BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA : CRADLE OF BALKAN CONFLICTS

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA                                                                             CRADLE OF BALKAN CONFLICTS

Bosnia and Herzegovina is a landlocked country (except for 26 km to Adriatic Sea whereNeum is only seaside town in Bosnia and Herzegovina) on the Balkan peninsula of South Eastern Europe with an area of 51,129 square kilometres ( Capital : Sarajevo ). Bordered by Croatia to the north, west and south, Serbia to the east, and Montenegro to the south, Bosnia and Herzegovina is almost landlocked, except for 26 kilometres of the Adriatic Sea coastline, centered around the town of Neum.The interior of the country is mountainous in the center and south, hilly in the northwest, and flat in the northeast. It is the largest geographic region of the modern state with moderate continental climate, marked by hot summers and cold, snowy winters.Smaller Herzegovina is the southern tip of the country, with Mediterranean climate and topography.Bosnia and Herzegovina’s natural resources are highly abundant.

FLAG DESCRIPTION :

Bosnia and Herzegovina : A wide medium blue vertical band on the fly side with a yellow isosceles triangle abutting the band and the top of the flag; the remainder of the flag is medium blue with seven full five-pointed white stars and two half stars top and bottom along the hypotenuse of the triangle.

ADMINISTRATIVE DIVISIONS :

The 1995 Dayton peace accord was of the opinion that “Bosnia remains unready for unguided ownership of its own future – ethnic nationalism remains too strong.” ans so ended up setting : a Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and the Bosnian Serb Republic, or Republika Srpska.

The country is politically decentralized and comprises 2 first-order administrative divisions and 1 internationally supervised district* –
Brcko district ( Capital : Brcko )
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the Bosniak/Croat Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Federation ( Capital : Sarajevo )
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the Bosnian Serb-led Republika Srpska ( Capital : Banja Luka )
NOTE : Brcko district is in northeastern Bosnia and is an administrative unit under the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina; the district remains under international supervision.

EXECUTIVE BRANCH :

The three members of the presidency (one Bosniak, one Croat, one Serb) are elected by popular vote for a four-year term (eligible for a second term, but then ineligible for four years).

ETHNICITY

The country is home to three ethnic groups :
Bosniak 48%, Serb 37.1%, Croat 14.3%, other 0.6% (2000)
Regardless of ethnicity, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina is often identified in English as a Bosnian. In Bosnia, the distinction between a Bosnian and a Herzegovinian is maintained as a regional, rather than an ethnic distinction and different faiths observed are : Muslim 40%, Orthodox 31%, Roman Catholic 15%, other 14%

ECONOMY :

The Nominal GDP per capita: $3,802 as Bosnia and Herzegovina ranked next to Macedonia as the poorest republic in the old Yugoslav federation.The national currency is konvertibilna marka (pegged to the Euro).

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA DURING WORLD WAR II ( 1941 – 1945 )

Once the kingdom of Yugoslavia was conquered by Nazi forces in World War II, all of Bosnia was ceded to the Independent State of Croatia. The Nazi rule over Bosnia led to widespread persecution of Jewish, Serbian and Gypsy civilians. The Jewish population was nearly exterminated and roughly at least 200,000 Serbs died as a result of genocide perpetrated by the Germans and Croatian Ustasha.Many Serbs in the area took up arms and joined the Partisans and Chetniks; a nationalist and royalist resistance movement that conducted guerrilla warfare against both the fascist Ustashe and the communist Partisans.The Chetniks received initial support from the UK and USA.Most Chetniks were Serbs and Montenegrins, although the army also included some Slovenes, Croats, and Muslims by nationality.Starting in 1941, Yugoslav communists under the leadership of Josip Broz Tito organized their own multi-ethnic resistance group, the Partisans, who fought against both Axis and Chetnik forces. On November 25, 1943 the Anti-Fascist Council of National Liberation of Yugoslavia with Tito at its helm held a founding conference in Jajce where Bosnia and Herzegovina was re-established as a republic within the Yugoslavian federation in its Habsburg borders. Military success eventually prompted the Allies to support the Partisans, but Josip Broz Tito declined their offer to help and relied on his own forces instead. All the major military offensives by the antifascist movement of Yugoslavia against Nazis and their local supporters were conducted in Bosnia-Herzegovina and its peoples bore the brunt of fighting. Eventually the end of the war resulted in the establishment of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with the constitution of 1946 officially making Bosnia and Herzegovina one of six constituent republics in the new state.

The secret meeting ( held at Karadordevo, Vojvodina, Serbia ) in March, 1991 between Croatian President Tudman and Serbian President Slobodan Miloševic broke down where they wanted to redistribute Bosnia and Herzegovina between Croatia and Serbia. Serbia wanted all lands where Serbs had a majority, eastern and western Bosnia. Croatian leader Franjo Tudman also aimed at securing parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina with Croatian majority.

THE BOSNIAN WAR ( 1992 – 1995 )

The 1990 parliamentary elections led to a national assembly dominated by three ethnically-based parties, which had formed a loose coalition to oust the communists from power. Croatia and Slovenia’s subsequent declarations of independence and the warfare that ensued placed Bosnia and Herzegovina and its three constituent peoples in an awkward position. A significant split soon developed on the issue of whether to stay with the Yugoslav federation (overwhelmingly favored among Serbs) or seek independence (overwhelmingly favored among Bosniaks and Croats). The Serb members of parliament, consisting mainly of the Serb Democratic Party members, abandoned the central parliament in Sarajevo, and formed the Assembly of the Serb People of Bosnia and Herzegovina on October 24, 1991, which marked the end of the tri-ethnic coalition that governed after the elections in 1990. This Assembly established the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina on January 9, 1992, which became Republika Srpska in August 1992. On November 18, 1991, the party branch in Bosnia and Herzegovina of the ruling party in the Republic of Croatia, the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ), proclaimed the existence of the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia, as a separate “political, cultural, economic and territorial whole,” on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Croat Defence Council (HVO) as its military part.The Bosnian government did not recognize it. The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina declared Herzeg-Bosnia illegal, first on September 14, 1992 and again on January 20, 1994.During the referendum there was 63.7% turnout amongst which 99.4% and wanted to seccede from the Yugoslav federation.Following a tense period of escalating tensions and sporadic military incidents, open warfare began in Sarajevo on April 6.After securing Eastern Bosnia, the Serb forces – military, police, the paramilitaries and, sometimes, even Serb villagers conducted genocide on non-serbians,to secure more territory.

In June 1992 the focus switched to the towns of Novi Travnik and Gornji Vakuf where the Croat Defence Council (HVO) efforts to gain control were resisted.

SREBENICA MASSACRE

An exhaustive investigation bosed on hundreds of interviews, confidential UN documents by Pulitzer Prize winner David Rohde ( see at http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/srebrenica/srebrenica.html ) exposes those responsible for the July 1995 fall of the world’s first UN-declared “safe area” and the death of 7.000 Bosnian Muslim men.The book highlights both US. and UN negligence and unveils new evidence that the commander ofthe UN forces in the former Yugoslavia may Intenlionally have allowed the world’s first UN-protected civilian “safe area” to be sacrificed.In their first interviews, Dutch peacekeepers and Bosnian Muslim survivors present additional evidence of Bosnian Serb Army commander General Ratko Mladic’s tight control over Bosnian Serb troops which killed an estimated 3,000 Bosnian Muslim prisoners in mass executions and 4,000 mostly unarmed Bosnian Muslims as they fled the fallen enclave. A detailed portrait of Mladic’s megalomania and hatred of Muslims emerges from previously unknown speeches and conversations with Muslim refugees and UN peacekeepers. On the day he took Srebrenica, Mladic stated in an interview with Serb television that he intended to exact revenge on Muslims in the area for Serbs killed in an uprising 150 years ago. Mladic, apparently emboldened by the West’s repeated failure to stand up to him militarily, mocked Dutch peacekeepers after the town fell, called them his “prisoners”.

U.S. and UN intelligence failed utterly in identifying the threat posed to Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces gathering around the enclave. Interviews with American diplomats and intelligence officials reveal that even on the day the town fell, U.S. and UN analysts were misjudging Bosnian Serb intentions. Several weeks before the faIl of Srebrenica, officials in the National Security Council privately discussed early versions of an “end game strategy” that involved the Muslim-led Bosnian government trading the three UN safe areas of Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde to the Serbs. But U.S. officials have denied that they intentionally or tacitly allowed Srebrenica and then Zepa to fall to the Serbs. No concrete evidence that U.S. officials were involved in a secret conspiracy to sacrifice Srebrenica or Zepa has been found, but a secret cable from U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith pleading with U.S. officials to save Zepa exists; it was ignored. Endgame details the poor performance of both U.S. intelligence and UN peacekeeping operations. Both bureaucracies–especially UN peacekeeping–are seemingly in need of major reform.

Srebrenica should not have fallen. The failure of UN commanders to call in NATO close air support and the Bosnian Army’s questionable decision to pull out Srebrenica’s commander and its top fifteen officers for retraining resulted in the rapid collapse of the town’s defenses. The fall of Srebrenica was not just a case of the United States, Britain, and France ignoring yet another distant atrocity. The international community stripped the town’s Muslim defenders of tanks and artillery and then turned them over to their potential executioners. The actions of the Clinton Administration and its allies aided, encouraged, and emboldened the executioners.

The investigation has found that most Bosnian Serbs were not involved in the torture and executions that occurred after Srebrenica’s fall. The Bosnian Serb leadership cultivated an atmosphere of nationalism and revenge through state-controlled media, and a minority of Serb ultra-nationalists appear to have carried out the atrocities. The fact that the majority of Serbs were not involved in the bloodletting makes comprehensive war crimes trials in the former Yugoslavia all the more important. For peace to last, nationalists on all sides must confront the crimes carried out by their leadership, and individuals, not groups, must be blamed for the atrocities, as was the case in Germany after World War II.