Confusion over Konjic

Judge Treschel: Courtesy of the ICTY

In the ongoing International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) trial of Bosnian Croat leader Jadranko Prlic and others accused of war crimes against Bosnian Muslims, lawyers for the defence took exception to comments judge Trechsel made about “Herceg-Bosna”, the controversial entity established by the Bosnian Croats.


During questioning on 28 April 2009 of Dragan Juric, a former deputy commander of the Bosnian Croat Army, HVO, in the municipality of Konjic, Hedveg Moe, for the prosecution, presented a map “that shows the Croatian Communities of Herceg-Bosna and Bosanska Posavina in 1991” to the witness and the following exchange ensued:


Moe:  “This map shows that Konjic was part of Herceg-Bosna, doesn't it?”


Juric: “That's what it says on the map.  According to this map, the map I'm looking at, that's how it's surrounded.”


Moe: “And Konjic was part of Herceg-Bosna, wasn't it?”


Juric:  “Let me say again, that's what would follow on the basis of this map, but who drew up this map and who conceived it, I don't know.”

At this point Judge Treschel intervened:

Treschel: I'm sorry, witness, I find this a bit difficult. Are you telling us that you do not know whether Konjic, your place, was part of Herceg-Bosna or not?  Do you want us to believe that you ignore even this?

Juric: “I said that judging by this map here...”

Treschel: “Please answer my question.  I am asking you, as a high military officer who worked in Konjic, were you ignorant of the fact that the municipality of Konjic formed part of the Croat Republic of Herceg-Bosna; yes or no?  You knew or you did not know?”

Juric: “Your Honour, yes, I did know.”

At this point defence lawyer Karnavas intervened to say that it was a fallacy that the entire municipality was part of Herceg-Bosna and asked whether it was the bench’s position that the whole municipality of Konjic was part of Herceg-Bosna. Mr Treschel did not answer the question, but went on to say that “The witness has clearly answered that he knew that Konjic was part of Herceg-Bosna, full stop.”

Then defence lawyer Nozica intervened to observe that Treschel’s question “’ Do you want us to believe that you ignore even this?’... is not commensurate with this stage of the proceedings.” She added that the comment “is a conclusion that the Prosecutor may be allowed to make in his closing arguments” implying that the comments did not appear appropriate for a judge.

The defence should also have pointed out that the word “Republic” was not used in relation to Herceg-Bosna until the second half of 1993, some time after the period that was being discussed at the hearing. But what is more interesting is judge Treschel’s assumption that whether Konjic was part of Herceg-Bosna or not is a completely black and white question. This gives rise to his  questionable assertion that Juric “clearly answered that he knew that Konjic was part of Herceg-Bosna, full stop.”

In fact, there is much ambiguity about what being part of the Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna (HZHB) meant.

The document declaring the decision on 18 November 1991 to establish the HZHB declares that it:

“Consists of the following municipalities: Jajce, Dobretici (Skender Vakuf), Travnik, Novi Travnik, Vitez, Busovaca, Kiseljak, Fojnica, Kresevo, Kakanj, Vares, Kupres, Bugojno, Gornji Vakuf, Konjic, Jablanica, Prozor, Mostar, Citluk, Ljubuski, Siroki Brijeg, Posusje, Stolac, Capljina, Neum, Grude, Livno, Tomislavgrad, Ravno (Trebinje) and Kotor Varos.”

And that:

“The Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna represents a political, cultural, economic and territorial entity.”

But the fact that Herceg-Bosna consisted of a list of municipalities including Konjic, according to a very vaguely worded decision of the Bosnian Croat leadership in 1991, does not show that Konjic was thereafter unquestionably part of Herceg-Bosna; Juric’s reluctance to give a precise answer to a very imprecise question is understandable.

The belief that HZHB was a rigidly-defined territorial entity gives rise to completely distorted interpretation of the descent into war between Croats and Muslims in the Konjic area, which in reality was caused by extreme behaviour on both sides.

The descent into Croat-Muslim war in northern Herzegovina

As in the rest of Herzegovina, Konjic’s Croats and Muslims were in the early stages of the Bosnian war in 1992 united in opposition to the Serbs, who threatened to overrun much of the country. In southern parts of Herzegovina, the counterattack against the Serbs was led by the Croats, aided by the Croatian army, but in the Konjic area the Croats were much weaker due to the larger Muslim population.

According to Dragan Juric, ”Muslims attempted to have a leading role” in Konjic and in early June 1992 did not allow the equitable distribution between Muslims and Croats of weapons from the Ljuta facility which had been seized from the Serbs in April.

Relations were strained later in June by the refusal of the HVO to join an attack on Serb forces in Nevesinje, because the aim of that attack, to ease the pressure on Bosnian government forces seeking to break the Serb siege of Sarajevo, was not perceived to be in the Croat national interest, in contrast to previous joint operations between the Muslims and Croats. After this, the joint command between Muslim and Croat forces ceased to function.

The Bosnian government had appointed Zejnil Delalic, a wealthy businessman, to act as a coordinator and later commander of “Tactical Group 1” with the aim of coordinating the activities of the Croat and Muslim forces operating in Konjic to help the forces trying to lift the siege of Sarajevo.

This role was slightly contradictory, because, as we have seen, the Croats did not view lifting the siege of Sarajevo as one of their aims and for this reason there was much distrust between Delalic and the local Croats. The Croats saw him as the “so-called” coordinator.

In October 1992 the first clashes between Muslims and Croats in Bosnia occurred in Prozor, a municipality that borders Konjic to the West. At this time, Zahir Hrnjica, commander of the 1^st Klis Battallion in Konjic, failed to carry out an order from the Main Staff of the Supreme Command of the Bosnian Army (ARBiH) to escort a company from Gornji Vakuf, a municipality bordering Konjic, to the village of Parsovici on the border between Konjic and Prozor, because he did not want to provoke a conflict with local Croats. The deputy commander of the ARBiH, Jovan Divjak, ordered that the refusal to carry out the order be investigated. Divjak also signed an order on 25 October removing Salko Zerem as the commander of the Jablanica municipal defence staff for failing to carry out an order assisting ARBiH forces in Prozor.  Zerem was replaced by Safet Idrizovic.

By January 1993, tensions had heightened and the main command of the ARBiH remained suspicious of local Muslims’ cooperation with Croats in the Konjic area. On 28 January, ARBiH commander Sefer Halilovic warned the commander of the 4^th Brigade of the ARBIH, which covered Herzegovina, of “cadres” from the ARBiH and the MUP (interior ministry) in the Konjic region who had put themselves in the service of “Greater Croatian” politics. He named Rusmir Hadzihuseinovic, the mayor of Konjic, Jasmin Guska, the head of MUP in Konjic, Refik Tufo, the commander of the MUP in Hadzici, a municipality between Konjic and Sarajevo, and ARBiH 7^th Konjic Brigade commander Midhat Cerovac. He ordered the 4^th Brigade to coordinate with Zulfikar Alispago, who commanded the “Zulfikar” special purposes unit.

The view that Hadzihuseinovic, Guska, Tufo and Cerovac were collaborating with Greater Croatia is of a piece with Judge Trechsel’s assertion that Konjic in 1992 was unquestionably part of Herceg Bosna. As well as a growing role for the Zulfikar unit in military operations, this view resulted in the removal of Hadzihuseinovic as president of the war presidency in Konjic in late March and his replacement by Safet Cibo, viewed by Croats as a Bosnian Muslim hard-liner, at the behest of the Sarajevo leadership.

Safet Idrizovic, who commanded the municipal defence in Jablanica, which was also brought under the control of Safet Cibo, offered a different perspective on cooperation with the Croats when questioned in the Prlic trial. Though critical of Croat actions in northern Herzegovina, Idrizovic said that his forces did not “feel any consequences of the HVO authority” adding that “there was a parallel power structure and apparently that was unacceptable because they [the Sarajevo government] thought we had accepted HVO authority.” Describing Bosnian Muslim forces that arrived in Jablanica from outside the municipality, he said that he and his men “were terrified of those people.”

On March 23, following an order dated March 20, ARBiH forces from Konjic, Jablanica and Hadzici began attacking the HVO in Konjic with the aim, among others, of taking the “Zlatar” military facility that was under Croat control. The attack was unsuccessful, but restarted on April 14 and succeeded. On April 16, the 45^th Konjic-based Neretvica Bridgade of the ARBiH and the Zulfikar detachment attacked the village of Trusina. The commander of the Neretvica Brigade, Hasan Hakalovic, Zulfikar Alispago and others are currently on trial at the Bosnian war crimes court, accused of killing 19 civilians and three captured Croat soldiers during the attack. The commander of the Hadzici-based 9^th Mountain Brigade, which though under the control of the Sarajevo-based 1^st Corp of the ARBiH, was involved in actions in Konjic, Nezir Kazic, and the speaker of the Hadzici municipal assembly and subsequently president of the Hadzici war presidency, Mustafa Dzelilovic, are also on trial at the Bosnian war crimes court, accused of crimes against Serb and Croat captives in the “Silos” facility in Hadzici municipality.

 The day after the ARBiH attack on Trusina, April 17, the HVO attacked the villages of Sovici and Doljani  in the Jablanica municipality. Mladen Naletelic was convicted by the ICTY for war crimes committed against the Muslim population in these villages as commander of the “Convicts Batallion”, an independent unit under the direct command of the HVO main staff. The events in Sovici and Doljani are included in the indictment against Jadranko Prlic.

The full truth about the descent into war between Croats and Muslims in Herzegovina – and the involvement of political leaderships on both sides – has yet to emerge, but Judge Treschel’s uncompromising insistence that in 1992 and 1993 Konjic was undeniably “part of Herceg Bosna” does not help us arrive there.

Land bridges, idiots in Usora and the Croat-Muslim conflict




30 municipalities of Herceg-Bosna (shaded) according to a decision of 18 November 1991.

 

Last year, the prosecution in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) trial of Jadranko Prlic and other former Bosnian Croat leaders accused of war crimes against Bosnian Muslims made an interesting claim.

In its final brief, the prosecution stated that the Croats “brazenly” included the central Bosnian municipality of Kakanj as part of their "Croatian Community of Herceg-Bosna" in 1991 “transparently for the purpose of providing a land bridge to Vares”, a municipality to Kakanj’s east, where Croats were according to the 1991 census the largest ethnic group.

This is one of many questionable assertions  about Herceg-Bosna that have contributed to a simplistic caricature of events in central Bosnia between 1992 and 1994.

The use of the word “transparently” suggests that you only need to glance at the map to see that Kakanj’s inclusion in Herceg-Bosna arose from its geographical position between Vares and other Croat territories.

But Kakanj, which according to the 1991 census was 30% Croat and 55% Muslim, was demographically similar to other municipalities that were also included in Herceg-Bosna or the Croatian Community of Bosanska Posavina in northern Bosnia, none of which was needed as a “land bridge” between Croat territories. Kotor Varos, for example, which was 29% Croat, was on the outer fringes of the group of municipalities that comprised Herceg-Bosna.

The claim that Kakanj was included in Herceg-Bosna to provide a land bridge seems to be based on the assumption that the Bosnian Croat leaders needed Herceg-Bosna to be territorially contiguous so that it could secede from Bosnia. There is, however, no real evidence that the Bosnian Croats actually took any meaningful steps to attach the 30 municipalities that had in 1991 been claimed as part of Herceg-Bosna to Croatia.

More convincingly, the prosecution has argued that the Bosnian Croat leadership abandoned Vares to the Muslims once they realised that it could not be defended, preferring its Croat population to resettle in Croat-controlled parts of Bosnia rather than remaining in Muslim-ruled territory.

The Bosnian Croats clearly prioritised certain Croat-populated areas over others, with western Herzegovina (including Mostar, which Bosnian Croats considered to be their capital) favoured over areas in central Bosnia such as Vares, Zepce and Usora.

In a copies of war diaries seized from former Bosnian Serb Army leader Ratko Mladic’s wife’s flat in Belgrade in 2010, the Bosnian Croat leaders are shown to be dismissive of Croats occupying enclaves outside the core of Herceg-Bosna, for instance, deriding the “idiots in Usora”, a Croat enclave surrounded by Serb and Muslim territory, where the Croats maintained their alliance with the mostly Muslim Bosnian Army (ARBiH). They also discuss the possibility of withdrawing the Bosnian Croat Army (HVO) 108^th Brigade from the Tuzla region.

According to the prosecution in the Prlic trial, former Herceg-Bosna president Mate Boban requested the assistance of international peacekeepers in moving Croats out of Sarajevo, Tuzla, Vares, Bugojno, Zepce and Zenica.

And as the former commander of the HVO, Milivoj Petkovic, who is on trial alongside Prlic, pointed out in the court, in Kiseljak and Kresevo there was resentment at the Bosnian Croat leadership because they were not included in the Croat majority provinces established by the Vance Owen Peace Plan of 1993. In ‘The Muslim Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992-1994’ Charles Shrader writes that HVO leaders in Zepce, Kiseljak and Vitez, were at the end of 1993 “somewhat disappointed in the support they were receiving from their compatriots in Herzegovina, who appeared to be more concerned with establishing the Croatian Republic of Herceg-Bosna than the with the very real threat to the continued existence of the Bosnian Croat enclaves in central Bosnia.”

The Bosnian Croat leadership, who were nationalists, clearly valued some territories more than others, depending on how many Croats lived there and how they were positioned in relation to the Croat heartland in Herzegovina.

But before blaming this for the war between Croats and Muslims, it is worth considering whether the Bosnian Muslim leadership’s stance wasn’t simliar. Was its commitment to Bosnian unity really more important than its desire to defend and liberate areas that had large Muslim populations prior to the Serb offensive in 1992? Did it value Kupres for example, which had a large Croat population, as much as neighbouring Muslim-majority Donji Vakuf, which had also been occupied by the Serbs in 1992? The answer in both cases is no. Both Croat and Bosnian Muslim leaderships failed to act in the spirit of brotherhood and unity and one-sided attempts to demonstrate how one side’s intransigence was provoked by the other are futile. This reality is not compatible with the “Greater Croatia” thesis that has already been advanced by the ICTY.

The Greater Croatia thesis also rests on the assumption that the Bosnian Croat leaders wildly exaggerated the threat to Croats in Bosnian government-controlled areas such as Travnik and Bugojno. No doubt this is true, but when the prosecution in its final brief cites a report by international observers detailing “Croat propaganda” about “mudjahidins slaughtering women and children” which was “totally without justification”, there is a real danger of downplaying the horrendous crimes that were also committed by Bosnian Army (ARBiH) troops. The version of the Greater Croatia thesis that has already been advanced by the ICTY in previous trial judgements depends on a completely sanitised view of the Bosnian government side that depicts every ARBiH crime as an isolated reaction to HVO aggression. It will be interesting to see how the thesis is developed when the ICTY reaches its judgement in the Prlic trial.

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.