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2022 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

Bosnia and Herzegovina After the Transition: Forever Postwar, Postsocialist and Peripheral?

Authors : Danijela Majstorović, Zoran Vučkovac

Published in: The Political Economy of Eastern Europe 30 years into the ‘Transition’

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The paper brings together several strands of academic and activist involvement with Bosnia and Herzegovina’s (BiH) colonial, postwar and postsocialist condition including relevant theoretical musings and analysis of struggles on the ground. It discusses peripherality in the specific context of BiH spanning over almost thirty years since 1992 while expanding the term beyond world systems’ theory to include bio-political governance by the ruling ethnonationalist parties who try to secure the status quo at all costs- be it over the memory and remembrance of the 1992–1995 war or issues of state-sanctioned violence like in the “Justice for David” movement. By tracing three phases of politico-economic restructuring and their aftermath and by giving account of the struggles in which we participated as activists, not only do we document moments in politico-economic history of the country but seek to conceive through what kind of struggles new models of sociality can emerge dismissing peripherality altogether.

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previous chapter The Restoration of Capitalism in Slovenia and Croatia

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The estimated death toll is 95,940 of whom more than 38,239 were civilians, out of whom 31,107 Bosniaks, 4178 Serbs, 2484 Croats and 470 others.

The General Framework Agreement for Peace in BiH or the Dayton Agreement is the peace agreement reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, United States, on 1 November 1995, and was formally signed in Paris, France, on 14 December 1995. These accords put an end to the three and a half year-long war in BiH.

The High Representatives heading the OHR have since 2006 mostly given up on their use of Bonn powers to impose laws, but the institution of OHR as the final interpreter of BiH constitution which is the Dayton agreement.

According to the most recent statistics, unemployment rate in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) averages around 42.39% (2017–2018).

These are the three ruling parties in BiH at the moment. SNSD stands for the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats- the major Bosnian Serb party; SDA stands for the Party of Democratic Action—the major Bosniak party; HDZ stands for Croatian Democratic Community—the major party of Bosnian Croats. Due to complex constitutional framework it was impossible to avoid coalitions that exclude any or all of them from state, entity or cantonal government.

Damir Arsenijević writes that the logic of privatization bears the same marks as the wartime creation of mass graves, “from the negligence of the toxic materials for profit, all the way to denying existence of any potential harm.” From Arsenijević, D. (2020, June 16). Ekološko nasilje ima istu logiku kao ratno. Bilten- Regonalni portal. Retrieved from: https://www.bilten.org/?p=33766.

Both BiH entities continue to exist as territories where ethnic cleansing was successful with 3.6% of Serbs in the Federation of BiH and 13.99% of Bosniaks in RepublikaSrpska according to the results of the 2013 census. The 2013 census did not pass without conflicts on both methodology and final results. See Arnautović, M. (2016, June 30). Rezultati popisa: Bošnjaci polovina bh stanovništva, entiteti etnički homogeni. Radio Slobodna Evropa. Retrieved from: https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/popisni-rezultati-nakon-25-godina-u-federaciji-vecina-bosnjaci-u-rs-srbi/27830387.html.

See for example Filipović, G. (2018, December 31). Bosnian-Serb Police Ban Anti-Government Rallies, Target Activist. Bloomberg. Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-31/protests-in-banja-luka-pose-dilemma-for-bosnian-serb-government.

For more background information on the asylum seekers see: Trajno preseljenje: Danijela Ratešić iz “Pravde za Davida” napušta RS?. (2019, January 18). Opcija.net. Retrieved from https://tv1.ba/istaknuto/ratesic-dosen-za-tv1-ba-zasto-sam-morala-napustiti-svoju-zemlju/ and Ubiti Šušnicu: nastavlja se Dodikov progon protivnika režima. (2019, February 7). Tačno.net. Retrieved from: https://www.tacno.net/novosti/ubiti-susnicu-nastavlja-se-dodikov-progon-protivnika-rezima/?fbclid=IwAR1CmL7-6RJ-sc596YcoBhe5KEi_r3QsA2Wcrm0uEjelziL71Sj1gQcsMbE.

One could rightly raise the issue of popular will in voting for Dodik and the SNSD at the October 2018 election including his skill in completely ruining the opposition. There are no voting behavior studies in BiH for the 2018 elections, but our assumption is that people voted for him not only for ethnonational security and political clientelistic reasons, but also because they were told to do so. In any event, after October 2018, there is no opposition whatsoever in the RS and police violence can be directed, as was shown in December 2018, to silence anyone who thinks differently; so marginalization can be seen in the self-censorship of many public figures for fear of life and security.

See Picin Park: Its defenders earned hardline retribution (n.d.). Retrieved from https://stop-persecution.org/bih-banja-luka-picin-park-zeljko-vulic.

Public debate about historical revisionism in RepublikaSrpska entity. For a description in Serbo-Croat see M.I.D. (2017, October 17) Preispitivanje nacije i istine: Kakva je to (nova) Istorija Republike Srpske.Buka magazin. Retrieved from:https://www.6yka.com/novosti/preispitivanje-nacije-i-istine-kakva-je-to-je-nova-istorija-republike-srpske.

Intervention in official commemorative process of the Battle of Kozara from the second world war. See in Serbo-Croatian: Obrenović, M. (2015, July 5). Kozara: Legitimisani zbog partizanskih pjesama tokom himne RS-a. Al Jazeera. Retrieved from: http://balkans.aljazeera.net/vijesti/kozara-legitimisani-zbog-partizanskih-pjesama-tokom-himne-rs.

Initiative Jer me se tiče has set up a number of so-called guerrilla monuments, one such commemorates the Sarajevo Serbs executed at the location of Kazani. For more, see Sarajevo: Postavljena spomen-ploča za žrtve zločina na Kazanima, traže procesuiranje zločina u opkoljenom Sarajevu.(2015, December 7). Buka magazin. Retrieved from: https://www.6yka.com/novosti/sarajevo-postavljena-spomen-ploca-za-zrtve-zlocina-na-kazanima-traze-procesuiranje-zlocina-u-opkoljenom-sarajevu.

Both entities have been tailoring their labor codes according to IMS’s guidelines which sparked a lot of discussion and protests (see for example this protest from the end of 2015: Veselinović, G., Milojević, M. and Katana, E. (2015, Decemebr 28). Banja Luka: Vladajuća većina usvojila novi Zakon o radu. Radio Slobodna Evropa. Retrieved from:https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/sindikalni-protest-u-banjaluci-ne-damo-da-nam-umanje-prava/27453021.html.). Since the protests of February 2014, BiH saw a number of initiatives and protests against disinvestment in public infrastructure and services, as well as privatizations and public policies that threaten the environment or are a cause of major health concerns. Examples are the protest against mini dams by women of Kruščica, workers of Fortuna and Dita fighting for their factories, as well as struggles for clean air and public water infrastructure in Sarajevo.

Majstorović is currently researching the economic migrations from BiH with the support of a Humboldt scholarship at the University of Giessen where Vučkovac is currently working on a dissertation regarding the lived experience of class in postsocialist transition and privatization as well as attempts to commemorate victims from the latest war at now privatized localities.

Sabrina Perić has highlighted this in an unpublished paper, claiming that “the Bosnian belongs to the world of 1992–1995: they can only be explained in terms of the paradigmatic war event. All sociality stems from the war and Bosnians of various affiliations are susceptible to nationalist ideologies, which were solidified in a terrifying moment of violence.” Perić claims that war ushered what Gramsci calls “spontaneous consent” on ethnonationalist’s operational logic both by those researchers who embrace it and those who barely acknowledge its existence.

Named after the Prime Minister of SFRY, Ante Marković, whose government passed the Law on Social Capital in 1989–1990 and enabled privatization in SFRY.

A total of 585 (5.24%) socially owned companies carried out these privatizations, affecting organizations that employed 98,494 (12.87%) of BiH's workforce at the time.

Even though capitalist growth cycles have been globally criticized, concepts like green growth or degrowth, as well as policy aiming at divestment of for example coal power plants or extractive industries have never taken off the ground in BiH. Also, most of the “successful” privatizations of socialist conglomerates were actually a part of the extractive economies of non-renewable resources that can only be partly processed in BiH and then exported. So we face a paradox whenever, for example, ArcelorMittal is criticized for not adhering to the bare minimum of ecological standards, and production grinds to a halt leaving thousands without work.

For example, the Law on the Revision of Privatization of State Capital and Banks in FBiH was adopted in 2012, establishing an Agency for Revision of Privatization in FBiH that would review failed and suspicious privatizations. However, the Agency did not actually start work until the first quarter of 2015, and thus has so far been unable to provide any tangible results.

We have been invited to provide linguistic analyses of twenty odd interviews with Dita workers by the Workers’ University collective, comprised of researchers and activists who supported them throughout their “protest for production” occupation of the factory, and the restarting of production after they managed to expel the owner. The analysis was provided for the collective as a part of attempts to understand better the working class grievances and create potential bridges between activist, academic and workers, therefore it will not be published. For more information on the Tuzla Workers’ University check their website at http://radnickiuniverzitet.org/. but also the work of DamirArsenijević, Jasmina Husanović, Larisa Kurtović, Andrew Gilbert, Boris Stapić and others.

The complexity of the latest migratory wave from the Balkan countries is hardly reducible to bad government or their accession to EU, with consequences still beyond comprehension or simple solutions. See: Judah, T. (2019, October 14). Bye-Bye Balkans: A Region in Critical Demographic Decline. Balkan Insight. Retrieved from: https://balkaninsight.com/2019/10/14/bye-bye-balkans-a-region-in-critical-demographic-decline/?fbclid=IwAR0Ef_OpCDxBU_7p_CryCxHzqXhkNayvKgn3fu5DAyBiRXbo6pb8_hIglk8.

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Title: Bosnia and Herzegovina After the Transition: Forever Postwar, Postsocialist and Peripheral?
Authors: Danijela Majstorović
Zoran Vučkovac
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: The Political Economy of Eastern Europe 30 years into the ‘Transition’
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-78914-5

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-030-78915-2

Copyright Year: 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-78915-2_5