Professor Dr Raymond REHNICER

University of Sarajevo

SUMMARY: Here is a revealing introduction to Bosnian past and present written by Raymond Rehnicer specially for AGORA at the request of Paolo Pietrosanti and Jan Jarab of the Radical Party office in Prague. Our friend Raymond is Professor of Urban Ecology at the University of Sarajevo; in the fall of 1992, he organized the escape of the Jewish community from the besieged Sarajevo. Since his escape from Sarajevo, he has been living in Prague and playing a crucial role in the life of the Bosnian community here. He met with Vaclav Havel shortly before the President's visit to the U.S.A., thus inspiring Havel's dramatic appeal against the world's indifference to Bosnia's plight. Raymond's fascinating book about the value of life in besieged Sarajevo, "Grass and Elephants", written in French, which was translated into Czech and published in May, 1993, has created a lot of interest and established his reputation as author and philosopher.

The present war in former Yugoslavia is often described as a religious war, but this is far from being the truth, at least in what concerns Bosnia-Herzegovina. To understand that, it is necessary to explain some aspects of the cultural and social background of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

[Footn.: The title of this paper refers to the pretext given by both Serbian and Croat expansionists, who unanimously pretend that Bosnia-Herzegovina is a perfid communist invention, which has to be divided between them. Although they are still fighting against each other, it seems that their unanimity to divide this country and people succeeded to convince the international community that Bosnia-Herzegovina has been simply invented by communists for the only reason to give a country to the local Muslim population. Therefore it seems necessary to emphasize the fact that the borders of this "communist invention" have not been fixed during the World War II session of the National Assembly, but are practically the same as they have been fixed by the peace treaty signed by the Turks in Karlovac after the victory of the Holy League in 1699.)

This paper is written as a short presentation of the relevant facts, concerning the country's history and people. It does not pretend to give an anthropological or sociological analysis of the past or present of Bosnia-Herzegovina; the only aim is to explain certain specific characteristics of the Bosnian people, which are not commonly known outside our country. The first part explains the genesis of this multi-cultural community, which survived over centuries, till the beginning of this war. The second part explains the ways how this multi-cultural community survived the long lasting political troubles. In the third part we shall look for the probable roots of the current conflicts in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with a survey of communist Yugoslavia in the fourth part. And finally some possibilities to solve the present conflict will be reviewed.

The people

The region of south-eastern Europe which is now known as Bosnia-Herzegovina has been inhabited since the oldest prehistoric times. The artifacts found in different localities are a vivid testimony of this past and of the cultures flourishing in that region. The great migration of Slavic tribes after the fall of Roman empire brought to the region the people considered as ancestors of the contemporary population. In fact, the Slavic immigrants imposed their language, but the region was not empty, so it is most probable that the contemporary population is a mix of these Slavs with different local tribes and with surviving Roman urban population.

The first written trace of Bosnia dates back to the Byzantine emperor Constantin Porphyrogenet and his work De administrando imperio. At that time, in the 10th century, it was a small region around the river Bosna, in the central part of contemporary Bosnia-Herzegovina. The emperor mentions that Bosnia was under theinfluence of the early medieval Serbian state called Rascia, but it seems that in the same 10th century the country had already some form of feudal independence. Later, according to a local source (a chronicle of a rector from Duklja), the independent Bosnian state was larger in size but remained under the influence of Hungary and Byzantium. Around the year 1200, under the rule of the "great ban" Kulin, Bosnia was considered as an independent state even by its more powerful neighbors. In the local language "ban" means a feudal master, similar to duke or prince.

At the time of the great division between the Roman Catholics and the Greek Orthodox Christians, Southern Europe was a region where many alternative Christian movements emerged. Both the Catholic and the Orthodox ecclesiastic authorities described and dismissed these movements as schismatic. The French Cathars and the Bulgarian Bogomils are the most famous ones, but there were also others in northern Italy and in other regions. In that time a non-hierarchic, basic Christian belief was very popular among the population of Bosnia-Herzegovina; it was known as the Bogumil Church or as the "church of the people". This Christian belief attracted not only the common people of the region, but also the majority of feudal masters, the royal family included. The schismatic Bogumil Church is first mentioned in written sources in the year 1199, precisely at the time when the well-known "ban" Kulin ruled in Bosnia.

This was the time when the Franciscan order escaped being dissolved as schismatic under the condition of becoming missionaries for the Pope in the regions where the "true belief" was endangered. The Pope and his powerful Catholic Church considered the "true belief" highly endangered by the simple and modest "popular church" of the Bogumils, so the Franciscans were sent to Bosnia-Herzegovina some 700 years ago. At the same time, and for same reasons, the Serbian Orthodox Church, which had recently become independent, founded a great number of monasteries in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

With the help of neighboring Catholic kings, who wished to annex parts of Bosnia, the Pope even managed to organize several crusades against the "schismatic and dissident" Bosnian kings. Over more than a century, the Hungarian kings were the Pope's most fervent allies, moved by the aspiration to expand their country to the south. In the mid-13th century, the Hungarian king Bela IV actually succeeded in incorporating Bosnia in his state for a relatively short time. In most cases, the Bosnian royal family, supported by the feudal lords, was able to avoid an open confrontation with crusaders, pretending that they did respect the Pope's authority and condemn the heretics. Indeed, the crusaders were often well received by the king and the local feudal lords as "brothers in faith", despite the fact that in reality the Bogumil Church was considered as the official one. This attitude, while hardly consistent, was probably the best and easiest way to avoid useless killing.

Thanks to the clever policy of their rulers and thanks to its good trade position between the Mediterranean Sea and Central Europe, Bosnia flourished during the 14th century under the reign of the Kotromanic family. The most remarkable member of this family, king Tvrtko, reigned almost 40 years over a prosperous country. At his death in 1391, the country covered approximately the same area as it does today, but with a much longer stretch of the coast.

At the beginning of the 15th century, Hungarian pressure from the north and the advance of Turks from the south-east became a constant menace which complicated life in Bosnia. At that time, Bosnian kings and local feudal lords often signed treaties with various neighbors for the sole purpose of protecting the country from actual destruction. [Footn.: The present Croatian claims that Bosnia always was a part of Croatia are based upon such a pragmatic, short-term treaty, in which Bosnia formally recognized the sovereignty of Croat king.] Finally, the unfortunate Bosnians were able to avoid a defeat by the Hungarians only with the help of Turks. This alliance proved fatal for the medieval Bosnian state. About ten years after the fall of Byzantium, most parts of Bosnia came under Turkish rule. The southern part of the country, now called Herzegovina, preserved its independence for a short time; the name of this region comes from the title of its ruler, a duke (herzog).

The fall of the most western Bosnian town of Bihac, in 1592, marks the end of the independent state and the beginning of Turkish rule over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Almost a century after the Turkish conquest began, the country was united again - this time, however, in the form of a Turkish province. From our present point of view this might seem as a catastrophe, but it was the crucial event which produced the rich multi-cultural character of the Bosnia. The Turkish rule in occupied regions was far less cruel and intolerant than the average European might conclude from his history books; it was therefore quite usual at that time that some members of a family accepted Islam, while others preserved (or accepted) the Catholic or Orthodox faith.

In fact, for the majority of feudal lords the Turkish advancement in the Balkans was a good opportunity to escape the lasting pressure from both the western and the eastern church. They resisted the Turkish advance as much as they could, but the war was lost in advance without substantial support from the European armies. And it seems that Europe was not unhappy to be free from the annoying Bogumil heretics. In the relatively short time of a few generations, most of the Bosnian population belonging to the national Bogumil Church accepted Islam.

There are numerous well-known Bosnian families which have today a Moslem, an Orthodox and a Roman Catholic branch. Of course, the non-Moslems were treated as second-rate citizens in the Ottoman Empire; still, they were considered as citizens, with all the legal rights. Under such circumstances it was always possible for the Islamic branch of the family to support and help the non-Moslem branches.

The fact that the Sultan himself invited the Jews, after they had been drive from Spain at the end of 15th century, to settle down in the Ottoman Empire, is a good example of the general Turkish tolerance toward other religions. The massive Jewish immigration resulted in the formation of important Sephardic (western Jewish) centers in Thessaloniki and in Sarajevo, which survived until World War II. Also the important Jewish population, which existed at that time in Serbia, came from the same source. [Footn.: During the World war II the collaborationist Serbian rulers "cleansed" the country efficiently of all its Jews. In the year 1942 or 1943 the collaborationist authorities in Belgrade declared proudly that their city is the first one outside the third Reich completely "cleansed" of Jews. Even some well-known Serbian heroes from World War I were executed or sent to concentration camps only because they were Jews.]

The multi-cultural community

The basic fundament of the long-lasting multi-culturalism of the Bosnian community is a specific split between the official, public social order and the private one, which functions at the level of the family. It seems that this split exists in many societies, but in Bosnia it is more deeply rooted than in most other European countries. Therefore it is difficult to see the present conflict only as a religious war, because the monotheistic religion in its pure, official form is considered by many Bosnians as something imposed by the official culture, and therefore not fully accepted. In fact, the oldest forms of belief - divining, witchcraft and worship of the spirits of Nature - are so deeply rooted in the traditional (mostly rural) culture of the former Yugoslavia that even the local versions of the monotheistic religions have to respect them. Over many centuries, a formal membership in an institutional religious community was for the common people of no greater importance than a formal citizenship.

The religious officials collected taxes in a similar way the representatives of the state authorities did; thus the institutionalized religious community was something which was rather tolerated than really accepted as a part of the daily life. Even today numerous holy places of pilgrimage present a curious mixture of monotheistic and traditional formes of belief, or are places of worship for members of different monotheistic religions. [Footn.: Some graves of holy Muslims (for instance the graves of the famous "seven brothers" in Sarajevo) are considered as places of pilgrimage by members of the Roman Catholic Church, and the Islamic population has been using some Catholic and Orthodox holy places as pilgrimages for centuries.]

Today it seems that the divisions between the Serbian Orthodox, the Roman Catholic and the Moslem Bosnians are source of the current conflict, yet the ancestors of almost all the present members of each religious group have in certain historic periods belonged to some of the others. The family tradition usually do not mention such changes in formal membership of religious communities, but in some old families there survives a memory of common ancestors with the those branches of the family which have now a different faith. Historical data show that this has been the true ever since the division between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church, and that it was usual even after the introduction of Islam by the Turks, being practiced byf the feudal lords as by the common people. [Footn.: It is a historic fact that the Serbian duke Stevan, who was the first to be crowned as king, had the coronation ceremony performed by a Roman Catholic bishop. At the same time, his brother Rastko was very active in the

Greek Orthodox Church, and was later actually proclaimed as an Orthodox saint under his monastic name, Sava.] Throughout the long history of religious conflicts between the Roman Catholic Croats and the Orthodox Serbs there are many examples of frequent changes between the two faiths, and not only among notable individuals, but also among significant groups of population. [Footn.: A famous Bosnian Moslem commander from the 19th century, Omer pasha Latas, was born as Orthodox Serb and became later a professional soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army. After having fled to the Turkish province of Bosnia, he became a Moslem and was very successful in the Turkish army.]

Whatever we may think of the Turks and their aggressive behavior in Europe, the fact is that their rule in Bosnia was the fundament of the long-lasting multi-cultural and (relatively) tolerant society in Bosnia. During the centuries of Turkish rule in Bosnia, the Franciscan monks had the freedom to maintain their religious and educational activities, as did the Serbian Orthodox monks and priests. A well-known document in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Sultan's edict of 1463, assures the Franciscan order of the personal protection of the Emperor. It is also well known that the great vezir Mehmed pasha Sokolovic, son of a Bosnian Orthodox family which accepted Islam, protected the existing Orthodox monasteries and promoted the renewal of the destroyed ones. Europeans have the tendency to consider Islam as an aggressive and intolerant belief, giving exagerrated importance to the most violent formes of radical Islamic groups. It is often neglected that Islamic rulers, in fact, seldom acted in a similarly intole

rant way as was the current practice among the Christian kings and princes. In the Islamic world there occurred no such massive expulsion of adherents of other religions as in Spain at the end of 15th century, and the Islamic states never persecuted systematically any other religious group as both the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox states did in the case of Jews for many centuries. [Footn.: It is rather curious that nobody in Europe admits the fact that in all Islamic countries significant groups of people with different religions survived over centuries, while in all the Christian states similar groups were efficiently eradicated. In Malta, for example, where the local population is a mix of Arabs and South Europeans, even the people speaking a dialect of north African Arabic language was forced to become Christian. The survival of Egyptian Coptic Christian faith is a good example of the different practice in islamic countries.]

In practice, this inherent tolerance of Moslems toward other beliefs is the main source of the present multi-cultural society in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is now falling apart. Therefore it is the sign of a tragic misunderstanding that the (western and dominantly Christian) international community now seems ready to consider the Bosnian Muslims as a nuisance to the peaceful settlement of the present conflict in the region. Another tragic misunderstanding is the fact that the international community does not ever take into consideration the existence of a small, but in its cultural presence important Jewish community in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Even if the Bosnian Muslims are sacrificed to appease the aggressive Serbian (and Croat) nationalistic expansionism, it is almost certain that this will not assure a long-lasting peace in the region. Without the tolerant Islamic population, willing to moderate the awakened nationalistic aggression of both the Orthodox population manipulated by Serbs and the Roman Catholic population manipulated by Croats, it will be difficult to avoid a long-lasting conflict between these two groups in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Basically, the present tragical degradation of the relatively stable multi-cultural society in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the final result of long-lasting Serbian expansionism.

The roots of the conflict

The great change in the relatively tolerant coexistence of the four beliefs in Bosnia-Herzegovina occurred during the era of Romantic nationalis, at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. At that time, the Serbian orthodox movement for national emancipation was the most violent one in south-eastern Europe, mostly thanks to the tolerant attitude of Hungarian authorities. In fact, all the nationalistic papers and books of the Serbian national revival have been published in Hungary, where an important part of Serbian intellectuals lived at that time. The awakening of the militant nationalistic spirit resulted in the first half of 19th century in the creation of a semi-independent and later independent Serbian state. Political rulers of this state nourished continuously the dream of bringing together all the Balkanic peoples of Orthodox belief in a greater Serbia.

The ideal of many Serbian ruler was to re-establish the splendor and (oversized) extent of medieval Serbia, which was created by aggressive conquests of the self-proclaimed emperor Dusan "the Vigorous" in the 14th century. At the time of the Byzantine decline and a Hungary weakened by dynastic struggles, Dusan was able to gain control - for the relatively short time of his rule - over a great part of the Balkan peninsula. After his death, his less clever heirs lost most of his conquests, and shortly afterwards they were defeated in several battles by the Turks. The decisive defeat of the Serbs came in 1379 in the battle of Kosovo Field.

Strange though it might seem, this lost battle became for long centuries the principal source of national self-confidence among Serbs.

Considering orthodox Serbia as a Balkanic Piemont, the Serbian rulers always insisted that the final national liberation of Orthodox countries in the region must include the expulsion of Turks and a total extermination of autochthonous Moslem Slavs. This idea of physical extermination of their Moslem brothers is a long-lasting constant in the strategy of Serbian national emancipation. [Footn.: A tragic illustration of the Serbian aggressive behavior against their Islamic brothers is the rich literary production of a praised Orthodox bishop from Montenegro, Petar Petrovic Njegos, who became ruling duke of his country in the 19th century. For a long time the national feelings of Montenegro's population were oscillating between a national self-determination and the concept that they are only a branch of the great Serbian nation. Njegos considered himself as a Serb and Montengrin, and was highly engaged in the national emancipation from Turkish rule. Being educated in the spirit of Romantic humanism, he was

more interested in literature than in warfare. Unfortunately, his education was less humanistic than nationalistic, so that a great part of his literary production was intended to mobilize his fellow countrymen to drive the Turks away and to exterminate the Islamic people of Montenegro. Some of his poems are literally promoting the systematic genocide of Montenegrins of Islamic belief.] It is rather curious that this long-lasting and extremely cruel aspect of Serbian "patriotism" is rather ignored by the European and international community. This strategic goal is the reason why the Serbian authorities have undertaken several rounds of extremely drastic "ethnical cleansing" during the last hundred-and-fifty years, so that Moslem Slavs survived in Serbia only in the region of Sandjak. This region was for a long period of time under direct Turkish rule, and later on under the influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which was rather tolerant towards the Slavs of Islamic belief.

When the Austro-Hungarian Empire occupied Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1878, the Turkish rule over the country was practically over, although it remained officially a part of the Ottoman empire until 1908. After some resistance against the new rulers, the tolerant multi-cultural community continued to function. It is obvious that the new rulers were better received by the Roman Catholics than by the others, but a reasonable policy of "stick and carrot", practiced by the Austro-Hungarian authorities, appeased the initial revolts. In a relatively short time, the neglected province of the Ottoman Empire became a dynamically evolving part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. An important immigration of new administrative and military staff, as well as a great number of skilled people from the more developed parts of the empire, further enriched the traditional multi-cultural community. Many native Austrians, Czechs and Ashkenazi Jews became integrated members of the growing urban population in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

It is most probable that the expanding cosmopolitan urban population contributed much to the way that the multi-cultural life of the community was reinforced during the Austro-Hungarian rule. At the same time, however, the rise of urban centers and the relative wealth of the urban population deepened the traditional antagonism between the citizens and peasants. This antagonism seems to have been the source of many local conflicts in the past, and it is certainly one of the important sources of the present conflict. The fact that the Orthodox Bosnian peasants have been less willing (or attracted) to live in cities than other parts of the population might be the explication for the present cruelty of Serbian national extremists against the urban centers and urban population.

Concerning the Romantic national movement in Bosnia- Herzegovina, it is rather curious that it was not the nineteenth- century Bosnian intellectuals but the Austro-Hungarian rulers who have been most interested to create a Bosnian national movement. In fact, by developing a Bosnian national self-consciousness, they hoped to stop the expansion of Serbian radical nationalism, which was extremely efficient in the whole region. [Footn.: There are many indications that this efficiency is mostly the result of a vigorous activity of imperial Russian secret services. For a long time, the Russian Empire was interested in securing a direct access to the Mediterranean sea, and therefore willing to support orthodox Serbs (and Montenegrins) against Roman Catholic Austro-Hungarians and Islamic Turks.] After the creation of independent Serbia, the awakening of Serbian nationalism among the (relatively important) Orthodox population of Austro-Hungarian empire was a constant source of instability. The idea of giving a

formal national consciousness to the Bosnian Islamic, Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Jewish population failed due to the stubborn insistence of Serbian nationalists on creating a widespread Serbian nation from all the Orthodox peoples living in the Balkans. This insistence finally produced the spark which led to the first great massacre in our 20th century.

After World War I, the nationalistic leaders of southern Slavic nations from the former Austro-Hungarian empire opted for a union with independent Serbia and Montenegro. The Kingdom of Southern Slavic Nations, later called Yugoslavia, was ruled by the Serbian royal family, and the pressure against the peaceful multi- cultural life of the community of Bosnia-Herzegovina was greater than ever. The new state was initially created as a federation of freely united nations, which were liberated from Austro-Hungarian and Turkish rule, with the independent states of Serbia and Montenegro. Under the Serbian Orthodox supremacy, the new kingdom became in a time of only few years a unitarian state, which was autocratically ruled by Serbian plutocracy, and later by a coalition of Serbian and Croat oligarchies. The new administration, mainly recruited among the Orthodox population, imposed even a radically different regional division of the new state, some ten years after it was created. Bosnia-Herzegovina, as it h

ad existed continuously since the end of 17th century, was thus divided in half a dozen of administrative regions. During that time, through dirty political manipulation, the state's plutocracy tempted to divide the Bosnian Islamic population by convincing them that they have to declare themselves as members of either the Serbian or the Croat nation. Only a few Bosnian intellectuals resisted this manipulation, and thus the Bosnian national self-respect was completely destroyed at the dawn of World War II.

During the war, a significant part of Bosnian Muslims joined the most radical Croat collaborationist forces, mostly because the newly proclaimed Croat state gave them the feeling of being protected from the expected extermination by the Serbian national extremists. [Footn.: This should be considered as a normal reaction, having in mind the long lasting policy of Serbian nationalists aiming to exterminate all members of the local Muslim community. At the beginning of World War II, the memory of massacres committed by Serbian "liberators" in Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina during World War I was still vivid among the survivors. Therefore the alliance with the anti-Serbian collaborationist government in Croatia has to be understood as a kind of self-defense of Bosnian Muslims.] Nevertheless, at the same time a no less significant part of the Bosnian Muslim population joined the liberation movement, which was led by the Communist party. Instead of ethnical exclusivity and intolerance, which were promoted

by the numerous national extremist movements, the Communist party insisted on the national self-determination and emancipation in a cooperative way. It is most probable that this policy of national tolerance and reconciliation assured to the Communist liberation movement a large support among the population, which led them to the final victory at the end of the war.

Communist Yugoslavia

Communist Yugoslavia was founded in a session of people's representatives from the liberated parts of the country during the liberation war. The principle of national self-determination was one of fundaments of the new state. For some political reasons, the Communist rulers later refused to form a Bosnian national cohesion, based upon the relative multi-cultural unity of the country. [Footn.: It was, in fact, the most appropriate way to leave the national question undefined, and the door was left open for all kind of political games. Without a clearly defined and politicaly supported Bosnian nation between Serbia and Croatia, it was always possible to push Serbia against Croatia or vice versa, so that a variety of manipulations were possible. In the same spirit the Muslim nation was practically invented, which instead of bringing a certain order in the national relations made them even more complicated and, of course, more suitable for political manipulations.] Instead, they formulated this unfortunate

concept of the Muslim nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which is based uniquely on religious belief, and therefore contradicts all usually accepted concepts of nation. There have never been given serious reasons against a Bosnian national self-consciousness, or in favor of a Muslim national self-consciousness - except for typical Communist tautologies.

In fact, it is hard to say if the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina can be considered as one nation or not, but they all speak the same dialect of the southern Slavic language, known as Serbian or Croat or Serbo-Croatian. They also have a long common heritage, which is in some aspects much older than the dominant monotheistic religions. In many troublesome times of Bosnia's past the common cultural heritage was dominant over the centrifugal forces. In many aspects are the Bosnians of different belief not more different than Protestant and Catholic Germans or French.

Insisting on differences will even convince brothers that there is a serious reason to fight against each other, and exactly this was the ultimate result of the Communist policy in Bosnia- Herzegovina. In that way, a long period of relative stability during the Communist rule has been (mis)used to cultivate nationalistic separatism, not only among the Roman Catholic and Orthodox population, but also among the Bosnian Islamic population.

In fact, when Tito died in 1980, the regional Communist rulers used more and more the old nationalistic feelings as the main instrument to manipulate the population of Yugoslavia. At that time the cohesion which had lasted in form of a certain inertia since the liberation war, was already disappearing, and for the numerous rulers without any political quality there were no other means to protect the system (and to survive) than nationalistic manipulation.

An other important fact, which should not be omitted, is the fact that the Communist administration did nothing to calm down the traditional antagonism between the rural and urban population. Through various manipulations this antagonism became even greater than in the past. Therefore, at the time when the slow decline of the Communist system became obvious, the Serbian nationalistic extremism could find a solid support in the strong feeling of intolerance among the (relatively numerous) Orthodox rural population against the urban population. [Footn.: With a certain degree of simplification, it might be said that the peasants were considered and treated by the Communist rulers as natural allies of the "working class", while the urban population was always treated with a certain suspicion. During the period of the most doctrinaire Communist rule social promotion was much easier for children of poor peasants and workers than of (similarly poor) urban employees. For example, the former were exempted from t

he compulsory numerus clausus in the universities, which was strictly applied to the latter.] The rage of Serbian national extremists to destroy Vukovar and ruin Osijek and Dubrovnik as well as the methodic effort to destroy all the Bosnian urban centers show that rural-urban antagonism should be considered as an important aspect of the present war in former Yugoslavia.

Like in other Communist countries, in former Yugoslavia the Communist rulers used to manipulate people by giving to different social and regional groups the feeling of being exploited and/or disadvantaged by other social and regional groups. In that way the natural aggression caused by constant frustration was oriented toward these other groups and not against the rulers. So it is quite logical that at the end of Communist rule the long-lasting Serbian indoctrination, combined with the stimulated separatism between Roman Catholics and Muslims in Bosnia, with the latent rural-urban antagonism, resulted in the present tragic conflict.

The ways to solve the problem

The real problem in Bosnia-Herzegovina is the fact that Serbia and Croatia are fighting there to reinforce and stabilize their nation-states in a long search of identity. The concept of nation- state itself is a highly manipulative one, at same time repressive and aggressive. It is repressive against the state's own citizens and aggressive against all the other nation-states. The repression is justified by the need to be unified against all the dangerous "others" and the aggression by the fear that these "others" may become even more dangerous.

Though this mechanism of repression/aggression is an important political tool in all modern states, it has been employed in its most radical form by leaders of the former Communist countries, former Yugoslavia included. The ethnic nationalism was not accepted by the Communist rulers, but they ruled using the purest nationalistic methods. After two or three generations have spent all their lives under such a pseudo-nationalistic pressure, the peoples of the former Communist countries are now completely disoriented, when the pressure disappeaered. Having being used for too long to exist only as members of some collective entity, these men and women are now unable to accept an existence of independent and responsible individuals. The traditional ethnic nationalism is the only non- Communist refuge they had to escape from this uneasy, frightful position, in which they have been pushed by the formal liberation after the fall of Communism. Therefore the people were willing to accept even the most extremist n

ationalism proposed by the new leaders, who in most cases are simply recycled old Communist manipulators. And this is exactly what happened in Bosnia- Herzegovina, when the great majority of the population voted for the three nationalistic parties.

The problem with these nationalistic parties is the fact that two of them are directed from outside the country, and are acting simply as branches of the Croatian and Serbian ruling nationalistic parties. The Croatian authorities consider the Roman Catholic population of Bosnia-Herzegovina as Croats, the Serbian radical nationalistic rulers insist that all the Orthodox population worldwide has to join the "mother Serbia". Therefore the Bosnian Muslims (considered as constituting a nation) the greatest loser in that cruel war. They do not belong to a radical ("fundamentalist") branch of Islamic belief, and they consider themselves as European and Slavic people. Therefore the majority of them do not want to emigrate to Turkey or to another Arab country, and their only hope is to survive in some way till the time when again it will be possible to start a moreless normal life in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The simple (and tragic) fact that the Bosnians of Islamic faith do not have any alternative fatherland makes

them so eager to preserve an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina in its territorial integrity.

In fact, the position of numerous other people living in Bosnia-Herzegovina who are not considered as Serbian and/or Croat, is similar to that of the Muslim - they do not have any other country where they can feel at home. That means that more than 50% of the total Bosnian population is definitely against the proposed division of the country between Serbia and Croatia. Without counting the Roman Catholic and Orthodox population having the feeling of Bosnian national identity, the 1991 census shows that 51.30% of total population declared themselves as Muslims, Yugoslavs and "others". This is the first indication of possible ways to solve the problem.

The second indication is the fact that the present conflict in Bosnia-Herzegovina is nothing unique; it is rather similar to numerous previous conflicts in other European countries, and in most cases no these countries were not divided. The long lasting conflicts between Swiss cantons and the civil war in Spain are two good examples. Therefore it is possible to imagine that a reasonable democratic government, supported by the international community, could successfully heal the tragic effects of the present fratricidal conflict.

And the third indication is the very simple fact that neither of the groups engaged in the present conflict will ever become an isolated island middle in ocean, so that even in the case of a hypothetical division of Bosnia-Herzegovina they will continue to live in the same region. It is a question of common sense to understand that a united multi-cultural state will be a lesser nuisance for the international community than a small reserve for Bosnian Muslims between two enemy nationalistic states, drunken by the successful imperialistic expansionism. Even if the international community sacrifices the Bosnian Muslims to satisfy the aggressive Serbian (and Croat) expansionism, this will certainly not be a guarantee for a solid and long lasting peace in the region. If the tolerant Islamic population will not be in position to moderate the awaken nationalistic aggression of both Orthodox population manipulated by Serbia and Roman Catholic population manipulated by Croatia, it will be impossible to avoid a l

ong-lasting conflict between the two groups in the region. It is even possible that the feeling of being abandoned by the (mainly Christian) international community finally results by some kind of irredentism and revanchism among the radicalized Bosnian Islamic population. This certainly will make the problems even more complicated.

The logical conclusion is that there are no serious reasons to believe that Bosnia-Herzegovina was historically condemned after the Yugoslav state ceased to exist. Yugoslavia was a federation, and Bosnia-Herzegovina is a multi-cultural country, which successfully survived many troubles in the past. It is definitely not a Communist invention, and its multi-cultural community has the right to survive the fall of Communism and the present explosion of the radical post-Communist nationalism.

Prague, 30.05.1993