UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI MILANO GRADUATE SCHOOL IN SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES PH.D. PROGRAM IN POLITICAL STUDIES – XXIX COHORT ! PH.D. DISSERTATION POLITICAL COMPETITION AND REJECTION OF NATIONALISM IN WARTIME YUGOSLAVIA THE CASE OF TUZLA (1990-1995) DISCIPLINARY SCIENTIFIC SECTOR: SPS/04 TUTOR: PH.D. CANDIDATE: PROF. ANDREA CARATI GORAN FILIC DIRECTOR: PROF. FRANCESCO ZUCCHINI ACADEMIC YEAR 2015-2016 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Many have contributed to this doctoral dissertation. If I have not mentioned someone, it is only due to the space constraint but I am most grateful to all that have helped me in this process. These nearly four years have been exceptionally challenging but also, most luminous experiences of my life so far. I would particularly like to express my sincere gratitude to the following: Dr. Prof. Andrea Carati, my advisor and mentor who has supported me throughout this work by offering continual encouragement and words of wisdom. I felt confident as those words came from a scholar with years of experience and dedication to the field and from a very kind and friendly individual. Dr. Prof. Francesco Zucchini, Director of the Political Science Doctoral Program and the admissions committee at the University of Milan, Graduate School of Social and Political Sciences for giving me an opportunity to study and produce the doctoral thesis, constructive feedback and an opportunity to make Italy my home for three years of my life which have been an invaluable personal and professional experiences. Without their help and opportunity given, this project would not have been achieved. I would also like to express gratitude to NASP Foundation, for their generous support of my research project. Dr. Prof. Stefano Bianchini, for continuous academic and professional mentorship, constructive feedback and sharing his insights and expertise on former Yugoslavia. !2 At this point I would like to thank all those in former Yugoslavia, particularly Mr. Damir Sehanovic who has generously shared all his contacts in Tuzla which enabled me conduct interviews with high level city leadership that I could not otherwise been able to access. Firstly, I would like to thank Mr. Selim Beslagic, wartime Mayor of Tuzla for accepting my interview with invaluable information provided. Mr. Imamovic, current Mayor of Tuzla and his entire staff whose explanation of Tuzla’s anti-fascist history is invaluable. Dr. Prof. Nada Mladina who has inspired me to look deeper into other aspects of Tuzla that I might have missed otherwise. Mr. Vehid Sehic from the Forum Of Citizens who has generously provided insight information of wartime civil society in Tuzla, Prof. Knezicek and Prof. Jugoslav Stahov at the University of Tuzla who have been immensely generous with their time who have given me very instructive explanations about Tuzla’s identity formation that of reflective of Tuzla’s industrial legacy. Lastly, Mr. Raif Dizdarevic, former President of Yugoslavia, who accepted my interview at difficult times in his life and found time to provide invaluable information on the Yugoslav society politics at most critical times. I would like to thank my cohort colleagues in particular Dr. Asier Erdozain, and soon to be doctors of philosophy, Niccolo Donati and Pierre Van Wolleghem a group of mature and caring friends for their valuable input and encouragement throughout the dissertation process and experiences we shared in Italy as well as my friends in Texas, Jon and Nick and many others for soccer and relax time for much needed breaks between reading, writing and working on the project. Lastly, my family in particular my WW II veteran grandmother Ljubica who is turning 92 this year. I do wish that my two grandfathers Filip Filic and Boris Mihajlovski, both who were miners, saw me complete this project before they !3 left, especially my dear grandmother whom I loved very much, Ruza Filic. Special thank you to Katz family in Dallas. In particular I would like to thank Mrs. Katz for loving emails, books, music and food during my studies at Columbia University in New York, years that have transpired this project and deep ongoing support and motivating discussions and endless list of inspiring greeting cards. Also, thanks to Dr. Katz for taking me on his WW II fighter jet airplane and letting me fly it (little bit). I would also like to thank my students in Dubrovnik, who have let me use my doctoral research for some classes which helped me make critical selections of main points needed for the larger audience. !4 DEDICATION This research is dedicated to my future family and my other half Ana to serve as a reminder of previous struggles and a reminder for capacity to persevere with resilience and embrace life to always go forward, higher and to continually better themselves first and then those around them second and lastly to maintain the unrivaled will, spirit and resolved determination much like Spartans and Texans: ‘µολὼν λαβέ’ — ‘come and take it’ ! Always. To the Government of United States and Texas that took me in, shaped me into who I am today and gave me an opportunity for a new life that enabled me to attain the highest echelons of academic studies. To all those who have perished in the senseless wars and to the new generations of Yugoslavs so that they make better choices from those of 1990. - Goran Filic !5 PERSONAL NOTE As a refugee during the 1990s from the Yugoslav wars who endured everything that the war had to offer, my multiethnic family, experienced all, from property looting, prisoners of war, refugee camps and frontlines deaths. I have been incorporated into the Yugoslav tragedy since I was ten years old when the Yugoslav violent collapse unfolded in front of my eyes. When the city of Vares fell, my father was taken as prisoner of war (POW), my uncle lost his life fighting in the frontlines, my two brothers also ended up in the trenches but miraculously remained unscathed, while mom and I were transported to the refugee camp deprived of most basic human needs for months. All these events have pushed me to fully understand the Yugoslav tragedy. It did not make a lot of sense that such violent outburst of violence occurred in such short period, especially after nearly five decades of peace. Now, almost twenty five years since, my family and I have made Dallas, Texas our new home and while Yugoslav war memories have become bleak, they have not been entirely forgotten. In the meantime, driven by the past experiences, I am now a scholar of political science, analyzing root causes of violence but more importantly, addressing instances where peace prevailed in a country that no longer exists, yet it still remains a socio-political phenomena. Because I was directly impacted by Yugoslav violent disintegration and was never fully satisfied with how the Yugoslav conflict, ethnic identities and nationalism particularly in Bosnia were addressed, after quarter of a decade in United States with a journey from a refugee camp in central Bosnia to the library halls of Southern Methodist and Columbia Universities now a doctoral student at the University of Milan, I want to offer my view of the conflict, but not only conflict, rather instance where peace won and nationalism was defeated. I hope that my view based on my !6 experiences and years spent in the region researching and working is more reflective of the realities on the ground. My interest in the city of Tuzla, was a continual process of questioning the practices and representations that often are subsumed under the rubric of nationalism, particularly cases of Serbian and Croatian radical nationalism and its subsequent violent outcome, not to exclude all other -isms, Bosnian Muslim, Slovenian, Albanian, Macedonian and Montenegrin. They all had their part in dismantling Yugoslavia. In this thesis, I explore the counter-intuitive phenomena of peace during the war in Bosnia, where the working class of a mining city defeated virulent nationalism, territorial partition, rejected all types of ethnic, national and religious oppressions and successfully maintained the rule of law in the city. Tuzla's wartime leadership opted to mobilize citizens around the civic values, which better reflected the preferences of Tuzla’s citizens as they were never inclined towards ethno-national or religious divisions, which reasserted the particularity of their undivided city. How and why Tuzlan’s were able to accomplish this, will be discussed in the next six chapters. !7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BiH Bosnia and Herzegovina DPA Dayton Peace Accords EC European Commission EU European Union FBiH Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina GDP Gross Domestic Product HR High Representative HDZ Croatian Democratic Union ICTY International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia IMF Monetary Fund JNA Yugoslav People Army KPJ Communist Party of Yugoslavia NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NDH Independent State of Croatia RS Republika Srpska SDA Party of Democratic Action SDP Social Democratic Party SDS Serbian Democratic Party SFRY Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia SKJ League of Communists of Yugoslavia TO Territorial Defense UN United Nations WTO World Trade Organization !8 MAP OF FORMER YUGOSLAVIA !9 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments 2 Dedication 5 Personal Note 6 List of Abbreviations 8 Map of Former Yugoslavia 9 Table of Contents 10 CHAPTER ONE: Introduction 14 Tuzla: The case to keep peace within a civil war 14 Primordialism vs. Instrumentalism: grasping the ethnic conflict 17 Research