Peacebuilding in Practice: Local Experience in Two Bosnian Towns

4. Wartime Legacies

4 Wartime Legacies As William Faulkner once observed, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” This is an especially appropriate aphorism for Bosnia as past events continue to profoundly shape political and social relations in the postwar period. In chapter 1 I noted that one of the most important, yet least understood, aspects of peacebuilding is the influence of wartime social and political processes. That events which took place during the war continue to matter in its aftermath is clear. But precisely when and how theselegaciesshapepeacebuildinginthepostwarperiodremainssomething of a black box. In part this is a problem of evidence—information about wartime processes is often fragmentary, hidden, or contested—and in part it is a problem of method—how do we demonstrate plausible links between events and processes across time and space? The cases of Brčko and Mostar show just how difficult it can be to identify meaningful wartime legacies. On the surface the most significant legacies of the war appear to be the ones the two towns have in common : both were sites of extensive violence and ethnic cleansing; both 82 Chapter 4 remained highly contested spaces even after the fighting ceased; and in both nationalists who came to power during the war and opposed political or territorial compromise appeared to be deeply entrenched. Indeed, by most accounts Brčko seemed to be a more intractable problem than Mostar at the end of the war. It is no surprise then that, given their comparable wartime histories and levels of ethnic tension in the immediate aftermath, both cities were singled out by international and domestic observers as potentially combustible, divided cities in need of special attention during the peacebuilding process. Yet for all their evident similarities the unfolding local and regional dynamics of the war and immediate postwar period produced political conditions in Brčko that were more favorable for compromise and reform than in Mostar. Specifically, in the former the legitimacy of each of the three main nationalist parties in Bosnia was severely weakened in the eyes of a significant portion of the local population, while in the latter the war brought about unchallenged supremacy for the Croat nationalist party HDZ and its mafia allies.1 These differences had a profound effect on postwar peacebuilding trajectories, but the impact was by no means predetermined. Dissatisfaction with ruling nationalists in Brčko might not have been converted into political action if international of- ficials had not successfully identified and cultivated key potential opposition figures. Likewise, without strong economic and political support from Croatia until Franjo Tudjman’s death in 1999 Croat nationalists in West Mostar might have found it more difficult to maintain such a strong grip on power. It is not enough, then, to treat legacies of war as static variables—one needs to trace the conjunction of specific legacies with concrete postwar processes, which I attempt to do in the rest of this chapter. Damaged Brands: Nationalist Parties during the War in Brčko In Brčko the SDA in particular suffered from a lack of legitimacy due to two perceived mistakes before and during the war. The first was SDA’s decision to form a governing alliance with SDS and HDZ following the elections in 1990. As noted in chapter 2, SK-SDP won a Wartime Legacies 83 plurality of votes in municipal elections in Brčko.2 Despite this the party was unable to put together a governing coalition as the three nationalist parties reached an agreement to form a ruling coalition in the local government, following orders given by their respective leaders at the state level.3 This decision by the SDA was widely criticized by Bosniaks in Brčko given the subsequent attack on, and ethnic cleansing of, the city by Serb forces. The second event, which crystallized the view that SDA had failed to protect Bosniaks at the beginning of the war, was the decision by the president of the party’s Brčko branch, Mustafa Ramić, to appear on local television with the commander of the nearby JNA base on May 1, 1992, the date that Serbian paramilitary forces swept into the town and began rounding up and killing non-Serb residents. In this appearance Ramić told residents not to flee Brčko but to stay calm and remain in their homes while local authorities regained control of...