INTERNATIONAL SLAP ON THE FACE OF THE MYTH ON MULTIETHNICITY

After the Conference on Sarajevo

AIM Sarajevo, 9 February, 1998

After having showed the new prime minister of RS to Pale, which made their hair stand on end, then chosen among the flags suggested, according to him, by a group of independent individuals, one which would be the state flag; designed our money for the one and the other entity, drawn licence plates for our cars with which we can, he says, go wherever we please, and by the way decided to erase the names of entities from the front page of B&H passport, UN High Representative for B&H, Carlos Westendorp, decided to take over Sarajevo as well. After the recently completed international conference on return to Sarajevo characterised by Westendorp as a "historical event", there is no more any doubt that B&H is an international protectorate, which is euphemistically called "increased authority of High Representative".

Turn has come for the "champions of the story of multiethnicity", as member of the B&H Presidency, Kresimir Zubak, said at the conference on return to Sarajevo. Their turn has come to show to what extent they are ready for this multiethnicity. Even before the conference, probably fearing what might come out of it, co-chairman of the Council of Ministers, Haris Silajdzic, said that he was not in favour of multiethnicity of the part of B&H controlled by the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) and its satellites. But the conference later showed what the officials of Bosnian political parties really think about multiethnicity. Izetbegovic conditioned it by multiethnicity of other cities, for examplae, of Banja Luka, which may be politically justified, but the conference was after all organized for Sarajevo as the capital, which is always bragging with tolerance and various multi- this and multi- that. Prime minister of B&H Federation, Edhem Bicakcic, spoke about the year 1492 when Sarajevo and B&H received the banished Jews from Spain, as if it had been their SDA that welcomed them. Even if it had been, why does not it give the Jews back their apartments nowadays, when there are less than one thousand Jews left in sarajevo. Minister for refugees in the government of the Federation, Rasim Kadic, head of the Liberals who are in a coalition with the SDA, seems to have been confirming his multiethnicity by drinking Slovenian mineral water on the table of participants of the conference!? It was also possible to hear the comment that the Croats and the Serbs run the best restaurants and cafes in Sarajevo. The only thing that they missed to say was that these very leaders were living in other people's homes and that they were defending them by alleged interests of the combatants and refugees whom they manipulate from one election campaign to the other or when, like now, things become critical.

The procedure in which replica is not permitted, like in assembly sessions, was used by Croatian political cadre, member of the Presidency Kresimir Zubak and vice-president of the Federation, Soljic, who were like never before open in expressing reprimands of SDA politicians and in advocating multiethnic Sarajevo. One could freely put a signature on almost everything they said, if it were not for the manner in which they did it, and if one could for a moment forget the recent activities of their party on "cleansing Srajevo". But, are they aware, as well as Krajisnik's spokesman at the conference Albijanic, that Sarajevo conference will indeed be a boomerang which will, before they even recover from their own story, return to their own political backyards?

Nowhere in the world do the politicians lie like here, Lord Owen was the first to establish. That is why, perhaps, the international community, greatly pressured by Germany which will really return refugees this year, decided to be absolutely serious in its intentions to begin implementing in B&H everything that had been signed. The political shift in RS was a far-reaching message. Initiation of revealing monetary malversations is a signal to the SDA. The conference on Sarajevo is, nevertheless, a real blow, and Schumacher's announcement of an anti-corruption team which will come to Sarajevo, will probably additionally make ground slip from under the feet of the SDA. On top of all this came nervousness manifested by Izetbegovic when he saw the declaration on Sarajevo, and before him Silajdzic, who was not even allowed to speak at the conference. The last in the row of blows is arbitration for Brcko which, according to Ganic's report from Vienna, does not seem to go too well for the Bosnian party.

Nobody is invulnerable any more. In B&H politics, it seems only Milorad Dodik, new prime minister of RS, still enjoys confidence of the international community. This is not surprising, since his speech at the conference was the most mature one. He was the only one who could say that it was "cynical that a large part of the job connected with the return of people should be done by those who had done their best to make them leave." The others immediately began accusing each other. It was obvious that Bosnian leaders were not satisfied with the speeches of their federal partners, so they pushed forward Mirza Hajric, Izetbegovic's advisor for foreign policy to answer Soljic that the HDZ was discouraging return of the Croats to Sarajevo. What would the advisor of internal policy have said?

Controlled media in Sarajevo, which had been carefully prepared for the conference, reacted promptly. They did not carry the declaration, with the exception of Vecernje novine, but they did carry numerous reactions in which they supported the until recently non-existant right of refugees to return, but it could not pass if there were no justice for the defenders, too. What that might mean is seen from one of the titles of an article: "We will Defend Ourselves from Fraud with Weapons". Where they would find weapons in the disarmed country, they failed to say. They do not say either that they will ask where ministers Kadic, Kapetanovic, got such big apartments, how Ganic got hold of his house, nor how members of the former B&H presidency got theirs, or the governor of Sarajevo canton Haracic, or the editor-in-chief of Ljiljan who brags that he lives in a five-room apartment, the obedient journalists Mufid Memija and Senad Hadzifejzovic, generals of the B&H Army, leaders of veterans' organizations, and so on, and so forth, with no end. The reactions went as far as to condition return of the Serbs, for instance, only if they brought back the robbed property form Sarajevo, and prime minister of the Sarajevo canton, at the commemoration to those killed by a Chetnik mortar in Vase Miskina street - manuipulating with the dead again - wondered "who will organize a conference for their return".

It is interesting that not only among the citizens but also in the media and among politicians, no distinction is made between the leadership of the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and criminals who had dismantled and driven away factory machinery from the suburbs of Sarajevo, and those who would return like refugees. It is interesting that hardly anyone still remembers the general amnesty which the international community is warning about the Bosniac political leaders. It is interesting that not even Haracic's confession about malversations with 82 per cent of housing units as opposed to 18 per cent in which refugees live was accepted by either the media or the "warriors who will defend their rights with arms". And how iritating is the lie that malversations were committeed only during the war, when Sarajevo was a shut city, is best known to ombudsmen, courts, lawyers, which are swamped with new appeals every day and faced with the impossibility to carry out court decisions (evictions) even after the removal of a certain Zahiragic, already notorious in Sarajevo.

Twenty thousand non-Bosniacs in Sarajevo by the end of the year seems more incredible nowadays than twenty thousand miles under the sea at the time of Jules Verne, when one has in mind all the forms of obstruction which those who represent the Bosniac authorities make, and especially which they are prepared to make. This especially because return means much more than that, starting from the new, therefore, different school curriculae and textbooks, to housing units, jobs, safety conditions in which there will be no need, like so far, to guard Catholic churches or the Catholic School Centre or the Serbs in "reintegrated parts of Sarajevo. The price of the myth about "thousand-year old tolerance and multiculturality" is high and will not remain on the verbal level. Champions of the story about it should have taken the initiative in carrying it out in practice as well, not to say anything about the story being false like any other myth used for political purposes. We have learnt at least that lesson in the past war, if nothing else.

Be what may, we can already see the value of Westendorp's "firm hand". The world has obviously learnt its lesson how those who believe they have "a historical mession" should be treated. And until those such as Dodik come, who will want to implement what has been agreed, the international community will be bound to resort to dictate in such a manner which will not be resisted even by their recent favourites, champions of cooperativeness but only verbally - representatives of the nation-victim, and nothing to say about the always guilty and uncooperative Serbs and Croats.

Zeljko IVANKOVIC

(AIM, SARAJEVO)