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Bosnia's Third Space? Nationalist Separatism and International Supervision in Bosnia's Brčko District

2006; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 11; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14650040600891063

1557-3028

Carl T. Dahlman, Gearóid Ó Tuathail,

Balkan and Eastern European Studies

This article analyses how the strategic Bosnian locality of Brčko emerged as a distinctive geopolitical space during the post-war period. This resulted from the struggle between separatist nationalisms and the international community over the status of displaced persons in Bosnia, but this struggle played out differently in the municipality of Brčko as its status was unresolved at Dayton and for years afterward. Post-war nationalist rivalry to determine Brčko's status through the manipulation of displaced persons provoked the creation of the Brčko District as a territorial condominium nominally shared by Bosnia's two entities but under direct international supervision. Drawing upon fieldwork in Bosnia, we develop a critical geopolitical account of Brčko from wartime through the post-war period to the present. The article concludes by considering whether Brčko as a third geopolitical space holds potential to offer Bosnia a third space, overcoming the oppositional binaries of the war.