Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Broken Bosnia: The Localized Geopolitics of Displacement and Return in Two Bosnian Places

2005; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 95; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1467-8306.2005.00479.x

1467-8306

Carl T. Dahlman, Gearóid Ó Tuathail,

Cyprus History, Politics, Society

Abstract Abstract The Dayton Peace Accords brought the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina to an end but left ethnonationalism undefeated and the country divided. The Accords legitimized the wartime entity Republika Srpska, created by ethnic cleansing, yet offered the possibility of reversing ethnic cleansing with Annex VII, which declared the right of those displaced to return to their prewar homes. Implementing Annex VII across ethnonationalist-dominated localities was a struggle of power, capacity, and law over the control of place in postwar Bosnia. This article examines the localized geopolitics of wartime displacement and postwar returns in two contrasting Bosnian counties, Zvornik in eastern Bosnia, and Jajce in central Bosnia. Based on extensive fieldwork in both places, the article documents how the Bosnian wars radically transformed the demographic character and cultural landscape of both places. The postwar effort to implement Annex VII developed as a struggle over place between entrenched local ethnonationalists, multiple international agencies, and displaced persons. In the years following the war, ethnonationalist forces were largely successful in blocking "minority returns." In response, the international community had, by 1999, imposed a legal system upon Bosnia's entities that facilitated returns and developed the local capacity to allow returns to (re)take place. Power tilted from localized ethnonationalists to localized internationals, and ethnically cleansed Bosnian places began to see more and more minority returns. Bosnian places, however, will never be as they were before the war. Bosnia remains a broken country. Key Words: Bosnia and Herzegovinalocalized geopoliticswartime displacementpostwar returnsrefugees and displaced personsinternational communityZvornikJajce Acknowledgements The research for this article was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation grants BCS # 0137106 and 0136847. The authors would like to thank Ramajana Zahirović and all those across Bosnia-Herzegovina who granted us interviews. OSCE officials spoke as private persons and not as official spokespersons for their organization. Notes 1. The estimated number of dead includes war-related deaths, the missing, and the higher mortality rate during the war. In the absence of a post-war census, there remains some debate over the number of deaths caused by the war and ethnic cleansing versus the general and indirect consequences of war's hardships on the civilian population (Burg and Shoup 1999 Burg, S. L. and Shoup, P. S. 1999. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic conflict and international intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar], 169–71; UNDP 2002, 111–13). 2. The local political subdivision of Bosnia is the opština or općina, which is usually translated as "municipality." We prefer the term "county," however, since opštini comprise not only urban areas but their rural hinterlands. Before the war, Bosnia had 109 counties. The war and subsequent interentity boundary line split many counties, leaving the Federation with eighty and Republika Srpska with sixty-two. 3. Emplotment is the organization of facts, events, action, and protagonists so they become components of a particular story (White 1973 White, H. 1973. Metahistory: The historical imagination in nineteenth-century Europe, Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. [Google Scholar]). For a discussion of the emplotment of the Yugoslavian breakup, see Campbell (1998, 33 Campbell, D. 1998. National deconstruction: Violence, identity, and justice in Bosnia, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. [Google Scholar]–81). 4. By the mid-1970s, Bosnia had three constituent peoples or nationalities: Serb, Croat, and Muslim. As such, they had equal political rights in the republic, though the Yugoslav state did not recognize them as nations in the conventional sense. Moreover, the category "Muslim," and later "Bosniak," was understood as a broad cultural identity rather than a strictly religious one. In keeping with the contemporary practice among most Bosnian Muslims, we use the term Bosniak but use "Muslim" when this identity was used by our interviewees (as was common among Serb or Croat nationalists). Likewise, the role of religion in defining Orthodox Christians as "Serbs" and Catholics as "Croats" was officially limited in the Communist state. While these differences were not always unimportant, they were often less pronounced in urban areas (Bringa 1995, 1 Bringa, T. 1995. Being Muslim the Bosnian way, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]–36; Fine 2002 Fine, J. 2002. "The various faiths in the history of Bosnia: Middle ages to the present". In Islam and Bosnia: Conflict resolution and foreign policy in multi-ethnic states, Edited by: Shatzmiller, M. 3–23. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press. [Google Scholar]). 5. The organization of the armed forces in operation at this time has been established at the ICTY and by reports issued in connection with United Nations' investigations. The paramilitary forces included the Arkanovci commanded by Željko "Arkan" Ražnatović who appeared to take a lead role in coordinating the attack on civilians in these towns. Other forces included the Chetniks("royalists" under the command of Serb Radical Party leader Vojislav Šešelj) and the Beli Orlovi ("White Eagles"). Local "Territorial Defense" civil militia units, organized and armed by the JNA, operated under Branko Grujic who took political control over the county (Cigar 1995 Cigar, N. 1995. Genocide in Bosnia: The policy of "ethnic cleansing", College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press. [Google Scholar]). 6. This description is from the testimony presented by "Witness B-1524" during the trial of Prosecutor v. Milošević (IT-02-54). Transcript of 13 November 2003. The Hague: International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: 29,064–29,079 (available at http://www.un.org/transe54/031113E.htm). 7. It is misleading to describe the Bosnian war as an ethnic war since the motivation of many of the participants was not solely ethnonationalist. Criminality and plunder dovetailed with essentialized racist/ethnicist discourse to create a murderous cocktail. (On the economic dimensions of the Bosnian conflict, see Collier 2001 Collier, P. 2001. "Economic causes of civil conflict and their implications for policy". In Turbulent peace: The challenges of managing international conflict, Edited by: Crocker, C. A., Hampson, F. O. and Aall, P. R. 143–62. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. [Google Scholar]; Pugh 2002 Pugh, M. 2002. Postwar political economy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The spoils of peace. Global Governance, 8(4): 467–82. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Andreas 2004 Andreas, P. 2004. The clandestine political economy of war and peace in Bosnia. International Studies Quarterly, 48(1): 29–51. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 8. One source puts the number of murdered in the first three months of the war in Zvornik at between 4,000 and 5,000 (RMAP 2003, 14). The United Nations Commission of Experts (1994b, c) collected eyewitness testimony describing twenty-three detention sites and numerous mass gravesites in Zvornik. Many of these bodies were disinterred and reburied in other locations near the end of the war to hide the evidence of the crimes. One such reburial site, Crni Vrh (Black Peak), was only recently excavated and is the largest single exhumation site in Bosnia to date, containing 483 complete bodies, 150 partial bodies, 198 body parts, and 122 related artifacts (Interview with members of the excavation team, International Commission for Missing Persons, Sarajevo, 18 March 2004). 9. There are many examples in Bosnia of this sort of banal nationalism as a territorializing act. Coffee in Republika Srpska is "Serbian coffee," and one type of salad a "Serbian salad," while their equivalents in the Federation are termed "Bosnian." 10. The Bosnian war saw a dramatic expansion in the mandate of the UNHCR from refugee protection to serving as a quasigovernment structure administering the international relief effort for Bosnia. For a discussion of the moral complexities of the UNHCR's role see David Rieff's A Bed for the Night (2002, 123–54) Rieff, D. 2002. A bed for the night: Humanitarianism in crisis, New York: Simon and Schuster. [Google Scholar]. 11. The term "minority returns" was adopted by the Peace Implementation Council (a intergovernmental conference that meets regularly to oversee the implementation of the DPA), even though some Bosniaks were returning to areas, like Zvornik, where they previously were a majority. See Ó Tuathail and Dahlman (2004b). 12. The base number of 42,962 Bosniaks in what is now Zvornik (less the Sapna area) was estimated by the authors using the 1991 census. 13. The prewar population of Jezero was about 2,450, comprising 1,400 Serbs, 780 Muslims, and 200 Croats. It was, of course, almost exclusively Serb after the war. By 2004, only 224 Muslims and 4 Croats had returned to Jezero. 14. As the successors to the Yugoslav Communist party, the ethnonationalist parties competed for separate spheres of total domination, first in trying to divide the country and then in local places (Burg and Shoup 1999, 46 Burg, S. L. and Shoup, P. S. 1999. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic conflict and international intervention, Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar]–61). 15. Many displaced Bosnian Croats eventually received entry and full citizenship rights in Croatia. Their rate of return has been much lower than for other displaced Bosnians. 16. Brčko remained so sensitive that its status was not determined at Dayton but given to a special arbitrator who finally awarded its control to a condominium of the Federation and Republika Srpska in 1999. 17. Durable solutions may include citizenship, refugee status recognition, permanent and temporary right to residence, or extended work permit.