The Ethno-Territorial Separation of Bosnia Was the Key to Ending the War and Keeping Peace
The constitution of Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H) that was included as annex 4 of the Dayton agreement is certainly complex. It divided the country into sub-territories, almost all of them dominated by only one of the country’s three main ethno-national communities: Bosniaks (known until 1993 as Muslims), Croats and Serbs [...]
The Dayton system has kept the peace for twenty-five years. Why destabilize Sarajevo now?
As befits a successful peace agreement, the November 1995 Dayton accords that ended the Bosnian war were marked on their twenty-fifth anniversary with a flurry of international conferences. Oddly enough, even though a general acknowledgment that the accords have kept the peace, most recommendations call for radically “revising Dayton,” on the grounds that Bosnia’s institutions are too cumbersome, prone to corruption and politically unfair to minorities. Even more oddly, many proposals have been made to address these problems by dismantling the very structures that have brought and maintained peace. Instead, NATO forces are supposed to impose upon the Croats and Serbs of Bosnia, half the population and majorities in 60 percent of its territory, the centralized state that they went to war to prevent. Since there are no indications that many Croats and Serbs will accept this, NATO troops would likely be regarded by them as an occupying force, a role that has not worked well in Afghanistan or Iraq.
The constitution of Bosnia & Herzegovina (B&H) that was included as annex 4 of the Dayton agreement is certainly complex. It divided the country into sub-territories, almost all of them dominated by only one of the country’s three main ethno-national communities: Bosniaks (known until 1993 as Muslims), Croats and Serbs. These ethno-polities are linked in a confederal structure, with the central government holding very little authority, and even that conditioned on rarely achieved consensus from the representatives of the three communities. Almost all governmental power resides at the levels of the ethno-territorial “entities”, one Serb, the other Bosniak and Croat, and within this last, among ten cantons, five Bosniak, three Croat, and two mixed.
Yet constitutionalizing the ethno-territorial separation of these three communities was the key not only to ending the war but to keeping the peace. The year 2020 was also the thirtieth anniversary of the free and fair elections at the end of communism, when the population of B&H partitioned itself into three mutually exclusive constituencies, Bosniak, Croat and Serb. A single party of each won almost all votes from that community, while those promising a social democracy of equal citizens did very poorly. Since Bosniaks comprised 43 percent of the population, Serbs 34 percent and Croats 17 percent, forming a joint state would only be possible if the members of these communities agreed to it. Tragically, but not surprisingly, they did not: while Bosniaks wanted a strong central government, Croats and Serbs fought the war in order to avoid having such a centralized state imposed upon them. They accepted inclusion in B&H at Dayton only because the central government has very little authority over them.
Critics argue that this system of ethno-territorial power-sharing is undemocratic because it blocks citizens from forming non-ethnic majorities and makes it impossible for minority members to run for some offices. They also argue that corrupt ethno-national elites exploit the weakness of the central state in order to enrich themselves. And finally, they assert that the ease of blocking consensus prevents the central government from taking supposedly necessary decisions, notably joining NATO.
Bosnia’s many problems, however, are not due to the Dayton constitution, or to its lack of accession to NATO. On Transparency International’s 2109 Corruption Perceptions Index, BiH scored better than NATO members Albania and North Macedonia, only slightly worse than Serbia and NATO founding member Turkey, and far better than Iraq and Afghanistan, where the long-term U.S. occupations have led to less viable states than B&H. None of these other countries has the Dayton system, though perhaps Iraq would have done better if then-Senator Joe Biden’s 2006 proposal to use Dayton as a model for its restructuring had been implemented.
And those putative anti-nationalist citizens who are disenfranchised by Dayton’s ethno-confederalism are very rarely found outside of debates in policy circles. In the 2013 census, nearly 97 percent of the population declared themselves Bosniak, Croat, or Serb. Only 1 percent declared themselves to be ethno-nationally neutral “Bosnians.” The three mutually exclusive ethnonational constituencies thus accurately reflect the social divisions of the society.
The war that was ended at Dayton was fought by three ethnoreligious armies and for three different countries: the overwhelmingly Muslim Army of B&H for all of Bosnia, including those places with few Muslims; the Army of Republika Srpska for a Serbian Fatherland composed of only parts of B&H, and the Croatian Defense Council for a Croatian Homeland that included only other parts of B&H. The territorial divisions at Dayton mainly followed the front lines between these forces, whose dead are now commemorated separately, and rarely in the same town, as Muslim “martyrs” (šehidi, from Arabic), or Croat “defenders,” or Serb “fighters.”
The Dayton constitution essentially proclaimed this house divided to be a condominium, despite two of three tenants rejecting co-ownership. The condominium can be continued only if those two tenants, the Croats and Serbs of B&H, are satisfied that the third one will not try to take over their parts of the house. Most of the proposals being made by denizens of U.S. think tanks to “fix Bosnia” are to have NATO help the Bosniaks in such a takeover, by imposing a centralized government on the Croats and Serbs. It is difficult to imagine a better way to destabilize Bosnia. It is even more difficult to find a defensible reason for such proposals.
Bosnia isn’t the way it is because of Dayton; rather, Dayton is the way it is because of the nature of Bosnian society. The Dayton system has kept the peace for twenty-five years. Why destabilize Bosnia now?
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
Long before Donald Trump successfully hung the “fake news” label on CNN, more discerning observers of the wars of the Yugoslav succession of the 1990s came to similar conclusions regarding the network’s news coverage of that tragedy. Headlined by Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s reporting, especially from Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo, showed a clear pro-Muslim, anti-Serbian bias, painting the conflict in stark black-and-white colors, where the Christian Serbs were always the “black hat” “aggressors,” perpetrators of “genocide” and such, while the Bosnian and Albanian Muslims were inevitably the “white hat” “victims,” in dire need of U.S. and Western “humanitarian” intervention to spare them from extermination at ...
Author’s note: a draft version of the article was originally written at the end of December 2015 and published in March 2016. This is the extended article’s version.On April 24th, 2016 Serbia faced three-level elections: for the national parliament, local municipalities and Vojvodina’s autonomous provincial administration. The elections did not cover Kosovo province as current Serbia’s pro-NATO/EU’s government already two years ago de facto recognized in its negotiations with the EU and Pristina’s government that this province is not any more an integral part of the legal and administrative system of the Republic of Serbia. Nevertheless, these elections were in ...
I come from a member state of the European Union which is meant to uphold the rights of all religions, political ideologies, acknowledge national and cultural rights, and is meant to spread “European brotherhood.” However, it appears that this does not apply to the Orthodox Christians of Bosnia and Kosovo respectively because not only have they been abandoned but outside Islamic powers are stepping up their Islamization agenda in both Bosnia and Kosovo.In Kosovo the de-Christianization of the Orthodox Christian community continues and hundreds of Orthodox Christian churches have been destroyed but little was done to protect this community. It ...
In Kill Anything that Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam (Metropolitan Books. New York. 2013), Turse writes that the US military’s official position, and the popular understanding in the US, is that leadership “has never condoned wanton killing or disregard for human life.” (2) On the rare occasions when atrocities are brought to light, they are blamed on low-level individuals and are said to be aberrations having nothing to do with official policy. The My Lai massacre, for example, was blamed on Lieutenant William Calley, who is said to have gone “crazy” (4,5) – although he and his unit ...
The Western-controlled International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was charged with delivering victor’s justice, polar opposite the real thing.In March 2016, it wrongfully convicted Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on multiple counts of genocide in Srebrenica, war crimes and crimes against humanity, sentencing him to 40 years in prison.At age-71, it was a virtual life sentence. He served as Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska president from 1992 – 1996, part of Bosnia and Herzegovina.Alleged genocide at Srebrenica was more myth than massacre. Deaths were hugely inflated, the ICTY established to blame Serbs for war crimes committed by both sides.Srebrenica ...
Video documentary movie on the first ISIS in Europe in the Islamic Caliphate of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1992-1995.This movie is made by the British SKY NEWS after the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.Similar documentary movies on the ISIS Bosnia-Herzegovina made by the Bosnian Serbs were never shown to the Western audience.The duration of the movie is 8 min. and 17 sec.In the movie are presented and future Al-Qaeda Mujahedeen holy fighters.From the movie is clear what was the real nature of the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in the 1990s.All copyrights reserved by the SKY NEWS.Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, ...
“Ethnic affiliation has never been forgotten in the territories of the former Yugoslavia. It did play a certain role, and it did influence decisions even during the Tito's era of strict ‘Brotherhood and Unity’”[Várady T., “Minorities, Majorities, Law and Ethnicity: Reflections of the Yugoslav Case”, Human Rights Quarterly, Vol. 19, 1997, p. 42]People, nation and stateI agree that “in Yugoslavia, all political problems are intimately linked with the issue of nationalism”.[i] Indeed, the fixing of inner or administrative borders between Yugoslavia’s nations and nationalities became one of the main issues that forged nationalism after the Second World War onward and ...
The Independent State of Croatia (NDH) was a World War II puppet state of Germany and Italy, which was established in parts of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers.A poster from the WWII Nazi Ustashi Independent State of Croatia with the state flag (Source: Instagram)The NDH consisted of modern-day Croatia and most of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as some parts of modern-day Serbia and Slovenia. The regime targeted Serbs, Jews, Roma people and anti-fascist or dissident Croatians and Muslims, as part of a large-scale genocide campaign ...
Bosnia’s Nazi past and role in the genocide of Bosnian and Krajina Serbs, Jews, and Roma during World War II has long been censored and covered-up in the U.S. and the so-called West. Film footage exists, however, of the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS troops and Imams in the Handschar and Kama Nazi SS Divisions.Bosnian Muslim Division Imam Abdulah Muhasilovic shown in 1943 during training and formation of the Bosnian Muslim Nazi SS Division HandzarMoreover, German film footage also exists of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el Husseini, a self-proclaimed leader of the Muslim world, reviewing the Bosnian Muslim ...
Two decades later Bosnia is still suffering the consequences. ISIS has declared the Balkans the next front for the Islamic Caliphate, and in remote mountain villages, Muslims are already flying the ISIS flag.Central Bosnia in 2015Russia Insider (h/t Maksim) The Balkans is the latest arena where the West is trying to circumcise any attempt of Russia to regainits influence. This anti-Serbian resolution and initiative is the part of the broader strategy and the latest Western attempt to demonize Serbs and delegitimize pro-Russian Republic of Srpska (Serbian part of Bosnia) in an effort to forcefully centralize Bosnia and give the driving seat to ...
Author’s noteThe following article focussing on the jihadist terrorist insurgency in Macedonia was first published by antiwar.com in July 2001, barely two months before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.Known and documented, since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin (“holy warriors”) to fight covert wars on Washington’s behest had become an integral part of US foreign policy. A report of the US Congress had revealed how the US administration – under advice from the National Security Council headed by Anthony Lake – had “helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base” leading to the recruitment through ...
Clinton/NATO Intervention In Balkans Revealed As Half-Witted DhimmitudeFebruary 26, 2007- San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - Twelve years after the alleged Srebrenica massacre, the International Court of Justice [ICJ] has found that charges alleging that a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing by the Bosnian Serb government was used against the Bosnian Muslims are baseless, yet the court adamantly maintains a belief in the myth of Srebrenica, much in the way that Islamists worldwide hold on to the Jenin hoax because both serve to stoke anti-Western, anti-Israel sentiment.From the beginning it should have been clear that the Clinton administration's decision to ...
On July 11, 1995, the town of Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serb army. At the time, I was the highest ranking United Nations civilian official in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In my book, Dubious Mandate,1 I made some comments on that tragedy. Beyond that, I decried the distortions of the international press in their reporting, not only on that event, but on the wars in Yugoslavia (1992-95) in general. I expressed the wish that there could have been, and must be, some balance in telling the story of what actually happened in Srebrenica and in all of former Yugoslavia, if we are ...
Tito’s policy in the 1970s of the so-called “encourage and suppress” for the sake to struggle against politically undesirable and threatening ethnic nationalisms especially the Croat and the Serb ones appeared to be incoherent one. In another words, while some ethnic nationalisms and their ideologies were considered to be dangerous to the system and, therefore, were suppressed and their advocates were jailed or banned from employment[i] (the case, for instance, of the Serbian dissident professors from Belgrade University), other nationalisms, supposed to be non-dangerous for the regime were encouraged by the local Communist elites (for instance, the Albanian nationalism in ...
Global Research Editor’s NoteRatko Mladić has recently been convicted to life imprisonment by the the ICTY on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity while he was Chief Commander of the Army of Republika Srpska between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia and Herzegovina.This detailed account first published in 1998 by former UN Military Observer Carlos Martino Branco casts doubts on the decision of the Hague Tribunal (ICTY) that “genocide was committed in Srebrenica in 1995.”“…Bosnia Serb forces carried out genocide against the Bosnian Muslims (…) .Those who devise and implement genocide seek to deprive humanity of the manifold ...
In light of Sergey Lavrov’s recent statements reflecting Russia’s disappointment with the West and the country’s intention to “stop judging ourselves on the basis of marks given by the collective West or individual Western countries”, it might have been expected that the Russian foreign minister’s mid-December Balkan mini tour would be a good chance to see how this new Russian awakening was going to be reflected in practice. Especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B-H), perhaps the most famous hamlet in the Potemkin village built by Western “humanitarian interventionism” during the, thankfully, relatively brief unipolar moment lasting approximately two decades after ...
The Balkan political environment is shaped-amongst other- by the existence of two political strains of Islam, the Wahhabis, related to the Saudis & Gulf states and the Muslim Brotherhood ones, related to the Turkish-Qatar axis.In both cases networking developed under a series of upturns since the 1990’s and is inexorably related to wider events of interest such as the ongoing wars in the Middle East and the culminations in countries such as Turkey, Egypt but also EU , Western European ones; including direct security affairs.Nowadays we are witnessing a massive buyout of land and corporations by mostly UAE, Kuwait and ...
Over the past several years, analysts and commentators have noticed a rising tide of domestic support for the Croatian homegrown Nazi movement of the Second World War, the Ustashe, which actively exterminated Serbs, Jews, and Roma in the territory it controlled from 1941-45. Far from condemning this alarming development, the Croatian government, the European Union, and non-state actors within it have tacitly and actively supported the rising tide of sympathy towards the Ustashe.This disconnect between the ostensible “European values” of human rights and tolerance that the European Union claims to represent, and its tacit support of trends towards extremist politics ...
“If the Nuremberg Laws were applied, then every post-war American President would have been hanged” Noam ChomskyEurasiaHenry Kissinger, one of the fundamental figures in creating and maintaining the US policy of global hegemony during the Cold War,[1] was quite clear and precise in his overviewing the issue of the American geopolitical position, national goals, and foreign policy. His remarks can be summarized in the following points:The US is an island off the shores of the large landmass of Eurasia.The resources and population of Eurasia far exceed the resources and population of the US.Any domination by any single state from Eurasia (either ...
In your book, "Islam and Nazi Germany's War", you write about the policies of the Nazis towards Islamic political entities. What form did they take?David Motadel: At the height of the war in 1941-1942, when German troops entered Muslim-populated territories in the Balkans, North Africa, Crimea and the Caucasus and were approaching the Middle East and Central Asia, Berlin began to see Islam as politically significant. Nazi Germany made significant attempts to promote an alliance with the "Muslim world" against their alleged common enemies – the British Empire, the Soviet Union, America and Jews.In the war zones, Germany engaged with ...
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994
