Almost a quarter century after the Dayton Accords signed in
1995 ended the horrific war between Muslim Bosniaks, Roman Catholic Croats, and
Orthodox Christian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina, this fragile entity remains a
state held together by “Scotch-tape” – the European Union and NATO.
At the summit of this ramshackle country stands the
presidency, controlled by three elected presidents, one each for the three
ethnic groups.
Since they agree on virtually nothing, it is governed, in
reality, by a so-called High Representative. The current incumbent is the
Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko.
He has the power to adopt binding decisions when
local parties seem unable or unwilling to act, and he can remove from office
public officials who violate legal commitments or, in general, the Dayton
Accords.
A cumbersome state apparatus with 14 levels of government
and no clear reconciliation strategy opened the door to continued ethno-nationalist
brinkmanship and endemic corruption.
Also, half the country has been turned into a de facto Serb
statelet, the Republika Srpska, the other half given over to the Croat and
Bosnian Muslim population.
If the external forces keeping the peace ever stopped, war
would resume almost immediately. In a sense, it has never really ended.
The former Yugoslav republic had a multiethnic population of
Bosniaks,Croats and Serbs. The latter two groups wanted to join their ethnic
kin in Croatia and Serbia when Yugoslavia disintegrated. War followed.
With at least 130,000 people dead and some 2.2 million
turned into refugees and internally displaced persons by ethnic cleansing
between 1992 and 1995, no one was left untouched by the conflict.
Sarajevo was besieged and indiscriminately shelled by
Bosnian Serb snipers. Banja Luka, the country’s second largest city, was
systematically cleansed of non-Serbs and all its mosques demolished. The city
of Mostar, a UNESCO world heritage site, would find itself similarly encircled.
Divided cities are places of extreme exclusion and
polarization, and Mostar has been divided since 1992. Though in 2004 the city
was reunified by an interim city statute, it remains highly contested.
Mostar is located in the Federation of Bosnia and
Herzegovina, the confusingly-named part of the country outside the Republika
Srpska that is mainly Bosniak and Croat.
Throughout 1992, tensions between Croats and Bosniaks
increased in Mostar and by April 1993 Mostar had become a divided city with the
western part dominated by Croats and the eastern part controlled by the
Bosniaks.
Its famous 16th-century stone bridge was destroyed during
the fighting but has since been rebuilt. The Croat–Bosniak conflict ended in
1994; by then some 2,000 people had been killed.
Today, the city’s population of 105,00 is divided between
Croats, at 48.4 per cent and Bosniaks at 44.1 per cent. There is a very small
Serb population. The city of Mostar has the largest population of Croats in
Bosnia and Herzegovina.
It is a city that, while officially reunited, remains
associated with the seeming impossibility of eradicating the ethnic divisions
that paralyse it.
Power is divided between the Croatian Democratic Union of
Bosnia and Herzegovina (HDZ BiH) and the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA),
the same parties that reduced the center of the city to a wasteland.
There are two separate fire brigades,
two garbage collection companies, two hospitals, two electricity
companies, two bus stations, two popular nightclubs, and two soccer teams.
Of course, schools are also either Croat or Bosniak. They
all attest to the continued division.
Mostar, and all of Bosnia-Herzegovina, is not so much at
peace as in a state of non-war.
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