Brcko unchanged

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)

The indivisibility of citizenship (a diversion)

This print from the 1790s, “French Telegraph Making Signals in the Dark”, shows the British statesman Charles James Fox signalling to a French fleet heading towards an undefended south coast of Britain. It is not difficult to imagine a modern day politician being similarly pilloried in a newspaper cartoon, this time over the issue of the European Union. And it is not just EU-enthusiasts whose attachment to Britain might be called into question. Scottish and Irish nationalists would openly acknowledge their indifference or antipathy to Britishness, as would many among ethnic minorities who remain attached to their homelands and continue to participate in politics there. Less obviously, many “Euro-sceptics”, supposedly the most patriotic Britons, are emotionally attached and committed to causes that do not always coincide with Britain’s interests. 

Hardly any of the last group, who see their adherence to the Anglosphere and the special relationship with the United States as an extension of their British identity, would accept that their Britishness is in any way compromised by their outlook. It would be absurd for an American to insist that the United States’ history begins with the American Revolution. Many American traits of which its citizens are so proud can be straightforwardly traced back to the former mother country; the two countries have a common history. It would be just as foolish for people in Britain to deny this fact, which is why so many here see in the United States the expression of all that is (or was) best about Britain. Largely because of this common history, the two countries’ interests often coincide, so when Brits express strong support for America, they are often doing so because they see it as a means to further Britain’s interests.

But pro-American Atlanticists do not always see the special relationship in terms of Britain’s interest. It is often seen as a friendship, a relationship that pretty much by definition cannot be based on selfishness.  They may not advocate a political union of the kind supported by Euro-federalists, but clearly the idea of the special relationship and close ties with other Anglosphere countries goes beyond a simple alliance of convenience. The potential for the special relationship to damage British interests while advancing those of the United States becomes apparent when one considers that the Americans have been among the most enthusiastic proponents of European integration; the gulf between Euro-enthusiast Atlanticists and “Euro-sceptic” Atlanticists may not be as wide as is sometimes suggested. In both cases there is a strong commitment to the defence of “the West” and an internationalist strand with the potential to clash with Britain’s narrower interests.  NATO, the military alliance that arose at the beginning of the Cold War but seems to have become permanent, against George Washington’s famous advice about avoiding permanent alliances, is more or less the military wing of the European Union. So the European integration so loathed by the most vociferous Euro-sceptic Atlanticists, is in fact an important aspect of the special relationship.

The potential for the special relationship to damage Britain’s interests becomes even more apparent when you consider that the United States’ foreign policy is often influenced by the many ethnic lobbies that are active in that country and so cannot even be seen as acting in America’s, let alone Britain’s, interest. In some cases these lobbies’ aims are so integrated into the general thrust of US foreign policy that few question whether there is any divergence with America’s national interest. Cuban Americans get a free pass thanks to their staunch anti-Communism, which dovetails nicely with mainstream American patriotism, but whether America would still pursue the same policy toward Cuba if there wasn’t such a large Cuban community in America is an interesting question. American support for Israel is tied up with the defence of “the West” in general but is at least in part a consequence of the large Jewish population in the United States. These cases do not obviously affect Britain, but consider the following. The United States played a significant role in shaping the 1990s “peace process” in Northern Ireland and this was largely due to the influence of Irish America. Americans’ equivocation and –and in some cases support – in the face of Irish Republican terror has been well documented, but worrying aspects of their role in shaping the peace process are sometimes overlooked.  Before the September 11 atrocities, the New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now feted as an enthusiastic supporter of the special relationship, welcomed the Sinn Fein president Gerard Adams to New York’s City Hall. According to the New York Times: “’I think President Clinton should greet him,’ declared the Mayor, joining the Irish visitor's own campaign for the Clinton Administration to honor him with a personal White House visit, which would add to the pressure on London for peace talks open to leaders of Northern Ireland's militant republican movement.” You might think that Americans were right about Northern Ireland and that we benefited from their prodding, but the damaging potential of their influence, not just over our foreign policy but in our internal affairs, is clear.

The most obvious impediment to Britishness is dual citizenship. While many dual nationals simply have a foreign nationality for convenience or because they haven’t bothered to renounce it, others see it as an important part of their identity and play an active part as a citizen of the foreign country. Even Michael Portillo, the former Conservative politician who used to dream of being prime minister of Britain, used his Spanish nationality to vote in that country’s last general election. How does a dual national decide how to vote if the interests of one of his countries of citizenship are in conflict with those of the other? (An example in Mr Portillo’s case would be over the issue of Gibraltar.) Countries have many areas of common interest, but there are other spheres where they can only be in competition and where competition – as in the corporate world, for example –adds to human prosperity. Such competition can only thrive when states command the full loyalty of their citizens.

Some British citizens who are not dual nationals act as if they are.  When the Conservative politician Daniel Hannan, ahead of the 2008 election in the United States, wrote: “I am a lifelong Republican, and have, over the years, felt a far more uncomplicated loyalty to that party than to my own,” was he not calling into question his loyalty to Britain in the same way as Mr Portillo? A more blatant example of loyalty to foreign causes entering British politics is the success of the JFK (Justice for the Kashmiri Community) party in Birmingham, which in 2000 successfully pressured the city council to pass a resolution supporting the self-determination of Kashmir. More recently, in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets, which has a large Bangladeshi population, the council has also waded into the foreign policy arena, calling for a boycott of “the pariah state” of Israel. In 2009 elections for the European Parliament, a candidate campaigning on the issue of Tamil rights in Sri Lanka won nearly 3% – in some boroughs more than 7% – of the vote in London.

Britishness does not preclude support for foreign causes as long as these are not in serious conflict with the interests of Britain, but if we accept the contention that one can have many different loyalties and identities but can only have one national loyalty, the above examples are problematic. The political scientist Samuel Huntington in a book about American identity compares dual citizenship to bigamy. That is not as harsh as it first appears if one considers that in a free country, citizenship is just one part of a person’s identity, independent of religion, family and many other aspects of life. To expand on the familial analogy, isn’t it best for Britain to be a family of peoples with a common loyalty rather than a vague geographical and political arrangement whose citizens are only there for convenience and feel little affinity with the soil they inhabit? The family unit, in which parents are devoted to their children but also encourage them to behave with compassion towards others,  has over time been a source of immeasurable human happiness. The same may be true of states. Perhaps a better analogy is religion; as Huntington writes, it is difficult to be half Muslim and half Catholic. The divisions between countries are equally rigid. The author Noel Malcolm points out in his pamphlet ‘Sense on Sovereignty’, “sovereignty cannot be divided up into percentage units.” Sovereignty, like religions, is indivisible. Perhaps the same should be true of citizenship.

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.