brotherhood and Unity” was ﬁnally and completely discredited and destroyed by the Balkan wars. This ideal had been based on the belief that the national groups within Yugoslavia were united by common aspirations, dangers, and needs, and that differing historical experiences did not obviate their common gene pool. The three-way war over Bosnia between the Serbs and the Muslims, the Serbs and the Croats, and the Croats and the 111

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Muslims spelled the end of that ideal. Therefore, the second part of this chapter explores the role that nationalism might continue to play in the character of the Bosnian polity.

Bosnia in the post-cold war era The international order that had been constructed at Versailles and then at Yalta has come to an end. Despite the engagement of many of the international institutional mechanisms for conﬂict resolution, the Yugoslav collapse was not easily dealt with and became a threat to the peace and security within the international arena. It threatened the political harmony of Europe, of Europe with Russia after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and of the Islamic world with the West. The Bosnian problem has come to be seen, in certain respects, as the means by which post-cold war arrangements for European security, indeed, global security, are being worked out. What did not work during the Bosnian war, as well as what did, provides certain clues as to what must be ﬁxed, altered, or otherwise worked out in order for the new global security order to be established successfully. In the post-cold war international arena, international relations are newly deﬁned as based not only on the old concepts of the sovereignty of the nation-state, but also, if not more importantly, on newer standards. The promotion of democracy and new global civic norms, such as the protection of human rights, is beginning to exert pressure on the notion of the centrality of the nation-state in the political sphere. The report by the Commission on Global Governance, for example, stressed that the “principles of sovereignty and non-intervention must be adapted in ways that recognize the need to balance the rights of states with the rights of people, and the interests of nations with the interests of the global neighbourhood.”1 Bosnia and Herzegovina represents the difﬁculty of transition between the cold war and the post-cold war norms, the difference between what Strobe Talbott called “realpolitik” and “idealpolitik.”2 Bosnia’s international relations are dominated by its associations with the Western powers that intervened to stop the Balkan wars. However, some analysts believe that the actions of those same Western powers also helped to doom Bosnia to suffer that war. According to the Report of the International Commission on the Balkans, a number of external factors contributed to the extension and brutality of the Balkan conﬂict, many of these factors directly involving the major Western countries: the refusal of the leading international powers, until summer 1995, to exert a credible threat of force to impose a solution; the gap between the rhetoric and the willingness of the international 112

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powers to back their words with actions; the under-equipping of the U.N. forces; the inability of humanitarian intervention to substitute for a political strategy involving, if necessary, the use of force; the tendency of many U.N. ofﬁcials to equate impartiality with neutrality between warring parties, even when one or more were violating Security Council mandates; and the tendency of the U.N. Secretariat – especially when faced with impracticable, unenforceable, and crucially ambiguous mandates, to “redeﬁne” the mandates to minimize the risks of implementation.3 This is a damning indictment of the West and its involvement in the Yugoslav wars of dissolution. Furthermore, the West’s response to the Yugoslav conﬂagration and especially to the Bosnian conﬂict altered postcold war relations much faster than most felt comfortable with and in ways that had not been conceived of previously. The major powers disagreed on all manner of issues with regard to the Bosnian conﬂict. They did not agree on what the conﬂict was about, how to end it and secure a stable peace, or even what they hoped to accomplish by intervening in the conﬂict. The United States and Germany thus looked upon the conﬂict as a territorial grab by an aggressive, ultranationalistic Serbia against a sovereign and independent state and, therefore, an action against the norms of the international community.4 Serbia must be weakened and punished for its deﬁance of the international community’s rules of stability and order, and the victims of this aggression must be protected. On the other hand, most of the European countries, especially Britain and France, viewed the conﬂict as a civil war, the consequence of the collapse of communism whereby previously smothered nationalistic tensions were now given free rein. The solution would be to inﬂuence Serbia as the key to peace, acknowledge the animosities, offer humanitarian aid to all victims no matter their national origin, and partition Bosnia into three regions within each of which one of the national groups would dominate. The inability of the great powers to act collectively and in tandem toward the Bosnian challenge undermined their effectiveness as peacemakers. Bowing to pressure to show the necessary leadership, the United States ﬁnally agreed to employ NATO air power to protect humanitarian aid delivery and to punish the Serbs for their continuing aggression. However, the countries who contributed peacekeeping troops insisted on retaining control within the UN command over the use of NATO air power through the “dual key” system. In this way they had hoped to minimize the risk to UN soldiers while trying to prevent further escalation of the war. Thus, the decision to bomb required that such requests originate from the UN forces.5 This was particularly aggravating to the US Congress, for it seemed to signal subordination of NATO to United Nations 113

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decision-making and, further, American subordination to its European allies.6 But, as Richard Holbrooke, former US Assistant Secretary of State, put it, Bosnia was one of the ﬁve decisive moments in the ﬁrst decade of post-cold war history, the others being Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, and East Timor. Bosnia’s importance was to serve as “the hinge because there we switched from the UN ‘blue helmets,’ which had failed there as they had in Somalia, to UN-authorized multinational forces, in this case NATO.”7 The Western alliance was then, as now during the crisis over Iraq, riven by contradictions regarding the nature of the conﬂict, the aims of the international community, and the methods by which these aims should be accomplished. Some observers, of course, suggested that the Balkan conﬂict was no more than merely a case of ancient ethnic hatreds run wild. In that case, the intervention of the great powers could be explained with a mainly humanitarian angle. However, some analysts suggest that the Western powers’ interest in the outcome may have had sphere-of-interest concerns, as they attempted to support their own chosen Balkan representatives.8 The postwar relationships of the various powers seems in certain respects to reﬂect their ambivalent actions during the war itself. These disagreements reﬂected the largest problem of all: a disagreement on the structure of the post-cold war order in regard to Europe, Russia, and the United States. The West did not want to dissipate a major beneﬁt of the post-cold war era – improved relations with Russia. Similarly, the United States did not want to lose its superpower status. However, the US also did not want to be solely responsible for keeping peace throughout the world and could not afford to anger its putative helpers in this endeavor. Thus, the subtext of the Bosnian problem was an unwillingness of the major powers to commit large amounts of treasure or people to its solution because Bosnia was not of sufﬁcient importance to any country’s national security. The inability of the great powers to agree seemed to indicate that instead of a seamless new Europe characterized by marketization and democratization, a future of “ethnic conﬂict, state fragmentation, and tribal wars” beckoned.9 The DPA reﬂected the post-cold war tendency to intervene in peacemaking and then peace-building. Brokered by the US, the DPA seemed to conﬁrm America’s international predominance extending even to the European continent and its Western European allies, not to mention to Russia. But the DPA also reﬂected the increasingly intrusive nature of international organizations into governance of post-conﬂict societies. This variety of complicated relationships became reﬂected then in Bosnia and the institutional setting established for peace implementation. The complexity was also reﬂected in the workings of the various Bosnian governmental and other institutions, directed by international 114

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organizations. For example, while the Western powers are not individually able to inﬂuence the Balkan peace implementation effort, the propping up of the same people who started the war in the ﬁrst place is an obvious contradiction between the humanitarian rhetoric and the politics of the situation of trying to placate a number of different international actors. This uneasiness is also reﬂected in Bosnia’s differing relationships with the various international actors, both international institutions and individual countries.

United Nations According to Richard Holbrooke, “the damage that Bosnia did to the UN was incalculable.”10 During the Bosnian war, the UN was more or less delegitimized because of its weak response to the humanitarian and political catastrophes in Bosnia. It found itself boxed in between two postSecond World War norms: protection of the universal norm of sovereignty for all states and protection of such universal human rights as the right of asylum, the conventions on war, and the norms of humanitarian law and global peace that were being deﬁled by the Serbs and the Croats against each other and against Bosnia’s Muslim population. The politicization of the involved humanitarian agencies had compromised the perceived impartiality of such an agency. For example, when UNHCR was drawn into the problem of ethnic cleansing, its constituents, the refugee population, could no longer view it as an impartial international agent. Thus, the UN was found wanting during this period.11 It later admitted at least in part to this failure. On November 15 1999, the United Nations issued a report taking blame for a misguided sense of neutrality during the Balkan wars. The report admitted that UN forces had failed to defend those civilians placed under its protection in the “safe havens” program and that it had wrongheadedly denied the Bosnians the means to defend themselves.12 After the war was over, the UN found that its involvement was winding down. As a matter of fact, it was not even represented at the DPA negotiations.13 Its postwar role was limited to its representation by the UNHCR and the UN Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMiBH), charged with supervising the creation of a viable police force in Bosnia. The mission of the latter, headed by Jacques Paul Klein, ended in 2002 and was turned over to the European Union.

Bosnia and the Western allies Since 1996, the US has spent more than $9 billion for military missions in Bosnia and over $1 billion for aid.14 However, in recent years, monetary aid for Bosnia has been scaled back by over 60 percent.15 In ﬁscal year 115

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2001, funding dropped even further when the focus of American efforts turned from military support to refugee return, encouraging the rule of law, and economic reform. President George W. Bush stated early in his Administration that he intended to reduce drastically the number of American troops in Bosnia at his earliest opportunity.18 However, by providing weaponry and training to the Federation army (so that the US could exit more rapidly), some analysts believe that the United States has, in fact, inadvertently prolonged its stay in the region.17 The Bosnian Muslims, in particular, have unrealized war aims that the new weaponry could enable them to pursue should NATO forces leave Bosnia. According to Aleksa Djilas, the Bosnian Muslim army is now the strongest army in Bosnia because of Western assistance and the arms Bosnia is able to buy on the world market.18 With smaller borders and shorter lines of communication to defend, not to mention international support, the Bosnian army might be in a favorable strategic position should there be a war. However, Serbia and Croatia would not be likely to commit aggression against Bosnia in light of their continued economic and political dependence on the West, and it is unlikely that Bosnia would start shooting ﬁrst. Therefore, while NATO, including the United States in particular, must stay even longer than at ﬁrst envisioned in order to avoid the possibility of war,19 it is likely that “a very modest NATO force would be sufﬁcient to guard the borders of the Muslim state. It would have a kind of trip wire role.”20 In the wake of the September 11 tragedy, however, some have questioned whether the US still retains its Bosnian commitment at all. But in 2002 Douglas Ebner, Counselor for Public Affairs at the US Embassy in Bosnia, unequivocally restated America’s determination to assist Bosnia.21 The rest of the international community also appears to be eager to end its involvement in the Balkans, as they see it as a messy place, full of animosity and intractable problems. The worst problem seems to be the tensions between the US and the Europeans on civilian and military implementation. Perhaps this was inherent in the structure of the DPA, as the Europeans were given the civilian implementation portfolio through their ﬁlling of the position of HR, while the United States, through its domination of NATO, ﬁlled the primary role in the military ﬁeld. Thus, US military authorities have reportedly blamed Europeans for the unsatisfactory progress on civilian issues. And Europeans blamed the delays on the unsustainable separation between military and political tasks and on the apparent US failure to provide reconstruction and development funds. Broader political divisions vis-à-vis the substance of the conﬂict in Bosnia reﬂect the European perception that the United States favors the Bosnian Muslims and the US perception that the British and the French are pro-Serb and the Germans pro-Croat. The “train and equip” program spearheaded by the United States and aimed at boosting the army of the 116

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Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina was apparently at cross-purposes with the European/OSCE policy of regional arms control. These and other examples demonstrate that “because the Dayton accord does not identify a single executive authority to resolve disagreements and take responsibility, these policy differences play out in personality conﬂicts and contests over authority.” The obvious conclusion is that “the main burden for the apparent failure of Dayton . . . rests with its sponsors,” meaning “ﬁrst and foremost the United States . . . [and] close behind . . . their nominal allies in NATO, particularly the British and the French.”22 The UN, and by extension the great powers who made the wartime decisions, has admitted to appeasing the aggressors during the war of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. If the West continues to duck any expression of its willingness to resist aggression until it is absolutely forced to, then aggressors will be ever bolder in asserting their will over defenseless populations. Furthermore, the depth of the commitment of the international powers guaranteeing the DPA to the preservation of a sovereign, integral Bosnia will be crucial to the survival of that state as such. The international community’s lengthy and intensive involvement in Bosnia, which has produced such laudable successes as the disengagement of Bosnia’s warring military forces, progress toward creating some common institutions (a central bank, a common currency, license plates, passports, etc.), key citizenship and property laws, privatization in various sectors, increasing refugee returns, reconstitution of public infrastructure, and others, has not noticeably increased Bosnia’s independence from the international community. The DPA has not been fully implemented, nationalist parties still dominate the political process, and it appears that Bosnia’s existence as a state is still inextricably linked to the persistent presence of the international community. Nor does it seem that Bosnia could sustain itself without continued large levels of such support and presence. International actions have not always encouraged increased trust among the Yugoslav groups. While some believe that the American posture in 1991 was the most reasonable (that political settlements precede diplomatic recognition),23 others cite the principle of selfdetermination expressed by the various ethnic groups as a rationale for dissolving the Yugoslav federation. The fact that the international actors favored an ethnic-based institutional structure was already one strike against the system. Those people who were not militantly nationalistic or who were the product of or engaged in mixed marriages were in effect disenfranchised. Finally, the United States and Europe still seem to be acting at odds with each other in the face of the unpopular US–British war against Iraq. The Western allies appear to be no closer to a common view of the post-cold war world than they were when the Bosnian crisis began to loom. 117

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Bosnia’s foreign policy is almost solely dominated by its relationship to the West and the other guarantors of the DPA. While other concerns have begun to take precedence in the twenty-ﬁrst century, it is imperative for the international community to realize that it will take generations for the wounds lanced in the last decade of the twentieth century to heal. OSCE representatives on the spot acknowledge that they do not see the possibility of Western withdrawal from Bosnia for at least ﬁfty years.24 Should the international community lose its resolve, it is questionable whether a stable Europe will be the norm throughout this century. A fractious Balkans can only undermine an area of the world that is a centerpiece of Western foreign policy. Therefore, Bosnia cannot be ignored in the calculus of Western foreign policy decision-making.

Bosnia’s relations with its neighbors The successful implementation of the DPA depended on the support of its signatories. Thus, it was expected by the international community that both Croatia and Serbia would cooperate in the reconstruction of civil society within Bosnia at least by not meddling or stirring up trouble among their own national cohorts in Bosnia. The reality, however, has been somewhat different. Some Bosnian Croats continued to insist on an increasingly “special relationship” with Croatia that Croatia’s Tudjman did not squash. However, upon his death in December 1999, the Croatian political scene was shaken up with the election of Stipe Mesic´ as President of Croatia. Among the ﬁrst of his initiatives was Mesic´’s ofﬁcial visit to Bosnia in 2000, during which he pledged Croatia’s cooperation with Bosnia and noninterference in the latter’s affairs.25 And, since then, Croatia appears indeed to be following that policy. One hears no more ofﬁcial Croat support for a Greater Croatia. Overt (and possibly covert) aid to the hardline Herzegovinian Croats and the HDZ appears to have ceased. There is a certain amount of Croatian money ﬂowing into Bosnia in the form of pensions, but that is handled through Bosnian state agencies and thus is relatively transparent. The persistence of massive corruption in Bosnian Croat areas, however, is one element that continues to undercut the achievement of a true federal agreement with the Muslim-dominated areas. While FRY’s September 2000 elections also produced some lessening of nationalist pressures on Bosnia with the election of Democratic Opposition of Serbia leader Vojislav Kosˇtunica as President of FRY, there was no explicit jettisoning of the support for the Greater Serb idea supported by RS. While Kosˇtunica took some steps to assuage Bosnian fears of renewed Serbian aggression, such as cutting off military assistance to the RS army and disallowing simultaneous service in the JNA and the RS military,26 FRY’s president was not as explicitly anti-nationalist as Croatia’s presid118

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ent. Many Serbs appear to have realized that the international community is opposed to RS becoming part of Serbia and thus acknowledge that Serbia cannot afford to alienate international aid donors, although that attitude does not appear to be ﬁnding its way into policy in any major way as yet. The assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic´ in March 2003, allegedly by the Zemun gang with close ties to the former Milosˇevic´ regime,27 may affect Bosnia. Instability and the re-emergence of overt nationalistic activities could easily translate into increased tension between Bosnia and FRY, one of the signers and guarantors of the DPA. Better political and economic conditions in Croatia and Serbia, including a lessening of the corruption that is currently manifested by close ties between the regimes and criminal elements and the deportation of the indicted war criminals Ratko Mladic´ and Radovan Karadzˇic´ to The Hague by Serbia, however, could in turn assist in Bosnia’s economic, political, and even psychological reconstruction. Instability in Bosnia’s neighborhood might set back that project. Ironically, as already stated, “the only truly organized, multi-ethnic institution in Bosnia is organized crime.”28 Thus, the perpetrators of Djindjic´’s assassination and their compatriots could conceivably strengthen their relationships with Bosnia’s Serbs, which is ominous for Bosnia’s stability.

Bosnia’s relations with Muslim states The relationship of Bosnia with the Muslim world is quite complex. Some Muslim states were appalled at the vacillation of the Western countries in the face of the Bosnian Muslim tragedy.29 They believed that the West was hesitant to intervene in what was obviously, to them anyway, a massacre of innocents simply because the victims were Muslims in the heart of Europe.30 On the other hand, the United States did not take steps to halt Iranian, Turkish, Malaysian, Pakistani, or Saudi activity on behalf of the Bosnian Muslims.31 Mujahedin from the Afghan conﬂict also reputedly served in the Bosnian Muslim army.32 It is quite likely that the United States may in part have felt called upon to act in Bosnia when the disastrous fate of so many Bosnian Muslims seemed to threaten the progress of Middle East peace efforts. Indeed, the Saudi government was instrumental in pushing the Bush Administration to recognize the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Saudi assistance to the United States during the Gulf War may have been part of the American rationale for intervening in the Balkans.33 In the wake of the American “War on Terrorism” and the negative response to it throughout the Muslim world, a Muslim-dominated region, as is Bosnia, can only be torn. As a secular, Europe-oriented Muslimdominated society, but a society forced by ethnic cleansing to confront its 119

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Islamic roots, the Bosnian Muslims cannot help but feel dual loyalties and thus suffer a sort of schizophrenia, possibly a little like its neighbor, Turkey. Bosnian Muslims, many of whom had chosen exile in Turkey and other Muslim majority countries over living under communism in Yugoslavia after the Second World War, demanded that Turkey take military action to save Bosnian Muslims from genocide.34 However, Turkey suffered its own problems of European identity vis-à-vis the European Union and NATO, as witness its response to American demands on it during the US war against Iraq. Moreover, the failure of Bosnia’s multinational experiment in tolerance may have dampened the prospects for Turkey’s own pluralist future.35

Inter-nationalism in Bosnia and Herzegovina The new state of Bosnia, so important to international politics, is numerically dominated by Bosnian Muslims. Because it also houses a signiﬁcant number of Serbs, Croats, and others, however, Bosnia must also deal with the problem of inter-national relations, or, perhaps, better said, nationbuilding. If, as some scholars insist, “ancient ethnic hatreds” was the reason for the outbreak of the Bosnian conﬂict, then nation-building in Bosnia is doomed to failure, since these hatreds would still be extant, ready to ﬂare up at any time. However, if, as this author argues, the war was a result of political manipulation by communist functionaries unwilling to relinquish their lucrative positions upon the fall of communism, then there is a possibility that Bosnian ofﬁcials who are not of the narrow nationalist variety might be able to undertake a healthy nation-building program.

Nationalism Nationalism, the ideology expressing the emotive nature of identiﬁcation with others sharing an identity, based on a common history, language, or culture, or other such factors, is not necessarily a destructive ideology. Nationalism can be a unifying force, which can aid in state-building by serving as the focus for loyalty. However, equally in its name many people have died prematurely during the twentieth century, particularly in the last decade in Europe, when nationalism showed an exclusionary face. The fact that members of a nation are related to each other by their blood and lineage seems to have been as much a decentralizing and fragmenting tool as a tool for integration. The inclusionary side of nationalism, civic nationalism upon which a civil society may be based, deﬁnes membership on the basis of citizenship, so that anyone who inhabits a certain area is assured of full rights of polit120

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ical participation and membership. The challenge of the future is to make civic, not blood-based, nationalism the norm in nationally fractured areas such as contemporary Bosnia.

National identity in Bosnia In the detritus left by a brutal war stands Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is now an independent nation-state, recognized by the international community as such in the waning years of the twentieth century. Its odyssey to this position has been long and arduous, the recent conﬂict being a bloody chapter in a long history of turmoil in the Balkans. The dominant model in the study of forms of collective identity applied to the Yugoslav case seems to be that membership in a group is given by birth and thus is immutable.36 However, in the Balkans in general, and in Bosnia in particular, national membership was a relatively amorphous concept until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Until then, religion was usually the deﬁning characteristic of group membership throughout Eastern Europe, although sometimes class and/or occupation served that purpose, too. Within Bosnia, there has been a long history of multiculturalism. Bosnia’s crazy-quilt of settlement is like the rest of Central Eastern Europe in that wars, migrations, and other major movements have separated national groups often into smaller enclaves surrounded by and surrounding other national groups.37 Bosnia’s peculiar situation is reﬂected in the fact that three major religions have existed side by side for centuries. Eventually, the Orthodox, Catholic, and Islamic religions each came to be identiﬁed with a certain national group within Yugoslavia. But that was not necessarily bad. Many are the anecdotes of Bosnians of one faith sharing the holidays and rituals of their neighbors of other faiths. Many are the intermarriages that occurred, particularly within the urban centers, that showed that religion was a form of national identity but not necessarily the dominant one in the social context. In Sarajevo alone, within a radius of approximately 100 meters, stand the premier Islamic mosque, Catholic Cathedral, Orthodox Church, and Jewish synagogue. The problem of the national conﬂicts in Eastern and Central Europe is at least partly the responsibility of the great powers who, in the nineteenth century, acquiesced to the identiﬁcation of governments (as the representatives of the state) with a single national group, usually the majority within the territorial borders. Minorities were generally treated with little respect or sensitivity, thus creating a vast amount of resentment against the dominating nation. Yugoslavia as a land of distinct national groupings is a fairly recent phenomenon. Not until the late nineteenth century did the South Slavs deﬁne themselves in any but religious terms. John Allcock pointed out that 121

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“Serbian national identity was imagined primarily in dialectical opposition to external enemies – the Austrian and the Turk,” not the Croat, the putative antagonist for “ancient ethnic hatreds.” The Croats were in a similar position of national self-deﬁnition until the beginning of the twentieth century.38 Bosnian Orthodox Christians did not begin until then to see themselves as Serbs. Nor did Bosnian Catholics always consider themselves Croats until the end of the nineteenth century, when religious and national identities began to coincide.39 As a matter of fact, Allcock went so far as to state that “there simply was no ‘Serb/Croat’ problem before the creation of the uniﬁed Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918.”40 Suddenly, however, the Serbs and Croats found themselves on opposite sides of a large number of issues dealing with the distribution of inﬂuence and resources within their common state. The stakes for each was raised, and the conﬂict increasingly took on ethnic-political overtones. The Bosnian Muslims were more or less left out of the “awakening” experienced by the other South Slavs for a long time, as their communal self-identiﬁcation was Muslim in the sense of religion. In the former Yugoslavia, ethnic identiﬁcation was “essentially ﬂuid, manipulable, and always [had] political implications.”41 Thus, the Bosnian Muslims’ burgeoning sense of nationhood under the communist regime after the Second World War was less an awakening and more of a defense mechanism against the aggressive Serbs and Croats who wished to subsume their community within one or the other national name, for largely political purposes.42 However, as a number of social scientists have pointed out, it is possible that the social identity of the masses was subject to being manipulated by elites with an agenda that did not include a peaceful, stable multicultural society. In the 1980s, after the death of Tito, these elites were able to engineer a sense of in-group/out-group dynamic in which a person’s neighbors and friends ceased to hold only that position. Instead they became “foreigners” to the person’s primary (national) group. By making a person’s national identity the primary, even the only legitimate, identity, everyone who was not part of the group became “the other.” In an attempt to enhance the self-worth of one’s own group, the “others” were placed in counterpoint and even demonized. Thus, for example, some Bosnian Serbs considered Bosnian Muslims as “foreigners,” even though they shared the same gene pool, their mutual ancestors had settled the land together, and their religion had become different only when the Ottoman Empire extended its control over Bosnia in the ﬁfteenth century.43 Some Croats, on the other hand, including, it seems, former Croatian President Franjo Tudjman,44 seemed to consider Bosnian Muslims as “Croats of the Islamic faith.” Thus, many misconceptions have hindered the growth of understanding and tolerance within this land, not least of which was the manipu122

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lation of messages of intolerance by the elite in order to further their own aims. The Bosnian Muslims were the only national group within the former Yugoslavia without a titular nationhood. While the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats each had a “motherland” outside of Bosnia, the Bosnian Muslims did not. When the Bosnian Muslims commanded a plurality within Bosnia to the point that some of their elites might reasonably have assumed that some day the Bosnian Muslims might claim Bosnia as their home state, the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats reacted negatively. Tito eventually decided to resolve the ambiguity of the Bosnian Muslim situation, and, by the way, resolve domestic wrangling between Serbs and Croats over control of resources and power within Bosnia and Herzegovina while also gaining international legitimization of Yugoslavia’s leading role in the non-alignment movement by recognizing the Bosnian Muslims as a Yugoslav nation. In 1969, for the ﬁrst time, the Bosnian Muslims were explicitly and publicly called a constituent nation of Bosnia, and, thereafter, the census designation of Muslim was available. Of course, the communist veil of respect for national minority rights within federations set up for that purpose was a lie, as witness Stalin’s brutality against numerous minorities and the post-Second World War solutions for minority rights in various communist countries.45 The grievances of the minorities only multiplied during and after the Second World War. Thus, once the communist blanket was lifted from these areas, the national minorities were free to air their grievances and attempt to right the previous wrongs through the acquisition of self-determination and control over their cultural future. This was particularly evident in Yugoslavia, which did not institutionalize citizenship, but which instead favored the major national groups and tended to ignore as far as possible the status of ethnic minorities throughout the country.46 The subsequent wars of Yugoslav succession then were “caused by majorities bullying minorities, who then took up arms against the intolerant majority.”47 The Bosnian Muslims were the only group in Bosnia that publicly stated a desire for a united Bosnia, as the other national groups were driven by Greater Serb and Greater Croat dreams.48 The difference in vision among the Bosnian groups permitted the necessary elite manipulation that led to bloodshed.

Concluding thoughts Many elites within the three major nations comprising Bosnia are grappling now in the early years of the twenty-ﬁrst century with how to pass through the stage of nationalism, as other Western countries are doing, and emerge on the other side, with no more bloodletting, into the era of globalization, market economy, and democracy. The classical model 123

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followed by Western European states was the amalgamation of territory, the promulgation of a kind of state nationalism, and, lately, the integration into a supranational body (the EU). Does Bosnia have to go through more pain and bloodshed before it can become an accepted member of the Western economic, political, and military alliance? The obvious answer to this question would be “yes,” as there still exist two Entities in Bosnia with little prospect of union because of differing agendas within the leaderships of the three major national groups. And, the mass of people seem not to be able to force themselves to vote for issue-based parties instead of national parties. Indeed, the cream of Bosnia’s youth, those with a multiethnic point of view, are voting with their feet. Large numbers of them are leaving Bosnia for the US or Europe, unwilling to sacriﬁce their lives while Bosnia tries to become a viable state. A 2000 survey found that 62 percent of Bosnia’s youth would leave if they had the chance.49 On the other hand, a recent poll of RS university students showed that segregated education and continued nationalist propaganda appear to be having the desired effect. Almost 75 percent of the students perceive the RS as a sovereign entity that should either declare its independence or become part of Serbia.50 Keeping these ﬁgures in mind, however, how does one account for public opinion polls that show that many members of the various ethnic groups share similar concerns in regard to a variety of issues? The Economist reported in 1998 that majorities of Bosnian Serbs, Croats, and Muslims resent the DPA, even while they prefer the DPA to a resumption of the war. Furthermore, many people cross-nationally resent certain international community initiatives in Bosnia, “but there is also a ‘silent majority of Bosnians who prefer western rule to the lawless ways of the nationalist parties.’”51 All three groups overwhelmingly support multiparty democracy, a market economy, and equal treatment for all under the law, and are “tired of politics.” Finally, individuals in all three ethnic groups were most concerned about “housing, education, job creation, medical care, and care for the elderly.”52 Thus, the future for Bosnia is complicated. Bosnia can enter Europe only as a whole state, not as one or two Entities. Therefore, before Bosnia can realize its aspirations of becoming part of integrated Europe it must work out its internal integration problems. The international community awaits the solution of Bosnia’s inter-national problems. The solution, however, does not have to be the traditional one followed by most countries growing from ethnonationalism to democracy. Elites should not be permitted to teach their populace that life is a zero-sum game, that is, that “rights accorded to a national minority are bound to hurt the interests of the majority.”53 Harassment of minority populations and an unwillingness to live with them, that is, the attempt to create homogeneous areas where once there was and again could be a heterogeneous 124

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mix, must be forbidden, not encouraged. Democratic forms must be implemented, not just declared, so that all people can participate in their governance, not just the majority national group. Increased education and access to some of the tools of globalization, such as the Internet, could conceivably lead Bosnians to the instant realization of a less exclusive, more universal identity than the narrow, ethnonational identiﬁcation pursued in the past. A more universal identity, probably a civil identity rather than one based on religion/nationhood, might even make Bosnia’s role in the international arena “a bridge between civilizations, between religions, between cultures” for Europe.54 These two competing impulses continue to bedevil Bosnia as it seeks its place in the postwar era. The choices of its elites may well propel Bosnia either to a stable future, integrated into an expanding European entity, or to a future ﬁlled with insecurity, conﬂict, and adversity. In this respect, then, Bosnia is a polity on the brink.

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INTRODUCTION 1 Erik Melander pointed out the similarity of Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian wars to the Bosnian conﬂict in Anarchy Within: The Security Dilemma Between Ethnic Groups in Emerging Anarchy, Report no. 52, Department of Peace and Conﬂict Research, Uppsala University, Sweden, 1999, p. 27. 2 “Armed Forces and Society in Yugoslavia,” in Catherine McArdle Kelleher, ed., Political-Military Systems: Comparative Perspectives (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1974), p. 165. 3 James Gow argued that the activity of the Yugoslav Peoples Army “in pursuit of Belgrade’s project to create new borders” and the Croatian Serb and Bosnian Serb paramilitary and political offshoots meant that the series of conﬂicts in Yugoslavia were in actuality different parts of one Yugoslav war of dissolution. Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 31. John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. xiv, and Rajko Mursˇicˇ, “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity: A View from a Slovene Blind Spot,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 76, on the other hand, used the plural, indicating a series of conﬂicts that could conceptually be considered separate wars. 4 See, for example, Ivo Banac, The National Question in Yugoslavia: Origins, History, Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1984). The theme of “ancient ethnic hatreds” also appears in Dusˇan Batakovic´, The Serbs of Bosnia and Hercegovina: History and Politics (Paris: Dialogue, 1996); and, perhaps most inﬂuentially, was used by the journalist Robert A. Kaplan in his Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), anecdotally, the only book US President Bill Clinton read about the Balkans before being faced with its implosion. E.A. Hammel rightly pointed out that much of the inter-ethnic tensions in the Balkans was a result of the policies of external actors and not always spontaneous outbursts against hated indigenous “others.” “Lessons from the Yugoslav Labyrinth,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 22. 5 Remarks in a parliamentary debate on the Balkan situation, October 1878. 6 Barry Posen, “The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conﬂict,” Survival 35 (1993), pp. 27–8. 7 For example, Elinor M. Despalatovic´ pointed out that “the Serbs of Serbia and

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8

9

10 11

12 13 14 15

the Croats did not ﬁght each other until World War I, when the AustroHungarian army, which included both Croats and Serbs, invaded the Kingdom of Serbia.” “The Roots of the War in Croatia,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 84. For a discussion of the consequences for global politics of the pluralization of identities and the resulting popular ambivalence toward many types of group identiﬁcation since the fall of communism, see Andreas Behnke, “The Enemy Inside: The Western Involvement with Bosnia and the Problem of Securing Identities,” Alternatives 23 (July–September 1998), pp. 375–95. Anthropologist Edit Petrovic´ reached a similar conclusion in “Ethnonationalism and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, explaining that “[in Yugoslavia] ethnonationalism as an ideology and strategy has been created and recreated and instrumentalized by intellectual and political elites. It has been combined with less fully articulated forms of populist nationalism that have always existed in some form among certain segments of the population. However malignant the past, the fact remains that somehow the Balkan peoples also found ways to coexist in peace” (p. 167). Yugoslavia then, in this regard, suffered from Ernest Gellner’s characterization of a society in transition, whereby “the transitional process from authoritarianism into democracy produced a kind of ‘ideological chaos’ created out of the situation where old values and systems coexisted with the new sets of values and standards that were not yet well deﬁned and established. This situation favored the emergence of different kinds of extremism, including ultranationalism” (ibid., p. 168). Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 12. UN Special Rapporteur Tadeusz Mazowiecki deﬁned “ethnic cleansing” as the systematic “elimination by the ethnic group exerting control over a given territory of members of other ethnic groups.” “Ethnic Cleansing – An Attempt at Methodology,” United Nations General Assembly, Security Council, Document A/47/666, S/24809, November 17 1992. Such a result may be obtained by outright killing or by forced expulsion. Further reﬁnements of the deﬁnition may be found at . Petrovic´, “Ethnonationalism and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” p. 169. “Ethnic identiﬁcation [in Yugoslavia] is thus essentially ﬂuid, manipulable, and always has political implications.” Hammel, “Lessons from the Yugoslav Labyrinth,” p. 26. Sˇac´ir Filandra, “Review Article: Bosnia in the Claws of European Nationalism,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 18 (April 1998), p. 187. Bette Denich, “Unmaking Multiethnicity in Yugoslavia: Media and Metamorphosis,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 41. 1 THE ROOTS OF CONFLICT

1 E.A. Hammel suggested that “the modern identiﬁcation of Croats with Catholicism and Serbs with Orthodoxy only dates back to the eighteenth century and was imposed from without by the Hapsburgs.” “Lessons from the Yugoslav Labyrinth,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 27. 2 “Avoiding Another Cyprus or Israel,” Brookings Review 16 (Winter 1998), p. 45. In fact, Woodward continued, “imperial powers seem to have needed Bosnia far more than Bosnians needed them.”

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3 John B. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 37–8. 4 Ivan Ivekovic´, “Modern Authoritarian Ethnocracy: Balkanisation and the Political Economy of International Relations,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 63. 5 A deﬁnitive deﬁnition of the Balkans region is difﬁcult to come by, since that term is sensitive and fraught with meaning. Nevertheless, Maria Todorova broadly deﬁned the region to include Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Turkey, and the former Yugoslavia, with the exception of Slovenia, which she considered to be part of Central Europe. Imagining the Balkans (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 31. 6 Geographical areas known as shatterbelts “are more likely than other regions to be the setting for interstate wars, but this is largely because they also generate more disputes that can go to war, rather than because of any greater likelihood that those lesser conﬂicts will escalate. Internal conﬂicts were also more common in shatterbelts, although the effect was more modest than with interstate conﬂict.” Furthermore, the proportion of conﬂicts, “especially interstate wars, that involve outside intervention is substantially greater in shatterbelts.” On the other hand, “given that intervention takes place, conﬂicts in shatterbelts (with the exception of interstate wars) are not more likely to expand further or to include major powers as the intervening parties.” Finally, the authors concluded that shatterbelt conﬂicts, be they internal or external, were generally considerably longer and bloodier than conﬂicts in other regions. Paul R. Hensel and Paul F. Diehl, “Testing Empirical Propositions about Shatterbelts, 1945–76,” Political Geography 13 (January 1994), p. 48. 7 This observation has been variously ascribed to Haris Silajdzˇic´, former Prime Minister of Bosnia, and Nikola Koljevic´, the deceased former Vice-President of Republika Srpska. In an interview in Sarajevo in June 2002, Silajdzˇic´ conﬁrmed to the author that he had made the comment. 8 Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 24. 9 See, for example, Noel Malcolm, who posited that “both Serbs and Croats were Slavic tribes with Iranian ruling castes, or that they were originally Iranian tribes which had acquired Slavic subjects.” Bosnia: A Short History (Washington Square, NY: New York, NY University Press, 1994), p. 7. 10 In a number of well-regarded works, Fine laid out his argument that the Bosnian Church was merely an autonomous, perhaps even schismatic, church with regard to doctrine simply because the areas in which it was dominant had been imperfectly proselytized or cared for in subsequent years by the Catholic Church. Fine determined that the Bosnian Church eventually came to be seen by some as an organization that stood for the independence of the Bosnian territory rather than a different religion. See, for example, The Bosnian Church: A New Interpretation: A Study of the Bosnian Church and its Place in State and Society from the 13th to the 15th Centuries (Boulder, CO: East European Quarterly, 1975), and “The Medieval and Ottoman Roots of Modern Bosnian Society,” in Mark Pinson, ed., The Muslims of BosniaHerzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 1–21. 11 See, for example, V. C´orovic´, Historija Bosne (Belgrade: Srpska akademija ´ nauka i umetnosti, 1940) and Sima Cirkovi´ c, Istorija srednjovekovne bosanske drzˇava (Belgrade: Srpska knjizˇevna zadruga, 1964).

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12 A more detailed explication of the history of the Bosnian Muslims can be found in Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). 13 For a discussion of the organization of the Ottoman administrative structure in the Balkans, see Robert J. Donia and John V.A. Fine, Jr., Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1994), pp. 48–50. 14 See Michael Palairet, The Balkan Economies c.1800–1914: Evolution without Development (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 152–6, for more on Bosnia’s industrial development under Ottoman rule. 15 Similarly, nineteenth-century Serbian political elites claimed that Herzegovina was Serbian territory because Vuk Stefanovic´ Karadzˇic´, the Serbian linguist credited with regularizing the Serbian language and grammar, considered the dialect spoken there to be pure Serbian. Jasminka Udovicˇki, “The Bonds and the Fault Lines,” in Jasminka Udovicˇki and James Ridgeway, eds, Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 23. 16 The Krajina region served as a buffer between the Ottoman Empire and Austria-Hungary and was peopled mainly by Orthodox settlers. The area expanded or contracted in response to Ottoman or Austro-Hungarian inroads. The signiﬁcance of this phenomenon lay in the mixture of national groups which later, in our times, produced violent conﬂict over whether Serbs or Croats should dominate those areas. 17 For example, Udovicˇki suggested that the “capricious” portioning of the Sandzˇak of Novi Pazar ﬁrst to Turkey and only later to Serbia separated a part of the Bosnian population from its homeland and initially kept Montenegro and Serbia apart while cutting off Serbia’s natural economic routes. “The Bonds and the Fault Lines,” p. 26. 18 Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 332. 19 Ibid., p. 257. 20 Ibid., pp. 39–40. Allcock generally debunked as myth Austro-Hungarian modernity as compared with Western Europe, stating that the unevenness of development in the various regions of Yugoslav areas formerly under Habsburg tutelage can be explained by the fact that there was a “comparative retardation of economic modernity in the Habsburg areas of southeastern Europe” (p. 47). 21 Palairet, The Balkan Economies, p. 131. 22 Ibid., p. 234. 23 Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 49. 24 Vojislav Bogic´evic´ estimated that as many as 150,000 Muslims may have left Bosnia at this time. “Emigracije Muslimana Bosne i Hercegovine u Tursku u doba Austro-Ugarske vladavine 1878.–1918. god.,” Historijski Zbornik 3 (1950), p. 182. 25 Udovicˇki, “The Bonds and the Fault Lines,” p. 26. 26 The Stranka Prava (Party of Rights), formed by Ante Starcˇevic´ and Eugen Kvaternik, was still another strand in the nationalist movements among the South Slavs. They envisioned a Croatian state recreated from the medieval Croatian kingdom. For more on the early movements for South Slav unity, see Branka Prpa-Jovanovic´, “The Making of Yugoslavia: 1830–1945,” in Udovicˇki and Ridgeway, eds, Burn This House, pp. 43–8. On the other hand, Hammel emphasized the importance in the creation of a South Slav identity of “not being” – that is, of not being Austro-Hungarian or Turkish. “Lessons from the Yugoslav Labyrinth,” p. 22.

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27 On the other hand, some intellectuals, like Bosnian Muslim leader Sˇerif Arnautovic´, favored Hungarian annexation of Bosnia with an assurance of Bosnian autonomy. Mustafa Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava Bosne i Hercegovine (Sarajevo: PIKOK, 1999), p. 341. 28 Bosnian Croats and a Muslim also took part in the assassination scheme. Udovicˇki, “The Bonds and the Fault Lines,” p. 27. 29 Ibid., p. 28. See also Donia and Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina, p. 118. 30 Naval Intelligence Division, Jugoslavia. Vol. III: Economic Geography, Ports and Communications, June 1945, p. 166. 31 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 332. 32 Naval Intelligence Division, Jugoslavia, p. 46. 33 Donia and Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina, p. 116. 34 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 332. Donia and Fine reported that Austrian authorities viciously suppressed the Bosnian Serbs, whom they considered to be a ﬁfth column, marking “the ﬁrst time in Bosnian history that a signiﬁcant number of people were killed for their national or ethnic afﬁliation.” Bosnia and Hercegovina, pp. 118–19. 35 V. Skaric´, O. Nuri-Hadzˇic´, and N. Stojanovic´ discussed such Bosnian volunteers in Bosna i Hercegovina pod austro-ugarskom upravnom (Belgrade: n.p., 1938), pp. 160–2. 36 See Malcolm, Bosnia, pp. 158–9, for a discussion of the composition of the various armies and the difﬁculties of choosing allegiance suffered by many ethnic groups within Austria-Hungary. 37 For a description of the interim National Councils created throughout Austro-Hungarian lands during its dissolution in the ﬁnal days of the First World War, see Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, pp. 342–3. 38 A group of prominent Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes negotiated the Corfu Declaration. They represented the independent Serbian ruling dynasty and the Yugoslav Committee, composed of South Slav émigrés from AustriaHungary. Serbian lands would be joined to Slovenian, Bosnian, and Croatian territories, which formerly had existed within their same historic borders under Austro-Hungarian rule. For more on the Yugoslav Committee and its work culminating in the Corfu Declaration, see ibid., pp. 332–9. 39 Croats and Slovenes knew they needed the protection of the Serbian army to hold onto their lands. Thus, the Corfu Agreement reﬂected the necessity of the moment as Italian and Austrian troops already threatened to overrun Dalmatia and other northwestern areas of disputed ownership, and Hungary intended to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the other hand, Serbia, which had fought the First World War as an independent state and had lost almost one-half of its adult male population, appeared less eager to join. 40 Rajko Mursˇicˇ termed Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia Serbia’s “war booty” from the First World War. “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity: A View from a Slovene Blind Spot,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 60. 41 The constitution of the contemporary Republic of Croatia denies the legality of Croatia’s entry into the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes because “the Croatian Sabor never sanctioned” it. Elinor M. Despalatovic´ further pointed out that the constitution recognizes only the Partisanestablished war government in Croatia and Croatia’s years as a Socialist Republic as “further steps in the restoration of the Croatian state” and specifically excluded the fascist Second World War period. “The Roots of the War in Croatia,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, pp. 84–5.

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42 Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims were not represented on the Yugoslav Committee. The three Bosnian representatives were Bosnian Serbs. Nor were Bosnian Muslims represented on the Central Committee of the National Council of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes until the Bosnian Muslims protested vigorously, at which time Dr. Halidbeg Hrasnica and Hamid Svrzo were coopted. Atif Purivatra, Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija u politic´kom zˇivotu Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1974), p. 30. 43 Bosnia’s illiteracy rate was greater than 80 percent right before the Second World War. Hugh Seton-Watson, Eastern Europe between the Wars 1918–1941 (Cambridge: The University Press, 1946), p. 139. 44 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 357. As a matter of fact, the Treaty of St. Germain, between the Yugoslav Kingdom and Austria, attested in Article 204 to the territorial wholeness of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. Article 10 of the Treaty speciﬁcally obligated the Kingdom to protect the rights of the Bosnian Muslims. Ibid., p. 362. 45 As the First World War ended, Bosnian Muslim landowners were being victimized by Christian peasants, who coveted their land and who could not be controlled by the ﬂedgling government of the Kingdom until a unit of the Serbian Second Army entered Sarajevo and other parts of Bosnia. The violence became so bad, with almost 2000 Bosnians killed, that Alexander, the Regent, interceded with a plea to Serbian peasants to be patient until the land could be legally transferred to them with fair compensation to the original owners. Ibid., p. 352. 46 A smaller party vied with the JMO for the Muslim vote. Led by Ibrahim ef. Maglajlic´, this faction captured only a little more than 6000 votes. It was soon even more insigniﬁcant as its support for the Serbian centralists compromised it to its Muslim voters, who suffered continued anti-Muslim violence at the hands of Serbian kmets. Friedman, Bosnian Muslims, p. 97. For more on the party composition of the Constituent Assembly, see Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, pp. 354–5. 47 Naval Intelligence Division, Jugoslavia, p. 127. 48 On this date at Kosovo Polje in 1389 the Ottoman Turks decisively defeated Serbia, ending its independence until the nineteenth century. 49 According to Imamovic´, the Vidovdan Constitution introduced a system of national unitarism, state centralism, monarchy, limited parliamentarianism, and a bourgeois economic order. Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 359. The King’s policy was “One King, One State, One Nation, One Language.” Jozˇe Pirjevec, Jugoslavija 1918–1992: Nastanek, razvoj ter razpad Karadjordjevic´eve in Titove Jugoslavije (Koper: Zalozˇba Lipa, 1995), p. 60. 50 Mart Bax described the elements of the lawlessness of armed bands of nationalistic Serbs and Croats that were met by Alexander’s “veritable reign of terror,” in “Barbarization in a Bosnian Pilgrimage Center,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 191. 51 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 369. 52 On the other hand, Imamovic´ pointed out that in six of the nine banovinas, the Orthodox population held an absolute majority. Ibid., p. 370. For the new conﬁguration of administration districts, see ibid., p. 371. 53 Ibid., p. 372. 54 Malcolm described the role of the Orthodox Church in inciting nationalistic demonstrations to halt a Yugoslav–Vatican “Concordat” in 1937. Bosnia, p. 171.

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55 Bosnian Muslims were also unhappy about their economic situation. Agrarian reform swung into high gear in 1930, particularly in Bosnia. Bosnian Muslim landowners were relieved of their landholdings with a promise of payment to extend until 1978, most of which remained unpaid. The outbreak of the Second World War meant that only about 5 percent of the government’s obligations to these landowners was ever met. Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 377. 56 JMO leader Mehmed Spaho also used the opportunity to reverse some of the more onerous parts of the January 6 dictatorship legislation. The seat of the Reis-ul-ulema was returned to Sarajevo and a united Islamic administration was created in return for JMO support of the Stojadinovic´ government. 57 Despalatovic´, “The Roots of the War in Croatia,” p. 87. 58 There was also a communist-backed student movement pushing for Bosnian autonomy with equality for all the national groups. Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 386. 59 The formerly classiﬁed British Naval Intelligence Division’s handbook on Yugoslavia highlighted some of the thorniest of the integration problems: “The small Serbian industry, which had been protected by high tariffs, now had to face the competition of the more industrialized provinces of the new state. The former Austro-Hungarian provinces were faced with a new currency and at least temporary dislocation of their markets. The transport system was inadequate for the needs of the new state, partly owing to the paucity of railway links between Serbia and the new provinces, and partly owing to the paucity of outlets to the Adriatic Sea, a drawback made even more severe by the Italian seizure of Fiume [Rijeka] in 1920.” Jugoslavia, p. 167. 60 Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, Vol. 4, “Jugoslavija” (Zagreb: Lekskografski zavod FNRJ, 1960), p. 639. See also Naval Intelligence Division, Jugoslavia, for population, industrialization, and transport ﬁgures for interwar Yugoslavia. 61 Naval Intelligence Division, Jugoslavia, p. 50. 62 Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 117. 63 Naval Intelligence Division, Jugoslavia, p. 169. 64 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 395. 65 Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 55 (note 20). 66 Ibid., p. 124. 67 Speech by NDH Minister of Education Mile Budak, Hrvatski Narod (June 26 1941), cited in Stella Alexander, Church and State in Yugoslavia since 1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 22. See also “The Pavelic Papers.” . 68 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 398. 69 Jozo Tomasevich, War and Revolution in Yugoslavia, 1941–1945: The Chetniks (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), p. 105. 70 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 399. 71 Enver Redzˇic´, Muslimansko autonomasˇ tvo i 13. SS divizija: Autonomija Bosne i Hercegovine i Hitlerov Trec´i Rajh (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 1987), pp. 71–9. 72 George W. Hoffman and Fred Warner Neal, Yugoslavia and the New Communism (New York, NY: Twentieth Century Fund, 1962), p. 70. 73 Bax attributed Tito’s success in part to “his [eventual] incorporation of the Chetniks, who were being defeated at the time.” “Barbarization in a Bosnian Pilgrimage Center,” p. 192. 74 Imamovic´, Historija drzˇave i prava, p. 403. 75 Ibid., p. 402. 76 Ibid., p. 417.

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77 Bor. M. Karapandzich, The Bloodiest Yugoslav Spring, 1945 – Tito’s Katyns and Gulags (New York, NY: Carlton Press, 1980), p. 20. 78 Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995), p. 26. 79 Such policy differences with Stalin included Yugoslavia’s desire for industrialization against Stalin’s design for Yugoslavia’s agricultural status and Tito’s interference in the Greek civil war on the communist side from 1946 to 1949. Furthermore, at that time, Stalin was trying to convince the West of the benignity of the Soviet bloc, and Tito’s refusal to dilute his power base by pursuing Stalin’s plans for Balkan federation angered the Soviet leader. 80 Croatian sociologist Josip Zˇupanov described four disparities between the normative ideas of Yugoslav society and the reality that deﬁned the Yugoslav crisis: stratiﬁcation of society, ethnic exclusivity, the proﬁt motive, and noncoordinated intervention into society of the market and the state. These factors contradicted the socialist institutions that were supposed to govern post-Second World War Yugoslavia. Cited in Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, pp. 206–7. 81 Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 45. Type of employment was also important, according to Woodward, because “those who did not also [aside from private sector activity] have public sector employment were excluded from the full rights of economic citizenship and social welfare.” 82 Donia and Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina, p. 171. 83 Pedro Ramet, “The Limits to Political Change in a Communist Country: The Yugoslav Debate, 1980–1986,” Crossroads, no. 23 (1987), p. 70. 84 For a more detailed analysis of Yugoslavia’s cold war importance both geopolitically and ideologically, see James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997), pp. 25–6. 85 Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 45. 86 As sociologist Jadwiga Staniskis asserted, “as long as the economic foundations for a genuine civil society do not exist, the massive political mobilization of the population is only possible along nationalist or fundamentalist lines.” Cited by Troy McGrath, “Dealing with Disintegration in the Balkans: Is Partition Such Sweet Sorrow?” Harriman Review 11 (April 1999), p. 29. 87 Bora Kuzmanovic´, “Social Distance Towards Individual Nations (Ethnic Distance),” in Mladen Lazic´, ed., Society in Crisis: Yugoslavia in the Early 90s (Belgrade: Visˇnjic´, 1995), p. 241. 88 The Serbs outside Serbia “were more than certain that ‘the others’ would treat them the same way as the Serbian government treated ‘their others,’ the Albanians in Kosovo and, to some extent, the non-Serbian populations in Vojvodina and elsewhere. That image, with roots in the Kosovo myth, was the driving force for all the tragic events in former Yugoslavia.” Mursˇicˇ, “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity,” pp. 76–7. 89 “The immense psychological distress of switching from the predominant constituent nation of a broader state to persons of an ethnic minority in a ‘foreign’ state” was likely to be traumatic and could be exploited by those who required mobilized masses to keep them in power. McGrath, “Dealing with Disintegration in the Balkans,” p. 31. 90 Mirjana Prosˇic´-Dvornic´, “Serbia: The Inside Story,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 320. 91 For more on the consequences of the introduction of the 1974 Constitution, see Bette Denich, “Unmaking Multiethnicity in Yugoslavia: Media and Metamorphosis,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, pp. 44–5.

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92 Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia: Implementing the Dayton Accords (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 27 (note 2). 93 According to Denich, “the argument over language was incendiary because it implied a return to a nineteenth-century theory of nationalism that declared a distinctive language to be a sufﬁcient basis for an ethnic ‘nation’ to claim the right to a separate state.” “Unmaking Multiethnicity in Yugoslavia,” p. 43. 94 Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 299. 95 “Complex historical constellations produced a phenomenon of equivalence between religious and ethnic identiﬁcation in the Balkans. . . . These identiﬁcations became important during communist rule.” Edit Petrovic´, “Ethnonationalism and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 166. Bogdan Denitch suggested that, because the LCY did not permit alternatives in political life, traditional national and religious afﬁliation remained the most important identiﬁcation in communist Yugoslavia. Limits and Possibilities: The Crisis of Yugoslav Socialism and State Socialist Systems (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), p. 78. 96 Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 16. 97 Carl-Ulrik Schierup characterized Yugoslavia’s situation as similar to other former Second and Third World countries that “followed a course of political fragmentation, supposedly making them more easily swallowed by the global economy. “The Spectre of Balkanism: Globalisation, Fragmentation and the Enigma of Reconstruction in Post-Communist Society,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 15. 98 Xavier Bougarel, “Yugoslav Wars: The ‘Revenge of the Countryside’ Between Sociological Reality and Nationalist Myth,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boca Raton, September 1998, p. 12. Bougarel also emphasized the negative side of this phenomenon. He suggested that post-Second World War Yugoslavia’s urbanization and modernization “shifted the traditional antagonisms between town and countryside into the towns themselves, endangered the balance of the urban social system and [broke] the structures of the rural one.” Bougarel presented that as a hypothesis about why Sarajevo and Mostar were so brutally used during the recent war, but not during the Second World War, and why the paramilitary units attracted ﬁrst the “neourban” strata and not the paciﬁst urban elites. 99 World Bank, World Development Report 1991: The Challenge of Development (Washington DC: World Bank, 1991), p. 205. 100 See Ramet, “The Limits to Political Change,” pp. 67–79, for an analysis of the deepening divisions in the 1980s within the LCY. 101 Zˇarko Puhovski characterized post-Second World War Yugoslav political life as a communist-sponsored ideology of collectivism, unmitigated by the democratic spirit of individualism dominating Western democratic countries. “Yugoslav Origins of the Post-Yugoslav Situation and the Bleak Prospects for Civil Society,” in Payam Akhavan and Robert Howes, eds, Yugoslavia: The Former and Future: Reﬂections by Scholars from the Region (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1995), pp. 121–5. 102 “The combination of territorial organization of economic decision-making, strategically based industrial policy, and preference for long-term stability and economies of scale through production specialization gave a distinct geopolitical character to the reform socialist economy. The economies of dif-

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103 104 105

106

107 108 109 110

ferent localities and regions tended to become identiﬁed with certain specializations, including foreign trade. These specializations often reinforced inherited patterns. For example, of the six republics composing the Yugoslav federation, Slovenia and Croatia were far more integrated into European networks because of the Habsburg legacy, geographic proximity, and industrial policy favoring export production (including tourism). Producers and traders from the republics of Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina inclined toward the Middle East and the Greek port of Thessaloniki. The republic of Serbia had relatively more business in Eastern-bloc clearing markets because of its substantial metal industry and heavy manufacturing and the importance of Danube River commerce. Exploitation of primary commodities tended to occur in the poorer regions of the south, such as Mediterranean crops in Macedonia, and mining for coal, iron ore, bauxite, copper, lead, zinc, antimony, and mercury in Bosnia and the autonomous province of Kosovo (in Serbia). . . . These biases were relative, and the decentralization of regional development policy to the republics after 1958 had led to substantial duplication of capital and consumer goods industries. But the economic differences among republics, given their shared dependence for production and employment on imports and their preference for Western technology to improve international competitiveness and productivity, made federal policy on foreign trade and foreign exchange particularly contentious.” Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, pp. 28–9. John B. Allcock, “Rural ressentiment and the Break-up of Yugoslavia,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, St. Louis, November 1999, p. 4. Ljubisa S. Adamovich, “Nations of the Former Yugoslavia: Consequences of Economic Breakdown,” International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society 9 (Fall 1995), p. 150. Both sides in this argument did have a point. The wealthier republics argued that investment there was more efﬁcient than investment in the poorer republics. Therefore, every dinar invested in the poorer areas was seen as exploitation of the richer republics, who earned a good deal of the investment through foreign exchange. On the other hand, the poorer republics argued that the raw materials taken from their regions were sold back to them in the form of ﬁnished goods, from which the wealthier republics, which produced those goods, proﬁted. As Lynn D. Maners described it, “through the 1970s and 1980s workers in various industries, through their BOALs [Basic Organization of Associated Labor], voted themselves pay raises to be paid for by loans from banks controlled by the industries in which they worked. Thus was inﬂation pushed ever higher. By the middle and late 1980s, classic hyperinﬂation had set in, exacerbating rising tensions between republics . . . The disintegration of the Soviet Union and the subsequent public revulsion at the exposure of the Potemkin village unreality of applied Marxist ideologies after the fall of the Berlin Wall further fractured the dissolving relationship among the Yugoslav republics.” “Clapping for Serbs: Nationalism and Performance in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 310. Vesna Bojicˇic´ and Mary Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of BosniaHerzegovina,” in Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans, p. 93. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 93. Allcock suggested that much of the remittances went into housing, rather than economic investment. Ibid., p. 89, note 25. Ibid., pp. 94–5.

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111 112 113 114

115 116

117

118

119

120 121 122 123

124 125 126

Ibid., p. 136. Allcock, “Rural ressentiment,” p. 5. Prosˇic´-Dvornic´, “Serbia,” p. 320. See V.P. Gagnon, Jr., “Historical Roots of the Yugoslav Crisis,” in Milton J. Esman and Shibley Telhami, eds, International Organizations and Ethnic Conﬂict (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 179–97, for an analysis of the conﬂict between Yugoslavia’s reformist and conservative elites that weakened and eventually sundered the fabric of Yugoslavia. Schierup, “The Spectre of Balkanism,” p. 13. Ibid., p. 16. Schierup further noted that the protective strategies adopted by these elites “tend to be narrowly focused on the personal power of the new elites and not on long-term strategy, and, actively pursued, they will imply that the new nationalist regimes will soon exhaust their own legitimacy, and remain of a short-lived transitory nature.” Sean Gervasi suggested that the US sought Yugoslavia’s transformation into a market-oriented economy through a “quiet revolution” against its communist party, despite its special relationships with the West and the non-aligned world. “Germany, U.S., and the Yugoslav Crisis,” CovertAction Quarterly no. 43 (Winter 1992–93), p. 42. According to National Security Decision Directive No. 133, Yugoslavia was to be treated as other Eastern European countries; that is, a “quiet revolution” would be supported to rid them of their communist inﬂuence. Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia,” Development in Practice 7 (November 1997), p. 376. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, pp. 15–16. The earliest seismic event in the collapse of Yugoslavia was Slovenia’s legislation to take over functions like banking, defense, patents, customs service and other ofﬁces from the central government. This was in response to the fact that the Slovenes comprised 8.5 percent of Yugoslavia’s population of 23.5 million but generated about 20 percent of the country’s hard-currency export earnings, most of which was distributed to the less-developed regions of Yugoslavia rather than reinvested in Slovenia’s own economic development. According to a World Bank report, by the end of 1990, more than 600,000 industrial workers (out of a total industrial workforce of 2.7 million) had been laid off, with the largest concentrations being laid off in the poorest regions of Yugoslavia. “Industrial Restructuring Study, Overview,” in Issues and Strategy for Restructuring (Washington, DC: June 1991), p. 34, cited in Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 378. Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 378. This term was proposed by G.M. Tamás, “Ethnarchy and Ethno-Anarchism,” Social Research 63 (Spring 1996), p. 172. Ibid., p. 175. This concept was introduced in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, “Introduction: The End of Yugoslavia Observed,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, pp. 3–18, and was implicit in many of the following articles in that volume. Allcock pointed out that this situation appeared to be endemic to the Yugoslav lands even before their uniﬁcation into the ﬁrst Yugoslavia. Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 302. See the “Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences (SANU) Memorandum 1986.” . A report issued by EC observers charged that the Serbian generals “were

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127 128 129 130

131 132

133 134

135 136 137 138

139

waging a cowardly struggle to preserve their perquisites and pensions.” New York Times (December 7 1991), p. A1. Mursˇicˇ, “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity,” p. 69. Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 95. World Bank, “Industrial Restructuring Study, Overview,” in Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, p. 376. See V.P. Gagnon, Jr., “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conﬂict: The Case of Serbia,” in Michael E. Brown, Owen R. Coté, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds, Nationalism and Ethnic Conﬂict (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), pp. 132–68, for a description of the paralysis in decisionmaking as the conservatives responded to attempts at economic and political reform throughout the communist period. Allcock characterized the threats faced by Yugoslavia as “galloping inﬂation, rising unemployment and lack of institutional direction at the top.” Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 97. Michèle Ledic´, “Debt Analysis and Debt-Related Issues: The Case of Yugoslavia,” Economic Analysis and Workers’ Management 18 (1984), p. 49. Michel Chossudovsky asserted that this economic program, “imposed on the Belgrade government by its external creditors,” was a direct cause of Yugoslavia’s dissolution. The Globalisation of Poverty: Impacts of IMF and World Bank Reforms (London: Zed Books, 1997), p. 243. Ibid., p. 244. “The global campaign of major powers and ﬁnanciers during the 1980s to promote economic liberalization had as a premise the idea that states had taken on too much control in managing their economies during the stagﬂationary conditions of the world economy during the 1970s. Economic revival required liberalization, privatization, and cuts in public expenditures for welfare, public employment, and social services. At the same time anticommunists within communist-ruled countries and in the West were declaring the problem of socialism to be the power of their states – so-called totalitarian control and overweening bureaucracies. The West’s euphoria over the collapse of communist states and its insistence on market reform, privatization, and slashed budgets as conditions for economic aid and trade paid little regard to the alternative hypotheses – that the crisis of these countries grew from governments that were too weak; that to achieve the prescribed reforms required an extremely effective administrative capacity; that foreign creditors will lend only to governments that guarantee repayment; and that foreign investors demand favorable governmental regulations and political stability.” Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 16. World Bank, “Industrial Restructuring Study, Overview,” pp. 10, 14, cited by Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 377. Toncˇi Kuzmanic´, “Strikes, Trade Unions, and Slovene Independence,” in Jill Benderly and Evan Kraft, eds, Independent Slovenia: Origins, Movements, Prospects (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), p. 164. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 17. Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 377. “By the mid-1980s, all the nations of Yugoslavia, and even more so Kosovar Albanians . . . knew they were worse off than ﬁve years before. Wittingly or unwittingly, the IMF’s prescriptions undermined any prospect for political legitimacy via economic performance.” Robin Alison Remington, “NATO Transformation and Miscalculation: Balkan Quicksand,” Problems of Post-Communism 46 (July–August 1999), p. 15. Author’s interview with Boris Tihi, formerly an economic adviser to the

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Bosnian government and currently Rector of the University of Sarajevo, May 31 2002. 140 Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant (New York, NY: Free Press, 1999), p. 108. 141 Richard Black, “Return and Reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Missing Link, or Mistaken Priority?” SAIS Review 21 (Summer–Fall 2001), p. 180. 2 THE DISSOLUTION OF YUGOSLAVIA 1 See Stephen Engelberg, “Carving out a Greater Serbia,” New York Times Magazine (September 1 1991), p. 32. 2 Death of Yugoslavia, television documentary series (1995), part 1, interview with Milan Kucˇan. 3 Jonathan Eyal, Europe and Yugoslavia: Lessons from a Failure (London: Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies, 1993), p. 1, and author’s interview with Slovenian Ambassador to Bosnia Tadej Labernik, July 8 2002. 4 See Article 5 of the Constitution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Belgrade, 1974), pp. 80–1, which stated that “the territory of a Republic may not be altered without the consent of that Republic, and the territory of an Autonomous Province – without the consent of that Autonomous Province.” 5 Rajko Mursˇicˇ, “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity: A View from a Slovene Blind Spot,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 62. 6 Bette Denich detailed a “schismatic communication” pattern that allowed the separate nationalistic programs to develop undeterred by alternative explanations or interpretations of misconceptions. “Unmaking Multiethnicity in Yugoslavia: Media and Metamorphosis,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, p. 49. 7 According to Ambassador Labernik, for example, while workers in other republics received apartments from their employers, Slovenes on the whole owned their own dwellings, thanks to a higher standard of living. Interview, July 8 2002. 8 “Wherever there are Serbian people, wherever there are Serbian homes and ﬁelds” is a part of the Serbian state. Dobrica C´osic´, “Addressing the Selfstyled Bosnian Serb Assembly at Pale,” Vesti (May 7 1993), cited in Ivan Ivekovic´, “Modern Authoritarian Ethnocracy: Balkanisation and the Political Economy of International Relations,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 70. Matija Becˇkovic´, President of the Serbian Writers’ Association, expressed a similar thought in regard to Kosovo in a speech on March 4 1989, when he said that “there is so much Serbian blood and so many relics that Kosovo will remain Serbian land, even if not a single Serb remains there.” Kosovo 1389–1989, special edition of the Serbian Literary Gazette, nos. 1–3 (1989), p. 45, cited by Sabrina P. Ramet, Whose Democracy? Nationalism, Religion, and the Doctrine of Collective Rights in Post-1989 Eastern Europe (Boulder, CO: Rowman & Littleﬁeld, 1997), p. 142. 9 Markovic´’s position was that “only an undivided Yugoslavia with a market economy, political pluralism, democratic rights and freedom for all citizens

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10 11

12

13 14 15 16

17

18 19 20 21

will open the door to Europe and its integration processes.” New York Times (December 3 1990), p. A18. James Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 18. Robert M. Hayden, “Bosnia’s Internal War and the International Criminal Tribunal,” The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 22 (Winter/Spring 1998), p. 55. The Bosnian city of Tuzla was one of the exceptions, with the populace not voting according to ethnicity. New York Times (December 11 1995), p. A10. According to Mursˇicˇ, “the common denominator of [all] these conﬂicts is Belgrade, not Serbia and Montenegro, and its political and military elite. During these years, Belgrade was never attacked by citizens of former Yugoslavia (only by NATO, and then only certain military and governmental targets). The wars were, however, led by the dominant elite of this city. Their maximal aim has been, since 1987, or even since Tito’s death in 1980, a unitary Yugoslavia. The maximal plan was for Federal Yugoslavia to be totally governed from Belgrade with the republics as its ‘cultural’ reservations. The minimal aim was articulated in the slogan: ‘All Serbs in one country.’” “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity,” p. 76. Janusz Bugajski, “The Balkans: On the Brink Again,” Washington Quarterly 20 (Autumn 1997), p. 225. Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 67–8. Hugh Poulton, The Balkans: Minorities and States in Conﬂict (London: Minority Rights Publications, 1991), p. 24. The wording was subject to interpretation: Croats believed that their constitution protected the status of Croatian Serbs when it spoke of “other nations.” Croatian Serbs, on the other hand, believed they had been demoted to minority status. “The role of Krajina apparently is to provoke surrounding Croatian communities to the point at which the predominantly Serbian federal army must intervene. Krajina could then be proclaimed part of Serbia, connected to the republic by an ethnically Serbian corridor across Bosnia. This would destroy Yugoslav federal unity. The Krajina Serbs had declared their intention to seek autonomy in August and again in October, but this was the ﬁrst time that they declared their region was ‘separate’ from Croatia.” New York Times (March 11 1991), p. A3. Géza Jeszenszky, “More Bosnias? National and Ethnic Tensions in the PostCommunist World,” East European Quarterly 31 (September 1997), p. 288. According to Gow, the Serbian action was intended to create conditions for a declaration of a state of emergency so that the Serb-dominated military could declare martial law. Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 20. New York Times (May 15 1992), p. A1. “Slovenian War of Independence 1991,” Armed Conﬂict Events Data. Slovenia’s leader, Milan Kucˇan, had received Milosˇevic´’s personal assurance that Slovenia would be permitted to withdraw from Yugoslavia without much ado. Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant (New York, NY: Free Press, 1999), p. 93. Doder and Branson described the thinking behind Milosˇevic´’s strategy to allow Slovenia to go free: The Slovenian “war” “discredited the last two ﬁgures committed to the preservation of Tito’s Yugoslavia. One was the prime minister, Ante Markovic´, who had ordered the army into action but then categorically denied ever having done so; the other was the defense minister, General Veljko Kadijevic´, the last Titoist

139

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22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29

30

31 32 33

general, whose incompetence had degraded what was once a formidable military force. A discredited Kadijevic´ and the other generals now had to shift their allegiance to Milosˇevic´” (p. 94). Gow disagreed with this analysis, stating that the JNA action in Slovenia was based on a series of miscalculations – that a JNA show of force would halt Slovenia’s moves toward independence and that any Slovenian resistance could be countered by JNA escalation that would have international support. Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 32. According to Jane M.O. Sharp, Germany’s lobbying efforts for Croatian independence were intense because Germany had “a large resident Croatian population, and because it associated Croatia’s right to self-determination with that of the recently united Germany.” “Dayton Report Card,” International Security 22 (Winter 1997–98), p. 106 (note 11). Many people blamed Germany for precipitously recognizing the independence of Slovenia and Croatia without securing civil rights provisions for minorities, particularly in the latter. For the opposite view, that Yugoslavia was already in tatters due to Yugoslav nationalist actions, see, for example, New York Times (June 7 1993), p. A16. This was similar to the plan of Yugoslav Prime Minister Ante Markovic´, to which the republican leaders had previously agreed. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 51. In the end, none of the provisions was followed. For the European motivation for intercession in Yugoslavia at this time, see ibid., pp. 47–50. Ibid., p. 48, note 7. Ibid., p. 51. Michael C. Williams, “Ties That Bind,” World Today 55 (May 1999), p. 4. Williams further pointed out the anomaly that NATO went to war against a sovereign state to protect Kosovo, when it would not defend sovereign Bosnia earlier in the decade (p. 5). Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 34. This strategy is not new in the Balkans. A Carnegie Endowment report about the First and Second Balkan Wars of 1911–13 suggested that indiscriminate killing of noncombatants occurred frequently, but that in certain cases the carnage resulted when ofﬁcers lost control over their troops. The Other Balkan Wars: A 1913 Carnegie Endowment Inquiry in Retrospect (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment, 1993), pp. 81–3. See Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 42, for the argument that there was a “degree of organisation inconsistent with spontaneous contingencies of war” that leads to the conclusion that the Serbian program of ethnic cleansing was systematic and controlled. For one attempt to delineate the issue of what is a nation upon which the Yugoslav constitutional-political dispute turned, see Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 68–77. See also Robert M. Hayden, “Constitutional Nationalism in the Formerly Yugoslav Republics,” Slavic Review 51 (Winter 1992), pp. 654–73, for a different analysis of these issues. Christopher Bennett, Yugoslavia’s Bloody Collapse: Causes, Course and Consequences (New York, NY: New York, NY University Press, 1995), p. 178. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 61. At the end of September, Yugoslavia requested that the UN Security Council impose sanctions on all Yugoslav parties, which assured JNA military superiority. Daniel Kofman, “Self-determination in a Multiethnic State: Bosnians, Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs,” in Dzˇemal Sokolovic´ and Florian Bieber, eds, Reconstructing Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Alder-

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34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41

42 43 44

45 46

shot: Ashgate, 2001), p. 42. In May 1992, the Security Council declared a more severe embargo against rump Yugoslavia. No country would be permitted to trade with Yugoslavia, its foreign assets were frozen, air trafﬁc links were severed, and all cultural, sport, scientiﬁc and technical contacts were forbidden. For excerpts of Security Council Resolution 757, see the New York Times (May 31 1992), p. 8. Milosˇevic´ responded that he had no authority over the Bosnian Serbs and had, in fact, denounced bombing of Bosnian civilians. New York Times (June 6 1992), p. 1. Department of Public Information, United Nations, “Former Yugoslavia– UNPROFOR.” . Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 118. New York Times (May 19 1992), p. A8. See, for example, the statement of Fabrizio Hochschild, chief representative in Sarajevo of the UNHCR, who, after coming under attack while trying to deliver humanitarian supplies, said that “we’re in the position of trying to do a humanitarian job in the middle of a raging war. What becomes clearer and clearer every day is that humanitarian aid alone is not the solution.” New York Times (July 27 1992), p. A3. Mark Dufﬁeld, “Lunching with Killers: Aid, Security and the Balkan Crisis,” in Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans, p. 133. New York Times (December 24 1991), p. A3. Major General Lewis MacKenzie (ret.) in A Soldier’s Peace (Screenlife Inc., 1995). I am grateful to James Gow for suggesting this source. The Badinter Commission considered that “except when otherwise agreed, the former boundaries become frontiers protected by international law. This conclusion follows from the principle of respect for the territorial status quo and, in particular, from the principle of uti possidetis.” Opinion No. 3, January 11 1992. . This ruling effectively quashed Serbian claims that it could legally incorporate portions of Croatia and Bosnia inhabited by Serbs. Note that this did not apply to other entities such as autonomous republics, a fact which frustrated Kosovar Albanian claims. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 76. Macedonia’s application for recognition was less problematic in the legal and constitutional sense than Croatia’s. However, Greece vetoed EC recognition of Macedonia’s independence. The 1981 census reported that there were about 640,000 inter-ethnic marriages in Yugoslavia. New York Times (January 15 1992), p. A3. Approximately one-seventh of the Yugoslav population in the 1980s were of mixed parentage or themselves were in mixed marriages. Silvano Bolcˇic´, “Citizens sans Frontiers,” WarReport, no. 9 (December 28 1991), p. 7, cited in Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995), p. 36. In the early 1990s, more than one-fourth of Bosnia’s marriages were mixed. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 116. Rusmir Mahmutc´ehajic´, “The War Against Bosnia-Herzegovina,” East European Quarterly 33 (Summer 1999), p. 229. On February 27 1991 Izetbegovic´ spoke the words that would set the tone for Bosnia’s future: “I would sacriﬁce peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacriﬁce sovereignty.” Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 91.

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47 Tone Bringa reported that Croats and Muslims expressed bewilderment during the recent Balkan wars, saying, “We always lived together and got along well; what is happening now has been created by something stronger than us.” Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 4. 48 Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (TV Books, 1995), p. 209. 49 Kljuic´ later stated that “the Muslims are surrounded, and the Croats put a knife into their backs. The Serbs have succeeded in doing a fantastic thing, to get the Muslims and Croats to turn against each other.” New York Times (June 10 1993), p. A8. 50 Attila Hoare characterized the leadership of both Croatia and Bosnia as “soft, complacent, and respectful of higher authority,” due to their representing states with no historical independence and their own comfortable jobs in the former communist hierarchy. “This background left them ill-prepared for the struggle they were forced to wage from the late 1980s on. Neither . . . Tudjman nor . . . Izetbegovic´ prepared his country adequately, if at all, for the murderous assaults of Serbia and the Yugoslav Army in 1991–92; both interfered disastrously with their war efforts; both allowed their citizens to be divided along ethnic and political lines; and neither made the required effort to build alliances with natural allies.” “A Rope Supports a Man Who is Hanged – NATO Air Strikes and the End of Bosnian Resistance,” East European Politics and Societies 12 (Spring 1998), p. 203. On the other hand, Sharp suggested that when the international community failed to respond, Izetbegovic´ successfully enlisted Iran’s assistance. “Dayton Report Card,” International Security 22 (Winter 1997–98), p. 107. Iranians had been in Bosnia since 1992. “By April of 1994, there were hundreds of Iranian mujahadeen and Revolutionary Guards in Bosnia.” United States Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence. “U.S. Actions Regarding Iranian Arms Shipments into Bosnia.” 104th Cong., 2nd Sess., May 21, May 23 1996, Strobe Talbott’s testimony, p. 62. 51 Mahmutc´ehajic´, “The War Against Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 228. 52 There was much sympathy for the Bosnian government’s argument that the arms embargo fettered its right to self-defense under the UN Charter’s Article 51, but, as Gow pointed out, legally and politically the Security Council was within its rights to declare such an embargo. Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 38. Whether it was morally correct to leave the Bosnians without the wherewithal to defend themselves against genocide was a different question. 53 Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (New York, NY: Penguin, 1992), pp. 148–9. 54 While neither man admitted that the Karadjordjevo meeting took place, what seems to have occurred there has been widely described. Stipe Mesic´, elected Croatian President after the death of Tudjman, estimated that the two sides may have met on thirty occasions to make their plans. Warren Zimmerman asserted that Tudjman had admitted to him that the plan existed after ranting about the danger to Yugoslavia’s Christians “if the fundamentalist front man for Turkey”, Izetbegovic´, had his way. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 89. 55 Lord Carrington commented on the cynicism of the Serb and Croat leaders when he said that “it was clear to me that both of them had a solution which was mutually satisfactory – which was that they were going to carve it [Yugoslavia] up between them. They were going to carve Bosnia up. The

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56 57 58

59 60 61

62 65

64

65

66 67

68

Serb areas would go to Serbia, the Croat to Croatia. And they weren’t worried too much, either of them, about what was going to happen to the Muslims. And they didn’t really mind about Slovenia.” Ibid., p. 95. Doder and Branson reported that Izetbegovic´ described the Muslim choice of having to live in either Greater Serbia or Greater Croatia as “choosing between leukemia and a brain tumor.” Ibid., p. 91. New York Times (January 10 1993), Sect. 4, p. 4. José Cutilheiro was the former Ambassador to the Conventional Forces in Europe arms control talks in Vienna, and, having close links to João Pinheiro, Foreign Minister of Portugal, which country was now President of the EC, could maintain a close link between the EC Conference and the EC Presidency. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 80. According to footage from A Soldier’s Peace, it was obvious that the Serbs “had been preparing for the destruction of Bosnia for some time.” Thus, it was hoped that the Conference would derail Serb aggression. This term was not precisely used during the conference, although it was the popularly accepted term for the proposals emerging from this conference. Gow characterized this strategy as “in essence a form of voluntary blackmail, which was to rank among the greatest of errors made in international diplomacy: the Serbian camp may have been intent on a programme of population puriﬁcation in Bosnia anyway, but admitting the principle of ethnically determined territorial units was a cardinal mistake, since it bestowed approval on Serbian ambition and was in effect a charter for ‘ethnic cleansing.’” Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 81. Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (Washington Square, NY: New York, NY University Press, 1994), p. 232. Mark Mazower, The War in Bosnia: An Analysis (London: Action for Bosnia, 1992), p. 7, cited in Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 84. Lord Carrington apparently presciently claimed at the EU Foreign Minister’s meeting on December 16 1991 that “if they asked the Bosnians whether they wanted their independence, they inevitably would have to say yes, and that this would mean a civil war [in Bosnia].” Silber and Little, Yugoslavia, p. 200. According to Attila Hoare, the Croatian plan for the region adopted by Tudjman was to seek a political agreement for Croatian independence with Serbia whereby land would be exchanged for peace – Bosnian and perhaps Croatian land. A military solution, on the other hand, would have required an alliance with Bosnia against the ﬁfth largest military force in Europe. “A military solution required Bosnia as an ally, but a diplomatic solution required Bosnia as a victim.” “The Croatian Project to Partition Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1990–1994,” East European Quarterly 31 (March 1997), p. 124. Popis stanovnisˇ tva, domacˇinstava, stanova i poljoprivrednih gazdinstava u 1991 godini: stanovnisˇ tvo: domacˇinstava, poljoprivredno stanovnisˇ tva poljoprivredni fondovi domacˇinstava: podaci po naseljima i opsˇ tinama (Beograd: Savezni zavod za statistiku, 1994). Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 84. Not all Bosnian Serbs were mobilized for war. A number of Serbs in Sarajevo condemned attacks on Bosnia and Herzegovina, decrying the suffering of innocent people through genocide and ethnic cleansing. They declared that only the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina should decide the fate of their country. They most particularly denied the claim of the SDS to represent all the citizens of Serb ethnic origin. See <www.scc.rutgers.edu/serbian_ digest/139/t139-6.htm>. See New York Times (August 29 1993), p. 10. In a subsequent letter to the

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69 70 71 72

73 74 75

76 77 78

79 80 81

82

New York Times, Zimmerman contradicted this report (September 30 1993), p. A24. David Chandler pointed out that Izetbegovic´ was not state President at the time he declared Bosnia’s independence, which means that “the Muslim-led government had little legal standing,” either with the international community or his Bosnian compatriots. He controlled approximately 11 percent of the country at the time and was challenged by other elites, such as Fikret Abdic´ of Bihac´, who wanted a negotiated arrangement. Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 42. New York Times (April 5 1992), p. 3. New York Times (April 12 1992), p. 16. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, pp. 115–16. According to C. Papahristodoulou, “17.2% of the entire Muslim opsˇtinas were isolated, blocked mainly by Serbs, 22.1% of Croat opsˇtinas were isolated, blocked mainly by Muslims, and 42.1% of Serb opsˇtinas were isolated, blocked by both Muslims and Croats.” “The Dayton Division of Bosnia and Other Core Allocations,” Applied Economics Letters 7 (2000), p. 326. Mike Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia: Russia and the International Community,” Europe–Asia Studies 50 (November 1998), p. 1249. See an interview with Mate Boban in Globus (March 6 1992), cited in Hoare, “The Croatian Project,” p. 125. See “Why Was the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia Created?” Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosnia – Ofﬁce of the President, July 26 1993, cited in Hoare, “The Croatian Project,” p. 126. Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” p. 1249. See an interview in Globus (October 29 1993), cited in Hoare, “The Croatian Project,” p. 130. Zoran Daskalovic´, “Holding on to Herzeg-Bosna,” WarReport (March–April 1994), cited in Hoare, “The Croatian Project,” p. 131. Izetbegovic´ said in June 1993 that “there is no Bosnia without the Croatian people.” New York Times (June 10 1993), p. A8. On rebuilding the Stari Most bridge, see Penny Young, “Building Bridges in Bosnia,” History Today 50 (February 2000), pp. 6–7. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 117. Vesna Bojicˇic´ and Mary Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of BosniaHerzegovina,” in Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans, pp. 95–6. For a description of the limitations of the humanitarian aid structure during the recent Balkan wars, see Dufﬁeld, “Lunching with Killers,” pp. 118–46. For example, Dufﬁeld claimed that the way the humanitarian arrangement was structured “gave the warring parties a good deal of control over the humanitarian operation. Not only did they regulate access; needs assessments, for example, were often conducted by the actual local authority that was responsible for distribution. At the same time, little, if any, end-use monitoring was undertaken by UNHCR [the UN lead agency for aid in Bosnia]. Aid diversion was widespread. Even ofﬁcial documents put this as between 35 and 40 per cent in central Bosnia. At the same time, however, since most of the ﬁghting was done by civilian militias, the distinction between civilian and combatant was rather academic” (p. 130). See, for example, New York Times (February 13 1995), p. A1, regarding criminalization in the so-called Herceg-Bosna area, and Mirjana Prosˇic´-Dvornic´, “Serbia: The Inside Story,” in Halpern and Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War, pp. 329–30.

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83 See New York Times (May 8 1992), p. A10, for a description of the early disorganization of the Bosnian Muslim military forces. 84 Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 96, and New York Times (May 8 1992), p. A10. 85 Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 96. See also George Kenney, “If the U.S. Takes Sides,” New York Times (December 12 1995), p. A27. 86 New York Times (April 15 1992), p. A6. According to Gow, the JNA and Serbian Security Service had begun to plan and implement Serbian actions against Bosnia before its declaration of independence. Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 34. 87 “An ethnic cleansing has been a goal of that war, not only ‘side effect.’” Tadeusz Mazowiecki in BOSNEWS Digest 469, no. 250 (September 22 1995). . 88 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Special Report: Musical Chairs – Property Problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina (July 1996), p. 9, cited in Eric Rosand, “The Right to Return Under International Law Following Mass Dislocation: The Bosnia Precedent?” Michigan Journal of International Law 19 (Summer 1998), p. 1100, (note 29). See also Mazowiecki in op. cit., who said that “I don’t believe it was pre-planned and politically led campaign by the Bosnian government. The lack of control at that time is an explanation. The Croats committed serious crimes in the Croat-Muslim conﬂict.” See also New York Times (June 25 1993), p. A3, for reference to a United Nations report that concluded that “Serbian forces committed most of the atrocities and were supported by . . . Milosˇevic´.” Furthermore, even more important was the absence of support by the Bosnian Government for the relatively few atrocities that were committed by the forces under its control. 89 Human Rights Watch, Former Yugoslavia: Clouds of War: Chemical Weapons in the Former Yugoslavia 9 (March 1997). Alija Izetbegovic´ threatened in 1992 that “if the current situation continues, the people of Bosnia will be forced to use poison gas to defend themselves and end the crimes committed by the Serbs, even though this may be against their true wishes.” New York Times (October 31 1992), p. 3. 90 Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor described the economic difﬁculties faced by the early Bosnian government in “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 97. 91 Ibid., pp. 96–7. 92 New York Times (January 10 1993), Sect. 4, p. 4. 93 Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister, Jacques Poos. New York Times (June 29 1991), p. A4. Paul Williams reported that the French Ambassador to the US had announced in late 1991 that responsibility for Western foreign policy with regard to the Soviet Union would fall to the US, while Europe would take care of the Yugoslav crisis. “The International Community’s Response to the Crisis in Former Yugoslavia,” in Branka Magasˇ and Ivo Zˇanic´, eds, The War in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina 1991–1995 (London: Frank Cass, 2001), p. 274. 94 New York Times (April 25 1992), p. 3. Hoare charged that “the British and the French . . . were determined to conciliate Serbia as the strong, established power in the former Yugoslavia, in contrast to the weak rebel republics of Croatia and Bosnia, which were perhaps instinctively identiﬁed with Germany’s inﬂuence. The inability of the West Europeans to negotiate an end to the war on the basis of a Serbian victory, however, meant the

145

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95

96 97 98

99 100

101

102 103 104

continuation of a bloodbath that became an embarrassment to Washington as well. The latter therefore began to shift to a policy of balancing a strong Serbia with a strong Croatia allied to Bosnia.” “A Rope Supports a Man Who is Hanged,” pp. 207–8. Some American ofﬁcials also subscribed to this idea. See, for example, VicePresident (and former Secretary of Defense) Dick Cheney’s remarks in New York Times (July 1 1992), p. A8. Nor was there certainty even in the pronouncements of Clinton himself. The New York Times (May 13 1993), p. A9, reported that Clinton described the Bosnia conﬂict as external aggression, but only a few days later characterized it as a civil war. See, for example, the exchanges between Washington and Paris about who should bear the blame for the ongoing Bosnian war. New York Times (May 30 1992), p. 3. Maynard Glitman, “US Policy in Bosnia: Rethinking a Flawed Approach,” Survival 38 (Winter 1996–97), p. 68. Richard E. Rupp, “The Western Powers and the Balkan War: Clashing Security Interests and Institutional Paralysis,” Southeastern Political Review 26 (September 1998), p. 615, citing a conﬁdential interview with a State Department ofﬁcial. See also New York Times (July 10 1992), p. A6, where senior American ofﬁcials were quoted as having said that “Washington does not have the kind of ‘national interest’ that it had in Kuwait: oil and a desire to maintain a power balance favorable to the United States.” Secretary of State Warren Christopher reiterated that view in June 1993 in a newspaper interview. New York Times (June 4 1993), p. A12. Then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Colin Powell articulated the side of the policy debate that was reluctant to use American military force in the Balkans. New York Times (September 28 1992), p. A1. William C. Banks and Jeffrey D. Straussman, “A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. Involvement in Bosnia,” Political Science Quarterly 114 (Summer 1999), p. 200. The American desire to align its policy on the Balkans closer to Europe’s was noted even earlier. New York Times (March 12 1992, p. A7, and January 21 1995, p. 1). For an insightful examination of the challenges faced by the incoming Clinton Administration regarding the collapse of Yugoslavia and the American response, see Robin Alison Remington, “NATO Transformation and Miscalculation: Balkan Quicksand,” Problems of Post-Communism 46 (July–August 1999). According to a recent study, the American public did not exhibit the “body bag syndrome,” an extraordinary aversion to American casualties in a conﬂict, that was one of the claims of the Bush Administration for its reluctance to send American ground troops to the Balkans. The political elite may have been covering themselves by utilizing the “free rider strategy” in which a country is reluctant to take the lead, or even participate, in a controversial undertaking, even for a good cause, when others can equally well carry the burden and when the resulting bounty is shared by all, even those who did not participate in the ﬁrst place. Philip Everts, “When the Going Gets Rough: Does the Public Support the Use of Military Force?” World Affairs 162 (Winter 2000), p. 91. Pravda (June 29 1991), cited in Mike Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia: Russia and the International Community,” Europe–Asia Studies 50 (November 1998), p. 1246. Glitman, “US Policy in Bosnia,” p. 67. On the other hand, Richard H. Ullman pointed out that Yeltsin had no sympathy for Milosˇevic´, despite the age-old pan-Slavic emotional link between

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105 106

107 108 109 110

111

112 113 114 115 116

Russia and the Serbs, because Milosˇevic´ had supported Yeltsin’s opponents during the Moscow coup of August 1991. Richard H. Ullman, ed., The World and Yugoslavia’s Wars (New York, NY: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), p. 29 Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” pp. 1248–61. Carl G. Jacobsen, “War Crimes in the Balkans: Media Manipulation, Historical Amnesia, and Subjective Morality,” in Raju G.C. Thomas and H. Richard Friman, eds, The South Slav Conﬂict: History, Religion, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (New York, NY: Garland, 1996), pp. 331–47. Remington, “NATO Transformation and Miscalculation,” p. 16. For the argument that Russia’s inﬂuence over Serbia was more limited than the West, or Russia, seemed to understand, see Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia.” A Western diplomat was quoted as saying, “Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Government played by the rules set down by the international community. They do not deserve this fate.” New York Times (May 8 1992), p. A10. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 90. Gow further pointed out that while some measures taken by the Security Council under Chapter VII could be seen in one sense as “the actions of a Security Council taking responsibility for the situation in Bosnia, in another they were the actions of a UN reluctant or unable to take as much responsibility as the situation demanded. As a consequence, each measure taken was only partial and would require some further step to be taken in the future” (p. 91). “UNPROFOR was not only not a traditional UN peacekeeping operation, even in Croatia, where its origins were closer to traditional peacekeeping than in the two other commands. It was also, evidently, not a full peace enforcement operation either, but something in between: more than pure peacekeeping, but far less than peace enforcement. It contained enforcement components but relied broadly on a consensual approach as far as possible.” Ibid., p. 101. For an analysis of the Mitterand initiative, see ibid., pp. 94–7. Chandler listed those functions and institutions in Bosnia, pp. 40–1. New York Times (September 22 1992), p. A1. The designation UNPROFOR was changed to United Nations Peace Forces, or UNPF, with UNPROFOR being used to designate only the forces serving in the Bosnia operation. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 100. In the absence of clear policy or “of any clear and strong alternative course of action, [the governments providing troops to UNPROFOR] left the UNHCR to determine international policy.” Ibid., p. 110 (note 25). UNHCR was considered the “lead agency” for deﬁning the international mission in Bosnia, which became, according to Gow, “to assist as many people as possible to remain where they were and to avoid becoming refugees.” This policy had two major aims: to prevent an inﬂux of refugees to Europe, for whom accommodation and perhaps political asylum would have had to be provided; and to avoid UNHCR complicity in ethnic cleansing. Thus, UNPROFOR II’s mission differed from the peacekeeping of the original UNPROFOR, which was to assist UNHCR militarily to get into besieged or isolated areas to provide assistance; UNPROFOR in Bosnia was a “UN multilateral military operation in support of international peacemaking efforts. The mission in Bosnia would be to deliver aid, thereby implicitly sustaining populations under siege and putting a brake on ‘ethnic cleansing.’” Ibid., p. 111. “In 1994, the UNHCR gave assistance to 3.7 million people within the territories of the former Yugoslavia, while over 600,000 former Yugoslavs were refugees in

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117 118

119 120

121 122

123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130

Europe. As a result of UNPROFOR’s relative impotence, the warring armies in Bosnia increasingly came to despise it and to humiliate it.” Ibid., p. 117. Rupp, “The Western Powers and the Balkan War,” p. 620. The “dual key” compromise was a result of clashes over military and political strategy among the various military and political forces involved in Bosnia. “Unease within NATO, UNPROFOR and the UN did not ebb away as arrangements for putting the NATO offer [of assistance by providing protective air cover in case of attacks on UNPROFOR] into effect were developed. The US wanted the commander in chief of Allied Forces South in Naples . . . to command the use of air strikes with full freedom. France and Canada, however, wanted the UNPROFOR commander to have a veto on any use of air power. The compromise of a ‘dual key’ in which either military commander could block a decision by the other on air strikes was introduced. If either one vetoed a decision by the other, the matter would be referred to the NAC [North Atlantic Council] and the UN.” Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 137. Gow pointed out, however, that there was likely to be less conﬂict among the military partners than at the political level where the Security Council, which had broadly authorized the use of air power, was checked by a cautious UN Secretariat (including Secretary General Boutros-Ghali) and senior UNPROFOR players. Ibid., p. 137. See New York Times (January 20 1994), p. A8, for the public airing of the frustrations inherent in the “dual key” strategy, and New York Times (May 24 1994), p. A11. Similarly, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Richard C. Holbrooke, complained that the “dual key turns into a dual veto, because of the enormous complexity of two different command structures with two different missions.” New York Times (November 26 1994), p. 7. An example of the ineffectiveness of the “dual key” strategy was featured in New York Times (March 16 1994), p. A14. New York Times (April 8 1992), p. A10. Williams, “The International Community’s Response,” p. 274. Williams further pointed out that China, not one of the central actors in this crisis, nevertheless was interested in gathering markers for its cooperation to trade some day for American trade or human rights concessions. “Dealing with Disintegration in the Balkans: Is Partition Such Sweet Sorrow?” Harriman Review 11 (April 1999), p. 33. For the contention that this was the argument put forward by a newly assertive American military not signiﬁcantly under civilian control anymore, see Gregory D. Foster, “Confronting the Crisis in Civil–Military Relations,” Washington Quarterly 20 (Autumn 1997), pp. 15–33. New York Times (August 7 1992), p. A1. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York, NY: Modern Library, 1998), p. 27. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 105. In early May, the State Department declared its preference that Yugoslavia remain united and that force not be used to alter its system of governance. New York Times (May 8 1991), p. A3. Warren Bass, “The Triage of Dayton,” Foreign Affairs 77 (September– October 1998), p. 96. See, for example, New York Times (August 10 1992, p. A8, and October 2 1992, p. A1). Bass, “The Triage of Dayton,” p. 97. As Adam Garﬁnkle put it, candidate Clinton did not have to worry about his domestic policy agenda being swallowed by the Bosnian conﬂict as did President Clinton. “Another Bosnian Mess,” Orbis 42 (Fall 1998), p. 645.

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131 James Gow, “The New Strategic Concept of NATO: Stratiﬁed Stability,” Link 1 (March–April 1999), p. 14. 132 “Many things have died or been seriously compromised in Bosnia. The optimism of the cold war’s end. The credibility of NATO. The American commitment to European security. The notion that a Europe no longer divided shares a commitment to basic human dignity. But perhaps the death of Western honor has been the most devastating. . . . The question of what, if anything, Western democracies stand ready to defend has to be posed.” New York Times (July 16 1995), Sect. 4, p. 1. 133 Bass, “The Triage of Dayton,” p. 96. 134 New York Times (December 12 1994), p. A19. 135 The American rationale for ending UN neutrality and supporting the Bosnian government was that an independent state should be able to defend itself against external aggression (see Art. 51 of the UN Charter) if the UN were unwilling or unable to defend Bosnia. See Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” p. 1250. Bowker further explained the European response to the American plan – that the Bosnian Muslims had already lost the war and should try to get the best peace terms possible in a peace settlement, in order to prevent the spread of the Bosnian war throughout the Balkans [realpolitik over justice, as Bowker put it] (p. 1251). For a behind-the-scenes description of the American diplomacy to sell “lift-and-strike” to its European allies, see Ivo Daalder, Getting to Dayton: The Making of America’s Bosnia Policy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2000). 136 A New York Times article on April 28 1993 (p. A1) evoked the Vietnam war as the dominant image in Congress, where some lawmakers feared that an open-ended military commitment could cripple the Presidency. 137 In April 1993, France declared that if the arms embargo against Bosnia were lifted as suggested by the United States, the approximately 4000 French soldiers involved in UN relief and peacemaking efforts in Bosnia and Croatia would be withdrawn immediately. New York Times (April 22 1993), p. A15. 138 See, for example, New York Times (December 5 1994, p. A1, and June 9 1995, p. A12). For the American policy-making situation during the Bosnian crisis, see Ryan C. Hendrickson, “War Powers, Bosnia, and the 104th Congress,” Political Science Quarterly 113 (Summer 1998), pp. 241–58. 139 President Izetbegovic´ alluded to the plan as an exercise in appeasement as he drew a parallel between the Vance–Owen talks and the 1938 Munich negotiations. New York Times (January 10 1993), Sect. 4, p. 4. 140 New York Times (February 5 1993), p. A8. 141 New York Times (February 16 1993), p. A17. 142 Slobodan Milosˇevic´ publicly accepted Vance–Owen, although Doder and Branson claimed that it was as an act of self-preservation rather than because he believed it would work and that it would be implemented. Milosevic, p. 179. Eventually, in mid-1994, there was a full break between the Serbs of Serbia proper and of Bosnia. Milosˇevic´ cut off Serbian aid to the Bosnian Serbs, except food and medicine. Ibid., p. 187. 143 Ibid., p. 178. Glitman suggested that the Clinton Administration was considering other options besides Vance–Owen, especially one reminiscent of the post-First World War Greek–Bulgarian and Greek–Turkish situations, which recognized that “border adjustments and an exchange of populations would be the most effective way to deal with the ‘minorities problem.’” “US Policy in Bosnia,” p. 71. However, this approach was abhorrent to many in that it appeared to legitimize the fruits of ethnic cleansing. See, for example, Norman M. Naimark, Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century

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144 145 146 147

148 149

150 151 152 153 154

155 156

157 158 159 160 161

Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), which discussed the genocidal result, if not intent, of some population transfers. Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 216. Hoare, “The Croatian Project,” p. 134. Hoare, “A Rope Supports a Man Who is Hanged,” p. 208. This plan was bitterly criticized by Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic´ (New York Times, May 24 1993, p. A7), and unenthusiastically received by many members of the UN (New York Times, May 28 1993, p. A6). One critic, Morton I. Abramowitz, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former American Ambassador to Turkey, criticized the strategy because “the implication is that anything goes. The Muslim side – the weakest side – has a Hobson’s choice – either to accept division or to be ground down because the West is unwilling to help except through cheap rhetoric.” New York Times (June 19 1993), p. 4. New York Times (June 15 1993), p. A14. Abdic´’s self-proclaimed “Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia” was defeated by the Bosnian Army in August 1994; his forces then ﬂed into Serbheld territory in Croatia. The Bosnian Serb military commander, General Ratko Mladic´, apparently coordinated the Bosnian Serb and Krajina Serb attacks against Bihac´ with military matériel supplied by Serbia. Croatian forces may have been involved to some extent, too, threatening a widening of the war. New York Times (December 12 1994), p. A11. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 4. New York Times (February 7 1994), p. A1. United States Senate, “US Actions Regarding Iranian Arms Shipments into Bosnia,” Strobe Talbott’s testimony, p. 61. McGrath, “Dealing with Disintegration in the Balkans,” p. 36. Tudjman was enticed into this deal by America’s offering of economic aid to rebuild Croatia’s economy, ignoring of Croatia’s receipt of military equipment in contravention of the UN arms embargo, and allowing American army ofﬁcers to train the Croatian military. See Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” p. 1253. For information on the American training of the Croatian Army, see Mark Edmond Clark, “US Army Doctrinal Inﬂuence on the War in Bosnia,” Military Review 179 (November–December 1999), pp. 23–9. An additional inducement was the eventual admission of Croatia into European institutions. Chandler, Bosnia, p. 43. Gow, for example, characterized the British response, which was not particularly decisive, as “pusillanimous realism.” Triumph of the Lack of Will, p. 182. New York Times (October 2 1994), p. 14. Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdzˇic´ expressed the Bosnian frustration with the UN prosecution of its mission, saying, “when you are neutral between good and evil, you become an accomplice to evil.” New York Times (January 22 1995), Sect. 1, p. 6. New York Times (April 26 1994), p. A6. Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” p. 1253. For the vacillations in US and Soviet policy orientations during this period, see Gow, Triumph of the Lack of Will, pp. 184–222. Marie-Janine Calic, “Bosnia-Hercegovina after Dayton: Opportunities and Risks for Peace,” Aussenpolitik 47 (1996), p. 128. On arms supply to both Bosnia and Croatia, see New York Times (November 5 1994), p. 1. See, for example, United States Senate, Testimony of Strobe Talbott and of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, 104th Cong., 2nd Sess., May 21, May 23

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162 163

164 165 166

167 168 169 170 171 172

173

174 175

1996, especially testimony on US Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith’s involvement with Croatian ofﬁcials that the US would look the other way when Croatia enabled Iranian arms deliveries to Bosnia. Galbraith had been directed by the Administration to give a “we have no instructions” response to a Croatian query whether the United States would oppose Iranian shipment of arms through Croatia for Bosnia. For American admission of its role in the Iranian arms transfer, see New York Times (April 15 1995), p. 3. New York Times (November 12 1994), p. 1. For reports of a possible covert American-supported airlift of weaponry to the Bosnian government and the UN’s negative response, see New York Times (March 1 1995), p. A5. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, pp. 4–5. French pique at American criticism of the European Balkans policy became increasingly evident. See, for example, New York Times (December 13 1994), p. A8. “Based on the facts now available, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the prospects for a peaceful settlement would have been considerably enhanced had the US joined the Europeans sooner in recognising that a uniﬁed Bosnian state was not feasible, that some degree of separation would occur, and that neither the US nor its allies were going to send in the ground forces required to enforce harmony. If nothing else, NATO’s hand would have been far stronger had its members been seen to and actually had worked more closely together.” Glitman, “US Policy in Bosnia,” p. 76. McGrath, “Dealing with Disintegration in the Balkans,” p. 34. See New York Times (June 21 1994), p. A3, for the problems faced by the Contact Group in forcing the parties in conﬂict to accept their plan. Matthew C. Waxman suggested that there was a signiﬁcant amount of “disrupted chains of command,” “dislocated authority,” and “splintered organizational structure” between the Bosnian Serbs and the Milosˇevic´-dominated Serbia, and between the Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, which meant that there was not a monolithic, hierarchic decision-making structure guiding Serbian policy during the Bosnian war. “Emerging Intelligence Challenges,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence 10 (Fall 1997), p. 320. New York Times (August 14 1994), Sect. 4, p. 3. Bosnian Serb deﬁance of Milosˇevic´ was backed by the Serbian Orthodox Church. New York Times (July 11 1994), p. A1. Waxman, “Emerging Intelligence Challenges,” p. 322. Izvestiya (August 3 1994), cited in Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” p. 1253. New York Times (December 15 1994), p. A1. The United States sent American ofﬁcers in October 1994 to oversee the integration of Bosnian Croat and Muslim forces, because the two parties had taken no immediate steps to do so themselves. See New York Times (October 21 1994), p. A8. Milosˇevic´ urged the international community to stop the Bosnian offensive, when the Bosnian Serbs lost so much territory so fast, in order to ensure a peace agreement along the lines of the Contact Group Plan. New York Times (September 19 1995), p. A1. Everts, “When the Going Gets Rough,” p. 91. In May 1995, several hundred UN soldiers were held hostage by Bosnian Serbs to prevent further international action after NATO air strikes on a Bosnian Serb ammunition dump near Pale. See Calic, “Bosnia-Hercegovina after Dayton,” p. 129.

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176 See New York Times (October 29 1995), p. 1, and Jan Willem Honig and Norbert Both, Srebrenica: Record of a War Crime (London: Penguin Books, 1996) for accounts of the massacre at Srebrenica. The UN would later be blamed for “the pervasive ambivalence within the UN regarding the role of force in the pursuit of peace,” and its “prism of ‘moral equivalency’” in which the victims and the aggressors were treated alike. The CIA issued a report in March 1994 charging that Serbs committed 90 percent of the acts of “ethnic cleansing” and that “leading Serbian politicians almost certainly played a role in the crimes.” New York Times (March 9 1995), p. A1. In a later report, the UN would also admit to the charge of appeasement because of the willingness of UN and other leaders to negotiate with Milosˇevic´, Karadzˇic´, and Mladic´. Christian Science Monitor (December 21 1999), p. 10. The UN report starkly outlined the institution’s faulty reasoning and actions: “The United Nations experience in Bosnia was one of the most difﬁcult and painful in our history. It is with the deepest regret and remorse that we have reviewed our own actions and decisions in the face of the assault on Srebrenica. Through error, misjudgement and an inability to recognize the scope of the evil confronting us, we failed to do our part to help save the people of Srebrenica from the Serb campaign of mass murder. No one regrets more than we the opportunities for achieving peace and justice that were missed. No one laments more than we the failure of the international community to take decisive action to halt the suffering and end a war that had produced so many victims. Srebrenica crystallized a truth understood only too late by the United Nations and the world at large: that Bosnia was as much a moral cause as a military conﬂict. The tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever.” It further lamented that “we tried to keep the peace and apply the rules of peacekeeping where there was no peace to keep.” And “the problem, which cried out for a political/military solution, was that a Member State of the United Nations, left largely defenseless as a result of an arms embargo imposed upon it by the United Nations, was being dismembered by forces committed to its destruction. This was not a problem with a humanitarian solution. . . . The United Nations’ global commitment to ending conﬂict does not preclude moral judgements, but makes them necessary.” “The Whole and Awful Truth,” New Republic 221 (December 13 1999), p. 9. 177 Calic, “Bosnia-Hercegovina after Dayton,” p. 129. See, for example, an editorial in the New York Times, which, as late as June 1995, spoke out against using American ground troops in combat in Bosnia (June 3 1995), p. 18. 178 New York Times (December 4 1994), p. 1. 179 The Serbs were deﬁant until the abrupt fall in 1995 of Western Slavonia and Krajina, “regions of Croatia whose ethnic Serbian leaders had vowed to ﬁght to the last man, only to ﬂee in haste in their Mercedes–Benzes.” New York Times (August 31 1995), p. A1. 180 The ease with which Croatia was able to secure its war aims suggests to many observers that Tudjman and Milosˇevic´ had a secret agreement to that effect. See, for example, Bowker, “The Wars in Yugoslavia,” p. 1253. 181 Unﬁnished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), p. 6. However, the US exerted pressure on the Croatian-Muslim forces not to conquer Banja Luka, the largest Serbian town. This became an area of frustration for the Bosnian Muslims, who believed their war aims were frustrated just on the brink of victory. 182 See New York Times (August 31 1995), p. A1, for a description of the ﬁrst bombing runs.

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183 It was Milosˇevic´ who ﬁnally secured the release of the UN hostages after threatening the Bosnian Serbs. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 214. 184 “By the time of the ﬁnal cease-ﬁre in October 1995, Serbian forces west of the Brcˇko corridor were in a state of near-complete collapse.” Hoare, “A Rope Supports a Man Who is Hanged,” p. 203. 185 According to Doder and Branson, Milosˇevic´ was able to force the Bosnian Serb leadership to acquiesce to his representation of the Serbs at the DPA only following the American-backed Croatian defeat of Bosnian Serb troops in August 1995. Milosevic, p. 221. 186 Williams suggested that the US ﬁnally accepted leadership of the Western response to the Yugoslav crisis when it became obvious that Europe could not provide that leadership. He also alleged that the American interest was in ending the war, not necessarily creating a lasting peace, which would explain why means for the implementation of the DPA provisions were given short shrift in its formulation (see a critique of the DPA in Chapter 3 below). “The International Community’s Response,” p. 279. 187 The United States decided to utilize the NATO forces to broker a peace agreement, bypassing the Bosnian Serbs and dealing directly with Milosˇevic´. At the Dayton negotiations, the Bosnian Serbs were ignored. Bass, “The Triage of Dayton, p. 98. Alija Izetbegovic´ signed the Accords saying, “And to my people I say, this may not be a just peace, but it is more just than a continuation of war.” Cited by Richard Horton, “Croatia and Bosnia: The Imprints of War – I. Consequences,” Lancet 353 (June 19 1999), p. 2144. On the other hand, when a Bosnian Serb representative, Momcˇilo Krajisˇnjik, was shown the ﬁnal maps only ten minutes before the initialing of the agreement, he fainted. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 225. 3 POST-COLD WAR DOMESTIC POLITICS AND POLITICAL PROSPECTS 1 Laura Palmer and Cristina Posa, “The Best-Laid Plans: Implementation of the Dayton Peace Accords in the Courtroom and on the Ground,” Harvard Human Rights Journal 12 (Spring 1999), p. 362 (note 3). 2 A Wall Street Journal article (August 26 1998), p. 1, described the theory as “Hatch a symbolic Bosnia ﬁrst, and with luck, a real one will follow.” 3 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, An Agenda for Democratization, A/51/761 (New York, NY: United Nations, 1996), p. 5. The document suggested caution during the democratization program: Democratization requires “a comprehensive approach, addressing not only the holding of free and fair elections, but also the construction of a political culture of democracy and the development and maintenance of institutions to support the ongoing practice of democratic politics” (p. 54). 4 In March 2003 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was renamed Serbia and Montenegro. Nevertheless, because the topics covered herein were delineated before this alteration, this volume continues to utilize the name FRY. 5 Power Sharing and International Mediation in Ethnic Conﬂicts (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1996), p. 28. Gojko Vucˇkovic´ suggested that evidence indicates “that domestic polities in the severely divided societies in the Balkans are unable to overcome challenges of democratization processes alone. Timely and balanced involvement of the international community appears to be necessary” before violence erupts. “Promoting Peace and Democracy in the Aftermath of the Balkan Wars: Comparative Assessment of the Democratization and Institution-Building Processes in

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6

7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14

15

16 17 18

Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Former Yugoslavia,” World Affairs 162 (Summer 1999), p. 10. This is the brief deﬁnition of democratic culture suggested by Vucˇkovic´ in ibid., p. 4. Vucˇkovic´ then elaborated on the characteristics of democracy: “not only a civilian, constitutional, multiparty regime, with regular, free, and fair elections and universal suffrage, but organizational and informational pluralism; extensive civil liberties (freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom to form and join organizations); effective power for elected ofﬁcials; and functional autonomy for legislative, executive, and judicial organs of government.” Larry Diamond, Promoting Democracy in the 1990s: Actors and Instruments, Issues and Imperatives: A Report to the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conﬂict (Washington, DC: The Commission, 1995), p. 3. The text of the DPA may be viewed at . David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy After Dayton (London: Pluto Press, 2000), p. 52. The DPA document authorized the FRY delegation to sign on behalf of RS. See the introduction to the DPA. For a detailed analysis of the military portions of the DPA, see Chandler, Bosnia, pp. 44–5. Arms control measures included reduction of capacity according to the following formula based on FRY’s baseline military capacity: reduction to 75 percent of the baseline for FRY, 30 percent for Croatia, and 30 percent for Bosnia, which for the latter would then be apportioned on a 2:1 ratio between the Federation and Republika Srpska. Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia: Implementing the Dayton Accords (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), pp. 49–50 (note 3). The issue of human rights was so important to the creators of the new Bosnian state and its underlying structures that the human rights instruments set out in Annex 6 with regard to human rights agreements were also incorporated directly in the Bosnian Constitution, which made them prescriptive. “In most countries, economic, social and cultural rights are only aspirational, whereas in Bosnia such rights are immediately enforceable under the Bosnian Constitution.” Palmer and Posa, “The Best-Laid Plans,” p. 366. The term was used in this context by Chandler, Bosnia, p. 2. He used it critically to suggest that Bosnia has become an artiﬁcial government with little prospect of possessing democratic institutions independent of the international organizations that created them. Consociation is deﬁned as “a system of government that institutionalizes proportional ethnic representation and a complex, negotiated system of compromises and balances between supposedly equal ethnic groups.” Pierre L. van den Berghe, “Protection of Ethnic Minorities: A Critical Appraisal,” in Robert G. Wirsing, ed., Protection of Ethnic Minorities: Comparative Perspectives (New York, NY: Pergamon Press, 1981), p. 349. US Dept. of State, “Agreed Measures on Dayton Accords Compliance,” March 18 1996. . Thomas D. Grant, “Internationally Guaranteed Constitutive Order: Cyprus and Bosnia as Predicates for a New Nontraditional Actor in the Society of States,” Journal of Transnational Law & Policy 8 (Fall 1998), p. 7. Julie Mertus, “National Minorities under the Dayton Accord: Lessons from History,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War:

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19 20

21

22 23 24 25 26 27

28

29

30

Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 241. Unﬁnished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), p. xvii. For more on the structure of the RS government, see . This description is a little misleading, as it does not reﬂect the fact that RS is not a united Entity by any means. The more moderate Serbs dominate in Banja Luka, while the unreconstructed nationalists, tied to Radovan Karadzˇic´, rule in Pale. The separate militaries, primarily designed to ﬁght each other, merely drain their respective treasuries. In May 2000 these expenditures were termed “at gross variance with the defense needs of Bosnia and are not ﬁnancially sustainable.” Address by the High Representative to the North Atlantic Council, cited in United States General Accounting Ofﬁce (hereafter GAO), Bosnia Peace Operation: Crime and Corruption Threaten Successful Implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement GAO/NSIAD-00-156 (July 2000), p. 40 (note 46). Charles Crawford, “The Balkan Chill: The Intrinsic Weakness of the Dayton Accords,” Harvard International Review 21 (Winter 1998–99), p. 83. GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, p. 18. Ibid., p. 17. Gordon N. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War: Politics, Society and International Engagement after Dayton,” Harriman Review 11 (April 1999), p. 10. In 1999, a draft law to provide judicial panels to appoint judges was rejected by the Parliament, which abjured an impartial court that would limit political prerogatives. Christian Science Monitor (February 22 2000), p. 6. Similarly, the nine-member Constitutional Court, charged with determining the constitutionality of Entity legislation and some appellate jurisdiction, was comprised of three non-Bosnian members chosen by the President of the European Court of Human Rights joining with the other six elected by the Entities, four from the Federation and two from RS. For more on the difﬁculty of building an impartially functioning Bosnian judicial system, see ibid. Cousens and Cater termed “Dayton’s human rights provisions [as] essentially toothless.” Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 120. See Palmer and Posa, “The BestLaid Plans,” which detailed the failures of the Bosnian judicial and human rights provisions and implementation mechanisms on pp. 368–79. Cousens and Cater argued that the separation of civil and military implementation of the accord led to a lack of coordination, which weakened the prospects of success, particularly in regard to public security, refugee return, and political democratization. Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 146. They further suggested that even the High Representative was not given full coordinating capability for the civil implementation provisions of the DPA. Some argued that the UN authority, which the United States used to justify its presence in Bosnia, provided insufﬁcient justiﬁcation for NATO’s activity: NATO, as a collective security defensive alliance speciﬁcally aimed at the containment of the former Soviet bloc, is not authorized to undertake out-ofarea offensive actions or even peacekeeping. William C. Banks and Jeffrey D. Straussman, “A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. Involvement in Bosnia,” Political Science Quarterly 114 (Summer 1999), p. 215. For the argument that NATO pursued its Bosnian involvement, as well as the enlargement process, with no real overall plan, see Joyce P. Kaufman, “A Challenge

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31 32 33 34

35 36

37

38 39 40

to European Security and Alliance Unity,” World Affairs 161 (Summer 1998), p. 23. These requirements were fulﬁlled by mid-1996, under IFOR. IFOR’s successor, SFOR, ensured continued compliance by frequent inspections. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 38. IFOR was in a peculiar position in regard to the ZOS when former inhabitants of villages located within the ZOS attempted to return to their homes, only to be expelled by IFOR. See ibid., p. 66 (note 3). The United States agreed to supply American soldiers to IFOR under the proviso that there be “clear goals, a powerful force, NATO command and control, robust rules of engagement, a one-year time limit and the expressed cooperation of the rival factions.” New York Times (November 27 1995), p. A1. For the domestic issues regarding the American involvement in IFOR, see Banks and Straussman, “A New Imperial Presidency?” pp. 195–218. The United States was reluctant to force full implementation of the DPA out of fear of taking military casualties. This despite the fact that the American public seems to have been more rather than less supportive of an American presence and role in Bosnia, particularly in regard to humanitarian aid and multilateral intervention. See Richard Sobel, “Portraying American Public Opinion toward the Bosnia Crisis,” Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 3 (Spring 1998), pp. 16–33, for a study of the disparity between American public opinion and American public opinion as described by the American media. Sobel also pointed to the discrepancy between public opinion in favor of multilateral (although not unilateral) intervention in both the United States and Europe and the weak governmental responses to the conﬂict. In Bosnia, on the other hand, the Clinton Administration’s public promise to Congress that the American forces in IFOR would return home in December 1996 led to a good deal of obstructive local behavior among those who believed that they could wait until the US, and thus IFOR itself, had exited Bosnia and then resume conﬂict, perhaps by other means. Six million land mines were scattered throughout Bosnia at the end of the war. New York Times (December 5 1995), p. A1. Cousens and Cater noted that IFOR/SFOR “have been rightly criticized for not embracing the full extent of their mandate. Only two years into the peace did they seriously focus on apprehending PIFWCs [persons indicted for war crimes]; protecting civilians from political violence, especially in the context of their return to their homes; creating a broader sense of security; or accomplishing important secondary tasks that were arguably critical to the political consolidation of peace in the country.” Toward Peace in Bosnia, pp. 65–6. General John Shalikashvili, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, listed what SFOR would not do in Bosnia: “The implementation force will not be responsible for the conduct of humanitarian operations. It will not be a police force. It will not conduct nation building. It will not be a disarmament force and chase after people to collect weapons and whatnot. And it will not be responsible for the movement of refugees.” “In Harm’s Way,” Time (December 25 1995–January 1 1996), p. 129. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 65. Miami Herald (April 9 2003), . SFOR removed Srpska Radio Television (SRT) from the control of Bosnian Serb hardliners, who had used the facility to broadcast messages to undermine the DPA and to compare SFOR forces to Nazi-SS troops. Thereafter, SRT was placed under international supervision. Radio Mostar was closed for

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41 42 43

44 45

46

47 48 49 50 51 52 53

three months after it broadcast calls for Croatian war veterans to demonstrate during an SFOR operation on October 15 1999. Ofﬁce of the High Representative, “15th Report by the High Representative for Implementation of the Peace Agreement to The Secretary-General of the United Nations” (November 1 1999). . Susan L. Woodward, “Avoiding Another Cyprus or Israel,” Brookings Review 16 (Winter 1998), p. 45. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 55. A chilling comment about the future of peace in Bosnia was reported by Cousens and Cater. In 1998, a senior civilian ofﬁcial was reported to have said that “you could measure the time it takes for ﬁghting to break out after NATO leaves in nano-seconds.” Ibid., p. 67, note 19. For more on the responsibilities and procedures of the SCMM, see David Lightburn, “NATO Security Cooperation Activities with Bosnia and Herzegovina,” NATO Review 46 (Summer 1998), pp. 31–4. Because of sinking morale, cessation of training, and maintenance of weaponry in the RS military, the United States proposed a “train and equip” program. The RS army no longer seemed to pose a viable threat to the Federation, but elections did not seem to win the hearts and minds of the Bosnian Serbs. The rationale was that, since the politicians could not seem to begin to democratize successfully, perhaps the military, more pragmatic than the political elites, could eventually form part of a joint military command, which would marginalize the Karadzˇic´ forces. Paul Harris, “Bosnia Herzegovina: Support Now Shifts towards Serb Army,” Jane’s Defence Weekly (February 16 1998). Thus, an American-based corporation, Military Professional Resources, Inc., of Alexandria, Virginia, was given a three-year contract in May 1996 to “equip and train” the Bosnian military. Al J. Venter, “Today’s Dogs of War: No Hiatus for Hired Guns,” Soldier of Fortune 23 (August 1998), p. 66. Since its inception the HVO received the overwhelming share of its funding, equipment, and many of its ofﬁcers from Croatia under Tudjman. Since the election of Stipe Mesic´, however, the HVO has apparently lost its ﬁnancial backing from Croatia. “Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina will never again vote in Croatia: Interview with Stipe Mesic´,” Bosnia Report (December 1999– February 2000). . The Bosnian Army ofﬁcer corps has become 95 percent Bosnian Muslim through purges of Bosnian Croats and Serbs, belying its claim to be the major force for multiethnicity. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 9. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 56. Los Angeles Times (October 7 2001). New York Times (December 3 1995), p. 1. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 54. Wall Street Journal (March 18 2002), p. 1. New York Times (March 22 1996), p. A3. Holbrooke put the number as “in the very low double digits.” This was speciﬁcally against Annex 1-A of the DPA. United States Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence. US Actions Regarding Iranian Arms Shipments into Bosnia. 104th Cong., 2nd Sess., May 21, May 23 1996, especially Ambassador Richard Holbrooke’s testimony, p. 17. Harris reported that the American-backed “train and equip” program “succeeded in driving out the Arab–Iranian inﬂuence” from the Federation. See also an article in the Los Angeles Times (January 15 1997), p. A4, which accused the Bosnian Muslim government of compromising a CIA agent in

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54 55 56 57 58

59 60 61

62 63 64 65

66

67

Bosnia by exposing his identity to Iranian intelligence agents. Assuming that Bosnia’s Interior Minister, Bakir Alispahic´, who had close ties with Iran, was the leak, the US demanded that Izetbegovic´ remove him from his post of overseeing the Bosnian security apparatus. David W. Hendon and Mark Long, “Notes on Church–State Affairs: Bosnia,” Journal of Church and State 40 (Spring 1998), p. 507. Author’s personal observation in Sarajevo, May 2001. Wall Street Journal (March 18 2002), p. 1. Los Angeles Times (October 7 2001), p. A1. OHR, “BiH Media Round-up: 1/3/2002.” . This action caused the remaining resident ﬁghters to either leave the country or go underground. Wall Street Journal (March 18 2002), p. 1. It was reported that American ofﬁcials would not use intelligence data that allegedly proved that the six were aligned with the terrorists, in order to protect their sources. Wall Street Journal (March 18 2002), p. 1. New York Times (January 28 2002), p. A3. International and Bosnian critics of the American actions claimed that due process of law had been seriously violated by arresting the Algerians before any crime had been committed. Critics of the government’s action, and even HR Wolfgang Petritsch, charged that the action was in direct contradiction of Bosnia’s constitution. Wall Street Journal (March 18 2002), p. 1. On the other hand, according to some American ofﬁcials convinced that the six men were in the process of planning violent attacks against American property and ofﬁcials, it would have been disastrous to wait until the crime had been perpetrated to arrest the individuals, despite the violation of legal protections. Private conversation, April 2002. Wall Street Journal (March 18 2002), p. 1. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 57. Compare that to the 600-member security service of pre-war Bosnia. Slobodna Bosna (Sarajevo), (March 22 1996), pp. 5–6, cited in Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 9. This section was based on interviews and research undertaken by the author in Bosnia during May 2001 and May 2002. Some of the ﬁndings were ﬁrst reported in Robin Alison Remington and Francine Friedman, “Bombing for Peace from Sarajevo to Kabul,” in George Cristian Maior and Larry Watts, eds, Globalization of Civil–Military Relations: Democratization, Reform and Security (Bucharest: Enciclopedica Publishing House, 2002), pp. 559–83. For a detailed review of the agencies and organizations responsible for civilian implementation of the DPA, see Chandler, Bosnia, pp. 34–65. This situation had a number of consequences. First, the lead agencies, like the UNHCR, found that they had to coordinate their actions with a variety of other organizations, causing duplication of efforts, arguments over authority, and some hard feelings when jurisdictions were trampled. On the other hand, the presence of the multitude of agencies permitted a postwar sharing of responsibilities. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal (August 26 1998), p. 1, there were as many as 10,000 foreign representatives of international agencies in Sarajevo alone, while another 40,000 were dispersed throughout the rest of Bosnia. This ﬁgure did not include the military personnel scattered throughout Bosnia. For a more detailed characterization of the HRs and their successes and failures in implementing the DPA, see Remington and Friedman, “Bombing for Peace,” pp. 572–7.

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68 Palmer and Posa, “The Best-Laid Plans,” p. 374. This was conﬁrmed in an interview in November 1997 with former HR Carlos Westendorp, who stated that “if you read Dayton very carefully . . . [it] gives me the possibility to interpret my own authorities and powers.” Slobodna Bosna (November 30 1997). . 69 Chandler provided details of PIC deliberations and the expanded powers given to the OHR. Bosnia, pp. 52–5. 70 “In short, OHR was given both creative authority to develop and enact laws otherwise blocked by the Bosnian leadership and enforcement powers to take action against any public party, including members of the media, who were not abiding by the terms of Dayton implementation. The interpretation of Dayton rests singularly with OHR.” Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 131. 71 Ayaki Ito pointed out that Bosnia has fourteen constitutions (the Bosnian Constitution, the two Entity constitutions, constitutions for the ten autonomous cantons, and the Brcˇko Constitution), with the Bosnian Constitution superseding the rest in case of conﬂict of provisions. “Politicisation of Minority Return in Bosnia and Herzegovina – The First Five Years Examined,” International Journal of Refugee Law 13 (2001), p. 105. 72 Poplasˇen was a member of Radovan Karadzˇic´’s inner circle during the Bosnian war and was the commander of a student brigade ﬁghting in western Bosnia. Palmer and Posa, “The Best-Laid Plans,” p. 380. 73 As a result of Plavsˇic´’s moderate policies, the US had donated $70 million to RS for schools, roads, and small-business start-up loans. Washington Post (August 31 1998), p. A18. 74 Washington Post (August 31 1998), p. 3. 75 New York Times (September 17 1998), p. A1. 76 “Statement by the Secretary General of NATO, Dr. Javier Solana, on the High Representative’s Decision to Remove Mr. Poplasen [sic] from the Ofﬁce of President of the Republika Srpska.” Press release (99)29, March 5 1999. 77 For more on this perspective, see Francine Friedman and Robin Remington, “Mission Creep in the Balkans: Civil–Military Dynamics,” paper presented at the Triennial Meeting of the Research Committee on Armed Forces and Society, Jerusalem, Israel, July 13–16 1999, and David L. Bosco, “Reintegrating Bosnia: A Progress Report,” Washington Quarterly 21 (Spring 1998), p. 67. 78 Bosco, “Reintegrating Bosnia,” p. 67. 79 Author’s interviews with ofﬁcials of the international community, Sarajevo, May 2001 and May 2002. 80 “Since the three nationalist parties won the ﬁrst elections in 1990, they created a modus vivendi, which came to an end after the 2000 elections. While in the pre-war years the parties engaged in a ﬂawed attempt of ‘powersharing,’ the cooperation after the Dayton Peace Accords amounted largely to a division of power. Each party largely respected the ‘right’ of the other nationalist parties to govern their respective nation, and cooperation, if required by the institutions, was limited to a division of access to state assets and resources. Effective governance, combined with power-sharing instead of resource-sharing, by the new governments poses a serious threat to the longterm viability of the nationalist parties.” Florian Bieber, “Croat SelfGovernment in Bosnia – A Challenge for Dayton?” ECMI Brief no. 5 (May 2001), p. 5. . 81 Elections are widely considered in the West to be the key tests of democracy.

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83 84

85 86

87 88 89 90

91 92

See, for example, Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1989), and G. O’Donnell, “Illusions about Consolidation,” Journal of Democracy 7, no. 2, pp. 34–51. On the other hand, Peter W. Singer suggested that the Bosnian elections were rushed because “policymakers in the West [were] concerned more about their own domestic elections” than the consequences for Bosnia of hurried elections. “Bosnia 2000: Phoenix or Flames?” World Policy Journal 17 (Spring 2000), p. 32. For examples of missed opportunities by the international community to encourage democracy in Bosnia during the various election cycles, see Friedman and Remington, “Mission Creep in the Balkans.” Cousens and Cater pointed out the anomaly that OSCE had never run elections before, while the UN had some previous experience in that area. They suggested that the less than successful wartime UNPROFOR experience had soured the region toward the UN. Also, they suggested, the US had more inﬂuence on OSCE than the UN, so the US could use leverage to try to keep to the election schedule that would enable its troops to withdraw by December 1996. Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 146. Because of the inexperience of the OSCE in putting together such an undertaking, as well as other technical lapses, the municipal elections were postponed until fall 1997. “All parties took on the characteristics of state institutions during the course of the war. While destroying the state by creating one-party statelets, they sought to ﬁll the void created by the collapse of the state. Two of the three Bosnian nationalist parties declared their own states, which were basically one-party dictatorships until not too long ago, staffed with party functionaries at all levels. These para-states served the interests of the parties in expanding their sphere of inﬂuence, ensuring the economic prosperity of the party and its leadership and in suppressing other nations, as well as internal opponents (real or imaginary).” Thus, when Yugoslavia collapsed, these para-states had no opponents for the loyalty of their constituents. Florian Bieber, “BosniaHerzegovina and Lebanon: Historical Lessons of Two Multireligious States,” Third World Quarterly 21 (2000), p. 274. Georgios Kostakos. “Division of Labor Among International Organizations: The Bosnian Experience,” Global Governance 4 (1998), p. 469. Aleksa Djilas called her “a homicidal maniac” who often termed the Muslims “racially inferior.” Remarks at a conference on “The Bosnia Crisis and International Broadcasting,” Washington, DC (October 8 1997), p. 6. In February 2003, she was sentenced to eleven years in prison by the The Hague for crimes against humanity. Richard Holbrooke, “Upholding Dayton: Keeping the Peace in Bosnia,” Harvard International Review 19 (Fall 1997), p. 41. Some observers believed that the corruption scandals publicized around that time provided a major impetus to the alteration in voting patterns. See, for example, Christian Science Monitor (April 26 2000), p. 5. Reuters, February 26 2001. Earlier remarks by Mesic´ had portended this situation: “I shall be the president not of all Croats [as Tudjman claimed to be], but only of the citizens of Croatia.” Bosnia Report (December 1999–February 2000). . Bieber, “Croat Self-Government in Bosnia,” p. 7. In the entire Federation the HDZ received 19.3 percent of the vote (1998: 19.7 percent), in canton 10 (Livno) it obtained 53 percent (1998: 61 percent) of the vote, in canton 8 (Western Herzegovina) 70 percent (1998: 84 percent),

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95 96 97

98

99 100

101

102

in canton 7 (Herzegovina-Neretva) 46 percent (1998: 50 percent). See <www.oscebih.org/elections-implementation/00gen_results.asp>. Exclusion from political power thus appeared unjust to the HDZ. Some international observers have deemed the HDZ’s criticism of the new electoral rules to be at least partly legitimate. ICG, “Turning Strife to Advantage: A Blueprint to Integrate the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina” (March 15 2001). . See also Bieber, “Croat Self-Government in Bosnia,” p. 3. For more on this incident, see Bieber, “Croat Self-Government in Bosnia,” p. 2. For the heavy involvement in corruption and smuggling by Croatian nationalists, suggesting a link to organized crime, see Guardian (April 16 2001). An ICG report concluded from the resistance to audit the bank that it “highlighted the nexus of crime and corruption that underpins Bosnia’s entrenched nationalist parties.” No Early Exit: Nato’s Continuing Challenge in Bosnia (Sarajevo: May 22 2001). . See also the Petritsch interview in Reporter (April 11 2001). . OHR, “15th Report by the High Representative,” op. cit. Bieber, “Croat Self-Government in Bosnia,” p. 6. The Alliance was composed of ten small parties that melded together into a viable larger party with encouragement by US Ambassador Thomas Miller and British Ambassador Graham Hand in 2000. Interview with Ambassador Miller, United States Embassy, Sarajevo 2001. The United States warned that it would stop any funding in the RS should the SDS be a part of an RS government. David Chandler, “Bosnia: The Democracy Paradox,” Current History 100 (March 2001), p. 115. Despite these threats, the RS government announced in January 2001 contained seven SDS members. ICG, “The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return in Bosnia & Herzegovina.” December 13 2002. . Palmer and Posa pointed out that the UN Security Council’s procedure in this case was irregular, avoiding as it did the usual negotiations and treaty signing by which member states approved (or disapproved) the statute. However, the immediacy of the need, in light of the daily reports of atrocities, increased the sense of urgency among the members of the Security Council. The method utilized by the Security Council for creating the ICTY bound all UN members to carry out the provisions and, in turn, assigned possible sanctions against those who failed to comply. “The Best-Laid Plans,” p. 363 (note 9). “For peace to hold in the former Yugoslavia, it is essential that individual guilt be substituted for the assumptions of collective guilt that now fuel ethnic conﬂict. Nations do not commit war crimes. Individuals do.” Gijs de Vries, leader of the Liberal group of the Netherlands Parliament. Cited in Martin Walker, “Is Bosnia Ready for Peace?” Europe no. 374 (March 1998), p. 19. Others, however, particularly Serbs, condemn the Tribunal as a political, not a judicial, body. In the wake of the Djindjic´ assassination, speculation is rife whether his zeal in turning Serbian indictees over to The Hague might have brought about his demise. See, for example, New York Times (April 21 2003), p. A4. Ed Vulliamy, “‘Neutrality’ and the Absence of Reckoning: A Journalist’s Account,” Journal of International Affairs 52 (Spring 1999), p. 604.

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103 For example, Kostakos wrote that “IFOR and its successor had no mandated obligation to hunt down and arrest persons indicted for war crimes.” “Division of Labor Among International Organizations,” p. 465. 104 According to polls taken by the USIA, all three national groups rank the bringing of war crimes indictees to The Hague very low on the list of urgent issues to be dealt with. Charles G. Boyd, “Making Bosnia Work,” Foreign Affairs 77 (January–February 1998), p. 46. 105 ICG, “Courting Disaster: The Misrule of Law in Bosnia & Herzegovina,” (March 25 2002). . 106 Bieber, “Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lebanon,” p. 278. 107 According to A. Ross Johnson, the Yugoslav wars of dissolution “began in Belgrade television, and continue in Pale television. They also continue in Zagreb, where the head of the governing board of Croatian television once said that Croatian television should be a cathedral for the Croatian national spirit. It is such an approach to the media that has shaped so much of what has happened in the region.” Remarks at a conference on “The Bosnia Crisis and International Broadcasting,” Washington, DC (October 8 1997), pp. 16–17. 108 ICG, Media in Bosnia and Herzegovina: How International Support Can Be More Effective (March 18 1997). . 109 For the latter interpretation, see Ted Galen Carpenter, “Jackboot Nation Building: The West Brings ‘Democracy’ to Bosnia,” Mediterranean Quarterly 11 (Spring 2000), pp. 1–22. 110 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 121. 111 International Centre for Migration Policy Development, Framework Report to Facilitate the Launching of the Commission Stipulated in Annex Seven Chapter Two of the Dayton Agreements (March 1996), p. 81, cited in Eric Rosand, “The Right to Return Under International Law Following Mass Dislocation: The Bosnia Precedent?,” Michigan Journal of International Law 19 (Summer 1998), p. 1100 (note 31), and Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 72. 112 Ito, “Politicisation of Minority Return in Bosnia,” p. 98. 113 The international community’s emphasis on return and reintegration of refugees, rather than population transfers, as had been more acceptable during the ﬁrst half of the twentieth century, is a result of the alteration of the political landscape as the cold war ended. No longer can vast numbers of refugees be absorbed by developed countries – the labor market is no longer there, nor do the refugees necessarily possess the educational and other skills needed in the more advanced countries. On the other hand, many of the Bosnian refugees either “came from skilled occupations” or were able to update their skills either before or during the Bosnian war. Richard Black, “Return and Reconstruction in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Missing Link, or Mistaken Priority?” SAIS Review 21 (Summer–Fall 2001), p. 185. For more on the right to return under international law, see Rosand, “The Right to Return Under International Law,” pp. 1091–139. 114 According to the UNHCR, “one of the most important legal obstacles to the return of refugees and displaced persons remains the current property legislation in both Entities.” Humanitarian Issues Working Group, Bosnia and Herzegovina Repatriation and Return Operation 1998 (December 10 1997), p. 40. 115 S. Alex Cunliffe and Michael Pugh argued that “by ﬁrst attempting to inhibit

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116 117 118 119 120 121

122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131

132 133 134

large scale refugee movements, and then to give protection on a temporary basis, UNHCR personnel were not accessories to ethnic cleansing and were adopting the lesser of two evils.” “The Politicization of UNHCR in the Former Yugoslavia,” Journal of Refugee Studies 10 (June 1997), p. 146. Christian Science Monitor (February 28 2000), p. 1. ICG, “Going Nowhere Fast: Refugees and Internatlly [sic] Displaced Persons in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” May 1 1997. . See Ito, “Politicisation of Minority Return in Bosnia,” pp. 106–12, for motivations and tactics of the leaders of the various ethnic groups in their attempts to orchestrate postwar settlement patterns in Bosnia. Bosco, “Reintegrating Bosnia,” p. 67. ICG, “Bosnia’s Refugee Logjam Breaks: Is the International Community Ready?” (May 31 2000). . The constraints on freedom of movement included “a maze of illegal police checkpoints and rumors of long ‘lists’ of Hague indictees who could be apprehended without due process; illicit tolls at interentity crossing points; the scattering of 600,000 active landmines throughout Bosnia, particularly along the IEBL; and actual violence in the form of attacks on individuals and small groups of travelers.” Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 76. UNHCR-Washington, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Update (February 28 1998), cited in Rosand, “The Right to Return Under International Law,” p. 1105 (note 51). See Elizabeth Neuffer, “Homecoming: Bosnia Dispatch,” New Republic 221 (August 23 1999), p. 15. ICG, “The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return in Bosnia & Herzegovina,” December 13 2002. . New York Times (February 6 2003), p. A10. James L. Cairns, “Meanwhile in Bosnia,” Christian Century 116 (July 14–21 1999), p. 702. Neuffer, “Homecoming,” p. 15. Local Serb nationalists also eventually allowed the elected Muslim town council to take control of Srebrenica. New York Times (July 18 1999), Sect. 4, p. 6. Louis Sell, “The Serb Flight from Sarajevo: Dayton’s First Failure,” East European Politics and Societies 4 (Winter 2000), p. 200. Christian Science Monitor 92 (February 9 2000), p. 7. Ofﬁce of the High Representative, Reconstruction and Return Task Force, “RRTF: Report July 1997: Update.” . In fact, the ICG reported, “it is difﬁcult to understand why certain municipalities – in particular, Vogosca and Gorazˇde – were chosen in the ﬁrst place and how they managed to maintain their status. By contrast, many thousands of minority returns took place during 1997 to Sarajevo (2300), Travnik (2500), Jajce (1800), and Drvar (800).” “Minority Return or Mass Relocation” (May 14 1998). . Christian Science Monitor (July 6 2000), p. 7. ICG, “Bosnia’s Refugee Logjam Breaks: Is the International Community Ready?” (May 31 2000). . The circular character of this problem is demonstrated by the fact that 55,000 Bosnian Muslims from eastern RS are occupying housing in Sarajevo. Should

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135 136

137

138 139

140 141 142 143 144 145

146 147 148 149 150

151

152

they be free to return to their homes, a signiﬁcant amount of housing would be freed up in Sarajevo for Sarajevans to reinhabit. Ibid. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 82. The ICG report also suggested that “in some parts of the RS a returnee is ten times more likely to be the victim of violent crime than is a local Serb. Even where the actual threat may be low, the continuing presence of putative war criminals – especially if in public ofﬁce – sends a message to potential returnees.” “The Continuing Challenge of Refugee Return in Bosnia & Herzegovina” (December 13 2002). . As a matter of fact, Timothy Garton Ash observed that the growing lack of tolerance in the region had spread to NATO-patrolled Kosovo, not just for Serbs but also for Roma and Muslim Slavs. “Anarchy & Madness,” The New York, NY Review of Books 47 (February 10 2000), p. 48. A not insigniﬁcant result of the intolerance is a growing “brain drain,” as the best and the brightest leave the country to seek a better life. For more on the exodus from Bosnia of its intellectual elite, see Christian Science Monitor (February 16 2000), p. 6. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 62. Ibid., p. 61. Furthermore, the authors pointed out that, like in the former Yugoslavia, the link between the police and the political leadership remains quite strong, with elites even going so far as to site the intelligence agencies within the local police forces. Ito, “Politicisation of Minority Return in Bosnia,” p. 120. Brieﬁng of Susan Woodward to Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Brcˇko and the Future of Bosnia” (December 10 1996), p. 7. Bieber, “Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lebanon,” p. 278. New York Times (December 10 1995), Sect. 4, p. 4. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 12. Examples of the rise in publicly expressed religious rites in this avowedly multinational society abound. The RS National Assembly inauguration proceedings in October 1996 called for members to swear their oath of allegiance on a Bible and kiss a cross held by an Orthodox prelate, something that Muslims and Croats would not do. A sheep was ritually slaughtered in the traditional Muslim way to celebrate the opening of a new Sarajevo waterworks facility in September 1997. Ibid., pp. 11–12. Author’s interviews with Sarajevo citizens, May 2001 and May–June 2002. Woodward, “Avoiding Another Cyprus or Israel,” p. 47. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 2. James Lyon, “Bosnia and Herzegovina: An Impossible Reconciliation?” UNESCO Courier (December 1999), p. 35. OHR, “15th Report by the High Representative,” op. cit. Advanced education also suffers. Sarajevo University continued to hold classes during the war. However, its ranks of teachers were depleted as were the student numbers, and the physical damage was tremendous. Bosnian universities may have suffered more than $20 million damage. Seventy percent of its professors left Bosnia during the war and few have returned. George Musser, “Make Science, Not War,” Scientiﬁc American 281 (July 1999), p. 22. GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, p. 5. For example, the United States Embassy reported that $900,000 of its operating funds and loan payments, deposited in a corrupt (and now bankrupt) bank, may have been irretrievably lost, while World Bank funds of $340,000 fell victim to a procurement scheme.” Ibid., p. 6. Testimony of the United Nations Special Representative to Bosnia before the

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157 158 159

160 161

162

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164 165 166 167

Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee of the Council of Europe in January 2000. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 14. Ibid., p. 16. Singer suggested that “the proof of this [cross-Entity cooperation] is that a major source of trade across internal boundaries is the transfer of stolen property.” “Bosnia 2000,” p. 33. He attributed this situation to the fact that all three ethnic groups beneﬁt from “underlying control systems, the lack of the rule of law, and the absence of transparency and accountability.” Ibid., p. 36. Ibid., p. 34. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 36. “Unlike for the majority of law-abiding Bosnians, national discrimination and ‘ethnic justice’ do not apply to smugglers, racketeers, tax evaders, gunrunners, drug dealers, white slavers, and their patrons. These groups rejoice in what remains of old Yugoslavia’s brotherhood and unity, doing business across internal and external borders and national or confessional divides. Their community of interest – in getting rich and defying the law – contrasts with the disunity of those who want to uphold the law.” ICG, “Courting Disaster: The Misrule of Law in Bosnia & Herzegovina.” . International Commission on the Balkans, Unﬁnished Peace, p. xix. For this argument, see Vesna Bojicˇic´ and Mary Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 94. This article compared and contrasted the situation of Tuzla and Mostar under post-Dayton EU administration. While Tuzla retained an administrative structure that was not dependent on the nation-based parties, Mostar is governed by an EU administration that worked with and through the nation-based parties. Tuzla is once again seen as a model of multi-ethnic cooperation, while Mostar remains divided by national animosity (pp. 98–108). The overwhelming power of the state over the individual may be due at least in part to the pre-communist and communist era emphasis on collectivism over the rights of the individual. See the explanation for this phenomenon by Allcock, who pointed out that the “participatory,” rather than the “representative,” form of democracy seems to have become enshrined throughout the region in the constitutions, which identify the state with a particular people, instead of all the citizens who live within the state. The communist era domination of a class over society has been replaced by domination of a certain ethnic group. Explaining Yugoslavia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 434–5. Bardos, however, disputed that Croats are united in their views. He stated that “the most important political cleavage [among Croats] divides central Bosnian Croats from their ethnic kin in western Herzegovina.” “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 4. Marie-Janine Calic, “Bosnia-Hercegovina after Dayton: Opportunities and Risks for Peace,” Aussenpolitik 47 (1996), p. 133. Warren Bass, “The Triage of Dayton,” Foreign Affairs 77 (September– October 1998), p. 96. Bieber, “Bosnia-Herzegovina and Lebanon,” p. 269. Constitution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Article III, paragraph 2a. The Dayton

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169 170 171

172

173 174 175

176 177 178

179

Peace Accords, , See the “Agreement on Special Parallel Relations between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republika Srpska,” Review of International Affairs 48 (February 15–March 15 1997) pp. 16–17. For accounts of ethnic cleansing and the concentration camps set up throughout the region, see Peter Maas, Love Thy Neighbor: A Story of War (New York, NY: Knopf, 1996), and Vulliamy, “‘Neutrality’ and the Absence of Reckoning.” Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 45. Ibid., p. 46. Bosco, “Reintegrating Bosnia,” p. 67. Cousens and Cater noted additional reasons for holding the elections at the earliest possible time even if the preparations were not completed: IFOR’s mandate was scheduled to end by December 1996; elections were supposed to ﬁll ofﬁces with moderate Bosnians who would be able to avoid further conﬂict within Bosnia so that IFOR could leave and keep a Clintonian promise – during a US presidential election year. Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 113. “Many of the Bosnian political leaders derived their power from their positions at the helm of sophisticated war-proﬁteering operations that continue to dominate the black market – an underground economy that still makes up roughly 50 percent of the economy as a whole.” Singer, “Bosnia 2000,” p. 32. For example, the SDA still “distributes apartments as political rewards to loyal members to the exclusion of disenfranchised Bosnian Muslim refugees.” Ibid. Author’s interviews conducted during May 2000 in Sarajevo. GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, p. 30 (note 30), suggested that funds from these state-owned enterprises are also funneled into so-called parallel organizations, such as intelligence services and procurement agencies, that were outlawed by the DPA but still exist. Newal K. Agnihotri, “Bosnia-Herzegovina: Unity & Progress,” Presidents & Prime Ministers 7 (May–June 1998), p. 20. US Department of State, Ofﬁce of Research, Opinion Analysis. “Many in Federation and RS Expect to Remain Part of Bosnia Herzegovina: Bosnian Croats and Serbs Prefer to Join Croatia, Serbia” (November 22 1999). Fionnuala Ni Aolain argued that while the bombs fall, warring parties are unable to create a postwar structure that would address the causes of the conﬂict and prevent its reoccurrence. Therefore, the states helping to end the conﬂict have a special obligation to ensure a strong, realizable settlement that will allow them to disengage eventually leaving behind a viable state. “The Fractured Soul of the Dayton Peace Agreement: A Legal Analysis,” in Dzˇemal Sokolovic´ and Florian Bieber, eds, Reconstructing Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 67–8. See, for example, Ralph Dahrendorf, Reﬂections on the Revolution in Europe (London: Chatto & Windus, 1990), p. 99; Strobe Talbott, “Democracy and the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs 75 (November–December 1996), p. 62; and K.S. Fine, “Fragile Stability and Change: Understanding Conﬂict during the Transitions in East Central Europe,” in A. Chayes and A.H. Chayes, eds, Preventing Conﬂict in the Post-Communist World (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1996), p. 566, among others.

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4 BOSNIA’S ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE AND OUTLOOK 1 Paul A. Marin, “Bosnia is Beginning to Recover after Four Years of War, and is Offering the First Signs of Legitimate Business Opportunities,” Business America 118 (September 1997), p. 5. 2 Elizabeth M. Cousens and Charles K. Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia: Implementing the Dayton Accords (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 91. 3 Ibid., p. 87. 4 United States General Accounting Ofﬁce (hereafter “GAO”), Bosnia Peace Operation: Crime and Corruption Threaten Successful Implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, GAO/NSIAD-00-156 (July 2000), p. 3. 5 Centralna Bank Bosne i Herzegovine, Bulletin, no. 4 (January–December 2001), p. 8. Former Federation President Ejup Ganic´ estimated that more than 250,000 Bosnians left their country during and after the war and “won’t come home.” Christian Science Monitor (February 16 2000), p. 6. 6 Cousens and Cater reported, for example, that only 2 percent of telephone calls placed were completed immediately after the war. Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 89. 7 Vesna Bojicˇic´ and Mary Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of BosniaHerzegovina,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 94. 8 Marin, “Bosnia is Beginning to Recover,” p. 5. 9 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Council of Ministers, Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations, Entrepreneurial Society: Bosnia and Herzegovina Economic Development Strategy Global Framework 2000–2004 (Sarajevo: May 10 2001), p. 8. 10 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 91. 11 According to General Wesley Clark, approximately 750,000 mines remained at the end of the war. “SACEUR on-the-Record,” NATO’s Sixteen Nations (Special Issue 2) (1998), p. 11. 12 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 91. 13 “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 98. 14 Interview with the author in Sarajevo, May 23 2002. 15 Telephone interview by author with P. Noel Atcherley, Statistical Adviser, IMF, Sarajevo, May 27 2002. 16 Carlos Westendorp, “Peace Implementation Council,” Presidents & Prime Ministers 8 (January–February 1999), p. 23. See also Jacques Paul Klein, “Stopping the Whirlwind,” World Today 55 (June 1999), p. 8, who stated that the Federation spent 40 percent of its GDP on defense. 17 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 88. 18 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Entrepreneurial Society, p. 8. 19 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 95. 20 Bosnia and Herzegovina, Entrepreneurial Society, p. 8. 21 “Mirza Hajric´ Holds Brieﬁng at the National Press Club,” FDCH Political Transcripts (March 28 2000). 22 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 91. The authors further suggested that Bosnia’s productive challenges are not only war-related, but include in addition “loss of access to previously protected markets, dramatically increased imports related to the reconstruction effort itself, and reduced tariffs demanded by international insistence upon rapid economic liberalization.”

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23 CIA World Factbook 1999. . 24 “Mirza Hajric´ Holds Brieﬁng.” 25 Ibid. 26 Stuart Thompson, “Status of the Environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Current Assessment,” Georgetown International Environmental Law Review 12 (Fall 1999), p. 249. 27 OHR. . 28 For a discussion of some of the obstacles facing integration of Bosnia’s reconstructed services, see Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 90. 29 Bosnia and Herzegovina. Entrepreneurial Society, p. 7. 30 Christian Science Monitor (February 28 2000), p. 1. 31 “Mirza Hajvic´ Holds Brieﬁng.” 32 Ibid. 33 UNHCR Information Notes, cited in Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 93. 34 “Bosnia 2000: Phoenix or Flames?” World Policy Journal 17 (Spring 2000), p. 34. 35 Wall Street Journal (August 26 1998), p. 1. 36 IMF Statistical Appendix (February 11 2002). . 37 Statistical Yearbook of SFR Yugoslavia (1991), cited in Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 94. 38 Christian Science Monitor (February 28 2000), p. 1. 39 “Mirza Hajric´ Holds Brieﬁng.” 40 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 97. Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor asserted that “the World Bank conditions the revitalization of large enterprises upon privatisation, which implies that its restructuring should eventually be carried out by foreign involvement and private foreign capital – a process which seems a remote possibility, given the political uncertainties surrounding the future of Bosnia-Herzegovina and slow progress in achieving economic recovery, not to mention the fact that locals who have the money to engage in buying stakes of state enterprises are often war proﬁteers and criminals.” “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” pp. 111–12. 41 “U.S. Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) Holds Hearing on Corruption in Bosnia,” FDCH Political Transcripts (September 15 1999). 42 “Building Bosnia on Banknotes,” The Economist (May 1 1999), p. 66. 43 Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia, Recolonising Bosnia,” Development in Practice 7 (November 1997), p. 381. 44 For the mechanics of the payment function in Bosnia, see . 45 Thompson, “Status of the Environment in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” p. 260. 46 Ibid., p. 256. 47 Ibid., p. 249. 48 Ibid., p. 256. 49 Ibid., p. 257. 50 Aydin Babuna, “Nationalism and the Bosnian Muslims,” East European Quarterly 33 (Summer 1999), p. 197. 51 John B. Allcock, “Rural ressentiment and the Break-up of Yugoslavia,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, St. Louis, November 18–21 1999, p. 1. 52 Ibid., p. 2. 53 Ibid. 54 Ibid.

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55 Eric Rosand, “The Right to Return Under International Law Following Mass Dislocation: The Bosnia Precedent?” Michigan Journal of International Law 19 (Summer 1998), p. 1101 (note 33). 56 Carl-Ulrik Schierup, “Memorandum for Modernity? Social Modernisers, Retraditionalisation and the Rise of Ethnic Nationalism,” in Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans, p. 37. 57 This argument is cogently made by Schierup, in ibid., pp. 38–41. 58 For example, Allcock stressed that a good number of Bosnia’s Serbdominated rural municipalities were hardly even viable. “Rural ressentiment,” p. 8 (note 13). 59 Ibid., p. 6. Allcock illustrated this with the example of the change in political emphasis within Bosnia’s Croatian community from ambivalence to the prospect of Bosnian independence, manifested by the earlier, urban-based leadership of the Croatian community in Herceg-Bosna, to the capture of the party by a more radical, rural-based nationalistic faction from Western Herzegovina. Ibid., p. 10. 60 Ibid., p. 3. Xavier Bougarel pointed out that the warriors in the recent Yugoslav conﬂicts expressed their hostility toward their opponents by utilizing derogatory words denoting people who were ignorant, uncivilized, alien to the cities. The Serbs called the Muslims “balije,” while the Muslims called the Serbs “Vlachs.” “Yugoslav Wars: The ‘Revenge of the Countryside’ Between Sociological Reality and Nationalist Myth,” paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies, Boca Raton, September 1998, pp. 1–2. 61 For a discussion on the putative urban–rural dimension of the Yugoslav wars, see ibid. 62 Schierup, “Memorandum for Modernity?” p. 43. 63 Rajko Mursˇicˇ, “The Yugoslav Dark Side of Humanity: A View from a Slovene Blind Spot,” in Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), p. 58. 64 The author was treated to such conversations in May 2002. When asked how one knew who was who, the author was repeatedly told by old-time Sarajevans, “I just can tell.” 65 Gordon N. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War: Politics, Society and International Engagement after Dayton,” Harriman Review 11 (April 1999) p. 10. 66 The results of various studies and surveys underline this phenomenon. See, for example, Vecˇernje Novine (Sarajevo) (September 20–21 1997), p. 7; Oslobodjenje (September 12 1997), p. 11; Dragoljub Krneta and Milosˇ Sˇolaja, Politicˇko oblikovanje biracˇa putem medija informisanja (Banja Luka: 1997), p. 44, table 15, all cited in Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 10. 67 Singer, “Bosnia 2000,” p. 33. Singer pointed out further that “as much as $1 billion may be missing from public funds. The theft and misallocation ranges from siphoning off soldiers’ pay to buy luxury villas and cars for army generals to the news that the money intended for a Srebrenica memorial has gone missing. Some foreign embassies even lost signiﬁcant sums when the Bosnia and Herzegovina Bank crashed. Reportedly, the bank loaned funds to ﬁctional businesses and friends of the management who were tied into the ruling power structure. Family ties are also often leveraged, so that a sort of indirect kickback system, where the sons and daughters of party leaders are paid off for favors with free investments and phony positions, has emerged.” 68 New York Times (October 13 1998), p. A10. While FRY has the dubious

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69 70

71 72 73 74 75 76

77

78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

honor of being in the top ten list of most corrupt places in the world to do business, Bosnian economic renaissance is also considerably notorious for its extraordinary amount of corruption. See remarks to that effect by former OHR Carlos Westendorp, OBN news broadcast on November 21 1997, 20.00 hours, cited by Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 13. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” p. 14. GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, p. 19. While Bosnia has received more than $5 billion in international aid in the past two years, private investment in Bosnia has totaled only $160 million, a result of investors’ fear of corruption and bureaucratic red tape. “Needed: An Army of Investors,” Business Week 3635 (June 28 1999), p. 6. See GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, Appendix III, pp. 58–61, for a listing of “Bosnian, International, and U.S. Anticorruption Efforts” as of April 2000. ICG, “Bosnia’s Precarious Economy: Still Not Open for Business” (August 7 2001). . Charles Gibson and Hilary Brown, FDCH ABC Nightline (August 17 1999). “Needed,” p. 6. The article also described a Volkswagen initiative near Sarajevo that, because of bureaucratic squabbling and extortionate demands, can produce only ten cars per day. “More Losses in Bosnia; This Time It’s Aid Money,” Time 154 (September 20 1999), p. 18. Schierup characterized the Balkans as “Europe’s most important gateway to Asia Minor, essential for the further progress of overall European economic integration.” “The Spectre of Balkanism: Globalisation, Fragmentation and the Enigma of Reconstruction in Post-Communist Society,” in Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans, p. 17. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 88. See also Bojicˇic´ and Kaldor, “The ‘Abnormal’ Economy of Bosnia-Herzegovina,” p. 108. This was in addition to what was already spent by the West prosecuting the war. Since 1996, the US has spent more than $9 billion for military missions in Bosnia and over $1 billion for aid. However, in recent years, monetary aid has been scaled back by over 60 percent. GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, p. 64. Current budgets provide for even less funding, since the focus of American efforts has turned to refugee return, encouraging the rule of law, and economic reform. Susan Ladika, “Rebuilding Bosnia,” Europe (November 1998), p. 28. “U.S. Representative Benjamin Gilman (R-NY) Holds Hearing on Corruption in Bosnia,” FDHC Political Transcripts (September 15 1999). Bosnia and Herzegovina, Entrepreneurial Society, p. 7. For the difﬁculties in providing aid to localities even if they are willing to support the principles of the DPA, see David L. Bosco, “Reintegrating Bosnia: A Progress Report,” Washington Quarterly 21 (Spring 1998), p. 67. “Saudi Aid,” Presidents & Prime Ministers 6 (March/April 1997), p. 17. “Stability Pact for South Eastern Europe.” . Ibid. Chossudovsky “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 375. San Francisco Chronicle (August 28 1995), cited in Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 375. “Dismantling Former Yugoslavia,” p. 376. For the argument that American aid policies that discriminated against RS were counterproductive, leading not to compliance with the DPA but to “resentment and a determination to get even next time,” somewhat like the post-First World War European policy toward defeated Germany, see

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91

92 93 94 95

96 97

98 99 100 101 102 103 104

Charles G. Boyd, “Making Bosnia Work,” Foreign Affairs 77 (January– February 1998), p. 47. Schierup, “The Spectre of Balkanism,” p. 18. See ibid., pp. 18–21, for more on this issue. In this manner, Schierup accused the Western policy-makers of ignoring the local situations of the Yugoslav successor states and instead instituting in them “the same economic policies that brought about the violent fragmentation of former Yugoslavia” – “the neo-liberal model for economic reform geared to the needs of international capital markets.” Schierup continued that “the Yugoslav successor states are faced with the task of integrating with the world market on terms that are considerably less favourable than those they were offered as parts of old Yugoslavia. Insisting, in this situation, on privatisation in the absence of capital, on freeing prices in the absence of working markets, and on the comparative advantages of cheap labour, when there are no jobs and no export opportunities, will lead to the perpetuation of economic crisis and to continuous social and political instability” (p. 22). German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel reiterated the international community’s approach to economic aid for Bosnia when he said in December 1997 that “those who support Dayton will receive aid; those who do not will receive nothing.” Press Conference, December 1997, Sarajevo, cited by Bosco, “Reintegrating Bosnia,” p. 67. Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 96. “EU Sends Aid to Bosnian-Serb Government,” Europe no. 374 (March 1998), p. 24. Richard Holbrooke, “Upholding Dayton: Keeping the Peace in Bosnia,” Harvard International Review 19 (Fall 1997), p. 42. “The fusion in Bosnia of aid agency negotiated access with, at least in theory, military protection for humanitarian logistics and civilian safe areas, represented a culmination of the major trends within the aid industry during the ﬁrst half of the 1990s. One could deﬁne this movement as that of UN-led military humanitarianism” (a concept discredited by the Bosnian experience). Mark Dufﬁeld, “Lunching with Killers: Aid, Security and the Balkan Crisis,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans, p. 129. Schierup, “The Spectre of Balkanism,” p. 21. GAO, Bosnia Peace Operation, p. 3 (note 2). See also “Benchmarks for a Sustainable Peace,” House Document 106–277, (September 20 2000), p. 14. . Charles Recknagel, “Part I: Reconstructing Mostar: Rebuilding the City,” RFE/RL (March 28 1996). . William Wallace and Jan Zielonka, “Misunderstanding Europe,” Foreign Affairs 77 (November–December 1998), p. 73. Unﬁnished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), p. 8. Dufﬁeld, “Lunching with Killers,” p. 130. Michael Pugh and S. Alex Cunliffe, “The Lead Agency Concept in Humanitarian Assistance: The Case of the UNHCR,” Security Dialogue 28 (March 1997), p. 25. Wall Street Journal (August 26 1998), p. 1. James L. Cairns, “Meanwhile in Bosnia,” Christian Century 116 (July 14–21 1999), p. 703.

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105 To date, there are more than 95,000 websites focusing on the alleged appearance of religious visions to villagers in Medjugorje beginning in June 1981. This site immediately became an immensely popular tourist destination, creating a large source of foreign exchange for whomever controlled the site. 106 Allcock, “Rural ressentiment,” p. 11 (note 15). 107 With little outcry by Muslim federation leaders, one opposition politician noted that the SDA and HDZ “appear to have already divided the Federation both territorially and economically.” Vecˇernje novine (Sarajevo) (October 22 1997), p. 3, cited in Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War,” pp. 12–13. 108 Cousens and Cater, Toward Peace in Bosnia, p. 141. 109 Klein, “Stopping the Whirlwind,” p. 8. 110 P.H. Liotta, “If it’s Not One Thing, it’s Another: Bosnia and the Economics of War and Peace,” Mediterranean Quarterly 11 (Summer 2000), p. 102. 111 ICG, “Bosnia’s Precarious Economy.” 112 Ibid. 5 BOSNIA’S FUTURE PROSPECTS: INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 1 Our Global Neighbourhood: The Report of the Commission on Global Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 337. 2 “Democracy and the National Interest,” Foreign Affairs 75 (November– December 1996), p. 49. 3 Unﬁnished Peace: Report of the International Commission on the Balkans (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1996), p. xvi. 4 According to Viktor Meier, while Germany did promote the recognition of Slovenia, which eventually led to the collapse of the Yugoslav entity, Germany should not be blamed for the ensuing disaster as Germany was merely ﬁlling the power vacuum left by Western diplomatic failures during this period. Viktor Meier, Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise (New York, NY: Routledge, 1999) pp. 235–43. 5 Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1995), p. 11. 6 See, for example, Senator Robert Dole’s comment that “I don’t see any reason for their [NATO’s] existence if they have to take orders from the UN.” Financial Times (November 21 1994), p. 1. 7 Richard Holbrooke et al., “Kosovo to East Timor–A First Draft of History,” New Perspectives Quarterly 16 (Fall 1999), p. 18. 8 Carl-Ulrik Schierup, “The Spectre of Balkanism: Globalisation, Fragmentation and the Enigma of Reconstruction in Post-Communist Society,” in Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and the Political Economy of Reconstruction (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), p. 12. Schierup seemed to have excluded the US from the charge of geo-political connivance in the Balkan effort, saying that the West Europeans were ﬁghting for privileged position in the area until 1995, when there was an “establishment of an overall US hegemony, iron-ﬁstedly directing the further course of events.” 9 Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 3. 10 New York Times (September 24 1996), p. A8. 11 “The U.S. administration, angered by the refusal of the UN peacekeeping operation to adopt the U.S. position and go to war against Serbs, led the campaign against the United Nations at the same time that it, as sole superpower, needed the UN more than other countries – to legitimize its actions in protect-

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15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

ing global security, take over policing actions that it had begun in the meantime in countries such as Haiti, Somalia, and Rwanda, and to enforce international law and the universal norms of a world order it had created after the Second World War and still led.” Woodward, Balkan Tragedy, p. 11. “Forgive Us Our Trespasses,” Commonweal 126 (December 17 1999), p. 5. Georgios Kostakos, “Division of Labor Among International Organizations: The Bosnian Experience,” Global Governance 4 (1998), p. 470. “Benchmarks for a Sustainable Peace,” House Document 106–277 (September 20 2000), p. 14, . See also John Warner, “Bosnia and Kosovo,” FDCH Congressional Testimony (February 2 2000). United States, General Accounting Ofﬁce (GAO), Bosnia Peace Operation: Crime and Corruption Threaten Successful Implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement, GAO/NSIAD–00-156 (July 2000), p. 64. The Guardian (March 16 2001). . As a matter of fact, Jacques Klein, then Deputy OHR, early suggested that the West “forget about exit strategy,” saying that Bosnia “is healing, not dying. But we are the life-support system.” Wall Street Journal (August 26 1998), p. 1. Aleksa Djilas, remarks at a conference on “The Bosnia Crisis and International Broadcasting,” Washington, DC (October 8 1997), p. 7. Susan L. Woodward, “Avoiding Another Cyprus or Israel,” Brookings Review 16 (Winter 1998), p. 45. Djilas, remarks at a conference on “The Bosnia Crisis and International Broadcasting,” p. 7. Former American Ambassador to Yugoslavia Warren Zimmerman pointed out that “we had no exit strategy in World War II, unless it was to defeat the enemy. We had dozens of exit strategies in Vietnam and each one probably conveyed the disastrous message to the North Vietnamese that we weren’t determined to stay the course.” Remarks at a conference on “The Bosnia Crisis and International Broadcasting,” Washington, DC (October 8 1997), p. 4. “America and Bosnia and Herzegovina after September 11,” in Muris Osmanagic´, Colleen B. London, Vladimir Premec, and Mustafa Handzˇo, eds, The Future Has Begun (Sarajevo: Svjetlost, 2002), p. 28. Kostakos. “Division of Labor Among International Organizations,” p. 475. See, for example, Alex N. Dragnich, “Distrust, Yugoslav-Style,” World & I 12 (December 1997), pp. 76–81. Author’s interview with OSCE representatives in Sarajevo, May 1999. “Our Goals Can Only Be Achieved through Co-operation: An interview with the President of Croatia, Stipe Mesic,” Central European Review 2 (May 15 2000). . Author’s interview at US Embassy in Sarajevo, May 2002. New York Times (March 20 2003), p. A32. John Warner, “Bosnia and Kosovo,” FDCH Congressional Testimony (February 2 2000). See, for example, “The Injustice Meted out to the Muslims of Bosnia in War and Peace,” Al Mujtama (Kuwait) no. 1177 (November 28 1995), p. 9, cited in Khalid Durán, “Islamists on the March,” Freedom Review 28 (January– February 1997), p. 145. Andreas Behnke stated the Western dilemma over the Bosnian conﬂict very succinctly: “Just when ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ has been established as the new danger to Western civilization, the West is called upon to support a Muslim government, which does not hesitate to accept aid and support from the worst incarnations of fundamentalist regimes against

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31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41

traditional Balkan allies of Western/European nations. “The Enemy Inside: The Western Involvement with Bosnia and the Problem of Securing Identities,” Alternatives 23 (July–September 1998), p. 380. Behnke asserted that the West’s hesitation to intervene was at least in part due to the “fact that Bosnian identity contains both Western and Islamic elements; that Bosnia is, if we accept the dominant way of categorization in the West, a contradiction in terms: a Muslim people in a Westernized civilizational space, a religious entity in a purportedly secularized political space. Above all, it represents the enemy inside.” That is, its Islamic population places it, from the Western point of view, in an anti-Western space, but as Yugoslavs, victims of Serbian aggression, Bosnia is also within the “cultural political space of the West,” even though its opponents are ﬁrmly Western (Croats and Serbs). “The Enemy Inside,” p. 377. See also the comment of Muhamed Sacirbey, former Bosnian UN Ambassador, regarding a concert by the multinational Sarajevo Philharmonic consisting of a blend of Muslim and European music: the concert was supposed to at least partially reconcile “East and West, Islam and Christianity,” an attempt to “signal Bosnia’s Muslims who felt betrayed by the West during the war that ‘we don’t want to make Islam into something that is alien to Europe and European culture.’” Peter Slavin, “Symphony and Dissonance,” World & I 14 (April 1999), p. 213. “Putting Iran in Bosnia,” International Herald Tribune (April 19 1996); “Iran Defends ‘Humanitarian’ Arms Lift,” Independent (April 9 1996), cited in Behnke, “The Enemy Inside,” p. 384. Dusko Doder and Louise Branson, Milosevic: Portrait of a Tyrant (New York, NY: Free Press, 1999), p. 207. Even today, Sarajevo inhabitants will scornfully point out the remnants of these mujahedin on the streets of Sarajevo, sporting wiry black beards, close shaven heads, and trousers that do not cover their ankles, exhibiting further the ambivalence of Bosnian Muslims toward the Islamic world. One Muslim religious leader scoffed to the author that “religion is not heartfelt if you lose it at night when you take off your pants.” Author’s interview, Sarajevo, May 2003. Doder and Branson, Milosevic, p. 117. Durán, “Islamists on the March,” p. 146. Unﬁnished Peace, p. xxiv. Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin Poyer, “Introduction,” in Jocelyn Linnekin and Lin Poyer, eds, Cultural Identity and Ethnicity in the Paciﬁc (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), p. 2. According to Géza Jeszenszky, “10 to 15% of the population of Central and Eastern Europe” belong to a national minority. “More Bosnias? National and Ethnic Tensions in the Post-Communist World,” East European Quarterly 31 (September 1997), p. 292. Explaining Yugoslavia (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2000), p. 330. “Historically, communal identities in Bosnia had not been strong; Serbs, Croats, and Muslims lived peacefully together as neighbors . . . Once the broader Yugoslav identity collapsed, however, these casual religious identities assumed new relevance, and once ﬁghting began, they intensiﬁed.” Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 268–9 (note 40). Allcock, Explaining Yugoslavia, p. 330. E.A. Hammel, “Lessons from the Yugoslav Labyrinth.” In Joel M. Halpern and David A. Kideckel, eds, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives

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45 46 47 48

49

50

51 52 53 54

on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, pp. 19–38. For more on the growth of Bosnian Muslims’ nationalism, see Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). Roy P. Mottahedeh, “Foreword,” in Mark Pinson, ed., The Muslims of BosniaHerzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. vii. Franjo Tudjman, Nacionalno pitanje u suvremenoj Europi, 2nd edn (MünchenBarcelona: Knjizˇnica Hrvatske Revije, 1982), p. 140, cited in Attila Hoare, “The Croatian Project to Partition Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1990–1994,” East European Quarterly 31 (March 1997), p. 122. Jeszenszky, for example, chronicled the fate of the minorities of Eastern Europe during the communist era. “More Bosnias?” Allcock catalogued a number of instances of elite manipulation of the Yugoslav “population policy” throughout the twentieth century in Explaining Yugoslavia, pp. 162–3. Jeszenszky, “More Bosnias?,” p. 286. See, for example, a statement by Bosnia’s wartime Prime Minister, Haris Silajdzˇic´: “People can live together even if they have different faiths or different ethnic backgrounds. There is no doubt that people can live together. Bosnia proved that over the last one thousand years. We lived together and whatever trouble came to Bosnia, it came from the outside, not from inside. Yesterday I had to point out that Bosnia was not an ethnic conﬂict. The conﬂict in Bosnia was caused by pure and simple aggression . . . In both its tragedy and its hope Bosnia offers a good example. What’s been happening to us for the last ﬁve years is an aberration in Bosnia’s history . . . The proof is that one thousand sacred sites, buildings, etc., of all religions stood until the end of the twentieth century. They were symbols proving that people can live together. But at the end of the twentieth century, one thousand sacred sites of different religions were destroyed.” Haris Silajdzˇic´, “The Consequences of Interreligious Hatred: The Case of Bosnia and Its Lessons for World Peace,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 34 (Summer 1997), p. 460. United Nations Development Program, Human Development Report: Bosnia and Herzegovina 2000: Youth (Sarajevo: Independent Bureau of Humanitarian Issues, 2000), p. 35. The ethnic breakdown was that 67 percent of Bosnian Muslim, 63 percent of Bosnian Serb, and 41 percent of Bosnian Croat youths would leave Bosnia, if they could. “Potmulo negodavanje: Istrazˇivanje javnog mnjenja: Studenti u RS,” Reporter (June 28 2000), pp. 22–4, in ICG, “Bosnia’s November Elections: Dayton Stumbles,” (December 18 2000), p. 19. . The Economist (February 14 1998), p. 50. Gordon N. Bardos, “The Bosnian Cold War: Politics, Society and International Engagement after Dayton,” Harriman Review 11 (April 1999), p. 7. Jeszenszky, “More Bosnias?,” p. 295. Muhamed Sacirbey, cited in Slavin, “Symphony and Dissonance,” p. 213.

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185

INDEX

Numbers in brackets refer to notes Abdic´, Fikret 53, 143–4(68), 150(149) Albanians 22 Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) 76 Anti-Fascist Council for the National Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ) 20, 21 Ashdown, Paddy 73 Austria-Hungary 5, 13, 14, 18, 87, 101, 127(1), 127(7), 129(16), 129(20), 131(44); occupation of Bosnia 9, 10–12, 130(27), 130(34), 130(39) Axis 19 Badinter Advisory Commission 40, 42, 141(41) Baker, James, III 37, 45, 49 Balkans 6 Banja Luka 69, 152(181), 155(20) banovinas 16, 17, 18 Bihac´ 45, 53, 57, 143–4(68), 150(149) Bildt, Carl 69–70 Boban, Mate 41, 43, 44, 52 Bogomils 7 Bosnia: agriculture 19, 29, 93, 96, 100, 109; Austro-Hungarian period 10–12; banking 75, 99, 161(94); borders 41, 53, 130(38), 130(39), 131(44), 141(41), 143(64), 144(72), 149–50(143); constitution 61, 75, 87, 90, 91, 99, 102, 154(13), 158(61), 159(71); corruption 84–91, 99, 103–4, 105, 119, 161(94), 164(151), 166(172), 166(173), 169(65), 169(66), 169(68); crime 64, 78, 82, 93, 94, 103, 110, 161(94), 165(159), 168(38), 169(65); defense industry 25; demography 92; economy 19, 28–29, 94–110, 166(172), 168(38); education 84, 85, 102,

131(43), 164(150); elections 60, 66, 71, 72–6, 81, 87, 88, 106, 157(45), 159(80), 159–60(81), 160(82), 160(83), 160–1(92), 166(171); employment 81, 96, 105, 106, 110; environment 100–1; foreign debt 99; human rights 65; IEBL 61, 62, 65, 73; independence 43; industry 8, 93, 96, 100, 101–3, 104; Islam in 7, 8, 19, 174(30), 174(32); judiciary 64, 72, 75, 81, 84, 155(26), 155(27); media 63, 66, 77–8, 162(107); military 44, 45, 53, 65, 66, 67, 70, 75, 94, 116, 150(149), 157(47); Ottoman period 8–10; Parliament 62, 155(26); peace conferences 42, 43, 48, 52, 53, 54, 57, 149(139), 149(142), 150(147), 151(173); police 65, 70, 72, 79, 81, 82, 84, 164(139); Presidency 62, 63, 71; privatization 95, 99; refugees 66, 78–82, 83, 99, 107, 147–8(116), 162(114), 162–3(115), 163(121), 163(131), 164(136), 166(173), 167(5); religion 83–4, 121, 164(145); resources 6, 11, 25, 29, 96; urbanization 101; war in 41–5; war criminals 66, 76–7, 81; see also Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska Bosnian Church 7, 128(10) Bosnian Croats 23, 24, 27, 34, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 52, 54, 56, 57, 62, 63, 71, 74, 78, 80, 83, 86, 87, 90, 106, 111, 118, 120, 123, 124, 130(28), 131(42), 142(49), 169(57); military 53, 57, 157(46); paramilitary forces 43, 44 Bosnian Muslims 2, 5, 7, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 27, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 52, 54, 56, 57, 62, 63, 67, 68, 74,

186

INDEX

78, 80, 81, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 106, 111, 115, 116, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 130(28), 131(42), 131(44), 131(45), 131(46), 132(55), 142(49), 152(181), 163–4(134); military (ARBiH) 55, 57 Bosnian Serbs 17, 23, 24, 26, 27, 34, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 52, 53, 55, 56, 57, 58, 62, 63, 78, 80, 83, 86, 87, 90, 100, 106, 111, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 130(34), 131(42), 142(49), 143(67), 149(142), 151(166), 151(168), 151(173), 151(175), 152(176), 153(183), 153(185), 153(187), 156(40), 157(45); paramilitary forces 43, 126(3), 141(33) bosˇ njasˇ tvo 11 Brcˇko 61, 66, 69, 83, 94 Bulgaria 19 Bush, George H.W. 32, 47, 49, 51, 146(101) Bush, George W. 116 Byzantium 6, 7 Carrington, Lord Peter 38, 39, 42, 142(55), 143(65) Carter, Jimmy 56 Catholic Church 7, 17, 23, 128(10) Cˇ ausˇevic´, Dzˇemaludin 12, 13, 17 Cˇ etniks 20, 132(73) Charlemagne 7 Clinton, Bill 50, 126(4), 146(95), 148–9(130), 149–50(143), 156(34), 166(171) Cominform 23; Cominform Resolution 24 Commission on Human Rights 64 Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY) 15, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 34, 35, 89, 101, 103, 134(95) Congress of Berlin 10 Contact Group 54, 55 Corfu Declaration 13, 130(38), 130(39) Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) 25 Council of Europe 64, 72 Croatia 7, 13, 18, 19, 22, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 45, 52, 55, 56, 59, 60, 66, 74, 79, 81, 87, 90, 93, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111, 115, 116, 118, 119, 122, 129(26), 130(38), 150(149), 150–1(161), 153(185); borders 141(41); Catholicism in 19; constitution 130(41), 139(16),

157(46); fascism in 19, 20; independence 46, 47, 58, 140(22), 141(43), 143(64); war in 38–40 Croatian Defense Council (HVO) 44 Croatian Peasant Party 14 Croatian Serbs 36, 46, 53, 126(3), 139(16) “Croatian Spring” 26 Croats 2, 3, 5, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 26, 27, 35, 102, 122, 127(1), 127(7), 128(9), 129(16), 130(39), 165(163) Cutilheiro, José 42, 44, 143(58) Cvetkovic´, Dragisˇa 17 Cyril 6 Dalmatia 19 Dayton Peace Accords 4, 57, 58, 73, 75, 80, 81, 85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 100, 105, 106, 114, 115, 116, 117, 119, 124, 153(185), 153(186), 153(187), 156(40), 159(80); implementation of 65–72, 154(12), 155(29), 158(66), 159(70); provisions 59–65, 159(68) Democratic Alliance for Change 75, 76, 161(97) Djindjic´, Zoran 119, 161(101) Dodik, Milorad 71, 73, 106 Dubrovnik 46 Duklja see Montenegro Egypt 25 ethnic cleansing 2, 3, 38, 43, 45, 46, 127(11), 143(61), 143(67), 145(87), 145(88), 149–50(143), 152(176), 162–3(115) European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) 61, 100 European Community (EC) 2, 37, 38, 39, 40, 43, 48, 106, 141(43), 143(58) European Union (EU) 2, 35, 46, 52, 54, 69, 72, 83, 84, 96, 104, 105, 106, 107, 111, 115, 120, 124, 143(65), 165(161) Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) 58, 59, 60, 61, 74, 80, 87, 90, 105, 108, 111, 118, 119, 169(66) Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina 55, 62, 63, 65, 66, 74, 75, 80, 81, 83, 84, 86, 90, 94, 96, 100, 105, 106, 108, 117, 172(105) Ferdinand, Franz 12

187

INDEX

First World War 12–13, 127(7), 130(39) France 18, 42, 46, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 69, 107, 113, 116, 117, 145–6(94), 149(137) Franciscans 7 Germany 12, 18, 19, 20, 37, 38, 39, 40, 46, 47, 49, 54, 69, 88, 107, 113, 140(22), 145–6(94) Great Britain 18, 19, 38, 46, 49, 53, 54, 56, 57, 72, 107, 113, 116, 117, 145–6(94), 150(155) Greece 24, 37, 55, 141(43) Handzˇar Brigade 19 Herceg-Bosna 44, 53, 74, 75, 108–9, 169(57) Herzegovina 7, 17, 38, 43, 44, 75, 88, 118, 129(15), 169(57) High Representative (HR) 69–72, 75, 76, 82, 88, 91, 116, 155(29) Hitler 19 Hrvatska demokratska zajednica (HDZ) 35, 41, 67, 73, 74, 75, 76, 118, 160–1(92), 172(105) Hungarians 22 Hungary 7, 17, 19 IFOR 61, 62, 65, 66, 77, 79, 107, 156(31), 156(33), 156(34), 156(36), 162(103), 166(171); see also SFOR Illyrianism 12 Independent State of Croatia (NDH) 19, 20, 36, 130(41) India 25 Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO) 17 International Conference on the Former Yugoslavia (ICFY) 48, 52, 69 International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) 76–7, 81, 119, 161(100), 161(101) International Monetary Fund (IMF) 2, 30, 31, 32, 33, 94, 96, 99, 137(138) International Police Task Force (IPTF) 61, 82–3 Iran 55, 67, 68, 119, 128(9), 142(50), 150–1(161), 157–8(53) Italy 17, 19, 24, 45, 54, 69, 108, 130(39) Izetbegovic´, Alija 40, 41, 43, 58, 68, 79, 141(46), 142(50), 142(54), 143(56), 143–4(68), 144(78), 145(89), 149(139), 150(147), 157–8(53)

Jelavic´, Ante 71, 75 Jews 19, 21 Jugoslavenska muslimanska organizacija (JMO) 15, 16, 17, 131(46), 132(56) Jugoslavenska nacionalna stranka (JNS) 16 jugoslovenstvo 12, 16 Karadzˇic, Radovan 43, 52, 55, 56, 58, 66, 73, 77, 119, 152(176), 155(20), 157(45), 159(72) Karadzˇic, Vuk Stefanovic´ 129(15) King Alexander 16, 17 King Peter II 17, 19 King Tomislav II 19 Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 5, 12, 13–18, 101, 122, 130(41), 131(42), 131(44), 131(45), 132(59); Agrarian Reform 15, 132(55) Klein, Jacques 72, 109, 115 Kljuic´, Stjepan 41, 44, 142(49) Korosˇec, Anton 12, 17 Kosovar Albanians 26, 133(88), 137(138), 141(41) Kosovo 10, 19, 22, 28, 33, 34, 35, 38, 80, 108, 138(8), 140(27), 164(137) Kosˇtunica, Vojislav 118 Kotromanic´, Stephen 7 Krajina 10, 139(17) Lagumdzˇija, Zlatko 74, 75 League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) see Communist Party of Yugoslavia Macedonia 6, 10, 18, 19, 22, 28, 35, 40, 58, 105, 141(43) Macˇek, Vladko 16, 17 Maglajlic´, Ibrahim ef. 17, 131(46) Markovic´, Ante 30, 32, 33, 35, 138–9(9), 139(21), 140(23) Marshall Plan 25 Mazowiecki, Tadeusz 127(11) Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences 31 Mesic´, Stipe 36, 74, 109, 118, 142(54), 157(46), 160(90) Methodius 6 Mihailovic´, Drazˇa 20 Milosˇevic´, Slobodan 30, 34, 38, 42, 45, 48, 52, 55, 56, 58, 105, 119, 139(21),

188

INDEX

83, 87, 88, 90, 93, 94, 96, 101, 105, 106, 108, 118, 119, 124, 155(20), 157(45), 159(73), 161(98), 163–4(134), 164(136) Roma 19, 21, 164(137) Russia 12, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 69, 89, 112, 114, 133(79); Gorbachev 47; relationship with Serbia 47, 56; Yeltsin 47, 146–7(104)

141(33), 146–7(104), 149(142), 151(166), 151(168), 151(173), 152(176), 152(180), 153(183), 153(185), 153(187) Mitterand, François 48 Mladic´, Ratko 56, 58, 77, 119, 150(149), 152(176) Montenegrins 16, 102 Montenegro 7, 10, 13, 19, 24, 129(17), 139(12) Mostar 44, 69, 82, 107, 165(161) mujahedin 45, 67, 68, 119 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 25 NATO 35, 39, 46, 47, 49, 50, 51, 53, 54, 57, 60, 65, 66, 67, 69, 84, 113, 116, 117, 120, 139(12), 140(27), 148(118), 149(132), 151(163), 151(175), 153(187), 155(30) Nehru, Jawaharlal 25 Netherlands 56, 96 non-alignment 25 Ofﬁce of the High Representative (OHR) 61, 69, 75, 78, 81, 85, 88, 90, 95, 106, 159(70) Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 45, 61, 66, 69, 72, 74, 117, 118, 160(82), 160(83) Orthodox Church 7, 16, 151(168) Ottoman Empire 5, 7, 8–10, 13, 18, 122, 129(16), 129(17), 131(48); Bosnian Muslims in 8–9; Christians in 8; Islamization in 8; millet 8; reforms (Tanzimat) 9 Owen, Lord David 48, 54, 55 Partisans 20, 21, 23 Pasˇic´, Nikola 14 Patriotic League 45 Pavelic´, Ante 17, 19 Peace Implementation Council (PIC) 69 Petritsch, Wolfgang 71–2, 75, 158(61) Plavsˇic´, Biljana 71, 73, 159(73), 160(86) Poplasˇen, Nikola 71, 73, 159(72) Prince Paul 17, 18 Radic´, Stjepan 14 Raznjatovic´, Zˇeljko (Arkan) 44 Republika Srpska (RS) 38, 55, 58, 62, 63, 65, 66, 67, 71, 73, 74, 75, 80, 81, 82,

“safe havens” 39, 53, 56, 115 Sandzˇak 20, 80, 129(17) Sarajevo 6, 20, 39, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 62, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 84, 87, 89, 92, 96, 109, 121, 131(45), 132(56), 143(67), 158(66), 163–4(134), 170(72) Second World War 3, 18–21, 36, 39 Serbia 7, 9 12, 19, 21, 22, 26, 28, 31, 33, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55, 57, 66, 79, 107, 110, 113, 116, 118, 119, 122, 124, 129(17), 130(38), 130(39), 131(45), 138(8), 139(12), 145–6(94), 150(149), 151(166), 161(101); Christianization of 6; in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes 13, 14, 16, 18, 131(46); and the Ottoman Empire 9–10, 131(48); war against Bosnia 51, 126(3); war against Croatia 46, 126(3) Serbian Agrarian Party 14 Serbian Autonomous Province of Krajina (SAO Krajina) 36 Serbian Democrats 14 Serbian Radical Party 14, 17, 71 Serbs 2, 3, 5, 16, 18, 19, 20, 23, 26, 27, 34, 77, 81, 93, 102, 115, 119, 126(7), 127(1), 128(9), 129(16), 133(88) Sˇesˇelj, Vojislav 44, 71 SFOR 61, 66, 67, 69, 72, 75, 77, 79, 81, 83, 156(31), 156(36), 156(37), 156(40); see also IFOR Silajdzˇic´, Haris 128(7), 150(156), 175(48) Simovic´, Dusˇan 19 Slovenes 14, 16, 34, 35, 130(39) Slovenia 18, 19, 26, 28, 29, 39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 105, 130(38), 138(7); independence 47, 58, 136(118), 139(21), 140(22); war in 35–7 Slovenian People’s Party 15, 17 Socijalsdemokratska partija (SDP) 74, 75, 76

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INDEX

49, 51, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 65, 66, 68, 88, 90, 91, 104, 105, 107, 111, 113, 114, 115, 117, 119, 124, 145–6(94), 149(135), 149(137), 150–1(161), 151(163), 152(181), 153(185), 153(186), 153(187), 155(30), 156(34), 159(73), 160(82), 161(98), 164(151), 170(75); “lift and strike” 51, 52; “train and equip” 67, 116, 150(154), 151(172), 157(45), 157–8(53) Ustasˇ e 17, 19, 20, 21, 24, 36

Soviet Union 2, 22, 24, 25 Spaho, Mehmed 132(56) Spain 53, 54 Sporazum 17 Srebrenica 53, 56, 104, 152(176), 163(127), 169(65) Srpska demokratska stranka (SDS) 35, 38, 42, 43, 73, 74, 76, 143(67), 161(98) Stability Pact for Southeastern Europe 84, 105 Standing Committee on Military Matters (SCMM) 67 Stojadinovic´, Milan 17, 132(56) Stoltenberg, Thorvald 53 Stranka demokratske akcije (SDA) 35, 67, 69, 73, 74, 79, 89, 166(173), 172(105) Stalin 23

Vance, Cyrus 39, 48, 54 Vatican 17 Vidovdan Constitution 15, 16 Vojvodina 10, 22, 29, 34, 35, 133(88)

Tanzimat see Ottoman Empire, reforms Tito, Josip Broz 13, 20, 21, 24, 25, 31, 34, 41, 44, 83, 86, 122, 123, 132(73), 133(79), 139(12), 139(21) Titoism 24 Tudjman, Franjo 30, 41, 42, 58, 74, 118, 122, 142(50), 142(54), 143(64), 150(154), 152(180), 157(46) Turkey 69, 119, 120 Tuzla 45, 53, 139(11), 165(161) Tvrtko 7 United Nations 39, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 60, 61, 65, 66, 69, 76, 79, 113, 114, 115, 117, 140(33), 142(52), 147(110), 148(118), 149(135), 150(154), 150(156), 151(175), 152(176), 153(183), 155(30), 160(82), 161(100) United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 49, 78, 79, 80, 107, 115, 144(81), 147(116), 158(66), 162(114), 162–3(115) United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMBiH) 72, 82, 83, 115 United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) 39, 40, 47, 48, 49, 51, 53, 56, 57, 62, 65, 79, 107, 147(111), 147(115), 147(116), 148(118), 160(82) United States 33, 36, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48,

Warsaw Pact 25 Westendorp, Carlos 70–71, 94, 159(68) Western European Union (WEU) 46 World Bank 32, 33, 99, 164(151), 168(38) Yugoslav Committee 14, 130(38), 131(42) Yugoslav Peoples Army (JNA) 25, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43, 44, 45, 118, 126 (3), 139(19), 139–40(21), 140(33), 142(50), 145(86) Yugoslav Radical Union 17 Yugoslavia: agriculture 18, 23, 28, 133(79); banking 31; borders 40; communist era 21–33; constitutions 22, 26, 34, 35, 36, 40; economy 18, 27–33, 34, 92, 134–5(102), 137(138); elections 35; industry 18, 23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 133(79); language 27; media 3; minorities 26, 40; nonalignment 2, 123; relationship with West 25; religion 27, 134(95); royal dictatorship 16–18; in Second World War 18–21; territorial defense forces 25; unemployment 29, 32; workers’ self-management 24, 32, 34; see also Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes; Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Yugoslavism 24, 26 Yugoslavs 27 Zimmerman, Warren 43

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