History of nationalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina. (c2009)

Abstract

When I travelled with Dr. Traboulsi to Bosnia-Herzegovina, I thought the Bosnian war was triggered by ethnic hatred whereby three groups refused to co-exist in the same country. At the time, I assumed that the Serbs, Muslims, and Croats had their nationalisms subdued till the time when Tito died and the Bosnian war broke out. In Sarajevo, my interviews at the time revealed that people actually loved the Communist dictator, and as a matter of fact, he was commonly missed by all ethnic groups. This led me to ask the following question: how can an ethnic society love Tito and his secular regime, and in less than a decade after his death, they turned into warring ethnic factions? The purpose of my thesis is to prove that the last war (1992 - 1995) in BosniaHerzegovina was not an ethnic war; rather it was a political war between the leaders of Serbia and Croatia to maintain their position in power. In order to investigate how valid such a hypothesis is, I investigated the history of nationalist movements in Bosnia since its foundation as a sovereign entity. During that time, and up to the Bosnian war of 1992- 1995, it was found that the majority of the Bosnians were not ethnically driven. Instead, the nationalists outside Bosnia imposed ethnicity on its people. Wars in such a scenario are a tool to impose ethnic tags on citizens in order to separate Bosnia's community by force into a three way nationalist ghettos. History reveals that Bosnia enjoyed interreligious co-existence, and ethnicity came initially from abroad, mainly from the political elites in bordering Serbia and Croatia.