Following the money: Muslim versus Muslim in Bosnia's civil war

Comparative Politics

Volumn 40, Issue 4, 2008, Pages

  Christia, Fotini ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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EID: 51349096569     PISSN: 00104159     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5129/001041508x12911362383390     Document Type: Review

References (84)

1. Bosnian Muslims are referred to as Muslims rather than Bosniacs because the events described predate the adoption of the latter term. The term Muslim dates from the Austro-Hungarian reign over Bosnia and Herzegovina, and though broadly used, it was elevated in status only in 1971, when Muslims became Yugoslavia's sixth constituent nation, along with Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, and Montenegrins. The term Bosniac, which became popular during the 1992-1995 war, was originally meant to refer to all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina irrespective of nationality. Having failed to amount to a broad civic identity, it instead came to be identified with Bosnian Muslims. Bosniac was formally codified as the newly espoused term for Muslims in the March 18, 1994, Washington Agreement on the constitution of the Bosnian-Croat Federation. See Steven Burg and Paul S. Shoup, The War in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ethnic Conflict and International Intervention (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), pp. 19-20, 36, 41-42, 68, 195-96.
2. A total of 2,260 Muslim fighters died in the intra-Muslim conflict, as compared to approximately 1,300 who died in combat against the Serbs in the same region. Interview with General Atif Dudaković, Sarajevo, July 12, 2004; Smail Kličić, MeCrossed d signubosnjaćki Sukob u Cazinskoj Krajini 1992-1995 [Intra-Bosniac Conflict in Cazinska Krajina 1992-1995] (Bihać: Bihać University, 2002), p. 176.
3. Misha Glenny, The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War (New York: Penguin Books, 1993);
4. Michael Ignatieff, The Warrior's Honor: Ethnic War and the Modern Conscience (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1998);
5. Burg and Shoup; Roger Petersen, Understanding Ethnic Violence: Fear, Hatred and Resentment in Twentieth-Century Eastern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), among others.
6. Mart Bax, "Warlords, Priests and the Politics of Ethnic Cleansing: A Case Study from Rural Bosnia Hercegovina," Ethnic and Racial Studies, 23 (January 2000), 16-36, who discusses micro-level dynamics in Herzegovina, is a widely cited exception.
7. Susan L. Woodward, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War (Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1995);
8. John Mueller, "The Banality of 'Ethnic War,'" International Security, 25 (Summer 2000), 42-70;
9. V. P. Gagnon, Jr., The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004);
10. Stathis Kalyvas and Nicholas Sambanis, "Bosnia's Civil War: Origins and Violence Dynamics," in Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis, eds., Understanding Civil War: Europe, Central Asia, and Other Regions, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank and Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 191-229.
11. Ted R. Gurr, Peoples versus States: Minorities at Risk in the New Century (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2000);
12. Havard Hegre et al.,"Toward a Democratic Civil Peace? Democracy, Political Change, and Civil War 1816-1992," American Political Science Review, 95 (March 2001), 33-48.
13. For similar discussions, see Timur Kuran, "Ethnic Norms and Their Transformation through Reputational Cascades," Journal of Legal Studies, 27 (June 1998), 623-59;
14. Robert H. Bates, "Ethnicity," in David Alexander Clark, ed., The Elgar Companion to Development Studies (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2006).
15. Henri Tajfel et al., "Social Categorization and Inter-group Behavior," European Journal of Social Psychology, 1 (June 1971), 149-77.
16. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Explaining Interethnic Cooperation," American Political Science Review, 90 (December 1996), 715-35.
17. Kanchan Chandra, Why Ethnic Parties Succeed: Patronage and Ethnic Headcounts in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
18. Barry Posen, "The Security Dilemma and Ethnic Conflict," in Michael Brown, ed., Ethnic Conflict and International Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 103-24;
19. Chaim Kaufmann, "Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars," International Security, 20 (Spring 1996), 136-75;
20. Stephen Van Evera, "Primordialism Lives!," APSA-Comparative Politics, 12 (Winter 2001), 20-22.
21. Wilbur John Coleman II and Francesco Caselli, "On the Theory of Ethnic Conflict," (ms., London School of Economics, 2006).
22. James D. Fearon, "Rationalist Explanations for War," International Organization, 49 (Summer 1995), 379-414;
23. Paul Collier and Nicholas Sambanis, "Understanding Civil War: A New Agenda," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46 (February 2002), 3-12. Whatever is not explained by preferences or opportunity can be a result of misperception, that is, incomplete or asymmetric information among parties or problems relating to commitment or indivisibility of issues.
24. Paul Collier and Anke Hoeffler, "Greed and Grievance in Civil War," World Bank Policy Research Paper, 2355 (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2000);
25. James D. Fearon and David D. Laitin, "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," American Political Science Review, 97 (February 2003), 75-90.
26. Posen; James D. Fearon, "Commitment Problems and the Spread of Ethnic Conflict," in David Lake and Donald Rothchild, eds., The International Spread of Ethnic Conflict: Fear, Diffusion, and Escalation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
27. Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
28. Rogers Brubaker and David D. Laitin, "Ethnic and Nationalist Violence," Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998), 423-52.
29. N. Gregory Mankiew, Principles of Economics (Orlando: Dryden Press, 1998), pp. 447-62.
30. Posen.
31. This timeline draws from primary interviews and sources, as well as from descriptions of events in Laura Silber and Alan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: Penguin Books, 1997);
32. Burg and Shoup; Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Kličić.
33. At the 1995 Dayton Accords all these municipalities were assigned to the same administrative unit of the Croat-Bosniac Federation, Canton 1.
34. Glenny, pp. 152-53; Silber and Little, pp. 129-30.
35. New York Times, July 4, 1994.
36. Kličić, pp. 91, 168.
37. "I could either protect this area through arms or through agreements. It would not pay off to do it militarily because we would be endangering the biggest capital of that area, the people, as well as jeopardizing the area's vast industrial potential. The agreements, except for agreements on cessation of hostilities, were also economic. The essence is that we Autonomists opened a corridor from Karlovac [in Croatia] to Velika Kladuša for goods and people, for trade and travelers. In order to get food we either had to fight and use violence or come to an agreement with the Serbs and Croats." Interview with Fikret Abdić, Karlovac Jail, Croatia, July 24, 2004.
38. Judah, p. 245.
39. Interview with Dudaković.
40. "The Fifth Corps chose the military way because they did not have the support of the people. They [the Fifth Corps] knew there was going to be a war. They planned it....There was no vote on who was for me and who was for Alija [Izetbegović] in Cazin and Velika Kladuša. The Fifth Corps decided that." Interview with Abdić.
41. "SPORAZUM o prekidu dejstava i neprijateljstva" [Agreement on Ceasefire and Cessation of Hostilities between the APWB and the Fifth Corps], January 18, 1994.
42. Interview with Abdić; interview with Dudaković.
43. Judah, p. 247.
44. "SPORAZUM" [Agreement between the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army, Croatia, and the APWB], Vojnić, August 8, 1995.
45. Kličić, p. 168.
46. "Abdić entered politics as a way to further economics. For him war was a continuation of economics - not politics - by other means." Interview with Rasim Delić, Sarajevo, July 16, 2004.
47. According to a local writer: "Back in late sixties, Velika Kladuša had barely fifty meters of asphalt road, one TV set kept under lock-and-key in the community centre and endemic syphilis and infectious hepatitis... raging across this over-populated area. 'Agrocommerce' paved with asphalt the streets in the villages around Velika Kladuša and Cazin, brought electricity and water supply system and poultry farms and factories kept cropping up all around. Once markedly poor villages...skipped the century of backwardness and joined civilization overnight." AIM Sarajevo, July 31, 2001.
48. Vreme News Digest Agency, No. 152, Aug. 22, 1994.
49. "I didn't just have 13,600 people as employees but also had 7,000 subcontractors in the villages that made as much as the employees or more. That's why they started calling me Daddy....If someone were to employ 20,000 in Bosnia and Herzegovina nowadays they wouldn't just call him Daddy; they would call him God." Interview with Abdić.
50. Interview with Dudaković.
51. Kenneth Banta, "All the Party Chief's Men," Time Magazine, Sept. 28, 1987.
52. Vreme News Digest Agency; Woodward, pp. 87-88.
53. Banta; Vreme News Digest Agency.
54. Silber and Little, p. 211.
55. There has been much speculation as to why Abdić agreed to abdicate his position. He suggested that the party cadres forced him to, openly siding with Izetbegović as the candidate of choice. Interview with Abdić.
56. Interview with Dudaković; Interview with Delić.
57. Roger Cohen of the New York Times provides characteristic examples of how Abdić's supporters rationalized their stance. "'The only reason that Velika Kladuša has not been destroyed by the Serbs is because Abdić has opted for peace....Izetbegović 's road is the road of destruction. Does he even care if his people are hungry? We are all very sad about what the Serbs did to Muslims in Bosnia, but fighting will bring us nothing now.'" New York Times, July 4,1994. Also: "Asked if Mr. Abdić and his followers were not traitors to the tens of thousands of Muslims killed and hundreds of thousands evicted from their homes in Bosnia by the Serbs, Mr. Kajtazovic replied: 'Our solidarity with the Muslims killed is to end the war. What solidarity is it to have more people die? Mothers cannot produce Bosnians as fast as Izetbegović is killing them.'" New York Times, Nov. 13, 1994.
58. "'Bijeljina was practically empty' Abdić said in one of his fact-finding missions as a member of the presidency. 'I met with the local authorities, they told me what had happened, but there wasn't a single Muslim there, so we couldn't discuss the problem as a whole. Muslims didn't answer our appeal. They were too scared to come out, and especially scared to talk about it all.'" Silber and Little, p. 225 Also see Fikret Abdić, "POLAZNE OSNOVE ZA FORMIRANJE PROVINCIJE BROJ 1" [Starting Basis for the Foundation of Province Number 1], Velika Kladuša, May 1993, p. 3.
59. The International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia authorized the arrest of Fikret Abdić on charges of grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. He was considered responsible for the deaths of 121 civilians and three prisoners of war along with the wounding of 400 civilians during Bosnia's intra-Muslim conflict. Abdić, who was granted citizenship in Croatia soon after his area of control in Bosnia and Herzegovina was overrun by rival Muslim forces, stood trial in Croatia, entered a plea of not guilty, and argued that his trial was victor's justice. In 2002 he received a twenty year sentence, which in the third instance appeal at the Croatian supreme court in 2005 was reduced to fifteen years. See "Background Report: Domestic War Trials 2005," OSCE Document, September 13, 2006, p. 23. accessed on January 30, 2007, http://www.osce.org/documents/mc/2006/09/20668_en.pdf. As an indication of Abdić's lasting legacy, DNZ got 74 percent of the total votes in Velika Kladuša in Bosnia's 2006 parliamentary elections. See www.izbori.ba, accessed on January 30, 2007.
60. Glenny, pp. 140, 151-52.
61. Ibid; Burg and Shoup, p. 35.
62. "I am from Cazinska Krajina which has a history of ethnic coexistence with Serbs and Croats. If someone needs to sign an agreement - and it is hard to be the first doing that -, that would have to be me. I bear this responsibility since I have great respect for my predecessors Mujo Hrnjic and Husko Miljkovic." Interview with Abdić.
63. Kličić, p. 85.
64. In 1970 Izetbegović wrote the Islamic Declaration, calling for a greater role for Islam in political life. Yugoslavia's Communist government imprisoned him on charges of Muslim nationalism in 1983. He served five years of a twelve year sentence before being pardoned in 1988. See New York Times, Oct. 20, 2003.
65. Interview with Mohamed Skrgić, Pecigrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 19, 2004.
66. "To emphasize his dedication to religion and tradition he [Abdić] also had religious followers. Some of them supported him and talked about him during and after prayers. To attract believers he wore a badge that said Allah." Klićić, p. 77. Notably, the first acting president of Abdić's DNZ party was an imam called Ahmed Huskić.
67. "We are the same ethnic group, nation, people. My assistant's name was Saracevic and his brother [Irfan Saracevic, the minister of defense and police in the APWB] was with Abdić." Interview with Dudaković.
68. Kličić, p. 86.
69. "Fetva" [Fatwa,] Islamic Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bihać Mufti's Office, No 35/93, November 24, 1993. A fatwa is a decree rendered by a high religious Muslim official addressing an issue which is not regulated by but is related to sharia law.
70. Ibid.
71. Ibid.
72. Zakat, the annual charitable contribution of 2.5 percent of an individual's wealth directed to those in need, is one of the five pillars of Islam. The other four are the testimony of faith, ritual prayer, fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca.
73. "IZVJEŠTAJ" [Report], Assembly of the Bihać Islamic Association, September 14, 1993, pp. 2,4,6-7.
74. Fetva.
75. Ibid.
76. Ibid.
77. The ideology is captured in statements of Abdić supporters: "'We see ourselves as the Cayman Islands of the Balkans....We're interested in business, finance, making money....We are fighting for open roads, the right of people to work, and a return to normal life....Our saying here is that money makes the world go round.'" New York Times, July 4, 1994.
78. Interview with Admit Mulalić, Velika Kladuša, Bosnia and Herzegovina, July 19, 2004.
79. Interview with Skrgić.
80. According to one of Abdić's supporters: "Abdić and his group who called themselves Young Muslims all their lives have wanted Bosnia to be a Muslim state....His whole life he worked to connect Bosnia with Islam....The reason for the war was Alija Izetbegović and his circles including mujahedin from Arab countries who came ready to fight for Islam and die for their cause." Interview with Mulalić.
81. "POLAZNE OSNOVE ZA FORMIRANJE PROVINCIJE BROJ 1" [Starting Basis for the Foundation of Province Number One], p. 2.
82. Kličić, pp. 123-29.
83. The Vance-Owen plan of March 1993 envisioned the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina into ten federal entities and gave Sarajevo special province status. The Owen-Stoltenberg plan, developed after the Vance-Owen plan was rejected, envisioned three federal entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Silber and Little, pp. 278-83.
84. Burg and Shoup, pp. 129-33.