Jasmin Mujanovic, a self-styled ‘proud Wobby’ young left-anarchist based in Canada but with Bosniak roots, has written at some length on the problems of the Dayton Peace Accords. He offers his suggestions for making progress, seemingly a BH-wide series of open meetings at which Bosnians define for themselves new constitutional principles. What could go wrong?

Here is my reply. I have tried to defend the Dayton BH constitution (a bit) by pointing to its intellectual origins in former Yugoslavia and before that, not least the infamous National Question:

This issue posed special problems for Marxists. How to reconcile global revolutionary ambitions with the reality that for many unique communities across Europe their very existence rather than class struggle was their main concern? Hence a vast bloc of theoretical work on the so-called National Question. The Soviet Union made enormous efforts to institutionalize and codify national identities at all levels of society, on a scale never before seen. Most European countries have given legal and/or political expression to ethnic rights in different forms. As does Canada.

Communist Yugoslavia took on some of the then current Soviet-style legal classifications. Ethno-linguistic communities whose homeland was Yugoslavia (Serbs, Slovenes, Croats etc) were called ‘narodi’ (‘nations’); those whose homeland was another country (Hungarians, Romanians, Albanians etc) were called ‘narodnosti’ (‘peoples’). Other small, ad hoc communities were called ‘manjine’ (‘minorities’). Today’s independent Slovenia still gives constitutional protection to “autochthonous ethnic communities” (Italians and Hungarians) and, crucially, links their rights to specific territorial areas.

In other words, there is nothing a priori bizarre or insane or chauvinistic in devising constitutional arrangements that a) give formal recognition to distinct categories of people (e.g. ‘Serbs’) and b) link political rights to identified territory.

On the contrary, this explains the sustained decades-long pressure within Yugoslavia from the significant community of people living mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina that did not identify itself as Serb or Croat, but rather as a group with unique Bosnian and, specifically, Muslim roots. Wikipedia:

In the 1948 census Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Muslims had three options in the census: “Serb-Muslim”, “Croat-Muslim”, and “ethnically undeclared Muslim”. In the 1953 census the category “Yugoslav, ethnically undeclared” was introduced and the overwhelming majority of those who declared themselves as such were Muslims. The Bosniaks were recognized as a ethnic group in 1961 but not as a nationality and in 1964 the Fourth Congress of the Bosnian Party assured the Bosniaks the right to self-determination. In 1971 the Muslims were fully recognized as a nationality and in the census the option “Muslims by nationality” was added.

In other words, the ‘Bosniaks/Muslims’ wanted to achieve the ‘top’ status of a narod, which they finally secured in 1971. The significance of this when Yugoslavia started to break-up was enormous.

The republic of Serbia was accepted by all as being ‘for’ the Serbs, Croatia was ‘for’ the Croats and Slovenia was ‘for’ the Slovenes. The Bosniaks, in effect, argued that as they were the largest community in Bosnia, it made sense that Bosnia and Herzegovina be ‘for’ them (or at least mainly for them). This was angrily contested by the Serbs in Bosnia and Serbia alike, many of whom who believed that the Titoist post-WW2 version of Bosnia had been created deliberately to cut Serbia down to size and had no intrinsic legitimacy.

If BiH was not for any one community, it would have to be shared or maybe even abolished. But how? Conflict!

Now that Bosnia is in this constitutional and moral tar-pit, there is no easy escape:

Now what? No-one knows. The Serbs have no reason to give up or redefine ‘their’ share of BiH, and have all sorts of legal ways to block constitutional reform. The Bosniaks and Croats bicker within ‘their’ Entity as they can not agree on what should replace it: a package of checks and balances that suits the relatively large Bosniak community does not suit the much smaller Croat community. The result? Deadlock and stagnation, and incredibly poor returns on the generous investment from the international community in Bosnian reconstruction.

My own conclusion is that some sort of confederation – within which each main community has its own defined territorial space – is a better outcome for now.

Yes, it is based on more ethno-territorial classifications that can be abused and are objectionable (to some) in principle. But it is at least crudely ‘fair’; as this term is understood in that part of the world. It gives each community an element of operational political insurance and, therefore, in due course may create the psychological space for more radical economic compromises (and, perhaps, a lot more grassroots pressure for further reforms).

The main problem is that the various Bosniak leaderships all hate the idea, as it further denies their core instinct that the whole territory of Titoist Bosnia and Herzegovina is ‘for’ them. And if the largest community in BiH won’t buy it, that change won’t happen.

Thus the political space for any change narrows down to small, crab-like manoeuvres that look ridiculous and largely change nothing much, performed – if at all – within Bosnia’s EU accession processes. Undignified? Yes. Wasteful? Definitely. Depressing? Utterly.

Mr Mujanovic again:

… the result of more and more supposed political and ethnic homoginzation (sic) is that political conduct and behaviour in BiH has become less and less clear and rational

Not really. It’s all very rational once the idea of seeing politics through national ‘group’ spectacles takes hold.

Maybe he’s right after all. Bring on anarchist grass-roots democracy!

But what if the grass-roots agree with their fine leaders? Or if the Republika Srpska grass-roots vote en bloc to leave BiH completely?