A Region as a Concession

These are only some of the questions put forward in the publication "Bosnia and Hercegovina Between War and Peace", which recently appeared in an edition of the Forum for Ethnic Relations.

A group of authors has brought together facts, analyses and projections of future relations on the territory of the state now divided by force and destroyed by war, though internationally recognized, which even before the outbreak of tribal conflict, were being worked on by theoreticians of various profile from the whole of the former Yugoslavia, in an effort to prevent the retrograde events. The most indicative are the last three chapters in which the authors work on the questions of the possibility of moving from a state of war to a state of peace and the restoration of democratic mechanisms for the protection of human rights. Particularly because no-one there bothers much about this.

And despite a certain dose of pessimism that the offered solutions will be able to be realized in the near future, most of the authors consider that today, maybe even more than when they were initiated, they should be respected. This particularly applies to the "Model of a Charter of Freedom and Rights" and the "Idea for a Model Constitution for the Republic of Bosnia and Hercegovina", whose authors are Jasminka Hasanbegovic, Zdravko Grebo, Ph.D., and Branislava Jojic, Ph.D..

Work on both projects was begun when Yugoslavia and the possibility of its reorganization and Europeanization as a whole could still be counted on, but according to Mrs. Jojic, they are now, after the legal establishment of Slovenia and Croatia, even more important. At the same time, both Europe and the world, after involvement in the Yugoslav crisis on the principle "bit by bit", which has produced new and different, far more serious disturbances, are now morally and politically compelled to influence the democratic formation of a whole, adds Hasanbegovic. She also points out that the processes of transformation of the Yugoslav authoritative socialist system, which has been broken into pieces, are not going in the direction of democratization, but towards the establishment of a new type of authoritarianism, this time with all the signs of nationalism, chauvinism and even fascism. On the question of the possibility of the Europeanization of the Balkans, she emphasizes the necessity of all six former republics' influence and impact on the area, stressing that authoritarianism, like the water level in adjacent receptacles, pours over, supports, provokes and outlasts. The priority given to the right for self-determination in her opinion endangers all other rights, and therefore democracy itself in the most universal sense.

In Bosnia and Hercegovina, in many ways a paradigm, or miniature Yugoslavia, as some liked to say, all three ruling nationalist parties have become bogged down in the trap of self-determination rights, as well as the right to statehood of nations, pulling with them into the abyss of civil war the pseudo middle-class parties whose members and leaders are guided by this or that national interest. Naturally, all with the support of the more nationally homogeneous "headquarters". The fact that Moslems in this area have no headquarters only became clear to some retroactively, after the sacrifice of thousands of dead and wounded and hundreds of thousands of exiled and evacuated. Because of this there can only be a theoretical answer to the question of whether there is any sense in pleading for an ethnically undivided Bosnia and Hercegovina, which was put forward last week in London by a team of experts and representatives of the by-national government, led by Alija Izetbegovic, in which there was not even one "honest" Serb. And the discrepancy between theory and practice in this part of the world has always been the basis of every discipline in social sciences, from the long proscribed sociology to the highly esteemed law which, as everyone knows, can always be adapted to existing circumstances.

Considering that the authors of both models are lawyers, and that Serbs, Croats and Moslems are constitutional nations within the republic, the acceptance of regionalization can be understood in two ways: as a mode of survival and as a mode of adaptation. In both cases it is a matter of accepting, for the time being, a fait accompli.

"The regions won't be absolutely clean, as would be cantons, and the autonomy in them will not be identical to the structure of government; the rights of the individual, and not the collective, will be taken into account", says Branislava Jojic.

What, according to this project, would the regions represent? Certainly not what is understood by Radovan Karadzic (leader, Bosnian Serbs) and Mate Boban (leader, Bosnian Croats), i.e. Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman. But neither that which Bosnia-Herzegovina President Alija Izetbegovic is prepared to accept. The ultimatums of Europe and the rest of the world obviously don't take into account the circumstances arising under the name of pluralism and the introduction of democratic standards, which are founded on the most retrograde forms of Balkanization with a tendency towards the Balkanization of Europe. Discussions about who is the bearer of sovereignty, nation or territory, and the adoption of the right to represent national interests by individuals or groups with pretensions of legality, while ignoring legitimacy or vice versa (which at international promotions of former states as present ones, to the shame of still normal people and 5.5 percent of Yugoslavs, takes the form of everyone taking along their musicians, tailors and bodyguards), as well as the apparent or real anger of leaders about the lies concerning the causes and consequences for the victims, does not give Europe and the world the right either to hold on to non-existent unity, or to divide what cannot be divided.

The months-long blockade of Sarajevo as a commercial, cultural, political and communications center is not accidental. In this administrative center of the Republic at the moment, through no fault of their own, those who are not Moslem are guilty for everything. In Sarajevo and its surrounds it is the owners and tenants of illegally built houses who are fighting, and they prove their righteousness through a readiness to fire at unidentified objects. The identification of every Svetozar, Ibrahim or Stjepan (a Serbian, Moslem and Croatian typical name - respectively) with the aggressors or defenders of the city is the most drastic proof that the wheel of civilization is relentlessly rolling backwards, at least two centuries.

Therefore, is there any point in printing and publishing blueprints and models of legal projects of European provenance relating to Bosnia and Hercegovina?