Contents of Left Feminists
A multi-cultural and multi-ethnic
7 Bosnia: The cynicism of the great powers
Athens, Greece, 3-5 November 1995
Nationalism and racism, endemic in much of Europe, are undermining the existence of multi-cultural, multiethnic
13 Bosnia: Stop the imperialist military intervention! societies. The war in Bosnia, stricter border controls in Fortress
Europe, the sometimes violent disintegration of the former states of central and eastern Europe, and the rise of
Canada
International Viewpoint #270 October 1995
3 Bosnia: One and (in)divisible?
Catherine Samary
Catherine Samary
10 Bosnia: Clinton and Bosnia
Kit Adam Wainer
Livio Maitan fundamentalism are crucial questions for left feminists.
Bosnia: Workers Aid?
In addition, a new pattern of migration into the southern
Report on Convoys to Tuzla countries of the European Union is leading to new forms of racism. Unless we build strategies for the recognition of
18 Russia: What stability?
divergent ethnic, religious, language and cultural groups or
Poul Funder Larsen minorities, and acknowledge the right to difference, we will see further polarisation in Europe.
21 Transcaucasus: From ethnic conflict to power struggle
As left feminists from many organisations and backgrounds,
Vicken Cheterian we need to strengthen alliances and networking between our-
23 Cuba: Turning point in Cuban-American Relations?
selves. Speakers have been invited from white European, minority ethnic and migrant women's organisations from Alge-
Jannette Habel ria, Belgium, Britain, Greece, Italy and the former Yugoslavia.
We hope to have participants from 24 European countries,
27 USA: The Farrakhan factor in the 1996 elections from Russia to Spain.
Joe Auciello
Participation costs are low, and reductions may be available for women from eastern Europe and others in financial difficulty. To
28 USA: The political potential of the Million Man March register, or for more information about the programme, please
Ron Daniels contact us as soon as possible.
29 Sri Lanka: Spectre of barbarism is again haunting Lanka
Greek Organising Committee, Zan Maureas str. 15, Athens 117-41,
Vickramabahu Karunaratne
Greece tel./fax +30 1 9239315, tel. +30 1 3632200, tel. +30 1 6463471
31 Morocco: Ila al Amam - 25 years of struggle
Communiqué
33 Book notes
Tel. (+33) 1/3792660, fax (+33) 1/43792961, e-mail
35 News Reports
Social democratic vote collapses in Sweden
Norway: Racist vote increases in municipal elections
Libertarian festival in Ruesta, Spanish State sent the views of the editors.
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Bosnia: one and
(in)divisible?
The ministers of foreign affairs of Croatia, the Federal Republic reasons.!. For the Serbs, the essential point of the new agreement of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) and Bosnia and is the Bosnian government's recognition of a "Serbian Republic"
Herzegovina have agreed in principle to a plan which marks a within Bosnia. This state within the state is to have its own radical shift in the conflict which is ravaging Bosnia and constitution and use the Serbian dinar as official currency. It
Herzegovina. But each party has agreed for quite different will have its own, already notorious, armed forces.
International Viewpoint n° 270 — October 1995 3
Now THAT the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has achieved the recognition of his "Serbian Republic", the same status could be accepted for "Herzeg-Bosna". Unless unification with Croatia proper is proposed.
The "Serbian Republic" is still without an internationally accepted capital. This is the fundamental issue in the siege of Sarajevo. Karadzic wants an ethnic partition of Sarajevo, like the 1947 partition of Jerusalem. The Bosnian government is radically opposed to any division of the town, which would mean new walls, barriers between, the separation of families, and endless conflicts. A huge number of citizens in the Bosniangovernment-controlled parts of Sarajevo have signed a petition opposed to any partition.
The other concern of the Bosnian Serb forces continues to be the creation of a state which can hold together. The logic of their war has been to link the Serbian "enclaves", to "carve out" a wide enough "ethnic corridor" in the north-east of Bosnia to link the two halves of the territory under their control, to "solve" the question of the mainly-Muslim "enclaves". Zepa and Srebrenica fell this summer. Bihac was re-connected to central Bosnia after a lightning Croatian advance in September, and it seems the Bosnian Serbs will suggest that they occupy Gorazde in exchange for withdrawing from a territory adjacent to Sarajevo.
by Catherine Samary
Paris, 19 September 1995
The "peace plan" awards 51% of Bosnia to the Croato-Muslim Federation and 49% to the Serbian Republic. At the moment of signing, the Bosnian Serb forces controlled over 60% of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The recent Croatian and Bosnian offensive may "solve" this problem. The Serbian population is fleeing the "restituted" areas but it seems that Serbian forces have not resisted very much. This might indicate a tacit agreement on the way "restitution" is mean to take place.
The terms of a cease fire seem to be emerging, but at the cost of adding thousands more people to the more than three million refugees and displaced persons. And it will involve the completion of the ethnic cleansing of the various territories.
Cease-fire or not, we are a long way from any coherent and stable "sovereign" Bosnian state. Nothing has been established yet. What form of government and parliament? Elected by who, and with what powers? All we know is that this will be a country with two constitutions, two currencies, two armed forces and two foreign policy.
THE AGREEMENT ALLOWS the Serbian Republic to establish relations with Serbia, and the Croato-Muslim Federation to form a confederation with Croatia. Cultural and economic relations with neighbouring states are normal. On the human and family level they can be essential. They can also be a confidence-building measure which weakens the secessionist ideas held by those parts of the Serbian and Croatian populations in Bosnia which still see "their" neighbouring state as the best framework for defending their interests. But if these special links with Serbia and Croatia are established without any defeat of the policies of ethnic cleansing, in negotiations dominated by nationalist currents, these links will prove to be a step towards the final disintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina, first into two states, and eventually into three.?
The tough "solution" of the Serbian question in Croatia has prevented the military and political unification of the "Serbian Republics" of Bosnia and Krajina (Croatia). This weakens the Greater Serbia project.
The dynamics which characterise the Croato-Muslim Federation are contradictory. The struggle to make it into a multi-ethnic and democratic framework, which recognises all its peoples as essential components of the whole, continues. Serbian recognition of Bosnia-Herzegovina can only encourage this process. A BLOODY SUMMER
The Krajina question (domination of the territory by Croatian Serb secessionists) had to be "solved" sooner or later. It is true that the negotiations dragged on and on partly because the Krajina Serbs had set their hopes on
4 International Viewpoint n° 270 — October 1995
DETER
Karadzic and the unification of the "Serbian lands" rather than on obtaining their full rights inside Croatia.
A brief look at the map of the bizarre crescent of a country called Croatia is enough to understand that the occupation of one quarter of this territory was a serious challenge to the viability of the state. Krajina sits on the main communications routes between the coastal and inland branches of Croatia. And while Krajina is a dirt-poor rural region, it overlooks the Dalmatian coast, Croatia's rich source of hard currency tourism revenue. To say nothing of the need to absorb 400,000 Croats "cleansed" from their villages of origin in Krajina.
But there were two ways to defend Croatia's viability. The first would have been to oppose great Serb nationalism by convincing the Serbs of Croatia that they would not become second class citizens in an independent Republic of Croatia, and that they were not under threat (as many of them thought at the moment of independence). The multi-national nature of the Croatian state should have been affirmed and confirmed.
Unfortunately, Croatian President Franjo Tudjman made "Yugoslavism" (including the very idea of a multinational state) into the main target of his election campaigns. In this he went much further than Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
The military re-conquest of Krajina, and the subsequent flight of thousands of Serb refugees from Krajina into Bosnia, are part of this second logic. As Croatia's sole remaining independent newspaper Feral Tribune commented, Tudjman had wanted to "cleanse Krajina for years... and he did it as soon as he could"
"As soon as he could" also means as soon as he could come to an agreement with Serbian President Milosevic that the latter would not intervene'.
As for Milosevic, since autumn 1993 his main concern has been consolidating his power, chiefly by achieving the lifting of the sanctions against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SerbiaMontenegro). The whole logic of the European negotiators has been to consolidate a Milosevic-Tudjman alliance, recognising each others' frontiers, and agreeing on the "orderly" partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina on an ethnic basis (be it on the basis of the front line at the moment of cease-fire, the "cantons" of the Vance-Owen plan, or the recognition of a "Serbian Republic" in Bosnia, as proposed in the latest plan). Milosevic and Tudjman were planning the division of Bosnia long before the outbreak of war. In this great game, Krajina represents an essential piece for Croatia, and a pawn of little value for Serbia — and an exposed pawn which it would cost too much to defend militarily. The other Serbianoccupied zone of Croatia, the rich lands of eastern Slavonia, is quite another matter. The two parties may agree that the region be recognised by Serbia as part of Croatia, but awarded a substantial degree of autonomy by Zagreb. The Croat opposition has for some time claimed that the "ethnic cleansing" of the region's main town, Vukovar, at the beginning of the war, was in fact part of the deal between Tudjman and Milosevic
Milosevic used nationalism and the defence of "Serbian interests" when he thought that an alliance with the extremeright nationalist currents in Serbia could consolidate his own power. But the war, and the 400,000 Bosnian and Croatian Serbs who have sought refuge in Serbia proper as a result, are increasingly unpopular with the base population of Serbia proper. In this new context, the idea of a total confrontation aiming to separate Croatia from one quarter of her territory, and definitively cutting that country's main communication routes, was clearly impossible.
In both domestic and international terms, it seemed more profitable for Milosevic to break with his former allies, the extreme right Radical Party of Vojislav Seselj. Better to come to an agreement with the Croatian President Tudjman. The break with Seselj in autumn 1993 has been followed by a new turn in the official media, which has "discovered" the
International Viewpoint n° 270 - October 1995 5
"excesses", even the "crimes" of "extreme Serbian nationalists"
This led to real tension between Milosevic and the radical Serbs of Krajina, who removed Milosevic supporters (who were ready to consider an agreement with Croatia) from positions of power in their "Serbian Republic" of Krajina. This left Krajina in the hands of Seselj supporters. Stimulated by the victories of the Bosnian Serb General Mladic, the authorities in Krajina voted their military and political union with the "Serbian Republic" in Bosnia.
Unable to control Krajina, Belgrade's propaganda became increasingly critical, which only increased the bitterness of the population of Serbia against their cousins who "held Serbia hostage". And when the Croatian offensive against Krajina came, there was no reaction from Belgrade.
In other words, the Croatian army had a green light from Belgrade. It also exploited the exasperation of world opinion with regard to Karadzic's troops' victorious offensives against the Muslim enclaves of Zepa and Srebrenica in July. American military and political support was virtually explicit in this offensive. REFUGEES
The Serbian refugees from Krajina will be used to reinforce the construction of "ethnically pure" states. In Croatia, the "rampant" ethnic cleansing of the Serbs4 (over 300,000 have fled, not counting the recent exodus from Krajina) will accelerate. There is every reason to expect that the real fears of the Croatian Serbs, the fears which nourished the secessionist project, will be amplified. There will be new "spontaneous" departures.
In Serbia the new refugees are a means of pressure for expelling the nonSerb population. But the resistance of Serbia's Albanian minority (which is a compact majority in the southern province of Kosovo suggests that these refugees will eventually be settled in the "cleansed" regions of the Republic" in Bosnia. This is the inexorable logic of the "partition plans" for Bosnia and Herzegovina. BOSNIA READY TO EXPLODE
Despite the essential role of Zagreb and Belgrade, the Bosnian conflict is not only a war of external aggression. It is also more and more a civil war opposing secessionist Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats to a mixed group which wishes to maintain Bosnia and Herzegovina. Muslims (in the ethnic-cultural sense) form the overwhelming majority of the population. All political currents are present in the population, and in the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is dominated by the Democratic Action Party (SDA), but not necessarily by its Islamic wing (except for the region of
The Islamic current in Bosnia oscillates between acceptance of partition and the struggle to maintain a state. The SDA tends to monopolise the real structures of power. But this is a complex and divided formation, only held together by the war. And from time to time the division between an Islamic and an anticlerical wing comes out into the open.
The Prime Minister Haris Siladzic (anti-clerical wing of the SDA) is much more popular than President Alia Izetbegovic (Islamic wing of the SDA). But each offensive on the Croato-Muslim or Muslim-Serb fronts increases popular support for the establishment of a Muslim state. And yet the creation of the CroatoMuslim Federation in Bosnia strengthens the hand of Siladzic, who is trying both to consolidate his power in the SDA and reach out to other, non-nationalist forces. His wing of the SDA expresses a non-religious "Muslim nationalism" - after the Serbian and Croatian ravages of Bosnia, many Muslims now feel that they are the only real Bosnians. Having said this, we should not forget that a large number of "Muslims" reject the ethnicnational identity ascribed to them, preferring a civic citizenship open to
The Islamic current is, in its essence less attached to the Bosnian state as such. President Izetbegovic has never hesitated to use his function, his powers, and the funds he receives from various Islamic states to attempt to re-Islamicise the Bosnian Muslims. Since the beginning of the war he has oscillated between accepting the ethnic partition of Bosnia (giving him a smaller, but more Muslim state which would be easier to Islamicise) or trying to Islamicise the Muslim component of a larger Bosnia and Herzegovina, formally non-confessional, but with many areas of life structured through separate communities. One of the advantages of the second option is the continued strength of traditional values (Islamic, Catholic and Orthodox) in the Bosnian countryside.
But there is a second Bosnia and Herzegovina, the mixed one. This society continues to struggle against all which stifles and destroys it. Mainly urban, it is supported by those of all origins who want a multi-cultural citizenship. This current is the major reality in Tuzla, a city mainly
Muslim in its ethnic composition. In the 1992 elections the people of Tuzla voted above all for non-ethnic political parties (liberals, socialists, social democrats) which had their origins in the former Communist League.
These Bosnians participate in the political life of the Croato-Bosnian Federation, through the opposition parties in the parliament, but also in the Citizens' Forums and the Serbian and Croatian "Civic Councils". Four of the supporters of this current, members of the Bosnian Presidency, recently denounced the Islamicisation of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Zenica region. Which proves that the Islamic currents can be opposed inside Bosnia and Herzegovina. given the negative balance sheet they draw of their participation in the government, without significant power, in the first part of the war.
Unfortunately, we cannot today talk of social movements and trade unions organising the workers of all the national groups, and seeking support in the neighbouring republics to combat socially and humanly reactionary policies. Movements like this are for the time being suffocated by the logic of war, and the ideologies which dominate. This is one of the key issues of the coming period, and should be a top priority for solidarity movements like the International Workers Aid's programme for Tuzla.
INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR
RESEARCH AND EDUCATION The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: an overview by Catherine Samary
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6 International Viewpoint n° 270 — October 1995
How will the Bosnian army and government behave on the territories which they conquer from the Bosnian Serb forces of General Mladic? And how will the Croat armed forces behave? In favour of a Greater Croatia, anti-Serb and very quickly becoming anti-Muslim? Or in favour of an alliance consolidating the Croato-Bosnian Federation, and giving it an anti-Serb character? Or even that of a current faithful to the tradition of coexistence present among all the peoples of Bosnia? The fear of the Serbian population and their flight in advance of the advancing Bosnian and Croatian forces are surely inevitable reflexes. And the risk of reprisals against them is heightened by the Karadzic-Mladic strategy of involving the civilian population in ethnic cleansing whenever possible.
We should remember what the logic of this war was, especially now that these objectives are being realised. Whatever the causes and responsibilities, the crisis of the Yugoslav federation consolidated currents which favoured the construction of ethnic-based nation states in Slovenia, Croatia and Serbia. Macedonia and Bosnia and Herzegovina struggled desperately to find a compromise maintaining some form of Yugoslavia, right up until the day they were faced with the fait accompli of the declarations of independence of Slovenia and Croatia.
The Serbian leadership and Serbian nationalists favoured a federal Yugoslavia, without accepting that the constituent republics have real sovereignty. And they refused to accept the transformation of Yugoslavia into a confederation unless the frontiers of the various components were first withdrawn. Even before the war, they accepted that the massive displacement of populations would be an inevitable mechanism in the creation of "ethnic frontiers" to replace the "false frontiers" of certain republics, and to completely suppress "false republics" like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and (for those in favour of a real centralisation, Montenegro too). "Artificial nations" like the Muslims (let alone "Bosnians") and Macedonians or Montenegrins would no longer exist.
This proved to be a point of agreement with Croat nationalists, also in favour of "sorting out" the Serbo-Croat frontier, at the expense of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The war has been the means for realising by force what could not be agreed by negotiation during the many secret agreements of Tudjman and Milosevic. In the sense that none of the populations concerned would have "spontaneously" accepted its massive displacement. The only way to push four million people into exile and transit is by force.
Notes 1. The Bosnian government is happy that Serbia recognises the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina within its original borders. But this is not the same as the consolidation of a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural state on that territory. 2. Croatia recognised the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992. This did not stop them establishing and proclaiming, that same year, a Croat state, HerzegBosna, in the western part of the republic. Nor did official recognition of the Bosnian frontiers stop the Croatian army and the HVO militia making war on their "Muslim allies" to "clean" Herzeg-Bosna and its "capital city", Mostar. The end of open hostilities and the establishment of the CroatoBosnian federation in Bosnia, under US pressure, in Spring 1994, did not challenge de facto this "republic", which has its own army, and uses the Croatian Kuna as legal currency. Mostar might be the capital of "Herzeg-Bosna", but the town is formally under the "supervision" of the European Union, which has established a provisional administration. Nor has the new "republic" been recognised internationally. 3, Reproduced in Courier International, 17-23 August 1995. 4. Documented and condemned by the country's human nights organisations. 5. His Islamic Declaration (1970) has often been used to portray the Bosnian government as an Islamic state. While the work expresses Izetbegovic's deep conviction in the need for an Islamic state and religious structuring of all areas of life, the author also criticises those who see the Koran as the source of all knowledge. He pleads in favour of science, education, and the study of the experiences of other societies. According to Izetbegovic, Islam should win over peoples' minds, and not be imposed by a coup in a state where Muslims form a minority. Several months ago, President Izetbegovic praised the Titoist partisans of the second world war, who were able to consolidate their victories precisely because they were able to rebuild confidence between communities torn apart by a war between currents promoting ethnic hatred. 6. The last population transfers comparable in size were supported, sometimes organised by the victorious powers at the end of the Second World War.