A tenable coalition existed between Bosnian and Croatian forces to end the ethnic war in 1992. The destruction of the old bridge in Mostar, the city’s namesake, was a response by armed radical nationalists in the streets to the Vance Owen peace plan.
The situation of Mostar and the general state of Muslim-Croatian relations in Bosnia from 1991 through 1993 suggests early attempts at mediation, far from solving problems, may have given the parties more reason to fight. The Croatian forces in Bosnia used the Vance-Owen map to justify the disarming of Muslims living in areas designated for Croat control. [1]
Stuart Kaufman, using his symbolic politics theory of ethnic war, argues that solving the problems of the region was impossible for the powerful west. Mediators would need to change Yugoslav leader’s bargaining tactics, policy goals and ruling strategies.[2] However, assuming this as fact, there seems to be a reasonable expectation that the response of the international community would not make matters worse.
Symbolic politics is an approach that encompasses other varied influences in a hierarchy and explains the development of a security dilemma through hostility and militarism.[3] Insight into the intensity of the conflict can be then gained observing how a population’s relationship to symbols evolves once ethnic war begins.
The ignorance of the national grievances in the west and their reliance upon ancient hatred as the intractable fact discredited any legitimate nationalistic demands.[4] Early in this conflict, a focused response from the international community could have brought a quick end. Unfortunately, the international community was unable to speak with one voice to the groups in conflict.[5]
Symbolic politics theory seems to breakdown when applied to the international community. The large number of nations and unique myth-symbol complexes represented in the international community tends to overwhelm any attempt to apply the theory to their actions. However, perhaps in future conflicts this theory can be used to finds hints from the last generation that can suggest paths to resolution.
Myths, symbols and there manipulation become the deciding force in ethnic war because there is a continuity from generation to generation. It seems reasonable to search the last forty years to find possible explanations for why it took so many things to go wrong before ethnic war began in Bosnia.[6]
The federation finally created between Muslims and Croats in Bosnia did become the foundation for peace in Bosnia after 1994.[7] This was possible due the experiences of the last forty years. The hints from the past may be exceptionally difficult to use as a predictor for ethnic war, but it is possible to search the generational context for lessons to help resolve future ethnic wars using symbolic politics theory.
Myths and Symbols
In essence, the last generation had a shared experience and a real basis for alliance as shown by Mostar in the spring of 1992. The majority of theories advocated either seek to explain the conflict as a case of ancient hatred or through simple rational choice. Stuart Kaufman has attempted to expose the roots of ethnic conflict through the politics of myths and symbols. He argues that there are specific conditions required for ethnic war.[8]
The idea that people react emotionally to symbols and base political decisions in certain part upon these feelings is the heart of symbolic politics theory.[9] Michael Sells strengthens this view as he argues religion and religious mythology as important not only for the faithful because the impact is: “far beneath and beyond self-conscious belief, in deeper structures of symbol, society and psychology, and can effect the atheist every bit as much as the self-proclaimed believer.”[10] Myths and symbols in a more general sense take advantage of the same mechanism.
Symbolic politics offers the possibility of a coherent definition of ethnic war. It is the type of civil-strife that myths and symbols can play a decisive role. The conflict in Yugoslavia meets all of Kaufman’s conditions:
· opportunity
· hostile symbolic myths
· ethnic fears[11]
Where these are not present, we are dealing with something other than ethnic war.
Opportunity was provided by the disinterest of the international community after the cold war. Hostile myths and ethnic fears in the former Yugoslavia are perhaps the best documented in the literature of ethnic war. References are made to this war in almost every volume on contemporary world issues.[12]
The intensity of the conflict is partly due to open hostilities and the fact that with an ethnic security dilemma there are people perfectly willing to fight.[13] However, symbolic theory does not explain the actions of the international community as clearly. Kaufman sights the lack of an international institution to facilitate a coherent peace process not as a failure of the international community to produce an appropriate institution, but as a reason that it was probably impossible for the west to prevent the war.[14]
The level of open hostility was demonstrated when Biljana Plavsic, an important member of the Bosnian Serb leadership, explained the failure of negotiations with Bosnian Muslims as one of genetics in 1994; she believed that poor genetic material was the reason for their initial conversion to Islam and the obstacle to good faith negotiations.[15] One could easily mistake her statement for a Nazi speaking of the Serbian population a generation earlier. As I will focus on the conflict in Mostar, it is necessary to acknowledge the extreme positions that led each side in turn to put myths and discredited reasoning to use in mobilizing ethnic forces.
Mostar
Before the war, the cities skyline included an Orthodox Church, Catholic cathedral and Muslim mosque because of centuries of living together in this shared space.[16] The heart was the bridge over the river Neretva that dates from 1561. Construction was a multi-religious project drawing artisans and engineers from the surrounding area; the bridge had connected the city for four centuries and survived thirty earthquakes[17]
In the spring of 1992, the coalition between Muslim and Croatian forces succeeded in repelling a Serbian advance on the city of Mostar. However, in July of 1992 the Union of Herceg-Bosna was declared as a Croat state in Bosnia similar to an already establish Republika Srpska.[18]
The destruction of the fragile cooperation indicated the victory of the HV and HVO over the HOS variant of Croatian national mobilization. HOS is the military wing of the fascist Croatian Party of Rights and the HV and HVO were Croatian national armies for Croatia and Bosnia respectively.[19]
Tudjman, president of Croatia and the acknowledged leader of Bosnian Croats, saw Bosnian Muslims as racially and culturally inferior; the historical ustashe movement saw them as simply historical Croatians, corrupted, but no less brother.[20] The HVO worked to divide Bosnia with the Serbs, while HOS wanted the Serbs out of Bosnia and Greater Croatia realized.[21]
Tudjman expressed extremist views quite openly; he suggested that Jews were the main executioners at the Ustashe death camp of Jasenovac due to their nature.[22] He saw the Muslim culture as little less than Turkish and Islamic contamination in the region that he would Europeanize.[23]
The HVO was formed independent of Sarajevo’s authority and the Bosnian army; Muslims needing all the help they could find were not in any position to object and naturally accepted the reality.[24] June 16th, 1992 a formal military alliance was signed that legitimized the use of HV forces in Bosnia.[25] The HVO took over Herzegovina and HOS essentially lost any independent significance.[26] HOS, the first Croatian force to mobilize in Bosnia, represented less than twenty percent of their available forces in 1992.[27]
By October, Croatian forces took control of the town of Novi Travnik and began to imitate Serbian tactics in Prozor: raping, killing and destroying cultural artifacts.[28] This same month the Vance-Owen peace plan was first presented to the parties.[29] In April of 1993, the HVO worked directly with Serbian forces during an assault upon the town of Zepce.[30] Peace negotiations would have to deal with new realities on the ground.
The Invincible plan was the response to the failure of Vance-Owen; a decentralized state was replaced with a federation of three ethnic republics taking into account the reality on the ground.[31] A great factor in the failure was the belief in the Muslim military establishment that more territory would be gained if the war continued, successes in central Bosnia against Croat forces was a turning point.[32] The maps would be drawn again.
The HVO learned a lesson from the Bosnian Serbs, they saw them rewarded for war crimes and they took a more systematic approach to their offensives. Symbolic politics theory explains that hostility and militarism, such as the HVO forces wrapped in HOS imagery, created the security dilemma in Mostar[33].
The ten-month siege of Mostar evolved out of this security dilemma; the HVO forced Muslims across the river in to the eastern part of city.[34] I first visited Mostar in January of 1996, even at this late date the contradiction was remarkable. East Mostar was the perfect location for the filming of a WWII movie; two years after the end of hostilities, the majority of the buildings were nothing but rubble. West Mostar looked the typical Mediterranean city, aside from a few blocks of front line.
The intensity of the conflict has been well documented, but the question remains how the role of symbols evolves once ethnic war begins. All the facts of the conflict are blurred even seven years after the end of the war, details have not been completely decided. “Despite an abundance of books about that war, which have been read and interpreted in accordance with various sentimentalist and ideological approaches, both the country and the war that destroyed it remain, for the most part, misunderstood.”[35] What we are left with are myths, symbols, and impressions.
The population of Mostar went through a demographic shift during the conflict; traumatized refugees came to the city.[36] Ethnic cleansing created homogeneous populations, but from varied geographical regions so that the populations no longer had a shared relationship to Mostar, but only a relationship to their particular ethnic group.[37] Perhaps symbols like the bridge become more powerful to people who lack any connection to the city. A Croatian militiaman working to destroy the bridge was quoted to say, "It is not enough to cleanse Mostar of the Muslims, the relics must also be destroyed."[38]
In November 1993, the bridge was destroyed as the climax of eighteen months of shelling first by the Serbian and then Croatian forces.[39] The war in Bosnia would continue and to the horror of the world, the worst would continue. In 1994, the United States working close with Germany was able to revive the Croat/Muslim alliance and a federation in Bosnia was created between the two groups.[40] The conflict returned to the stage of early 1992, with so much water and bridge under the bridge; an end was finally in sight.
But the most ghastly loss has been the housing at the center of the town near each end of the Old Bridge, much of it only recently restored. "Maybe," the bombs seem to say in crazed logic of this war, "if we remove the architecture that sustains the people in this community, the people themselves will die." The attacks are not symbolic strikes at the representational value of architecture, as in Italy, but an insane effort to eliminate a people by destroying their architecture.[41]
Attempts to avert tragedy in the collapse of Yugoslavia clearly failed for numerous reasons. However, in 1994 the international community got a second chance to build on the cooperation of the Croatian and Muslim communities. Using the symbolic politics approach struggles of the previous generation could have offered clues to an early resolution.
The Generational Context
Under Lenin, Stalin and Tito, who attended comintern leadership lectures in Moscow in the mid-30’s,[42] nationalism was a threat because it could create an all class alliance for nationalistic goals; a bourgeois trick and a good one.[43] The most significant force was the principle of greater danger: great-power chauvinism was the real threat compared to smaller less conscious national minorities.[44] In the Soviet experience, Russian nationalism was the greatest problem; in the Yugoslav experience, Serbian nationalism was the focus after the domination of Belgrade during the interwar period.
Croatia was one of the most developed republics. However, Croatian nationalism was not seen as great-power chauvinism; a greater Croatia was possible only with the support of Germany during WWII.[45] For the communist, great-power chauvinism of the Serbs created the Ustasha movement. There was a real grievance and a real Croatian dissatisfaction unleashed; domination by Germany filled the roll of force multiplier.[46]
The important implication for a Croatian/Muslim alliance in 1992 is that both of those nationalities grew in consciousness under communism: the idea that their claims were more important in order to balance the nationalities of a multi-ethnic state encouraged each to blossom; communist policies would “address the positive psychological needs of nationalism.”[47] A strong Yugoslavia based on a weak Serbia is the most important foundation for analysis of the years of ethnic war.
The absence of free political expression tended to excite the highly emotional question of national identity. By the 1960’s it was becoming clear that nationalism was becoming a greater problem than it had been before WWII.[48] As Pavlowitch noted in 1988:
The partition of Yugoslavia, if it could be carried out, would place her successors in a situation of mutual enmity with one another, as well as at the Mercy of their more powerful neighbors. Her nationality question does, nevertheless, offer a permanent temptation to the mischief-makers of uncompromising solutions, and to all those who fish in troubled waters.[49]
Misha Glenny in his exhaustive volume on the Balkans argues that between 1966 and 1972, a period that includes the Croatian Spring, Tito used conflict between Zagreb and Belgrade to consolidate his own power.[50] A new constitution in 1974 gave greater autonomy to Kosovo and Vojvodina in an attempt to balance the power of Serbia.[51] Dobrivoj Radosavljevic a Serb communist, who agreed with the majority of Tito’s policies, in 1971 predicted Yugoslavia would pay a large price for the historic error of intensifying Croatian-Serb and Serb-Albanian conflict.[52]
Gary Bertsch doing research in Zagreb, based on questionnaires in 1971, found that the heartland of Yugoslavia appeared to be relatively more politically integrated; this included Bosnia and Croatia (except for the Dalmatian coast).[53] Furthermore, his results showed Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia “attitudinally similar.”[54]
This study hints at the foundations of a coalition between the Muslims and Croats and is an example of the type of information that mediators in future conflicts should search out and document. Available data clearly indicates that Bosnia and Croatia had shared experienced upon which to build cooperation; policies to create a new Yugoslav citizen, from data available, seem to have worked best on the Croats and Muslims in Bosnia.
Loss of Balance
The rise of Milosevic and nationalism in Serbia was possible due to communist policies of the past. Serbia was the only republic with autonomous regions. This fact allowed Milosevic to blame decentralization as the culprit for economic problems in Serbia. The Croatian response was reactive and defensive initially, and helped to fuel ethnic fears that would later destroy Bosnia.[55]
In early 1989, by dominating the autonomous regions along with a close relationship to Montenegro and Macedonia: Milosevic effectively controlled four of eight votes in the collective federal presidency.[56] Slovenia, which historically was the least integrated into Yugoslavia,[57] had a choice to stay and hope to balance the Serbian threat or to leave the federation. In the summer of 1989, party leaders stated that they would not accept Serbian domination of the federal presidency. Milosevic responded by severing all economic ties and denounced their attitude as anti-Yugoslav and anti-Serbian.[58]
By 1991, with national grievances bringing Yugoslavia to the brink of all out war, the world was distracted. The death of Yugoslavia was not a vital interest of the west with the Soviet Union collapsing into fifteen independent states, the Berlin wall gone, Germany one nation and the liberation of Kuwait.[59]
International Response
Mediation by the international community played the role of external threats (the loss or gain of territory) in the model developed by Stevan Pavlowitch:
Alongside organic growth and power apparatus, external threats should also be taken into account as factors of unity, for as long as they do not turn into aggression. At that point, and when the aggressor sets about brutally exploiting internal differences, the bonds give way, as happened with the German attack of 1941 and with the Ottoman advance at the turn of the fourteenth century.[60]
The international community is often defined as the external force that had a profound influence on the mobilization of the nationalities.[61] Symbolic politics, however, does little to quantify this aspect. An overview of the world’s response is all that seems possible.
Initial support for the continuation of Yugoslavia first acted to strengthen the position of Milosevic; he had no incentive to accept a decentralized confederation that would decrease the position of Belgrade.[62] In contrast, by including Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serbs in negotiations at early stages, the Muslims felt slighted; mediation effectively made them all equal parties and therefore reduced the status of the recognized government.[63]
The belief in ancient hatred as the cause of Balkan conflict was the central mistake of the international community. Canada, for example, held the position that this was a civil war with deep historical roots; the assumption was that these people had always been fighting.[64] The groups were seen as morally equivalent with no good-guys to be found.[65]
A 1993 best-seller, Balkan Ghost by Robert Kaplan, gave the strong impression that with such ancient hatred in the region nothing could be done. President Clinton new into his office was reportedly among those influenced.[66] The situation seemed unsolvable in Kaplan’s analysis.
A common misconception is that Bosnia was a creation of Tito and that it has no historical significance or history as a multi-ethnic state.[67] “The linguistic, historical, and geographic integration of its population was of a higher order than can be found among its neighbors.”[68] Jack Eller argues that the real conflict was between visions of pluralistic or exclusive societies.[69]
Support from the west for the preserving Yugoslavia continued up to the summer of 1991. However, the subtext was qualified and the wording evolved over time. There was a perception by the groups in conflict that there would be no real consequences for their actions; they would be accepted eventually and the peace negotiations would include new realities on the ground.[70]
Washington supported the idea of self-determination implicitly supporting breakup, but at the same time spoke of both the need to preserve Yugoslavia and to limit the means of Belgrade to do so.[71] Those most responsible for starting the war created the theory of ancient hatred as a simplistic argument that there was nothing to understand.[72] In this context contradictory policies and statements from the west resulted; adding more confusion than support for resolution.
Using Pavlowitch’s ideas from 1988, one can argue that the international community represented the historical outsider that has so often been the signal of great suffering in the Balkans.[73] However, any belief that the international community could have solved or not intensified the problems assumes that a coherent response was possible through the actions of countless individuals in west.
Kaufman’s symbolic politics defines the reason for ethnic war as myths supporting hostility and the how as manipulation of symbols.[74] This theory seems best suited to explain actions on the ground, but a larger context is missing: ethnic war does not exist in a vacuum.
Conclusion
Symbolic politics best describes situation up to the security dilemma and offers good insight into the intensity of the conflict. Continuity can be seen in the myths and symbols through the generations. The recent past should then offer the best source of information for resolution of conflict. Appling the theory to the international community’s response seems more problematic.
The coalition between Bosnian and Croatian developed out of a shared experience; there seems to be indications in the older generation that they were better integrated into the communist system. The situation was much more difficult in 1994, but the Federation between the Croats and Muslims demonstrates the potential of a similar plan in 1992; the basis for ethnic fear and hostile myths had only been increased in the years of conflict.
The situation of Mostar from 1991 through 1993 demonstrates the intensity ethnic war can reach. The HVO’s use of the Vance-Owen map for their deadly designs indicates that there was a significant role played by the international community.[75]
Stuart Kaufman theory of ethnic war offers tools to evaluate developments in Mostar, but offers little help in separating and evaluating the impact of the various interventions and attempts at mediation. However, the impression that the problems were unsolvable was encouraged by the leaders of each group.[76]
Symbolic politics, an approach that encompasses many varied influences, fails to help explain the international context of ethnic war. Kaufman hints at the greater applicability of his theory and shows security dilemmas do not develop from anarchy, but have quantifiable causes.[77] Unfortunately, as great as the insight gained into the causes and intensity of the conflict a theory more able to include factors outside of the Balkans remains elusive.
Misconception of Bosnia tended to question the possibility of coexistence;[78] the end of the war through the creation of a Muslim/Croat federation demonstrates the reality. Better possibilities were certainly possible, a greater focus on a general cease-fire instead of local ones could have saved more lives. However, there was always a risk of appearing as accepting defacto partition and ethnic cleansing. [79]
Symbolic politics theory stumbles when applied to the international community. However, there is a real basis to believe that the approach can be used to identify strategies for future conflict mediation. Myths, symbols and their manipulation have continuity from generation to generation; it is vital to search the last forty years to find hints for resolution.
Federation between Muslims and Croats in Bosnia was the foundation for peace in Bosnia. Using symbolic politics theory, the hints from the past offer a generational context to help explain this resolution. Furthermore, the approach offers the best chance to understand the intensity once war begins.
My first experience in Bosnia was March of 1995; July 11, Srebrenica became the latest tragedy in the continuing war. The sense I received was one of indignation, the fight should have never been started, should not have continued and made no sense.
Symbolic politics theory offers the chance to extract a clear development and chronology. If ethnic war ever existed in a vacuum, the approach could thoroughly explain the seemingly chaotic developments. However, the context of the wider world seems to reveal limitation in the applications of the theory. Future would be mediators could create a more coherent approach using the strengths of symbolic politics theory.
[1] Sells, Michael Anthony. The Bridge Betrayed: Religion and Genocide in Bosnia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 100.
[2] Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatred: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), 166.
[3] Ibid, 221.
[4] Jack David Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict (Ann Arbor:: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 244
[5] Saadia Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 15.
[6] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 200.
[7] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars, 127
[8] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 203-204
[9] Ibid, 29.
[10] Michael Sells, “The Construction of Islam in Serbian Religious Mythology and Its Consequences” in Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution And Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States ed Maya Shatzmiller, (Montreal, Kingston, London, and Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 57
[11] Ibid, 34.
[12] Rusmir Mahmutcehajic, Sarajevo Essays: Politics, Ideology, and Tradition, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003) 5.
[13] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 34.
[14] Ibid, 166
[15] Michael Sells, “The Construction of Islam in Serbian Religious Mythology and Its Consequences,” 58.
[17] Ibid.
[19] Glenny, The Balkans, 645.
[20] Ibid
[22] Ibid, 95.
[23] Ibid.
[25] Malcom 240
[27] Malcom 240.
[29] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars, 120.
[31] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars, 123.
[32] Ibid, 125.
[33] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 221.
[35] Rusmir Mahmutcehajic, Sarajevo Essays: Politics, Ideology, and Tradition, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003) 5.
[36] Andrew Herscher “Remembering and Rebuilding in Bosnia An architect argues that the right blend of reconstruction can help revive multiculturalism” Transitions vol. 5 no. 3 (March, 1998)
[37] Ibid
[39] Ibid, 113-114
[40] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars, 127.
[41] Nicholas Adam, “Architecture as the Target.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, (vol. 52, December 1993.) 389-390.
[42] Misha Glenny, The Balkans: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers, 1804-1999, (New York: Viking Penguin, 2000), 572.
[43] Terry Martin, “An Affirmative-Action Empire: The Emergence of the Soviet Nationalities Policy 1919-1923,” in The Structure of Soviet History, ed Ronald Grigor Suny (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 94.
[44] Ibid, 97.
[45] Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor, 10.
[46] Ibid,
[47] Martin, “An Affirmative-Action Empire,” 99
[48] Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor, 75.
[49] Ibid, 77.
[50] Glenny, The Balkans, 572.
[51] Vojin Dimitrijevic, “The 1974 Constitution and Constitutional Process as a Factor in the collapse of Yugoslavia,” in Yugoslavia: The Former and Future, ed. Payam Akhavan, (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1995) 59.
[52] Glenny, The Balkans, 593.
[53] Gary Bertsch, Nation Building in Yugoslavaia: A Study of Political Integration and Attitudinal Consensus (London: Sage Publications, 1971) 20.
[54] Ibid, 29
[55] Mahmutcehajic, Sarajevo Essays, 121.
[56] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 181.
[57] Bertsch, Nation Building in Yugoslavaia 20.
[58] Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict, 290.
[59] Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), 24.
[60] Stevan K. Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor: Yugoslavia and its problems, 1918-1988 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988), 55.
[61] Mahmutcehajic, Sarajevo Essays, 118.
[62] Marc Weller, “The International Response to the Dissolution of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.” American Journal of International Law (86, no. 3 July 1992), 569-607.
[63] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars 116.
[64] Nader Hashemi, “Peacekeeping with No Peace to Keep: The Failure of Canadian Foreign Policy in Bosnia” in Islam and Bosnia: Conflict Resolution And Foreign Policy in Multi-Ethnic States ed Maya Shatzmiller, (Montreal, Kingston, London, and Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002), 187.
[65] Ibid, 189.
[66] Holbrooke, To End a War, 22..
[67] Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict, 244.
[68] Mahmutcehajic, Sarajevo Essays, 117.
[69] Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict, 245.
[70] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars, 15.
[71] Ibid, 22
[72] Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict, 245.
[73] Pavlowitch, The Improbable Survivor: Yugoslavia and its problems, 1918-1988, 55-56.
[74] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 210
[76] Kaufman, Modern Hatred, 166.
[77] Ibid, 221.
[78] Eller, From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict, 244
[79] Touval, Mediation in the Yugoslav Wars 132.
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