The largest story within the Balkans as of late is the circulation of an obscure unofficial doc–identified in European circles as a “non-paper”–allegedly drafted and despatched by the Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Janša to Charles Michel, president of the European Council.
The document argues that the primary obstacles to a speedier EU integration of Balkan nations are unsettled nationwide points which ought to be remedied by carving out a Greater Serbia, a Greater Albania and a Greater Croatia. This, so the doc argues, may be achieved by tearing aside Bosnia and Herzegovina and adjoining its autonomous Serb Republic to Serbia, its Croat-dominated cantons to neighboring Croatia and merging Kosovo with Albania. Accordingly, Bosniak Muslims who represent a majority in Bosnia and Herzegovina would be given a tiny rump statelet, surrounded by unfriendly forces and with no entry to the Adriatic Sea. Understandably, this induced a lot angst and misery in Bosnia and Herzegovina, notably amongst its Bosniak Muslim inhabitants.
Though the leaked doc was revealed by a revered Slovenian investigative reporting web site, Slovenia’s Primer Minister Janez Janša denied writing it and accused “fake media” of harming Slovenia’s efforts to combine the Western Balkan states into the European Union. However, as a result of Janša is understood for being a right-leaning populist and a pugnacious ally of Hungary’s equally far-right Viktor Orban and Serbia’s Aleksandar Vučić, hardly anybody doubted the doc’s authenticity.
This shouldn’t be the primary time that the thought of a redrawing of Balkan borders is being floated, ostensibly to resolve political and ethnic disputes.
Following the Nineties Yugoslav wars and U.S. mediation culminating within the Dayton Peace Agreement, Bosnia and Herzegovina turned divided into two entities with appreciable independence: a Bosniak-Croat “Federation” comprising 51 % and a “Serb Republic” comprising 49 % of the nation.
Each has its personal authorities, legislature and police power, bolted collectively by a relatively weak central authorities and a rotating tripartite presidency held equally by a Bosniak, a Croat and a Serb. The Western pondering was that thousands and thousands of {dollars} spent on reconciliation, democracy and state constructing would finally end in a functioning Bosnia and Herzegovina and successful story of Western state-building. However, Serb and Croat nationalists, keen to realize their wartime objectives of breaking away chunks of the nation and creating their little statelets, continued obstructing the functioning of the state utilizing their constitutionally assured vetoes with a purpose to present its alleged dysfunction and thereby making yet one more argument for its dissolution.
Though the thought of land swaps and redrawing borders was prior to now dismissed by Western leaders, politicians and analysts as a gap of Pandora’s field of unsolved Balkan ethnic and territorial disputes, views have shifted prior to now few years.
Due to intense lobbying by Croatian and Serbian nationalists in Brussels, together with rising Islamophobia and right-wing populism, an growing variety of EU leaders are actually, greater than ever, pondering on redrawing the area’s borders and separating its Muslims from their Orthodox and Catholic neighbors. Even the latest Trump administration, in a break with America’s decade’s lengthy coverage towards the Balkans, started cautiously advocating for “border correction”–a much more palatable-sounding euphemism.
However, there’s a backgrounder to the story.
Back within the Nineties, Bosniak Muslims had been portrayed in Western media because the defenders of a multi-ethnic secular state towards marauding Serb and Croat hordes intent on wiping out their white Slavic Muslim neighbors. After all, Serbs dedicated the first genocide in Europe after the Holocaust whereas Croats had been discovered responsible of crimes towards humanity.
Such a picture of them lingered for years, that’s, till the September 11, 2001 assaults within the U.S. It is then that nationalist Serb and Croat journalists, teachers and politicians realized that they may bandwagon with the remainder of the world of their battle towards “Islamic radicalism” and win much-needed buddies in Europe and the U.S. and brush off their picture of génocidaires. The most believable approach of doing so was by portraying their Bosniak Muslims neighbors as “white Al-Qaeda.” The emergence of small numbers of radicalized Bosnian and Kosovar Muslims who joined ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Iraq and Syria again in 2014 and 2015 was taken as irrefutable proof of the whole states being radicalized.
Once seen as a paranoid nationalistic discourse employed by Balkan struggle criminals, the depiction of (deeply secularized and largely non-practicing) Bosniak and Kosovar Muslims as “Islamic radicals” has gained momentum and develop into mainstream in Europe. It was employed by Croatia’s former President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic, Austria’s chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Janša and France’s President Emmanuel Macron who referred to Bosnia as “a ticking time bomb.”
ELVIS BARUKCIC/AFP through Getty Images
Even although the Yugoslav wars of the Nineties had been primarily over territory, Serb and Croatian nationalists discovered it helpful to cover their irredentist aspirations towards Bosnia’s territory and their genocide of Muslim Bosniaks underneath the clout of not eager to share a state with “radical Muslims.”
Such a story, coupled with the approaching to energy of Islamophobic right-wing populists in Europe, turned the right ingredient to already current concepts of land swaps and redrawing of borders. However, any negotiated commerce of territory is a foul concept notably in a area with a fragmented political panorama and ambiance of distrust. Such land swaps would possible create larger instability within the area and can kick begin clamoring for different territorial trades.
An impartial Serb and Croat statelet would confine the nation’s majority Bosniak Muslim inhabitants to a landlocked Bantustan whose worldwide borders would be managed by unfriendly forces. Bosniaks clearly oppose such a transfer and demand on a unified and multi-ethnic nation. This has been a constant political stance of the Bosniak Muslim management for the reason that Nineties. Many have publicly said that any secession from the state will result in outright struggle–one that might undoubtedly have a spillover impact within the area, the place Serbia and Croatia would step in to help Serb and Croat secessionists, whereas Muslim-majority nations reminiscent of Turkey and Arab-majority states would step in to help Bosniak Muslims–as they did within the Nineties.
There are vital Bosniak Muslim minorities residing within the Serb and Croat populated elements of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and vice versa. Any new border drawing would trigger a chaotic fleeing of minority populations to lands the place their coreligionists represent a majority. In complexity, it might be corresponding to chopping up Lebanon alongside non secular and sectarian strains. As was seen within the Nineties wars, this might not go down easily–killings, lootings and destroying property would be widespread. Establishing new functioning states, drafting new constitutions and legal guidelines would take years. Hard gained safety that’s presently taken with no consideration would be breached and the already shambolic financial system would additional deteriorate.
A change of borders would current huge dangers and set an ominous precedent for leaders who harbor separatist ambitions, from Spain’s Catalonia to Moldova’s Transnistria. It would additionally give Russia an higher hand within the area, given its affinity for Serbia and its latest efforts to sow discord all through the Balkans, as any undermining of democracy and stability suits properly into Moscow’s broader technique. Redrawing Balkan nationwide borders would additionally be per Russia’s actions in Georgia and Ukraine and maybe be used as a justification for satisfying Moscow’s ever rising territorial urge for food.
Drawing nationwide borders to resolve ethnic disputes is a colonial-era follow that was designed to create ethnically pure territories largely by Great Britain in its Middle Eastern and Asian colonies. It appeals to ethnic nationalists and racists, which maybe is why Serb and Croatian nationalists have proven nice curiosity for such an concept. However, as we noticed within the case of Pakistan and India, Palestine and Israel and Turkey and Greece–a drawing of borders, land swaps and inhabitants exchanges is a bloody course of that does little to ameliorate deep rooted political tensions and societal animosities amongst neighbors.
Since it did little to cease ethnic tensions prior to now, it’s unlikely to take action within the Balkans at the moment.
While redrawing borders might be a precedence for some in Western capitals, these within the Balkans don’t see the political scenario as such a urgent problem. According to a 2020 International Republican Institute ballot, when requested what’s an important downside going through their nation, 39 % of Bosnians blamed unemployment, adopted by excessive prices of residing and corruption whereas solely 5 % cited politics. In Kosovo, 65 % blamed the financial system, adopted by corruption and excessive prices of residing and in North Macedonia, 33 % blamed the financial system, 24 % blamed excessive prices of residing whereas 13 % blamed corruption. Clearly, redrawing of borders shouldn’t be a main concern as far as Balkan nations are involved.
Harun Karčić is a journalist and political analyst primarily based in Sarajevo masking overseas influences within the Balkans. He tweets @HarunKarcic.
The views expressed on this article are the author’s personal.
Source Link – www.newsweek.com
source https://infomagzine.com/should-balkan-borders-be-redrawn/
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