The Bosnian Educational System As a Means of Strengthening Ethnonationalism
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One step forward, two steps back: the Bosnian educational system as a means of strengthening ethnonationalism. Master thesis August 2018 Tea Martic (1365746) MSc Crisis and Security Management Under supervision of: Dr. Myriam Benraad Leiden University 21057 words ABSTRACT After the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina education has become segregated on the basis of ethnonationalism in an effort to suppress ethnonationalistic tensions. This dissertation examines the influence of the infusion of ethnonationalism through education on the students’ historical perceptions of the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995. Through a combination of a content and discourse analysis of the history textbooks, a survey with the students and interviews with the teachers the purpose of this dissertation is to analyse the interplay between what the books show, what the teachers tell and how the students understand and reproduce this information. After conducting field research in a Bosniak, Croat and Serb primary school, this dissertation finds that the infusion of ethnonationalism through education influences the students’ perception of how and when the Bosnian War started and their perception of who helped Bosnia and Herzegovina during the war. This ethnonationalist influence also becomes visible in who the students consider to be the “winners and losers” of the war. The different perceptions of the history of the Bosnian War are a result of the call for ethnonationalist rights through the right to educate in their own language and from their own perspective. As a consequence, the Bosnian educational system contributes to the societal security dilemma. However, this dissertation also finds that students in schools with multiple ethnonationalities show less ethnonationalist influences and have a more neutral perception of the history of the Bosnian War. Segregation in education has proven to be counterproductive. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people that I would like to thank for their help and assistance in preparing for my field research. Also, I would like to thank the people that have helped me during my time in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the people that have inspired me to write my thesis by sharing their thoughts and ideas. Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Myriam Benraad, for her assistance throughout the whole process, for the understanding and all the useful comments and thoughts. Second, I would like to thank Andrea Knezevic, library assistant at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, who made all the documents on former Yugoslavia and the war in Yugoslavia available for my research. Third, I am highly indebted to all the people that brought me into contact with either the schools or the ministries. Nada Stajic, Stana Krajina, Stjepan Krajina and Senad Hedzic, thank you for all your time and effort in order to organize my field research in the best way possible. I would like to give special thanks to Nada Stajic for making my entire stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina so pleasant and adventurous. Fourth, I would like to thank all of the schools, especially their directors and history teachers that were willing to find the time to let me conduct my research and to discuss the current system. It was their willingness to participate in this research that showed both bravery and positivity and made me believe that there is hope for change in the educational system in Bosnia in Herzegovina. Fifth, my sincere thanks goes to Mustafa Mustajbegovic for the inspiring conversations and for always providing food for thought. Last but not least, I would like to thank all of the students that participated in this research. The questions in the survey covered a very sensitive topic and it is likely that these questions reminded the students of their own family history. Therefore, I think that it was very courageous of them to try to answer these questions as honestly as possible. I sincerely admire their bravery. 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION 5 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK- ETHNONATIONALISM AND ETHNIC CONFLICT 9 3. METHODOLOGY 18 4. THE CURRENT BOSNIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 25 5. ETHNONATIONAL INFLUENCE IN WHAT IS WRITTEN, SAID AND HEARD 30 6. CONCLUSION 59 LIST OF REFERENCES 64 APPENDIX A: INTERVIEWS 68 APPENDIX B: HISTORY TEST SURVEY (TRANSLATED) 70 4 One step forward, two steps back: the Bosnian educational system as a means of strengthening ethnonationalism. 1. INTRODUCTION “Forming a nation does not presuppose the possession of a common state or language, nor a common culture or shared religion; all that is truly indispensable is the sense of their members that ‘they participate in a common past’” (Budak, 1999, p. 15). During and after the Bosnian War (1992- 1995), the education system of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) became highly decentralized, politicized and nationalistic, promoting competing visions and identities of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Swimelar, 2013). Education and youth are among the most fertile grounds to study the cultural production of new forms of identity and solidarity (Hromadzic, 2008). While in Yugoslavia education played a crucial role in both creating and solidifying a Yugoslav identity and at the same time respecting ethnic differences, education in post-war BiH represents a key arena for nationalist and ethnic divisions (Swimelar, 2013). According to Swimelar, the three separate ethnonational groups in BiH, the Bosniaks, Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs, all exploit education as a means of manifesting nationalism through calls for human rights, especially for their individual ethnonational group. These rights translate into the right to be educated in their own language, the right to have public support for their cultural preservation and the right to cultural autonomy (Swimelar, 2013). This also translates into the use of textbooks as the most important tool for the promotion and formation of national identity (Bartulovic, 2006). However, instead of promoting a unified Bosnian identity, the textbooks used by different mono-ethnic schools promote separate, exclusive identities (Bartulovic, 2006). During the pre-war Socialistic Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY), all cultural and historical heritages from the individual republics were suppressed in order to create a solidifying Yugoslav identity (Hromadzic, 2008). Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had an enormous cultural heritage from their time as a part of the Ottoman Empire, suddenly had to get rid of many of the traditional religious institutions. All memories of previous episodes in history were banned in Tito’s Yugoslavia (Bet-El, 2002). Soon after the death of Josip Broz Tito, the former leader of SFRY, in 1980, the contrasts between the ethnicities became visible again. In combination with the manipulation of these ethnonationalist feelings by the 5 politicians, the SFRY became destabilized resulting in the Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995 (Kondylis, 2010). The war ended with the signing of the Dayton Accords in December 1995, resulting in the division of Bosnia and Herzegovina where 51% of the territory has become a Bosniak-Croat Federation and 49% of the territory has become a Serb Republic (see figure 1) (Owen-Jackson, 2015). This Dayton Peace Agreement was not only supposed to end the ongoing war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. By creating a political structure that avoided any ethnic fusion on institutional levels, the creators of the peace agreement expected the agreement to be a long-term solution for the ethnonationalistic tensions in BiH. This high autonomy that was given to the separate entities has also resulted into their abilities to design the educational systems in favor of their ethnonationality (Russo, 2000). Figure 1: Division of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Republika Srpska (Serb Republic) and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosniak-Croat Federation). Source: Owen-Jackson, 2015, p. 127 While educators and politicians have recognized the role of education in socialization, identity formation and the promotion of peaceful relations; education as a non-traditional ‘security’ issue has been neglected by international relations scholars (Nellis, 2006). However, the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina shows that education can be used not only as a socializing tool, but also as a potential security threat (Swimelar, 2013). According to the 6 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Bosnia and Herzegovina’s current educational system represents a serious obstacle to the reconciliation, stability, security, institution-building, economic recovery and the sustainable return of refugees (OSCE, 2002). When summing up potential security threats, education has previously not been considered as a classic potential security threat in comparison to for example organized crime, terrorism and climate change. However, education is a human right and the societal insecurity can be intensified by the human rights exploited by the ethnicities. Swimelar has argued that the Bosnian education system leads to a societal security dilemma (2013). According to Swimelar, this dilemma appears when “the attempts of one group to attain societal security and promote its identity through cultural and rhetorical means lead to perceptions of insecurity by another group, which then attempts also to support its identity and gain security through similar means. These cultural means can be the call for human rights within education, such as the right to learn in one’s own language and from one’s own cultural perspective” (2013, p. 162). The concept of societal security was first introduced by the Copenhagen School of Security, in order to enable the security analysis to look at the “society” as a referent object, and not only the “state”. As Sadzovski argues, in societal security, “identity based threats and insecurities are of primary concern” (Sadzovski, 2015, p. 55). As Buzan and Waever argue, “survival for a society is a question of identity, because this is the way society talks about existential threats: if this happens, we will no longer be able to live as ‘us’” (Buzan & Waever, 1997, p. 242 as quoted in Sadzovski, 2015, p.