When the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina broke out a baffled world sought explanations from a range of experts who offered a variety of reasons for the conflict. The author of this study takes Bosnian ...affairs seriously and in so doing makes it much easier to grasp why the war occurred.
Politics of the European Union in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Between Conflict and Democracy, by Doga Ulas Eralp, evaluates the European Union's ability to transform the escalating political tensions at a ...period where the postconflict balance of the Dayton Peace Agreement is turning increasingly unsustainable. Eralp questions whether reforms integral to the EU membership process and existing European crisis management mechanisms can liberate Bosnian politics from the help of ethno-nationalism and plant the seeds for a successful liberal democracy. Eralp's text captures the tools and history of the EU's accession strategy for Bosnia-Herzegovina and the challenges of the Dayton system as two interrelated narratives, both exploring the realities of Bosnian politics and analyzing the overall quality of Bosnian democracy. Bosnia's consociational system, the role of the international community, and the intervention of the European Union are all put under the spotlight as the institutional and political factors behind Bosnia's stagnation. The text concludes with a discussion of factors that impact the effectiveness of the European Union as an important transformative actor in Bosnia.
This book represents the first ever comprehensive study of the EU’s foreign and security policy in Bosnia. Drawing on a wealth of fresh empirical material, it demonstrates that institutions are a key ...variable in explaining levels of common foreign security policy (CFSP) coherence and effectiveness over time. In doing so, it also sheds new light on the role that intergovernmental, bureaucratic and local political contestation have played in the formulation and implementation of a European foreign policy. The study concludes that the EU’s involvement in Bosnia has not only had a significant impact on this Balkan country in its path from stabilisation to integration, but has also transformed the EU, its foreign and security policy and shaped the development of the EU’s international identity along the way. The book will be of great interest to researchers and students of EU politics, International Relations and Bosnian politics.
Through the Window brings an original perspective to folklore of Bosnians at a certain period of time and the differences and similarities of the three main ethnic groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina. ...It examines the transethnic character of cultural heritage, against divisions that dominate their tragic recent past. The monograph focuses in particular on customs shared by different ethnic groups, specifically elopement, and affinal visitation. The elopement is a transformative rite of passage where an unmarried girl becomes a married woman. The affinal visitation, which follows, is a confirmatory ceremony where ritualized customs between families establish in-lawships These customs reflect a transethnic heritage shared by people in Bosnia as a national group, including Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats.
The 1992-1995 battle for Sarajevo was the longest siege in modern history. It was also the most internationalized, attracting a vast contingent of aid workers, UN soldiers, journalists, smugglers, ...and embargo-busters. The city took center stage under an intense global media spotlight, becoming the most visible face of post-Cold War conflict and humanitarian intervention. However, some critical activities took place backstage, away from the cameras, including extensive clandestine trading across the siege lines, theft and diversion of aid, and complicity in the black market by peacekeeping forces.
InBlue Helmets and Black Markets, Peter Andreas traces the interaction between these formal front-stage and informal backstage activities, arguing that this created and sustained a criminalized war economy and prolonged the conflict in a manner that served various interests on all sides. Although the vast majority of Sarajevans struggled for daily survival and lived in a state of terror, the siege was highly rewarding for some key local and international players. This situation also left a powerful legacy for postwar reconstruction: new elites emerged via war profiteering and an illicit economy flourished partly based on the smuggling networks built up during wartime. Andreas shows how and why the internationalization of the siege changed the repertoires of siege-craft and siege defenses and altered the strategic calculations of both the besiegers and the besieged. The Sarajevo experience dramatically illustrates that just as changes in weapons technologies transformed siege warfare through the ages, so too has the arrival of CNN, NGOs, satellite phones, UN peacekeepers, and aid convoys.
Drawing on interviews, reportage, diaries, memoirs, and other sources, Andreas documents the business of survival in wartime Sarajevo and the limits, contradictions, and unintended consequences of international intervention. Concluding with a comparison of the battle for Sarajevo with the sieges of Leningrad, Grozny, and Srebrenica, and, more recently, Falluja,Blue Helmets and Black Marketsis a major contribution to our understanding of contemporary urban warfare, war economies, and the political repercussions of humanitarian action.
The 1992–95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina following the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia became notorious for “ethnic cleansing” and mass rapes targeting the Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) ...population. Postwar social and political processes have continued to be dominated by competing nationalisms representing Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, as well as those supporting a multiethnic Bosnian state, in which narratives of victimhood take center stage, often in gendered form. Elissa Helms shows that in the aftermath of the war, initiatives by and for Bosnian women perpetuated and complicated dominant images of women as victims and peacemakers in a conflict and political system led by men. In a sober corrective to such accounts, she offers a critical look at the politics of women’s activism and gendered nationalism in a postwar and postsocialist society.             Drawing on ethnographic research spanning fifteen years, Innocence and Victimhood demonstrates how women’s activists and NGOs responded to, challenged, and often reinforced essentialist images in affirmative ways, utilizing the moral purity associated with the position of victimhood to bolster social claims, shape political visions, pursue foreign funding, and wage campaigns for postwar justice. Deeply sensitive to the suffering at the heart of Bosnian women’s (and men’s) wartime experiences, this book also reveals the limitations to strategies that emphasize innocence and victimhood.
In Dervishes and Islam in Bosnia, Ines Asčerić-Todd explores the importance of dervish orders and Sufism in the formation of Muslim society in the first two centuries of Ottoman rule in Bosnia (15th ...- 16th centuries C.E.).
"Replacing tyranny with justice, healing deep scars, exchanging hatred for hope . . . the women in This Was Not Our War teach us how."—William Jefferson Clinton
This Was Not Our War shares amazing ...first-person accounts of twenty-six Bosnian women who are reconstructing their society following years of devastating warfare. A university student working to resettle refugees, a paramedic who founded a veterans’ aid group, a fashion designer running two nonprofit organizations, a government minister and professor who survived Auschwitz—these women are advocates, politicians, farmers, journalists, students, doctors, businesswomen, engineers, wives, and mothers. They are from all parts of Bosnia and represent the full range of ethnic traditions and mixed heritages. Their ages spread across sixty years, and their wealth ranges from expensive jewels to a few chickens. For all their differences, they have this much in common: all survived the war with enough emotional strength to work toward rebuilding their country. Swanee Hunt met these women through her diplomatic and humanitarian work in the 1990s. Over the course of seven years, she conducted multiple interviews with each one. In presenting those interviews here, Hunt provides a narrative framework that connects the women’s stories, allowing them to speak to one another.
The women describe what it was like living in a vibrant multicultural community that suddenly imploded in an onslaught of violence. They relate the chaos; the atrocities, including the rapes of many neighbors and friends; the hurried decisions whether to stay or flee; the extraordinary efforts to care for children and elderly parents and to find food and clean drinking water. Reflecting on the causes of the war, they vehemently reject the idea that age-old ethnic hatreds made the war inevitable. The women share their reactions to the Dayton Accords, the end of hostilities, and international relief efforts. While they are candid about the difficulties they face, they are committed to rebuilding Bosnia based on ideals of truth, justice, and a common humanity encompassing those of all faiths and ethnicities. Their wisdom is instructive, their courage and fortitude inspirational.
Bosnia and Herzegovina Friedman, Francine
2004, 20040224, 2006, 2004-01-16, 2004-02-24, Volume:
17
eBook
Emerging from communism in the early 1990s, the new state of Bosnia and Herzegovina was immediately embroiled in devastating ethnonationalist conflict. Now an international protectorate, the choices ...of its elites may well propel Bosnia either to a stable future, integrated into an expanding European entity, or to a future filled with insecurity, conflict, and adversity. This volume assesses current conditions in Bosnia, as well as the prospects for stability in a country torn between nationalistic elites on the one hand and the desires of important regional actors for control of Bosnia on the other, with a fractious international community overseeing the matter. Friedman controversially denies that the wars of Yugoslavia's dissolution are a necessary product of ancient ethnic hatreds, contending that Bosnia and Herzegovina was once the quintessentially multiethnic, multireligious community and could be again. Containing chapters on the country's history, economics, international relations and politics, this book provides social scientists with an accessible overview of contemporary Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Francine Friedman is Associate Professor of Political Science at Ball State University, USA.
Preface Introduction 1. The Roots of Conflict 2. The Dissolution of Yugoslavia 3. Post-Cold War and Domestic Politics and Political Prospects 4. Bosnia's Economic Performance and Outlook 5. Bosnia's Future Prospects: International relations and inter-national relations
Velikonja sees the former Ottoman borderland as a distinct cultural and religious entity where three major faiths—Islam, Catholicism, and Orthodoxy—managed to coexist in relative peace. ...It is only during the past century that competing nationalisms have led to persecution, ethnic cleansing, and mass murder. Here, he presents a comprehensive survey that examines how religion has interacted with other aspects of Bosnia-Herzegovina's history.
