Post-War Identification
Everyday Muslim Counterdiscourse in Bosnia Herzegovina
Torsten Kolind
Former Yugoslavian republics and autonomous provinces, 1945-1991
Bosnia Herzegovina after the Dayton agreement 1995, showing inter-entity boundary line between Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina and Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) and larger cities.
Acknowledgements
My book is based on research which was part of the research project ‘Archaeological and Social Anthropological Perspectives on War and Society’ at the Institute of Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. This project formed part of the Danish Research Council for the Humanities’ special initiative on the subject of ‘Civilization and War’. I want to thank all the members of our research group for our inspiring discussions, seminars and workgroup sessions (see Otto et al. 2006 for an overview of the results of this research project).
I want to thank Ton Otto, professor at the Department of Anthropology and Ethnography, University of Aarhus, who supervised the PhD dissertation on which this book is based. His comments were always constructive, he was respectful of my way of thinking, and he supported me whole-heartedly.
I want to thank both Aarhus University Research Foundation and the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation for grants to fund the publishing of this book.
I also want to thank a handful of scholars whom I have come across during my research in Bosnia Herzegovina, and who have commented constructively on my work and inspired me intellectually. Dr Maja Povrzanović Frykman, who completed a thorough and critical reading of my manuscript for the PhD dissertation, and for inspiring conversations. Dr Xavier Bougarel for his useful comments on part of my work (Kolind 2007). Dr Mitja Velikonja, Dr Ivana Maček and Dr Stef Jansen for stimulating conversations at seminars in Aarhus and Lund, and fruitful email correspondence. Dr Hannes Grandits for our friendly and interesting exchange in Stolac and Mostar. And Dr Tone Bringa, whose works have inspired me a great deal, and for the invitation to the right seminar at the right time.
I want to express my greatest debt of gratitude to my informants in Stolac. For many years their lives have been a nightmare. They have experienced war, expulsion, fear, hunger and desperation; and after returning to their homes, many have felt uncertainty, bitterness and resignation. I was therefore amazed and impressed by how hospitable, sincere and trusting most of my informants were. Circumstances, unfortunately, do not allow me to mention any names. I do, however, wish to express a special thanks to my host family, who did all they could to help me in my research, as well as being thoroughly decent people. M for our inspiring talks and for your work in translating interviews. A for helping me with arranging interviews and for the kindness that you and your family showed me. H for your decency. M, your father, M and J for our good times together.
Last, I want to thank my lovely family, first of all my wife Jeanett Bjønness and my two children Martine and Severin, my father Jørn Kolind, my two brothers Lars and Marcus, and my deceased mother Inger Kolind, to whom this book is dedicated.
Part I
Framing the question
Prologue: Chronology of the war
Stolac, the town of departure for this book and the site where I conducted fieldwork, is located in the south-western corner of Bosnia Herzegovina. Before the war, according to the population census from 1991, the municipality of Stolac had 18,681 inhabitants (Muslims: 43 %; Croats: 33 %; Serbs: 21 %; others: 3 %), and the town itself had 5,530 inhabitants (Muslims:62 %; Serbs: 20 %; Croats: 12 %; others:6 %). A large proportion of the Croats lived in the minor villages in Stolac municipality. When I did fieldwork among the Muslims of Stolac no census figures were available, but judging from the number of schoolchildren attending the school in Stolac, the town had a majority of Croats, the rest being Muslims. Only a few Serb families had returned. According to the daily newspaper Dnevni Avaz (8 December 2001), between 1998 and 2001 about 3,700 Muslim refugees had returned to the municipality of Stolac, and 1,700 to the town itself. Most of the Muslim returnees were confined to a few neighbourhoods in the eastern and southern part of the town, which were largely destroyed during the war.
Before the war Stolac was a beautiful and historical town, as can be seen from pre-war pictures. The town contained many buildings from the Ottoman period, including mosques, houses, housing complexes and bridges. Post World War Two architecture was finely adjusted to the cultural traditions of the town. Stolac also had a lot of light industry, with several of the factories employing between 200 and 1,000 people. In addition, there were banks, a shopping centre, a museum, a cinema, many cafés, a new hotel, a big market, a hospital and a high school. Today a large proportion of these buildings have been destroyed, the industry has fallen apart, and the Croat population runs nearly all the public institutions.
The war in Herzegovina
Bosnia Herzegovina experienced a fierce war from 1992 to 1995, a war which divided the country ethnically. The Dayton peace agreement of December 1995 retained Bosnia Herzegovina’s international boundaries and created a joint multi-ethnic and democratic government. Also recognised was a second tier of government comprised of two entities roughly equal in size: the Bosniak/Croat Federation of Bosnia Herzegovina, and the Bosnian Serb-led Republika Srpska (RS) (see map). The Federation and RS governments were charged with overseeing internal functions.
The war in Bosnia Herzegovina was initially an act of aggression and territorial conquest instigated by Serbian political leaders. However, as the war progressed, it increasingly came to consist of several minor wars, one of them fought in Western Bosnia Herzegovina between Croatian and Muslim forces. This was the one that affected the inhabitants of Stolac the most. At the beginning of the war, Bosnian Croats and Muslims had joined forces, primarily because they faced the same enemy, the Serbs, who had already conquered large parts of Bosnia Herzegovina in the first month of the war. Croatia had already suffered from Serbian attacks, so in Croatia people felt sympathy for their neighbours. However, the alliance was a marriage of convenience, made up of rather different strategies.
The Bosnian Croats were divided between those living in central Bosnia, who considered themselves as much Bosnian as Croat, and the Croats living in areas dominated largely by Croats, mainly Western Herzegovina, who were eager to forge closer ties with Croatia proper, rather than with the other ethnic groups of Bosnia Herzegovina. The Herzegovinian Croats only constituted around a third of the total Croat population of Bosnia Herzegovina, but when the war started they were the most influential. This influence was primarily due to the existence of what some have called ‘the Herzegovinian lobby’ (Donia and Fine 1994: 249; Grandits 2007: 107-9), a hard-core nationalist group of mainly émigré Croats. The Herzegovinian lobby had contributed greatly to the Croatian President Tuđman’s presidential campaign in 1990 (Woodward 2000). Tuđman – himself strongly nationalistic, with his dream of annexing substantial parts of Bosnia Herzegovina1 – rewarded his backers by supporting their desire to divide up Bosnia and make Herzegovina a part of Croatia. In July 1992, the Herzegovinian Croats, led by Mate Boban, leader of the HDZ-BiH (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica – Bosna i Hercegovina; the Croatian Democratic Union – Bosnia Herzegovina, a strongly nationalist Croat political party) convened a self-proclaimed Presidency of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna and declared a self-governing community (Donia and Fine 1994: 248-51; Glenny 1996: 192-9; Bennet 1995: 198-202).
The Herzegovinian Croats, despite the declaration of the self-governing community,