Unintended consequences in Bosnia-Herzegovina

Bosnia's borders were not intended to be international when they were established in the 1940s, yet that is precisely what happened in 1992. Similarly the internal divisions in Bosnia that were drawn up by international overlords in the 1990s may in time gain much more significance than was originally intended. 

The internal divisions of Yugoslavia were decided during the Second World War and its aftermath. They were based on straightforward historical precedents, but some issues were debated. The border between Croatia and Serbia was largely based on a previous one, but adjusted for ethnic reasons. Had these adjustments not been made, the previously Croatian areas that were allocated to Serbia probably would have suffered the same devastation as eastern Slavonia in Croatia, the scene of the most bitter fighting during the Croatian war of 1991. In negotiations over Bosnia’s borders, Muslims had advocated attaching the Muslim-populated Sandzak region to Bosnia. Had the communists done so rather than allocating it to Serbia and Montenegro, Sandzak’s Muslims might have suffered the same fate in 1992 as those of Eastern Bosnia.

Shaping Republika Srpska

Of the decisions taken over Bosnia's internal borders in the 1990s, those relating to the "Republika Srpska" (RS) were mostly felt immediately. The insistence that RS should cover 49% of Bosnia ensured that large areas of Western Bosnia, possibly including RS’s biggest city Banja Luka, were not overrun in 1995 by the Bosnian Croat forces (HVO) or the mainly Muslim Bosnian Army (ARBiH).

The insistence on 49% also ensured that an area around the towns of Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo that had been overrun by the HVO would be returned to the RS, which was obviously of immediate benefit to the Serbs who vacated the area in the face of the Croat advance or were expelled by the Croats, as it meant they could quickly return. It also meant however that a large, though also thinly populated, area around the towns of Glamoc, Bosansko Grahovo and Drvar remained in Croat hands after the war, despite having been overwhelmingly Serb according to the 1991 census. In the same region, the 5^th Corps of the ARBiH was left in control of an area it conquered around the towns of Bosanski Petrovac and Kljuc. This land was of interest to the Muslims because it had had a substantial Muslim population prior to the war. Although Croats had no similar reasons to want to control Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo, holding them would have linked another town they captured that was of interest to them, Jajce (which was 35% Croat before the war), with other Croat-held territories in Western Bosnia.

Important decisions over the border between the RS  and the Muslim-Croat Federation were also taken in relation to Sarajevo. The Serb siege of Sarajevo technically lasted until 1996. Early in that year, Bosnia’s international administrators transferred some of the Serb-held territory around the region to the Muslim-Croat Federation, to link Sarajevo with other Muslim-controlled territories and to create a buffer between the city and the RS. Though in principal a common sense decision, in practice it was poorly implemented, with the immediate effect that there was a mass exodus of Serbs from those territories. The transfer is in contrast to the gradual changeover in Serb-occupied Eastern Slavonia in Croatia, which was not handed over to Croatian control until 1998, ensuring that there was no sudden departure of the Serb population. In the long-term, the decision to transfer the territories around Sarajevo ensures the existence of a cohesive Muslim heartland around a triangle formed by Sarajevo and two other large Bosnian cities, Tuzla and Zenica.

The delayed decision on Brcko

Brcko, a strategically important town in a small “corridor” of territory linking the western and eastern halves of the RS, was under the control of the Serbs at the end of the war but its long-term status was left unresolved ahead of an arbitration process that would last until 1999. In that year it was decided that Brcko would be neither part of the RS nor the Federation. Instead it would be a self-governing district, where laws would be created only at the state (Bosnia) and the district level.  Brcko’s potential as a flashpoint between Muslims and Serbs has been much discussed, but less attention has been paid to the possibility of conflict between the Croats and either of the two other groups. Brcko District is composed not just of the part of the pre-war Brcko municipality that was occupied by the Serbs during the war, but of an even larger portion of territory that was under the control of the ARBiH and its allies in the 108^th Brigade of the HVO. The existence of a common enemy in a fiercely contested area may have kept the Muslims and Croats together, but there were tensions. Testifying at a trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the wartime Muslim mayor of Brcko, Mustafa Ramic, said that there had been a very good relationship between Brcko’s Muslims and the Croat political party, the HDZ, (which won most of the Croat vote in Brcko in the 1990 elections) but that it later turned out that “we were not as close as we might have thought.”

The reason for the tensions was that the territory around Brcko held by the HVO and ARBiH was seen by the Muslims as ARBiH territory, but the Croats disagreed. They sought to establish two of their own municipalities, Ravne-Brcko and Gornje Ravne, around the Croat villages in the municipality, with Ravne-Brcko also to include Spionica, a village in Srebrenik municipality and a small part of Gradacac municipality. Brcko had before the war been earmarked as part of the Croats’ “Croatian Community of Bosanska Posavina”, which encompassed eight municipalities in northern Bosnia, with the separate municipalities Ravno-Brcko and Gornje Ravne  a kind of consolation prize following the Serbs’ establishment of the Brcko corridor. The aspiration died with the creation of Brcko District, but any renewed attempt to link up these territories with the Croat controlled area of Posavina around Orasje and Odzak would bring the Croats into conflict with the Serbs as it would entail cutting their corridor. Conflict between Croats and Muslims over the areas of Brcko not controlled by the Serbs is a more likely possibility.

The cantons

Relations between Muslims and Croats are even more strained in the areas that saw bitter fighting between the two groups during the Bosnian War. The Muslim-Croat Federation that was proclaimed following the end of the Croat-Muslim civil war in 1994 bore little resemblance to the reality, which was that most of the territory not under the control of the Serbs was firmly controlled by either the ARBiH or the HVO. Gradually though, the existence of the Federation began to take effect and the Croats have argued that it has turned them into an embattled minority in a Muslim-dominated state, sparking an exodus of Croats from Bosnia.

At the Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995, international mediators decided to divide the Federation into 10 Cantons. Some of these Cantons had a precedent, with the Una Sanska Canton (I) around Bihac and the Tuzla Canton (III) around the city of the same name, for example, corresponding to areas that were under the control of particular ARBiH corps at the end of the war, but others bore little resemblance to the actual control of territory.

The Herzegovina-Neretva Canton (VII) is composed of territories that had been fiercely contested between the HVO and ARBiH. Since 1994 it has been rigidly divided between territories that were under the control of the two armies at the end of hostilities, most notably in the city of Mostar, which is divided into a western half controlled by the Croats and an eastern half dominated by Muslims. The Croats also occupy an enclave surrounded by Muslim territory outside the town of Konjic, a remnant of the war. Hercegovina-Neretva is dominated by the Croats, who view Mostar as the capital of their now-defunct “Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna.” Although it is they who occupy an enclave in Muslim territory in Hercegovina-Neretva, it is the Muslims, isolated from the Muslim heartland around Sarajevo, Tuzla and Zenica, who are the weaker of the two groups in the canton. This has been tempered somewhat by special measures that have been implemented by the international community in Mostar, which the Croats would like to be unified as a Croat-majority city. When the Muslim-Croat war ended in 1994, Mostar was placed under international administration, and though committed to Mostar’s reunification in principle, the international community has implemented power sharing measures to ensure this doesn’t happen under Croat domination.

The other of the “mixed” cantons, Central Bosnia (VI), which like Hercegovina-Neretva  was engulfed by the Croat-Muslim war, was also divided between Croats and Muslims, with the Croat territory including two enclaves surrounded by Muslim territory around the towns of Vitez and Kiseljak. Another Croat-occupied area allocated to the canton, around of the town of Jajce, also became an enclave, though it was surrounded by both Muslim and Serb territory after the Croats were forced to give the Mrkonjic Grad area back to the Serbs. The canton was until recently dominated by Croats, but now has a Bosniak Prime Minister. Two Croat municipalities in the municipality, Kiseljak and Kresevo, have indicated their desire to transfer to the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, which is dominated by Croats. The option of transferring to a mostly Croat canton is not open to Jajce, though it might have been if the Croats had not been forced to return Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo, which separate Jajce from other Croat-held areas in Western Bosnia, to the Serbs. That decision means that Jajce now finds itself in a canton that is increasingly dominated by the Muslims. Kiseljak and Kresevo are also unlikely to be allowed to change cantons, because they are separated from Herzegovina-Neretva Canton’s mainly Croat municipalities by two of its Muslim-dominated municipalities, Konjic and Jablanica, which might also legitimately ask to transfer to Central Bosnia Canton.

Eight of the 10 cantons are ethnically cohesive, with Muslims dominating Sarajevo (IX), Gorazde (V), Tuzla, Una-Sana and Doboj-Zenica (IV) Cantons and Croats predominant in Posavina (II), Western Herzegovina (VII) and Canton 10. Doboj-Zenica at the end of the war included two Croat enclaves resulting from Croat-Muslim fighting at the end of the war, one around the municipality of Zepce and one outside Vares, a town from which the Croat population was expelled by the ARBiH. It also included Usora, an area that had been largely under the control of the HVO’s 110^th Brigade (which remained allied to the ARBiH) during the war. Usora, which the Croats had in 1992 declared as part of the “ Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna”, was turned into a separate municipality in 1998.

The Croats also sought to create a separate municipality in the Tuzla area and to an extent remained interested in this proposal after the creation of Tuzla Canton in 1995. In Tuzla municipality itself, according to some data, the Croats, despite only numbering 16% of Tuzla’s inhabitants were the biggest ethnic group across 50% of the territory. Many of the sparsely populated rural settlements around Tuzla, including villages such as Husino, Breske and Dokanj, were, and still are, mostly Croat. These form the nucleus of the putative “Soli” municipality, which also includes Croat majority villages in neighbouring municipalities; Bistrac in Lukavac municipality and Drijenca in Lopare (now Celic) municipality. But judging by the experience of the Zepce and Usora enclaves in Zenica-Doboj Canton it is doubtful whether such a municipality would do much to prevent the gradual depletion of the Croat population in Tuzla Canton. The same may be true of Ravne-Brcko and Gornje Ravne, Croat islands in a sea of overwhelmingly Muslim territory.

It is the cantons, so unrepresentative of the reality in Bosnia-Herzegovina when they were created at the Dayton negotiations, that may turn out to be the most important factor in shaping Muslim-Croat relations. Three Croat-dominated cantons tried to create an inter-cantonal council in 2008, but faced opposition from Muslims who understandably viewed this as a precursor to the formation of a Croat entity. In a report on the Federation last year, the International Crisis Group said that modifications of cantonal borders, such as combining Croat-dominated Western-Herzegovina and Canton 10, would not change the ethnic balance adding that it could also be applied to Muslim cantons such as Sarajevo and Gorazde. But a merger of Hercegovina-Neretva, Western Herzegovina and Canton 10 would consolidate Croat control of ethnically-mixed Hercegovina-Neretva and a merger of the Central Bosnia Canton with the more heavily Muslim-populated cantons to its east would accelerate Muslim control there. The Croats would be in control of two cohesive areas territorially linked to Croatia. The only barrier to a territorially-linked single Muslim area would be the relatively small area around Mrkonjic Grad and Sipovo in the RS; the Serbs would probably be willing to give this up in exchange for more powers for RS or full control over the Brcko corridor. Large numbers of Croats and Muslims would be left in areas controlled by the other ethnic group, but probably not enough to spark another conflict between the two sides. The constitutional arrangements imposed on Bosnia in 1995 may have unwittingly shaped the contours of a three-way partition.

The electoral legacy of the Croat-Muslim conflict

The patterns of ethnic separation – and, in some areas, of continued coexistence – between Muslims and Croats during the Bosnian war of 1992 to 1995 are still very much in evidence today.

While separation between Serbs and both Muslims and Croats was pretty much absolute, Croat-Muslim relations were much more varied and complex. Ethnic strife was most marked in areas where both groups had a strong presence, but in areas where one group substantially outnumbered the other, relations were much better. I discussed this tendency in a previous posting, Croat-Muslim Relations in the Bosnian War: The Demographic Factor.  Results from last year’s election in Bosnia – despite the distorting effects of refugee returns, economic emigration, voting for non-ethnic parties and other variables – indicate its continuation.

Prior to the war, the region now known as the Zenica-Doboj Canton contained large numbers of Muslims, Croats and Serbs. Now, after bitter fighting during the war between the Muslim-dominated Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Croat Army the HVO, it is scarcely more ethnically mixed than Tuzla Canton, which prior to the war had a more strongly-concentrated Muslim population.

In Zenica-Doboj, Croat parties won 6.9% of the vote in the Bosnian elections last year. In Tuzla Canton, they won 3.25%, a figure that may appear miniscule, but actually demonstrates that the Croat population has held up relatively well.

A starker contrast can be seen in the municipalities that contain the main cities of each canton. Zenica and Tuzla municipalities were both 16% Croat prior to the war. In Zenica municipality, Croat parties won 3.4% of the vote last year. In Tuzla, they won 6.6%.

The Croat population in Zenica-Doboj Canton is not generally intermingled with the Muslim population.  Stripping out Zepce and Usora municipalities, which are under Croat control, a legacy of the separation between Muslims and Croats in this region during the war, Croat parties won just 4.9% of the vote.

Kakanj, a municipality now in Zenica-Doboj Canton, was 30% Croat in 1991, but the Croats were expelled by the ARBiH during the war; in last year’s election, Croat parties won just 5.2% of the vote. Thus its ethnic composition is now similar to that in the municipalities of Srebrenik and Zivinice, both in Tuzla Canton and both 7% Croat according to the 1991 census, where the Croat parties respectively won 4.9% and 3.8% of the vote last year. The 115^th Brigade of the HVO in the Tuzla region was allied to the ARBiH during the war, preventing a mass exodus of the Croat population.

Bihac, in the overwhelmingly Muslim-dominated region in northwest Bosnia, was 8% Croat before the war and the 101^st Brigade of the HVO throughout the war fought on the side of the ARBiH against the Serbs who surrounded the region. It is not surprising therefore, that there is still a substantial Croat community and that Croat parties won 4.6% of the vote last year.

In Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo, the HVO was forcibly incorporated into the ARBiH during the war, largely as a result of the city’s proximity to central Bosnia, which saw bitter fighting between Croats and Muslims. This may help to explain why, even though, similarly to Bihac, it had a Croat population of 7% before the war, Croat parties could muster just 1.52% of the vote in Sarajevo Canton last year.

A similar pattern of ethnic homogenisation in formerly mixed areas and continued co-existence in more homogenous areas can be seen in Croat-dominated areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

The expulsion of Muslims from areas of “Herceg-Bosna” has been well documented, but even in areas that some see as bastions of Croat chauvinism one can see a more complex situation. Livno and Tomislavgrad in west-central Bosnia were overwhelmingly Croat before the war, but had Muslim populations of 15% and 11% respectively. Muslims were mistreated in both municipalities during the war, but not subjected to wholesale ethnic cleansing witnessed in central Bosnia and parts of Herzegovina. Thus there has been a continuous Muslim population in both and identifiably Muslim parties won 9.5% of the vote in Livno last year and 8.6% in Tomislavgrad.

In Orasje in northern Bosnia, 75% Croat and 7% Muslim in 1991, Muslims fought in the HVO throughout the war, but Ljubuski in Herzegovina, 93% Croat and 6% Muslim in 1991, was caught up in the Croat-Muslim struggle for control of the wider region. In last year’s election, identifiably Muslim parties won 11.2% of the vote in Orasje, but 0% of the vote in Ljubuski.

Strangely, it is the areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina that used to be among most ethnically homogenous that have best preserved the vestiges of common life between Muslims and Croats. Towns such as Livno, Orasje and Tomislavgrad are in overwhelmingly Croat regions, but contain large, visible Muslim populations, a legacy of Ottoman times when towns were mostly Muslim and Christians lived in the countryside. Livno’s “Upper Town” was the only Muslim-majority settlement in the municipality of Livno in 1991; the Muslim SDA won most of the vote there last year. In Orasje municipality, where the Muslims nearly made up a majority the town’s inhabitants prior to the war, the SDA was the best performing party in four of the 23 voting areas last year.

In the mostly Muslim areas around Tuzla and Bihac, many of the villages are populated mostly by Croats, who are historically the most rural of Bosnia’s three main ethnic groups. The HDZ was the biggest party more than a dozen of 152 the voting areas in Tuzla last year, including in the villages of Husino, Dokanj and Par Selo, and in two of the four villages in Bihac that were Croat-majority according to the 1991 census, Vedro Polje and Zavalje.

The experience of Bosnia’s Croats and Muslims suggests that in ethnically mixed areas, where one group’s dominance of an area is not demographically challenged by the presence of another group, relations remain harmonious. But once a rival ethnic group reaches a certain percentage of the population, a struggle for political control begins, resulting in expulsion of populations from the losing side. Perhaps an awareness of this tendency could help to prevent future ethnic conflict, not just in Bosnia, but elsewhere in the world.

The VOPP and the Croat-Muslim civil war

The role of the Vance Owen Peace Plan (VOPP) in sparking the war between Bosnian Croats and Muslims of 1992 to 1994 has been greatly exaggerated.

The VOPP, named after the international mediators Cyrus Vance and Lord Owen, first took shape in 1992 and was presented in its final form in January 1993. It divided Bosnia into provinces with ethnic majorities.

The argument of those who blame the VOPP for the fighting is that it placed Muslim majority areas under the control of the Croats, something that could never be accepted by the Muslims, who wanted Bosnia to remain unified as a multi-ethnic republic. The Muslims resisted a Bosnian Croat army (HVO) order, first made in January 1993 then repeated in April, to submit to its command in areas that were allocated to the Croats. The Croats, who had previously declared their “Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna” over much the same areas that were awarded to them by the VOPP, saw the plan as a useful vehicle for their expansionist aims. Their determination to pursue these and the Muslims’ resistance to ethnic division made war between the two sides inevitable.

The appeal of this interpretation is that it can be used to tidy up a very messy and complicated state of affairs, providing a context for what would otherwise appear as a struggle between two ethnic groups who were ultimately only interested in defending the areas of Bosnia they inhabited. Without the framework of the VOPP (and the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna that was declared by the Croats in 1991) to explain events, attempts to apportion blame would descend into a futile chicken-and-egg-type argument about who first attacked or provoked the other group. Invoking the spectre of Croatian expansionism settles the matter.

But this interpretation assumes that, had the Croats co-operated fully with the Muslims, the Muslims would have returned the favour. An examination of evidence seen by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) makes this extremely difficult to believe.

Gornji Vakuf

After several clashes in 1992, fighting between Croats and Muslims broke out in January 1993 in Gornji Vakuf, one of the three Muslim-majority municipalities (according to the 1991 census) assigned to a Croat-majority canton (aside from Donji Vakuf, which was assigned to a Croat-majority canton, but was under Serb control).

On 16 January, it was reported by international monitors that the HVO commander in Gornji Vakuf had demanded that the Bosnian Army (ARBiH) “must be subordinate to the HVO.”

The commander also demanded that ARBiH units from Jajce, a town that had fallen to the Serbs in 1992, should withdraw from the area. He called for the establishment of mixed patrols and demanded the removal of three Muslim commanders, with their replacements to be picked by the Zenica-based 3^rd Corps of the Bosnian Army. The ARBiH in Gornji Vakuf said they could not accept all of the demands, but, perhaps because they agreed to remove their 305^th Brigade, which originated in Jajce, from the area and transfer it to Central Bosnia, large-scale fighting did not erupt in Gornji Vakuf at this time and tensions between Croats and Muslims in Central Bosnia calmed.

Konjic

They resurfaced in March in Konjic, another Muslim majority municipality assigned to a Croat-majority canton, where, despite the HVO order for subordination of ARBiH troops in Croat-majority provinces to the HVO, there had been no clashes between the two armies in January, only tensions.

According to Croat sources, the ARBiH attacked the HVO in Konjic on 23 March 1993. As in Gornji Vakuf, a major problem for the Croats appears to have been the arrival of Muslims from outside the municipality. The Croats blame the escalation of violence on the arrival of Safet Cibo, who was appointed by the Sarajevo authorities to lead the war presidency in Konjic, Jablanica and Prozor, following the removal of Konjic’s mayor Rusmir Hadzihuseinovic. Sarajevo authorities appear to have been unhappy with cooperation between the authorities in Konjic and the HVO forces there. A document signed by ARBIH commander Sefer Halilovic dated 28 January 1993 warns Arif Pasalic, the commander of the ARBiH’s Mostar-based 4^th Corps, of “cadres” in Konjic, including Hadzihuseinovic, who had put themselves in the service of “Greater Croatia.” Croats also point to the activities of Nezim Halilovic, a cleric from the eastern Bosnian town of Zepa, who became commander of the 4th Muslims Light Brigade, part of the 4th Corps, and to the activities of the “Black Swans” and foreign Arab-Afghan guerrillas who were integrated into Bosnian government forces from February 1993.

Fighting died down in Konjic after these March clashes but resumed ahead of a new 15 April deadline for Muslim forces in Croat-majority provinces defined by the VOPP to put themselves under HVO command or withdraw.

As is confirmed by an ARBiH journal, it attacked the HVO on 14 April, driving them into Kostajnici, Vrci and Ljesovina. The Croats fought back, but were forced out of the town and by June were confined to a small enclave to the west of Konjic.

Why did the Muslims attack Croats in Konjic? The Muslim answer to this question appears to be that the Croats had claimed Konjic as part of the “Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna” in 1991 and then ordered the Muslims to submit to Croat command in January and again in April, in line with the VOPP proposals. But while Konjic’s inclusion in Herceg-Bosna and then the putative Croat majority canton is not in doubt, actual evidence of Croat attempts to bring the municipality fully under their control is elusive. Accounting for just 26% of Konjic’s pre-war population (against the Muslims’ 55%) and with just a single unit in the area, against three ARBiH brigades, it was highly unlikely that they would be able to achieve this. It seems much more probable that they sought to stay onside with the local Muslim leadership who, before the arrival of Safet Cibo, presented no obstacle to wider Croat aims in the region.

Questioned about Croat actions in Konjic during his trial at the ICTY for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, the former HVO commander Milivoj Petkovic said that the Croats did not seek to incorporate the entire municipality into Herceg-Bosna. According to Petkovic: “The HVO existed in Konjic and participated in power, and then Mr Cibo comes along and blows everything apart.”

Divisions between Muslims and Croats in Konjic go back to earlystages of the war. As in other parts of Bosnia, tensions arose from the Muslims’ desire to reconquer land that had been overrun and ethnically cleansed by the Serbs and the Croats’ reluctance to be drawn into what they saw as a battle for Muslim objectives.

According to an HVO soldier who appeared as an anonymous witness in the ICTY trial of Jadranko Prlic, the former prime minister of Herceg Bosna who is accused of war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, the Croats and Muslims in Konjic began to separate after a joint attack against the Serbs in Bradina in May 1992, an operation that “was not in the interests of the Croatian people.”

In his expert report for another trial at the ICTY, ARBiH Brigadier Muhammed Vejzagic said that the HVO was willing to participate in operations at Bradina and another village near Konjic, Donje Selo, “because these areas were significant for the rounding up of territory considered to be ‘the Croat national territory’.” However, the HVO later “no longer had the intention of engaging in combat activity to liberate the territories still occupied by the Serbs” and refused to help “liberate” Borci, south of Konjic, in June 1992.

As elsewhere in Bosnia, Croats and Muslims in Konjic were happy to maintain an alliance when their aims appeared to converge, demonstrating that divisions were not due to atavistic hatreds that precluded co-existence. It was primarily military issues related to the wider region, rather than questions over political power in Konjic itself that led to divisions.

The Croats wanted to control the road from Mostar to their stronghold of Kiseljak in central Bosnia, while the Muslims wanted to link up Sarajevo and Mostar. Both roads run through Konjic. To the West of Konjic, the road from Gornji Vakuf to Mostar, which runs through Croat-majority Prozor and Muslim majority Jablanica (the third Muslim majority municipality included in a Croat canton), was coveted by both sides.

Wider regional considerations are the most likely reason for the overthrow of Hadzihuseinovic as Konjic mayor and the installation of Cibo as the strongman in the region. In this sense, events in the area appear to mirror the breakdown in relations that was to occur between Croats and Muslims in the municipality of Fojnica later in the year. With no group enjoying a majority, Croats and Muslims co-existed in Fojnica under Croat leadership until June 1993, when the leadership was deposed by Herceg Bosna authorities for not joining an attack against ARBiH forces that were in conflict with Croats in neighbouring parts of central Bosnia. Similarly, the Bosnian Muslim leadership in Konjic was usurped for co-operating too closely with the Croats. The ARBiH captured Fojnica in July, whereas Konjic never changed hands.

Kiseljak, Kresevo, Vares, Zepce

The VOPP left two Croat majority municipalities, Kiseljak and Kresevo, outside the Croat majority cantons, in “special status” Sarajevo. It also left two municipalities with large Croat populations but where no group had a majority, Zepce and Vares, in a Muslim majority canton. The Croats have been accused of abandoning Vares to the Muslims (it was captured in November 1993) because it was not in a Croat majority province. Asked about this at the ICTY, the HVO commander Petkovic responded that it could not be correct because Kiseljak and Kresevo were not assigned to the Croats under the VOPP, yet remained under Croat control.

Zepce also remained under Croat control. Not only was Zepce not assigned to a Croat-majority canton, but it was not originally claimed by the Croats as part of “Herceg-Bosna.” A report by United Nations Military Observers (UNMOs) describes the HVO aim in Zepce as “to retain and expand Zepce to the (south) and remain free of both Moslem and Serb control and to join a Greater Herceg-Bosna state.”

In fact, certainly in the later stages of the war, the Croats in Zepce had no realistic chance of linking with Croat controlled territories to the south because they were separated by the Muslim-controlled municipalities of Zenica and Kakanj, a fact that further undermines the idea that the Croats’ aim was a territorially cohesive ethnically pure state that would join with Croatia.

The Croats were engaged in a much more subtle struggle for hegemony in the parts of Bosnia that were of interest to them, one that, if one looks beyond the commonly-held view that Croat expansionism, facilitated by the VOPP, started the Croat-Muslim war, bears a remarkable similarity to the aims of the Muslims.

Paddy Ashdown and Greater Croatia

In 1993, as war raged in Bosnia, its future ruler, the British politician Paddy Ashdown, wrote an article for the New Statesman magazine advocating an ethnic partition of the country.

The partition, he said, would inevitably result in parts of the country being subsumed into “Greater Serbia” and “Greater Croatia”, with a separate state in the middle “that provides a safe homeland for the Muslims.”

Two years later, when the war was nearing its endgame, Ashdown attended a dinner in London where he chatted with the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman. Ashdown described the conversation in 1998 when he testified at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the trial of Tihomir Blaskic, one of the Bosnian Croat military leaders jailed for war crimes. He said that during the dinner Tudjman spoke of his preference for “Greater Croatia.” Ashdown also submitted as evidence the menu on which Tudjman had scrawled a barely legible map outlining his vision for a Bosnia divided between Croatia and Serbia.

Ashdown’s account was accepted as fact by the ICTY.  The judgement against Blaskic notes that during the dinner “Tudjman clearly confirmed that Croatia had aspirations to territory in Bosnia.”

The court’s acceptance of Ashdown’s account helped it to arrive at the conclusion (expressed in the judgement against Dario Kordic, a Bosnian Croat political leader who was also jailed for war crimes) that Tudjman “harboured territorial ambitions in respect of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that was part of his dream of a Greater Croatia, including Western Herzegovina and Central Bosnia.”

During his testimony in the Blaskic trial, Ashdown quoted Tudjman as saying that “There will be no Muslim area, except as a small element of the Croat State.” Tudjman’s Croat state, according to Ashdown’s account, was to include Sarajevo and Banja Luka, two cities that only the most extreme Croat nationalists would claim. The area Ashdown attributed to Tudjman’s Greater Croatian aspirations in fact bears a resemblance to the Muslim Croat Federation that emerged when the war ended in 1995. This may be why one of the judges hearing the case asked Ashdown, “Do you think that what was reserved for the Muslims was part of a Croat/Muslim Federation or did you think that it was really a cutting up of Bosnia, that Bosnia would no longer exist and that there would be a Greater Croatia?”

Ashdown responded that the way the map was drawn, with arrows pointing from what Tudjman saw as the Croat part of Bosnia to Croatia and from the Serb part to Serbia, clearly shows that it indicated the division of Bosnia between Greater Croatia and Greater Serbia. But this seems a rather flaky explanation, particularly given that the Muslim-Croat Federation agreed to by the Bosnian Muslims and Croats in 1994 included an agreement to set up a “confederation” between the Federation and Croatia. This was still on the agenda when Ashdown and Tudjman dined together.

Any considered reading of Ashdown’s testimony would surely have to leave open the possibility that the division of Bosnia that Tudjman described was the one that had been agreed already, between a Muslim-Croat Federation and a Serb Republic. It is also possible that, like Ashdown in his New Statesman article in 1993, Tudjman was expressing doubts about the possibility of integrating Bosnia’s ethnic groups rather than enunciating his dream of Greater Croatia.

No such doubts are countenanced by the Blaskic judgement, which states that “The Trial Chamber considers that the testimony of the witness [Ashdown] is totally credible and coherent in all respects” and adds, “Nor can there be any doubt as to what the partition of territory between Croatia and Serbia as shown in the sketch drawn by President Tudjman represents.”

The ICTY was set up to uncover the truth about the wars in the former Yugoslavia, helping the ethnic groups overcome their differences. But its unquestioning acceptance of the “Greater Croatia” thesis on such spurious grounds shows that it has failed in this task.

Croat-Muslim relations in the Bosnian war: the demographic factor

                                ARBiH/HVO monument in Dokanj, Tuzla.

Demography was a crucial factor in the war between Bosnian Croats and Muslims of 1992 to 1994. In municipalities that were not under the Serbs’ control and where Croats and Muslims each made up more than a third of the pre-war population, without exception, war broke out between the two ethnic groups.

Fighting also erupted between Croats and Muslims in municipalities where one group was substantially outnumbered by the other, though this was usually related to demographic conditions in neighbouring areas. But in other municipalities that were demographically dominated by either the Croats or Muslims, the two ethnic groups continued to co-exist, avoiding the outright separation that took place elsewhere in Bosnia.

Tuzla

Perhaps more than any other part of Bosnia, Tuzla, a city and municipality in northeast Bosnia, withstood the ethnic divisions that plagued much of the rest of the country after war broke out. It fostered common life not just between Croats and Muslims, but with the Serbs as well. The most obvious reason for this is that non-nationalist forces won the elections in the municipality in 1990, but demography may have been an even more important factor.

Although only 48% of Tuzla municipality declared itself as Muslim in the 1991 census, the city is considered part of Bosnia’s Muslim heartland along with the cities of Sarajevo and Zenica, because Croats and Serbs only accounted for 16% and 15% of the municipality’s population respectively. The remainder of the population declared themselves as "Yugoslavs". Tuzla’s demographic make-up meant that it was never likely to fall under the control of either the Serbs or Croats during the 1992 to 1995 war.

This was particularly true in the case of the Croats, because they made up even smaller percentages in the municipalities that border Tuzla, whereas Lopare to Tuzla’s northeast was Serb-majority and there was a concentration of Serbs in eastern parts of Tuzla municipality that bordered with Lopare. Due to the Croats' isolation from other Croat-populated areas of the country there was never any serious likelihood of a Croat-Muslim fight over territory in Tuzla or surrounding areas.

Nevertheless, there were tensions between Croats and Muslims in Tuzla and its surrounding municipalities for two reasons. The first was that, though Croats’ minority status ensured that they would not lay claim to Tuzla as Croat territory, in some parts of the municipality they did predominate, and at least to some degree they wanted this to be recognised. Secondly, though Croats and Muslims in the municipality were united in seeking to prevent its fall to the Serbs, when it came to offensive aims, they were very much divided.

The 1991 census shows that half of the Croats in Tuzla municipality lived not in the city but in the surrounding villages and countryside, in contrast to the Muslims and Serbs, who were mostly in urban areas. According to one demographic survey, the Croats were the dominant ethnic group across 150 square kilometres or nearly 50% of Tuzla municipality, against 30% for the Muslims and 20% for the Serbs. Obviously, such figures depend on how you divide the territory and may be arrived at through manipulation, but it is certainly the case that Croats were the biggest ethnic group in many of the non-urban settlements in Tuzla as defined by the 1991 census. For this reason, the Croats hoped to establish their “Croatian Community of Soli” in the municipality in 1992, to some extent with the intention of linking up areas where they predominated. This was a source of tension with Muslims in Tuzla.

In the municipalities that surrounded Tuzla, Croats also tended to be concentrated in certain areas rather than intermingled with the Muslims and Serbs in the towns and elsewhere. Interestingly, the Tuzla-based 115^th Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO), noted for remaining loyal to the Bosnian government even as other HVO Brigades fought against the Bosnian Army (ARBiH), had its origins in a force that emerged in the village of Drijenca, home to the bulk of Lopare municipality’s Croat population.

Tensions between Croats and Muslims may have been most prevalent in areas of Tuzla where Croats predominated. A Serb intelligence report from February 1995 describes strained relations between the two groups, particularly in the Croat villages of Dokanj and Husino (in Tuzla municipality) and in Bistrac (in Lukavac, the municipality that borders Tuzla to the West).

However, tensions between Croats and Muslims in Tuzla and the surrounding municipalities may have arisen not so much from demographic factors within the municipalities themselves as those in the wider region. Most notably, while the Tuzla-based Second Corps of the Muslim-dominated ARBiH sought to liberate the besieged Muslim enclave of Srebrenica to the southeast of Tuzla, Croats appear to have been much more concerned with simply defending their villages.

Within the Tuzla-based 2^nd Corps of the Bosnian Army, there were tensions that were at least in part related to ethnicity. The first commander of the corps, Zeljko Knez, a Croat, was replaced by a Muslim in 1993, having been blamed for failing to do enough the relieve the pressure on the besieged enclave of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia. A report authored by Bosnian Army commander Rasim Delic in 1996 claims that the 2^nd Corps’ efforts in 1992 “were directed towards the corridor, and not toward Srebrenica where more favourable results were more realistic.” The Croat national interest in breaking the corridor that linked Serb territory between eastern and western Bosnia was clear, but there was no Croat interest in any operations in eastern Bosnia.

Tensions between Croats and Muslims in the Tuzla region culminated in the Bosnian government decision to disband the 115^th Brigade of the HVO at the end of 1993. The decision was accepted by the leadership of the 115^th Brigade because to have started a conflict with the ARBiH 2^nd Corps would have been suicidal.

Vares

Though the demography of Vares was much more conducive to conflict between Croats and Muslims than in Tuzla, it seems that, as in Tuzla, the main source of conflict in Vares municipality was the Croats' reluctance to become involved in a fight with the Serbs for what they saw as Muslim territory.

With a pre-war population that was 41% Croat and 30% Muslim, Croats and Muslims in Vares co-existed peacefully if warily until June 1993, when Croat refugees from the war with the Muslims in Central Bosnia began moving into the municipality, pressuring Muslims to leave. In October, Ivica Rajic, commander of the Second Operational Group of the Central Bosnia Operative Zone of the HVO, which had control over Vares’s HVO Bobovac Brigade, arrived in the municipality to assume command and Muslims in the town were abused and pressured to leave. On 23 October, there was a massacre of Muslims in Stupni Do, a village just outside Vares. In early November the Bosnian Army occupied Vares town and the Croat civilians left, retreating into the tiny Dastanko enclave east of Vares.

The ARBiH takeover of Vares has been interpreted as the result of the extremist behaviour of the Croats under the command of Ivica Rajic, destroying the delicate co-existence that had survived in the region and prompting the intervention of the Bosnian Army. However, the 2^nd Corps of the ARBiH, now commanded by Hazim Sadic following Zeljko Knez’s removal, had already been seeking to subordinate Vares to its command well in advance of Rajic's arrival. It may have been motivated in part by the desire to protect the Muslim population there, but there were also clear strategic reasons for the takeover. The HVO in Vares had enjoyed warm relations with the Serbs and was not inclined to engage in offensive operations against them, because there had been no significant pre-war Croat population in the surrounding territory occupied by the Serbs. The ARBiH, however, had a clear interest in capturing territory in the region, all of which had had a substantial Muslim population prior to the war. Taking over the Vares enclave allowed to ARBiH to link up its 2^nd and 3^rd Corps, paving the way for offensives against the Serbs in 1994 and 1995. As in Tuzla, the diverging aims of the Croats in Vares hindered Muslim objectives. But while the HVO in Tuzla could be subjugated peacefully, in Vares, the Croats’ demographic predominance in the municipality meant it could only be achieved by war.

Orasje, Livno, Tomislavgrad, Sarajevo

In Tuzla and Vares, to widely varying degrees, conflicts arising from the different military aims of the HVO and ARBiH soured relations between Croats and Muslims. In Orasje, a Croat-majority municipality on Bosnia’s border with Croatia, there was no such conflict, because the territory was indisputably under the control of the HVO. Muslims, who made up 7% of the municipality, but nearly half of the town’s inhabitants according to the 1991 census, fought in the 106^th Orasje Brigade of the HVO throughout the war. Orasje was hemmed in against the Croatian border by Serb forces; had this not been the case it could well have been caught up in a Croat-Muslim conflict for control of the wider region. But the otherwise non-descript town of Orasje is one of the few areas in Bosnia to preserve the vestiges of Croat-Muslim co-existence.

The demographic situation in Livno, a municipality on Bosnia’s western border with Croatia, was also conducive to good relations between Croats and Muslims. Its pre-war population was 72% Croat and 15% Muslim so it too was indisputably under the control of the HVO. Muslims fought in the Livno HVO in 1992 and for much of 1993, until it became involved in the Muslim-Croat civil war in central Bosnia and in Herzegovina.

Muslims in the Livno HVO as in other municipalities were disarmed following the eruption of large-scale clashes between the HVO and ARBiH in Herzegovina at the end of June 1993. As military analyst Davor Marijan, a former soldier with the HVO in Livno, told the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, once relations between Croats and Muslims broke down, the HVO was to become, except in Orasje, “an almost mono-ethnic formation.” In Livno, the breakdown in relations between Croats and Muslims culminated in incidents that followed the Bosnian Army capture of Bugojno, to Livno's east, from the Croats in late July 1993. A report by the European Community Monitoring Mission quotes an Imam in Livno as saying that following the fall of Bugojno there were “provocations, meetings, robberies, closing of shops, against the Muslims” in the town.

But for the clashes that erupted in the much more ethnically-mixed municipalities in central Bosnia and Herzegovina , Muslims might have remained in the Livno HVO in substantial numbers throughout the war. Nevertheless, according to one report by international military observers from October 1993, UN soldiers spoke to three Muslim men who were still fighting for the HVO, suggesting that there was not a complete breakdown in Croat-Muslim relations in the town.

Tomislavgrad, the municipality that separates Livno from central Bosnia, had a similar ethnic make-up, with 87% of its inhabitants declaring themselves as Croats and 11% as Muslims in the 1991 census. As in Livno, but probably to an even greater extent, relations between the two ethnic groups were soured not by its own ethnic composition but its proximity to the more mixed municipalities of central Bosnia and Herzegovina that were disputed between Croats and Muslims.

The partial, but not total, breakdown in relations between the two groups in Tomislavgrad is well-illustrated by the Croatian author Ivo Zanic, who writes: “Although the Bosniaks were on the whole degraded to the rank of second class citizens, there was no systematic destruction of Islamic religious buildings or mass expulsions or murders.”

He notes that unlike in other Croatian-controlled parts of Bosnia the names of streets and squares did not become wholly Croat and Tomislavgrad kept its Ulica Bega Kopcic (Kopcic-bey Street), named after a Muslim.

The demographic balance between Croats and Muslims in Livno and Tomislavgrad was mirrored in the Muslims’ favour in Sarajevo, with Muslims accounting for 49% of population according to the 1991 census and the Croats 7%. As in Livno and Tomislavgrad there was no large-scale fighting between the two groups, but as in Livno and Tomislavgrad, tensions did arise in Sarajevo due to the conflict between Croats and Muslims in central Bosnia.

The HVO in Sarajevo was at least nominally, like the HVO in Vares, under the control of the Second Operational Group of the Central Bosnia Operative Zone of the HVO. The Second Operational Group was based in Kiseljak, a municipality that bordered Sarajevo and was at the heart of Croat-Muslim conflict in central Bosnia. It was commanded by Ivica Rajic, who, as discussed above, was blamed for the Croat-Muslim fighting in Vares. The ARBiH in Sarajevo was understandably wary of the Sarajevo HVO, which was suspected of working in collusion with the Kiseljak HVO and the Serb besiegers. Like the Tuzla HVO, it was disbanded at the end of 1993.

Relations between Croats and Muslims in Sarajevo also broke down, although no doubt the claim by Ivan Vulic, a commander of one of the HVO formations in Sarajevo, that “to be a Croat or a Serb in Sarajevo in 1992, and especially in 1993 meant to be, not a second class citizen but a zero class citizen”, was exaggerated. The Croats’ acceptance of Sarajevo as a Muslim city helped to ensure the survival of a significant Croat population there.

Ethnic dominance and multi-ethnicity

Looking at the ethnic map from the 1991 census, the link between demography and conflict in areas populated by Croats and Muslims seems unmistakable. Curiously, the best examples of continued Croat-Muslim co-existence during the Bosnian war are to be found not in evenly balanced municipalities, but in those areas where either Croats or Muslims predominated. Thus in Sarajevo and Tuzla, where Croats were heavily outnumbered by Muslims, relations were relatively good. Muslims fared much better in the Croat-dominated municipalities of Orasje, Livno and Tomislavgrad than in more mixed municipalities in Central Bosnia, such as Kiseljak and Busovaca. In Tesanj, 72% Muslim and 18% Croat according to the 1991 census, the 110^th Brigade of the HVO continued to fight on the side of the ARBiH during the Bosnian war. But in nearby Zepce, which was 47% Muslim and 40% Croat and so more evenly balanced, bitter fighting erupted between the 111^th HVO Brigade and the ARBiH.

Examining the link between demography and conflict helps to explain the dynamics of the Croat-Muslim civil war of 1992 to 1994 – and could help to prevent conflict between the two groups in the future.

The trial of Herceg-Bosna

There are many received opinions about the Bosnian war of the 1990s. One is that the Croat-Muslim conflict of 1992 to 1994 was caused by the betrayal of the Croats, who stabbed their Muslim allies in the back to join the Serbs in a carve-up of the country.

This interpretation is advanced by most of the Western journalists and academics who have written about the war and even by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which claims to have “contributed to an indisputable historical record, combating denial and helping communities come to terms with their recent history.”

Central to the conventional wisdom on the Muslim-Croat conflict is that it resulted from the expansionist behaviour of the Croatian president Franjo Tudjman. The ICTY is quite explicit about this. In the judgement against Dario Kordic, a Bosnian Croat leader jailed for war crimes, it states that Tudjman “harboured territorial ambitions in respect of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and that was part of his dream of a Greater Croatia, including Western Herzegovina and Central Bosnia.”

This interpretation has led the ICTY to treat the Bosnian Croats much more harshly than the Muslims. But an examination of the evidence the ICTY has dealt with in relation to the Croat-Muslim conflict suggests that the truth is much more interesting and complicated than the simplistic explanation advanced by the court and its supporters.

Greater Herceg-Bosna

A central pillar of the ‘Greater Croatia’ explanation for the Muslim-Croat conflict is that ‘Herceg-Bosna’, the entity the Bosnian Croats set up in 1991, mirroring similar moves by Bosnian Serbs, was established with the aim that it would secede from Bosnia and join Croatia.

The Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna (HZHB) declared its existence on 18 November 1991. It encompassed 30 municipalities in south-west and central Bosnia-Herzegovina and was described as ‘the freely expressed will of the Croatian people’ which ‘represents a political, cultural, economic and territorial entity.’

Prior to this declaration, on 12 November, a joint meeting of the ‘Crisis Staffs’ of the Herzegovina and Travnik Regional Communities, with the latter chaired by Dario Kordic, was held. As the Kordic judgement states, ‘the two communities decided that the Croatian people in Bosnia and Herzegovina should institute a policy to bring about “our age-old dream, a common Croatian State” and should call for a proclamation of a Croatian Banovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina as the “initial phase leading towards the final solution of the Croatian question and the creation of a sovereign Croatia within its ethnic and historical … borders.”’

However, in its founding document, HZHB also proclaimed: ‘The Community shall respect the democratically elected government of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina as long as Bosnia-Herzegovina remains an independent state in relation to former or any future Yugoslavia.’

HZHB was not the only Croat entity in Bosnia-Herzegovina to emerge at this time. Six days before HZHB declared its existence, on November 12 at a meeting in Bosanski Brod, northern Bosnia, the regional board of the Croatian Democratic Party (which had won most of the Croat vote in the Bosnian election of the previous year) founded the ‘Croatian Community of Bosanska Posavina’ (HZBP).

The declaration said the community was being formed ‘because of the complex political and general situation and the immediate threat of war and aggression against the Croatian people.’

At the time the Croatian war of 1991 was still raging, with some of the fiercest fighting taking place not far away on the other side of the Sava, the river on which Bosanski Brod sits. In Bosnia, areas with predominantly Serb populations had organised themselves into ‘Serbian Autonomous Regions.’

Like the HZHB, the HZBP gave itself a clear geographical delineation, comprising eight municipalities in the north of Bosnia-Herzegovina.  It said its aim was to ‘unify all political activities in the defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to strengthen the Croatian population in it.’

The territories over which the HZHB and HZBP laid claim were never actually set in stone and in 1992 after the outbreak of war in Bosnia, the HZHB expanded. On 20 August, the Croatian Community of Usora, an area in northern Bosnia under Croat control, joined the HZHB.

The following day, nearby Croat-controlled Zepce (which like Usora was not one of the 30 municipalities originally claimed by the HZHB) also issued a declaration joining the HZHB and on 29 September, Croat-controlled Orasje, soon to become the only remnant of the areas laid claim to by the HZBP not under Serb control, joined the HZHB.

While the Zepce Croats came into conflict with the Muslims during the 1993-1994 Muslim-Croat hostilities, the HVO (the Bosnian Croat forces) in Usora and Orasje remained on the side of the Bosnian government throughout the Bosnian war.

So Herceg-Bosna was not just a Croatian-concocted poison that seeped into Central Bosnia from Western Hercegovina, the bastion of Croat nationalism. It was embraced by Croats across the country, including in those areas where they are said to have fought loyally on the side of the Bosnian government. Even in Tuzla, the city in Bosnia that best fostered peaceful inter-ethnic relations, Croats established the “Croatian Community of Soli”, reflecting tensions between them and the Bosnian Muslims. Though Croats in these areas set up their own “communities”, these had no chance of linking up territorially with the original municipalities of “Herceg-Bosna” or “Bosanska Posavina”, suggesting that Croat “separatism” did not necessarily mean linking up with Croatia.

Cooperation between Croats and Muslims in areas where they did not come into conflict is often highlighted by proponents of the Greater Croatia thesis, because it creates the impression that Croats were divided between those who were artificially infected with Tudjman’s expansionism and those who remained loyal to the Bosnian government.

In truth though, there were deep tensions between the Croats and Muslims in the areas where the HVO and ARBiH did not go to war, tensions that could easily have led to military conflict.

In Tuzla, the supposed bastion of multi-ethnic harmony, the 115^th Brigade of the HVO was disbanded by the Bosnian government at the end of 1993. The leader of the brigade Zvonko Juric, said that this decision had to be accepted because confronting the mostly Muslim Bosnian Army (ARBiH ) was not feasible as there were “minimum chances to achieve any military success.” Had the Croats in the region been a stronger military and demographic position, conflict might well have erupted between the two groups in this area.

In another area held up as an example of Croat-Muslim cooperation, Olovo, the HVO did indeed fight alongside the ARBiH against the Serbs in the first stages of the war. But the Olovo HVO was also disbanded at the end of 1993, after relations with the Muslims, who predominated in the municipality, deteriorated sharply. Zdravko Dujmovic, the leader of the HVO there, said that senior HVO members who had helped him organise the defence of Olovo had been made to dig trenches following this deterioration. After the HVO was disbanded in Olovo, Dujmovic left to serve with the Croat authorities in Kiseljak, one of the municipalities that had been engulfed in the Croat-Muslim conflict in Central Bosnia.

In Brcko, where the HVO fought alongside the ARBiH in fierce battles against the Serbs, tensions emerged over the Croats’ attempts to establish their own municipality; as in Tuzla it was most likely the Croats’ weak demographic and military position that prevented war between the two groups.

In Bihac, another area where Croat loyalty to the Bosnian government is highlighted, Croats were also heavily outnumbered by Muslims so it would have been suicidal and pointless for them to attempt to carve out their own territory. Nevertheless, their commander Vlado Santic disappeared in mysterious circumstances that may have arisen from Muslim mistrust at his relationship with Franjo Tudjman. It is also interesting to note that, according to Brendan O’ Shea, author of ‘Crisis at Bihac: Bosnia’s Bloody Battlefield’, of fewer than 1,000 HVO troops operating in the Bihac region, nearly 100 were in the area controlled by Fikret Abdic, the breakaway Muslim leader who organised a rebellion against the Bosnian government.

In Usora, Croats were said to be dismayed at the cooperation between their ethnic kin in nearby Zepce and the Serbs against the Muslims. This may be so, but the ARBiH also expressed concerns in February 1994 that the HVO Brigade in Usora were“frequently in contact with the aggressor’s side.” That this was the case is clear from an HVO document dated 9 August 1993 that shows that the 110^th Usora Brigade made contacts with the Serbs to discuss joining them and the HVO 111^th Brigade in Zepce in the fight against the Muslims. In another document, the HVO commander in Usora describes the problems the HVO and Croat civilians experienced due to being “sandwiched” between the “Chetniks” (Serbs) and the Muslims. Usora became a separate municipality after the war, in line with local Croat opinion.

What all this suggests is that the breakdown in relations between Muslims and Croats was not the result of Tudjman’s “dream” of “Greater Croatia”, but a gradual separation that occurred wherever significant populations of Muslims and Croats lived side-by-side. Thus there were tensions not just in the Herzegovinian and Central Bosnian heartland of Herceg-Bosna, but in other areas that associated with it.

The heart of Herceg-Bosna: Herzegovina

Western Herzegovina is often described as the heartland of Bosnian Croat nationalism, unrepresentative of the more moderate outlook of the majority of Bosnian Croats, who are from elsewhere in the country. This may be so, but evidence examined by the ICTY suggests that the war between Croats and Muslims in the region was not so much a battle between Croat separatism and multi-ethnic Bosnia as a struggle for territory between two ethnic groups.

Since it was the Croats, mindful of the war in Croatia in 1991, who were best prepared for the Serb onslaught in Bosnia in 1992, it was the HVO, with assistance from the Croatian Army, rather than the ARBiH, who pushed the Serbs out of Herzegovina’s capital Mostar in June of that year. Only later in the year did the ARBiH establish the 4^th Corps in the region.

The commonly-accepted interpretation of the outbreak of Croat-Muslim fighting in Herzegovina is that it arose from an HVO demand that the ARBiH surrender to the command of HVO forces in areas that had been designated as Croat provinces by the Vance-Owen Peace Plan agreed in January 1993. Another interpretation, backed up by evidence seen by the ICTY, is that it was a conflict between two ethnic groups who were both seeking to gain control over as much territory as they could.

A document from 20 February 1993, signed by the ARBiH 4^th Corps commander Arif Pasalic, describes Muslim objectives in the region. It is worth quoting at some length.

“Our basic objective is to create a coherent, cohesive and unified political and military whole, consisting of legal authorities, Muslim organisations and the BH Army. We have no doubt that the Neretva River valley, which includes municipalities with an absolute or relative Muslim majority, is of strategic importance and as such the key to opening up horizons for not only Muslims in Herzegovina but in the whole of Bosnia and key to the fate of the Republic of BH as our sole state and homeland.”

It goes on to talk of the need to create “a unified Muslim political and national front with a single body and soul, with regard to which the defensive capacity as embodied by the 4^th BH Army Corps shall represent a factor of security and provide a firm political position.”

At this time many Muslims were still serving in the HVO, a situation that the ARBiH thought could be useful to Muslim aims. Thus a document from 18 April 1993 describes the need to “draft an information plan for the Muslims in HVO units in the municipalities of Capljina and Stolac.” Stolac was a Muslim-relative majority municipality south of Mostar, while neighbouring Capljina had an absolute Croat majority.

On 2 May, another document signed by Pasalic orders Muslim soldiers in the HVO to capture the town of Stolac and the village of Tasovcici and bridge in Capljina .

Nevertheless many Muslims remained in the HVO until June; an HVO document from that month says that Muslims still comprised 16.19% of the army. But on 30 June, according to the Bosnian Croat position, the ARBiH launched a full-scale assault against the HVO to the north and south of Mostar with the aid of Muslim HVO soldiers, resulting in their arrest and isolation. The HVO became a purely Croat army and Bosnia’s war became one of three sides.

The common interpretation of the Croat-Muslim civil war is that the Croats – at the behest of Franjo Tudjman – betrayed their Bosnian Muslim allies and embarked on a “rebellion” against multi-ethnic Bosnia. The Croats argue that it was they who were stabbed in the back by rebellious Muslims. Both of these interpretations have merit but both are simplistic. The truth is that, having voted along ethnic lines in Bosnia’s first free elections in 1990, it was unlikely that the Croats and Muslims would be able to sustain their alliance once the Serbs refused to accept Bosnia’s independence in 1992.