From Muslim to Bosniak Nationalism A Case Study of Nationalism in the SDA Party Newspapers Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan between 1990 and 1995

Master Thesis

for the award of the academic degree of Master of Arts (MA)

at the University of Graz

submitted by:

Harm Rudolf Kern

at the Centre for Southeast European Studies

Supervisor:

Professor Florian Bieber

Graz, 2020

ABSTRACT

This research studies the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1990 and 1995 by analyzing the political content of Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan, the two successive party newspapers of the nationalist party SDA – Stranka Demokratske Akcije (Party of Democratic Action). Between 1990 and 1992, Muslimanski Glas articulated Muslim nationalism as an ideology that imagined the Muslim nation as one of three sovereign nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Between 1992 and 1995, Ljiljan articulated Bosniak nationalism as an ideology that imagined the Bosniak nation as the state-owing nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. This research qualifies this transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism as an ideological development from a latent to a more manifest form of Rogers Brubaker’s analytical category of nationalizing nationalism.

KURZFASSUNG

Diese Studie untersucht die Umformung vom muslimischen zum bosniakischen Nationalismus in Bosnien-Herzegowina zwischen 1990 und 1995, indem sie den politischen Inhalt von Muslimanski Glas und Ljiljan, den beiden aufeinanderfolgenden Zeitungen der nationalistischen Partei SDA – Stranka Demokratske Akcije (Partei der demokratischen Aktion), analysiert. Im Zeitraum 1990-1992 artikulierte Muslimanski Glas den bosnisch-muslimischen Nationalismus als eine Ideologie, die muslimische Nation als eine von drei souveränen Nationen in Bosnien-Herzegowina verstand. Gleich danach, zwischen 1992 und 1995, artikulierte Ljiljan den gleichen Nationalismus mit dem neuen Namen – bosniakisch – als eine Ideologie, die diese Nation als staatstragend definierte. Diese Untersuchung qualifiziert diesen Wandel vom muslimischen zum bosniakischen Nationalismus als eine ideologische Entwicklung von einer latenten zu einer offenkundigeren Form des Nationalismus, in der Anlehnung an Rogers Brubaker’s analytische Kategorie “nationalizing nationalism”.

1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing this thesis has been like an ultra marathon that I could not have finished without the support of a number of dear people in the field and on its sidelines. First of all, I am indebted to the academic staff at the Centre of Southeast European Studies in Graz for training me during my first year of studies in Graz and for supporting me during my next years of mobility and research in Sarajevo. I am especially grateful to Florian Bieber and Armina Galijaš for not giving up on me and for keeping the finish line open for this slow-paced runner at the end of the pack. Sarajevo has thereafter been the absolute highlight in this thesis-bearing ultra marathon. Its Gazi Husrev Beg Library provided me with crucial access to the newspapers that form the empirical core of this thesis. I am, therefore, enormously grateful to the library staff for assisting me in navigating their voluminous collection of these newspapers. I am also grateful to the Sarajevo-based university professors Husnija Kamberović and Asim Mujkić for their guidance and feedback during my stay in Sarajevo. At the Institute for History in Sarajevo, I would especially like to thank Sabina Veladžić and Edin Omerčić for generously sharing their insights with me. During my research in Sarajevo, I have also received very valuable input from Iva Lučić and Ivan Ejub Kostić in long conversations on Skype. Besides the highs of this research, there have been lows in its writing. I am especially grateful to my parents for being there for me when I needed it most. Finally, my soul mate and running buddy Heidi has been there with me through all the highs and all the lows of this ultra marathon of research and writing. Thank you, my love, for being by my side during all these unforgettable moments of joy and sadness and for understanding me the way you do.

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 4

1. SCHOLARSHIP ON MUSLIM AND BOSNIAK NATIONALISM 11

1.1. International scholarship 11 1.2. Scholarship in Bosnia-Herzegovina 15

2. MUSLIM NATIONALISM IN MUSLIMANSKI GLAS (1990-1992) 18

2.1. Nation-talk in Muslimanski Glas (1990-1992) 20

2.2. State-talk in Muslimanski Glas (1990-1992) 23

2.3. Nationalist politics in Muslimanski Glas (1990-1992) 27

3. BOSNIAK NATIONALISM IN LJILJAN (1992-1995) 33

3.1. Nation-talk in Ljiljan (1992-1995) 34

3.2. State-talk in Ljiljan (1992-1995) 39

3.3. Nationalist politics in Ljiljan (1992-1995) 44

CONCLUSION 51

BIBLIOGRAPHY 54

3 INTRODUCTION

Nationalism – the ideology that holds that the political and the national unit should be congruent – has politically fueled the dissolution of Yugoslavia (1990-1992) and the subsequent War in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992-1995). This central role of nationalism in both these events has received abundant scholarly attention.1 However, not all cases of nationalism in Yugoslavia have been studied with the same level of scrutiny. The most theoretically informed observations of post-Yugoslav nationalism have focused on the cases of Serbian and Croatian nationalism as these cases most directly explain the outbreak of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s.2 More empirically informed studies have also included detailed observations of Slovenian and Kosovo Albanian nationalism in order to explain how the nationalist movements in Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Kosovo interacted with each other.3 Macedonian nationalism was less involved in such interactions within Yugoslavia, but an early case study has been made of its radicalizing interaction with Greek nationalism.4 Nevertheless, the case of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina has remained relatively understudied despite its central place in the interactions and entanglements between the post-Yugoslav nationalist movements of the 1990s. Comparative overviews of post-Yugoslav nationalism have sketched out the religious dimensions of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism, while explaining the other cases of nationalism in terms of their political claims and objectives.5 Scholarly accounts of

1 Catherine Baker, The Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s (London: Palgrave, 2015), 2–3 and 129; Jasna Dragović-Soso, “Why Did Yugoslavia Disintegrate? An Overview of Contending Explanations,” in State Collapse in South-Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on Yugoslavia’s Disintegration, ed. Lenard J. Cohen and Jasna Dragovic-Soso (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2007), 5–9; Dejan Jović, “The Disintegration of Yugoslavia A Critical Review of Explanatory Approaches,” European Journal of Social Theory 4, no. 1 (2001): 104–8. 2 John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester University Press, 1993), 357–63; Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996), 69–75; Siniša Malešević, Ideology, Legitimacy and the New State: Yugoslavia, Serbia and Croatia (London: Routledge, 2002), 172–269; V. P. Gagnon, The Myth of Ethnic War: Serbia and Croatia in the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 87–177. 3 Jasna Dragović-Soso, Saviours of the Nation?: Serbia’s Intellectual Opposition and the Revival of Nationalism (London: Hurst, 2002), 115–205; Dejan Jović, Jugoslavija, država koja odumrla: uspon, kriza i pad Kardeljeve Jugoslavije, 1974-1990 (Belgrade: Prometej, 2003), 419–85; Nebojša Vladisavljević, Serbia’s Antibureaucratic Revolution: Milošević, the Fall of Communism and Nationalist Mobilization (London: Palgrave, 2008), 179–94. 4 Loring M. Danforth, The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 56–78. 5 Aleksandar Pavković, The Fragmentation of Yugoslavia: Nationalism and War in the Balkans (London: Palgrave, 2000), 85–99; Sabrina P. Ramet, The Three Yugoslavias: State-Building and Legitimation, 1918-2005 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006), 29 and 418–27.

4 the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina have similarly treated Muslim/Bosniak nationalism with strong emphasis on its religious aspects.6 These religious dimensions of the Muslim/Bosniak case have been most thoroughly analyzed by the leading expert on Bosnian Islam, Xavier Bougarel. His research has indicated that the Muslim/Bosniak nationalist movement of the 1990s emerged around a pan-Islamist current of religious anti-communist dissidents. However, Bougarel has also explicitly noted that these pan-Islamist origins have not led Muslim/Bosniak nationalism to be more religious or less nationalist than any of the other cases of post-Yugoslav nationalism.7 Bougarel’s most recent monograph on Islam and nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina therefore concludes that the Muslim/Bosniak case cannot be reduced to its Islamic dimensions. Bougarel instead suggests the in-depth study of Muslim/Bosniak nationalist politics as a more revealing avenue for new research.8 This thesis aims to empirically analyze the understudied political content of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism between 1990 and 1995. Within this period, the political content of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism underwent a radical transformation with the year 1993 as the turning point. During that year, the Muslim national name was replaced with the Bosniak national name, under wartime circumstances that are further evaluated in this thesis. The name change in 1993 signifies the redefining moment at which Muslim nationalism transformed into Bosniak nationalism and this thesis investigates exactly how and why this ideological transformation took place. This thesis thus aims to answer the overall problem statement: how and why did Muslim nationalism transform into Bosniak nationalism between 1990 and 1995?

Primary Sources and Research Questions At the center of this empirical research stands the SDA – Stranka Demokratske Akcije (Party of Democratic Action) as the political party that led the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism between 1990 and 1995. The SDA, in fact, raised the

6 Xavier Bougarel, Bosnie, Anatomie d’un conflict (Paris: La Découverte, 1996), 44–46; Neven Andjelic, Bosnia-Herzegovina: The End of a Legacy (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 140–44; Marko Attila Hoare, How Bosnia Armed (London: Saqi, 2004), 25–27 and 102–7. 7 Xavier Bougarel, “From Young Muslims to Party of Democratic Action: The Emergence of a Pan- Islamist Trend in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Islamic Studies 36, no. 2/3 (1997): 533–49; Xavier Bougarel, “L’islam bosniaque, entre identité culturelle et idéologie politique,” in Le Nouvel islam balkanique: les musulmans, acteurs du post-communisme, 1990-2000, by Xavier Bougarel and Nathalie Clayer (Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2001), 80–90. 8 Xavier Bougarel, Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Surviving Empires (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 217–18.

5 dilemma between the Muslim and the Bosniak national name at its very foundation in May 1990. SDA founder Alija Izetbegović devoted part of his opening speech to the Muslim-Bosniak dilemma and announced that the SDA would resolve this issue because it “cannot stay aside in any question concerning this nation”. Izetbegović further emphasized that the SDA understood the Muslim-Bosniak dilemma as a dilemma between two different names for the exact same national category:

In the concerned Muslim-Bosniak dilemma it should primarily be said that Bosnian Muslims are what they are, and that the differences are only in the name (nomination) of that nation. Both names cover literally the same ethnic entity and the debate is practically concerned with which of those two names is more appropriate.9

The SDA founding ceremony did not resolve the Muslim-Bosniak dilemma right away, but it did successfully impose the SDA as the final decision maker in the debate about the most appropriate national name. This thesis further investigates how the SDA thereafter resolved the Muslim-Bosniak dilemma. This thesis, more specifically, analyzes how SDA articulated the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in its two successive party newspapers Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan. The SDA published the first six issues of Muslimanski Glas between November 1990 and April 1991 and thereafter shifted to its weekly publication until the outbreak of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April 1992. The war disrupted the regular distribution of Muslimanski Glas from Sarajevo and its editorial team therefore moved to Zagreb in order to launch Ljiljan as the successor to Muslimanski Glas. Ljiljan gradually replaced Muslimanski Glas during the first year of the war and this period of transition corresponded with the gradual introduction of Bosniak nationalism in Ljiljan. This thesis therefore analyzes Muslim nationalism in Muslimanski Glas and Bosniak nationalism in Ljiljan. The empirical core of this thesis thereby contributes an in-depth evaluation of primary sources that have not been systematically analyzed in previous scholarship. Muslimanski Glas was officially published as the SDA party newspaper, but the party affiliation of Ljiljan was slightly less conspicuous. Unlike Muslimanski Glas, Ljiljan did not carry the subheading “SDA newspaper” on its cover page, but the paper instead featured the heading “newspaper for free Bosnia-Herzegovina” above its logo. Ljiljan, however, continued to print the address of the SDA party

9 Opening speech at the SDA founding ceremony on May 26, 1990, republished in: Alija Izetbegović, Robovi biti nećemo: govori 1990-1995 (Sarajevo: OKO, 2005), 17–21.

6 headquarters as its own address in Bosnia-Herzegovina in each issue between 1992 and 1995. Ljiljan also continued to report closely on the SDA’s internal affairs and loyally published all SDA press releases and party speeches. The continuity between Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan in both editorial personnel and newspaper content indicates that both newspapers functioned as de facto party newspapers that loyally transmitted the official party line of the SDA. The ideological stances in Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan did not necessarily reflect the positions of all currents within the SDA, but Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan clearly transmitted the dominant ideological position of the party in close alignment to stances taken by party founder Alija Izetbegović. This thesis therefore studies the dominant ideological stances of the SDA, using Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan as the main primary sources. In order to answer the overall problem statement about how and why Muslim nationalism transformed into Bosniak nationalism, this thesis investigates three specific research questions. The first research question is concerned with how the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism has been contextualized in previous scholarship. The answer to this research question provides the referential framework for the next two research questions, which focus on the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in the SDA party newspapers. The second research question asks how the SDA articulated Muslim nationalism in Muslimanski Glas and the third research question asks how the SDA articulated Bosniak nationalism in Ljiljan. The three chapters of this thesis each aim to answer one of these research questions in the listed order. The overall conclusion thereafter combines the answers to these three research questions in order to explain how and why Muslim nationalism transformed into Bosniak nationalism.

Theory and Methodology This thesis draws from the mainstream theories of nationalism in order to analyze the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism. The Muslim/Bosniak case has so far remained relatively isolated from the mainstream theories of nationalism. Scholars of nationalism have rarely included the Muslim/Bosniak case in their theories and scholarly observations of the Muslim/Bosniak case have rarely referred to theories of nationalism. One rare theoretical reference to the Muslim/Bosniak case was made by Ernest Gellner in his most prominent work on nationalism. Gellner described the Muslim/Bosniak case as “fascinating and profoundly revealing” since it illustrated his

7 hypothetical argument that religion can transform into culture before nationalism demands this culture to be congruent with a state.10 This hypothesis has the potential of generalizing the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism as a trajectory from Muslim nationalist claims to culture towards Bosniak nationalist claims to statehood. This case study of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism therefore partly applies Gellner’s generalizing theory of nationalism. This thesis combines Gellner’s generalizing approach with theories of nationalism that have been more sensitive to the specific features of individual cases of nationalism. Benedict Anderson stands out as one of the first scholars of nationalism to include comparative case studies in his theory of nationalism. Anderson defined nations as imagined communities and argued that especially newspapers played an essential role in allowing nations to be imagined.11 These theoretical notions have helped this thesis in identifying the SDA party newspapers as important instruments of nationalist imagination. Anderson analyzed newspaper narratives and fragments and thereby provided the theoretical groundwork for other studies analyzing the content of nationalist ideologies.12 As such, Anderson’s theory of nationalism represents an important analytical lens for exploring exactly how the SDA party newspapers imagined Muslim and Bosniak nationhood. This thesis, however, mirrors Anderson’s nation-centered approach with the state-centered approach of John Breuilly in order to focus the analysis on the political content of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism. Breuilly warned that “a vague definition of nationalism which includes any statements about nations or ethnic groups would create an impossibly large subject”.13 He therefore conceptualized nationalism as a form of politics that is expressed in relation to the state. This narrow definition of nationalism allowed Breuilly to classify three types of nationalism in terms of their relation to existing states. Separation nationalism seeks to break away from the state, unification nationalism seeks to unite with other states and reform nationalism seeks to reform the existing state into a nationalist direction. 14 Particular cases of nationalism can either fit one of these types or the typology can explain different dimensions of a particular case of nationalism. This thesis draws on Breuilly’s theory

10 Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 71–72. 11 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1991), 5–6 and 25–36. 12 Ibid., 26–32. 13 Breuilly, Nationalism and the State, 3. 14 Ibid., 1–9 and 14–15.

8 of nationalism in order to explore the exact relation of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism to the concept of statehood in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The final and most significant layer of theory in this thesis is provided by Rogers Brubaker as one of today’s leading theorists of nationalism. Brubaker’s theoretical arguments and analytical concepts neatly complement and nuance earlier contributions by Gellner, Anderson and Breuilly. Brubaker partly criticized their combined view of nationalism as nation-based, state-seeking activity and instead argued that nationalist politics are “infinitely protean” since “the interests of a putative nation can be seen as requiring many kinds of actions other than, or in addition to, formal independence”.15 In his view, nationalism therefore “resists neat parsing into types”. He instead proposed a simple distinction between state-framed and counter-state understandings of nationhood because the “inexhaustible moral and political ambiguities and dilemmas generated by nationalism can then be addressed on their own terms”.16 This thesis especially applies this valuable theoretical argument of Rogers Brubaker in addressing the ambiguities and dilemmas of Muslim/Bosniak nationalist politics on their own terms. Rogers Brubaker has specifically applied his theoretical arguments to the comparative analysis of nationalism in post-communist Europe and Eurasia. This thesis therefore relies on Brubaker’s analytical typology of post-communist nationalism in order to frame Muslim/Bosniak nationalism as a single case of the wider phenomenon of post-communist nationalism. Brubaker’s typology classified three categories of post-communist nationalism that are bound together in a triadic relational nexus across post-communist Europe and Eurasia. Brubaker defined these three categories as nationalizing nationalism, minority nationalism and homeland nationalism. Nationalizing nationalism asserts a post-communist successor state as a nation-state despite its internal heterogeneity. Minority nationalism asserts claims on behalf of a national minority within a post-communist successor state. Homeland nationalism asserts the right of a post-communist successor state to support the interests of its co-nationals in other states.17 Brubaker’s comparative analysis has explicitly excluded the case of Bosnia-Herzegovina from this typology. Brubaker noted that almost all twenty-odd post-communist successor states are generally

15 Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism,” in The State of the Nation, ed. John Hall (Cambridge University Press, 1998), 276. 16 Rogers Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2004), 146. 17 Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 4–6 and 60–69.

9 understood as nationalizing nation-states with “the partial and ambiguous exceptions of Bosnia-Herzegovina, rump Yugoslavia and the Russian Federation”.18 This thesis anyway frames its analysis of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a case study of post-communist nationalism in order to qualify exactly how the Muslim/Bosniak case constitutes a partial and ambiguous exception to Brubaker’s analytical category of nationalizing nationalism. The methodology of this thesis systematically flows from its theoretical framework. Chapter one first presents how previous scholarship has contextualized the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism. This first chapter provides the referential framework for the empirical analysis in the next two chapters. Chapter two analyzes how the SDA articulated Muslim nationalism in Muslimanski Glas and chapter three analyzes how the SDA articulated Bosniak nationalism in Ljiljan. The empirical analysis in these two chapters follows an identical three-step method that is inspired by the mainstream theories of nationalism. The first step applies Anderson’s nation-centered approach to the analysis of the SDA’s nation-talk, meaning its stances on nationhood. The second step applies Breuilly’s state-centered approach to the analysis of the SDA’s state-talk, meaning its stances on statehood. The third step thereafter applies a Brubaker-inspired approach to the analysis of the SDA’s nationalist politics, meaning the legitimization of its policies in the name of the nation. This three-step method informs the selection and categorization of articles from Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan on the basis of their respective expressions of nation-talk, state-talk and nationalist politics. The mainstream theories of nationalism thereby serve to analyze the case of Muslim/Bosniak nationalism through different analytical lenses. The conclusion of this thesis finally qualifies the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in theorized and comparable terms.

18 Ibid., 104.

10 1. SCHOLARSHIP ON MUSLIM AND BOSNIAK NATIONALISM

This chapter provides an overview of scholarly contributions on Muslim and Bosniak nationalism as the referential framework for analyzing the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in the SDA party newspapers Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan. The chapter makes a distinction between international scholarship and scholarship from Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to relate the findings of this study to both these fields of scholarship.

1.1. International scholarship The transformation of Muslim nationalism towards more strident and xenophobic tendencies in the course of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina was observed fairly early by Laura Silber and Allan Little in the Death of Yugoslavia, which was published for the BBC immediately after the war.19 Silber and Little produced a milestone journalist account of Yugoslavia’s dissolution, offering rich detail on the basis of extensive interviews with the wartime key actors themselves. Their treatment of Muslim nationalism was fragmentary but convincingly explained its radicalization as a desperate response of the SDA-led Bosnian government to its hopeless military situation and diplomatic isolation during the war.20 The first scholarly treatments of the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina followed soon after the initial journalist reports. Because, at the time, archival sources were still lacking, these pioneer studies provided so-called “instant histories”, relying on available secondary literature and longue durée explanations.21 The most common scholarly approach to Muslim nationalism became to trace the history of Bosnian Muslims back to the Middle Ages.22 Some of these studies asserted that a delay in the development of nationalism had been a consistent factor in the history of Bosnian Muslims.23 Other overview works altogether ignored

19 Laura Silber and Allan Little, The Death of Yugoslavia (London: Penguin, 1996), 297–308. 20 Ibid., 207–20, 297–308, 365 and 384–87. 21 Gale Stokes et al., “Instant History: Understanding the Wars of Yugoslav Succession,” Slavic Review 55, no. 1 (1996): 136–60. 22 Mark Pinson, ed., The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina: Their Historic Development from the Middle Ages to the Dissolution of Yugoslavia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996); Francine Friedman, The Bosnian Muslims: Denial of a Nation (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996). 23 Florian Bieber, “Muslim Identity in the Balkans Before the Establishment of Nation States,” Nationalities Papers 28, no. 1 (2000): 13–28; Francine Friedman, “The Muslim Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Islam as National Identity,” Nationalities Papers 28, no. 1 (2000): 165–80.

11 the existence of Muslim nationalism.24 The more detailed longue durée accounts, however, gave rise to the nascent scholarly consensus that Muslim nationalism radicalized during the war towards the de facto acceptance of a Muslim-majority rump state within a partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina, under pressure from violently imposed Serbian and Croatian nationalist partition plans and endorsement of such partition plans by the international community.25 The long durée approach has thus contextualized Muslim nationalism pointing out the external factors that led to its internal radicalization. Robert Donia and John Fine have indicated that the ascendancy of Muslim nationalism within the Bosnian government by 1993 was primarily the result of the Serbian and Croatian nationalist campaigns of territorial conquest and ethnic cleansing that violently reduced the government-controlled territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina to besieged and deprived Muslim-majority areas.26 Marko Attila Hoare clarified that the ratification of partition by the international mediators in successive peace plans, was furthermore a catalyst for the SDA-led Bosnian government to retreat from defending Bosnia-Herzegovina in favor of accepting a Muslim-majority rump state.27 Xavier Bougarel stood out from other scholars within the tradition of longue durée explanations by paying more detailed attention to the political dimension of the radicalization of Muslim nationalism. Bougarel argued that the essence of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina lay in the evolution of political configurations between and within the Bosnian national communities rather than in its military and diplomatic developments.28 His focus on the political aspects of the war informed several lucid observations of the ambiguities between the SDA’s nationalist politics and its formal commitment to the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina.29 Bougarel pointed out that the SDA collaborated in the dismemberment of the Bosnian state in the pre-war period in coalition with the main Serb and Croat nationalist parties. During the war, the SDA continued this tendency by monopolizing power in government-held territories. Bougarel concluded that by establishing an SDA-dominated one-party state in the

24 Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York: NYU Press, 1996), 234–71. 25 Robert Donia and John Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina: A Tradition Betrayed (London: Hurst, 1994), 237, 259–68 and 277–80; Bougarel, Bosnie, Anatomie d’un conflict, 64–66, 69–70 and 72–73; Marko Attila Hoare, The History of Bosnia: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Saqi, 2007), 373–85. 26 Donia and Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina, 262–68 and 277–80. 27 Hoare, History of Bosnia, 376–79; Donia and Fine, Bosnia and Hercegovina, 259–62 and 280. 28 Bougarel, Bosnie, Anatomie d’un conflict, 77. 29 Ibid., 44–50, 55–57, 64–66, 69–70, 72–73 and 90–97.

12 government-held territories, the SDA effectively contributed to the creation of a Muslim entity within a partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina.30 Bougarel presented a synthesis of his oeuvre in his 2018 monograph on Islam and nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1878 and 2012. This longue durée chronicle included three chapters on the period between 1990 and 1995 of which two were focused on Islam and one dealt with nationalism.31 Especially the chapter on nationalism offered a breakthrough in the understanding of SDA politics, showing that the SDA consistently prioritized the political sovereignty of the Muslim nation over the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA’s preference for Muslim sovereignty provided the internal political rationale for the final acceptance of a Muslim-majority rump state while external factors had pushed Muslim nationalism towards radicalization. Bougarel pointed out that the SDA’s assertion of national sovereignty and acceptance of partition simultaneously reached their turning point at the Bosniak Congress of September 27 1993.32 While Bougarel discussed the Bosniak Congress mainly in his chapter on nationalism, his next chapter on Islam and Bosniak identity provided a more detailed evaluation of the nominal change from Muslim to Bosniak national identity that was initiated at the Bosniak Congress. Bougarel’s analytical focus on Islam informed his conclusion that the shift to the Bosniak national name was mainly a shift fusing Islam and national identity by transforming the secular Muslim identity into a Bosniak identity with religious overtones.33 The longue durée approach has thus reached the scholarly consensus that Muslim nationalism radicalized under external pressure, internally mainly leading to the Islamization of Bosniak national identity.34 This religious outcome of radicalizing Muslim nationalism has been confirmed by other scholars that have analyzed the role of religion in the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina.35 These scholars have, however, also pointed out that religion was mainly abused as an instrument for nationalist purposes and that the return of religion in the public sphere reflected nationalist manipulation rather than spontaneous religious revival.36 Bougarel himself gained similar insights,

30 Bougarel, “L’islam bosniaque, entre identité culturelle et idéologie politique,” 79–132. 31 Bougarel, Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 111–39, 141–67 and 169–84. 32 Ibid., 118–30. 33 Ibid., 141–51. 34 Hoare, History of Bosnia, 382; Bougarel, Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 146–51. 35 Vjekoslav Perica, Balkan Idols: Religion and Nationalism in Yugoslav States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 74–88; Mitja Velikonja, Religious Separation and Political Intolerance in Bosnia-Herzegovina (College Station: TAMU Press, 2003), 276–81. 36 Perica, Balkan Idols, 218–23; Velikonja, Religious Separation and Political Intolerance, 287–95.

13 noting that the Islamization of Bosniak identity was an authoritarian process that in fact led to the nationalization of Islam rather than the genuine Islamization of the nation. 37 These scholarly observations have all indicated that nationalism took predominance over religion and it is therefore surprising that these longue durée accounts of Muslim and Bosniak nationalism have paid far more attention to Islam than to the non-religious content of the nationalist ideology itself. It has been furthermore pointed out that the conventional longue durée approach to nationalism in scholarship on Yugoslavia is methodologically problematic since it reifies the existence of nations over time by recounting their past in long-term explanations.38 In line with such arguments, Iva Lučić has recently demonstrated that studying the Muslim nationalist discourse with a narrower timescale and more attention for its immediate context could provide greater understanding of its exact causes and dimensions. Lučić has demonstrated how the affirmation of Muslim national identity in the 1970s was simultaneously motivated and limited by the overall aim of strengthening the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the shared homeland of Muslims, Serbs and Croats.39 In another recent study, Armina Omerika has applied a narrower timescale and focus on developments in the Islamic religious discourse in Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1918 and 1983. Her research has provided detailed insights regarding the ideological and organizational origins of the SDA.40 It is thus evident that considerable contributions can be made by applying a more contemporary approach to understudied aspects of Muslim and Bosniak nationalism. Previous scholarship has omitted to systematically evaluate the content of the ideological change from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism between 1990 and 1995, leaving the research gap that I address in this study. This research shifts attention from Islam to nationalism, aiming to reveal the ideological essence of the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism rather than its effects in the religious sphere. I accordingly exchange the longue durée perspective for a narrower timescale in order to focus on the internal content instead of the external context of the shift to Bosniak nationalism. The research also relies on the empirical analysis of primary sources rather than depending on secondary literature. I furthermore aim to

37 Bougarel, Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 146–51. 38 Baker, The Yugoslav Wars, 3. 39 Iva Lučić, Im Namen der Nation : Der politische Aufwertungsprozess der Muslime im sozialistischen Jugoslawien (1956–1971) (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2016), 21–28 and 288–305. 40 Armina Omerika, Islam in Bosnien-Herzegowina und die Netzwerke der Jungmuslime (1918-1983) (Harrassowitz Verlag, 2014), 306 and 331.

14 relate the findings of this study to both the international state of the art and to scholarship published in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

1.2. Scholarship in Bosnia-Herzegovina A select body of scholarship published in Bosnia-Herzegovina has been of great support to this study by proving the merits of evidence-based research with a narrow timescale and a contemporary focus on topics closely related to Muslim and Bosniak nationalism. Scholars at the Institute of History in Sarajevo have especially produced valuable contributions that have unfortunately gone largely unnoticed in the wider field of scholarship, due to language barriers and a lack of international contacts.41 In 2000, the institute’s former director, Enver Redžić was the first Bosnian historian to critically address the SDA’s pre-war and wartime nationalist politics.42 As an older and well-established scholar, Redžić was able to raise controversial issues that were thereafter taken up by younger colleagues. Husnija Kamberović, who was the director of the Institute of History between 2002 and 2016, oversaw a generation of younger scholars who critically confronted the recent past of Bosnia-Herzegovina providing highly relevant evidence-based groundwork for further research.43 The Institute of History in Sarajevo has presented a selection of its scholarship on topics related to Muslim and Bosniak nationalism at a conference in 2008.44 At this conference, Dženita Sarač-Rujanac presented her research on the relation between religious and national identity among Muslims, which she later published in a more extensive monograph.45 Sabina Veladžić unveiled an exceptionally well-documented account of the role of the Islamic weekly Preporod in the national homogenization of Muslims in 1990. Veladžić’s analysis of Preporod articles illustrated how the religious weekly articulated nationalist demands embedded within a general cult of

41 Christian Promitzer, “Whose Is Bosnia? Post-Communist Historiographies in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” in (Re)Writing History: Historiography in Southeast Europe After Socialism, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer (Berlin: Lit, 2004), 54–93. 42 Enver Redžić, Sto godina muslimanske politike u tezama i kontraverzama istorijske nauke: geneza ideje bosanske, bošnjačke nacije (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2000), 101–16, 170–78 and 194. 43 Husnija Kamberović, Historiografija u Bosni i Hercegovini u službi politike (Zagreb: Srednja Europa, 2012), 69–72; Promitzer, “Post-Communist Historiographies in Bosnia-Herzegovina,” 78–80. 44 Husnija Kamberović, “Razlozi za održavanje skupa ‘Nacionalni identitet Bošnjaka 1945-2008,’” in Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka, ed. Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2009), 9–14. 45 Dženita Sarač-Rujanac, “Neuspjeh sekularizacije i jačanje religijskog identiteta početkom 1980-ih godina u Bosni i Hercegovini,” in Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka, ed. Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2009), 153–84; Dženita Sarač-Rujanac, Odnos vjerskog i nacionalnog u identitetu Bošnjaka od 1980. do 1990. godine (Sarajevo: Insitut za istoriju, 2012).

15 Muslim national victimhood. 46 Šaćir Filandra and Admir Mulaosmanović also contributed at the 2008 conference and both scholars thereafter published notable monographs independently from the Institute of History.47 Filandra’s research has mainly focused on Bosniak politics in the twentieth century. His first book outlined an essentialist national narrative, admittedly written to support “the construction of a new Bosniak identity”.48 His second book was less politicized and provided a more documented overview of post-socialist Bosniak political ideas and actions. Filandra voiced considerable criticism of the wartime Bosniak elite, but consistently combined his critiques with conformist conclusions that contradicted his own findings. His final conclusion, for example, criticized the post-socialist Bosniak elite for opportunism and lack of a concrete conception of Bosnian statehood, while also claiming that “the Bosniak answer to the challenges of the post-socialist and post-Yugoslav ideological and political transitions was legitimate and positive”.49 Filandra characterized Bosniak nationalism as a unique type of non-violent defensive nationalism that resisted the nation-state model due to its attachment to the idea of multinational Bosnian statehood.50 He pointed out that part of the Bosniak elite advocated the creation of a Bosniak nation-state at the Bosniak Congress of 1993, but argued that this was a short-lived deviation in Bosniak politics that thereafter never again called the integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina into question.51 Despite the general conformism of his arguments, Filandra provided several critical observations and valuable references to primary sources. For Admir Mulaosmanović some of Filandra’s observations were too critical. He argued that Filandra’s criticism of the SDA and the Bosniak Congress for considering the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina was unjustified because the political options were limited at that time.52 The central thesis of Mulaosmanović’s political

46 Sabina Veladžić, “Homogenizacija Bošnjaka kroz Preporod 1990,” in Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka, ed. Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2009), 185–217. 47 Šaćir Filandra, “Crnogorski bošnjaci i renominacija nacije,” in Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka, ed. Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2009), 83–96; Admir Mulaosmanović, “Nacionalni identitet u kontekstu izraženog regionalnog identiteta i političkih potresa u Bihaćkoj krajini,” in Rasprave o nacionalnom identitetu Bošnjaka, ed. Husnija Kamberović (Sarajevo: Institut za istoriju, 2009), 137–52. 48 Šaćir Filandra, Bošnjačka politika u XX. stoljeću (Sarajevo: Sejtarija, 1998), 6. 49 Šaćir Filandra, Bošnjaci nakon socijalizma: o bošnjačkom identitetu u postjugoslavenskom dobu (Sarajevo: BZK Preporod, 2012), 453–55. 50 Ibid., 134–44. 51 Ibid., 269–87. 52 Admir Mulaosmanović, Iskušenje opstanka: Izetbegovićevih deset godina 1990. - 2000. (Sarajevo: Dobra Knjiga, 2013), 132.

16 biography of Alija Izetbegović was that the SDA founder and the wartime head of state, acted from a position of powerlessness due to which he mostly dealt with the fate that was imposed on him by others, only rarely having more significant influence on the course of history.53 Mulaosmanović interpreted Izetbegović’s readiness to accept the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a positive sign that Izetbegović had no dilemma when forced to choose the survival the Bosniak nation over the survival of the Bosnian state.54 Mulaosmanović mainly relied on the memoirs of local politicians and foreign diplomats for his account. Izetbegović’s memoirs, Sjećanja, featured most prominently among Mulaosmanović’s references, often leading to strong resemblance between his explanations and the retrospective evaluations of Izetbegović himself.55 Most of these works from Bosnia-Herzegovina have thus focused on the political history of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such studies have mapped out the main political actors and events of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina but have omitted to systematically study the political ideas that motivated these actors and events. This study tries to address part of that gap by systematically studying the ideological transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in the SDA party newspapers Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan.

53 Ibid., 7–8, 116 and 211–15. 54 Ibid., 155. 55 Alija Izetbegović, Sjećanja: autobiografski zapis (Sarajevo: OKO, 2005); Mulaosmanović additionally relied on Izetbegović’s republished interviews, statements and letters: Alija Izetbegović, Bosna je velika tajna: intervjui 1989.-1995. (Sarajevo: OKO, 2005); Alija Izetbegović, Na razmeđu svjetova: izjave, obraćanja, poruke, pisma 1990-2003 (Sarajevo: OKO, 2005).

17 2. MUSLIM NATIONALISM IN MUSLIMANSKI GLAS (1990-1992)

The SDA launched Muslimanski Glas as its party newspaper and media outlet in November 1990, at the peak of its campaign for the first post-communist elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina. SDA Executive Committee member Džemaludin Latić assumed position as the editor-in-chief of Muslimanski Glas and his introduction to the first issue announced that the purpose of the party newspaper was “to express the political attitudes and aspirations of the Muslim nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina”.56 From its first issue onwards, Muslimanski Glas, thus, embodied the very essence of Muslim nationalism by invoking the Muslim nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a homogeneous group with common interests while equating these putative Muslim national interests with the stances and policies of the SDA.57 This chapter provides a text-based analysis of pre-war Muslim nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina by demonstrating exactly how Muslimanski Glas legitimized the stances and policies of the SDA in the 17-month period before the outbreak of war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April 1992. The first issue of Muslimanski Glas presented the main stances of the SDA by providing the full SDA party program on its last pages. The party program vaguely coined the SDA as “the political alliance of Yugoslav citizens belonging to the Muslim cultural-historical circle”, but its sixteen party principles clarified that the SDA primarily claimed to represent the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The first six party principles defined democracy as “the rule of the nation” and demanded Yugoslavia as a “community of nations” to be governed by “national representatives” in order to secure “the full equality of large and small nations”. 58 These general concerns with asserting national sovereignty in Yugoslavia reinforced the central claim of the SDA party program, which was presented as its seventh principle:

Bosnian-Herzegovinian Muslims, both those living in Bosnia-Herzegovina and those living outside its borders, are an autochthonous Bosnian nation, and thus form one of the six historical nations of Yugoslavia, with its own historical name, its soil under its feet, its history, its culture, its religion, its poets and its writers; in short, its past and its future. The SDA will therefore revive the national consciousness of B-H Muslims and insist on asserting the facts of their national distinctiveness with all the corresponding legal and political consequences.59

56 Džemaludin Latić, “Uz prvi broj Muslimanskog glasa,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 5. 57 For this cognitive essence of nationalism see: Brubaker, Ethnicity Without Groups, 7–18. 58 “Programska deklaracija Stranke demokratske akcije,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 62–64. 59 Ibid., 63.

18 This key section of the SDA party program listed the unspecified historical, territorial, cultural and religious criteria by which the SDA imagined the Muslim nation as a distinct community. It, furthermore, proclaimed the assertion of Muslim national distinctiveness as the SDA’s overall platform for making political and legal demands. The seventh principle of the SDA party program, thus, defined the SDA as a Muslim nationalist party because it asserted Muslim national sovereignty as the primary source of political legitimacy.60 The SDA party program, however, expressed its assertion of Muslim national sovereignty in direct contradiction to its simultaneous concern with the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the extension of its seventh principle:

While asserting the right of B-H Muslims to live on this soil under their own national name as an autochthonous nation, we recognize this right equally and without any reservations or limitations to Serbs and Croats as well as all other nations and nationalities in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this regard, we assert our particular interest in the preservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the joint state of Muslims, Serbs and Croats.61

This section contradicted itself since the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina over all of its citizens and the national sovereignty of Muslims as only one of its nations were incongruent principles. The principle of territorial sovereignty ascribed self-determination to the entire citizenry of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the principle of national sovereignty invoked the legitimacy of separate Muslim, Serb and Croat self-determination within Bosnia-Herzegovina.62 The SDA internalized this ambiguity by proclaiming the preservation of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the joint state of Muslims, Serbs and Croats to be a particular Muslim interest. The SDA, thus, asserted the sovereignty of a multinational state on the basis of a mononational platform. In three parts, this chapter shows how the SDA continued to base its pre-war ideology of Muslim nationalism on the simultaneous assertion of the national sovereignty of Muslims and the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The first part analyzes the SDA’s pre-war stances on nationhood in Muslimanski Glas, while the second part analyzes the SDA’s pre-war stances on statehood in Muslimanski Glas. The third part analyzes how Muslimanski Glas legitimized the SDA’s pre-war policies that operatively tried to overcome the contradictions between its stances on nationhood and statehood. On the basis of this three-part analysis of

60 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 6; Bougarel, Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 106. 61 “Programska deklaracija Stranke demokratske akcije,” 63. 62 Tarik Haverić, I vrapci na grani (Sarajevo: Rabić, 2009), 121–28.

19 Muslimanski Glas texts from between November 1990 and April 1992, this chapter demonstrates how the SDA led pre-war Muslim nationalism to increasingly prioritize Muslim national sovereignty over the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

2.1. Nation-talk in Muslimanski Glas (1990-1992) SDA founder Alija Izetbegović prioritized the assertion of Muslim national sovereignty as his primary aim even before the SDA and Muslimanski Glas were founded. In his first ever interview for the Yugoslav press, Izetbegović argued that, in Yugoslav decision-making, Muslim national sovereignty should have primacy over the republican sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina, because “the nation is the origin of sovereignty and the republic is just an expression thereof”.63 Izetbegović later made a similar statement for the Bosnian press, pointing out that “the nation is the carrier of original sovereignty”. 64 These initial media statements indicated that the SDA understood national sovereignty as the legitimizing principle for organizing the Muslim nation as a distinct political factor in Yugoslavia. The first issues of Muslimanski Glas embedded such early statements within a more elaborate Muslim nationalist platform centered on the SDA party program. Muslimanski Glas legitimized the SDA’s focus on asserting Muslim national sovereignty as a remedial political project that was supposed to compensate for alleged anti-Muslim discrimination in the past.65 The party newspaper supported this argument with historical narratives of Muslim victimhood, which suggested that the SDA would bring an end to previous periods of suffering and inequality. SDA politician Haris Silajdžić provided Muslimanski Glas with its first such narrative, describing Muslim history as one centuries-long struggle of the Muslim nation for the protection of its territory, freedom, faith and culture. Silajdžić especially focused on the political engagement of Muslims in the Austro-Hungarian and Yugoslav monarchies and concluded that in both states, Muslims had been underrepresented at all levels of government.66 In similar terms, Alija Izetbegović described the position of Muslims in Socialist Yugoslavia, claiming that “due to the policy of the last 40 years, they have not been sufficiently affirmed as a nation, they are not conscious

63 Interview in Delo, November 18, 1989, republished in: Izetbegović, Bosna je velika tajna, 21–27. 64 Statement in Oslobođenje, July 19, 1990, republished in: Izetbegović, Na razmeđu svjetova, 15. 65 For nationalism as a form of remedial political action see: Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 79–84. 66 Haris Silajdžić, “Sadašnjost prošlosti: korijeni političkog organizovanja Muslimana,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 47–50.

20 enough, and their interests are not pronounced in any way”. 67 Editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić, finally, drew such victimizing nation-talk towards its conclusion:

Distinct from others, naïve, lucid, unwary and unhappy, the Muslim nation awaited the SDA as heavenly mercy for its perishing, suffering and hiding.68

These narratives of Muslim victimhood all stressed the Muslim nation’s lack of political representation in the past, in order to promote the SDA as the first and only true representative of the Muslim nation in the present. The ideological function of such victimizing nation-talk in Muslimanski Glas was, thus, the homogenization of Muslims as a single political factor represented by the SDA. In line with such victimizing nation-talk, Alija Izetbegović, told Muslimanski Glas that the SDA’s victory in the elections of November 1990 represented “the historical chance” that “the Muslim nation has awaited for over a hundred years” in order to become “a political factor of Yugoslav significance” as “the most numerous nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina”.69 This statement ascribed political relevance to the population size of the Muslim nation within Bosnia-Herzegovina and confirmed that the SDA aimed to organize the Muslim nation as a political factor in Yugoslavia. Izetbegović, in fact, claimed that the SDA had already united the Muslim nation in its election campaign and that the party hereafter intended to consolidate this Muslim national unity in Yugoslav politics. Izetbegović’s repeated emphasis on organizing the Muslim nation as a distinct political factor indicated that the SDA aimed to seriously change the political system of Yugoslavia, which was based on the sovereignty of its six republics rather than the sovereignty of its individual nations. Muslimanski Glas endorsed the SDA’s prioritization of national sovereignty over republican sovereignty by reporting that the appointment of Alija Izetbegović as the president of the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina in December 1990 finally made “Muslims equal participants” in Yugoslav decision-making. The presidents of all six Yugoslav republics participated in Yugoslav summit meetings on state reforms and Muslimanski Glas emphasized that with Izetbegović as the representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina, “Muslims will have to be consulted about the future of Yugoslavia”. In this regard, Muslimanski Glas even announced that Izetbegović would attend the Yugoslav summit meetings with a “Muslim answer” to the central

67 Željko Vuković, “Intervju sa Alijom Izetbegovićem,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 51–53. 68 Džemaludin Latić, “Izraz svih pa i vjerskih prava,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 29. 69 Alija Izetbegović, “Istorijska šansa,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 10.

21 dilemma between federal and confederal plans for Yugoslavia.70 The wording of this report explicitly monopolized the representation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Yugoslavia as a Muslim affair, which implicitly excluded all non-Muslim citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina. By framing Izetbegović as a Muslim representative while he was officially entitled and obliged to represent all citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Muslimanski Glas verbally replaced the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina with the sovereignty of the Muslim nation in Yugoslav decision-making. In order to outline the “Muslim answer” on the Yugoslav question, Muslimanski Glas staff members Mehmedalija Hadžić, Nedžad Latić, Hadžem Hajdarević and Zilhad Ključanin joined 80 other SDA activists and Muslim intellectuals in drafting and signing the “Resolution of 84 Muslim Intellectuals” in January 1991. Altogether, the eight points of this Resolution demanded “Muslims to be assured of the same position in the joint state as all the other participants” on the grounds of yet another victimizing narrative of alleged Muslim inequality. The Resolution additionally legitimized its demand for national equality on the basis of the Muslim nation’s size as “the third largest Yugoslav nation” and its acclaimed status as “one of the old European nations”. The seventh point of the Resolution, moreover, demanded the Yugoslav presidency to be made up of national rather than republican representatives, claiming that in this supreme federal institution “Muslims, who until now have always been neglected, should receive the place that belongs to them”. 71 The Resolution of 84 Muslim Intellectuals, thus, provided the SDA with intellectual support to officially replace the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina with the sovereignty of the Muslim nation at the highest levels of Yugoslav decision-making. The main stance of the Resolution of 84 Muslim Intellectuals, however, combined its insistence on Muslim national sovereignty with defining the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the vital interest of the sovereign Muslim nation:

Muslims are a distinct and sovereign nation! The survival and development of all Muslims in Yugoslavia is not separable from the survival and development of the sovereign democratic state of Bosnia-Herzegovina! 72

The Resolution of 84 Muslim Intellectuals, thereby, fused the otherwise incongruent principles of the national sovereignty of Muslims and the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina. While the entire Resolution asserted Muslim national

70 Džemaludin Latić, “Muslimani ravnopravni sudionici,” Muslimanski Glas, February 1, 1991, 1–2. 71 “Rezolucija muslimanskih intelektualaca,” Muslimanski Glas, February 1, 1991, 10–11. 72 Ibid., 11.

22 sovereignty in contrast to the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina, its main stance anyway demanded the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina on the platform of Muslim national sovereignty. This core stance of pre-war Muslim nationalism paradoxically implied that the territorial sovereignty of multinational Bosnia-Herzegovina could be based on the mononational platform of vital Muslim interests alone. With such contradictions in its pre-war nation-talk, the SDA faced a serious challenge in formulating coherent state-talk in the pre-war issues of Muslimanski Glas.

2.2. State-talk in Muslimanski Glas (1990-1992) Whereas the SDA’s nation-talk in Muslimanski Glas primarily asserted Muslim national sovereignty at the federal level of Yugoslavia, the SDA’s state-talk focused more on relating Muslim nationhood to the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina at the republican level. The SDA thereby continued to fuse the principles of national and territorial sovereignty, while facing a serious challenge in relating its mononational platform of Muslim nationalism to the multinational state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslimanski Glas legitimized such state-talk from its first issue onwards and outlined exactly how the SDA envisioned the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina to be based entirely on the principle of national sovereignty:

The SDA advocates a natural form of government in Bosnia-Herzegovina, meaning that all three nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina elect their own representatives for the legislative, executive and judicial branches of government; the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina should thus be governed by a Muslim-Serb-Croat coalition.73

This text announced the SDA’s pre-war coalition with the Serb nationalist SDS and the Croat nationalist HDZ as a natural Muslim-Serb-Croat alliance able to represent and rule the three nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslimanski Glas, thereby, not only equated all Muslims with the SDA but also endorsed the SDS and the HDZ as “the true representatives” of all Serbs and all Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA, furthermore, affirmed its understanding of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the joint national state of Muslims, Serbs and Croats.74 Muslimanski Glas further supported the SDA’s notion of Muslim-Serb-Croat governance in Bosnia-Herzegovina with an article by constitutional lawyer and SDA co-founder Halid Čaušević on the idea of institutionalizing national sovereignty

73 Džemaludin Latić, “Prirodan oblik vlasti,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 14–15. 74 “Zajedno sačuvati BiH,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 3.

23 through the establishment of a council of nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Čaušević presented such a council as an effective instrument of decision-making by national consensus aimed at preventing Muslim, Serb and Croat representatives from outvoting each other on issues of vital national interest. He further suggested that the council of nations could eventually become a separate chamber of parliament, while it would initially function as an informal practice of party representatives deciding by national consensus in meetings parallel to parliament.75 In the pre-war period, the SDA consequently applied this informal practice of decision-making by national consensus as the unwritten rule of its coalition with the SDS and the HDZ.76 The SDA, thereby, based both its stances and its policies regarding the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina primarily on the principle of national sovereignty. Conforming to the SDA’s focus on national sovereignty in its pre-war state-talk, Muslimanski Glas covered the formation of the SDA-SDS-HDZ government with a self-centered and exclusive focus on the public offices and state institutions that came under SDA control in the division of power between the SDA, the SDS and the HDZ.77 The nationalist coalition parties agreed by national consensus to appoint SDA party president Alija Izetbegović as the president of the seven-member presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina while, in exchange, the SDS appointed Momčilo Krajišnik as the chairman of parliament and the HDZ appointed Jure Pelivan as the prime minister. Because this arrangement placed the HDZ’s candidate at the head of government, the SDA was compensated with the appointment of two of its most prominent members as deputy prime ministers. SDA ideologue Rusmir Mahmutćehajić became deputy prime minister for social affairs and SDA secretary Muhamed Čengić became deputy prime minister for economic affairs. Within the government, Mahmutćehajić and Čengić kept the eight SDA ministers in line with the SDA’s party priorities, while the seven SDS ministers and the five HDZ ministers also primarily obeyed their party instructions, causing the SDA-SDS-HDZ government to function as three parallel shadow governments rather than one coherent coalition.78 Despite their shared understanding of national sovereignty as the primary source of political legitimacy, the SDA, the SDS and the HDZ had opposing stances on the issue of statehood in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Yugoslavia. The SDS ascribed

75 Halid Čaušević, “Vijeće naroda,” Muslimanski Glas, November 1990, 61. 76 Tarik Haverić, Ethnos i demokratija: slučaj Bosne i Hercegovine (Sarajevo: CJP, 2016), 139–42. 77 “Izabrana nova vlada BiH,” Muslimanski Glas, February 1, 1991. 78 Mulaosmanović, Iskušenje opstanka, 42–43; Andjelic, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 183–205.

24 statehood to Yugoslavia as a centralized federation, while the HDZ rather saw the Yugoslav republics as states in a decentralized confederation. The SDS thereby echoed the state-talk of the Milošević regime in Serbia, while the HDZ aligned its state-talk to the Tuđman regime in Croatia. Caught in between such SDS-HDZ disagreements on statehood in Yugoslavia, the SDA insisted on the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the vital interest of the Muslim nation. The SDA thereby echoed the Declaration of 84 Muslim Intellectuals and even adopted that Declaration as its party policy in a proclamation, which stated that “the survival of the Muslim nation directly depends on the survival and sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina”.79 In its pre-war state-talk, Muslimanski Glas, thus, continued to fuse the principles of national and territorial sovereignty by asserting the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a Muslim national interest. Muslimanski Glas most obviously captured such dualism in its presentation of the SDA’s “Declaration of the State Sovereignty and Indivisibility of Bosnia-Herzegovina”. This SDA-drafted declaration asserted the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina by stating that “the borders of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina are unchangeable” and that “sovereignty belongs to all citizens of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina”. The declaration, however, simultaneously expressed its concern with national sovereignty by defining Bosnia-Herzegovina as “the democratic state of Muslims, Serbs and Croats” with a constitution based on “national and all other equality”.80 The SDA, thus, tried to anchor Bosnia-Herzegovina on citizen sovereignty without changing its conception of Bosnia-Herzegovina as the national state of its three nations. An editorial article, right below the SDA-drafted declaration, further explained that the SDA fused its commitment to citizen sovereignty with a contradictory claim to majoritarian political privileges for the Muslim nation on the basis of its status as a distinct majority within Bosnia-Herzegovina:

Inasmuch as it is confirmed in the next census that Bosnia-Herzegovina is inhabited for over 50% by Muslims, this will be a fact of paramount political importance. For example, the procedure of the next elections will be significantly changed and it will be easier to realize the Muslim demands for equality and national balance.81

79 “Proglas SDA,” Muslimanski Glas, February 1, 1991, 1 and 6. 80 “Deklaracija o državnoj suverenosti i nedjeljivosti Republike Bosne i Hercegovine,” Muslimanski Glas, February 20, 1991, 1. 81 Džemaludin Latić, “Borba za bolju političku poziciju,” Muslimanski Glas, February 20, 1991, 1.

25 This dualism between Muslim majoritarianism and the SDA’s attempt to anchor the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina on citizen sovereignty implied that the SDA, in fact, understood Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multinational state that primarily belonged to its Muslim majority population. Muslimanski Glas further legitimized such implicit claims of Muslim state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina by repeatedly stressing that “Muslims experience Bosnia-Herzegovina as their own republic”.82 The SDA initiative to affirm the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina on the basis of citizen sovereignty produced the first tensions between the SDA and the SDS. The SDS claimed that the sovereignty declaration “ignored the existence of Yugoslavia as a state” and “denied the right of the Serb nation to live in one state”.83 Muslimanski Glas republished these SDS statements and denounced them in Izetbegović’s words as “unprecedented” and “very risky”. Izetbegović argued that “the sovereignty of the republic cannot harm anyone, least of all the Serb nation”.84 When the SDS, however, kept obstructing the SDA-drafted sovereignty declaration, Izetbegović chose more militant terms to insist on the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

For the sovereignty of Bosnia, I would sacrifice peace. For peace in Bosnia, I would not sacrifice a sovereign Bosnia.85

The SDA, thus, responded to SDS obstructionism by radicalizing its stances to the extent of announcing the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina as its war aim, more than a year ahead of the eventual outbreak of war. By this time, the nationalist coalition parties SDA, SDS and HDZ attacked each other verbally, but none of them was ready for a military confrontation. The SDA, the SDS and the HDZ, nonetheless, each radicalized their stances and secured access to arms.86 Amidst such radicalization, Muslimanski Glas even publicly announced that the SDA had established its own military wing under the name “National Council for the Defense of the Muslim Nation” at a gathering of 356 Muslim representatives on June 10, 1991.87 This SDA military wing was later renamed Patriotic League, but its initial name twice stressed its Muslim nationalist profile as a national council for the

82 “Bosna i Hercegovina je naša jedina domovina,” Muslimanski Glas, March 5, 1991, 6; Asim Gruhonjić, “Kako je Muslimanima vraćeno oteto blago,” Muslimanski Glas, May 17, 1991, 8. 83 “Deklaracija neprihvatljiva: saopštenje savjeta SDSBiH,” Muslimanski Glas, February 20, 1991, 1. 84 Alija Izetbegović, “Suverenitet republike ne može nikome štetiti, najmanje srpskom narodu u BiH,” Muslimanski Glas, February 20, 1991, 13. 85 Alija Izetbegović, “Vukovi nisu pojeli crvenkapicu,” Muslimanski Glas, March 5, 1991, 5. 86 Baker, The Yugoslav Wars, 60–61. 87 “Formiran nacionalni savjet za odbranu muslimanskog naroda,” Muslimanski Glas, June 14, 1991, 1.

26 defense of the Muslim nation. The gathering of 356 Muslim representatives further affirmed the nationalist aims of the SDA and its military wing in a proclamation:

The Muslim nation in Yugoslavia found itself at historical crossroads and before a choice that cannot be postponed. We confirm the full consent of this gathering in the view that that choice is and can only be a sovereign and unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, as the homeland of Bosnian Muslims and the fatherland of all Yugoslav Muslims. For that choice, we are ready to fight.88

This proclamation implied that Bosnia-Herzegovina exclusively belonged to the Muslim nation as its “homeland” and “fatherland”. Muslimanski Glas, furthermore, reinforced this implicit claim of Muslim state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina with the large-lettered headline that announced the proclamation on the front page, stating: “MUSLIMS DON’T GIVE UP THEIR OWN REPUBLIC”.89 The SDA’s pre-war state-talk in Muslimanski Glas, thus, gradually articulated its claim of Muslim state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina in more insistent and militant terms. Muslimanski Glas further supported such claims with historical narratives that appropriated Bosnia-Herzegovina exclusively for the Muslim nation. Izetbegović, for example, ascribed the historical coexistence of different nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina exclusively to the traditional tolerance of the Muslim nation.90 Other articles stressed that, historically, it had always been the Muslim nation that defended Bosnia-Herzegovina against foreign threats.91 Just like the SDA’s pre-war declarations, these historical narratives combined explicit commitments to citizen sovereignty with implicit claims of Muslim state-ownership. The SDA’s pre-war state-talk in Muslimanski Glas, thus, verbally insisted on the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while its implicit assertion of Muslim state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina gave rise to conceptual contradictions between nationhood and statehood, which the SDA’s pre-war policies had to overcome in practice.

2.3. Nationalist politics in Muslimanski Glas (1990-1992) Whereas the SDA’s pre-war state-talk insisted on a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina, the SDA’s pre-war policies, in practice, compromised the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina by participating in the regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina on

88 Radno predsjedništvo Skupa, “Proglas,” Muslimanski Glas, June 14, 1991, 2. 89 “Muslimani ne daju svoju republiku,” Muslimanski Glas, June 14, 1991, 1. 90 Alija Izetbegović, “Bosna je kulturno-civilizacijski unikat,” Muslimanski Glas, November 29, 1991, 6. 91 Enes Peledija, “Usud naše republike,” Muslimanski Glas, December 27, 1991, 5; Mustafa Imamović, “Višestoljetni državni kontinuitet,” Muslimanski Glas, January 10, 1992, 6.

27 a national basis. The SDA initially opposed such national regionalization when the SDS one-sidedly organized Serb-inhabited regions in Bosnia-Herzegovina in April 1991.92 Alija Izetbegović, however, denounced the one-sidedness of the SDS-led regionalization rather than the idea of regionalization itself. He emphasized that the SDA instead wanted the regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina “to be solved together with us Muslims and Croats”. 93 In May 1991, the SDA therefore created a governmental SDA-SDS-HDZ expert group for negotiating the regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina, announcing in Muslimanski Glas:

The government will be actively engaged in finding the most rational solutions and will consider scientifically verified and economically based relations in approaching the new regionalization, which will include all B-H municipalities and in which the representation of all three constitutive elements of the Republic is obligatory.94

In May 1991, the SDA, thus, initiated negotiations with the SDS and the HDZ on regionalizing Bosnia-Herzegovina among its “three constitutive elements” and Muslimanski Glas legitimized this policy shift towards national regionalization as a necessary compromise “between reality and wishes”.95 In June 1991, the SDA-SDS-HDZ coalition agreed to continue negotiations on the reorganization of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the presidency, where decisions required a full consensus between the SDA, the SDS and the HDZ. The coalition parties placed a moratorium on discussing the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina in parliament and instead tasked the presidency with formulating a joint platform on the internal arrangement and external status of Bosnia-Herzegovina within Yugoslavia. The SDA therefore withdrew its sovereignty declaration from parliament and even blocked a new resolution on the territorial integrity of Bosnia-Herzegovina, which had been drafted and proposed by the non-nationalist opposition parties in parliament.96 The SDA, thereby, openly compromised the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to negotiate a joint presidency platform with the SDS and the HDZ. In September 1991, Muslimanski Glas released the SDA’s first draft of the “Platform on the Position of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the Future Arrangement of the

92 Halil Šetka, “Ne damo nijednog našeg ćepenka,” Muslimanski Glas, April 26, 1991, 6; Mehmed Burić, “Ekonomski razlozi samo providan paravan,” Muslimanski Glas, April 26, 1991, 8. 93 Mirsad Sinanović, “Boj za dostojanstvo pod Banjalukom,” Muslimanski Glas, April 26, 1991, 5. 94 “Jednoglasno: obustavljanje regionalizacije,” Muslimanski Glas, May 17, 1991, 5. 95 “Vlada između stvarnosti i želja,” Muslimanski Glas, May 17, 1991, 5. 96 “Izdaja ili ljevičarska opereta: zašto nije izglasana Rezolucija o nepovredivosti granica BiH na posljednjem skupštinskom zasjedanju,” Muslimanski Glas, June 21, 1991, 2.

28 Yugoslav Community” before the SDA-SDS-HDZ coalition had fully agreed on the document. The draft however indicated clearly that the SDA aimed at reorganizing the political system of Bosnia-Herzegovina to account for its three nations, stating:

The appropriate structure of the parliament of Bosnia-Herzegovina will exclude the possibility of majoritarianism in decision-making about the most important questions of equality between the nations and nationalities that live in the republic. The nations and nationalities that live in Bosnia-Herzegovina will be able to secure their political and cultural development on a national basis through the structure of local government and cultural autonomies within the framework of the state integrity and sovereignty of the republic.97

This SDA draft of the Presidency Platform, thus, projected the parliament to institutionalize decision-making by national consensus and aimed at organizing the autonomy of Muslim, Serb and Croat politics and culture through the regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina at the level of local government. Muslimanski Glas further legitimized the Presidency Platform by reprinting the speech, in which Alija Izetbegović informed parliament about the SDA-SDS-HDZ negotiations about the Presidency Platform. Izetbegović raised the possibility of regionalizing Bosnia-Herzegovina by asking parliament “how to apply the otherwise indisputable principle of national self-determination to a territory where a nationally intermixed population lives”. He thereafter answered his own question, announcing:

In this regard, I want to unveil that in Bosnia-Herzegovina, since not so long ago, an idea circulates about cultural and other autonomies for the nations within the republic. This idea is not finalized yet, but its advocates claim that it could mean a way out of this particular clinch.98

Two weeks later, Izetbegović told Muslimanski Glas in an exclusive interview that the SDA and the SDS were negotiating about such national autonomies:

The SDS wants negotiations about national autonomies. We thought about accepting such negotiations. We decided to negotiate. What can we lose? We know the margins, below which we won’t go; those are the sovereignty of Bosnia and the equality of the Muslim nation.99

Through the negotiations about the Presidency Platform with the SDS and the HDZ, the SDA, thus, tried to reorganize Bosnia-Herzegovina in a way that secured both the sovereignty of the republic and the autonomy of its nations.

97 Stranka Demokratske Akcije, “Platforma o položaju Bosne i Hercegovine u budućim ustrojstvu Jugoslavenske zajednice,” Muslimanski Glas, September 13, 1991, 8. 98 Alija Izetbegović, “Granice se ne mogu menjati silom,” Muslimanski Glas, September 13, 1991, 5. 99 Džemaludin Latić and Fahira Fejzić, “Sila u Bosni neće proći,” Muslimanski Glas, September 27, 1991, 6–7; it is remarkable that this interview with Alija Izetbegović was not included in the 2005 republication of his selected interviews: Izetbegović, Bosna je velika tajna.

29 In October 1991, the SDA requested parliament to accept the SDA’s version of the Presidency Platform, but the SDS aggressively opposed its references to the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The following parliamentary debate between the SDA and the SDS lasted for four days and fully escalated with SDS leader Radovan Karadžić threatening that the Presidency Platform “will lead Bosnia-Herzegovina into hell and the Muslim nation maybe into disappearance”. The SDS left parliament and openly insisted on the territorial partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a solution based on national self-determination. Amidst such polarization, the SDA radicalized its own stances and policies. Muslimanski Glas reported that “Karadžić definitely determined the Muslim nation to favor an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina”. 100 Alija Izetbegović, moreover, stressed that “the Muslim nation will not disappear” because “it will energetically defend itself”. He also stated that “the words of mister Karadžić maybe demonstrate in the best way, why we might not want to stay in rump Yugoslavia”.101 Without the SDS, the SDA anyway secured a parliamentary majority to accept the Presidency Platform and its adoption indeed served as the official basis for requesting the European Community (EC) to recognize the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina from Yugoslavia in December 1991.102 However, in January 1992, the EC conditioned its recognition with the request for Bosnia-Herzegovina to first organize a referendum in order to determine if the majority of its citizens supported independence. The SDA accepted this request and announced that it was willing to reach a compromise with the SDS and the HDZ on the exact form of the referendum.103 The SDA, the SDS and the HDZ discussed the referendum in parliament and as an argument for holding the referendum Alija Izetbegović presented his vision of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

I want that every citizen feels free and especially every member of a nation, that every Serb rules himself, and every Croat and Muslim too, and that only that which is necessary is in the jurisdiction of our joint institutions.104

Muslimanski Glas rephrased this statement and clarified that Izetbegović considered the regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina into national cantons as a compromise “if they are the price of peace”.105 Peace was indeed at stake since the SDS had armed its

100 Dževad Hodžić, “U živom blatu prijetnje,” Muslimanski Glas, October 18, 1991, 6. 101 Alija Izetbegović, “Muslimanski narod neće nestati,” Muslimanski Glas, October 18, 1991, 2. 102 “Zahtjev BiH za evropsko priznanje,” Muslimanski Glas, December 27, 1991, 14. 103 “Konferencija za štampu SDA,” Muslimanski Glas, January 17, 1992, 4. 104 Speech in parliament January 25, 1992 republished in: Izetbegović, Robovi biti nećemo, 57. 105 Esad Hećimović, “Alijine garancije,” Muslimanski Glas, January 31, 1992, 32.

30 self-declared Serb autonomous regions in order to violently unite them as a Serb republic outside the jurisdiction of Bosnia-Herzegovina. During the parliamentary debate, Karadžić therefore demanded Bosnia-Herzegovina to be organized as a confederation of three national republics before the SDS would accept a referendum. The SDA accepted further talks on the regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina but refused to make such talks a condition for holding the referendum. The SDS left parliament in protest and the SDA thereafter anyway secured a parliamentary majority for holding the referendum.106 The next issues of Muslimanski Glas announced the last weekend of February 1992 as the referendum date and instructed its readers to vote for the independence of Bosnia-Herzegovina.107 Meanwhile, Muslimanski Glas stated that the SDA had accepted the EC to mediate in SDA-SDS-HDZ talks on regionalizing Bosnia-Herzegovina with a new constitution. The SDA party newspaper stressed that the SDA-SDS-HDZ talks were not about the referendum itself but instead about guaranteeing the equality of Muslims, Serbs and Croats in a new Bosnian constitution for after the referendum.108 EC mediator José Cutileiro endorsed Izetbegović’s earlier readiness to accept the national regionalization of Bosnia-Herzegovina and pressured the SDA to follow up on such commitments. Cutileiro convened the first SDA-SDS-HDZ meeting in Lisbon on February 21, 1992, and there proposed Bosnia-Herzegovina to be regionalized into constituent entities that would allow Muslims, Serbs and Croats to each control those municipalities in which they constituted at least a relative majority of the population.109 The SDA accepted this EC proposal as the basis for further talks and Muslimanski Glas editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić supported this policy shift by claiming that the SDA “did not betray the Muslim nation” because “over 82% of Bosnian Muslims would be gathered in the Lisbon entities” under Muslim control.110 Muslimanski Glas, thus, legitimized the SDA’s acceptance of the Cutileiro Plan by outlining that the vast majority of the Muslim nation would be united in the Cutileiro Plan’s Muslim-controlled territories.

106 Arifa Elezović, “Anatomija Karadžićeva časa u parlamentu,” Muslimanski Glas, January 31, 1992, 8; “Konferencija za štampu SDA,” Muslimanski Glas, January 31, 1992, 2. 107 Haris Silajdžić, “Nezavisnošću protiv zavisnosti,” Muslimanski Glas, January 31, 1992, 5; Rusmir Mahmutćehajić, “Korak ka pravdi za sve,” Muslimanski Glas, February 14, 1992, 5; Ejup Ganić, “Odlučuje tvoj glas,” Muslimanski Glas, February 14, 1992, 5. 108 Esad Hećimović, “Dogovor trojice ili referendum svih,” Muslimanski Glas, February 14, 1992, 2. 109 Esad Hećimović, “Niko neće odlučiti umjesto nas,” Muslimanski Glas, February 21, 1992, 2. 110 Džemaludin Latić, “Šta (ne) nudi lisabonski dogovor,” Muslimanski Glas, February 28, 1992, 4.

31 After the second round of SDA-SDS-HDZ talks in Brussels in early March 1992, Muslimanski Glas published the full Cutileiro Plan, which announced that “working groups will be organized with the aim of defining the territories of the constituent entities based on the national principle”.111 The next issue of Muslimanski Glas published the EC-proposed map, which outlined the territorial reorganization of Bosnia-Herzegovina into three nationally defined units. The EC proposed the Muslim and Serb units to each cover little less than 44% of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the Croat unit would cover the remaining 12.5%.112 Džemaludin Latić again stressed that the Muslim unit would gather 82% of all Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina and called for the acceptance of the Cutileiro Plan as a bitter compromise to avoid war:

We claim that, so far, the policy of the SDA delegation in the negotiations on the internal arrangement of B-H aimed at a short-term compromise to avoid a war, which is persistently imposed on us. Let’s drink this bitter cup!113

Three SDA representatives, hereafter, joined a nine-member SDA-SDS-HDZ working group in delineating majority-based territories, but these delineation efforts fueled the outbreak of war rather than avoiding it. The nationalist parties sharply disagreed about which territory belonged to which majority. The SDA-SDS-HDZ talks therefore polarized and fully lost sense when the SDS, in April 1992, launched a pre-planned military campaign of ethnic cleansing to seize control over more than two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina for its self-proclaimed Serb Republic.114

*** The SDA’s pre-war ideology of Muslim nationalism featured a contradiction between its mononational platform and its proclaimed commitment to Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multinational state. The SDA’s pre-war nation-talk asserted Muslim national sovereignty as the primary platform for making political demands, while the SDA’s pre-war state-talk asserted the sovereignty of a multinational Bosnia-Herzegovina as the main political demand of the Muslim nation. The SDA’s pre-war policies tried to operatively overcome this ideological contradiction by nationalizing the territorial space of Bosnia-Herzegovina through its regionalization along national lines.

111 “Izvještaj o principima za novo ustavno uređenje Bosne i Hercegovine,” Muslimanski Glas, March 13, 1992, 6. 112 “Bosna na Konaku: prijedlog evropske zajednice,” Muslimanski Glas, March 20, 1992, 2. 113 Džemaludin Latić, “Zebnje nad dogovorom u Konaku,” Muslimanski Glas, March 27, 1992, 5. 114 Baker, The Yugoslav Wars, 63–69.

32 3. BOSNIAK NATIONALISM IN LJILJAN (1992-1995)

The SDA gradually replaced Muslimanski Glas with Ljiljan as its party newspaper and media outlet during the first months of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Serb forces terrorized and occupied over two-thirds of Bosnia-Herzegovina and thereby also disrupted the distribution of Muslimanski Glas and the communication between its editorial staff members. Editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić therefore decided to regroup the editorial staff in Zagreb in order to launch Ljiljan as the official successor to Muslimanski Glas. Ljiljan continued as a “patriotic newspaper” in the tradition of the pre-war Muslimanski Glas and its first editions even contained republished issues of the Sarajevo-based Muslimanski Glas, which otherwise couldn’t reach readers beyond the besieged capital.115 The gradual replacement of Muslimanski Glas with Ljiljan coincided with a simultaneous radicalization in the SDA’s wartime stances and policies. Especially, the radicalization in the SDA’s nation-talk and state-talk during the replacement of Muslimanski Glas with Ljiljan indicated that the SDA’s ideology was gradually transforming from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism. Ljiljan first introduced such radicalization in its stances towards the international community. After the Cutileiro Plan had failed, the UN and the EC appointed Cyrus Vance and David Owen as the mediators for new negotiations in Geneva. Alija Izetbegović first welcomed such developments in Muslimanski Glas by stating that “in Bosnia, Europe is being defended”.116 However, in Ljiljan, Izetbegović later added the more radical warning that Europe “may be buried in Bosnia too”. He thereby meant to warn the UN and the EC against partitioning Bosnia-Herzegovina:

Reject plans on the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina and suppress any intentions of that kind. If you do not do that, the aggressor will, instead of punishment, receive a reward, while the two-million-member Muslim nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be deprived of its homeland. In such a case, its worse part would become criminals and its better part would become avengers. The latter would then seek revenge for the aggressor’s atrocities and the world’s indifference.117

Despite this warning, the UN and the EC continued to propose territorial partition as a solution to the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the SDA continued to accept such proposals while radicalizing its nation-talk and state-talk in Ljiljan.

115 Džemaludin Latić, “Uz prvi broj Ljiljana,” Ljiljan, August 31, 1992, 2. 116 Alija Izetbegović, “U Bosni se brani Evropa,” Muslimanski Glas, July 17, 1992, 2. 117 Alija Izetbegović, “Gospodo ovo nije običan rat!,” Ljiljan, August 31, 1992, 2.

33 The SDA further announced the radicalization of its nation-talk and state-talk, when Izetbegović told Ljiljan in an exclusive interview in October 1992, that the SDA was changing its vision of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a result of the war:

This is another Bosnia. It has changed its face and spirit. It went through a terrible experience. I have verified that this really is the case. Until now we have talked about the coexistence of three nations, but now we talk about the coexistence of two nations.118

Izetbegović, thus, excluded Serbs from his vision of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a result of the SDS-led military campaign against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Two months later, in December 1992, tensions with the HDZ similarly led Džemaludin Latić to exclude Croats too. Latić cited the nineteenth-century romantic poet Safvet-Beg Bašagić with a poem claiming that Bosnia-Herzegovina once belonged to the Bosniak nation alone while Serbs and Croats allegedly didn’t even exist at that time. This was the very first text in Ljiljan to use the Bosniak national name for the Muslim nation in order to assert its exclusive state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina. 119 During the transformation of the SDA’s wartime ideology from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism, the SDA’s nation-talk, thus, became more self-centered while its state-talk showed less concern for the other nations of Bosnia-Herzegovina. In three parts, this chapter demonstrates how the SDA initiated and articulated the ideological transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism in its party newspaper Ljiljan during the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The first part analyzes the SDA’s wartime stances on nationhood in Ljiljan, while the second part analyzes the SDA’s wartime stances on statehood in Ljiljan. The third part analyzes how Ljiljan legitimized the SDA’s wartime policies, which operatively tried to implement its stances on nationhood and statehood. On the basis of this three-part analysis of Ljiljan texts from between August 1992 and November 1995, this chapter shows that the SDA radically changed its stances and policies regarding nationhood and statehood as part of transforming its ideology from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism.

3.1. Nation-talk in Ljiljan (1992-1995) The SDA changed its nation-talk in Ljiljan, as the direct result of its participation in two congresses that took place in Sarajevo during the war. These were the Wartime

118 Fahira Fejzić, “Slutio sam rat, ali ne i genocid,” Ljiljan, October 25, 1992, 4–5. 119 Džemaludin Latić, “Od Trebinja pa do Brodskih vrata,” Ljiljan, December 21, 1992, 26.

34 Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals on December 22, 1992 and the Bosniak Congress on September 27, 1993.120 SDA activists and Muslim intellectuals jointly organized both events in order to formulate and legitimize far-reaching declarations in the name of the entire nation. These declarations redefined military and diplomatic objectives while also reshaping the dominant stances on nationhood and statehood. The two congresses especially set new standards in the field of nation-talk because they changed the name of the nation in two steps. First, the Wartime Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals introduced “Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks)” as the official terminology to refer to the Muslim nation. This terminology primarily insisted on Muslim nationhood while endorsing the Bosniak national name as a secondary addition between brackets. Nine months later, the Bosniak Congress gave Bosniak nationhood primacy by introducing “Bosniaks” as the official national name for the exact same national category. Ljiljan covered both congresses extensively and twice adjusted its nation-talk in adherence to each congress decision on the official national name. The meaning of the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationhood can, thus, be studied by analyzing the SDA’s wartime nation-talk in Ljiljan. Ljiljan presented the Wartime Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals primarily as a public display of Muslim national unity. Ljiljan correspondent Hadžem Hajdarević claimed that the Congress “confirmed the truth that all divisions within the Bosnian Muslim nation are artificial” by showing that Muslim intellectuals shared the destiny of their nation. The Congress aimed at “uniting the Bosnian Muslim intellect” in order to “fundamentally consider the main courses of action for the Muslim community in Bosnia-Herzegovina under the current conditions of war”. In this regard, Ljiljan especially highlighted the course of action that SDA co-founder Halid Čaušević had presented at the Congress. Čaušević had claimed that Muslims were obliged “to organize their national life in a way that never again makes them dependent on the help and mercy of others”. Ljiljan endorsed this insistence on national self-reliance and even cited Čaušević in the subtitle of its report, presenting the Congress in his words as a moment “at the bloody gates of national revival”.121

120 In Bosnian: Ratni Kongres Bosanskomuslimanskih Intelektualaca and Bošnjački Sabor. The proceedings of both congresses were partly published: Husnija Kamberović, ed., Ratni Kongres bosanskomuslimanskih intelektualaca: 22. decembar 1992. (Sarajevo: VKBMI, 1994); Šemsudin Musić, ed., Bošnjačko Pitanje, Vojna Biblioteka 14 (Sarajevo: PC ARBiH, 1995). 121 Hadžem Hajdarević, “Ratni Kongres bosanskomuslimanskih intelektualaca: na krvavim vratima nacionalnog preporoda,” Ljiljan, January 4, 1993, 18–19.

35 In continuation of its emphasis on national unity, Ljiljan noted that the Wartime Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals had reached a consensus on the dilemma between the Muslim and the Bosniak national name. Ljiljan cited historian Mustafa Imamović as the keynote speaker on the name issue with a warning against the negative aspects of dualism between Muslim and Bosniak nationhood.122 Imamović instead argued that the two-word term “Bosnian Muslims” was the most adequate national name because “its first half signifies the unbreakable ties with the native soil and the state, while the second half determines the spiritual composition of the Bosnian Muslim ethnic being”.123 In line with this reasoning, the Congress partly endorsed the main argument for adopting Bosniak nationhood, which also held that the national name should signify closer ties between nationhood and statehood. The Wartime Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals, thus, introduced “Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks)” as the official national name in order to closer identify Muslim nationhood with the statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan immediately adjusted its terminology to the Congress decision on the official national name and published the “Resolution of the Congress of Bosnian Muslim Intellectuals” by way of explanation. The first lines of the Congress Resolution clarified the full meaning of the official national name:

Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) are the inheritors of the millennial civilization and culture, which they – together with Serbs, Croats and since the sixteenth century also Jews – built in their only homeland Bosnia-Herzegovina.124

Despite mentioning Serbs, Croats and Jews as fellow state-builders, this definition of Muslim nationhood ascribed the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina exclusively to “Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks)” as the inheritors of the millennial civilization and culture in their homeland Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Resolution further supported this claim by stating that “Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) have always been the factors and mediators of encounters and connections” in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 125 The introduction of “Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks)” as the official national name, thus, asserted a more explicit claim to Muslim state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina.

122 Ibid., 18. 123 Mustafa Imamović, “Osnovne historijske naznake bosanskomuslimanskog nacionalnog identiteta,” in Ratni Kongres bosanskomuslimanskih intelektualaca, 11–19. 124 “Rezolucija Kongresa bosanskomuslimanskih intelektualaca,” Ljiljan, January 4, 1993, 18. 125 Ibid.

36 The Congress Resolution further embedded its claim to Muslim state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina into its proclamation of the survival of Bosnia-Herzegovina and the survival of the Muslim nation as two elements of one two-fold objective:

Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) by destiny depend on the survival of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Any violation of the territorial unity and independence of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina, as a result of the expansionist ambitions of others, is a threat to the biological and spiritual survival of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks).126

Ljiljan added that the war for the liberation of Bosnia-Herzegovina was therefore “in fact, a war for the biological and spiritual survival of Muslims”, citing Alija Izetbegović’s chief military advisor Fikret Muslimović.127 This key statement in Ljiljan implied that the SDA’s primary war aim was the defense of the Muslim nation rather than the defense of Bosnia-Herzegovina, although the SDA still defined these distinct war aims in terms of each other as one two-fold objective. In January 1993, Ljiljan reported how Alija Izetbegović implemented the Congress Resolution as his negotiating platform during the peace talks about the Vance-Owen Plan in Geneva. Editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić endorsed the fact that Izetbegović thereby represented the Muslim nation rather than Bosnia-Herzegovina. Latić, namely, explained that Izetbegović had to reject the plan’s decentralization of Bosnia-Herzegovina into ten provinces because “this partition reduces the largest nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina with 44-45% of its population to some 28% of its territory”. Latić, thus, opposed the proportions of the partition rather than partition itself, clearly prioritizing the Muslim nation over the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina.128 Izetbegović likewise prioritized the Muslim nation when he signed the Vance-Owen Plan in March 1993, under the following condition:

If the peace plans remain without results, the Presidency and the Government will undertake all necessary measures to defend its nation.129

With this statement, Izetbegović announced that the defense of the nation would take full priority if the Vance-Owen Plan failed. The Vance-Owen Plan indeed failed and the EC-UN mediators thereafter launched the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan, which proposed Bosnia-Herzegovina to be

126 Ibid. 127 Hajdarević, “Ratni Kongres bosanskomuslimanskih intelektualaca,” 18. 128 Džemaludin Latić, “Osvrt na ponuđenu ženevsku kartu: korak do velike Srbije i velike Hrvatske,” Ljiljan, January 18, 1993, 4. 129 “Uvjeti predsjednika Izetbegovića i bh. delegacije za potpisivanje Vance-Owenovog plana,” Ljiljan, March 29, 1993, 4.

37 partitioned as a union of three nationally defined republics. Alija Izetbegović first condemned this plan for abandoning the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina but later nevertheless joined the peace talks in Geneva under intense military and diplomatic pressure.130 At a press conference in Geneva in early August 1993, Izetbegović thereafter officially confirmed that the defense of “the Bosniak Muslim nation” was taking full primacy over the defense of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

The center of our struggle, the struggle of our soldiers who have succeeded to protect Bosnia-Herzegovina, must be the Bosniak Muslim nation, which is the target of the aggression. The aggressor’s goal, first and foremost, is not so much the annihilation of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state, as it is the extermination of the Muslim nation.131

In this statement, Izetbegović, for the first time, used the Bosniak nomination as the primary national name in Ljiljan, while also dissociating the survival of “the Bosniak Muslim nation” from the survival of Bosnia-Herzegovina.132 The first endorsement of Bosniak nation-talk, thus, coincided with the abandonment the two-fold objective of defending both the Muslim nation and the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan supported Alija Izetbegović in abandoning the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina in favor of securing the survival of the Bosniak nation on a smaller territory. The newspaper even insisted that “Izetbegović may only accept a solution in which Bosnian Muslims receive 45% homogeneous territory with access to the Sava and the Adriatic Sea”. 133 Editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić further legitimized such radical demands for the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina by stating:

Alija Izetbegović must abandon a unified Bosnia-Herzegovina! To continue commitment to that cause at this moment would mean to go towards an even bigger catastrophe!134

This statement reversed the SDA’s earlier claim that the survival of the Muslim nation depended on the survival of Bosnia-Herzegovina. To the contrary, Ljiljan now claimed that the survival of the Bosniak nation required the abandonment of the territorial sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA’s simultaneous endorsement of Bosniak nation-talk and the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina reached its absolute climax at the Bosniak Congress of

130 Alija Izetbegović, “Najviše zamjeram Evropi i Americi,” Ljiljan, July 28, 1993, 4. 131 Alija Izetbegović, “Bosna je opstala,” Ljiljan, August 4, 1993, 14. 132 Bougarel, Islam and Nationhood in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 127. 133 Džemaludin Latić, “Šta može donijeti Ženeva?,” Ljiljan, August 4, 1993, 4. 134 Džemaludin Latić, “Partija dezertera i profitera,” Ljiljan, August 18, 1993, 4.

38 September 27, 1993. This Congress convened 349 delegates in Sarajevo in order to define Alija Izetbegović’s negotiating platform for further peace talks in Geneva about the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan. First, Izetbegović presented the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan along with nine arguments for and five arguments against its acceptance. Thereafter, several other SDA officials and intellectuals argued mostly in favor of accepting the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan and its partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina under the one condition that “this partition is fair, meaning that Bosniaks must receive those areas in which they were a majority before this war”. The Congress supported this conditional acceptance of the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan with a majority of 218 out of 349 votes and Ljiljan summarized this result under the headline: “if it is partition, then let it be fair”.135 The Bosniak Congress, thus, provided Izetbegović with the mandate to partition Bosnia-Herzegovina, as long as the Bosniak part would include all Bosniak-majority territories in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Along with the Congress decision to conditionally accept the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ljiljan published the Congress Resolution, which announced that the national name, as of then, had officially changed from Muslim to Bosniak:

Conscious of the historical significance of the moment at which we have gathered and the challenges that await us, we are determined to return to our nation its historical and national name as Bosniaks, in order to connect ourselves firmly to the country of Bosnia and its tradition of statehood, to our Bosnian language and to the full spiritual tradition of our history.136

This Resolution defined the Bosniak nation through its language, its spiritual tradition and its exclusive state-ownership over Bosnia, without mentioning Herzegovina. Such a definition of Bosniak nationhood not only denied state-ownership to non-Bosniaks but also seemed to exclude Herzegovina from the projected state territory. The introduction of Bosniak nation-talk was, thus, bound to radically change the SDA’s wartime state-talk in Ljiljan too.

3.2. State-talk in Ljiljan (1992-1995) The adoption of Bosniak nationhood at the Bosniak Congress of September 27, 1993, introduced a closer titular connection between the name of the Bosniak nation and the name of the Bosnian state. This titular link redefined Bosniak nationhood and Bosnian statehood in terms of each other. Bosniak nationhood invoked the Bosniak nation as

135 “Ako je podjela, neka je pravična,” Ljiljan, October 6, 1993, 4. 136 “Bošnjački Sabor,” Ljiljan, October 6, 1993, 4.

39 the titular nation of Bosnia and thereby conceived Bosnia as the state of and for the Bosniak nation. This titular claim of Bosniak state-ownership over Bosnia, however, defied the multinational diversity of the entire territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina and seemed to consider Bosnia, without Herzegovina, as a smaller Bosniak-majority territory within a partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina. These contradictions in the relationship between Bosniak nationhood and Bosnian statehood were the central preoccupation of the SDA’s state-talk in Ljiljan during the wartime period. Ljiljan emphasized that the adoption of Bosniak nationhood at the Bosniak Congress had fundamentally redefined the relationship between the Bosniak nation and the Bosnian state. Several Ljiljan texts elaborated on the name change and introduced the term “državotvornost” (state-ownership) to explain the redefined status of the Bosniak nation in relation to the Bosnian state. One text stated that the Bosniak Congress made Bosniaks “an important, political, military and state-owning subject that can no longer be overlooked”.137 Another text used similar terms to legitimize the name change as a remedial act that restored Bosniak state-ownership, stating:

At the Bosniak Congress in Sarajevo, after almost a full century, Bosniaks returned to their ancient and legitimate name as a state-owning nation.138

Ljiljan repeated such interpretations of Bosniak nationhood and state-ownership in later issues and its reporter Nedžad Latić summarized:

The argument that Bosniak nationhood strengthens the state-ownership of the nation over a Muslim-inhabited state is so attractive in its patriotic overtone that it will not be difficult for Muslims to accept this idea as their final national maturation.139

Ljiljan, thus, consistently explained and presented the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationhood as a natural maturing development towards exclusive Bosniak state-ownership over Bosnia as a Bosniak nation-state. Ljiljan editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić explicitly interpreted the renomination of the Bosniak nation as a sad but necessary step towards the creation of a Bosniak nation-state claiming that “who has no national name in Europe, can’t have a state either”. Latić insisted that Muslims “have to be Bosniaks, which we nationally indeed are, if we want to survive in our own country”.140 Columnist Zilhad Ključanin more

137 Enes Pašalić, “Prerano priznata?!,” Ljiljan, October 6, 1993, 6. 138 Remzija Hadžiefendić, “Napokon Bošnjaci,” Ljiljan, October 13, 1993, 30. 139 Nedžad Latić, “Povratak otpisanih,” Ljiljan, October 27, 1993, 4. 140 Džemaludin Latić, “Jedan tužni rastanak,” Ljiljan, October 13, 1993, 29.

40 enthusiastically identified Bosniak nationhood with the radical demand for a Bosniak nation-state in a column that covered the front page of Ljiljan with its large-lettered title, stating “I WANT MY OWN BOSNIA”. Ključanin wrote:

Bosniaks exist. Muslims that hardened into Bosniaks. A young nation. A core nation. The only nation that is entitled to that which is called Bosnia. Because it is the only one to love it. Because it is the only one to see it as its own. Because it runs through its blood. Because others despised Bosnia. Because others always saw Bosnia as someone else’s, through someone else’s eyes.

Young Bosniaks, new Muslims, want their own Bosnia. As large as they can obtain in battle today. As large as they can obtain in battle tomorrow.141

Ljiljan, thus, responded to the Bosniak Congress with radicalized state-talk that called for the creation of a Bosniak nation-state as the primary war aim. In the meantime, the SDA was formalizing its radicalized stances on Bosniak state-ownership and Bosnian statehood through the parliament, the government and the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA reconvened the remaining 69 members of parliament in order to confirm the decision of the Bosniak Congress with a majority of 58 votes. This SDA-led parliamentary majority formalized the acceptance of the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan under the condition that its partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina would ascribe all Bosniak-majority territories to a viable Bosniak-majority republic with access to the Adriatic Sea and the Sava River.142 The SDA thereafter appointed Haris Silajdžić as the prime minister of a new government that accepted the implementation of this parliamentary decision as its main task. Silajdžić selected almost all of his ministers from the ranks of the SDA and announced the program of this SDA-dominated government in Ljiljan, stating:

The most important final aim within the framework of the program of this government must be to achieve peace along the provisions that were decided by the parliament of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina.143

The SDA-dominated Silajdžić government, thus, took office in October 1993, with the explicitly partitionist mandate to secure political control over all Bosniak-majority territories for a Bosniak-majority republic within a partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina under the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan. While the SDA endorsed the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as government policy, Alija Izetbegović adjusted the war aims of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina

141 Zilhad Ključanin, “Hoću svoju Bosnu!,” Ljiljan, October 20, 1993, 1 and 4. 142 Dževad Hodžić, “Da, uz vraćanje otetog,” Ljiljan, October 6, 1993, 4. 143 Haris Silajdžić, “Čuda nejma, ali ima nade,” Ljiljan, November 3, 1993, 4.

41 (ABH) and the presidency to such partition. During a personal campaign in November 1993, Izetbegović visited 17 government-controlled towns and inspected ABH units at the frontlines in Central Bosnia. Ljiljan covered this campaign in detail and especially celebrated Izetbegović’s speech in Zenica as a “turning point in the contemporary history of Bosnia”. Ljiljan published an exclusive three-page interview in which Izetbegović further reflected on this speech and on other messages from his campaign in the government-controlled territories. Izetbegović opened with his rather positive assessment that the government-controlled “free territories are far bigger than we sometimes think”. He stressed that in these territories “the army is well-trained” and “the industries are largely preserved”. Izetbegović presented these achievements as arguments for accepting the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

I said that we have to achieve that which is decided at the last session of parliament with its renowned ‘but’, meaning that we accept the proposed concept under the condition that all territories inhabited with a Bosniak national majority return to the control of the B-H government. We will insist on this mainly by political means, but if that is not possible, we have to do everything to achieve this by military means. This is the point at which we can stop the war.144

Izetbegović, thus, proclaimed government control over Bosniak-majority territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina as the primary war aim of the ABH and added that this adjusted war aim “might be considered within the presidency, as we might change the Presidency Platform in this direction”.145 In this exclusive Ljiljan interview, Izetbegović, however, presented the war aim of controlling Bosniak-majority territories as the first phase of a two-phase strategy that would continue to aim for the reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war. Within this two-phase strategy, Izetbegović distinguished a short-term military phase from a long-term political phase. In the first phase, the SDA would secure control over Bosniak-majority territories by military means as the immediate war aim. The second phase would thereafter aim to reintegrate Bosnia-Herzegovina by political means as a long-term objective after the war. Ljiljan coined this two-phase strategy as “the new strategy for Bosnia” and allowed Izetbegović to outline its implications in detail.146 Soon thereafter, the SDA adopted this two-phase strategy as its official party doctrine at a crucial SDA Main Committee meeting in Sarajevo on January 12, 1994.

144 Mufid Memija, “Predsjednik Alija Izetbegović: pobijedit ćemo jer smo drukčiji od njih!,” Ljiljan, November 24, 1993, 6–8. 145 Ibid., 8. 146 Ibid.

42 Izetbegović addressed this meeting with an extensive program of “seven theses on Bosnia”, which he finally summarized as his two-phase strategy:

In my opinion, there is two phases in the struggle for a unified Bosnia. One is the military phase, which is the current phase, raising the question when that phase can be stopped. In my opinion, it can be stopped when the areas in which the Bosniak nation has a majority, are liberated.147

The long-term vision of reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war, thus, allowed the SDA to paradoxically legitimize the wartime partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a necessary first step towards the eventual reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan positively reviewed the SDA’s attempt to formulate a long-term national strategy and its correspondent Selim Arnaut wrote that finally the time had come for the Bosniak nation “to formulate our own national interest, which we will accomplish in the coming 50 or maybe the next 100 years”. Arnaut further explained:

There was a time when Bosniaks fought for a joint state, while Serbs and Croats fought for their own territory that they would take away as dowry to their homelands. I suppose that this time is behind us. Today, Bosniaks are again faced with the question of a national program that won’t be a trend of yesterday, neither an expression of short-term necessities, but instead a strategy that should unambiguously answer the question: what is the Bosniak national interest today?148

In this regard, Arnaut announced that such a long-term national strategy should finally define “what we mean when we say Bosnia”. This Ljiljan text thereby called out to the SDA to clearly redefine its stance on Bosnian statehood. Ljiljan attached Arnaut’s call to a reprinted parliamentary proposal, in which the SDA indeed redefined Bosnia as a nation-state of and for the Bosniak nation. The SDA had launched this proposal on February 7, 1994, calling for the creation of a small Bosniak nation-state in the Bosniak-majority territories of Bosnia-Herzegovina:

The Bosnian Republic will be established as the independent democratic state of the Bosniak (Muslim) nation. Serbs and Croats in this state will have the status of national minorities and will enjoy all rights according to valid international law and conventions.149

Ljiljan wholeheartedly supported this controversial SDA proposal although it would have replaced the subjectivity of Bosnia-Herzegovina with the proclamation of a small Bosniak nation-state. Its columnist Zilhad Ključanin resolutely claimed that a

147 Alija Izetbegović, “Sedam teza o Bosni,” Ljiljan, January 19, 1994, 8–9. 148 Selim Arnaut, “Šta danas mislimo kad kažemo Bosna,” Ljiljan, February 16, 1994, 5. 149 “Izlaganje poslanika ing. Muhameda Kupusovića na zatvorenoj sjednici Skupštine BiH, 7. februar 1994. u Sarajevu,” Ljiljan, February 16, 1994, 5.

43 “just peace for Muslims, at this moment, would mean: a Bosniak state, with all returned territories where Muslims were an absolute or relative majority”.150 By 1994, the SDA’s wartime state-talk in Ljiljan, thus, clearly reached the point at which it abandoned its support for a multinational Bosnia-Herzegovina in favor of advocating the creation of a smaller and more homogeneous Bosniak nation-state. The central preoccupation of the SDA in its wartime state-talk in Ljiljan had been to adjust its stances on Bosnian statehood to its newly adopted conception of the Bosniak nation as the state-owning nation of Bosnia. The SDA’s assertion of exclusive Bosniak state-ownership over Bosnia defied the multinational diversity of Bosnia-Herzegovina and raised the question of what kind of state form the SDA had in mind for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA avoided a straightforward answer to this question through the adoption of its two-phase strategy. The first phase of this strategy, allowed the SDA to assert Bosniak state-ownership over Bosniak-majority territories within a partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA, thus, endorsed a reduction of state territory in order to assert majority control over a smaller and more homogeneous Bosniak nation-state. The second phase of the SDA’s strategy, however, projected the reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a long-term objective to be realized after the war on the basis of the political model in the Bosniak-majority territories. The SDA’s two-phase strategy, thus, asserted Bosniak state-ownership over Bosniak-majority territories while extending this claim of exclusive Bosniak state-ownership indirectly to the rest of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The contradictions between the SDA’s demand for the short-term creation of a Bosniak nation-state and its project of the long-term reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina were to become even more manifest in the SDA’s wartime policies.

3.3. Nationalist politics in Ljiljan (1992-1995) Changes in the wartime stances and policies of the SDA often corresponded to developments in the international context of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The UN-led peace talks on the Owen-Stoltenberg Plan had provided the context for the SDA to endorse the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina between August 1993 and February 1994. These peace talks, however, deadlocked in February 1994 and the US, thereafter, gradually started to replace the UN as the leading mediator of a new peace

150 Zilhad Ključanin, “Kuda idu divlje svinje,” Ljiljan, February 16, 1994, 4.

44 plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan interpreted the increased US involvement in February 1994 as a sign that “the US took sides with its own interests and thereby with the Bosnian state”. Editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić argued that the US now pressured Serbs and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina to either accept a decentralized joint state or to settle for a fair partition, in case of which “the Americans demand 40% of territory for Bosniaks”.151 Ljiljan expressed its satisfaction with both options and anticipated that the negotiation of a peace settlement under US supervision would require the full attention of the SDA in the time to come. In March 1994, Ljiljan interviewed Alija Izetbegović about the first results of the US-led peace talks with special interest for the new Washington Agreement, which foresaw the creation of a joint federation in the areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina with Bosniak and Croat majorities. Izetbegović explained that this agreement would improve the situation in government-controlled territories but also reluctantly noted that the agreement’s provisions of power-sharing between Bosniaks and Croats were a “price that had to be paid”. Izetbegović stressed that the SDA would, nevertheless, continue to pursue a policy in which the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina would be the means to achieve the primary aim of asserting Bosniak national interests:

We have two aims: first, preserving Bosnia-Herzegovina as a state in its existing and internationally recognized borders; second, internally organizing Bosnia-Herzegovina in a way that ensures the existence, identity and development of the Muslim nation. This must be a state built in such a way that the Muslim nation never again endures genocide. I have said that these are two aims. To be more precise: the second point is the aim, whereas the first is the means.152

This statement echoed the SDA’s two-phase strategy and announced that the SDA would operatively prioritize to internally organize the Bosniak-majority territories within the Federation over its declarative aim of reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA’s wartime policies, thus, continued to partly implement the idea of a Bosniak-majority nation-state although the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina provided a potential framework for reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan supported the SDA in its reluctance to give up the idea of a Bosniak nation-state for the creation of a joint Bosniak-Croat federation. Columnist Zilhad Ključanin argued that “Bosniaks should never have accepted an agreement with

151 Džemaludin Latić, “Sarajevo (p)ostaje muslimanska prijestonica,” Ljiljan, February 23, 1994, 4. 152 Džemaludin Latić and Hadžem Hajdarević, “Vrijeme je da odrastemo kao narod,” Ljiljan, March 16, 1994, 6–7 it is remarkable that this interview with Alija Izetbegović was not included in the 2005 republication of his selected interviews:; Izetbegović, Bosna je velika tajna.

45 Croats” since “Bosniaks are a nation, ready for its own state”. Ključanin suggested that the SDA could, nevertheless, tactically accept the Federation with the actual aim of transforming it into a Bosniak-majority nation-state with a Croat minority:

According to all global customs, Croats should sooner or later have the true status of a national minority in Bosnia! 17% doesn’t make a nation! In a soft Bosniak nationalist variant, Croats in a Bosniak state could, thus, have the status of a national minority.153

This line of thinking behind the acceptance of the Federation was partly endorsed by Alija Izetbegović, who stressed that control over Bosniak-majority territories remained the primary war aim despite “some solution being in sight”. He stated that “there will be no peace without the return of territories” and claimed that ABH soldiers fought for these territories rather than for coexistence in a joint state:

Coexistence is a beautiful thing, but I think I can freely say that it is a lie that our soldiers are dying for it… Our soldier up there, suffering in the mud, does not do so to coexist, but to defend his toprak [territory], the land that they want to take away from him.154

With this statement, Alija Izetbegović made it clear that securing control over Bosniak-majority territories would remain the primary objective of the SDA’s policies throughout the rest of the war. The SDA’s commitment to securing control over Bosniak-majority territories determined its approach to the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The constitution of the Federation formally applied to “the territories with a majority Bosniak and Croat population” and this formula permitted the SDA to legalize its policies of Bosniak nationalization in the territories under its control. 155 Ljiljan reported how the constitution of the Federation was accepted at a parliamentary session, which was decorated with SDA and HDZ party flags as “the national flags of Bosniaks and Croats” in “expression of the political reality in Bosnia-Herzegovina”. The SDA and the HDZ, thus, restored their coalition on the basis of recognizing each other’s political hegemony over majority-based territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan legitimized this nationalizing approach and even claimed that the SDA protected the continuity of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina through its insistence on applying the Washington Agreement only in territories with Bosniak and Croat majorities.156

153 Zilhad Ključanin, “Bošnjaci su narod zreo za svoju državu,” Ljiljan, March 30, 1994, 8–9. 154 Alija Izetbegović, “Nema mira bez vraćanja teritorija!,” Ljiljan, April 6, 1994, 20–21. 155 “Ustav Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine,” Ljiljan, March 30, 1994, 20–21. 156 “Usvojen Ustav Federacije BiH,” Ljiljan, April 6, 1994, 4–5.

46 By the end of May 1994, the SDA formally accepted the new Vienna Agreement, which implemented the Washington Agreement through the formation of eight cantons within the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This agreement provided for four Bosniak cantons, two Croat cantons and two mixed cantons, while the SDA also agreed to create territorial corridors to link up these nationalized territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina.157 Ljiljan announced that “after the Washington and the Vienna Agreements, there is political will for the harmonization of, above all, the national interests of Bosniaks and Croats, as well as the political party interests of the SDA and the HDZ”. Ljiljan also celebrated the territorial results of these SDA-HDZ agreements and thereby legitimized the SDA’s efforts to control Bosniak-majority territories. The SDA’s wartime policies, thus, operatively aimed to assert political hegemony over interconnected Bosniak-majority territories within the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while Ljiljan ideologically legitimized such policies as efforts preserving “the continuity of the statehood” of Bosnia-Herzegovina. 158 Throughout the rest of the war, Alija Izetbegović continued to legitimize the SDA’s operative policies of partition with ideological references to the long-term aim of preserving the unity and statehood of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This ideological use of the SDA’s two-phase strategy was especially evident in Izetbegović’s argumentation in favor of accepting the US-proposed Contact Group Plan in July 1994. The Contact Group Plan ascribed 51% of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina to the Federation while leaving the remaining 49% to a Serb entity. Izetbegović claimed that “Bosnia is actually partitioned, but this plan once again truly affirms the principle of the unity of Bosnia”. He argued that the Contact Group Plan provided the future possibility to continue “our struggle for the integration of Bosnia” if “we turn the part of Bosnia that we control into a modern, democratic and free country”. He closed this speech by stating that the Bosniak nation was destined to reintegrate Bosnia after the war:

Therefore, we Bosniaks, the Muslim nation of Bosnia, are destined to become the leaders of the new integration of Bosnia, not in order to make Bosnia a unitary state – which it cannot be – but to preserve its unity.159

In this speech, Izetbegović, once again, legitimized the short-term territorial partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a necessary step towards its long-term reintegration, while also asserting the exclusive state-ownership of the Bosniak nation over Bosnia.

157 “Nastaviti kontinuitet borbe i pregovaranja,” Ljiljan, June 1, 1994, 8. 158 “Kontinuitet državnosti,” Ljiljan, June 8, 1994, 8–9. 159 Alija Izetbegović, “Bošnjaci su japija nove Bosne,” Ljiljan, July 27, 1994, 4.

47 The peace talks on the Contact Group Plan, however, initially failed to achieve an agreement because the SDS-led Serb delegation refused to accept the proposed division of territory between the Federation and the future Serb entity. The SDA therefore concluded that the proposed 51/49 territorial balance could only be imposed by military force before negotiations would be able to ratify such a territorial division in a potential peace agreement. In preparation of further fighting, Izetbegović addressed Ljiljan in December 1994, with the following statement:

We finally become a nation and create our own state. All nations have achieved that through bloodshed, as history doesn’t give gifts and it doesn’t serve things on a plate. Our nation cannot be an exception.160

This statement confirmed that the SDA did not give up on the idea of creating a state of and for the Bosniak nation. Such nation-state claims in Ljiljan were somewhat adjusted to the possibilities of new peace plans, but their message remained that the SDA’s wartime policies aimed for the Bosniak nation to have its own state. The initial failure of the Contact Group Plan was followed by a ceasefire, during which the US-led Contact Group made diplomatic concessions to the Serb delegation. Such concessions included the possibility of “special parallel relations” between the future Serb entity and Serbia. Ljiljan deplored this “new interpretation of the Contact Group Plan” and stressed that the return of Bosniak-majority territories remained as “the condition for any possible agreement, including the Serb right to secede from Bosnia-Herzegovina”.161 The SDA, thereafter, insisted on the unchanged Contact Group Plan of July 1994 and announced that it was unwilling to prolong the ceasefire.162 Fighting resumed in March 1995 and escalated in July 1995, when Serb forces threatened to overrun the UN-protected towns of Srebrenica and Žepa. The SDA responded with a joint parliamentary declaration calling for the UN to fulfill its commitment to the protection of Srebrenica and Žepa, but the Dutch UN forces in Srebrenica failed in doing so.163 Serb forces overran Srebrenica on July 11, 1995 and massacred over 8000 Bosniak men and boys. This brutal instance of genocide caused the US to intensify its combined use of military and diplomatic pressure in order to impose a final peace settlement between August and November 1995.

160 Džemaludin Latić and Selim Arnaut, “Hiljade ljudi nose našu zastavu, i nastavit će da je nose,” Ljiljan, December 14, 1994, 6. 161 Esad Hećimović, “Mir ili granice?!,” Ljiljan, December 28, 1994, 7. 162 Džemaludin Latić, “Stranačka ofenziva,” Ljiljan, April 5, 1995, 7. 163 “Sarajevska izjava,” Ljiljan, July 12, 1995, 5.

48 The SDA responded to the US initiative to bring the war to a definitive end with several party declarations listing its conditions for a final peace agreement. On August 18, 1995, Alija Izetbegović put forward the first such declaration with 12 points. He insisted on “the territorial integrity of the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina” while also demanding that “the map of internal demarcation may not be less favorable than the demarcation map that the Contact Group proposed in July 1994”. He, furthermore, proclaimed that the peace agreement “may not contain anything that would obstruct peaceful reintegration in the future”.164 This declaration, in fact, legitimized the partition of Bosnia-Herzegovina on the basis of the Contact Group Plan, while referring to the reintegration of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a future perspective. Three issues later, the SDA-appointed Bosnian minister of foreign affairs Muhamed Šaćirbey used the exact same argument to legitimize his official recognition of “the Serb Republic” as a semi-autonomous entity within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Šaćirbey explained in Ljiljan that “this Serb entity, whatever they may call it, will have to respect democratic laws”, after which “it can be integrated into the Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina”. 165 The SDA thus presented the long-term perspective of reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina as an excuse for making short-term compromises during the negotiation of a final peace settlement. The SDA adopted another party declaration on October 20, 1995, outlining 21 points as the official mandate for the Bosnian delegation in the final round of peace talks under US mediation in Dayton. The SDA, thereby, effectively reduced the mandate of the official state delegation of Bosnia-Herzegovina to a platform of Bosniak national interests defined by a single political party. The first point of this SDA declaration defined the overall aim for the Bosnian delegation in Dayton:

Our aim is the preservation of a sovereign and unified Bosnia-Herzegovina. That aim can be achieved by military and political means. We think that we reached the point at which we can end the war and continue the rest of the way to a sovereign and unified Bosnia by political means.166

The SDA, thus, once again, referred to the long-term perspective of a sovereign and unified Bosnia-Herzegovina, while it was, in fact, negotiating for its self- proclaimed list of Bosniak national interests within a de facto partitioned state.

164 Alija Izetbegović, “Uvjeti za mir u Bosni,” Ljiljan, August 23, 1995, 2. 165 Džemaludin Latić, “Beograd je implicitno priznao Bosnu,” Ljiljan, September 13, 1995, 4. 166 “Izlaganje predsjednika SDA Alije Izetbegovića na sjednici Izvršnog odbora SDA u Fojnici, 20. oktobra 1995. godine,” Ljiljan, November 1, 1995, 8.

49 On November 21, 1995, Alija Izetbegović signed the Dayton Peace Agreement and the next issue of Ljiljan extensively reflected on this peace settlement that finally ended the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Editor-in-chief Džemaludin Latić especially highlighted its territorial implications for the Bosniak nation and stressed that the achieved results could be defended and preserved:

With our own army and with weapons that allow us to defend the achieved… we can say with a clean conscience that in the future there will be no fear for our survival on our own Bosnian soil.167

Ljiljan, furthermore, supported this evaluation of the Dayton Peace Agreement with an exclusive interview in which Alija Izetbegović stated:

It is, after all, most important that the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina has survived, that our nation has its own state.168

These statements in Ljiljan at the very end of the War in Bosnia-Herzegovina both invoked the claim to exclusive state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina. This claim to Bosniak state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina had become the defining feature of the SDA’s wartime ideology of Bosniak nationalism.

*** The SDA’s wartime ideology of Bosniak nationalism asserted exclusive Bosniak state-ownership over either part or all of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The SDA’s wartime nation-talk introduced the Bosniak national name in order to closer link the Bosniak nation to its own state. The SDA’s wartime state-talk, however, combined long-term commitments to the entirety of Bosnia-Herzegovina with short-term claims of exclusive state-ownership over Bosniak-majority territories within a partitioned Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan paradoxically articulated both these long-term commitments and short-term claims in order to legitimize the SDA’s wartime policies of nationalization in the Bosniak-majority territories under SDA control.

167 Džemaludin Latić, “Sretan ti rođendan, republiko,” Ljiljan, November 29, 1995, 2. 168 “U svijetu kakav je danas postignuli smo maksimum,” Ljiljan, November 29, 1995, 4.

50 CONCLUSION

Conscious of the historical significance of the moment at which we have gathered and the challenges that await us, we are determined to return to our nation its historical and national name as Bosniaks, in order to connect ourselves firmly to the country of Bosnia and its tradition of statehood, to our Bosnian language and to the full spiritual tradition of our history.169

With these words, Ljiljan explained how and why the Bosniak national name replaced the Muslim national name at the Bosniak Congress on September 27, 1993. The name change thus explicitly aimed to introduce a firmer connection between Bosniak nationhood and Bosnian statehood. This self-proclaimed aim not only redefined the concepts of nationhood and statehood but also introduced a new vision of the preferred relationship between those two concepts. The introduction of the Bosniak national name in September 1993 therefore signifies the redefining moment at which Muslim nationalism transformed into Bosniak nationalism. This thesis has studied the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism by analyzing the SDA’s articulation of nation-talk, state-talk and nationalist politics in its successive party newspapers Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan. The overall meaning of the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism can now be qualified through the side-by-side comparison of Muslim and Bosniak nationalism in these analytical categories of nation-talk, state-talk and nationalist politics. In its nation-talk, the SDA most obviously changed the name it used for the nation that it claimed to represent. The name change, however, included a change in the political claims that were linked to the national name. Muslim nation-talk in Muslimanski Glas insisted on the national sovereignty of Muslims alongside Serbs and Croats in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Muslim nationalism thereby distinguished the Muslim nation from the territory and citizenry of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a whole on the basis of a counter-state understanding of nationhood. This did not prevent Muslim nationalist state-talk from simultaneously articulating a state-framed understanding of Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multinational state. Muslim nationalism therefore featured a constant contradiction between its mononational understanding of nationhood and its multinational understanding of statehood. The introduction of Bosniak nation-talk in Ljiljan partly removed this rhetorical contradiction by articulating a firmer political claim to Bosniak state-ownership over Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bosniak nation-talk was

169 “Bošnjački Sabor,” Ljiljan, October 6, 1993, 4.

51 still based on a mononational understanding of Bosniak nationhood but it now related to a mononational understanding of Bosnian statehood. Bosniak nationalist state-talk in Ljiljan abandoned the idea of multinational coexistence in Bosnia-Herzegovina and instead asserted the need for a nation-state of and for the Bosniak nation. The transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism thus led to increased ideological coherence between nation-talk and state-talk in Ljiljan as the SDA increasingly understood Bosniak nationhood and Bosnian statehood in terms of each other. The increased ideological coherence between Bosniak nation-talk and state-talk did not bring increased coherence to the SDA’s nationalist politics. In this regard, there was striking continuity in the SDA’s policies over the entire period between 1990 and 1995. Muslimanski Glas legitimized the SDA’s pre-war policies of regionalization, which nationalized sub-state territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Thereafter, Ljiljan legitimized the SDA’s wartime policies of aiming to control Bosniak-majority territories, which also nationalized sub-state territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina. Ljiljan legitimized such nationalization of Bosniak-majority territories as a necessary short-term step towards the long-term objective of reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina after the war. This two-phase strategy introduced a new ideological contradiction at the heart of Bosniak nationalism between the demand for a Bosniak nation-state and the objective of reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina. The declarative long-term objective of reintegrating Bosnia-Herzegovina featured as an ideological smoke screen to legitimize the operative consolidation of political control in Bosniak-majority territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina. The overall meaning of the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism can thus be summarized in two evidence-based statements. Muslim nationalism imagined the Muslim nation as one of three sovereign nations in Bosnia-Herzegovina, while it understood Bosnia-Herzegovina as a multinational state. Bosniak nationalism imagined the Bosniak nation as the state-owning nation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, while it understood Bosnia-Herzegovina as the state of and for the Bosniak nation. The combination of these two evidence-based statements theoretically qualifies the overall transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism as an ideological development from a latent to a more manifest form of Rogers Brubaker’s analytical category of nationalizing nationalism.170

170 Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed, 4–5 and 63–66.

52 Muslim nationalism lacked two of the main characteristics of nationalizing nationalism because its nation-talk did not assert the Muslim nation as the core nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and its state-talk did not define Bosnia-Herzegovina as the state of and for the Muslim nation. Muslim nationalism instead contradicted its mononational understanding of Muslim nationhood with its multinational understanding of Bosnian statehood. Muslim nationalist politics, however, tried to operatively overcome this contradiction by nationalizing sub-state territories within Bosnia-Herzegovina through policies of regionalization in the pre-war period. Muslim nationalism therefore qualifies as a latent form of nationalizing nationalism. Bosniak nationalism thereafter fulfilled the two main characteristics of nationalizing nationalism because Bosniak nation-talk asserted the Bosniak nation as the core nation of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bosniak state-talk defined Bosnia-Herzegovina as the state of and for the state-owning Bosniak nation. Bosniak nationalism therefore qualifies as a more manifest form of nationalizing nationalism. Altogether, the transformation from Muslim to Bosniak nationalism thus clearly qualifies as an ideological development from a latent to a more manifest form of Rogers Brubaker’s analytical category of nationalizing nationalism. The nationalizing stances of Bosniak nationalism vis-à-vis Bosnia-Herzegovina defy the multinational heterogeneity of its population. Bosnian statehood is, furthermore, contested by Serbian and Croatian nationalism. The triadic interaction between Bosniak nationalism, Serbian nationalism and Croatian nationalism is therefore bound to further destabilize Bosnia-Herzegovina in times to come. This case study of nationalism in the SDA party newspapers Muslimanski Glas and Ljiljan demonstrates that different theories of nationalism can provide different analytical lenses to study the same phenomenon. In general, the study of nationalism can benefit from in-depth case studies that study cases of nationalism in terms of their own contradicts while simultaneously providing comparable results through the use of the mainstream theories of nationalism.

53 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources Muslimanski Glas (Sarajevo) Ljiljan (Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sarajevo)

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