A Battle for Herzegovina

The SDA Looking for a Chance to Fight the Alliance

Herzegovina has once more became a proving ground for the testing of political strength in F B&H. When three months ago the HDZ engaged in a frontal clash with the ruling Alliance of non-national parties and the international community, the SDA observed its chance to pick a fight against the Alliance in this region too.

AIM Sarajevo, May 26, 2001

Yesterday's meeting of the SDA top leadership, led by the Party President Alija Izetbegovic, with the local leadership in Blagaj, near Mostar, represented the SDA's attempt at consolidating its ranks and getting ready for opening a new front against the Alliance. This was also confirmed, although there were no official statements on the "excursion to picturesque Blagaj", by graffiti, which appeared on the eve of Izetbegovic's arrival to Mostar. They openly called upon the Bosniacs to "raise up against the Alliance" as they are in for another year 1992.

Herzegovina paid the price of an idyllic marriage concluded between the HDZ and SDA six years ago at the time of the official establishment of the Federation of B&H (F B&H). Since the partnership functioned on the basis of tacit division of spheres of interest in the F B&H (in which HDZ did not meddle in the SDA's rule in Cantons with the Bosniac majority in exchange for the same SDA's non-interference in their turf, primarily in Western Herzegovina), the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, with its seat in Mostar, served as a bargaining chip. The platitude on the "special status" of this Canton, based on the fact that it was populated by both Bosniacs and Croats, hid the fact that in reality there were two separate systems. Each had its own police, judiciary, schools. It was best seen on the example of Mostar, which is still a divided town.

Despite SDA's verbal support for an integral Mostar, as unified urban entity, in practice HDZ was running the show in Mostar especially when it came to prosaic things, such as money. Dubious privatisation and never clarified inflow of fresh capital to former economic giants (The Aluminium Combine "Sokol") and a number of smaller enterprises, resulted in their transfer into the hands of the HDZ elite and loss of every hope for its non-Croatian workers that they might return to their former working places.

Political deals made between HDZ's and SDA's top leaderships "somewhere far away" in Sarajevo brought only poverty and depression. The symbol of such SDA's step motherly relation towards Herzegovina and Mostar was Federal Prime Minister Edhem Bicakcic who, by ignoring their existential problems, provoked the rage of Mostar Bosniacs both against him personally, as well as against his party. They placed their hopes on the sacrosanct leader Izetbegovic, deeply convinced that everything was being done without his knowledge or approval. When it became clear that this was not a matter of Izetbegovic being "uninformed", at the last elections the voters denied the SDA their votes it could count on until then. Sensing that the climate started to change, the until-recent local SDA leaders swiftly changed political colours by joining parties of the ruling Alliance (mostly Haris Silajdzic's Party for B&H).

Since this trend within SDA was registered all over B&H, it was logical that the top party ranks got scared of such developments and started looking for ways to turn things to their advantage. After losing political power, same as HDZ, the SDA was now faced with much important loss of economic power. The appointment of new management boards in state enterprises (especially those highly profitable, such as PTT and Power Industry, which had been a source of unlimited resources for parallel financial channels) coupled with the announced reorganisation and purge in para-statal secret services, forced the new members of the opposition to launch a counter-offensive as they realised that they had no time to waste and that their expectations that (due to its heterogeneousness) the Alliance would break up on its own, were in vain.

The HDZ's response is well known. It opted for the proclamation of "Croatian self-government" which has recently started slowly collapsing for a totally banal reason - lack of money for its financing. In all likelihood, the SDA has chosen a slightly more sophisticated option in its fight against the Alliance. Encouraged by results achieved at the last local elections in Croatia at which (despite previous total disintegration) the local HDZ fared rather well, Bosnian-Herzegovinian national parties see their new chance in the times ahead taking courage from the fact that after a short rule of the "leftists" citizens would inevitably become disappointed and would return to tested values - "their national parties".

That is why Herzegovina is quite a logical SDA's choice as a starting point in its attempt to win back the power. The basic principle according to which all national parties in B&H are functioning is to create an atmosphere of fear and danger from the other two nations. In such a situation the national homogenisation is a normal consequence and national parties appear as the only saviour and guarantor of the survival and protection of its people's vital national interests.

After HDZ succeeded in nationally re-homogenising most of Croats in Western Herzegovina (it did not have such luck with Bosnian and Sava Croats) and after recent rampages of Serbian ultra-nationalists in Trebinje and Banjaluka at the attempted laying of the foundation-stone for the reconstruction of mosques destroyed during the war, ideal conditions have been created among Herzegovinian Bosniacs to once again play a card of fear and national homogenisation. Warning that "a new 1992 is coming" and blaming the Alliance for that, the advocates of this idea want to convince the Herzegovinian Bosniacs that the experiment of supporting parties which value work, flats, wages, pensions, etc. more than "national interests" has failed and that the last moment has come for them to return to the fold of "proven protectors of the national interests" as no one else can protect them.

How will this fare depends on two things. In the first place, it will depend whether, after settling of accounts, citizens will come to a conclusion that the previous ten-year rule of the "defenders of national interests" has truly saved them from even greater misfortune and ordeals (in which plunder, crime and corruption were only inevitable omissions) or, on the other hand, that power-holders have used fear and national intolerance only as a good cover for the plunder of the remains of one-time social wealth. The second factor, which will determine the mass character of the response to the repeated "call of the nation", will be the practical results of the Alliance's rule and the fulfilment of pre-election promises. At first glance paradoxically, both the Alliance on the one hand, and the SDA and HDZ, on the other, believe that time is on their side. The only ones who remain unconvinced are common people (who do not believe that they will be better off in future) on whom the wheelings and dealings of party elites depend. The stakes have now become too high.

If the Alliance doesn't find strength to deliver at least most of its pre-election promises, it will break apart and lose power. As for SDA and HDZ, this is a matter of their survival. If the recipe of national homogenisation fails one again, hidden conflicts between various factions within these parties will result in their disintegration and transformation from national movements into just another two parties in a multitude of others on the political scene. The final outcome of this testing of strength should become known very soon, probably already this fall, when it will be possible to see the initial results of the Alliance's rule and whether SDA and HDZ are capable of functioning without political power and power to independently manage public and secret funds.

Tanja IVANOVA

(AIM Sarajevo)