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POPULATION, SPACE AND PLACE Popul. Space Place 17, 140–152 (2011) Published online 7 January 2010 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/psp.607 Refuchess: Locating Bosniac Repatriates after the War in Bosnia–Herzegovina Stef Jansen* Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK ABSTRACT Received 20 December 2008; revised 11 September 2009; accepted 11 November 2009 One of the central contradictions Keywords: home; ethnic cleansing; refugees; characterising the state of Bosnia–Herzegovina return; Bosnia–Herzegovina that emerged from the ashes of the 1992–1995 war concerns the territorial distribution of its population according to nationality. On the INTRODUCTION one hand, the foreign intervention, and the Dayton Peace Agreement it brokered, 1994 poster entitled REFUCHESS by the sanctioned its division into largely nationally Art Publishing Service in the then homogenised polities, consolidating military A besieged city of Sarajevo depicted a conquests. On the other hand, large foreign chessboard with two rows of 10 person icons. funds were invested in programmes of refugee Representing those displaced in the confl ict in repatriation and return to redress ethnic Bosnia–Herzegovina (BiH) as pawns, a classic cleansing, with considerable success in terms metaphor of subjection and manipulation, the of property restitution. Rather than poster implied that displacement itself had understanding these dynamics as a become a strategic parameter in the 1992–1995 resurrection of a prior situation, this article war. Wartime refuchess took many forms, of considers them as part of a set of interrelated which the military expulsion of persons of unde- transformations. Working from ethnographic sired nationality – an activity that henceforth material gathered among Bosniac repatriates came to be designated as ‘ethnic cleansing’ – was in the early phases of large-scale return, it fi rst the most documented. It also involved nationalist introduces the notion of refuchess, the strategic elites organising, with varying degrees of force, deployment and movement of nationalised the resettlement of the very people they claimed persons across nationalised places. It then to represent, such as the resettlement of Bosnian zooms out to investigate such return Croats into western BiH. Post-war examples movements more generally in terms of include the 1996 exodus to territories under different projects of home making and in Serbian control by Bosnian Serbs from Sarajevo terms of their paradoxical implications on suburbs that the Dayton Peace Agreement had the national demographic structure of assigned to the Bosniac-dominated canton of 1 Bosnia–Herzegovina. Copyright © 2010 John Sarajevo. Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Chess, of course, often serves as a metaphor for war. If the poster represented displaced persons (DPs) as pawns, who were the Karpovs, the Fischers, and the Kasparovs in this lethal game in BiH? In wartime Sarajevo, the primary actors referred to are undoubtedly the Bosnian Serb nationalist elites and their tutors in Serbia. In fact, * Correspondence to: Stef Jansen, Social Anthropology, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 both the wartime political leader of the Bosnian 9PL, UK. E-mail: [email protected] Serb nationalists, Radovan Karadzˇic´, and their Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Locating Bosniac Repatriates 141 military commander, Ratko Mladic´, were known game of chess) further fanned resentment. As a to be keen chess players – during the war, they result, even among those who did not straight- even countered rumours of disagreement between forwardly reject the FIAs as the institutional and them with a televised game near the front line. military arm of Western conspiracies, suspicion Chess is also popular in the detention centre of was prevalent. It is against the background of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former this multi-stranded chess game of war-time BiH Yugoslavia in Den Haag, where many inmates that we must understand the bitter paradoxical have apparently no aversion towards those with combination of the sense of subordination and of different national backgrounds when it comes abandonment felt by many Bosnians. to post-war entertainment. In this context, it is The stakes of this game were high. Every important to note that the refuchess poster shows second Bosnian fl ed her or his pre-war place of a chessboard set up for a game, which requires residence, and around 100,000 people have been more than one player: Hence, at least two of the confi rmed killed or are still missing, of which military-political elites in the confl ict (and possi- some 41% civilians. Over 80% of all civilians con- bly all three of them) are being accused of treat- fi rmed killed or missing are Bosniacs.3 In late ing the displaced as pawns in their geostrategic 1995, with the territorial balance tipped after a schemes. Events on the ground have tended to period of intense offensives as well as NATO support this view: Many patterns of displace- (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) air strikes ment in the BiH war can only be understood as against VRS positions, the foreign-brokered integral parts of wider processes of military con- Dayton Agreement secured a sovereign BiH, quest, consolidation of territories, foreign and which had been the stated preference of 62.68% local political support, control over humanitarian of its adult population in a 1992 referendum (99% aid, and so on (see e.g. Bougarel, 1996). of those who did vote in a 64% turnout; a major- Furthermore, already during the military ity of Bosnian Serbs did not vote). Dayton BiH, violence, most Bosnians clearly detected another however, was divided into two entities: Federacija party at the chessboard: the Foreign Interven- BiH (‘the Federation’) and Republika Srpska (‘RS’). tion Agencies (FIAs).2 Dominant Serbian and Because the Federation was itself decentralised Croatian nationalist discourses represented them into cantons, this effectively consolidated the largely as an occupying imperialist force, but largely nationally homogenised Bosnian Serb, among others, particularly among inhabitants of Bosnian Croat, and Bosniac polities produced by Bosniac-dominated territories, the situation was wartime population movements. Indeed, in 1996, more ambiguous (partly refl ecting the overlaps only 10% of all Bosnian Serbs who had, in 1991, between Bosnian unitarism and Bosniac nation- lived in the geographical area that is now the alism): On the one hand, FIAs were seen as Federation remained there, while only 5% of all possible allies, or at least guarantors of survival, Bosnian Croats and Bosniacs remained in their but on the other hand, people resented what pre-war places of residence in what is now RS. they experienced as their ineffi cacy, their reluc- The military dimension of refuchess thus ended tance to intervene when desired, and their with a near-total unmixing of the population in pragmatic (many say cynical) deal making with terms of nationality. various sides. A much-quoted example involves FIA complicity in the invasion of Srebrenica by the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), the ‘evacu- THE DAYTON PARADOX AND ation’ of its Bosniac population (itself already 1 MILLION RETURNS consisting largely of DPs), and the ensuing massacre of thousands of men and boys. Another In 2000–2001, basing myself in Tuzla, I carried reason for indignation was the fact that the FIAs out a year-long period of participant observation allowed VRS considerable control over humani- and interviews among displaced and returned tarian aid deliveries to the city of Sarajevo that it persons with different national backgrounds in besieged. In both cases, pictures of foreign func- north-east BiH, both in the Federation and in RS.4 tionaries engaging in a seemingly friendly I worked with people on reconstruction sites, manner with Bosnian Serb nationalist top brass attended meetings by would-be returnees as well (over food, drinks, and, indeed, the occasional as those who did not wish to return, and listened Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Popul. Space Place 17, 140–152 (2011) DOI: 10.1002/psp 142 S. Jansen to their stories over copious amounts of coffee. DPs]. Probably the single most quoted section of In this article, I present some fi ndings from that the Dayton Agreement was its Annex 7: ethnographic research and then cast them against ‘All refugees and displaced persons shall have documentary and narrative evidence collected to right freely to return to their homes of origin. during subsequent yearly research visits to BiH They shall have the right to have restored to (roughly a few months every year) as well as them their property of which they were during a new long-term research project in a deprived in the course of the hostilities since Sarajevo suburb (8 months in 2008). This later 1991 and to be compensated for any property research did not focus on return per se, but the that cannot be restored to them. The early issue is so central to Bosnian political life that return of refugees and displaced persons is an its presence is always felt. Hence, while still important objective of the settlement of the drawing on the immediacy of ethnography, for confl ict in BiH. The Parties confi rm that they the purpose of this special issue, I step back to will accept the return of such persons who try to make sense of return movements on a have left their territory, including those who longer time scale, both in terms of different have been accorded temporary protection people’s (re)makings of home and of their para- by third countries.’ doxical implications on the national demographic structure of BiH. The last line indicates that, of the three ‘durable Six years after the production of the refuchess solutions’ for refugees as defi ned by the UNHCR, poster, when I started my fi eld research, many voluntary repatriation of refugees from BiH was people still harboured its representation of the prioritised over integration and resettlement displaced as pawns.