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ANTIWAR, Thursday, April 4, 2002
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
Bosnia Revisited
10 Years On
Ten years ago this Friday, the Bosnian capital of
Sarajevo woke up under a
blockade. Set up
by a Bosnian Serb militia to protest the impending - and
illegal - declaration of independence by a Muslim-Croat
regime, it escalated
into a full-fledged
siege and a bloody ethnic conflict that dragged on for
1326 days. In the course of what became known as the
Bosnian War
(1992-1995), Serbs fought
Muslims, Croats and - eventually - NATO. Croats
fought both Serbs and Muslims, and occasionally allied with
either. Muslims
fought Serbs, Croats, and
even other Muslims, howling all along for the UN
or NATO to intervene on their side. They also solicited and
accepted help
from hundreds of vicious
"holy warriors" from Islamic countries, claiming at
the same time to be secular, democratic, multi-ethnic and
tolerant.
The Fog of Facts
The war has been defined as an aggression, a civil
war, a religious or
ethnic conflict, a
clash of civilizations, a genocide, a war of secession
and a war of succession, with every belligerent using the
definition that
suited them
best.
Same thing happened with the casualty figures. No
one knows for certain how
many people
actually died in Bosnia. Usual wartime practice of inflated
claims of enemy casualties was combined with a new practice
of inflating
one's own civilian deaths, in
order to gain sympathy from abroad. Figures
thus range from 250,000 Muslims alone to 60,000 on all
sides. Similarly, it
is claimed that up to
2 million people were displaced, but it is still
unclear how many were displaced by force. Many certainly
were, yet they all
claim so. No one admits
fleeing in the face of danger, even if that is the
truth.
Beyond a doubt, the war in Bosnia was brutal.
Atrocities were a part of
everyday
fighting, and international conventions were hardly heeded as
boundaries between civilians and military were blurred to
nonexistence.
Sharpshooters on urban
frontlines picked off anything that moved. Millions
of land mines killed anyone who came along. Artillery
bombardment killed
indiscriminately.
Captured foes, military or civilian, were often brutalized
and killed. The real atrocities, however, quickly became
obscured by a sea
of garish claims
calculated to gain media attention: concentration camps,
mass murder, mass and systematic rape of women, and even
genocide. And while
it was easy to
document the everyday atrocities, finding evidence for these
claims has proven much more elusive.
A House Divided
To be sure, there are a few facts few can disagree
on. One is that Bosnia is
divided today
between the Serb Republic (48%) and the Muslim-Croat
Federation (51%), the remaining 1% taken up by the
internationally-run
"district" of Brcko.
The Federation is further subdivided into 10 cantons,
largely along ethnic lines.
The entire country is effectively - but not
officially - ruled by an
international
viceroy, with the prosaic title of High Representative and
offices in a walled white mid-rise along the former
frontline in downtown
Sarajevo.
Some 20,000 NATO troops still remain in Bosnia as
part of a "stabilization"
(i.e.
occupation) force, or SFOR. That's down from 60,000 sent there 6 years
ago. Among them are still a 1000 or so Americans,
despite a promise by a
former Emperor that
they would only stay one year. Many of those who served
in Bosnia are now occupying Kosovo, as part of
KFOR.
Word Games
Few other places testify to the power of words as
much as Bosnia today. Its
very name has
become a weapon in political, cultural and ethnic conflict
that still simmers in that ruined land. Muslims have
bestowed upon
themselves the name
"Bosniak," an Austrian-era archaism denoting inhabitants
of Bosnia, thus implying their ownership of the country.
Very often, Muslims
are simply referred to
as "Bosnians," clearly implying that Serbs and Croats
are pesky minorities at best, murderous intruders at
worst.
Residents of the Muslim-Croat Federation mention
the phrase
"Bosnia-Herzegovina" as often
as possible, as if uttering the country's name
could somehow conjure it into existence. In the Serb
Republic, on the other
hand, the name is
mentioned seldom, if ever - as if ignoring it could make
the country disappear.
Rather than simple word games, these are serious
indicators that the
attitudes which a
decade ago led to the war are alive and well today,
ingrained deeply into the fabric of society, and poisoning
ethnic relations
every day
more.
Oscar Politics
Just two weeks ago, a picture about the Bosnian
War won the (American)
Academy Award for
best foreign film. The award, earned by Danis Tanovic for
his brilliant directing, a clever screenplay and
captivating music score,
was immediately
drawn into Bosnia's political maelstrom. His words from the
award ceremony, "This is for my country, for Bosnia," were
twisted and
abused almost as soon as he
uttered them.
Thus the Bosnian Serbs, portrayed rather
unflatteringly in "No Man's Land,"
smarted
and scoffed at the accomplishment. Croats claimed the award as their
own, on the grounds that many ethnic Croats
starred in the film. Bosnian
Muslims, on
the other hand, would not shut up about their success; Tanovic
is a Muslim, and the film sometimes unabashedly peddled
their war
propaganda. Yet they
conveniently forgot that the Muslim authorities'
refusal to allow Tanovic to film in Bosnia made him move
the production to
Slovenia.
To his greatest credit, Tanovic himself refused to
be drawn into politics,
staying away from
the limelight and even avoiding a triumphant return to
Sarajevo he knew would turn into a media
circus.
Back To Square One?
Just last week, the departing viceroy managed to
convince some of Bosnia's
leading
politicians to agree on a package of constitutional reforms that
would give greater rights to all three major
ethnic groups. This is seen as
a step
ahead from the institutional discrimination of the Dayton Peace
Agreement, which favored ethnic oligarchies.
Nonetheless, the reforms are still based on
ethnic, collective politics, and
their
system of quotas and parity is merely trying to restore the situation
from just before the war. This system, and its
abuse by ethnic parties, led
to the war in
1992. Reinstating it will hardly undo the damage.
Ironically, the judicial review that led to the
reforms was initiated by the
wartime
Muslim leadership, which hoped to accomplish its goal of unifying
Bosnia under Muslim domination by abolishing the
Serb Republic. The current
agreement
thwarts that plan, but it's far from being defeated. As long as it
exists, Serb and Croat politicians will bitterly
oppose all calls for a
citizens' republic,
a non-ethnic political society that might give Bosnia a
raison d'etre and a future. Muslim integrationists' wartime
claim to
represent a secular, citizens'
republic seems to have poisoned that well for
a long time to come.
No Man's Land
Unlike irony, tragedy, suffering or deceit, hope
is one thing Bosnia is
perpetually short
of. Stumbling under the weight of loss, destruction,
poverty, crime and repression that have marked the past
decade, the
residents of Bosnia are far
from any sort of miraculous deliverance. Some
ruined buildings may have been mended, but the wounds in
people's souls may
never be.
Meanwhile, Bosnia continues to exist as a sort of
black hole, bereft of
meaning, form,
function or future. In order to be free, those who live in it
need to take responsibility for their feelings. But what
then? Bosnia's
peoples could find a way to
live together and build a true Bosnian nation.
Or, they could peaceably part and bury Bosnia as Yugoslavia
- another idea
of multi-ethnic coexistence
- was buried recently. Or, most likely, they
would simply jump into another round of ethnic bloodshed,
hoping that
violence could persuade the
others, or at least kill them off.
The occupation is not addressing any of the
persisting ethnic, political or
even
social issues. It merely represses them, postponing the day of
reckoning and prolonging Bosnia's continuing agony. Such an
approach is
somewhat justified by the
absence of bloodshed, but it might make things
worse in the long run - if they can possibly get worse,
that is.
Bosnia is a living monument to the horror of
Yugoslav dissolution, the
harrowing
reminder that people are not footnotes, and can't simply be erased
or left behind. It is, as Tanovic's film so aptly
states, a "No Man's Land,"
resting on a
landmine that would surely kill if it were to try and rise. It
is a testament to Empire's criminal misconduct in the
Balkans, as it sought
to impose unworkable
solutions without understanding the problems.
Most of all, ten years later, Bosnia remains a
paradox. And those were never
easy to
inhabit.
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