Ethnic borders caused bloody wars: multiethnic societies function very well

During a joint event with the presidents of Kosovo and Serbia last weekend, I called on the two of them not to make the fatal mistake, destabilizing the entire Balkan region.

I spoke not only as political analyst, but personally as a Balkan citizen, confessing the story of how my birthplace in Bosnia and Herzegovina was destroyed by war, and reborn again as a multiethnic community.

Addressing Serbia's president, Aleksandar Vuciq and Kosovo's Hashim Thaci, I warned of the danger of trying to deal with minorities for the purpose of eliminating them, and with borders reduced along ethnic lines.

I already called on the European Union, represented by a European commissioner and the presidents of the two EU countries, to make it clear to Thaci and Vucic that they would not welcome any such move. Sadly, I fear that my complaint has already fallen on deaf ears.

In their speeches at the Alpbach European Forum, Vuciq and Thaci have made it clear that they are willing to discuss the borders in an effort to reach a permanent solution to peace.

EU representatives said they would not discourage the region in this direction.

And it risks enlivening the dangerous idea, which fed on a decade of war in the 1990s: the concept, that people are safe, only among their ethnic group. If this idea gains credibility, and again becomes a possible political programme for nationalists throughout the region, it would have the worst consequences for the Balkans as a whole.

If the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia change their borders to make their countries less multiethnic, what would prevent other leaders from deciding to do the same? This will lead to fear, tension and aggression and fanatics may decide to use violence again. These all happened before.

Pointing to the history of my native country, I want to convey above all one thing: that the city's resurrection was possible only because the international community sent a clear message at the end of the war in Bosnia: no border changes along ethnic lines.

I was born in 1986 in a small town in northern Bosnia called Doboj. I was five when war broke out in the former Yugoslavia and six years old, when fighting began in Bosnia. Along with my mother and brother, I spent the war as a refugee in Croatia. My father stayed in Bosnia, getting involved in combat. I was nine when the war ended in 1995.

My family was lucky because we all survived. But I remember very well when we first visited Doboj after the war in February 1996. It was a terrible city: Bosniaks and Croats were deported, minarets and mosques were destroyed, and many houses were damaged.

We couldn't even say loud on the streets, our Bosnian Muslim names.

For months and years after the war, I had nightmares about Doboj. Since then, Bosnia and Herzegovina has changed dramatically. The number of foreign peacekeepers has dropped from 60,000 in 1996 to just under 1,000 today.

Since 2006, there has been a joint army, and mandatory recruiting has been abolished. I am part of the generation of young Bosnians who have never been forced to use weapons. But as I told the leaders last Saturday, I'm really worried today.

I'm too young to remember the years before the war, but now I know a lot about that period. Many Yugoslav intellectuals and politicians spoke of borders, injustice and ethnic rights. They all used a simple but destructive argument: You are safe, only when and where your ethnic group prevails.

Some ideas seem innocent at first, but they can become monstrous. This idea destroyed Yugoslavia and Doboj. It destroyed families, led to mass deportations, and genocide in Srebrenica. He turned the boundaries into a first plan, and created new limits with blood.

But ideas can be overcome. We'll prove it. Today the town is part of Republika Srpska, one of the two main regions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, formally known as “entite”. The name of the region implies an ethnic Serb character, and about 1 million Serbs live there.

But they live with 230,000 people from other ethnic groups. In Doboj, half the pre-Serb population has returned nearly 20,000 of them. Mosques have been rebuilt, calls for prayer can be heard from minarets while Catholic and Muslim holidays are celebrated.

The weakness of my anxieties is today an ordinary city, where Bosniaks and Croats are not afraid of its Serbian mayor. They constantly vote for him even when a Bosnian candidate competed for the post in 2012.

And along with their Serbian neighbours, they face common challenges: poor health and education services, few jobs to compete. Today's weakness would not exist if nationalists who wanted to use the war to build monoethnic states had triumphed. A lot of people share my opinion.

Young people from around the Balkans who were present for Saturday's discussion enthusiastically received my remarks. EU ambassadors and top diplomats from across the region sent me an encouraging email. There are minorities throughout the region who rely on commitment that there is a need to be a majority to have a good future.

However, the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia tried to convince us that the idea that destroyed Yugoslavia and pushed the Western Balkans to the outskirts of Europe would now help both countries, and that the region will approach the EU.

I told them that, instead, the rebirth of this idea would jeopardise the progress of the past two decades. Our generation's task is not to negotiate borders, but to make them insignificant to return the Balkan borders to European borders, such as those between Tirol and South Tyrol, or between Germany and Poland.

And to do that, we have a lot of work ahead: build institutions based on rule of law, strengthen our democracies, promote media freedom and much more. These are the challenges that political leaders need to focus on rather than changing territories on a map.

Several members of the panel named my discussion as “prehistoric”. I'm too young and hopeful to see myself as a Cassander, so I hope they're wrong. Because if the ideas presented in Austria become reality, this discussion will be remembered for the wrong reasons. It would go into history as a tragic turn, towards an avoidable instability.

Note: Adnan Cerimagic is analyst at the European Stability Initiative Institute, headquartered in Berlin.

Source: “Politico.eu”