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Trading Places 140 Trading Places ARIZONA MARKET: INTER-EtHNIC COLLABORatION IN BRCˇKO Not far from the north Bosnian town of Brcˇko lies one of the most notorious marketplaces in south-eastern Europe: Arizona Market. It has 2,500 stalls on an area covering 40 hectares, receives 3 million visitors a year and employs directly or indirectly an estimated 100,000 people. Apart from these statistics, what distinguishes the market depends on participants’ perspectives and interests, and these can differ considerably. For some, it is a model of a multi-ethnic com- munity, for others it is the largest open-air shopping mall in the Balkans, while still others experience it as hell on earth. The differences in perspective depend upon which of the numerous stages and transformations of what is commonly Trading Places called Arizona Market one is referring to. The strip of land occupied by the present Arizona Market is a part of the war zone that was fiercely fought over by Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Muslim units because of its strategic position after Bosnia-Herzegovina had left the federal state of Yugoslavia in 1991. Besides the entities set out in the Dayton Peace Accords of November 1995, i.e. the Serbian Republic and the Federation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the disputed territory around the town of Brcˇko, whose future was to be decided in an international arbitra- tion process, was granted special status. It was placed under the direct supervision of a special supervisor from the Office of the High Representative (OHR) of the inter- national community of states for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Along the so-called Arizona Corridor (the north-south link between Bosnia and Croatia, which divides the Serbian Republic into a western and an eastern part), thus named by the IFOR/SFOR troops, an economic hub has established itself whose importance extends far beyond the area occupied by the Special District of Brcˇko. In 1996, after the checkpoint set up at the interface between the three ethnic groupings had evolved into an informal meet- ing place where cigarettes and cattle were traded and coffee was served at the road- side, the local commander decided to encourage initial encounters between members of the different ethnic communities by establishing a ‘free-trade zone’, with the aim of consolidating peace. SFOR soldiers levelled several hectares of farmland, cleared the mines and supplied building materials. In next to no time, the largest informal market for goods in Southern Europe arose on the opposite side of the road to the checkpoint: with wooden huts, improvised stalls, smuggled goods and bootleg versions of brand- name goods. Textiles, food, electronic products, building materials, cosmetics, car accessories and CDs could all be purchased at favourable prices there. The cheapest goods could be acquired directly from the lorries. Decisive for the continued development of Arizona Market was the fact that, unlike most other informal markets, it arose on the open fields with the support of the armed forces. In the years that followed, the convergence of economic activities at the site and the self-organization of this grey trade area were extolled as a model for promoting the sustained development of communications and community structures between former wartime enemies. Supplementing the simple market facilities and mobile sales, the first houses soon arose, presaging the emergence of a self-organ- ized urbanization process on the site. As time went by, ever more bars and motels operating in these huts and houses started to accommodate a form of trade that made it increasingly difficult to sell – at an international level – the success story of peace based on the market economy. For at Arizona Market, the real money was made through prostitution and trafficking in human beings: with women and girls who were being brought in from Eastern Europe. According to reports, they were rounded up on the streets and resold like cattle from one bar owner to the next. On 26 October 2000, the international community (OHR, OSCE, UNMIBH and SFOR) announced a package of measures designed to purge Arizona Market of such illegal activities. These measures focused on regulating the issue of licences and tax revenues and relocating the market by June 2001 to a new site that would offer all the necessary facilities and safety features.1 Arizona Market BosniaBrcˇko, and Herzegovina, 2006 Places Trading Places Trading 141 140 The most striking thing about this strategy to regain control over Arizona Market – of forms, colours, materials and standards. Turbo architecture is one of the uncon- which ultimately culminated in the ceremonial opening of a new shopping centre cealable and unrestrainable results of the black market. It is ‘proof that architectural in the presence of the Principal Deputy High Representative, the US Ambassador, production depends neither on a stable market nor on a stable political system’.5 Donald S. Hays, on 11 November 20042 – was the way the international community, Turbo architecture is a self-created niche marking out its own field of operation by which exercised politico-territorial control, and an international investor co-operated skilfully manoeuvring through a combination of half-truths, misunderstandings and in privatizing public space. In February 2001, the supervisor ordered the closure of the local reactions; it is the antithesis of the firmly laid-down rules of the master plan. existing market.3 In December that year, Italproject, an Italian-Bosnian-Serbian con- In this sense it counterbalances the design envisaged for the new Arizona Market. sortium, won a tender to establish and operate a new market. The consortium signed Indeed, at Arizona Market, at the interface between the grown settlement and the a 20-year leasing agreement with the district administration that granted it the right new developments on allotted plots, ‘Balkanized’ house models respond to a land- to retain 100 per cent of the rental income for a period of seventeen years in return scape of instable policies with powerful gestures of invulnerability and success, for developing the infrastructure. The project envisaged investing 120 million euro, hyper-materialism and hyper-identifiables. under the supervision of the EUFOR (EU), to develop a modern trade infrastructure on an area initially comprising 60,000 square meters. In a later phase of development, a In contrast to all of these facades, developments on the other side of Arizona Road complexly structured economic and trade base for the entire southern European area point to the vital contribution that invisible labour markets have made to Arizona was to be established, which would include multiplex cinemas, hotels, casinos and Market’s prosperity. The far-reaching trade contacts find their official expression a conference centre. Italproject offered existing traders in the fact that Italproject is developing the Trade City of China on the other side the opportunity to rent or buy stalls in module-like of Arizona Road. The Trade City of China is a theme shopping centre designed to rooms. Resistance by landowners and traders to this accommodate over 100 businesses that import their goods directly from China and total takeover was met with compulsory disposses- resell them in Brcˇko to wholesalers and retailers. This splendid future is being made sions. This response was justified with the argument possible by hundreds of Chinese workers who are staying in a bunkhouse in a vacant that it was in the public interest to ensure that the dis- salesroom that stands in the shadows of advertising hoardings. If one takes Arizona trict administration of Brcˇko complied with the agree- as a model of a market-oriented town-establishment project, then the Trade City of ments concluded with Italproject.4 Demonstrations and China is Arizona’s Chinatown, and its decorated prefabricated hall a sign of changing road blockades staged to oppose the demolition of trade relations. Arizona, being caught up in the vortex of these diverse enterprises, the old site were cleared by the police. As most of the is also surrounded by a variety of conceptions. In their study on the Arizona Market, landowners affected were Croatians who sought the Harvard Business School economists, for instance, have concluded that democracy is support of nationalist groups to assert their cause, the not necessarily a precondition for launching capitalist economies. The armed forces, maxim of achieving reconciliation by taking economic they argue, are more efficient than a democratically elected government at triggering measures came dangerously close to fomenting an economic processes, because they, like their market counterparts, go into operation ethnic conflict as a result of what was seen as an when states of emergency present themselves.6 Where the Harvard study praises the arbitrary allocation of economic options. Arizona Market Gate of the Trade City of China BosniaBrcˇko, and Herzegovina, 2006 combination of a military framework and economic self-organization as a model for a perfect market-oriented state structure, others condemn the transformation process The transformation of the informal market into a shopping centre, which was intended as a lost opportunity to urbanize the area from below. This shift in attention to tax rev- to prevent illegal activities and, at the same time, preserve its economic vitality, enues and ignorance about the potential that self-regulating structures contain have signalled a critical turning point, revealing the limits of translating between formal extinguished any hopes of forward-looking models of sustainable urban development. and informal systems. The ‘spontaneous’ evolution of a public-urban space in the To cite Azra Akšamija: ‘A fundamental reorganization of a situation in the case of a shape of an informal market surrounded by transporters and huts was replaced by conflict provides the possibility to intuitively come to terms with the economic and enclosed fee-charging parking spaces.
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