BoBosnia journal #2, Saturday, June 5, 2010
Banja Luka, Doboj, Tuzla
Hello folks,
Here’s more about my travels and visits through northern Bosnia: Banja Luka, Doboj, Tuzla. Just a “short” [a la Noel Malcolm’s use of the word] review of latest experiences. Breathe. There won’t be more real soon.
As I write this, it is again with much pain that I note the incredibly brutal attack by Israeli commandos on the humanitarian convoy of ships heading for Gaza with tons of building supplies and other aid, including hundreds of wheelchairs. Israeli spin notwithstanding, there is no excuse for the murder of at least nine activists -- just as [to bring up the background] there is no excuse for the three-year-long siege of Gaza, and associated atrocities. For more information on this situation, visit http://electronicintifada.net/.
BANJA LUKA
My main focus, for now, is to talk to activists on the grassroots level. This is the least organized part of society, due to a general sense of disempowerment and lingering -- better, increased -- ethnic tension as a result of skilful political manipulation. I am regularly told that people do not have a tradition of volunteerism; that they are apathetic; that they don’t see a financial benefit in volunteering. One has to be suspicious of the established NGOs, some of which are corrupt [practicing “humanitarian profiteering”], and some of which are in the pocket of one political party or another.
The long-term hope for Bosnia is among young grassroots activists -- there are at least a few hundred around the country, and the RS is not an exception. These are the people who understand that no one is going to save them -- not the domestic politicians, and certainly not the “international community,” which has just held a high-flown conference in Sarajevo. There, they made their due contribution to global warming.
In Kozarac I had met a few members of the multi-ethnic Banja Luka NGO, “Zene to Mogu” [Women Can Do It]. I visited their director, Sajma, in Banja Luka. ZtM, with some 170 members, implements projects in the city and nearby villages. They have funded the construction of a playground in Vrbanje, where there are returned Muslims and displaced Serbs. Their kids now play together. ZtM has worked with the local Roma, and set up a desperately-needed maternity clinic in Celinac. The women of ZtM are pozitivci.
Sajma said, “Why did I choose Celinac? I am a teacher. I chose Celinac because I started my teaching career there. I was like the children’s mother in that time. I taught them everything, including folklore. Later I moved on to another job. The war started. I stayed in Banja Luka because of my elderly mother, who could not move. My husband is a Serb.
“This house was full of all kinds of people, Croats, everything. One day two soldiers came to the door with weapons. They could have done anything, but they wanted to know if we had firewood. One of them said, ‘Teta [aunt] Sajma, don’t you recognize me? We were your students.’”
About the situation in Banja Luka, Sajma told me, “There has been much change in Banja Luka. After the war there was much criminal activity, selling drugs, trafficking, and selling weapons. Now, people have matured; they see what the stupidity was that they did. But the politicians are still about the same.
“People are poor. About 80% are living below the poverty line. They are not interested in politics; they want work. Women and young people have the biggest problems. Pensions are very low, and young people are not able to get employment. There is no production. This country could live from tourism and agriculture.
“I am Bosniak, and my husband is Serb. When the war started, my son asked me, ‘Mom, who am I supposed to shoot at?’ He left in 1992 and ended up in London. My grandson is able to get work as soon as he leaves high school. I went to London to visit my son. I saw Indians, Chinese people, everything. I asked my son, ‘Where are the English?’ He answered, ‘Mother, these are all English people.’”
OSTRA NULA
I met with “Martin,” a young local activist in the recently-formed group, “Ostra Nula.” The name means “Sharp Zero.” It has been the name of a brand of fine flour for cakes, but Martin explained to me, “The government thinks we citizens are nothing. But we will show that we can be a sharp nothing.”
Much like Dosta in Sarajevo [mentioned in journal #1], Ostra Nula’s first action was a protest against rising prices and the cost of electricity and telephone service: “We did a street action about consumer rights, passing out leaflets. People don’t know that laws protecting consumer rights exist. There is a prohibition against companies unreasonably raising prices. We created a tent out of black plastic garbage bags. Inside we displayed the relevant laws, as though they were hidden from the public in the dark.”
Martin told me that on the whole the action was well-received, but “people are confused here. They have nothing to eat, but people say, ‘See, we have the Republika Srpska.’ And if you are protesting anything that the government has done, some people say you are ‘against Serbs.’ It is a sad story. When we did that action on the street, some people ask us, ‘Who sent you?’” This reflects the idea that all political action is supported by one party or another, that no one can act independently as a citizen.
Martin continued, “Everyone fought for something in the war, but ordinary people have nothing. Not only the tycoons are responsible for this. We are, as well, because most people are not willing to look beyond one meter in front of themselves.”
I was intrigued by this rare acknowledgment of personal responsibility, and I asked Martin how he developed this attitude. He answered, “It’s just a normal thing. You can be here for five days and see it all. I don’t know how other people don’t see that. Maybe it’s because I was raised that way, although my parents don’t like that I’m involved in activism.”
Describing another project, Martin said, “We had another protest in March, where we carried posters reading “41 KM,” “160 KM,” “320 KM,” and “0,” referring to what all the others receive, who don’t receive welfare, a pension, or the lowest wages [320 KM], respectively. Four of us carried these posters. We passed out 500 leaflets. There were about 15 people handing out leaflets, which explained the figures. The leaflets did not enter into the question of why the situation is this way; we simply wanted to initiate discussion. We got a good response.”
Such grassroots activity is relatively new in the RS. Martin told me, “It is a success if we have 20 people who come out to an action.” Martin points out the paradox that “people know that things need to be changed, but they won’t do anything about it. Everyone knows that the politicians are stealing, but if a journalist asks someone about this, he will say that he doesn’t know, because people are afraid to say anything. If someone says that he knows who sold such and such a company, he could lose his job. It should not be considered a disgrace to protest.
“We can’t live a normal life. We are ghettoized, can’t travel. This is an imprisoned society. We are closed both to Europe and to other parts of Bosnia; there is no collaboration, for example, with Sarajevo University.”
There are a few brave people in the RS who are more prominent, such as the valiant journalist Slobodan Vaskovic, who collaborates with a Federation TV program called “60 Minutes.” This is an exemplary show that exposes corruption wherever it exists, i.e., among the leaders of all three ethnicities. Its director, Bakir Hadziomerovic, has received death threats in Sarajevo. In Banja Luka Vaskovic has received death threats, which are not to be ignored. Martin told me that Vaskovic now has to move around with police protection. Not long ago Dodik banned broadcasting of shows from Federal television, and now people can only watch them in the RS if they have cable access.
Banja Luka feels like a real city, not a town like Prijedor. It is spread out and there are fine parks and big, glassy office buildings in the center of town -- most notably, the ostentatious new RS government building constructed by friends of Dodik with money raked off from the sale of state-owned corporations to foreign investors in Serbia and Russia. This is one of Dodik’s several scandals; he has been under investigation for this and other boondoggles by the state security agency, SIPA, for many months. Nothing yet has come of that investigation; Dodik does not completely control SIPA, but he has his own men in that agency.
People are not out in the street in Banja Luka protesting Dodik’s malversations. While I was there, there was a massive gathering of young people to celebrate their graduation from high school. The graduating girls were decked out like parade-float princesses in satin and heels, looking as glamorous and glitzy as Las Vegas. Their boys wore tuxedoes. They filed down the main pedestrian walkway, with hundreds of admirers and family standing on each side enjoying the procession. A couple of Rom brass bands from Serbia -- which you never see in the Federation -- followed them, in and out of the line, playing “Erdelezi” [the theme song from Kusturica’s film “Time of the Gypsies”] over and over again. The baritone player kept gesturing to people to stuff money in the bell of his horn, without much success.
Kids are out by the hundreds in the kafanas, play-station joints, and on the street. That’s the “normal.” Regardless of their apathy or political delusion, as the case may be, or who their heroes are, you want them to enjoy this time of their lives. Later, it is going to be hard.
Clarity and confusion come in varying mixes in Banja Luka, as elsewhere. One young activist with good ideas about what to do in Banja Luka was asking me what happened in Sarajevo during the war. He asserted that “there are more returnees to Banja Luka than to Sarajevo.” That’s probably an exaggeration; the statement revealed lack of awareness of the Serb authorities’ fierce and ongoing obstruction of the return of displaced Serbs to the Federation. (Yes, obstruction of return of their own people. This was a corollary of the ethnic cleansing project, after all.)
DOBOJ
I moved on to Doboj, where I slept one night on the floor of a vacant room upstairs in the synagogue, constructed in 2003 -- the only synagogue built in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war.
I had visited Doboj only once before, in early 1999. Then a local activist for refugee return, Aleksandar Sakota, showed me around. He was a decent man who wished for his old Bosniak friends to return. One day he took me up the hill to the ancient fortress to view the town and surroundings. From there, he told me, “Over there is where I was on the front line.” It was with some dissonance that I learned he had fought in the Serb army. I asked, “Isn’t it paradoxical that now you’re working to bring back those people whom you fought against?” He said, “No, we understand each other well. It’s the people who stayed down in the town and tormented the Muslims, they’re the ones who don’t want them to come back.”
Those tormentors are still in power in Doboj.
I made acquaintance with a local man, “Vilko,” who showed me around town. As we were sharing coffee, Vilko told me, “There is much support for Milorad Dodik; he is a strong leader. The RS is better-organized than the Federation. Dodik will win the election [upcoming, this fall]. He helps the various ethnic communities, the Catholics…the Ferhadija mosque in Banja Luka is being rebuilt; the synagogue has been built. He arranged the sale of large companies and built the government building. Yes it was expensive, but… [in this way, sidestepping the issue of the the scandal]. Dodik supports the Razvojna Investiciona Banka [evading the fact that this “development bank” exists primarily to “develop” Dodik’s and his cronies’ bank accounts]”
Vilko continued, “If the Muslims and the international community achieve what they want in the strengthening of Bosnia’s central government, then the RS will be nothing but an NGO.”
It was a bit difficult for me to maintain a flat affect in the face of these assertions, and I don’t know if I succeeded, but it was important to me to hear Vilko’s attitudes. I asked Vilko what he thought about the ongoing controversy regarding the arrangement of a nationwide census in 2011. The Serbs and Croats want there to be an ethnic designation in the census, and the Bosniak leaders are mostly opposed to this. Their reasoning is that when it is shown that the population of the RS is shown to be overwhelmingly Serb, this fact on the ground will be manipulated to favor increased separation of powers for the entities.
Vilko said, “The Bosniaks don’t want there to be a census with ethnic designation, since it would show that “Sarajevo is 90% Bosniak, Tuzla is 100% Bosniak.” Tuzla is, in fact, the least ethnically-cleansed municipality in Bosnia, but either Vilko does not know this, or it doesn’t fit with his ideology.
I’m afraid many people in the RS -- especially those who gain advantage from being “politically appropriate” -- hold similar opinions.
Vilko told me that my old friend Aleksandar Sakota had passed away.
*
Vilko did me a favor by setting up a meeting for me with Momir Dejanovic, local activist and leader of the Center for Human Politics [www.chpngo.org]. This NGO implements several projects nationwide; one compares promises that candidates have made with their implementation after election. This type of project is always certain to reveal what people already know about their leaders -- that they lie.
Dejanovic’s evaluation of the general political situation in Bosnia is that ethnic division has happened and that it is a reality, and that the principal problem today is corruption. He says, “We are struggling against corruption. This is the basic problem in Bosnia-Herzegovina, not the existence of entities and national division. We have sent reports about corrupt practices to prosecutors here in Doboj and in Banja Luka, calling for prosecution, but without much success.
“There are companies that owe millions in taxes, and they have paid nothing. We could construct the entire [freeway] corridor “Vc” with the funds that are embezzled. The Federal prosecution has initiated preliminary investigation. Recently one of the bigger debtors, Kekerovic, who owed 7-8 million Euros, was arrested.
“We have filed complaints regarding conflict of interest, with no results. In the RS, punishments are mild. There should be more transparent proceedings, with stricter sanctions. Usually, transgressors only get something like a ‘warning,’ if they get any punishment at all.
“We filed a complaint about corruption against our mayor. He was a police chief during the war. He must have been involved in war crimes. In Doboj several dozen Bosniaks and Croats were killed, hundreds mistreated, and several thousand robbed and expelled. Almost all the Muslim and Catholic houses of worship were destroyed. No one from the leading political infrastructure has answered for that.
“We want to encourage other people in other municipalities to take similar action. But few people will involve themselves in this kind of work, because it is risky.”
I commented that there seems to be an unending list of criminal charges that are filed, and eventually dropped, due to “lack of evidence.” That list includes a remarkable number of the highest political leaders in all three ethnicities over the last 15 years.
Dejanovic replied, “The parties and many individuals are seriously corrupt. There was a reform of the court system carried out on the state level in 2002, but it was not successful. Laws were changed, but the reform came up lacking. Our research has shown that 80% of prosecutors are re-elected. They are people who won’t live up to their responsibilities; they aren’t prepared to bring the court system to an equal level with the other two branches of government. And the police are not de-politicized. They are not independent; they are under strong political pressure. We need to strengthen their investigative capacity.
“All this goes very slowly; we aren’t strong enough. We have not had good experience with our research; from one hundred complaints filed, only one resulted in a mild sanction, that is, a warning. And the prosecutors process fewer than five percent of complaints.”
Dejanovic provided more specifics on corruption in Doboj and the RS, detailing political padding of the staffs of public institutions: “Two or three years ago the OSCE tried to press reform, but they failed. There were 160 employees in the local administration then, and now there are 250. One can become a municipal employee if he is a member of the right party or has personal connections. …The RS railway system has 3,500 employees; there should only be 2,000. I believe that by next year there will be 4,000.
“The local administration is totally unreformed. The mayor comes to the municipal building once every ten days. He has seventeen advisors -- maybe more than Obama [I ventured that Obama has sixteen].”
This is a picture of the system that the tormentors of Doboj -- not the ordinary people -- fought for.
TUZLA
It rained a week in Tuzla, into the month of June. Soon though, I’m sure we’ll be complaining about the heat.
My friend “Amira” told me that a neighbor of hers jumped from her balcony and killed herself. She had co-signed on a loan, and when the borrower defaulted the bank came to Amira’s neighbor and demanded 30,000 KM. That woman was only receiving a pension of around 300 KM per month. [ 1 KM currently equals about $0.65]
The atmosphere in Tuzla is, as before, saner and more pleasant than anywhere else in Bosnia. Tuzla has remained relatively multi-ethnic, although many Serbs who left on the eve of the war, or during the war, never came back. The local government has remained in the hands of the anti-nationalist SDP [Social-Democrats] since before the war, and you don’t feel the insistent Bosniak dominance that prevails in Sarajevo. Meanwhile, development of tourism and infrastructure improvement proceed apace here. The smelly old swamp was turned into a park with a salt-water lake some years ago; now there are two lakes and a waterfall -- of salt water [!].
But not everyone is happy in Tuzla.
I visited the office of Zene Srebrenice [Women of Srebrenica], the widows organization run by Nura Begovic and Hajra Catic. They showed me dozens of snapshots that people had given them of their lost loved ones. Holding snapshots in my hand, looking at aged photos of ordinary people who were killed, I felt at least a piece of the impact of the atrocity that was committed.
The organization is participating in the promotion of an interesting project, the stub srama, or column of shame [check out stub srama on the Internet]. It is to be a monument in the form of the letters “UN”, about 12m wide and 8m tall. Some international organizations are helping with the financing. It is to be erected on private land, so there may be a chance of success for the project.
Meanwhile, local authorities have erected a large cross near the memorial cemetery at Potocari.
To date, over 3,700 identified remains exhumed from mass graves have been reburied at Potocari, and another 800 to 1,000 are expected to be reburied during the annual commemorative ceremony this July 11th. The women tell me that this amounts to fewer than half of the total victims; they are convinced that something like 10,000 were killed, well over the usually-quoted number of 8,000+.
ACTIVISTS IN TUZLA
Although things are in most ways better in Tuzla, the young people, perhaps because they have fewer worries than elsewhere [and more freedom of expression] have plenty to complain about. They are active regarding national issues, but they are also very concerned about local problems including lack of services for young people -- and, apparently, worsening corruption on the local scene.
I met with Gordan Isabegovic and Damir Dajanovic, two very bright young men who are leaders in the local youth NGO, “Revolt.” This group, in existence for about five years, organizes protests against tuition hikes, crime, environmental destruction, and some local issues. Nationally, Revolt collaborates with other local organizations rather than forming branches of its own group.
Gordan says, “We are not connected with political parties, even though people assume that. That is a manifestation of the typical conspiratorialist thinking. It is difficult to attract people to action, because of the high level of apathy. Volunteerism is weak, when people see no financial benefit from the work. People will only come out and demonstrate for concrete reasons, such as the murder [of young Denis Mrnjavac on a Sarajevo streetcar a few years ago]. We have relative success, since we have good ideas. We have local influence, not national, especially in the RS. There, there is a media blackout. We have about 30 active people, and we expect about 50 to be involved in our project.
“We have four goals in our campaign: 1. To expose the mistakes of the government in relation to their promises. 2. To emphasize the importance of issue-based voting as opposed to ethnic-based voting: health care, social assistance, education, and corruption are real issues. 3. To motivate people to vote. 4. To be in contact with politicians to pressure them to increase social expenditure. …On health care, we have caught politicians during a debate and pressured them to make promises to fight corruption. These are the things that constitute our strategy.”
Revolt has been active regarding a currently burning issue for the youth in Tuzla. They have a traditional hang-out center by the theater near the river Jala: “The police were starting to bother people at the gathering place by the theater. We reacted; now it looks like it will be ok to stay there. We sent out a press release calling on the authorities to leave that place alone.”
I asked Gordan and Damir what they expected to be the result of the fall elections:
“The upcoming elections are probably the most important ones since the independence of Bosnia. For the last four years, the government has done nothing to bring us closer to the EU. The economy has never been worse. Political tensions are also worse than they ever have been. If we don’t make a change in these elections, pardon my language, but we will be in deep shit. We can’t afford four more years, or people will completely lose patience.
“SDP [the Social Democrats] has lost real progressive power, it became the progressive party of the Bosniaks. They are nothing in the RS. Now there is Nasa Stranka and the NSP [Krsmanovic], but they have few votes. The SDP plays a good role in Tuzla, that’s why Nasa Stranka is not strong here. They avoided running a mayoral candidate in the last elections.
“There could be changes in this Canton and in the Federation, probably not in the RS. Our goal is to expose the mistakes that the government has made in the Canton and the Federation, and on the national level. It is hard to affect what happens in the RS, since all the media are controlled, except for one newspaper [probably Stav, of Slobodan Vaskovic] and one television station. Our strategy is to change things in the Federation now, and then work for change in the RS in 2014. Change that happens here could affect what happens in the RS.
“In the Federation there is the new party, the SBB [Stranka za Bolju Buducnost - Party for a Better Future, led by Fahrudin Radoncic, the notoriously corrupt publisher of the Sarajevo daily Avaz], which will attract dissatisfied voters. But the SBB has a concealed nationalism. Radoncic is like Dodik. In 2006, voters wanted to change things, and they elected Silajdzic. Now those people will vote for the SBB. We hope that not too many people will vote for them.”
“I want to stress that the officials of the international community are not innocent in all this. They speak as if they expect change, but they mainly support the members of the government, which works against the interests of the citizens; they never punish the politicians. They are responsible for what is going on here, because they created the Dayton constitutional system. It is a great hypocrisy!...if you had a population of Swedes, or anyone from any other well-organized society, living under the present Bosnian system, even they would not be able to solve our problems, because there are too many possibilities to obstruct good governance. I don’t mean to exonerate the Bosnian politicians, but the international community collaborates, morally and legally, with their operations.”
Q: What about William Hague [the new British foreign minister? He seems interested in Bosnia -- at least he knows where it is on the map.
“I don’t think anyone there is really interested in Bosnia and the Balkans in general. I see the EU ultimately as being interested in Bosnia as a source of cheap labor.
“It is ironic that some people in the the international community are using ‘terrorism from Bosnia’ as a boogeyman, when the population of all Bosnia is smaller than any big city in Europe, and many of those cities have far more potentially real terrorists than there may be in Bosnia. In one municipality in Berlin or London there are probably more extremists than in Bosnia; here, it is maybe one percent of the people.
“Neither Damir nor I are Muslim, but the Muslims here are the most progressive in the world; they are highly tolerant, more than those in Europe. The Wahabbis [Muslim extremists] do not have support here among ordinary people. Muslims here want to preserve their own identity. There have been confrontations when the Wahabbis have tried to take over local mosques, for example, even shooting.
Q: It seems to me that the incident during the Queer Festival in 2008 had a big impact, and really frightened people.
“That was about 100 Wahabbis, 100 idiots. They violate the traditions of ordinary people; they are not part of our tradition. Also, Bosnia is still a homophobic society. It was a big problem, too, that the festival was scheduled during Ramadan. Otherwise, it probably would have passed without incident. [I disagreed with this, saying that Ramadan was just an excuse.] I am sure that the Queer Festival could have happened in Tuzla, or some other city, without a problem, even during Ramadan, because it would have been supported by us and other people.”
MORE ACTIVISM IN TUZLA
Another day, I met with Danijel Senkic, leader of the organization Front, and with Suzana Hrustic, president of Mladi anti-fasisti [Young anti-fascists]. Both groups work against nationalism and corruption. One initiative they collaborated on was the recent proposal to outlaw fascist organizations such as the Ravnogorski Cetnicki Pokret [Ravnogora Chetnik Movement, political heir to the WWII wartime Serb nationalist and monarchist leader General Draza Mihajlovic -- one of his contemporary adherents, among others, is Vojislav Seselj, now on trial at The Hague]. Activists collected 60,000 signatures in a support for the proposal The measure was, however, defeated not long ago at the state level when Dodik’s party, the SNSD, voted against it.
Danijel and Suzana say, “These days, anti-fascism is associated with Communism. We must separate the two concepts. Anti-fascism is not a political program. The SDP likes to have a monopoly on anti-fascism.”
The two organizations are quite displeased with the SDP, both nationally and locally. They are, apparently, much more ready to confront local corruption than is Revolt. They have nothing good to say about the mayor of Tuzla, Jasmin Imamovic, and apparently the feeling is mutual.
Danijel: “We criticized Imamovic because of the attempt to remove the youth gathering place. I spoke on RTV-TK, in an informative program. Then someone from the SDP threatened the program director. Some members of SDP have arrogantly called us liars, even though councilors from the SDP supported our initiative. Recently, the municipal council decided to support keeping the area as a youth gathering place, on May 27th. There is a plan to build a stage there.”
Suzana: “We express what is on our minds. The gathering place for youth has been there for 25 years. Much love started there, many marriages. But the city does not have a feeling for that place.”
Danijel: “At the big Tuzla waltz [May 7th, to break the Guinness record], Imamovic gave a talk, and young people whistled at him because he had previously reacted poorly to a letter from the Front, calling for more services for young people. He had said that this was not a priority for Tuzla, that tourism and building a pool were priorities.
“Now they have built a new building on Solni Trg [“salt square”], in a place where there was supposed to be a stage. They say that that building is intended to become a museum of innovation, but we have found out that there will be a gambling place there! A party colleague of Imamovic’s from Srebrenik was given the contract to build the building. He tendered the highest bid, but Imamovic’s excuse was that he said he would build it the fastest.”
The building is not complete, but in its present form it quite ruins the quaint atmosphere of the square. Later I talked to a friend of mine, a local professor, who said, “I don’t know about all those allegations, but what about that ‘secret’ bank account Jasmin has in Italy, where the contractor deposited 100,000 KM?” I asked Amira about this, and she said, “Everyone knows about that. Jasmin Imamovic has entered into the category of serious criminality.”
Danijel continued, “The SDP here is ok, actually, but Imamovic is the problem. For the last year and a half, he has refused to meet with non-SDP municipal councilors. Originally, I voted for him. He had a good start. Now, maybe because he’s in his last term, he is trying to seek some financial benefit.
Q: What are your expectations for the elections?
“Our people are strange. I spoke on television; maybe I exaggerated when I answered a similar question. I said that our people are masochist and the government is sadist. We persistently vote for them, and they persistently rule in the same way. This is the only possible conclusion. We live in the ‘stupid Balkans.’ We have to wait for change. The young people think differently.”
We brought up the issue of Muslim extremism in Bosnia, and touched on the notorious incident of the fall of 2008 [see http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/journal2008-5.htm], when Wahabbi activists attacked and shut down the Queer Festival.
Danijel: “During the Queer Festival many NGOs reacted against homosexuals. However, we criticized the reis [chief Bosnian Imam Mustafa ef. Ceric]. I was speaking on the radio, and the speaker asked me, ‘What is the problem with homosexuals?’ I answered, ‘Their problem is that they can’t choose their sexual orientation, they are born with it. Then, they are born in a patriarchal country, so they have to escape from their families and sometimes even their friends. Sometimes they even escape into the ranks of the Wahabbis.’ I then heard a ‘beep-beep-beep’ [dial tone].
Tuesday, June 08, 2010
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Journalist Peter Lippman Bosnia Journal #1
[Peter Lippman has returned to Bosnia, and once again he is passing along his travel journal for wider distribution. Here is part 1. ED NOTE: This is a revised edition from the one originally posted.]
Bosnia Journal #1
June 2, 2010
Kozarac and Prijedor
I arrived in Sarajevo and quickly started seeing old friends, making new acquaintances, and setting up a couple of meetings. One worthwhile meeting was with Kurt Bassuener of the Democratization Policy Council, which perhaps could be described as being on the fringe of the international community. Kurt was friendly and forthcoming, and I consider his organization’s analysis to provide a helpful insight to the workings of the i.c. with regard to Bosnia-Herzegovina. (See http://democratizationpolicy.org/)
The international community has been struggling, long-term, to pressure the Bosnian politicians into creating a more practical and reasonable constitutional structure that can do away with ongoing political obstruction. Kurt says, “The three sides, if they are to negotiate, have three things in common: they want to keep what they’ve stolen, keep stealing, and maintain their lack of accountability.”
This is a good portrayal of the mechanics of Bosnian politics. On the other hand, adding some perspective, here’s what my friend Gordan, a local grassroots activist in Tuzla, said to me last night about the international community: “I want to stress that the officials of the international community are not innocent in all this. They speak as if they expect change, but they mainly support the members of the government, which works against the interests of the citizens; they never punish the politicians. They are responsible for what is going on here, because they created the Dayton constitutional system. It is a great hypocrisy!...if you had a population of Swedes, or anyone from any other well-organized society, living under the present Bosnian system, even they would not be able to solve our problems, because there are too many possibilities to obstruct good governance. I don’t mean to exonerate the Bosnian politicians, but the i.c. collaborates, morally and legally, with their operations.”
In Sarajevo I was brought up to date with the sad situation of Bosnians living in economic stagnation compounded by the worldwide economic crisis, in an atmosphere of increasing political tension that is customary in this year of national elections. But the tension is not new; Serb prime minister of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Milorad Dodik, has cranked up the tension through an ongoing series of clever, well-focused maneuvers designed to heighten inter-ethnic fear and suspicion. Bassuener says, “Dodik is the logical outcome of Dayton. We have a situation of deterrent failure, because no rules apply here.”
Meanwhile, pensions are low, unemployment is high, and prices are skyrocketing. My friend “Amira” in Tuzla says, “For three years my pension has remained at around 300 KM. But three years ago, a kilo of meat cost 7 KM, and now it is 15 KM.”
I have been hearing of people borrowing money from banks just to pay for food.
KOZARAC
I hurried up to Kozarac for the May 24 observance of the anniversary of the first Serb attack on that town, when hundreds of people were killed, thousands driven into concentration camps (Omarska, Keraterm, Trnopolje), and the rest -- a total of around 25,000 -- expelled. Five thousand homes in the area of Kozarac were destroyed. I have been following return to Kozarac since 1998, when the town was a dismal and foreboding place. Now Kozarac is a relatively pleasant place, where some 20% of the former (mainly Bosniak) population has returned. There has been return to nearby Prijedor, the municipal seat, as well. The 80% of people from Kozarac who now live abroad constitute a strong and supportive diaspora. I was told that return to the Prijedor municipality peaked in 2003, and since then, people have been leaving.
Participating in the commemoration activities, I had the chance for the first time to visit Omarska and Trnopolje. At Omarska, I was rather surprised to see that the notorious “white house,” where many prisoners were tortured and killed, stands untouched. The international steel company Mittal bought the Omarska mining complex several years ago and operates it today, but has obstructed the placement of any kind of memorial to the victims of the camp (notwithstanding a Dec./2005 announcement of intent to construct a memorial). They allow people to come look at the white house, but the local authorities throw up roadblocks to visits to the rest of the complex. Sadly, some local (Bosniak) and international figures have -- to their own profit -- participated in confounding attempts to create a memorial, and the project has been at a standstill for several years. (If you are interested in signing a petition to support the memorial project, it is available at http://www.headgroups.com/hg/display/om/online+petition)
Satko, a survivor from Omarska, says, “I live to tell.”
Satko took me and a group of German visitors to Omarska and told us his story. Upon the fall of Kozarac, he was taken to the camp with his father. Pointing to the biggest building of the complex, he said, “We were in rooms in that building. From the windows, in the morning we could see the bodies of people who had been killed that night… There is a certain way that people scream when they know they are going to die.
“There was no way to know how to survive...There, in the room called the “garage,” they crammed many people into a small room. No one could sit down. It became so hot that the paint melted. On night, a man died standing up. When people were allowed to move out of the room, they noticed that he had died. And in the ‘white house, people were tortured and killed nearly every night of that summer of 1992.”
“We had to run along this building to the restaurant there, for food. We only received one meal a day, but since there were thousands of us here, they were pretty much feeding people all the time. Sometimes they put benches that we had to jump over or oil for us to slip on. The walkways were often covered in blood that we had to clean up.”
At one point Satko was so weak that he could not move or talk. He noticed that his father was crying. His father had not even cried when his best friend was killed. Satko understood that his father thought Satko was dying. He whispered to his father, “Dad, don’t cry. This is your and my film. In a movie, the heroes always survive.”
One man, a local Serb named Mirko Amidzic, was also taken to Omarska because he refused to cooperate with the new regime, saying, “These are my people.” His father managed to get him out of the camp. Later he was ordered to join the Bosnian Serb army, but he refused. Subsequently both he and his parents were tortured, and Mirko died in 1995. His death was called a suicide.
After foreign journalists including the valiant Ed Vulliamy discovered the camps and informed the world, the camps were closed and some of the prisoners were released and expelled from the Republika Srpska. Satko was transferred to Manjaca camp, where he was held together with thousands of other civilians. That camp was finally closed in December of 1992, and Satko ended up in Western Europe.
Few of the perpetrators have been punished. Satko said, “Tadic, the first person convicted for crimes here, killed some of his own friends. He was sentenced to 20 years and served 15.” Meanwhile, 63 mass graves of camp victims have been unearthed. About 20,000 people passed through Trnopolje, and 3-4,000 through Omarska. It is estimated that between 900 and 1,000 people were killed in three months in 1992. Mass graves have been found in Kevljani (456 people) and in Ljubija (around 370). At Kevljani, the victims were interred six meters below the ground.
Satko recalls that a friend, commenting on his activism, once told him that he has “survivor’s guilt.” He comments, “I do not have survivor’s guilt. I have survivor’s responsibility.” He took us to visit the school at Trnopolje, in a village on the outskirts of Omarska. Memorial designations have been obstructed at that location as well; however, Serb authorities constructed a large cross and memorial to fallen Serb soldiers -- right in front of the school where so many Bosniak prisoners had been abused.
Returning to Kozarac, we visited the “mezarje,” the local cemetery of reburied Bosniak war victims. Satko said, “I am talking because I could be lying here under the ground, and these people cannot talk anymore.” Hundreds of posts mark the graves; one bore the name of a woman with the dates: “1892-1992.”
By way of remarking on the lunacy of the whole war, Satko recounted, “There was a UN soldier from Kenya who served with the NATO troops in Croatia. He said, ‘I don’t understand what it was all about. They are all white, and they all have water.’
That evening Satko and I had a drink together, and Satko was in a mood to sing. I thought of my own occasional remark: "It's good to be alive." I think that thought must have a very special meaning to Satko.
MORE KOZARAC
Kozarac, mostly Bosniak, feels like an enclave in the RS, an island of Bosniaks in an otherwise ”ethnically-cleansed” area,
One night in Kozarac a waiter serves me a drink. He has a big tattoo in Arabic, the word “Allah,” on his right forearm.
I spent a lot of time with my friend Ervin. Ervin was 18 at the beginning of the war, and spent some time at Trnopolje. Upon his release from Trnopolje he was expelled to central Bosnia, an area controlled by the army of the government of Bosnia. He joined and fought in the 17th Krajisnicka Brigada. This was a brigade of displaced men who fought as a mobile forward operating force, wherever the Bosnian army needed them.
After the war Ervin returned to Kozarac, and since then he has been working to implement very effective civic actions, including setting up the web portal kozarac.ba. This provides the crucial communication link between the return community and the diaspora. Ervin works with young people, organizing sports and educational activities. In 2004, he and Satko founded the “Optimisti 2004” foundation, which organized several projects in Kozarac (such as the extensive reconstruction of sports fields and a gym hall in the local school). To my mind, he is the best example of a “pozitivac,” someone who thinks positively, does not dwell on his own victimization, and strives to improve the lot of his community. As such, Ervin and other pozitivci are the object of much jealousy. Others in positions of power work to undermine Ervin’s accomplishments, but he keeps going.
Ervin continued, “A person has the sun on one side of him, and his shadow on the other. You can spend your life chasing your shadow, but you will never catch it.”
Sitting at a kafana at the lower end of Kozarac, Ervin gestured up the street to a workman repairing a house. “That man abused me when I was a prisoner in the camp,” he said. Now he’s just a marginal figure. I look at him and I think, ‘God, how the world has turned.’ If I can ignore him, then I come out stronger. I don’t hate people. It’s not because of them, but for my own sake, not to bear that burden.”
“I am for coexistence, but there are limits. One man, Mile Mutic from Prijedor, was a warmonger on the radio in 1992. Recently, he came to Prijedor and read poetry at a festival. It is as if Radovan Karadzic came here to read poetry.”
Like everyone in Kozarac, Ervin is concerned about the search for the remains of the rest of those killed during the war. He says, “We want to know who killed whom, when and where that happened, and what the entire chain of command was. The mass graves were created and the burials organized during the war, when fuel was hard to come by.
“Can you imagine running a bulldozer and burying bodies all day, and then coming home and asking, “What’s for dinner?”
“The investigation for missing people is being conducted in a backwards fashion, without cooperation. The RS investigator looks for missing people in Sarajevo, and the Muslim investigator from the Federation, based in Bihac, looks for people here. They should cooperate; a crime is a crime.”
I attended a meeting where the new DNA identification of 91 exhumed remains of victims was announced. There was a fuss because of the insensitive way that people were being informed, after 18 years, that their loved ones had been found. One woman who heard the name of her son fainted. Ervin criticized the speaker for saying that “bodies” were identified, when in many cases it could just be one bone from someone’s body.
Ervin drove me up to Kozara, another prominent place I had never gotten around to visiting. Kozara is a prominent hill above Kozarac and Prijedor, a memorial to a very significant battle in World War II. There, in 1942, Germans had surrounded a local population, but with the help of the Partisans, many fought their way out. The memorial, a tall stack of concrete, is located at the top of a hill in the woods in a very pleasant place. Around the stack there are slabs of concrete lying down. Ervin told me that those represent defeated Germans. There is a memorial museum there, but it appears to have been re-arranged to portray only Serb defenders.
Driving back to Kozarac, Ervin told me that in the war, when they were in the trenches, fighting, they would wear a scarf with perfume. At night in bed, they would cover their faces with that scarf to feel something gentler than real life.
PRIJEDOR
In Prijedor I visited Edin Ramulic, who works with the organization “Izvor,” women survivors of the war who are seeking the remains of their loved ones and calling for prosecution of the war criminals. Edin is a stalwart activist in the community. He told me that of over three thousand people who were listed as killed or missing in the entire municipality, around two thousand have been exhumed and identified to date.
Edin commented, “The Prijedor police have not helped us at all. They are capable of doing police work; when our office was burglarized they managed to find our computer. Some of them participated in the war crimes. There are Bosniak returnees who are in the police, but they are in the lower ranks. …The municipality has given 687,000 KM to the organizations of demobilized RS soldiers, but nothing to us. They can have a good life, but there is nothing for the children of the disappeared.
“There are monuments or memorials for the Serb soldiers in front of all the public institutions here, but the government obstructs the creation of memorials for the victims on our side.”
I asked Edin how he felt, living among his persecutors. He said, “Every day I pass the Butik, which is owned by a person who led the police and killed people. But I just pass by. People don’t react anymore.” I asked him, “Does that mean things are a little normal than before?” He answered, “Maybe it is too normal for what happened. For example, Branko Topola was a guard in Trnopolje, He became the owner of a company that installed gutters on houses, and he was rebuilding returnees’ houses. Later he died. The father of the owner of the kafana nearby was a member of the wartime ‘crisis staff;’ he killed people.”
Concerning the dilemma of the project for the memorial at Omarska, Edin said, “In the RS, they insist that such a memorial may not be created until there is a state-level law regarding memorials and the language contained. Meanwhile, they have been posting memorials for their soldiers everywhere, even in places where there was no fighting.
“However, for us, it is more of a priority to see the war criminals imprisoned. Memorials are not the priority. That is not where the real message gets through -- it is a message meant only for the victims, and the message from each side just bypasses the other side. So the function of the monument is lost. We need an institution here in the city, where people can study the history and see the evidence.”
I asked Edin if he would call the situation in Prijedor apartheid for the Bosniaks, or something else, something more mild. He answered, “Yes, it is that way it is in employment, and in the treatment of the victims of the war. Returnees who have companies must be much more organized with their books and payment of taxes. The police are much more tolerant towards the Serbs. The only employment for returnees here is in private companies, with relatives.” His colleague commented that her two grown sons were unable to find jobs.
“It is not so bad in the schools, although the education is very nationalist,” he continued. “Slobodan Kuruzovic was the director of the schools until he died. During the war he was the head commander at Trnopolje camp. Returnees are only ten percent minority. So all they can do is stay quiet and put up with the situation.
*
Prijedor these days feels like a very pleasant place, with its restored central pedestrian walkway adorned with attractive fountains and always populated by people walking, seeing and being seen. Young people are decked out in their finest, enjoying the prime of their life. Mothers show off their babies. (Older people, however, look worn out.) The atmosphere indeed seems more relaxed compared to earlier postwar years. A casual visitor could only be pleased to spend a little time in the town. But my local friends described it all as “shminka” (makeup), in a place where ordinary people concentrate on finding jobs, and disappointment is the most common attitude. But apathy reigns, says my friend “Mirsad.” He is an activist, formerly with “pokret Dosta!” (“Dosta” means “enough,” something like “basta” in Spanish).
Mirsad says, “These days, nationalism is only for the little people. The big politicians are just criminals; corruption is their real work. Dodik is not even a nationalist, but he raises tension along national lines among uneducated people in this election year.”
Mirsad researched the monuments to the dead in every local community in Prijedor municipality. “There were perhaps around 100 Serbs killed, not more. But there is a monument to them in every neighborhood, even to people who were not killed in this municipality. The Serb veterans organizations would not help me; they refused to work with me. One member even threatened to beat me up.”
Mirsad says, “To me Prijedor is the dearest city in the world, but there is discrimination here. There is in Sarajevo as well, but nowhere near what there is here. Tuzla is great. There, people work together and tease each other on the basis of their ethnicity, and everyone understands that it is just a joke. Bihac is good too.
“I have been looking for work. I got indirect invitations to join various political parties, but I wouldn’t do it. I have a friend who went to Banja Luka and applied for work as an English teacher. Her application got to the level where Dodik said she had to join his party -- his control has gotten to such extremes. She joined the party and got the job.
“I finished a degree in sociology; I am a professor of sociology. But I can’t get a job. All the criteria are reversed. Religion should be a personal thing, but now they are teaching it in the kindergartens.”
Friends in Prijedor explained to me the situation of many people who have co-signed on bank loans, after I noticed headlines in the news about this problem. People take out a loan and then default, and the co-signer is stuck with the debt. Bankers have been forging people’s signatures. It happens that someone will take out a loan for 5,000 KM, then someone will add a zero, making it 50,000 KM. There is an organization in Prijedor called the Association of Swindled Co-signers.
So, behind the pleasant atmosphere of “too much normality,” post-war suffering goes on, with some innovations. If all history is local, each locality has its own predominant interpretation. Most people do not see the whole truth. To make matters worse, a few people in the beleaguered minority return communities collaborate with the local powers, retaining their positions and profiting off of the suffering of their constituency by whitewashing it.
Bosnia Journal #1
June 2, 2010
Kozarac and Prijedor
I arrived in Sarajevo and quickly started seeing old friends, making new acquaintances, and setting up a couple of meetings. One worthwhile meeting was with Kurt Bassuener of the Democratization Policy Council, which perhaps could be described as being on the fringe of the international community. Kurt was friendly and forthcoming, and I consider his organization’s analysis to provide a helpful insight to the workings of the i.c. with regard to Bosnia-Herzegovina. (See http://democratizationpolicy.org/)
The international community has been struggling, long-term, to pressure the Bosnian politicians into creating a more practical and reasonable constitutional structure that can do away with ongoing political obstruction. Kurt says, “The three sides, if they are to negotiate, have three things in common: they want to keep what they’ve stolen, keep stealing, and maintain their lack of accountability.”
This is a good portrayal of the mechanics of Bosnian politics. On the other hand, adding some perspective, here’s what my friend Gordan, a local grassroots activist in Tuzla, said to me last night about the international community: “I want to stress that the officials of the international community are not innocent in all this. They speak as if they expect change, but they mainly support the members of the government, which works against the interests of the citizens; they never punish the politicians. They are responsible for what is going on here, because they created the Dayton constitutional system. It is a great hypocrisy!...if you had a population of Swedes, or anyone from any other well-organized society, living under the present Bosnian system, even they would not be able to solve our problems, because there are too many possibilities to obstruct good governance. I don’t mean to exonerate the Bosnian politicians, but the i.c. collaborates, morally and legally, with their operations.”
In Sarajevo I was brought up to date with the sad situation of Bosnians living in economic stagnation compounded by the worldwide economic crisis, in an atmosphere of increasing political tension that is customary in this year of national elections. But the tension is not new; Serb prime minister of the Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Milorad Dodik, has cranked up the tension through an ongoing series of clever, well-focused maneuvers designed to heighten inter-ethnic fear and suspicion. Bassuener says, “Dodik is the logical outcome of Dayton. We have a situation of deterrent failure, because no rules apply here.”
Meanwhile, pensions are low, unemployment is high, and prices are skyrocketing. My friend “Amira” in Tuzla says, “For three years my pension has remained at around 300 KM. But three years ago, a kilo of meat cost 7 KM, and now it is 15 KM.”
I have been hearing of people borrowing money from banks just to pay for food.
KOZARAC
I hurried up to Kozarac for the May 24 observance of the anniversary of the first Serb attack on that town, when hundreds of people were killed, thousands driven into concentration camps (Omarska, Keraterm, Trnopolje), and the rest -- a total of around 25,000 -- expelled. Five thousand homes in the area of Kozarac were destroyed. I have been following return to Kozarac since 1998, when the town was a dismal and foreboding place. Now Kozarac is a relatively pleasant place, where some 20% of the former (mainly Bosniak) population has returned. There has been return to nearby Prijedor, the municipal seat, as well. The 80% of people from Kozarac who now live abroad constitute a strong and supportive diaspora. I was told that return to the Prijedor municipality peaked in 2003, and since then, people have been leaving.
Participating in the commemoration activities, I had the chance for the first time to visit Omarska and Trnopolje. At Omarska, I was rather surprised to see that the notorious “white house,” where many prisoners were tortured and killed, stands untouched. The international steel company Mittal bought the Omarska mining complex several years ago and operates it today, but has obstructed the placement of any kind of memorial to the victims of the camp (notwithstanding a Dec./2005 announcement of intent to construct a memorial). They allow people to come look at the white house, but the local authorities throw up roadblocks to visits to the rest of the complex. Sadly, some local (Bosniak) and international figures have -- to their own profit -- participated in confounding attempts to create a memorial, and the project has been at a standstill for several years. (If you are interested in signing a petition to support the memorial project, it is available at http://www.headgroups.com/hg/display/om/online+petition)
Satko, a survivor from Omarska, says, “I live to tell.”
Satko took me and a group of German visitors to Omarska and told us his story. Upon the fall of Kozarac, he was taken to the camp with his father. Pointing to the biggest building of the complex, he said, “We were in rooms in that building. From the windows, in the morning we could see the bodies of people who had been killed that night… There is a certain way that people scream when they know they are going to die.
“There was no way to know how to survive...There, in the room called the “garage,” they crammed many people into a small room. No one could sit down. It became so hot that the paint melted. On night, a man died standing up. When people were allowed to move out of the room, they noticed that he had died. And in the ‘white house, people were tortured and killed nearly every night of that summer of 1992.”
“We had to run along this building to the restaurant there, for food. We only received one meal a day, but since there were thousands of us here, they were pretty much feeding people all the time. Sometimes they put benches that we had to jump over or oil for us to slip on. The walkways were often covered in blood that we had to clean up.”
At one point Satko was so weak that he could not move or talk. He noticed that his father was crying. His father had not even cried when his best friend was killed. Satko understood that his father thought Satko was dying. He whispered to his father, “Dad, don’t cry. This is your and my film. In a movie, the heroes always survive.”
One man, a local Serb named Mirko Amidzic, was also taken to Omarska because he refused to cooperate with the new regime, saying, “These are my people.” His father managed to get him out of the camp. Later he was ordered to join the Bosnian Serb army, but he refused. Subsequently both he and his parents were tortured, and Mirko died in 1995. His death was called a suicide.
After foreign journalists including the valiant Ed Vulliamy discovered the camps and informed the world, the camps were closed and some of the prisoners were released and expelled from the Republika Srpska. Satko was transferred to Manjaca camp, where he was held together with thousands of other civilians. That camp was finally closed in December of 1992, and Satko ended up in Western Europe.
Few of the perpetrators have been punished. Satko said, “Tadic, the first person convicted for crimes here, killed some of his own friends. He was sentenced to 20 years and served 15.” Meanwhile, 63 mass graves of camp victims have been unearthed. About 20,000 people passed through Trnopolje, and 3-4,000 through Omarska. It is estimated that between 900 and 1,000 people were killed in three months in 1992. Mass graves have been found in Kevljani (456 people) and in Ljubija (around 370). At Kevljani, the victims were interred six meters below the ground.
Satko recalls that a friend, commenting on his activism, once told him that he has “survivor’s guilt.” He comments, “I do not have survivor’s guilt. I have survivor’s responsibility.” He took us to visit the school at Trnopolje, in a village on the outskirts of Omarska. Memorial designations have been obstructed at that location as well; however, Serb authorities constructed a large cross and memorial to fallen Serb soldiers -- right in front of the school where so many Bosniak prisoners had been abused.
Returning to Kozarac, we visited the “mezarje,” the local cemetery of reburied Bosniak war victims. Satko said, “I am talking because I could be lying here under the ground, and these people cannot talk anymore.” Hundreds of posts mark the graves; one bore the name of a woman with the dates: “1892-1992.”
By way of remarking on the lunacy of the whole war, Satko recounted, “There was a UN soldier from Kenya who served with the NATO troops in Croatia. He said, ‘I don’t understand what it was all about. They are all white, and they all have water.’
That evening Satko and I had a drink together, and Satko was in a mood to sing. I thought of my own occasional remark: "It's good to be alive." I think that thought must have a very special meaning to Satko.
MORE KOZARAC
Kozarac, mostly Bosniak, feels like an enclave in the RS, an island of Bosniaks in an otherwise ”ethnically-cleansed” area,
One night in Kozarac a waiter serves me a drink. He has a big tattoo in Arabic, the word “Allah,” on his right forearm.
I spent a lot of time with my friend Ervin. Ervin was 18 at the beginning of the war, and spent some time at Trnopolje. Upon his release from Trnopolje he was expelled to central Bosnia, an area controlled by the army of the government of Bosnia. He joined and fought in the 17th Krajisnicka Brigada. This was a brigade of displaced men who fought as a mobile forward operating force, wherever the Bosnian army needed them.
After the war Ervin returned to Kozarac, and since then he has been working to implement very effective civic actions, including setting up the web portal kozarac.ba. This provides the crucial communication link between the return community and the diaspora. Ervin works with young people, organizing sports and educational activities. In 2004, he and Satko founded the “Optimisti 2004” foundation, which organized several projects in Kozarac (such as the extensive reconstruction of sports fields and a gym hall in the local school). To my mind, he is the best example of a “pozitivac,” someone who thinks positively, does not dwell on his own victimization, and strives to improve the lot of his community. As such, Ervin and other pozitivci are the object of much jealousy. Others in positions of power work to undermine Ervin’s accomplishments, but he keeps going.
Ervin continued, “A person has the sun on one side of him, and his shadow on the other. You can spend your life chasing your shadow, but you will never catch it.”
Sitting at a kafana at the lower end of Kozarac, Ervin gestured up the street to a workman repairing a house. “That man abused me when I was a prisoner in the camp,” he said. Now he’s just a marginal figure. I look at him and I think, ‘God, how the world has turned.’ If I can ignore him, then I come out stronger. I don’t hate people. It’s not because of them, but for my own sake, not to bear that burden.”
“I am for coexistence, but there are limits. One man, Mile Mutic from Prijedor, was a warmonger on the radio in 1992. Recently, he came to Prijedor and read poetry at a festival. It is as if Radovan Karadzic came here to read poetry.”
Like everyone in Kozarac, Ervin is concerned about the search for the remains of the rest of those killed during the war. He says, “We want to know who killed whom, when and where that happened, and what the entire chain of command was. The mass graves were created and the burials organized during the war, when fuel was hard to come by.
“Can you imagine running a bulldozer and burying bodies all day, and then coming home and asking, “What’s for dinner?”
“The investigation for missing people is being conducted in a backwards fashion, without cooperation. The RS investigator looks for missing people in Sarajevo, and the Muslim investigator from the Federation, based in Bihac, looks for people here. They should cooperate; a crime is a crime.”
I attended a meeting where the new DNA identification of 91 exhumed remains of victims was announced. There was a fuss because of the insensitive way that people were being informed, after 18 years, that their loved ones had been found. One woman who heard the name of her son fainted. Ervin criticized the speaker for saying that “bodies” were identified, when in many cases it could just be one bone from someone’s body.
Ervin drove me up to Kozara, another prominent place I had never gotten around to visiting. Kozara is a prominent hill above Kozarac and Prijedor, a memorial to a very significant battle in World War II. There, in 1942, Germans had surrounded a local population, but with the help of the Partisans, many fought their way out. The memorial, a tall stack of concrete, is located at the top of a hill in the woods in a very pleasant place. Around the stack there are slabs of concrete lying down. Ervin told me that those represent defeated Germans. There is a memorial museum there, but it appears to have been re-arranged to portray only Serb defenders.
Driving back to Kozarac, Ervin told me that in the war, when they were in the trenches, fighting, they would wear a scarf with perfume. At night in bed, they would cover their faces with that scarf to feel something gentler than real life.
PRIJEDOR
In Prijedor I visited Edin Ramulic, who works with the organization “Izvor,” women survivors of the war who are seeking the remains of their loved ones and calling for prosecution of the war criminals. Edin is a stalwart activist in the community. He told me that of over three thousand people who were listed as killed or missing in the entire municipality, around two thousand have been exhumed and identified to date.
Edin commented, “The Prijedor police have not helped us at all. They are capable of doing police work; when our office was burglarized they managed to find our computer. Some of them participated in the war crimes. There are Bosniak returnees who are in the police, but they are in the lower ranks. …The municipality has given 687,000 KM to the organizations of demobilized RS soldiers, but nothing to us. They can have a good life, but there is nothing for the children of the disappeared.
“There are monuments or memorials for the Serb soldiers in front of all the public institutions here, but the government obstructs the creation of memorials for the victims on our side.”
I asked Edin how he felt, living among his persecutors. He said, “Every day I pass the Butik, which is owned by a person who led the police and killed people. But I just pass by. People don’t react anymore.” I asked him, “Does that mean things are a little normal than before?” He answered, “Maybe it is too normal for what happened. For example, Branko Topola was a guard in Trnopolje, He became the owner of a company that installed gutters on houses, and he was rebuilding returnees’ houses. Later he died. The father of the owner of the kafana nearby was a member of the wartime ‘crisis staff;’ he killed people.”
Concerning the dilemma of the project for the memorial at Omarska, Edin said, “In the RS, they insist that such a memorial may not be created until there is a state-level law regarding memorials and the language contained. Meanwhile, they have been posting memorials for their soldiers everywhere, even in places where there was no fighting.
“However, for us, it is more of a priority to see the war criminals imprisoned. Memorials are not the priority. That is not where the real message gets through -- it is a message meant only for the victims, and the message from each side just bypasses the other side. So the function of the monument is lost. We need an institution here in the city, where people can study the history and see the evidence.”
I asked Edin if he would call the situation in Prijedor apartheid for the Bosniaks, or something else, something more mild. He answered, “Yes, it is that way it is in employment, and in the treatment of the victims of the war. Returnees who have companies must be much more organized with their books and payment of taxes. The police are much more tolerant towards the Serbs. The only employment for returnees here is in private companies, with relatives.” His colleague commented that her two grown sons were unable to find jobs.
“It is not so bad in the schools, although the education is very nationalist,” he continued. “Slobodan Kuruzovic was the director of the schools until he died. During the war he was the head commander at Trnopolje camp. Returnees are only ten percent minority. So all they can do is stay quiet and put up with the situation.
*
Prijedor these days feels like a very pleasant place, with its restored central pedestrian walkway adorned with attractive fountains and always populated by people walking, seeing and being seen. Young people are decked out in their finest, enjoying the prime of their life. Mothers show off their babies. (Older people, however, look worn out.) The atmosphere indeed seems more relaxed compared to earlier postwar years. A casual visitor could only be pleased to spend a little time in the town. But my local friends described it all as “shminka” (makeup), in a place where ordinary people concentrate on finding jobs, and disappointment is the most common attitude. But apathy reigns, says my friend “Mirsad.” He is an activist, formerly with “pokret Dosta!” (“Dosta” means “enough,” something like “basta” in Spanish).
Mirsad says, “These days, nationalism is only for the little people. The big politicians are just criminals; corruption is their real work. Dodik is not even a nationalist, but he raises tension along national lines among uneducated people in this election year.”
Mirsad researched the monuments to the dead in every local community in Prijedor municipality. “There were perhaps around 100 Serbs killed, not more. But there is a monument to them in every neighborhood, even to people who were not killed in this municipality. The Serb veterans organizations would not help me; they refused to work with me. One member even threatened to beat me up.”
Mirsad says, “To me Prijedor is the dearest city in the world, but there is discrimination here. There is in Sarajevo as well, but nowhere near what there is here. Tuzla is great. There, people work together and tease each other on the basis of their ethnicity, and everyone understands that it is just a joke. Bihac is good too.
“I have been looking for work. I got indirect invitations to join various political parties, but I wouldn’t do it. I have a friend who went to Banja Luka and applied for work as an English teacher. Her application got to the level where Dodik said she had to join his party -- his control has gotten to such extremes. She joined the party and got the job.
“I finished a degree in sociology; I am a professor of sociology. But I can’t get a job. All the criteria are reversed. Religion should be a personal thing, but now they are teaching it in the kindergartens.”
Friends in Prijedor explained to me the situation of many people who have co-signed on bank loans, after I noticed headlines in the news about this problem. People take out a loan and then default, and the co-signer is stuck with the debt. Bankers have been forging people’s signatures. It happens that someone will take out a loan for 5,000 KM, then someone will add a zero, making it 50,000 KM. There is an organization in Prijedor called the Association of Swindled Co-signers.
So, behind the pleasant atmosphere of “too much normality,” post-war suffering goes on, with some innovations. If all history is local, each locality has its own predominant interpretation. Most people do not see the whole truth. To make matters worse, a few people in the beleaguered minority return communities collaborate with the local powers, retaining their positions and profiting off of the suffering of their constituency by whitewashing it.
Public Statement from National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina
1. Victims of aggression deserve state and military salutes Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje Associatione-mail: majkesip@bih. net.ba Presidency of Bosnia and HerzegovinaHonourable Mr. Valentin Inzko, High Representative for Bosnia and HerzegovinaHonourable Major General Bernhard Bair, Commander EUFORHonourable Mr. Selmo Cikotic, Minister of Defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Re: Request to honour the victim of genocide with state and military salutes and honours. Honourable Gentlemen, The commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of the Genocide perpetrated in the UN Protected Zone of Srebrenica is scheduled for July 11, 2010. At the last meeting of the Organizing Board for Commemoration and Burial held on May 13, 2010, Association of “Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje” submitted a request that starting with this July 11th and from there on in the future, the victims of genocide shall be always buried with state and military salutes and honours. Considering that the International Court of Justice on February 26, 2007 ruled that Genocide was committed and that Serbia was directly responsible for failing to fulfil its obligation to prevent the genocide, which was directly committed and incited by the government and institutions of “Republika Srpska” and specifically the Army (VRS) and Police (MUP) of „Republika Srpska”, we request that you adopt a Decision for burial of victims of genocide with state and military salutes and honours, including raising of the flag and rifle salutes. Survivors of genocide will not give up their rights to honour the victims of genocide with state and military salutes and honours. The victims of genocide were murdered because of the aggression on Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and therefore, the survivors of genocide can not accept that the victims of genocide are buried as if they had been victims of some random natural disaster. If Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina does not honour our request, we request EUFOR to take over the responsibility of providing full military honours and salutes to the victims of genocide on July 11, 2010 at the Memorial for the Victims of Genocide in Srebrenica-Potocari . Respectfully, looking forward to your timely response, Sarajevo, May 17, 2010 Ibran MustaficPresident of Association“Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje” ____________________________________ Bosnian translation 2. ZRTVE GENOCIDA ZASLUZUJU DRZAVNE POCASTI JER SU UBIJENI U AGRESIJI NA REPUBLIKU BiH Predsjednistvo Bosne i HerzegovinePostovani gospodin Valentin Inzko, Visoki predstavnik za BiHPostovani General-major Bernhard Bair, Comandant EUFORPostovani gospodin Selmo Cikotic, Ministar odbrane BiH PREDMET: Zahtjev da se komemoracija i pokop žrtava genocida obavi uz vojne i državne pocasti. Poštovana gospodo, Ove godine se obilježava 15-ta godišnjica genocida u Zašticenoj i demilitarizovanoj zoni – Srebrenica. Na posljednjem sastanku Organizacionog odbora za ukop i komemoraciju odrzanom 13. maja 2010. godine, Udruženje gradana „Majke Srebrenice i Podrinja“ je iznijelo svoj prijedlog da se ove godine i ubuduce žrtve genocida moraju sahranjivati uz vojne i državne pocasti. Obzirom da je Presudom Internacionalnog suda pravde od 26. Februara 2007-e godine dokazan zlocin genocida u kojoj se direktno okrivljuje Srbija za nesprecavanje genocida, a kao direktni i neposredni izvršioci genocida vojska i policija RS, zahtjevamo da donesete Odluku o ukopu žrtava genocida uz vojne i državne pocasti, uljucujuci podizanje zastave i pocasnu paljbu. Prezivjele zrtve genocida nece odustati od svog zahtjeva da se zrtve genocida sahranjuju uz vojne i drzavne pocasti. Prezivjele zrtve genocida ne mogu prihvatiti da se zrvtve genocida sahranjuju kao žrtve neke vremenske nepogode. Takav odnos prema zrtvama genocida je neprihvatljiv za prezivjele zrtve genocida. Ako Predsjedništvo BiH ne odgovori pozitivno na naš zahtjev, tražimo da postrojbe EUFOR-a preuzmu na sebe zadatak odavanja pocasti 11. Jula 2010-te godine prilikom sahrane posmrtnih ostataka zrtava genocida na Memorijalnom centru zrtvama genocida u Srebrenici-Potocari. Uz srdacan pozdrav, tražimo od Vas što hitniji odgovor. Sarajevo, 17.05.2010. Ibran Mustafic,Predsjednik UO Udruženja
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Monday, May 31, 2010
New Resolution on Bosnia and Herzegovina in the U.S. Congress
From the Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina
The Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BAACBH) expresses its support for the U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 1423 (H.Res. 1423) on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). On May 28, 2010, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (NJ-4) introduced the resolution, which was co-sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan (MO-3), Rep. Frank R. Wolf (VA-10), and Rep. Brian Baird (WA-3). With this resolution, Congress is observing the 15th anniversary of the genocide committed in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in July 1995, and expressing support for the designation of "Srebrenica Remembrance Day" in the United States.
The H.Res. 1423, among other things, states the following:
- solemnly observes the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide;
- supports the designation of ''Srebrenica Remembrance Day'' in the United States;
- commends the official bodies that have recognized the Srebrenica genocide, including the European Parliament, which declared a Srebrenica Remembrance Day in the European Union;
- honors the memory of the thousands of innocent people who died at Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1995, along with all individuals who were killed during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995;
- extends its condolences to the families and friends of those who died at Srebrenica in July 1995, and during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995;
- reaffirms its support for the independence and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, peace and stability in southeastern Europe as a whole, and the right of all people living in the region, regardless of national, racial, ethnic or religious background, to return to their homes and enjoy the benefits of democratic institutions, the rule of law, and economic opportunity, as well as to know the fate of missing relatives and friends.
BAACBH calls on all friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina to support this resolution and to immediately ask their congressional representatives to become co-sponsors of H.Res. 1423.
********************
Ed. note: You can find contact information for your House Representative here.
The Bosniak American Advisory Council for Bosnia and Herzegovina (BAACBH) expresses its support for the U.S. House of Representatives Resolution 1423 (H.Res. 1423) on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). On May 28, 2010, Rep. Christopher H. Smith (NJ-4) introduced the resolution, which was co-sponsored by Rep. Russ Carnahan (MO-3), Rep. Frank R. Wolf (VA-10), and Rep. Brian Baird (WA-3). With this resolution, Congress is observing the 15th anniversary of the genocide committed in the Bosnian city of Srebrenica in July 1995, and expressing support for the designation of "Srebrenica Remembrance Day" in the United States.
The H.Res. 1423, among other things, states the following:
- solemnly observes the 15th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide;
- supports the designation of ''Srebrenica Remembrance Day'' in the United States;
- commends the official bodies that have recognized the Srebrenica genocide, including the European Parliament, which declared a Srebrenica Remembrance Day in the European Union;
- honors the memory of the thousands of innocent people who died at Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in July 1995, along with all individuals who were killed during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995;
- extends its condolences to the families and friends of those who died at Srebrenica in July 1995, and during the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 to 1995;
- reaffirms its support for the independence and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina, peace and stability in southeastern Europe as a whole, and the right of all people living in the region, regardless of national, racial, ethnic or religious background, to return to their homes and enjoy the benefits of democratic institutions, the rule of law, and economic opportunity, as well as to know the fate of missing relatives and friends.
BAACBH calls on all friends of Bosnia and Herzegovina to support this resolution and to immediately ask their congressional representatives to become co-sponsors of H.Res. 1423.
********************
Ed. note: You can find contact information for your House Representative here.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Sign that Serbia is Moving in the Right Direction
Serbia plans to open mass grave
It can only be a good thing for Serbia (and the Balkans as a whole) for this very public admission of war crimes guilt on behalf of the Milosevic regime. Serbian society will benefit by clearing the air with a full accounting.
It can only be a good thing for Serbia (and the Balkans as a whole) for this very public admission of war crimes guilt on behalf of the Milosevic regime. Serbian society will benefit by clearing the air with a full accounting.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Does the Country Claim the Person, or Does the Person Claim the Country
A recent article from the Southeast Europe Times raises some interesting issues:
Honouring Mesa Selimovic
While countries argue over who gets to claim Selimovic, the man himself seemed to understand that national identification was a choice, not something decided by blood. Whether he was Bosnian or Serbian, he realized he was free from the constraints of tribal identity. His "blood" was not his destiny.
He also seemed to understand that identity is a complex thing; something facsists and extreme nationalists (as well as relgious fundamentalists and all other zealots) are incapable of grasping. He was able to embrace a Serbian identity without renouncing his former Bosnian identity.
The idea that the individual is free to reinvent him or herself, and to adopt and claim new identities, is fundamental to genuine freedom. Too many writers in the Balkans preached that ethnicity is destiny; how refreshing to celebrate one who knew better.
Honouring Mesa Selimovic
While countries argue over who gets to claim Selimovic, the man himself seemed to understand that national identification was a choice, not something decided by blood. Whether he was Bosnian or Serbian, he realized he was free from the constraints of tribal identity. His "blood" was not his destiny.
He also seemed to understand that identity is a complex thing; something facsists and extreme nationalists (as well as relgious fundamentalists and all other zealots) are incapable of grasping. He was able to embrace a Serbian identity without renouncing his former Bosnian identity.
The idea that the individual is free to reinvent him or herself, and to adopt and claim new identities, is fundamental to genuine freedom. Too many writers in the Balkans preached that ethnicity is destiny; how refreshing to celebrate one who knew better.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
The Unrealistic Abstractions of Realpolitik in the Balkans
Foreign policy analyst Nikolas K. Gvosdev published a troubling article at the website for Foreign Affairs magazine:
Unfreezing Kosovo: Reconsidering Boundaries in the Balkans
Briefly, Gvosdev argues that regional stability in the Balkans and security and economic development in Kosovo are impossible as long as Serbia--the "linchpin state of the western Balkans" as he tellingly describes it--is unreconciled to the independence of Kosovo under its current borders. He insists that the "issue" of independence (which apparently will not be resolved until Serbia gets its way) must be "delinked" from the "issue" of boundaries. In short, the West must agree to an ethnic partition of Kosovo.
The article isn't, on the surface anyway, the work of an overt supporter of ethnic partition. The tone is reasonable, and one might even take heart from Gvosdev's assertion that one of the negative consequences of the current situation is that nationalists are able to attack pro-reform and pro-Western parties by championing the “fate of Kosovo.” This seems to indicate that Gvosdev is no friend to the nationalist project, and wishes to see liberal, secular political forces win out in Serbia proper.
The problem with his analysis isn't simply in what he says, however (more on what he does say later). Namely, the context to the current state of affairs; i.e., the recent history of Kosovo within the old Yugoslavia and then under control of Milosevic's Serbia. This is not to say that the incidents he does address--the riots and other acts of violence aimed at Kosovo's Serbian minority--are not issues of genuine concern. Nor do I wish to suggest that relations between Pristina and Belgrade should be forever frozen in a pattern of atrocity one-upmanship. Milosevic is gone, Serb forces are no longer threatening the ethnic Albanian majority, and Kosovo and Serbia are still and will forever remain neighbors, mutually interested in securing peace and stability in the region.
However, his analysis is curiously myopic--Gvosdev seems completely unaware that events in Kosovo resonate throughout the former Yugoslavia. There is not a word about Bosnia in this article. Anyone familiar with the history of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s is well aware of the connection between events in Kosovo and Bosnia. To suggest that ethnic partition of Kosovo in order to placate nationalists in Belgrade is the path the greater security and peace in the region is to betray a shocking ignorance or indifference to the region's recent history.
Gvosdev gives some examples of agreements which he believes provide possible frameworks on how to proceed. He is very concerned not only with the Serbian-majority north, which he points out is not under Pristina's control (for reasons he does not dwell on), but also on some of the ethnic Serb enclaves in the south, and the many Serb Orthodox religious sites which are currently under the protection of NATO (and therefore also not under Pristinas' control--see how neatly this works?). Therefore, he suggests that a possible "solution" would be to pattern an autonomy agreement based on the Lateran Treaty, the agreement by which fascist Italy established the Vatican City as a sovereign nation capable of shielding serial child rapists from prosecution in their home countries. Gvosdev blandly portrays this pact, by which Mussolini courted favor with a right-wing, authoritarian church previously not inclined to look favorably on his radical regime, as merely a resolution of territorial beef between the church and the Italian state.
He also points out that both Poland and Armenia were promised independence before border had been settled--given that those two nations did not have long-standing fixed borders because of their history (any historical atlas of Europe will demonstrate this--go from map to map throughout history, and you'll note that Poland, sadly, never had the same borders for very long, due to aggression by its neighbors), Gvosdev might have a hard time ignoring that Kosovo has a long history as a well-defined geopolitical entity, but using a common Balkan revisionist tactic he claims that the borders were nothing but arbitrary administrative boundaries established by the Tito regime.
And this is the only time Gvosdev even acknowledges that there are other "disputed" boundaries in the Balkans. He dismisses these concerns by pointing out that Pristina doesn't control these areas, anyway--which means that hopefully nobody will ask him for his advice regarding the Russian occupation of significant areas of Georgia, for example. Gvosdev may not realize it, but he is arguing in favor of might making right--get enough militia on the ground able to bully the government into backing down, and viola--instant redrawing of the map.
Finally, what is so depressing about this article is that Gvosdev doesn't even realize that he is suggesting that the best way to defuse nationalist agitation is to give nationalists exactly what they want, or at least to make compromises on their terms. This is ethnic partition, no matter how one dresses it up, and it also is a validation of the premise that Serb nationalist demands have a legitimacy which cannot be fundamentally challenged, only modified. Ultimately, this sort of solution can only fuel more instability in Bosnia (and possibly the Sandzak as well), while his belief that this would actually increase the leverage that liberal and pro-democratic forces in Serbia wield seems naive to me.
Ironically, there was another story recently which suggests that Gvosdev has ignored a much less craven method of ensuring stability in the region--insisting on an acceptance of curent boundaries and a willingness to work within current national structures. Recently, the government in Turkey was able to get the governments of Serbia and Bosnia to sit down and pledge to work together. Predicatably, hardliners in the Republika Srpska were not pleased to see Belgrade dealing directly with Sarajevo without going through Banja Luka first. I suspect Gvosdev might be disappointed as well:
Serbia, BiH optimistic about new chapter in ties
Unfreezing Kosovo: Reconsidering Boundaries in the Balkans
Briefly, Gvosdev argues that regional stability in the Balkans and security and economic development in Kosovo are impossible as long as Serbia--the "linchpin state of the western Balkans" as he tellingly describes it--is unreconciled to the independence of Kosovo under its current borders. He insists that the "issue" of independence (which apparently will not be resolved until Serbia gets its way) must be "delinked" from the "issue" of boundaries. In short, the West must agree to an ethnic partition of Kosovo.
The article isn't, on the surface anyway, the work of an overt supporter of ethnic partition. The tone is reasonable, and one might even take heart from Gvosdev's assertion that one of the negative consequences of the current situation is that nationalists are able to attack pro-reform and pro-Western parties by championing the “fate of Kosovo.” This seems to indicate that Gvosdev is no friend to the nationalist project, and wishes to see liberal, secular political forces win out in Serbia proper.
The problem with his analysis isn't simply in what he says, however (more on what he does say later). Namely, the context to the current state of affairs; i.e., the recent history of Kosovo within the old Yugoslavia and then under control of Milosevic's Serbia. This is not to say that the incidents he does address--the riots and other acts of violence aimed at Kosovo's Serbian minority--are not issues of genuine concern. Nor do I wish to suggest that relations between Pristina and Belgrade should be forever frozen in a pattern of atrocity one-upmanship. Milosevic is gone, Serb forces are no longer threatening the ethnic Albanian majority, and Kosovo and Serbia are still and will forever remain neighbors, mutually interested in securing peace and stability in the region.
However, his analysis is curiously myopic--Gvosdev seems completely unaware that events in Kosovo resonate throughout the former Yugoslavia. There is not a word about Bosnia in this article. Anyone familiar with the history of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s is well aware of the connection between events in Kosovo and Bosnia. To suggest that ethnic partition of Kosovo in order to placate nationalists in Belgrade is the path the greater security and peace in the region is to betray a shocking ignorance or indifference to the region's recent history.
Gvosdev gives some examples of agreements which he believes provide possible frameworks on how to proceed. He is very concerned not only with the Serbian-majority north, which he points out is not under Pristina's control (for reasons he does not dwell on), but also on some of the ethnic Serb enclaves in the south, and the many Serb Orthodox religious sites which are currently under the protection of NATO (and therefore also not under Pristinas' control--see how neatly this works?). Therefore, he suggests that a possible "solution" would be to pattern an autonomy agreement based on the Lateran Treaty, the agreement by which fascist Italy established the Vatican City as a sovereign nation capable of shielding serial child rapists from prosecution in their home countries. Gvosdev blandly portrays this pact, by which Mussolini courted favor with a right-wing, authoritarian church previously not inclined to look favorably on his radical regime, as merely a resolution of territorial beef between the church and the Italian state.
He also points out that both Poland and Armenia were promised independence before border had been settled--given that those two nations did not have long-standing fixed borders because of their history (any historical atlas of Europe will demonstrate this--go from map to map throughout history, and you'll note that Poland, sadly, never had the same borders for very long, due to aggression by its neighbors), Gvosdev might have a hard time ignoring that Kosovo has a long history as a well-defined geopolitical entity, but using a common Balkan revisionist tactic he claims that the borders were nothing but arbitrary administrative boundaries established by the Tito regime.
And this is the only time Gvosdev even acknowledges that there are other "disputed" boundaries in the Balkans. He dismisses these concerns by pointing out that Pristina doesn't control these areas, anyway--which means that hopefully nobody will ask him for his advice regarding the Russian occupation of significant areas of Georgia, for example. Gvosdev may not realize it, but he is arguing in favor of might making right--get enough militia on the ground able to bully the government into backing down, and viola--instant redrawing of the map.
Finally, what is so depressing about this article is that Gvosdev doesn't even realize that he is suggesting that the best way to defuse nationalist agitation is to give nationalists exactly what they want, or at least to make compromises on their terms. This is ethnic partition, no matter how one dresses it up, and it also is a validation of the premise that Serb nationalist demands have a legitimacy which cannot be fundamentally challenged, only modified. Ultimately, this sort of solution can only fuel more instability in Bosnia (and possibly the Sandzak as well), while his belief that this would actually increase the leverage that liberal and pro-democratic forces in Serbia wield seems naive to me.
Ironically, there was another story recently which suggests that Gvosdev has ignored a much less craven method of ensuring stability in the region--insisting on an acceptance of curent boundaries and a willingness to work within current national structures. Recently, the government in Turkey was able to get the governments of Serbia and Bosnia to sit down and pledge to work together. Predicatably, hardliners in the Republika Srpska were not pleased to see Belgrade dealing directly with Sarajevo without going through Banja Luka first. I suspect Gvosdev might be disappointed as well:
Serbia, BiH optimistic about new chapter in ties
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