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Background Report on
Bosnia-Hercegovina

 

© 1994 Dianne L. Durante

 

Report originally written in 1994. Only the sections of Issues / Analysis and the Postscript have been updated since then.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Current Crisis

If you know it, you know if for …

Caveat on statistics

Geography

People and culture

Economy

History

World Reaction

Postscript

Bibliography

 

NOTE: Except in the very earliest part of the History section, "Bosnia" is used below to refer to Bosnia-Hercegovina. "Communist  Yugoslavia" refers to the Yugoslav state 1945-1991, composed of 6 republics - Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia - and Serbia's 2 autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. "Yugoslavia" refers to the present Yugoslavia, i.e., the former Communist Yugoslav republics of Serbia and Montenegro.

 

THE CURRENT CRISIS: Civil war has raged since Bosnia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in March 1992. There are reports of ethnic cleansing (the new euphemism for murdering or exiling anyone not of your particular tribe), detention camps, mass rape and daily casualties. An estimated 10,000 people have died in Sarajevo alone in the past 2 years.

IF YOU KNOW IT, YOU KNOW IT FOR (an attempt to help you integrate what you might already know of this nation): Its capital, Sarajevo, was site of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, which triggered World War I. It was also the site of the 1984 Winter Olympics, whose stadium has since become a massive graveyard.

CAVEAT ON STATISTICS: They are almost non-existent for the 2 years since Bosnia declared its independence. I have given them for Bosnia when available; on occasion, as noted, I have given them for Communist Yugoslavia.

 

Geography                                                            Back to table of contents

SIZE: 19,741 sq. mi. (roughly the size of New Hampshire and Vermont combined)

CAPITAL: Sarajevo, pop. 525,980 (1991), seat of the head of all Muslims in Communist Yugoslavia, of a Roman Catholic archbishop and of an Orthodox metropolitan (roughly the equivalent of an archibishop).

TOPOGRAPHY: Mostly mountainous and densely forested, with arable land less than half the total, most of it in the north. Bosnia has about 12 mi. of coastline, where the Neretva River flows into the Adriatic.

WIDER GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING: In the Dinaric Alps on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea, bordered by the Communist Yugoslav republics of Serbia (to the east, with 34,116 sq. mi.), Montenegro (southeast) and Croatia (north & west).

CLIMATE: Hot summers, cold winters.

 

 

People & Culture                                              Back to table of contents

POPULATION: 4,364,000 (1991 est.); 220.6 persons per sq. mi. Life expectancy (1980-82): women 73, men 68. Most of Bosnia's population are Southern Slavs, but they divide themselves into three groups. Ca. 1991, when independence was declared and before the movement of massive numbers of refugees, those groups were Muslim Slavs at 43.7% of the population, Eastern Orthodox Serbs at 31.3% and Roman Catholic Croats at 17.2%. Thus one can be a Bosnian Serb or  a Bosnian Croat - not to be confused with Serbians from Serbia and Croatians from the Communist Yugoslav republic (now independent) of Croatia.

RELIGION: See "Population," above. In Communist Yugoslavia as a whole, ca. 1991, the breakdown by religion was 43% Orthodox, 30% Catholic, 14% Muslim.

LITERACY RATE: 85.5% of adult population

LANGUAGES: Serbo-Croatian

CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Best known writer is Ivo Andric, a Bosnian Croat, Nobel-winning author (1961) of The Bridge on the Drina.

TIDBITS: At the dirt-poor mountain village of Medugorje (near Mostar), on 24 June 1981, 6 teenagers claimed to see a miraculous apparition of the Virgin Mary (still not officially recognized by the Catholic Church). It was the first such apparition since those of Lourdes, France in 1858 and Fatima, Portugal in 1917. From Stanley's Eastern Europe on a Shoestring: " 'Religious tourism' is being developed Yugoslav-style as if this were a beach resort . . . The highlight of any visit to Medugorje is an apparition and these are usually on Monday and Friday. . . . Miracles also occur. . . . It's possible to arrange audiences with the original visionaries who saw the Virgin in 1981 . . . [they] still receive daily messages from the Virgin and on the 25th of each month a message to the world is passed on through them" (p. 838).

 

 

Issues: Why do racist disagreements necessarily lead to violence? Why do religious differences also lead to violence?

 

Analysis

Bosnia has a double whammy: its rival ethnic groups are also irreconcilable religious enemies, i.e., Serbians of the Orthodox Church, Croatians who are Roman Catholic, and Muslims, whom you could call Bosnian Muslims or Muslim Slavs.

Racism means one judges a man not by his ideas and actions, but by an inherited trait: his race. "Racism," wrote Ayn Rand, "is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's genetic lineage - the notion that a man's intellectual and characteriological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. . . . Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited: that a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control." ("Racism," The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 172.)

Because they believe race rather than mind matters, argument and persuasion are seldom used by racists against their enemies. A Bosnian Serb will shoot a complete stranger who happens to be a Bosnian Muslim, for no other reason than that he was born a Muslim.

If that weren't trouble enough, the differing ethnic groups in Bosnia also have different religions. Like philosophy, religion offers a comprehensive view of man and the world: what reality is like, what men are like, how they ought to behave. Unlike philosophy, religion is based on faith, on accepting ideas without evidence or proof. Since the ideas cannot be proved or disproved, reasonable argument is, in the end, useless. For those who have only religion to guide them, serious disagreements lead inevitably to fisticuffs. The strong religious elements in Bosnia make the racist elements even more deadly.

 

FURTHER READING

On religion vs. philosophy, see Ayn Rand, "Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It?, pp. 70-92 (hardcover).

On racism, see Ayn Rand, "Racism," Return of the Primitive, ed. P. Schwartz, pp. pp. 179-188 (paper).

On racism in Nazi Germany, see Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, p. 48 (hardcover).

All the above are available through the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

 

 

Economy                                             Back to table of contents

PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS: Timber, grain, fruit, vegetables, tobacco and minerals (coal, iron ore, bauxite, zinc, mercury, manganese); used to produce much of  Communist Yugoslavia's armaments. Agriculture used to occupy about 2/3 of the population. GDP (1991) $14 billion. Main source of foreign exchange was the tourist trade (mostly cheap package tours to the Adriatic coast), which has largely ceased due to the civil war.

CURRENCY: No data. The dinar was the currency of Communist Yugoslavia. In late 1991, after a bout of 2000% inflation and subsequent revaluation of the currency (10,000 dinars became one new dinar), US$1 = 22 dinars.

INFLATION RATE: No data.

PER CAPITA INCOME: Average monthly income in Communist Yugoslavia ca. 1991 was $400, but most Yugoslavs received "free" health care and subsidized housing, and worked 2-3 jobs.

 

Issue: Like any other nation, Bosnia would need to become economically self-sufficient to survive.

 

Analysis

Bosnia will never become a wealthy country through agriculture (not enough arable land) or maritime trade (land-locked, except for a 12-mile stretch of coast). It has some mineral resources and some armaments factories left over from its Communist days, but these are prime targets for any enemies, internal or external.

This doesn't mean it's condemned to poverty. Countries much smaller and less fertile (Bermuda, or Hong Kong under British control) have become prosperous when they had the proper political and economic outlooks: recognition of individual rights, including property rights, which is to say: capitalism.

Not surprisingly, given Bosnia's recent history as part of a totalitarian, Communist state, the proper ideas are not in circulation.

FURTHER READING: Ayn Rand, "What Is Capitalism?" Capitalism, The Unknown Ideal, pp. 11-34  (and other essays in the same volume). Available through the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

 

QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: Ayn Rand wrote, "The recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting man's rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. ("What Is Capitalism?", ibid. p. 19). Given this, what is the main factor in Bosnia, aside from Communist ideology, that would prevent the introduction of capitalism?

 

 

History                                             Back to table of contents

Bosnia-Hercegovina was historically two separate territories: Bosnia, the area around the Bosna river, and Hercegovina, a small territory ruled by a *herceg* (similar to a duke).

When our knowledge of the area begins, it was inhabited by Illyrian tribes. By the early first century A.D. it had been conquered by the Roman Empire and was ruled as part of the province of Illyricum. When the Empire was divided in 395, the present Bosnia and Croatia stayed with the Western Empire, while Serbia went to the Eastern Empire. This helps explain why most Serbians are Eastern Orthodox, and most Croatians are Roman Catholic.

The Slavs (cf. the "Population" section above) moved into central Europe from Asia beginning in the 5th c., in the mass migrations that occurred during the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The Slavs were so often captured and sold other peoples of Western Europe that the word "slave" in English, and its equivalent in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic, come from the word "Slav." Most of Bosnia's population is of Slav descent, specifically of the branch called Southern Slavs (vs. the Russians, who are East Slavs, and the Poles and Czechs, who are West Slavs).

Bosnia first became a separate political entity in the 10th century. Under King Kulin (ca. 1180-1204?) the Bosnians embraced the Bogomil heresy, which declared that the visible, material world was a creation of the devil and that Christ could therefore never have been incarnated. Hence the Bogomils rejected baptism and the Eucharist, and not surprisingly earned the enmity of the Catholic Church. Although the King of Bosnia eventually renounced this heresy, it persisted among the nobility. In the 13th c. the pope described the country as "overgrown with thorns and nettle and a breed of vipers."

The Turks invading Bosnia in 1386 were repelled by King Tvrtko (d. 1391), who conquered surrounding territory and led Bosnia to the height of its power. When the Turks invaded again in the 15th c., however, the king of Bosnia was captured and beheaded, and the area became a province of the Ottoman (Turkish) Empire. The nobility, many of whom were still Bogomils, converted en masse to the Muslim faith, although they never adopted polygamy. It is their descendants who now form the large Muslim population in Bosnia.

In the 16th-17th c. Bosnia, by now thoroughly assimilated into the Ottoman Empire, was on the front line of the war between the Empire and the Christian West. It remained under Turkish control almost continuously until 1878, despite frequent rebellions by Christians and Muslims, both of whom hated the corrupt Ottoman bureaucracy.

In 1877, by secret convention, Russia recognized Austria-Hungary's right to occupy Bosnia in return for Austro-Hungarian neutrality in Russia's forthcoming war with Turkey, and after the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) Bosnia was assigned to Austria-Hungary. Banjamin Kállay (d. 1903) ran Bosnia for Austria-Hungary for 21 years, aiming to evolve a "Bosnian" consciousness, to check Serbian national feeling and to create dissensions between Serbs and Croats. Bosnia was formally annexed to Austria-Hungary in 1908 and given its own parliament, but no say in national affairs.

Dissent was still rampant by 1914, when the Archduke of Austria Francis Ferdinand and his wife visited Sarajevo and were assassinated by a Bosnian Serb (Gavrilo Princip) - the shot that triggered World War I. Austria-Hungary blamed the independent nation of Serbia for the assassination and declared war; Russia and France came to the aid of their ally Serbia; Germany came to the aid of its ally Austria-Hungary; and so on.

Bosnia formally became a part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1918,  renamed Yugoslavia (i.e. "land of the South Slavs") in 1929. Divided between Germany and Italy during the Second World War, Bosnia-Hercegovina was reunited and became one of the republics making up Communist Yugoslavia in 1945.  The Communists had gained support during the war by promising to expel the occupying forces and achieve "ethnic equity" in a new Yugoslavia.

Josip Broz (Tito) - a Croatian who deliberately tried to suppress the power of  the Serbs - led Communist Yugoslavia from its inception until his death in 1980. Communist Yugoslavia officially had 2 alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic), 3 religions (Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Muslim), 4 languages (Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Macedonian, Albanian), 6 republics (Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia, plus Serbia's 2 autonomous provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina), and 7 major nationalities, including Albanians and Hungarians, among whom Serbians were the largest group, at about 40%. "Ethnic diversity" was apparently encouraged, e.g., minorities were guaranteed the use of their native language in local government and elementary schools.

After Tito's death a collective presidency was established, with one member from each of the 6 republics and the 2 autonomous provinces. This system started to unravel when various ethnic groups began demanding autonomy. (They had demanded it under Tito, too, but he reacted with a "return to Leninism" - party purges - and threats of military force.) Bosnia declared its independence of Yugoslavia in March 1992, following the examples of  2 other republics, Croatia and Slovenia, in June 1991; Serbia and Montenegro then joined to form a smaller Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The Serbs living in Bosnia (who had boycotted the independence referendum) objected violently to being governed by non-Serbs and immediately blockaded the Muslim part of Sarajevo off from the rest of Bosnia. They were supported by the Serbian Serbs (the dominant group in the new Yugoslavia), who now regretted that many of Communist Yugoslavia's armament factories had been built in Bosnia. The Serbs are a force to be reckoned with: mostly veterans of the army of Communist Yugoslavia, they were trained in guerrilla tactics in case their country was invaded by the Soviet Union. Bosnia, with its mountains and dense forests, is perfect territory for guerrilla warfare. (Note that this makes air strikes in the area fairly useless, as the U.S. ought to know from its bombing of Vietnam.)

The Serbs in Bosnia began "ethnic cleansing" of the territory within Bosnia that they controlled, expelling Muslims and Croatians and creating some 700,000 refugees. By summer 1993 Bosnian Serbs held about 70% of Bosnia's territory, had declared their own government, the Serbian Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina, and were besieging Sarajevo and other Muslim strongholds (Maglaj, Srebrenica, Zepa, Bihac, Gorazde). The aim of many Serbians is a "Greater Serbia" that would include Serbia proper, its two former autonomous provinces, and the predominantly Serbian parts of Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia. They are unlikely to achieve this aim, or to give it up, without full-scale war.

Bosnian Croats began as allies of the Muslims against the Serbs, whom both groups hate. For the past 10 months, however, Bosnian Croats have been at war with the Muslims in southwest Bosnia, where many Croats would like to add territory that they dominate to the independent Croatian state: a "Greater Croatia." Bosnian Croats have declared the city of Mostar capital of their own independent republic. In Mostar 50,000-65,000 Muslims have been besieged by Croatians for 9 months, and the damage from heavy artillery is worse than in Sarajevo. Croatia denies sending any regular troops to help Bosnian Croats, but seems to be fudging by sending troops who have signed a statement that they are "volunteers." A cease-fire between Muslims and Bosnian Croats was signed in late February 1994.

The Bosnian Muslims presently control a swath of territory in central Bosnia and half a dozen cities isolated and besieged by the Serbs, including Sarajevo.

Lest it sound as though the Muslims are on the defensive everywhere, Muslims have Croats surrounded in several central-Bosnian cities: Busovaca, Kiseljak and Konjic.

 

Issue: Is there any justification for keeping Bosnia-Hercegovina intact, given the continuing murderous dissension among its ethnic groups?

 

Analysis

A country's right to exist depends on the nature of its government and the willingness of the majority of its citizens to be governed by that government. If many of the citizens believe the government is flawed, they have the right to attempt to change it by peaceable means, to move elsewhere, or (as a last resort) to form their own state.

Yugoslavia, as created after World War II, was an artificial construct: its separate territories did not have anything in common except geographical proximity, and were torn apart by ethnic conflicts. After the death of Tito, Yugoslavia's first and only leader, four Yugoslav provinces achieved independence. The significant difference in Bosnia is that the different ethnic groups are scattered throughout the country, not in tidy areas that could form their own governments.

 

FURTHER READING: Ayn Rand, "The Nature of Government," Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 107-115 (paper). Available through the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

 

QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: The United States has often been described as a "melting pot." It was certainly not ethnically homogeneous in 1776, and is not so today. What attitudes do Americans share (and not share) that keep the U.S. from sinking into the sort of brutal civil war that is raging in the former provinces of Yugoslavia?

 

Geographically, Bosnia-Hercegovina is not a promising site for a united nation; mere acquaintance with one's neighbors has always been difficult. Geography is obviously not a determining factor, however: other countries with similar terrain (Greece, for instance) have managed to survive without civil war. Bosnia's problem is that it's always been on the dividing line between specific and often fanatical ethnic and religious groups, as far back as the break-up of the Roman Empire and the battles between the Ottoman Turks and the Western Europeans. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rulers of the area - the Austro-Hungarians, the Germans and Italians who controlled the area during the Second World War, and Tito's Communists - all dealt with the Bosnians in terms of specific groups, ethnic and/or religious.

 

FURTHER READING: Peter Schwartz, "Multicultural Nihilism," Return of the Primitive pp. 245-269 (paper). Available through the Ayn Rand Bookstore.

 

QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION:  Is Bosnia's insistence on the importance of race and religion significantly different or significantly similar to the present American emphasis on multiculturalism?

 

QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: In Balkan Ghosts, A Journey Through History, Robert Kaplan notes that "Macedonia . . . defines the principal illness of the Balkans: conflicting dreams of lost imperial glory. Each nation demands that its borders revert to where they were at the exact time when its own empire had reached its zenith of ancient medieval expansion"(p. 57). How does this apply to Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia? By what rational rules are a nation's boundaries are set? If purely on historical precedent, why shouldn't the present residents of Rome still rule over all the former Roman Empire, from Spain to Turkey?

 

 

World Reaction                                             Back to table of contents

Sanctions imposed by United Nations in May 1992 have devastated Serbia economically, but had no notable effect on its military intervention in Bosnia. There is an embargo on arms shipments and a no-fly zone for military aircraft over all of Bosnia. The U.N. has peace-keeping troops in Bosnia (none of them supplied by the U.S.) and is sending relief shipments to besieged cities, where possible.

The European Community, the United States and the United Nations debated for months over what might justify airstrikes on Serb positions. Finally NATO - which, if you remember, was created 44 years ago to deal with Soviet aggression, not civil war - was "authorized" by the United Nations to act on the U.N.'s behalf. In February 1994, NATO issued an ultimatum to Bosnian Serbs: move all heavy artillery 12.5 miles away from the center of Sarajevo or turn it over to U.N. forces; otherwise it will be bombed. The Serbs turned in old, broken equipment and shifted much of the rest from Sarajevo to positions from which they can attack other Muslim-dominated cities. NATO judged that the ultimatum had been met and decided not to implement an air strike. Meanwhile the siege of Sarajevo continues: only the shelling has stopped.

The United States is at the moment (3/1/94) subscribing to a plan that would divide Bosnia into 3 republics along ethnic lines and would join the Muslim- and Croatian-dominated sections, while at the same time subdividing them into municipalities defined as Muslim or Croat, depending on which has a majority. In early March 1994, the Muslim and Croat republics agreed to be joined in an economic federation with Croatia. As for the Serbs, the Administration seems to hope (quoting the *NYTimes*, 2/25/94, p. A8) "that the Serbs will somehow prefer to be aligned with what the United States envisions as a democratic, economically vibrant entity." There is no indication that the ethnically divided Bosnia which the Administration advocates would become either democratic or economically self-sufficient. The Serbs are adamantly opposed to the reunion of Bosnia; the plan calls for them to give up nearly a quarter of the territory they now control. Clinton has repeatedly promised not to send ground troops into Bosnia, although he has agreed to send a third of the 50,000 troops for a peace-keeping force, once a peace treaty is signed. As the *Christian Science Monitor* pointed out ("US Troops in Bosnia?", 9/22/93), "Allowing American troops to ratify the borders of a state acquired through mass murder and territorial aggression would be a dangerous precedent."

There is some danger that the conflict in Bosnia will escalate due to foreign intervention. The Russians sympathize with the Bosnian Serbs, who are not only fellow Slavs (most Bosnians are) but also fellow Orthodox Christians; Russian troops have been sent to support the Serbs in Sarajevo. Vladimir Zhirinovsky has promised, if/when he comes to power in Russia, to intervene militarily on behalf of the Serbs. The Islamic Conference Organization, with 50 Muslim member countries, considers Western failure to intervene militarily on behalf of Bosnian Muslims  an insult to the Muslim world; millions of dollars of aid has been raised, and Iran has sent arms and is prepared to send troops. Turkey, NATO's only predominantly Muslim member and a vital base for U.S. planes during the Gulf War, has also expressed considerable dissatisfaction with Western failure to come to the aid of Bosnian Muslims, and has been clandestinely sending arms to them.

 

Issue: What is the proper role of foreign governments in a civil war?

 

Analysis: Any foreign citizen can go fight in Bosnia if he wishes (as a mercenary or volunteer), but a foreign government must be able to justify military intervention on grounds of the rational self-interest of its citizens. Are military or economic values at risk? Can military intervention solve the problem that is causing the war? When Saddam Hussein and the Iraqis invaded Kuwait, U.S. military involvement was justified, to preserve the oil fields and restrict access to the sea by a bloody tyrant. We have no vital interests in Bosnia, and the presence of foreign soldiers cannot prevent random Bosnian Serbs from killing random Bosnian Croats or Muslims; such troops merely provide more targets.

 

FURTHER READING: Peter Schwartz, "Foreign Policy and the Morality of Self-interest," The Intellectual Activist, IV:5 (March 24, 1986) and IV:6 (April 29, 1986).

 

 

Postscript (August 2000)                                      Back to table of contents

In March 1994, the Muslims (or Bosniaks, as they are presently called) and the Croats signed an agreement creating the Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Federation signed an agreement toward the end of 1994 with the Bosnian Serbs, dividing Bosnia-Hercegovina roughly equally between the Federation and the "Republika Srpska" for the Bosnian Serbs. Between 1990 and the time the Dayton Agreement was signed, about 250,000 died and over 2 million were displaced. A NATO peace-keeping force is still present in Bosnia. Serbia and Croatia are both still disputing with Bosnia over Croatian- and Serbian- dominated parts of Bosnia. The situation is far from stable.

 

 

Bibliography (for the original report)                Back to table of contents

Academic American Encyclopedia, online edition, Grolier Electronic Publishing, Danbury, CT, 1993: s.v. Bosnia, Serbia (by Norman G. Pounds), Slavs (Bernard S. Bachrach) and Yugoslavia.

Encyclopedia Britannica (1970) III, 983-5.

Software Toolworks World Atlas, distributed by The Software Toolworks, 1991 version.

Sowell, Thomas. "A Quagmire Beckoning." Forbes Magazine 3/14/94, pp. 64-5. A nice summary of why the U.S. shouldn't get involved in Bosnia.

Stanley, David. Eastern Europe on a Shoestring. 2nd ed. Hawthorn, Vic, Australia: Lonely Planet, 1991. On Yugoslavia, pp. 727-865; on Bosnia in particular, 835-44.

General background: assorted articles over the past 2 years in the Christian Science Monitor, available on-line through Compuserve.

 

 

Addenda to the Bibliography, 4/16/94

For more background on the Balkan region, I recommend Robert D. Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History , 1993. Kaplan does not cover Bosnia in detail, but he gives a reasonably clear history of the Balkans since the early 20th century, which helps explain current events in the area.

 

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