Bosnjak Coffee

A symposium on Bosnjaks and Sandzak was held in Novi Pazar on 1-2 March. Ambitiously announced as an "international symposium," the weekend meeting gave no answers, but did restore all the old questions about the Muslims of Sandzak.

There was no dispute about the new name for the people who until recently called themselves Muslim. The newly introduced term "Bosnjaks" denotes a Slavic people of Muslim religion in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, which under the Turkish rule adopted Islam, but not the Turkish language. The Sandzak Muslims accepted the new name without a critical distance. The name was transplanted from a declaration made by the congress of Muslim intellectuals in Sarajevo three years ago, and later accepted by the Parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina. As it was explained at the time, the Muslims returned to their century-old name. The Sarajevo decision was accepted by the Muslim intellectual and political circles in Sandzak without a comment.

"Adoption of the name will be a process, but not a long one," Mehmedalija Bojic, a historian from Belgrade who spoke at the Novi Pazar meeting, told Vreme. According to him, this name proves that the Muslims are becoming nationally aware. "The greatest contribution to the awareness-heightening of the Muslims into the Bosnjak nation was given by the Serbs, Montenegrins and Croats with their anti-Islamic propaganda," Bojic said.

The meeting itself, organized by Sefket Krcic, showed a modest scientific potential of the national corps. A member of the Belgrade Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, Sefko Alomerovic, as well as other speakers, said that the potential existed but was very inert, suppressed by many self-proclaimed alliances and political parties.

In the political and daily usage, the purpose of the direct transplantation of a term from Bosnia-Herzegovina to Sandzak is to show that the Sandzak Muslims and the Muslims in Bosnia are members of the same national corps. Even before the war, the Sandzak Muslims looking for jobs felt that Bosnia was closer to them than parts of Serbia outside Sandzak and when they were enroling at universities, that Sarajevo was closer than Belgrade. The deep emotional link was made even deeper by this war. If you had happened to be at the Novi Pazar taxi rank to hear the reactions of the taxi-drivers to the Radio Sarajevo report on the Serbs' offensive on Gorazde, you would have realized that bitterness was greater in Novi Pazar than in Sarajevo itself. The identification of the Sandzak Muslims with the Muslims in Bosnia, many of whom were their relatives, could not have been prevented by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by encircling Novi Pazar with tanks in the autumn of 1992, nor by sending reservists to Sandzak. The state in which they lived could not gain their affection through brutal seizure of weapons. School text-books which said that the Muslims were enemies, or that they were actually Serbs, were also discouraging.

With the war ending, the situation has eased and the Muslim-Croat disputes about Mostar have shown that it was not only Belgrade that fought the war against the Muslims. Towards the end of the war, the Serbian regime became less repressive and persistent in the confiscation of weapons.

With the emotions overheated by the war, which are now rapidly cooling down, the Sandzak Muslims with their new name are entering the phase of light national romanticism.

The Bosnjak national definition and determination has automatically posed the question of a "new language." The benign language romanticism, as well as the light political one, is accompanied by a total, cold political uncertainty. Sefko Alomerovic is angry: "They are discussing the past in this meeting and we are having problems with the present and future. No one is asking what will happen. Milosevic will let us be called Bosnjaks, but we shall vanish from here. Or he will not, and that could be one of the instruments to force us to move from this region." Leader of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) for Sandzak Rasim Ljaljic says the first problem is that the authorities are not willing to define the Muslim issue in Sandzak as a problem. The second problem, according to him, is that the authorities will try to maintain the status quo, expecting the Muslim population to continue migrating to their mother-country.

In early May 1995, while the war in Bosnia was raging, Ljaljic had a round of talks with the representatives of the Serbian authorities. Even before his contact with the regime, Ljaljic was called "Fikret Abdic of Sandzak," which might now make his position on the internal level in Sandzak quite uncomfortable. During the talks with the Serbian authorities, Ljaljic and his associates posed the questions of human rights, education, culture, police repression, customs, while the authorities solved only some communal problems. However, the SDA leader believes he scored a few points on the international level because he said, "representatives of the international community got assurances that we want to negotiate."

Rasim Ljaljic is a representative of the political group in Sandzak which maintains that participation in the political life of the state is one of the elements for the fulfillment of national political goals and, as such, he advocates that SDA should participate in the elections. However he has doubts that the government may be doing its best to offer the Muslims reasons to abstain in the elections. He says that the local electoral units are being tailored in order to enable the predominantly Serb-populated units to get a deputy with a far smaller number of votes than in the predominantly Muslim-populated units. "The government is doing its best to introduce an act according to which our representative is the one they choose for us," Ljaljic said.

Having failed to make a coalition with other Muslim parties in Sandzak, Ljaljic dared to try and go into a broader coalition of the centre with the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), Civil Alliance of Serbia (GSS), Democratic Centre (DC), New Democracy (ND) and at least one party of ethnic minorities. The problem is that "with the Serbian opposition, you are never sure about the agreements. You have a politician who is with Seselj one day, with Djindjic the next and with an ethnic minority party the next day." When this is the way things are and with a public opinion in which politics is based mostly on emotions and not on political practice, Ljaljic's position may be jeopardized by a statement by SPO leader Vuk Draskovic in which he denied the correctness of the national name "Bosnjak" (although he recognized the Muslims).

The other, clearly distinct, political group of the Sandzak Muslims comprises 18 political parties and various associations from all Sandzak towns. The coalition is dominated by the followers of the former SDA leader Sulejman Ugljanin who is now in exile. The outlines of this political block have been softened by leader of the Reform Democratic Party of Sandzak (RDSS) Izudin Susevic who had ignored Ugljanin's recommendation not to participate in elections. Susevic is said to be the unofficial chief of the coalition. In touch with the dominant, Ugljanin's faction, Susevic has become somewhat sharper. In an interview for Vreme he did not deny the fact that Sandzak was an inseparable part of Serbia, but said that it was a region which should have a special status including independent legislation. This opinion revives a document of the Muslim National Council, signed by Sulejman Ugljanin four years ago.

Susevic speaks on behalf of the whole political block which he represents when he says that the "Sandzak Muslims are a part of the Bosnjak corps, but are not willing to be an ethnic minority in Serbia." More precisely: the status of the Muslims will be resolved on reciprocal basis - if the Serbs are a constituent nation in Bosnia, so are the Muslims in Serbia.

This political block maintains that their opponents, represented by Rasim Ljaljic, Rizah Gruda, Zevdzo Huric, have already accepted the status of ethnic minority for the Muslims in Serbia and Montenegro.

Both groups, however, are under Sarajevo's magnifying glass. Both of them visited Sarajevo within a short time span and met with Bosnia-Herzegovina President Alija Izetbegovic. The prevailing opinion in the Sandzak public is that the more popular faction is the one represented by Susevic in Sandzak and by Ugljanin in Sarajevo. The truth is right in the middle - the Bosnian president offered unreserved support to neither of the factions.

"We in Sandzak are the victims of both Sarajevo and Belgrade. Sarajevo is hostile toward the Sandzak Muslims because they are afraid we are going to take up their positions and offices, since the Sandzak Muslims greatly contributed to the defence of Sarajevo and Bosnia," Alomerovic said. He maintains that Sarajevo is presently busy with its own problems and that it will deal with the Sandzak topics only as balance between Belgrade and Sarajevo.

The people can deal with the new national name.