 |
| Multi-ethnic veneer: a Croat war memorial in Brcko city centre |
Many people see Brcko as one of the few multi-ethnic successes of post-war Bosnia. To others, paradoxically, it is a potential flashpoint that could trigger renewed conflict. Both views are wide of the mark. This is because, despite the unified political apparatus and the veneer of multi-ethnicity in the city centre, Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats live in different parts of Brcko District and have little reason to provoke a conflict over territory that they do not inhabit.
Brcko District is neither part of the Muslim-Croat Federation nor the Republika Srpska (RS) [Correction: it is part of both. See comments below] and has a single political structure, despite containing large numbers of each of the three ethnic groups. The Serbs gained control of Brcko city in the early stages of the Bosnian war in 1992 and expelled its Muslim (now known as Bosniak) and Croat inhabitants. But the multi-ethnic make-up of Brcko District today is not due to successful returns of non Serbs to Brcko city, but to the fact that most of the territory of Brcko District, which was established by Bosnia’s international supervisors in 1999, had not been under Serb control during the war.
Results from the 2010 general election show that the area that was under Serb control during the war, including the town and the rest of the “corridor” that linked the eastern and western arms of Serb-controlled territory, is still overwhelmingly Serb, though modest numbers of Bosniaks and Croats have returned to formerly Serb-controlled areas. Although it is not part of the Federation or the RS [see above correction], Brcko District’s inhabitants are citizens of one of the two entities. Most Bosniaks and Croats in Brcko District are citizens of the Federation and most Serbs are citizens of the RS, though a significant number of the Bosniaks who have returned to formerly Serb-controlled areas such as the city are citizens of RS. Citizens of the Federation and RS voted for identifiably Bosniak parties in substantial numbers in areas that had been under Serb control during the war, but the data shows that these areas are still dominated by Serbs. This may be one of the reasons why, as related by a report by the International Crisis Group last month, “Brcko Unsupervised”, Serbs often still use maps that ignore the existence of Brcko District and show Brcko city and the former corridor as parts of RS.
The Bosniak and Croat areas of Brcko District are also ethnically divided, though this dates back to before the war and was not caused by ethnic cleansing between the two groups. While many Muslims were expelled from Brcko city, most Croats even before the war lived in cohesive areas outside the town. Despite making up 25% of Brcko municipality’s pre-war population (against the Muslims’ 44% and the Serbs’ 21%) Croats were by far the smallest group in the city. During the war (as I described in a previous post, “Unintended Consequences in Bosnia-Herzegovina”) the Croats in Brcko municipality sought to establish two of their own municipalities, Ravne-Brcko and Gornje Ravne, around the Croat villages, but abandoned these plans after the war when it was agreed that Brcko would become a district. Nevertheless, the 2010 election results show that they still occupy very cohesive areas, which is likely to be an important factor in any future negotiations over the district.
I pointed out in my previous post that any attempt to link these Croat areas with the Orasje enclave in northern Bosnia, which remains under Croat control, would bring the Croats into conflict with the Serbs as it would encroach on the former corridor between the two halves of the RS. I should have added that, while linking all of these territories with the Orasje enclave would cut the Serbs’ corridor, the part of Brcko District that abuts the Orasje enclave is largely Croat, so it would still be possible for the Serbs and Croats to agree a delineation of territories that would result in some of Croat-majority Brcko District joining an expanded Orasje enclave. This is hypothetical given the international community’s support for the continued existence of Brcko District, but in light of recent co-operation between Serbs and Croats, is a real possibility. That said, most of the Croat areas in Brcko District fall south of the former corridor, so barring the creation of a new corridor south of the previous one, could not be attached to the Orasje enclave without cutting the corridor.
Much has been made of the possibility of Bosniak-Serb clashes in Brcko District. In an article last year, “Croat Crisis Pushes Bosnia Towards Endgame”, the analyst Matthew Parish noted that Bosnia’s three ethnic groups have “become used to living apart in the 15 years since the war ended” and so are unlikely to want to go to war to capture territories with which they have no connection. However, he advanced Brcko as a caveat, saying that there is “a real risk of ethnic confrontation there if the transition to Republika Srpska domination of the town is not managed smoothly.” But if the Bosniaks have given up on formerly Bosniak-majority municipalities that are now in RS, such as Srebrenica, they are unlikely, leaving aside economic considerations, to care much about Brcko, which was not a Bosniak-majority municipality before the war. Notwithstanding the much-praised multi-ethnic advances that have been made in fields such as education in Brcko, election results define politics. These show that Brcko remains rigidly divided, which is why ethnic conflict is as unlikely there as in other parts of Bosnia.
(Apologies for the lack of maps. You can see the map of Ravne-Brcko and Gornje Ravne here http://www.dubrave.ba/images/main/ravne-brcko-l.gif , and the International Crisis Group report also has a useful one http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/europe/balkans/bosnia-herzegovina/B66%20Brcko%20Unsupervised.pdf. You can browse the 2010 election results in detail here: http://www.izbori.ba/Finalni2010/Finalni/ParlamentBIH/Default.aspx)
3 comments:
You are writing nonsense, Bošnjaks form a majority right up to the Sava river effectively cutting the coridor from a demographiv point of view.
If you as a foreigner are going to be presumptious enough to write about Bosnia in such specific details make sure you get them right.
If you think I am being too harsh on you, consider if someone writing an article about the United States wrote that the Bible Belt extends from Los Angeles to Denver would you think thez are a moron?
I am very pleased that people such as Mr Gallivan are writing about Brcko. It is a fascinating place. Mr Gallivan has clearly undertaken significant research in connection with this Blog post. That in itself is to be commended. Too many people write about Bosnia without knowing the facts or understanding the country.
However Mr Gallivan's account of Brcko contains a few misstatements. I would like to take the opportunity to correct them.
1. He says that Brcko District is not part of either Entity. This is not strictly true. According to the Final Award of the Brcko Arbitral Tribunal, it is actually part of both Entities and shared by them in condominium. It has a level of de jure (if not de facto) independence from the Entity governments, however.
2. Mr Gallivan suggests that Brcko District is ethnically partitioned. He argues that election statistics support this conclusion. This is a curious assertion, because the election system in Brcko (which in the interests of full disclosure I should admit that I was involved, in part, in designing in the latter phase of US supervision of the District) is such that no statistics are available which could demonstrate this. The election system within Brcko District has no constituencies. It is an "open list" system in which the entire population of the District votes for the entire District Assembly. Therefore there is no breakdown which shows that all inhabitants of Maoca (a Bosniac-majority village), for example, voted for Bosniac political parties, although that is undoubtedly the case.
3. The truth is that Brcko District is partially ethnically partitioned. The villages and suburbs are partitioned. But the centre of town is mixed. Different neighbourhoods within the town are dominated by different ethnic groups, but no neat lines can be drawn. When I lived in Brcko town I lived in a Bosniac street, but there was a Serb newsagents at the bottom of the street.
4. To suggest that the town remains rigidly ethnically partitioned is to fail to give credit to perhaps the only place in Bosnia were refugee returns were achieved in significant quantities, under the supervision of US diplomat Bill Farrand and his team.
5. The suggestion that Brcko District does not represent a potential conflagration point because it is already ethnically partitioned is not quite to the point. The reason why it represents a conflagration point is because the Serbs want Brcko town to achieve the territorial continuity necessary for their independence project, and the Bosniacs want Brcko town to prevent precisely the same goal. The danger of conflagration is driven by Brcko's strategic location, not by ethnic partition or the lack of it.
6. Unfortunately education in Brcko District has suffered a remarkable degree of voluntary re-segregation in the last 5 years, as supervision of the education sector has declined.
I would like again to thank Mr Gallivan for taking the time to study Brcko. It is a very complex place and it merits further international enquiry for the lessons for future state-building projects that this remarkable experiment offers.
Many thanks for the comment. I enjoy your comment pieces on Balkan Insight.
On the first point I am grateful for the correction, although I will leave the text unchanged for now as I think it could be argued that, notwithstanding the Brcko statute, it is not really possible for two entities to overlap, as is the case if Brcko is part of the Federation and RS.
On the second point, I provided a link at the end of my post to the Bosnian election results website, which show how well different parties performed in different areas using data from polling stations, including in Maoca for example. Of course these figures should be treated with caution and not be equated with census results, but my reading of them is that identifiably Serb parties won more votes than the SDP and the SDA combined in the whole district and that most of the Serb votes were concentrated in areas that they controlled during the war, including areas in the town “Centar”.
I agree that Brcko city is mixed (point three) and that the town itself is not “rigidly” partitioned (point four) or neatly divided into Serb and Muslim areas, but it would be interesting to know the actual ethnic breakdown, both for the town and the areas that were formerly under the control of the VRS on one hand and the ARBIH/HVO on the other. It is also interesting to note that most of the prewar population of Brcko municipality lived outside the town.
Moving to point five, the main reason why Brcko is not in my opinion a likely flashpoint is that, as I think you pointed out in one of your comment pieces, RS to Bosniaks is a bit like Kosovo to the Serbs – a distant memory that they are not likely to fight for. Brcko’s main importance for Bosniaks is probably as a means to prevent the Serbs controlling areas such as Doboj and Prijedor, but if they give up on these, then I think they are likely to give up on Brcko. However, if Brcko had returned to its pre-war state, with the town again dominated by Bosniaks, this would probably make a localised conflict there a bit more likely. But it has not, and this I think makes conflict less likely.
Post a Comment