Bosnia at the crossroads by Catherine Samary
IT IS TOO SOON to predict the final outcome of two recent events that could change the course of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina; the taking hostage of UNPROFOR observers and soldiers by Radovan Karadzic's Bosnian Serb forces, on the one hand, and the counteroffensive by the Bosnian army around Sarajevo on the other. But the humiliation suffered in the hostage taking episode has in no way lessened the common determination of the great Western powers, whatever their partially differing objectives; to avoid entering the war and to remain within the framework of the "peace plan" proposed by the "contact group" (United States, Germany, France, Great Britain and Russia). This plan attempts to preserve the frontiers of Bosnia-Herzegovina (thus not recognising the states within states, the Serbian republic of Karadzic and the Croat HercegBosna) but at the same time proposes a territorial carve-up on an ethnic basis; initially into PLANTLA three entities, currently into two (51% for the Bosnian Croatian -Muslim federation, 49% for the part controlled by Karadzic).
Radovan Karadzic for his part is pursuing a constant objective; to obtain international recognition of the "Serb republic" of Bosnia in the name of the right of self-determination of the Serb people, as a stage towards the unification of all the Serb states. The union already proclaimed with the leaders of the Krajinas of Croatia, dominated by Serb secessionists, seeks to press home this point of view as an "irrevocable " right imposed on he ground through ethnic cleansing.
At the political and military levels Milosevic has a real interest in consolidating his power at the head of the Serbo-Montenegrin federation through the lifting of sanctions and international recognition. The war for a greater Serbia, which is being pursued on a 1000 km. front, is very costly and increasingly unpopular in Serbia itself. The rupture between Milosevic and his extreme radical right (with Vojislav Sesel in Serbia, then with Karadzic in Bosnia) has been a reality since a year now. But Karadzic is not a slave of Milosevic and the project of a greater Serbia has a real social base among the Serbs of the diaspora who — rightly or wrongly — regard themselves as threatened outside a Serb state. To build that state is moreover and above all the
UN raison d'être of the warlords like Karadzic. This latter will not give it up easily. Milosevic has not been able to sweep away these leaders in favour of others closer to him. Indeed the opposite has happened recently in Krajina, where "his" candidate was swept aside by the radicals.
In this context, all things being equal (that is, if the relation of forces on the ground does not deteriorate for Karadzic at the end of the Bosnian offensive) the paradoxical outcome of the hostage taking episode could be the reinforcement of Karadzic's international position. It is, then, towards a shaky and unstable compromise that we are proceeding. We do not know the tenor of the negotiations taking place in the wings, but one can imagine that Karadzic has agreed to "return" the hostages (a process which now appears completed) in return for a form of recognition of the authorities of
Bosnia-Herzegovina the "Serb" republic of Bosnia. This would without doubt be "compensated" for by a recognition by Milosevic of the frontiers of Bosnia-Herzegovina, accepted by Karadzic because associated with the right of B-H to confederate itself with Croatia and Serbia. The dynamic of such a scenario depends obviously on the logic of the existing forces. It remains more than ever explosive and, in the absence of a political-military defeat of Karadzic,
Pacific instead of a blow to the process of disintegration and nationalist polarisation of Bosnia-Herzegovina (and Yugoslavia as a whole), one will have only a stage towards a regroupment of a greater Serbia, with its chain of consequences in Croatia,
The objective of the recent offensive of the Bosnian army is to at least weaken, if not break, the logic of unification of the territories controlled by the Serbian nationalists. The Bosnian army has become more professionalism and settled in the course of the war. T • much more numerous than the pops (whose superiority is in hea mo). But there is neither defeat nor radical victory — as witnessed among other things by the continuing struggles in Bihac. It is undoubtedly as a consequence of these risks that Izetbegovic - after the first advances of the Bosnian army attempting to control the strategic routes linking
17 International Viewpoint #268 July 1995
Bosnia-Herzegovina Sarajevo and Pale (the fiefdom of Karadzic) — has proposed to suspend all the fighting if Karadzic signs the peace
For, although not satisfied by the 51% to it, the Muslim-Croat federation has chosen to sign this plan, preserving at least formally the Bosnian state. The political desire to make Karadzic appear responsible for a nonsignature has also undoubtedly limited the current offensive. But the essential questions are political. The Bosnian-Croat alliance is fragile because the common Serb enemy is at the same time, since the beginning of the war, an ally of the Croat nationalists against the Moslems, and because even in the secular context desired by a part of the Muslim SDA and the army, the federation remains dominated by the nationalist parties who all attempt to consolidate their exclusive territorial holdings and ideological grip. The some 150,000 Serbs of the federation remain in a precarious position in the absence of an equal status to that of the other peoples. Such is in fact the principle weakness of the Croat-Moslem federation in the struggle against the politics of Greater Serbia. But the federation remains the privileged framework of the resistance to the nationalist logic in defence of a multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina — which implies also that the identity of the components of the ethnic mixture is recognised. The regroupment of "Serbian Civic Councils" favourable to the maintenance of Bosnia-Herzegovina in several towns of the federation remains the proof that Karadzic does not incarnate the self-determination of the Bosnian Serbs — and that the federation is not (yet) an alternative guaranteeing the possibility of a multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina.
But is a multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina to be defended, even when a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Yugoslavia has broken up, and after the war has sown its sufferings and its hatreds?
It must be defended. But for the right reasons. Several bad reasons are widely understood - such as the supposed need to defend a recognised state. But this is after all a juridical argument. And Yugoslavia was just 18
International Viewpoint #268 July 1995 internationally recognised state.
A second bad reason is the supposed need to defend a recognised state under external attack.. It is true that the initial outbreak of armed conflict was planned in Belgrade, in connivance with Zagreb. But the project of carving up the territory was
Bosnian parties proclaiming mutually exclusive and intolerant nationalist programmes. To speak of a war of aggression (often reduced to "Serbian aggression") is also to deny any social base to the clashing nationalisms in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is a way not to ask the question of what problems must be resolved in order to live anew in a community of several peoples.
Some say that this plurality of peoples is an invention, and that only one Bosnian people exists, as the result of the secular mixing of peoples. This would mean that it is necessary to reverse the fatalistic argument which tends to justify ethnic cleansing
('Yugoslavia broke up, so what else can we expect the Bosnian people' is subjectively more solid than the "Yugoslav people' was. But this is to make an abstraction from history. First of all to abstract from the history of secular differentiation, where religion combined with socio-cultural dimensions to forge distinct communities, the subsequent history of the construction of nation-states, starting from the break-up of the empires in the 19th century accompanied by a fatal polarisation of the Serbian and Croat Bosnian communities towards the neighbouring states, from whence the affirmation impossibility of a common Bosnian identity, which sought to favour AustriaHungary against Serbian and Croat nationalisms, when the province passed under Austrian domination after 1878. Finally, there is current history, where the Bosnian state as common framework for the defence of the interests of all was rendered profoundly fragile by the coming to power of nationalist parties and a president with Islamic aspirations.
On the contrary, it is true that the secular history is also that of a long coexistence and tolerance. But above all, urbanisation and industrialisation carried out under Titoism during the recent decades have allowed the enlargement of horizons, the weakening of the weight of religion, the mixing of families. This real mixing of peoples has evolved and been rendered more fragile by the fragmentation of Yugoslavia — with, at the ideological level, a dominant polarisation by the various nationalisms which contrasts with the attractive force of the partisans and their multi-ethnic anti-fascist struggle in WW2. This mixed Bosnia is also less real in the countryside, which is a juxtaposition of communities - from whence the dimension of the siege of the towns by the
Yet even in the countryside there was no inevitable outcome of hate and fratricidal struggle. The role of the militias provoked the violence, the mendacious propaganda playing on the memory of past traumas are realities which have trapped the populations. Their manipulations have been facilitated by the absence of a progressive pole advocating a state of all the peoples at the Yugoslav and Balkan levels, as was done by the Titoist leaders —while distributing the land to the peasants. Today, the dismantling of social property to the profit of each state is accompanied by a real (and well-founded) fear of losing one's jib and land if one is not inside the 'right frontiers'. It is necessary to reverse this process. That is why (and how) it is necessary to fight for a multi-ethnic Bosnia-Herzegovina. This means responding to all its fears so as to isolate and defeat the nationalist chieftains - whether they are in Herzegovina or the neighbouring states. That is why it is necessary to reverse the fatalistic argument which tends to justify ethnic cleansing (*Yugoslavia broke up, so what else can we expect for Bosnia?').
What is necessary is a new union of peoples of the Yugoslav and Balkan region. It is the cost of the war which allows this idea to progress.
But there is no model, still less any simple slogan with which to defend these objectives — neither the Jacobean, unitary "model' of integration, nor the construction of states based on exclusive ethnicity. One of the keys to democracy is the distinction of citizenship (universal, independent of origin and differences) and of collective rights of distinct peoples, but transcending the exclusive territorial approach). But this is secondary to the essential element - the socio-economic development that allows people to live together without fear of the "foreigner" who steals your job and your social advantages. It is necessary to build this alternative logic on an European scale, not just in the Balkans. 20 June 1995