Review article
THE SIZE OF ETHNIC TERRITORIES IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA (1991) AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE DAYTON PEACE AGREEMENT (1995)
Saša Mrduljaš
orcid.org/0000-0002-1946-2243
; Institute of Social Sciences Ivo Pilar, Centre Split, Split, Croatia
Abstract
Since mid 1991, in the context of structuring the ethnic relations and statuses in Bosnia and Herzegovina, a great attention is being devoted to the country’s internal territorial division in accordance with the ethnic principle. The leadership of the three peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina, appealing to the size of “their own” ethnic territories, formulated incompatible and extremely conflicting ethno-territorial demands. The Serbs claimed that two thirds of the country’s territory should belong to them, the Croats demanded one third, and the Muslims/ Bosniaks, being unable to articulate a project of a unitary state, demanded one half. After its initial involvement in the attempts to find a solution to the crisis in the country, at the beginning of February 1992, the international community supported a proposal for a federal arrangement where the federal units would be established according to the ethnic principle. However, since the international community rightly considered the existing demands as exaggerated, it tried to find an objective method to determine the size of the ethnic units in order to achieve a fair distribution of the country’s territory. For that purpose, it used ”the ethnic map” made on the basis of the numbers of each people in the existing administrative units – counties (općine). After the break out of the war (1992-95), the significance of that map would diminish in the subsequent peace plans and territorial division that accompanied them. Still, most of the experts interested in the problems of Bosnia and Herzegovina consider the mentioned map, thanks to its initial popularisation by the international community, as an adequate basis for determining the size of the “ethnic units” according to which one should measure the ethno territorial divisions created by the war. Those views had their share of influence on the interethnic relation in the Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the internal geopolitical relations, and even on the aspect of international relations that was influenced by the war in Bosnia. The article claims that this map gives a wrong idea about the real size of the ethnic territories in the country. Thus, it was wrong to consider the map as an adequate ”politically correct” basis in determining the ethno territorial units, and it is also wrong to use it as a standard by which one should measure the ethno territorial results of the war in Bosnia.
Keywords
ethnic territories; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Serbs; Croats; Muslims/Bosniaks; ethno territorial divisions; ethnic principle; international community
Hrčak ID:
37887
URI
Publication date:
15.6.2009.
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