The Railway System of Bosnia and Herzegovina Connectivity, Neglect and Chances
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The Railway System of Bosnia and Herzegovina Connectivity, neglect and chances Master’s thesis For the award of the academic degree of Master of Arts in History of South-Eastern Europe at the University of Graz Submitted by Florian Supe BA BA MA Supervisor: Dr.phil. Armina Galijaš, M.A. Centre for South-East European Studies Graz, 2021 Content Preface ..................................................................................................................................................... 3 1. Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Structure and methodology .................................................................................................... 5 1.2 State of research and overview of used sources ..................................................................... 7 1.3 Studying railway links – a theoretical framework ................................................................. 13 2. Shifting connectivity – Railway links as indicator of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political and economic ties up until 1992 .................................................................................................................. 23 2.1. Ottoman rule ......................................................................................................................... 23 2.2. Austro-Hungarian rule ........................................................................................................... 26 2.3. Inter-war Yugoslavia .............................................................................................................. 38 2.4. Socialist Yugoslavia ................................................................................................................ 45 2.5. Internal and inter-republican railway connections of BiH on the eve of the Yugoslav Wars 56 2.6. Summary................................................................................................................................ 63 3. Reconstruction and neglect – The loss of importance of the Bosnian Herzegovinian railway since 1996 ....................................................................................................................................................... 66 3.1. Organisation of the railway system in BiH with a stakeholder analysis ................................ 70 3.2. Immediate remedy and hesitant further reconnection (1996–2002) ................................... 72 3.3. Stagnation, abandonment and new investment (2003–2020) ............................................. 81 3.4. Political, economic and societal frame conditions .............................................................. 100 3.5. Summary.............................................................................................................................. 118 4. A railway revival in Bosnia and Herzegovina – Chances, arguments and requirements ............ 121 4.1. Flaws in traditional transport policy and arguments for the railway as focal point in BH transport investment ...................................................................................................................... 121 4.2. Requirements for and impediments to a passenger railway revival in BiH ........................ 129 4.3. Summary.............................................................................................................................. 134 5. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 136 Annexe ................................................................................................................................................. 140 Abbreviations .................................................................................................................................. 140 Interview Questions ........................................................................................................................ 141 Bibliography ......................................................................................................................................... 142 2 Preface I do not recall playing with toy trains as a child (neither with toy cars, for that matter). My fascination for transport infrastructure, for coloured lines on folding maps that ramify, cross landscapes and effortlessly pierce national borders, developed rather in the wake of my growing personal mobility in late adolescence. The possibility to reach other, distant places within a predetermined period of time, simply by boarding a train coach, is a privilege made possible by political cooperation and an appropriate use of financial resources. In the transport sector of Bosnia and Herzegovina, both of these factors have been deficient for nearly three decades, leading to a marginalisation of rail-bound traffic. This thesis is published in the European Year of Rail, at a time when the mainstreaming of climate policy and the increasing awareness for the external costs of road transport make the railway seem as seminal as in the era of its invention 200 years ago. Simultaneously, the concepts of travelling in general and public transport in particular are weighed down by the coronavirus pandemic, which also influenced my own working process. As the COVID-19 restrictions prevented the conduction of my initially planned field research, I was forced to adapt the methodology and limit myself to remotely accessible sources. I dedicate this work to my mother, who supports me in all my endeavours, and to all railway enthusiasts in South-Eastern Europe who keep the memory of former connectivity alive through their tireless fascination expressed in blogs and online forums. Also, I would like to thank the PR department of the Republika Srpska railway company which compiled my most important source on railway connections in post-socialist Bosnia and Herzegovina; my interview partners Štefica Galić, Miodrag Živanović, Tihomir Dakić and Dragan Kabić; and my proofreaders Carina, Iona, Saul and Ariane. Florian Supe, April 2021 3 1. Introduction Transport is a decisive factor in integration processes, working as “a `bloodstream’ of every country” and being “the main prerequisite for [the] development of other economic activities”,1 as the Bosnian Herzegovinian geographer Đuro Marić states. The connectivity of a certain space through its transport infrastructure thus poses an important reason for studying it. A particularly fertile study field for matters of political, economic and social (dis)integration is Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) with its eventful modern history. The railway, with 150 years of presence on the ground, its relative stability and an abundance of source material, allows to write a transport history of BiH that also sheds a new light on a variety of continuities and fractures in the development of the Bosnian Herzegovinian (BH) space. The latest of those fractures, the war in the 1990s, represents the division between the two big chapters of this thesis: a longer period when the railway played a central, though diminishing role in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a shorter, still lasting period when its role was peripheral or even insignificant. Between 1992 and 1995, much of the existing railway infrastructure in the republic was devastated. This, next to adversarial political relations, financial straits and the focus on other infrastructural priorities, led to the fact that two and a half decades after the restoration of peace by the Dayton Agreement, it is not possible to approach any of BiH’s major cities by train from neighbouring Croatia, Serbia or Montenegro. In the post-socialist period, some of the formerly existing inter-republican (today international) connections had been revived for a couple of years, but none of them survived the competition by road traffic and airplanes, the lack of investment power in the outdated railway infrastructure due to the prioritisation of motorways, the unwillingness to cooperate over ethnic and national boundaries and the political indifference to the railway. Within BiH, however, recent years showed steadily rising investment in the railway sector that, if continued and prioritised over road infrastructure, could restore former railway connectivity and subsequently the societal and economic importance of the train. My thesis outlines the long-term development of the BH railway network from the 1870s until 2020, analyses it as a physical manifestation of political and economic ties and aspirations and 1 Đuro Marić, “Corridor Vc as a Factor of Integration of Bosnia and Herzegovina into the European Union,” Zbornik radova Geografskog instituta "Jovan Cvijić" SANU 62 (2012): 89, https://www.ceeol.com/search/article- detail?id=578137 (accessed January 2, 2021). 4 scrutinises the dramatic loss of importance that it suffered especially since the end of socialist Yugoslavia. Moreover, I shall give a brief outlook for the chances that a resurrection of the railway offers to the transport profile of the region. This endeavour manifests itself by three research questions: Firstly, how did the railway connectivity of Bosnia and Herzegovina evolve through time and how does it relate to the political and economic (dis)integration of spaces? Secondly, what are the reasons for the loss of the BH railway’s significance from the 1960s until today? Finally, what are the main arguments and requirements