Bosnia and Herzegovina

V

Government

Bosnia and Herzegovina’s constitution was originally written in 1974 but was subsequently revised between 1989 and 1991. In order to reflect the republic’s increasing democratization, the General Assembly prepared to write a new constitution in 1991, envisaging Bosnian autonomy within a Yugoslav federation, but this effort was impeded by increasing polarization among the republic’s three main ethnic groups, and in particular by the Serbian community. The country has a multi-party system, and in 1992 the primary organizations included the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Muslim Bosniak Organization, Party of Democratic Action, Serbian Democratic Party, Socialist Alliance, and the Socialist Democratic Party.

The 1995 Dayton Peace Accord, which ended the Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War, set up a new Constitution for the country. As described in the Accord, Bosnia and Herzegovina is made up of two entities: first, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Federacija Bosne i Hercegovine) covering 51 per cent of the state's territory and, second, the Republic of Srpska (Republika Srpska), covering 49 per cent. Each has its own government with a president, vice-president, and a prime minister. Overarching these is a central government (the Federal Government), with a parliament and a rotating presidency of three presidents, one from each ethnic grouping, one Bosniak and one Croat directly elected by universal suffrage from the Federation and one Serb directly elected from the Republika Srpska. Elections take place every four years. The presidency is responsible for foreign affairs, immigration, and the nomination of the prime minister.

There is a bi-cameral legislature comprising the House of Representatives (Zastupnièki Dom) and the House of Peoples (Dom Narodu). The former has 42 directly elected members, two thirds Croat and Bosniak, one third Serb. The latter has 15 members: 5 Croats, 5 Bosniaks, and 5 Serbs. Both houses have two-year terms.

The Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is headed by a president and a vice-president, alternately a Croat or a Bosniak. There is also a 140-member House of Representatives and a 74-member House of Peoples.

The Republic of Srpska is also headed by a directly elected president and a vice-president. There is a National Assembly of 83 members voted for by proportional representation. It is this Assembly that nominates delegates to the House of Peoples.

Each of the two entities may enter into agreements with states and international organizations with the consent of the federal Parliamentary Assembly. The Parliamentary Assembly may provide by law that certain types of agreements do not require such consent.

The Ministry of Justice and the State Administration supervise all courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Supreme Court and Constitutional Court are the highest courts in the republic.

The republic employed a Territorial Defence Force prior to the war, which then separated into three ethnic factions. In late 1994 Bosnian Muslim forces numbered about 210,000; Bosnian Serbs, about 80,000; and Bosnian Croats, about 50,000. UN Protection Forces were sent in to encourage peace in the war-torn areas of the former Yugoslavia, and numbered between 35,000 and 40,000 in early 1995, about 22,000 of whom were stationed in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country now has its own unified armed forces that in 2004 numbered about 24,672.

VI

History

Nearly three millennia ago, the territory now considered Bosnia and Herzegovina formed part of Illyria, which became known as the Roman province of Illyricum in the 1st century bc. Following the collapse of the Roman Empire, first the Goths and then the Slavs conquered the territory. Various petty Slav princes ruled the area until the 12th century ad, when Hungary made the area one of its dominions. The Hungarians later made Bosnia a banat (province) under the control of a ban (viceroy). Ban Stephen Krotomanic extended Hungarian authority over the principality of Hum (also known as Zahumlje), later known as Herzegovina. Krotomanic’s nephew and successor Stephen Tvtko further extended the boundaries, and in 1376 proclaimed himself king of Serbia and Bosnia. The kingdom began to disintegrate after the death of Tvtko. A rebellious Bosnian chieftain seized the Hum region early in the 15th century and established it as Herzegovina, which means “independent duchy”. By 1463 the Ottoman Empire had conquered most of Bosnia, and Herzegovina fell to them in 1483. The two territories remained provinces of the Ottoman Empire for the next 400 years, although unsuccessful uprisings against the Turks occurred frequently during the 19th century.

A

Events Prior to Independence

The population of the area included Roman Catholic Croats, Orthodox Serbs, and Muslims (Slavs who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule) by the late 19th century. Unrest among the various ethnic groups coupled with the increasing deterioration of the Ottoman Empire led to a general decline of the area. During the Congress of Berlin in 1878, the Habsburg dual monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire negotiated with other European rulers for administration rights over the area, and by 1908 had annexed the two provinces. Austro-Hungarian rule did little to quell the ethnic tensions in the region, and instead it became a centre of nationalist agitation for political independence and cultural autonomy. Europe began to take sides in the disputes: Austria-Hungary and Germany opposed the growing Serbian nationalism, while Russia and Great Britain, in part, supported it.

In June 1914 the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, and his wife were assassinated in Sarajevo, an act that precipitated World War I. Gavrilo Princip, the assassin, was a Serb student from Bosnia. During the war, Croats and Serbs mostly fought together, hoping to create a kingdom that would unite all the South Slavic peoples. On December 1, 1918, following the overthrow of the Habsburg monarchy at the close of the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina merged and became part of the independent Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes under the Serbian monarchy of King Alexander from 1921 to 1934. When conflict between Croats and Serbs led to greater national tensions, Alexander tightened control over the country, and in 1929 he renamed the kingdom Yugoslavia (which means “Land of the South Slavs”).

During World War II Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia. Italy formed a pro-Fascist puppet state encompassing much of Croatia and Bosnia, which was headed by native nationalists in Croatia. Yugoslavs fought against each other during the remainder of the war; in particular, the forces of Josip Broz Tito, a Croatian Communist, fought against the Italian-backed Croat Fascist puppet state. At the end of the war, Tito reconciled all the various parts of Yugoslavia and created a Yugoslav federation with Bosnia and Herzegovina as one of the constituent republics, despite insistence by Serbs that the region should be made only a province like Vojvodina and Kosovo. During the 1960s Tito granted Muslims a distinct ethnic status, in an effort to put them on equal footing with Serbs and Croats. In the 1970s a collective presidency was instituted in the republic. Ethnic tensions continued, however, and worsened following Tito’s death in 1980.

In 1990 the Communist Party finally relinquished power in Yugoslavia. A panoply of political parties quickly formed throughout the country, each advocating a different cause. Most of these new parties represented distinct ethnic groups. During the three separate elections for members of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Assembly in November and December 1990, the Muslim Party of Democratic Action (PDA), which had engaged in various clashes with ethnic Serbs, won 86 seats. The Serbian Democratic Party (SDP) earned 72 seats, and the Croatian Democratic Union of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CDU-BH) won 44 seats. These three parties together filled all seven seats of the collective presidency. Alija Izetbegović, leader of the PDA, became the president of the presidency in the new coalition government.

During 1991, ethnic tensions throughout Yugoslavia helped weaken the precarious Bosnian presidency. When both Croatia and Slovenia declared their independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, many Serbs throughout the remaining republics began proclaiming their allegiance to Serb-dominated federal Yugoslavia. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, as in Croatia, they formed Serbian Autonomous Regions (SARs). Rejection of the SARs by the Bosnian government led to armed conflicts between Serbs and non-Serbs. These conflicts escalated after the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in September 1991. The Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) demonstrated its opposition to the secession of the three republics by sending in forces in an attempt to reimpose the federation. The JNA was defeated in Slovenia; in Croatia it helped Croatian Serbs take about 30 per cent of the country, and almost destroyed Croatia’s culturally and architecturally most important city of Dubrovnik. In Bosnia, the Serbian Democratic Party rejected proposals for independence by the presidency of the republic and by the PDA. Negotiations among the various parties ended in a stalemate. The dissenting Serbs withdrew from the National Assembly in February 1992, formed an Assembly of the Serb Nation, and held a referendum for Serbs on whether they should remain part of Yugoslavia. While nearly all participants in the referendum voted to remain with Yugoslavia, voters in a similar referendum in February and March 1992 open to all ethnic groups (but boycotted by most Serbs) voted to secede. That same month, Bosnia and Herzegovina declared its independence. Shortly thereafter, the brutal Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian War broke out as the Serbs, backed by the Yugoslav People’s Army, began battling Croats and Muslims for territory.

B

Independence and War

Despite international recognition of the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, first by the United States and European Community (now EU) in April 1992 and then by the UN in May 1992, the conflict within the country went on unabated. By May 1992, when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) was established by the two remaining republics, Bosnian Serbs with JNA support had gained control of more than two thirds of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and laid siege to Sarajevo. Early mediation efforts by the EC and the UN failed, and on May 30, 1992, the UN imposed economic sanctions against the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), because of continuing Serbian government support for the Bosnian Serbian militias. The FRY was not generally internationally recognized, and was excluded from the UN as the legal successor to the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The war took a new turn in July when a group of Croats, under the leadership of Mate Boban, formed a breakaway Croat state called the Republic of Herceg-Bosna. This move suspended the Croat and Muslim alliance against the Serbs, and convinced EC and UN mediators that their earlier proposal, in March 1992, which called for the division of the country into three autonomous ethnic communities under a central authority, would be necessary to end hostilities. As before, however, this proposal was rejected.

The Bosnian government continued to request UN intervention in the expanding war. It also asked the international community to recognize that the imposition of economic sanctions against Serbia and Montenegro was actually more detrimental to Bosnia, which was unable to receive supplies. The Bosnian government also protested against the international arms embargo on the republics of the former Yugoslavia, arguing that the lack of an arms supply hurt them more than the well-armed Serbs; as a result, the United States unilaterally decided to stop enforcing the ban in late 1994; in July 1995 the US Congress voted by a large majority to lift the arms embargo following a withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces. During the second half of 1992, the international community became aware of extensive violations of human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In particular, the systematic rape of an estimated 20,000 Muslim women by Serbian soldiers, in the name of so-called “ethnic cleansing”, was recognized as a barbarous atrocity. International mediation, however, was able to accomplish very little.

C

Creation of Safe Areas

In June 1993 the UN Security Council passed a resolution to create six “safe areas” for Bosnian Muslims: Bihać, Tuzla, Srebrenica, Zepa, Gorazde, and Sarajevo. The resolution called for the deployment of up to 25,000 additional UN soldiers and gave them the mandate to use force to defend those areas. While the safe areas provided a refuge for many driven from their homes, the international community recognized the general ineffectiveness of this resolution as some of the safe areas, including Sarajevo and Gorazde, continued to come under attack by Serbian forces.

In March 1994 fighting between Bosnian Muslims and Croats ended when the two groups agreed to create a joint federation and to ally the new federation with the republic of Croatia. The federation was based on territory amounting to 58 per cent of Bosnia and Herzegovina, contingent upon the recovery of territory from the Serbs (who still controlled about 70 per cent of Bosnia and Herzegovina). The federation was based on eight cantons, four of which would be Muslim-dominated, two controlled by Croats, and the remaining two of mixed ethnicity. The new federation coexisted with the established government of the republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which remained under the guidance of President Alija Izetbegovic. However, in early 1995 only one of the cantons had been created, and there were power disputes within the federation government. Izetbegovic and the Muslims remained wary of the expansion-minded Croats, which made the federation unstable.

A ceasefire between Bosnian Serbs and the Muslim-Croat federation was declared from January to April of 1995, but fighting continued, and attempts at renewing the agreement were not successful. Despite the ceasefire, fighting continued in the Bihać UN “safe area”, in the north-western border region, which had been under attack since November 1994 by Bosnian Serb forces in coalition with rebel Bosnian Muslims and Croats. These forces were supported by Croatian Serb troops from neighbouring Serb-held territory in Croatia (the self-declared Republic of Serbian Krajina, or RSK), with the aim of joining up the western Serb-held areas of Bosnia with the RSK. Following this alliance between the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs, the commanders of the armies of Croatia, of the Bosnian government, and of the Bosnian Croats agreed on March 6, to establish a military alliance between their respective forces. The move was followed in April and May by a new Bosnian government offensive against Serb forces surrounding the UN “safe area” of Tuzla in the northern mountains, and a Bosnian Croat offensive against Serb strongholds in the Bosnian-Croatian border area. At the same time, Bosnian Serb forces renewed attacks on Sarajevo.