The Kindling of Identity Politics: Bosnia and Herzegovina Conflict in Perspective

The modern nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is inextricably linked to conflict. As a nation born from conflict, the scars from the bitter three-year fighting remain deeply inscribed in the residents, politics, and political institutions. The cessation of hostilities in 1995 ushered in a tenuous balance among the disparate factions – typically cast as ethnic groups: Bosniaks, Bosnian Serbs, and Bosnian Croatians –residing in federated republics – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srpska, and the independently governed Brcko district.

Identity politics, ostensibly instrumentalized to consolidate factional support, fanned the flames of ethnic tensions, and the conclusion of the conflict in 1995 failed to quell these tensions (Dahlman and Tuathail, 2005, 644). In fact, the political settlement arguably further entrenched and institutionalized tensions between the belligerents. Yet questions remain as to how ethnicity came to define the conflict and the extent to which such explanations are plausible in modern-day Bosnia and Herzegovina? Moreover, why does it remain pervasive to date?

Identity politics, instrumentalized in the three-year BiH conflict, were institutionalized both in the formal state political institutions and informal socioeconomic politics in the aftermath of the Dayton Peace Accords. In the most basic form, identity politics essentializes fundamental characteristics or features – such as an ethnic, religious, or national orientation – to galvanize and define a group at the expense of all other characteristics or features (Hobsbawm, 1992, 4-5). This paper traces the historical development of the Bosnia and Herzegovina conflict to contextualize the ongoing tensions and the implications on the present. The fundamental aim lies to advance a more robust grasp of the roots of identity politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the ways they are manifest in modern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Historical Foundations Ethnic Violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

A starting point from which to examine the roots of ethnic tensions remains a challenge. Uneven development, divergent political alignments, and disparate socialization processes heavily influenced the demographics, settlement, and cultural and political norms of the regions of former Yugoslavia. Sections of Southeastern Europe were carved up between the Ottomans – an Islamic Empire based in modern Istanbul – and the predominantly Christian Habsburg monarchy in the 19th and early 20th centuries (O’Tuathail, 2010, 260; Bechev, 2006, 13). Similarly, Croats – under the aegis of the Ustase – were granted independence by the Nazi regime in the early 1940s, and through this proxy, systematically massacred Serbs, Jews, and gypsies in camps, such as Jasenovac (Fisk, 1992)). Finally, in the aftermath of WWII, the region came under the control of Joseph Broz Tito, the strongman who administered the federated republics. Each of the republics received different investments from the central regime and led to greater inequalities (Magas, 1993, p. 136). Tito’s death in 1980 left a void for the direction for Yugoslavia, and arguably served a key function disintegration of the Yugoslav republic and the onset of the 1992 conflict.

The delicate ethnic balance in the federated republics of Yugoslavia began to unravel in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Economic depression, combined with the rise of identity politics, fueled nationalist claims of breakaway regions of the federated states. The dissemination of the Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, a nationalist paper called for the radical reorganization of the state for decentralization, set the stage for the crumbling of Yugoslavia (Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1986). Slobodan Milosevic’s election to the presidency of the Serbian Republic in 1989 granted a platform for his notions of a “Greater Serbia” and subsequently fueled nationalist fervor in Serbia and, in turn, the nationalist aspirations of the federal states. The tenuous balance of former Yugoslavia unraveled in the early 1990s (Branson, 1992). The Bosnian referendum for independence – largely boycotted by Bosnian Croatians and Bosnian Serbs – in March 1992 followed a similar declaration by Slovenia and Croatia but ushered in conflict (Dahlman and O’Tuathil, 2005, 647). Guerilla tactics soon followed by each side (O’Tuathail, 2010, 261-262). The violence led to the mobilization of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) in early April, under the pretense of protection of the ethnic Serbs in mixed regions, but the implicit intent of support for Bosnian Serbs (Doder, 1993, 18-19). The joint JNA and Republika Srpska troops overwhelmed Bosnian government forces and marched to Sarajevo in April 1992 (Andreas, 2004, 36-37). Reports of the ethnic-oriented violence and intimidation soon followed, as mixed ethnic villages became frontlines (Andreas, 2004, 31-32). Despite an active UNSC-mandated Protection Force (UNPROFOR), the UN troops proved powerless. UN troops were humiliated; seventeen were captured and held by Serb forces in April 1994, but the UN had little recourse (Williams, 1994). UNSC resolution 781 in October 1992, created a “no-fly zone” over Bosnia ostensibly to counter JNA and Republika of Srpska bombings, and the implementation of the “no-fly zone” later gave way to bombings of Serb military targets (UNSC, 1992).

The deterioration of the situation came to a head in 1995. The UNPROFOR contingent remained impotent to counter the strength of the JNA and affiliated paramilitary forces on the ground. In fact, UN troops not only failed to halt ethnic cleansing but enabled some instances of this heinous crime. The most egregious example was in the so-called UN “safe zone” of the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995 (British Broadcasting Corporation, 2005). The massacre perpetrated by Serbian troops and paramilitaries killed 8,000 Bosnians whilst the UN troops stood by as witnesses. Similarly, the Serb bombing of the Markale Market in central Sarajevo in August 1995 left 38 civilians dead (Fish, 2004).

The Dayton Accords of 1995 paved the way for the current tenuous peace between the factions and integrated the federated Republika of Srpska regions, sites of ethnic cleansing, within the Bosnia and Herzegovina nation. As a result, many analysts suggested the impatience of the US administration was more interested in ending the hostilities at the expense of a viable and sustainable peace among the factions and the neighboring nations (Djipa, O’Loughlin, and O’Tuathail, 2006, 63).

State of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Institutionalized Identity Politics

While the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA), signed in 1995, brought the cessation of hostilities between factions, the institutional configuration remains subject to criticism and debate. Djipa, O’Loughlin, and Tuathil (2006) offer a searing critique of the political institutions based on surveys from residents. They conclude the DPA legitimized the Republic of Srpska, and the dysfunctional DPA systems and jingoistic nationalist tendencies could be remedied through ascension of BiH to the European Union (Djipa, O’Loughlin, O’Tuathail, 2006, 74-75). To clarify, the DPA agreement carved out two “state-like” ethnonationalist entities, Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 10 cantons within the BiH Federation and held together by thirteen individual constitutions (Djipa et al. 2006, 62-63). Many analysts attribute the dysfunctional nature of the political institutions to the inability or indifference of outside actors (Touquet and Vermeersch, 2008, 273). Thus, most of the critiques and scholarship tend to focus on the type and nature of institutional reforms to foster a more efficient political arrangement (Andreas, 2004, 30; Djipa, O’Loughlin, O’Tuathail, 2006, 64-65).

Beyond institutions, the DPA institutionalized identity politics in two important ways. On the one hand, the institutions to emerge from the DPA contributed to the “identity formation” and consolidation of individual “ethnic” groups (Touquet and Vermeersch, 2008, pp. 266-267). Indeed, Tuathail echoes his colleagues in claiming “nationhood and ethnicity are contingent events”, meaning discursive elements are at play in the cultivation of national identity, a logic to resonate with the subnational politics of BiH (Tuathil, 2010, 258). Thus, identity politics provided the modality through which “ethnic” identity was constructed, yet the need for territory to realize the national aspirations fueled the “ethnic cleansing” by belligerents.

On the other hand, the DPA further entrenched identity politics through economic patronage networks. More specifically, the pervasive but robust war economy forged by informal and in some cases, criminal networks, enabled arms shipments to the Republic of Srpska, the border regions of Serbia (Andreas, 2004, 33-34). Informal networks, then, provided avenues for both the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian government to sidestep the UN arms embargo during the conflict. In the aftermath, such networks were translated to criminal networks at the expense of the state. These criminal networks undermine not only the state authority but the viability of the state.

Conclusions

This paper sought to deconstruct the “ethnic” orientation as an instrument to consolidate political authority and fuel nationalist aspirations. Indeed, the conflicts in the Balkans shed new light on the constructions of identity and the fundamental elements of nationalism. Yet nationalism requires territory and the basis for an exclusionary identity feeds the most egregious features, namely the “ethnic cleansing”, of the conflict to achieve homogeneity. Moreover, the framing of the conflict as “ethnic” lends to reductive notions of the “other” and enables greater leverage in mobilizing resources. This logic fostered by the conflict continues in the array of current political and socioeconomic institutions. The challenge, then, remains in the need to dissolve these entrenched systems, but the form of such changes remains to be seen.

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(Appendix I omitted for preview. Available via download)

1. Milosevic 1989 speech, credit: Historycommons.org

2. Political Map of Present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina, credit: Vlib.iue.it

3. Graves at Srebrenica, the site of 1995 massacre, credit: Wikipedia.org

4. “Welcome to Sarajevo” iconic picture from city under siege, photo credit: www.thejournalist.ie

5. Sarajevo burning: telegraph.co.uk