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The ‘West Bank of the Drina’: land allocation and ethnic engineering in Republika Srpska

2006; Wiley; Volume: 31; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/j.1475-5661.2006.00213.x

1475-5661

Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Carl T. Dahlman,

Philippine History and Culture

The Bosnian war was driven by fantasies of geopolitical and demographic engineering which led to ethnic cleansing and the separation of Bosnia's ethnic qua national communities from each other. The post‐war peace opened up the possibility of returns, most especially the politically sensitive cross‐boundary return of Bosniaks to their old homes in Republika Srpska and Serbs to the residences in Bosnian Federation. This article considers one response of Bosnian Serb nationalist forces to returns, namely the strategy of distributing land plots to displaced Serbs to preserve the demographic consequences of ethnic cleansing. This study draws upon semi‐structured fieldwork interviews with international and local officials in Republika Srpska to contextualize the policy within former Yugoslav norms, post‐war Bosnian Serb politics and international community governance in Bosnia‐Herzegovina.