The Struggle for Redress: Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina [1st ed.] 9783030516215, 9783030516222

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi
Introduction (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 1-37
Victim Capital for Recognition and Redress (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 39-78
The Bosnian Conflict, Its Aftermath and Victims’ Demands (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 79-130
‘Why Is My Leg Worth Less?’ Disability and the Loss of Life of Military and Civilian War Victims (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 131-182
Graves and Redress: Families of the Missing Persons and the ‘Srebrenica Effect’ (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 183-234
Between Recognition and Oblivion: Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 235-294
Victimhood, Recognition and Redress from a Comparative Perspective (Jessie Barton-Hronešová)....Pages 295-333
Back Matter ....Pages 335-336

Citation preview

MEMORY POLITICS AND TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE

The Struggle for Redress Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina Jessie Barton-Hronešová

Memory Politics and Transitional Justice

Series Editors Jasna Dragovic-Soso Goldsmiths University of London London, UK Jelena Subotic Georgia State University Atlanta, GA, USA Tsveta Petrova Columbia University New York, NY, USA

The interdisciplinary fields of Memory Studies and Transitional Justice have largely developed in parallel to one another despite both focusing on efforts of societies to confront and (re-)appropriate their past. While scholars working on memory have come mostly from historical, literary, sociological, or anthropological traditions, transitional justice has attracted primarily scholarship from political science and the law. This series bridges this divide: it promotes work that combines a deep understanding of the contexts that have allowed for injustice to occur with an analysis of how legacies of such injustice in political and historical memory influence contemporary projects of redress, acknowledgment, or new cycles of denial. The titles in the series are of interest not only to academics and students but also practitioners in the related fields. The Memory Politics and Transitional Justice series promotes critical dialogue among different theoretical and methodological approaches and among scholarship on different regions. The editors welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines – including political science, history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies – that confront critical questions at the intersection of memory politics and transitional justice in national, comparative, and global perspective. Memory Politics and Transitional Justice Book Series (Palgrave) Co-editors: Jasna Dragovic-Soso (Goldsmiths, University of London), Jelena Subotic (Georgia State University), Tsveta Petrova (Columbia University) Editorial Board Paige Arthur, New York University Center on International Cooperation Alejandro Baer, University of Minnesota Orli Fridman, Singidunum University Belgrade Carol Gluck, Columbia University Katherine Hite, Vassar College Alexander Karn, Colgate University Jan Kubik, Rutgers University and School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London Bronwyn Leebaw, University of California, Riverside Jan-Werner Mueller, Princeton University Jeffrey Olick, University of Virginia Kathy Powers, University of New Mexico Joanna R. Quinn, Western University Jeremy Sarkin, University of South Africa Leslie Vinjamuri, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London Sarah Wagner, George Washington University

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14807

Jessie Barton-Hronešová

The Struggle for Redress Victim Capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Jessie Barton-Hronešová Oxford Department of International Development University of Oxford Oxford, UK

Memory Politics and Transitional Justice ISBN 978-3-030-51621-5 ISBN 978-3-030-51622-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Photo by Jessie Barton-Hronešová This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For the relentless Bosnians who keep fighting for their rights and the rights of others. In memory of Goran Bubalo.

Acknowledgments

The main debt for this book goes to dozens of individuals that patiently replied to my questions and enquiries during my fieldwork research in Bosnia. Many survivors of wartime suffering, relentless humanrights defenders, civil-society workers and courageous frontline journalists continuously amazed me with their commitment and resilience. I am very grateful for their time, dedication and knowledge. I would like to particularly extend my gratitude to the Peacebuilding Network run by Goran Bubalo, who introduced me to the vast networks of the civil sector and victim associations in Bosnia and without whose contacts and references would access to so many inspiring individuals have been impossible. Goran sadly passed away during the production of this book, without ever seeing it published. I hope his efforts will be remembered. I am also deeply indebted to my friends and colleagues in Bosnia: Elvira Juki´c, Semir Juki´c, Dijana Dedi´c, Besim Dizdari´c, Jasmin Hasi´c and my former colleagues from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network made my fieldwork both enjoyable and rewarding. Hardly would I have finished writing this book without the unfaltering support of dozens brilliant scholars who have continued to provide encouragement and ideas. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to Timothy Power for his patience and consistent support and Othon Anastasakis for his long-time encouragement and insights into Balkan politics. My gratitude further belongs to Jack Snyder, my one-time mentor at Columbia University, who advised me to approach transitional justice

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

through a political lens. I am much obliged to Adis Merdžanovi´c for offering invaluable feedback on Bosnian post-war politics. Milada Anna Vachudova has become a great source of academic wisdom; her views and scholarship on the role of international organizations substantially shaped my work. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to many scholars who have further influenced this research journey, including Richard Caplan, Eric Gordy, Gwen Sasse, Jasna Dragovi´c-Soso, Jack Blumeneau, Susan Woodward, Nicholas Barker, Kurt Bassuener, Kate Roll, Iavor Rangelov, Jelena Obradovi´c-Wochnik, Vesna Bojiˇci´c-Dželilovi´c, Kalypso Nicolaidis, Leigh Payne, John Gledhill, Adam Fagan, Florian Bieber and Vincent Druilolle, among others. I would also like to thank Margaret MacMillan for offering her advice when it was most needed. I am much obliged to the Economic and Social Research Council for their financial support that allowed me to conduct the fieldwork and finish this book. Special thanks go to the London School of Economics’ Research on South Eastern Europe (LSE-E) who hosted me as a visiting fellow in 2019 and my LSE-E colleague James Ker-Lindsay who has since become an invaluable mentor and friend. I would also like to extend my gratitude to wonderful colleagues at the Oxford Department of International Development, especially Diego Sanchez-Ancochea who has been the most supportive Head of Department anyone could wish for. My gratitude further goes to Ashley Hill, Jesse Bia, Vanya Bhargava, Claudia Stoiescu, Rupert Burridge and Bˇetka & Josh Fellenbaum for their comments on previous drafts and their encouragement. David Hope has never ceased to amaze me with his scholarly precision and generosity. Alex Martins has been a sharp-witted editor, as well as an encouraging friend. Zuzana Vacková has been a great source of life-long moral support and meticulous copy editor. I also owe much to my parents and grandmother Helena who have taught me the value of hard work and grit. Most importantly, this book would have never seen the light of day without Peter Alexander Barton, my husband, cheerleader and source of inspiration. From Iraq to Kenya—from the battlefield to savannahs—he managed to stand by me, even at the most difficult times. Thank you!

Contents

1

2

1

Introduction 1.1 Varieties of Post-Conflict Recognition and Redress in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1.2 Victims, Recognition and Redress 1.3 Assessing Status as the Outcome 1.4 Victim Capital: Towards an Understanding of Victims’ Power 1.5 What Do We Know About Paths to Post-War Redress? 1.6 Bosnian Victims and Survivors 1.7 Researching Bosnian Victims 1.8 Structure of the Book References

11 15 19 21 28 31

Victim Capital for Recognition and Redress 2.1 Understanding Recognition and Redress 2.2 Post-conflict Divided Societies 2.3 Who Decides on Recognition and Redress? 2.4 Victim Capital for Recognition and Redress 2.4.1 International Salience 2.4.2 Domestic Moral Authority 2.4.3 Mobilization Resources 2.5 Scenarios of Success and Incentives 2.6 Timing, Institutions and Democracy

39 39 41 42 48 49 53 58 61 64

1 4 8

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2.7 Conclusion References 3

4

The Bosnian Conflict, Its Aftermath and Victims’ Demands 3.1 Introduction 3.2 The Bosnian War and Peace 3.2.1 The War as a ‘Problem from Hell’ 3.2.2 The Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995 3.3 Post-War Politics: Between Guardianship and Polarization 3.3.1 Emergency Post-War Stabilization (1995–1999) 3.3.2 Centralization and External State-Building (2000–2005) 3.3.3 Flawed Europeanization and Re-nationalization of Politics (2007–Present) 3.4 Victims’ Justice and the Status 3.4.1 Victimization and the Limits of Legal Justice 3.4.2 Non-legal Forms of Justice: Truth and Recognition 3.5 Conclusion References ‘Why Is My Leg Worth Less?’ Disability and the Loss of Life of Military and Civilian War Victims 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Characterizing Civilian and Military War Victims 4.3 Goals and Outcomes: Status and Reforms 4.4 Explaining Redress for Civilian and Military War Victims 4.4.1 International Salience: The Spectacle of War and the Economy 4.4.2 Moral Authority: Cults of Victims and Fighters 4.4.3 Mobilization Resources: Protests and Networks 4.5 Context and Combinations for Success and Failure 4.6 Conclusion References

67 70

79 79 80 80 87 91 92 96

100 105 107 112 116 121

131 131 132 136 141 142 150 159 166 171 175

CONTENTS

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6

Graves and Redress: Families of the Missing Persons and the ‘Srebrenica Effect’ 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Characterizing Families of Missing Persons in Post-War Bosnia 5.3 Goals and Outcomes: Bones, Return and Recognition 5.4 Optimal Victim Capital of the Missing 5.4.1 International Salience: Srebrenica and Its Aftermath 5.4.2 Moral Authority: The Epitomes of Suffering 5.4.3 Mobilization Resources: Remembrance and Allies 5.4.4 Context for the Optimal Route Scenario 5.5 Access After the Adoption of the 2004 Law 5.6 Conclusion References Between Recognition and Oblivion: Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture and Their Associations 6.3 On the Path to Redress: Justice and Care 6.4 Explaining Recognition of Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture 6.4.1 International Salience: Fighting Violence Against Women 6.4.2 Moral Authority: Womanhood and Politicization 6.4.3 Mobilization Resources: Partisanship, Litigation and Campaigns 6.4.4 Understanding the Context: Between Cooperation and Polarization 6.5 Struggles for Access and Distribution 6.6 Conclusion References

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183 183 184 188 191 191 200 207 214 216 223 227

235 235 236 239 242 242 251 259 267 273 276 283

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CONTENTS

Victimhood, Recognition and Redress from a Comparative Perspective 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Revisiting Redress: ‘Status’ and the Varieties of Success 7.3 Bosnian Victims’ Salience, Authority and Resources 7.3.1 Salience: Shame and External Priorities 7.3.2 Authority: ‘Deservingness’ and Identities 7.3.3 Resources: Unity, Networks, and Leadership 7.3.4 Combinations for a Formal Change 7.4 Assessing Alternative Explanations 7.5 Wider Applications Outside of Bosnia 7.6 Concluding Remarks References

Annex: List of Key Legislation

295 295 296 302 303 306 309 312 315 318 322 327 335

About the Author

Jessie Barton-Hronešová is ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford. In her research projects she has mostly focused on ethno-nationalism, post-war reparations, community-building and transitional justice in the former Yugoslavia and the wider Eastern Europe. She authored several studies on identity politics (including Post-War Ethno-National Identities of Young People in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 2012), retributive transitional justice and radicalization. She previously worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Sarajevo and Belgrade. She also worked in the international development sector and collaborated with a range of research institutions, including the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, the London School of Economics. She holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford in politics (2018).

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Abbreviations

ABiH AI BiH BORS CEN CRSV CWV DDR EBRD EU EUFOR EUPM FARG FBiH FRY HDZ BiH HR HRW HULDR HVIDRA HVO ICC ICG ICJ

Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina Amnesty International Bosnia and Herzegovina Organization of Fighters of RS Central Records of Missing Persons Conflict-Related Sexual Violence Civilian War Victims Demobilization, Disarmament, and Reintegration European Bank for Reconstruction and Development European Union European Union Force European Union Police Mission Le Fonds d’assistance aux rescapés du genocide (Assistance Funds for Survivors of the Genocide) Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Croat Democratic Union in Bosnia and Herzegovina High Representative Human Rights Watch Croatian Association of ex-Detainees of the Homeland War in BiH Association of Croatian Defenders and War Invalids Croatian Defence Council International Criminal Court International Crisis Group International Court of Justice xv

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ABBREVIATIONS

ICMP ICRC ICTJ ICTR ICTY IFOR IMF IMP IOM IPA IPTF JNA JOB KM MHRR MWV NATO NGOs OHCHR OHR OSCE PDP PIC PM PTSD REKOM

RS SAA SBiH SDA SDP SDS SFOR SFRY SLBH SLRS SNSD SPONA TRIAL

International Commission for Missing Persons International Committee of the Red Cross International Center for Transitional Justice International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Implementation Force (of NATO) International Monetary Fund Institute for Missing Persons International Organization for Migration Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance International Police Task Force Yugoslav National Army Unified Organization of Fighters Convertible Mark Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees Military War Victims North Atlantic Treaty Association Non-Governmental Organizations Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Office of the High Representative Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe Party of Democratic Progress Peace Implementation Council Prime Minister Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Regional Commission Tasked with Establishing the Facts about All Victims of War Crimes and Other Serious Human Rights Violations Committed on the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia in the period from 1991–2001 Republika Srpska Stabilization and Association Agreement Party for BiH The Party of Democratic Action Social Democratic Party Serb Democratic Party Stabilization Force (of NATO) Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Union of Camp Inmates of Bosnia and Herzegovina Union of Camp Inmates in Republika Srpska Alliance of Independent Social Democrats Serb Movement of National Associations Track Impunity Always

ABBREVIATIONS

UK UN UNDP UNFPA UNHCR UNICEF UNPROFOR US USD VRS WB WHO

United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Development Program United Nations Population Fund United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund United Nations Protection Forces United States United States Dollar Army of Republika Srpska World Bank World Health Organization

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List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3 Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 5.1 Fig. 5.2

Fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina (adapted from www. VectorStock.com/20422894) An analytical framework for redress (Source Author) Fatalities of the Bosnian war by ethnic identity (Source Figure created from data included in the Bosnian Book of Dead [Tokaˇca, 2012, pp. 125–127]) Fatalities of the Bosnian war by gender (Source Figure created from data included in the Bosnian Book of Dead [Tokaˇca, 2012, pp. 119–124]) Timeline of key post-war political developments (Source Author) Casualties of the Bosnian War by military/civilian deaths (Source Tables created from data included in the Bosnian Book of Dead [Tokaˇca, 2012, 112–113]) The Red Line Commemoration Project in Sarajevo in 2012 (Source Photo by the author) Flag of the Army of BiH at the Jajce Fortress (Source Photo by the author) Milestones in redress for civilian and military victims (Source Author) Missing persons by regions/events as of 2017 (ICMP data, 2017) Sign on the entrance to the Srebrenica-Potoˇcari museum (Source Author)

24 67

86

87 106

134 154 157 170 186 196

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5.3 Fig. 5.4 Fig. 6.1

Sculpture in front of Potoˇcari Dutch battalion building (Source Photo by the author) Milestones in the adoption of the law on missing persons (Source Author) Milestones in redress for victims of torture and sexual violence (Source Author)

203 217 272

List of Tables

Table Table Table Table Table Table

1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 3.1 4.1

Table Table Table Table Table

4.2 5.1 6.1 7.1 7.2

The analytical scope of the book Victim groups, recognition and redress outcome Interviews by topics Theoretical combinations of victim capital Periodization of Victims’ Demands Registered civilian and military victims as of 2013–2015 (rounded) Recognition of civilian and military victims Outcomes for families of missing persons Redress for victims of torture and rape Status by groups and regions in BiH Redress outcomes and scenarios for success

10 22 25 64 115 135 141 191 242 299 314

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

1.1 Varieties of Post-Conflict Recognition and Redress in Bosnia and Herzegovina Amir is one of the estimated 200,000 survivors of torture that occurred during the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.1 As a leader of a victim association in Sarajevo, he has been at the forefront of the struggle for formal recognition of victims of torture who suffered in brutal detention camps as prisoners of war. In the Bosnian system of war-related victim redress the vast majority of these survivors remain without any formal rights enacted in law. While the smaller Bosnian entity, Republika Srpska (RS), recently recognized some victims of torture, the larger entity where Amir lives, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (FBiH), has never done so. Pressing the state into legally recognizing them as victims has been the declared objective of Amir’s association, as well as hundreds similar other associations across the country. Formal legal recognition, encapsulated in the so-called ‘victim status’, would provide victims of torture (also called ex-detainees) with free social and medical services, preferential job opportunities and monthly payments, among other benefits. More importantly, it would also give them the moral satisfaction of having their suffering acknowledged. ‘We need a systemic change’, Amir sighs. ‘We need a law. Even if you now gave us one million marks,2 this would not help us. When I try to get free medical care, my certificate

© The Author(s) 2020 J. Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2_1

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of camp imprisonment is just a meaningless piece of paper. It is humiliating,’ he adds. To Amir, ex-detainees not only suffered during the war, but especially after the war’s end, from discriminatory policies that have left them ‘on the margins of society’.3 Elma was brutally raped and repeatedly sexually abused in a prison camp between 1992 and 1993. Not only a rape survivor but also an internally displaced person from her hometown in northeastern Bosnia, she moved to the capital Sarajevo. Uprooted and underprivileged, Elma joined the Women-Victims of War association that was formed in 2003 as the first of its kind in Bosnia. It started to fight for the redress of women as war victims, for marking places of their suffering and persecuting the perpetrators. After years of activism and awareness-raising, she and other survivors of sexual violence were at last successful in June 2006 when a legal amendment was passed in FBiH that granted rape survivors a victim status without the need to provide medical certificates or testifying at a court. Survivors of sexual violence became entitled to a monthly benefit in the equivalent of 250 Euro and free healthcare.4 ‘It was a great achievement that brought many benefits to women who were struggling’, Sabiha Husi´c from a humanitarian NGO Medica Zenica explained.5 ‘I witnessed how women were losing jobs when employers found out that they were raped. I witnessed their poverty and constant suffering’, she added. The law was to her only the beginning of the tortuous struggle for victims’ redress. Fewer than a thousand women and men became beneficiaries of the new legal arrangement by 2019, leaving many without formal recognition and redress. How can we explain the differences in which victim groups are recognized and redressed in a post-war state such as Bosnia? The complex varieties of recognition, redress, justice and victimhood that these two cases illustrate are at the heart of this book. Recognition of suffering and redress are interwoven through the stories of Bosnian survivors-victims who have challenged our understandings of passivity in victimhood and transitional justice.6 Rather than submissive sufferers without any agency, many Bosnian survivors have stood at the forefront of the fight for what they see as their rights. Their struggle has lasted for over two decades. While to some degree empowering women and disadvantaged groups, this struggle has also had its polarizing effects on the divided political landscape of Bosnia, a phenomenon well-known from other contexts such as Northern Ireland and Lebanon where victimhood inevitably assumed a political character (Jankowitz, 2018; Lynch & Joyce, 2018). It has created hierarchies and competition that at times further

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3

marginalized peripheral communities and individuals. As a consequence, while some victims have achieved a special treatment granted through the revered ‘victim status’, others have remained legally invisible. Survivors of sexual violence, camp prisoners, families of the missing and killed persons, paraplegics and sufferers from other injuries—all discussed in this book— have been appreciated and recognized differently in law. Consequently, they were granted varied types of redress benefits across the country. The ‘piecemeal nature’ of the existing system of various victim-centric payments and support packages in Bosnia ‘targeting some but not all victims’ (Van der Auweraert, 2013) offers benefits to a small set of select groups rather than representing true redress for all victims. This approach to redress and recognition seems haphazard and inconsistent with victims’ needs and rights. However, as this book argues, this at first glance inexplicable complexity of the victim-centric redress in Bosnia can be traced to the intricate developments in post-war Bosnia and the differing patterns in what I call ‘victim capital’7 of each of the studied groups. Victim capital as used here represents the social, political and economic power for leverage and influence of the studied victim groups. As this book shows, the different components of victim capital and how it is used and presented provide answers to the present puzzle. Unlike most of the literature studying post-conflict ways of dealing with the past that has focused on war-crimes prosecution, truth-seeking and memorialization efforts, this book studies the dynamics of redress among and between victim groups within a post-conflict state. Such a bottom-up enquiry invites questions that are central to transitional justice, such as questions about how post-conflict societies deal with their violent past and how groups and individuals victimized by conflicts pursue justice. As I demonstrate throughout this book on the example of redress, victims’ organizations and their leaders are able to utilize both thought-through and serendipitous strategies to achieve their goals at the domestic and international level. However, although they are able to choose different strategies and tactics, their pursuits are restricted by the limits and problems posed by the dysfunctional Bosnian state, characterized by its convoluted and fragmented administration. Relying on interviews and other sources collected during fieldwork in Bosnia, media sources and secondary literature, but also practical professional experience in the civil sector, this book presents a new analytical framework to explain the different pathways to recognition and redress outcomes using the case of Bosnia.

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Recognition and redress are at the heart of the study here. Recognition in the form of collective victim status after conflict belongs among the arsenal of transitional justice. It can serve as a starting point for socio-economic redistribution and social justice (Fraser, 2003). Naturally, recognition as the formal action of acknowledging the belonging of individuals to a victim group is only the first step towards satisfying victims’ rights and needs. Related policies—that range from public apologies, judicial justice, truth culture, acknowledgment of harm in ceremonies and material benefits—underpin recognition’s importance. However, recognition is a critical step that leads to empowerment and giving voice to those who are otherwise treated as court witnesses only and ‘subjects’ of justice measures such as war crimes prosecution. Recognition provides a sense of societal ‘solidarity’ (De Greiff, 2006b). Redress as understood in its narrow sense in this book generally follows recognition through a set of material benefits (e.g. payments, services, preferential treatment) that are able to transform lives of victims living in deprived countries. For example, the controversial ‘Report of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland’ suggested ‘recognition payments’ (amounting to 12,000 GBP) for the nearest relative of those killed during the Troubles (Jankowitz, 2018, p. 13) as a valid ‘redress’ mechanism. The report stressed the symbolic and moral aspect of the payments, rather than the material benefits only. Recognition and redress serve as a key aspect of domestic reckoning outside the courtroom. They are political acts where power interests of political authorities clash with victims’ ideas of justice and international human rights regimes. Such clashes are traced and explained in the following chapters.

1.2

Victims, Recognition and Redress

As Michael Rothberg recently noted (2019), we lack a precise vocabulary to describe the multifaceted roles and identities that individuals emerging from violence and wars assume. Among others, there are perpetrators, victims, bystanders, beneficiaries but also ‘implicated subjects’ as those who might not have willingly participated and benefitted from injustice but whose ‘actions and inactions help produce and reproduce the positions of victims and perpetrators’ (Rothberg, 2019, p. 1). His insights speak to the ‘messy’ war situations when individuals assume different roles—some victims might have been directly involved in the conflict as soldiers while others had simply found themselves in the wrong place at

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the wrong time. In some cases the line between a victim and a perpetrator may be blurred as multiple roles are possible (Drumbl, 2012; Moffett, 2016). Victims may also prefer to use different terminology for different audiences—they may privately resist the term victim but understand the need for its outward projection in order to be acknowledged (cf. Fernandes, 2017; Moˇcnik, 2019). This also results in the frequent debates among victims about who is a ‘true’ victim and what the different victim roles are. In law, victim definitions are seemingly clearer, though just as problematic. Victims of conflict and war are defined as people who have suffered from gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law. According to the standard United Nations (UN) definition from 1985, victims are ‘persons who, individually or collectively, suffered harm, including physical or mental injury, emotional suffering, economic loss or substantial impairment of their fundamental rights’ through acts breaching international human rights (UN General Assembly, 1985, Art. 12). In a narrow sense, such a definition can be linked to legally established war crimes and atrocities that have been anchored in forensic investigations. From this perspective, a victim of the Rwandan genocide is an individual who was directly targeted by the Hutu slaughter, or whose family members perished in events that have been investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). In a wider sense, it could be argued that all individuals who survived a brutal war are victims for the suffering they have gone through and economic losses resulting from the conflict. Defining the universe of victims is thus extremely difficult. However, it is important when considering eligibility to reparation awards and direct court-administered compensation. From a critical point of view, such definitions are challenging as they inevitable exclude survivors who may want to identify as victims but whose victimization has not been defined in law (Mani, 2005; Vinck & Pham, 2014). Conversely, legal definitions of victimhood may at times be imposed on those who feel disempowered by being labelled as ‘victims’ when their identities lie outside of the victim framework. Feminist scholarship has put forward the term ‘survivors’ as it implies agency and will rather than passivity (Buckley-Zistel, 2013; Butler, 2006; Gámez Fuentes, Núñez Puente, & Gómez Nicolau, 2020). Yet the victim-survivor identity becomes difficult for individuals to align with when transitional justice is involved. Victim is the universal term that carries the weight of suffering, damage and injury; all important components of formal international

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recognition. As Towle (2018) in his historical analysis of victimhood noted, empathy and emotions are contained in the term victim rather than any other term. While victims might individually prefer the term survivor as it implies a sense of struggle and resistance, when demanding their rights, there is a need to leverage suffering and innocence that the term victim implies (Bouris, 2007). Victim identities can also bear more than one label due to multiple victimizations (being a victim of multiple types of suffering) and re-victimization as the repetition of the same harm (Bloomfield, Barnes, & Huyse, 2003, p. 61). The victim-survivor identity is thus multifaceted and multidirectional. It is also context dependent as some societies may prefer notions of survival while others might opt for suffering.8 While legal definitions can be too restrictive or imposing, individual labelling may become muddled. The victim-survivor groups studied here are social actors who have survived the war and who have shown a great level of mobilization and resistance. Bearing in mind the discussion above, this book generally uses the term victim rather than survivor unless specifically used by interlocutors or in the used sources. There are several reasons for this. First and foremost, the focus of this book is on the legal act of recognition of a preceding harm or suffering (and the socio-economic redress that follows) that ‘allows’ the sufferer to use the victim status as eluded to in law. Second, this interpretation reflects the Bosnian usage of the term ‘war victims’ (žrtve rata), which denotes all killed individuals in the 1992– 1995 war and those who survived war atrocities and harm such as rape, torture, physical injuries or the loss of loved ones. Third, the clustering of groups seeking recognition and redress in Bosnia has evolved through the sources of suffering and damages. In other words, it is the indelible victimization of individuals—such as physical injuries, permanent mental or physical harm and other irrevocable losses (e.g. lives of loved ones) that denote the different groups studied here. This approach allows us to link victimhood to individual and collective types of victimization that are not necessarily connected to crimes or personal identities but to the source of suffering. Therefore, war victims as a term used in this book denotes wargenerated populations that have been disproportionately and permanently affected by wartime suffering through inflicted wounds, injuries, losses and harm. The term is not used to devalue agency of those studied here but as a practical and applicable term that is widely used in Bosnia. The term ‘victim groups’ is then used to denote collective classes of victims

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that have a shared source of victimization (e.g. torture, rape, injury, loss of a loved one). Victim status as the collective recognition in law of a group is the key studied phenomenon. The status is a powerful and loaded term in Bosnia that implies domestic recognition of responsibility and redress offered by state (or subnational) authorities. There is not only a victim status but also a veteran status. Both imply a societal standing of the individual in the moral pecking order of the Bosnian society, but they also come with important practical consequences that include different types of redress measures. The status is the direct synonym to recognition in the Bosnian parlance. And so, although courts can order defendants to pay out damages to victims, if such victims are not recognized in law as a collective group of victims, they do not have a status. While compensation may result from court-administered payments to individuals or groups of people who have been found as the damaged party in court, redress linked to status that is discussed here consists of a wide range of additional social benefits and/or payments that only state authorities can provide. They bear some similarities to what the UN 2005 ‘Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Right to a Remedy and Reparation’ (henceforth ‘UN Reparations Principles’) call compensation and rehabilitation—though only to a limited degree. The UN Reparations Principles anchored what is here denoted as redress as part of responsibilities of states towards their citizens and identified the need for a ‘victim-oriented perspective’ in post-conflict justice.9 They also highlighted that unlike trials that focus on the perpetrators and fight against impunity, or truth commissions that seek to establish factual narratives of the past to facilitate societal reckoning, the key aim of reparations is to address broader social, economic and emotional needs of victims (De Greiff, 2006a; van der Merwe, 2014). They specifically define ‘compensation’ as material remedy for irreparable harms; ‘restitution’ as a remedy for material damages (such as destroyed houses); ‘rehabilitation’ as the restoration of one’s social position (such as employment); ‘satisfaction’ as an array of truth-seeking efforts, memorialization and apologies; and ‘guarantees of non-recurrence’ as state-level institutional changes (such as human rights guarantees). While victims of socio-economic harm and displacement such as refugees have benefited from restitution, compensation and rehabilitation has been applied as a substitute for losses and harm that cannot be undone. It is often provided in the form of socio-economic redress specifically targeting victims.

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Unlike court-administered compensation that has primarily encompassed monetary payments only, policies linked to the status have combined state-provided material (monetary) but also in-kind benefits (services and privileges). Either lump sums or monthly payments have been in practice combined with free medical care, psychosocial support, employment privileges and other services. Therefore, the practical application of recognition has materialized in payments and wider social care for victims in rehabilitation. Such redress policies have been used as a tool to help victims regain their livelihoods, provide them with acknowledgment of their suffering and signal society’s acceptance of responsibility (De Greiff, 2006a; van der Merwe, 2014, p. 208). In the Bosnian case, legal recognition in the form of a status has thus not only represented a moral positioning of the victim but it has also implied a set of stateprovided material and in-kind benefits. The implied assistance (redress) is what makes recognition meaningful.10 Recognition and redress differ from other transitional justice tools in their symbolic and material implications but also in the threat they pose to incumbents. While trials can be perceived as threatening post-war elites and even remove them from power, truth commissions may open old wounds and exacerbate previous divisions (Bass, 2000; Mendeloff, 2004; Minow, 2000). Recognition and redress seem to be more ominous for post-war budgets, bureaucracies and understandings of victimhood. Rather than threatening domestic political elites, they can be used as an opportunity to redefine identities through symbolic means, redistribute resources and extract some domestic or external reputational and political benefits. Therefore, they may become acts over which various political and social actors clash because of their material and symbolic content. Therefore, while recognition and redress offer an opportunity for post-conflict societies to reintegrate their victimized populations, they also include risks of selectivity that may further undermine political stability (cf. De Greiff, 2006a; Satz, 2012).

1.3

Assessing Status as the Outcome

The inherent problem with recognition is that it requires attaching values to suffering because of its redress implications. Both compensation and rehabilitation are based on a key principle that defines its content and scope: proportionality to the gravity of the victimization and appropriateness of measures (UN General Assembly, 2005, Art. 20). These principles

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9

represent the idea of establishing redress on the basis of victims’ needs as well as rights, i.e. what each harmed individual requires for a decent life and what their rights are depending on the crimes committed. While rights are often framed in vague terms such as ‘justice’ and ‘satisfaction’, most debates about defining the scope and content of reparations focus on the various forms of services and amounts of payments (De Greiff, 2006b). Some scholars believe that this is futile and harmful. Slyomovics argues that any form of material redress has the greatest distance from justice because it puts a price on suffering without linking it to the perpetrator (2009, p. 14). Others assert that in cases when ‘the national process of “reconciliation” does not coincide with the individual psychological process’, survivors see reparations as blood money as was the case in Chile, Brazil, Argentina and in some cases in Northern Ireland (Hamber & Wilson, 2002, p. 46). While such criticism is valid (and documented in this book), governments need to be able to practically assess the cost of their policies and thus a certain level of proportionality and appropriateness needs to be introduced. It is also seldomly possible to link a victim to a perpetrator of mass human rights violations directly without any doubt. Even when that is the case, few perpetrators may be responsible for the suffering of thousands. Slyomovics’ criticism is thus applicable to single criminal cases, rather than cases of mass human rights violations when there may be thousands of victims of an individual perpetrator. Nonetheless, proportionality, appropriate measures and ‘assigning values’ to suffering are key features of the Bosnian ‘status’. Analytically, the normative debates about what can truly be labelled as proportional and appropriate for redress offer only limited opportunity to assess ‘status’ as a policy outcome. While most studies focus on the distribution of benefits, the interest of this book is in the act of recognition, its history and the consequences for redress. Therefore, I focus on the adopted legal regulations that target Bosnian victim groups. In some cases, redress provisions for victims may be reminiscent of peacetime social services.11 However, they are conditioned through its relationship to the war. In other words, claimants of victim-centric benefits are only eligible if their victimization resulted from war. Therefore, victim status can be assessed as a war-related redress policy in the form of new legal regulations or amendments that address individual victim groups. The official provision of status is then a formal recognition of a victim group, which accordingly gives its bearers a set of rights enacted in state laws, subnational laws, law amendments, executive orders and the like. Rather than

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a single and equal status, we can observe varieties of the types of policies the status implies. As the focus here is on differences between the achievements of Bosnian victim groups vis-à-vis their status, the assessment approach adopted here is to compare demands and various ‘statuses’. I study the purported ‘success’ or ‘failure’ not as a normative ideal of what should be achieved, but what has been demanded and enacted. It is a two-step process consisting of redress demands (agenda) that are later turned into a redress change (cf. Gamson, 1975). It is important to stress that a policy change does not imply its implementation, i.e. the access to the provisions of the policy. A law adopted—a status granted—does not automatically mean full success if its beneficiaries have no access to its provisions such as payments and preferential services. While I cannot explore implementation theoretically due to the scope of this book, the empirical chapters each reflect on the level of access differently. These analyses are far from exhaustive and only offer an overview of the key problems. For example, Chapter 4 integrates poor access as part of the continuous demands for changing redress levels while Chapters 5 and 6 include a separate section on this issue. The theoretical arguments presented in the next chapter as well as the majority of the empirical analysis are thus predominantly valid for a legal change. Table 1.1 depicts the two dimensions (legal change and access). This book relies on a political and policy conceptualization of recognition and redress. While court-administered recognition of victimhood belongs among legal measures for individuals, state-provided status is more suitably positioned among reparative approaches to transitional justice. These approaches are related to redistribution of resources and acknowledgment of collective victimhood (Brophy, 2008). I study status Table 1.1 The analytical scope of the book Status

Demands

Legal change

Access (implementation)

Assessment

Victims’ agenda

Amendment/new law

Studied in this book

Empirically

Theoretically and empirically

Actual access to legal provisions by the beneficiaries Only partial empirical exploration

Source Author

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INTRODUCTION

11

as a legal act and a policy that encapsulates a variety of political, economic and social tensions in a post-conflict state. Rather than discussing the benefits of status, this book analyses the mechanisms behind its conferral. Casting a political lens on socio-economic justice in the field of transitional justice that has been dominated by normative and moral arguments of what is just and fair remains a minority approach (Balasco, 2013; Thoms, Ron, & Paris, 2008). However, this approach is much needed given the growing evidence of how transitional justice efforts can be misused by political elites and how their side-effects can further polarize societies (Grodsky, 2011; Payne, 2007; Suboti´c, 2009).

1.4 Victim Capital: Towards an Understanding of Victims’ Power Previously, limited research in transitional justice has explored the crosscountry varieties of state-provided reparations and socio-economic justice for victims. A growing amount of literature looks at structural conditions such as legacies of repression, democratic and economic development, and the regional clustering of justice in order to explain why some countries are more likely to provide reparations than others (Powers & Proctor, 2017; Wolfe, 2013). Other authors see regional differences in the numbers of victims and budgetary constraints of poor post-conflict countries as the main causes for different reparation policies (Correa, Guillerot, & Magarrell, 2009; Cunneen, 2006; Segovia, 2006). The highly influential normative approach emphasizes the role of ‘transnational advocacy networks’ as key motors of policy adoption and reform in the form of wider networks of advocates and organizations that influence public opinion globally (Keck & Sikkink, 1998). Finally, identity politics studies see the main difference in identifications with in-group and opposition to out-group when distributing policies (Arthur, 2011). Each of these bodies of work provides invaluable insights into post-conflict justice regimes. However, they cannot explain the puzzle of this book, which is not about cross-country or cross-ethnic differences but variations between victim groups. Unless there are other factors at play, when state budgets are depleted and societies divided, why recognize victims at all? We need to look for other explanations of the varied patterns observed in the Bosnian case. As our understanding of macro-determinants of transitional justice improves, it is equally important to further our analyses of

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the complex relationships between domestic authorities, external policymakers and victims while probing how they are constrained by institutions and norms. With its intricate ethno-national identities, extensive international interventions, peacebuilding and a large victim population, Bosnia makes for a particularly suitable setting for the study of inter-category variation in recognition and redress.12 The analytical framework developed here uses Bosnia to explain why recognition and redress vary among victim groups within a divided and post-conflict state. It blends structural constraints that all victims face with the various strategies that are at their disposal. It shows how victims can effectively pursue their aims by leveraging their international salience, amplifying their domestic authority and mobilizing their existing resources. While each group is endowed with a certain set of these qualities and tools, groups that leverage, increase or amplify them more effectively are usually more successful with their agendas. Domestic authorities, as the main proximal policymakers, subsequently respond when they consider these demands to be beneficial for harnessing public political support and reaping economic benefits. However, they also respond positively out of reputational, ideational and moral reasons. Such reasons go beyond ethno-national arguments and rational choice that generally seem to define post-conflict societies divided by identity cleavages and dichotomies of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The three key components of ‘victim capital’ for recognition and redress have been developed using scholarship in transitional justice, identity and social mobilization. ‘International salience’ means the amount and quality of external attention to a victim group or its demands. It generally captures how prioritized a victim group is on the agendas of external actors and donors. It is encapsulated in advances of human rights, such as UN conventions and resolutions, international court decisions and the key topics of the day on the humanitarian and human rights agendas of some primary international and regional organizations such as the UN, Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union (EU). It also encompasses global media attention. As it is time-variant and shifts from issue to issue, it allows victims to align their demands with some broader trends and press domestic authorities to comply with them. It is shaped by the context, but its resonance reflects the ability of victims to boost their visibility through their advocacy, campaigns and appeals. When domestic authorities are sensitive to reputational (e.g. membership in international organizations) and

1

INTRODUCTION

13

economic pressures (e.g. foreign aid), it can be costly to neglect groups of high international salience (Cortell & Davis, 2000, p. 69). Such dynamics is well known from studies on Euro-Atlantic integration, among others (Grabbe, 2006; Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier, 2005; Vachudova, 2005). The second concept is ‘moral authority’ that is domestically attributed to a victim group. It is defined as the public recognition of a group’s perceived worthiness. Each victim group is endowed with a different moral authority among its co-nationals and the general public (Bouris, 2007). As Michael Humphrey argues, ‘only those victims considered to be morally deserving have their human rights protected’ (2012, p. 67). Depending on the strength of such moral worthiness and deservingness, victims are empathized with and perceived by the public and domestic authorities as legitimate recognition claimants, and not as scroungers. Moral authority includes a range of attributes, some of which are constant and some of which vary over time and can be influenced by victims. Public and political authorities may be more sympathetic to those whose ethnonational, gender, or social identities correspond to their understanding of who is deserving, partially mirroring identity arguments (Arthur, 2011). Other sources of moral authority—such as new revelations about victims’ suffering—are time dependent and can be amplified by the victims themselves. Like international salience, moral authority can be moulded by the actions of victims and their framing strategies. When domestic authorities are responsive to domestic pressures, have a war-related political agenda or simply empathize with a particular group, status-adoption may become a reasonable course of action. Finally, the third victim capital that will make recognition more likely are resources that facilitate activism, here referred to as ‘mobilization resources’. Each victim group will have varied capacities and leadership. While some of these resources are due to the wider structure of the specific system (e.g. economic situation), others can also be shaped by victims (e.g. numbers of protests). As the social movements literature argues, structural factors constrain the type of resources available to actors that are then able to voice their demands (McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996; McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001; Tarrow, 1994). The more actor-centric literature on resource mobilization further shows that differences in endowments between organizations such goods and skills in their possession explain why some are more successful with their demands than others (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Melucci, 1980). The broader the membership and networks of a victim group, the greater its financial and

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informational resources are. The deeper its skills and organizational capacities, the more successful it will be. Those with wide networks and support can act as more effective pressure groups not only because they can be perceived as a potential threat but also because they may acquire influential allies. Mobilization resources can vary over time, partially dependent on structural factors but also on a progressive build-up of such resources. Combining these three components of capital can be highly effective when seeking recognition and redress. In the empirical material, I find that those groups with the highest levels on the different dimensions of victim capital have been most successful with their demands. The logic of change is similar to Charles Ragin’s ideas about combining different ‘ingredients’ that produce results. He argued that a ‘change emerges from the intersection of appropriate preconditions—the right ingredients for change’ (Ragin, 1987, p. 25). While I make no claims to causality, I adopt a similar approach because none of these capitals on its own could plausibly explain the change. Neither could contextual factors on their own explain the varieties observed between groups. It is only the combinations under certain conditions that allows us to explain the varieties in statuses. Indeed, I find that political authorities have been more responsive to victims that have either challenged or advanced their domestic political power or moral standing, or those that have facilitated reputational and economic benefits from external actors. Such incentives are highly unlikely to be occasioned by one factor only. This book thus argues that recognition in the form of a legal status is primarily influenced by a combination of victims’ salience, authority and resources that shape their ability to influence domestic authorities who seek political, economic and reputational rewards. It is a change driven by political calculations of domestic authorities and by the agency of victims who are bounded by the nature of the political and economic context at a specific time. To illustrate, a victim group would be more likely to succeed with its demands when it is generally framed as deserving of recognition (i.e. high moral authority). It would also be able to mobilize its members and have a wide network of allies (i.e. high mobilization resources). Finally, it would be placed highly on international agendas that influence domestic policymaking or determine rewards (i.e. high international salience). Such a group would be more successful at times when its demands deliver electoral support or when governments are more sensitive to external pressures (i.e. when they seek to join an international organization). Therefore, general context and time (especially vis-à-vis the end of the conflict) are important factors to consider. While the most

1

INTRODUCTION

15

potent recipe for success is the combination of all three capitals, there can be other constellations, as discussed later.

1.5 What Do We Know About Paths to Post-War Redress? Although no study has so far focussed specifically on the causes of victims’ recognition and subsequent redress in the form of compensation and rehabilitation, several other arguments could be made using the existing literature. It is reasonable to argue that depleted post-conflict states simply do not have funding for war victims as other peacebuilding priorities take precedence (Letschert & Van Boven, 2011). As some claim, reparations are ‘post-transitional’ measures that become important only once security and other urgent priorities have been dealt with (Powers & Proctor, 2017). This is a valid and proven claim that we have seen play out in numerous post-war contexts, including Bosnia. However, it is important to highlight that the aim of this work is not to explain the level of recognition and redress but the variations within it. Even if meagre, various types of what is here referred to as status have been awarded in what may initially seem as a haphazard manner. The question to answer here is—why? A cynical approach might consider recognition in the form of a status for its symbolism rather than its budgetary consequences. Nonetheless, financial constraints certainly play an important role in recognition and redress. Other structural factors matter too. Scholars looking at cross-national determinants of transitional justice stress legacies of repression, levels of pluralism and the regional clustering of justice tools. In their seminal work, Olsen, Payne, and Reiter in 2010 showed that the strength of civil society, availability of international advocacy networks, the course of transitions, and previous regime types influence transitional justice choices. Their analysis and dataset provided a starting point for other scholars such as Hun Joon Kim (2008) and Powers and Proctor (2017) who later argued that the higher the level of pluralism, economic development and the number of other transitional justice tools in a country, the more likely different subtypes of reparations become. However insightful these studies are to compare countries, they do not account for difference within countries. In other words, structural factors should generally have the same effects on everyone seeking redress.

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Similarly, works on theories of democratization suggest that the balance of power between new and old elites determines policies (Arthur, 2009; Balasco, 2013; Linz & Stepan, 1996; O’Donnell, Schmitter, & Whitehead, 1986). Depending on the course of the transition—whether it is negotiated or the previous regime collapses—transitional justice could be applied either as a tool of reckoning by the negotiating parties or as retribution imposed by the victor, respectively (see especially Elster, 1998). This is related to distributive politics that proposes that the aim of governments is to allocate a fixed budget to competing social categories (Golden & Min, 2013; Stokes, Dunning, Nazareno, & Brusco, 2013). It suggests that there are two main explanations why some citizens receive redress and others do not. In the first one, governments offer resources towards their ‘core’ political constituencies (aligned with ‘winners’), while other constituencies are less privileged (‘losers’). In the second one, governments target benefits toward those ‘swing’ voters who decide elections. The distributive politics literature would propose that it is the political alignment of voters relative to the party that holds power that determines redress. In divided societies, distributive politics is structed along identity cleavage lines. Paige Arthur argues that ‘collective victimization and collective guilt are common outcomes of conflict and systematic domination, making recognition of victimhood on the other ‘side’ difficult, if not impossible’ (2011, p. 8). Using the same set of arguments, status would be only granted if it benefitted the victors or one side. The difficulty with contemporary conflicts is that there are no longer clear and stable winners and losers, and recognition becomes a balancing act influenced by domestic but also international actors. Moreover, the identity divisions do not explain recognitions across ethnic lines such as in the case of Bosnian missing people. This is where normative scholarship on transnational advocacy networks in human rights come to aid. Norms of accountability for past human rights abuses emerged in the 1980s in Latin American and later in South Africa with a shift towards new norms and practices of accountability, truth-seeking, and global justice (Hayner, 2001; Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink, 1999). These norms gradually spread across the world through networks of activists, advocates, and scholars that influenced governments’ policies, in what Lutz and Sikkink called the ‘justice cascade’ (2001), i.e. the chain-effect of adopting new legal measures. This cascade resulted in external normative pressures on domestic actors that eventually complied with the human rights regime in order to be considered

1

INTRODUCTION

17

respectable and/or full members of the international community. Such actors operate across the world through networks and alliances to pressure governments on behalf of repressed or weak domestic groups, and persuade them to change their policy preferences. Keck and Sikkink in their seminal 1998 book ‘Activists without Borders’ demonstrated that aligning with ‘transnational advocacy networks’ is a useful strategy to empower domestic victims by gaining financial and technical capacities, raising awareness and helping push for domestic change through the so-called ‘boomerang effect’. They suggest that transnational advocacy networks strengthen domestic groups and push the targeted governments to change their behaviour. They show that where local organizations have difficulty influencing their own governments, they ‘bypass their state and directly search out international allies to try to bring pressure on their states from outside’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 2). The inter-category variation would, according to these propositions, be driven by the work of the diffusive activities of such networks. This is a powerful explanation for many ‘victories’ of war victims. While networks are incorporated as part of each group’s resources, it is hard to see how each of the distinct compensation outcomes is the result of such external factors and advocacy only. For example, despite the growing involvement of such networks in the issue of torture, ex-detainees in Bosnia have only been recognized in 2018 in Republika Srpska that has had a much lower exposure of such networks. Scholarship on adaptational strategies of domestic actors to many norm-driven external pressures has provided more insights that can be included here. Most notably, Jelena Suboti´c (2009) showed on Croatia and Serbia how the European Union’s pressure vis-à-vis criminal prosecution and other justice reforms has been ‘hijacked’ by domestic elites in order to legitimize their rule and delegitimize the opposition and/or external actors. She argued that the EU’s insistence on compliance with international norms of justice and trials encouraged domestic elites to ‘go through the motions of fulfilling international demands while in fact rejecting the profound social transformation these norms require’ (Suboti´c, 2009, p. 167). As a result, domestic authorities adopt halfhearted measures to extract international rewards (political progress towards the EU and economic aid) without any intent of implementation.13 Similarly, using other post-socialist cases, Brian Grodsky proposed that national leaders pursue their preferred justice policies when these ‘pose minimal political or economic risk’ and when they are advantageous

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for their political ambitions (Grodsky, 2011, p. 32). He concluded that direct external pressures have ambiguous domestic effects because too much external coercion weakens domestic liberal opposition. This instrumentalist logic has great explanatory power on the case studied here. Yet both Suboti´c and Grodsky focused on trials and truth commissions and thus work with different assumptions. While recognition and redress can be expensive, it does not pose much direct threat to political survival per se. Instead, it can impact the legitimacy of ruling elites. This is where the last set of arguments—that this book aligns with— offers additional contributions. In the critical scholarship of victimhood (Druliolle & Brett, 2018; Schmid, 2016), victims are no longer viewed through the prism of their traumas and passivity but as ‘protagonists of transitional justice’ with a large remit for mobilization and action (Dixon, 2016). Works on Rwanda (Rombouts, 2004), Northern Ireland (Jankowitz, 2018) and East Germany (Clarke, 2019), among others, have shown how victims adopt strategies and seek out allies to become active policy pursuers. In Bosnia, the contribution by Elissa Helms on female victim activism demonstrated victims’ usage of moral frames of innocence and motherhood to justify justice claims (Helms, 2013). Similarly, Cécile Jouhanneau in her research (in French) on the politics of Bosnian victims of torture alerts to their framing of the ‘guardians of memory’ as a strategy to increase public empathy (Jouhanneau, 2013). Isabelle Delpla’s work (also in French) on victim associations in general shows how victim leaders have been co-opted by Bosnian political parties (Delpla, 2014). Janine N. Clark’s work on and with survivors of sexual violence also offers many insights about the dissonance within a highly heterogenous group that is often perceived as monolithic (Clark, 2017). These are important and courageous works as critical engagement with politicization of victims remains a somewhat taboo topic in transitional justice. This book builds on these works but adds an analytical and comparative aspect to these discussion by presenting an analytical framework (Chapter 2) and subsequently comparing the achievements of Bosnian victim groups in relation to each other (Chapters 4, 5 and 6). It relies on transitional justice, social movements and anthropological approaches to victimhood to offer insights into how and why post-conflict regimes adopt redress. Given the lack of solid theoretical foundations in transitional justice this book fills critical theoretical gaps. As the following chapters document, post-conflict transitional justice, normative arguments, and victimhood studies are used to conceptualize moral authority

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19

and international salience. The literature in social movements is used to conceptualize mobilization resources and the role of contextual factors.

1.6

Bosnian Victims and Survivors

Bosnia is a suitable context in which to study variation in recognition and redress. The Bosnian conflict transformed our understandings of civil wars, peacebuilding and post-conflict justice. The 1992–1995 war between Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims14 ), Croats, and Serbs came as a tangible proof that ethnicity and nationalism were to be lasting and potent political tools in domestic politics and international affairs at a time when many believed the victory of liberal peace was imminent. To settle the animosities through an external arbiter, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was set up in 1993 as a new tool to deal with the human rights violations in the country and to serve as a deterrent for further crimes (Orentlicher, 2010). As a beneficiary of the first ad hoc international tribunals for war crimes, Bosnia has since then turned into a ‘laboratory of transitional justice’ (Dragovi´c-Soso & Gordy, 2010, p. 193) and a trailblazer for war-crime trials. The end of the war was an unprecedented peace experiment of external intervention. The so-called ‘Dayton Peace Agreement’ stopped the fighting and created a formally unified state through the enactment of complex power-sharing structures in two so-called ‘entities’, the smaller Bosnian Serb Republika Srpska (RS) and the larger Bosniak-Croat Federation of BiH (FBiH).15 It also introduced a new type of international guardianship through the Office of the High Representative (OHR), which directly linked domestic policymaking to international politics (Caplan, 2004). Finally, the extent of war suffering, targeting of the civilian population in some of the most atrocious ways since World War II and the sweeping levels of war destruction have left a large and complex legacy of hundreds of thousands war victims. The Bosnian conflict produced ‘direct victims’ (also called primary)— i.e. those killed, disappeared, abused, detained or persecuted—and ‘indirect victims’ (also called secondary) as ‘family members of a direct victim’ (Bloomfield et al., 2003, p. 54). As noted above, victim identities can be determined by specific events or regional crimes; however, the key criterion for categorization of victims is generally their victimization, which not only shapes their demands but also the general ways in which

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they mobilize. Therefore, this book does not only study injured civilians and those who lost their loved ones but also maimed war veterans, veterans who were tortured, and families of fallen or missing soldiers, i.e. all victims-survivors with irreversible losses and harms. Together with refugees and displaced persons, identities of war victims and veterans are the direct result of wars and form the universe of war-generated populations. While refugees and displaced persons pertain to various restitution and restorative policies, they are not included in this study. The reasons are of conceptual and practical nature. Conceptually, many displaced people and refugees pertain to other categories of victims (and are thus included). Practically, many members of this category reside abroad, limiting the validity of a study of internal Bosnian politics. Therefore, the victim groups studied here are military war victims, civilian war victims, families of missing people, victims of torture (ex-detainees) and victims of sexual violence (rape16 ). These five groups cannot return to the situation ex ante and thus can be recognized and redressed through compensation and rehabilitation (redress). Before proceeding further, it is important to justify the inclusion of military victims. Ex-soldiers are generally treated in studies of peacebuilding as part of Demobilization, Disarmament, and Reintegration (DDR). In addition, the existing legal definitions of victimhood exclude servicemen unless their injuries were the result of grave breaches of the international human and humanitarian law (especially the Geneva Conventions).17 Moreover, transitional justice often sees ex-soldiers as (potential) ‘thugs or perpetrators of violence’ rather than victims (Nettelfield, 2010, p. 90). Such portrayals fail to capture the reality on the ground. As Hourmat convincingly argued in the case of Rwanda, ‘defining a rigid victim-perpetrator dichotomy can be profoundly excluding and limited in capturing the diversity of victimhood’ (2016, p. 44). Huyse further stressed that victimhood is relevant for all ‘those killed and tortured, those bereaved and maimed, those assaulted and raped, those injured in battle and by mines, those abducted and detained, …’ (2003, p. 54). Although victimized soldiers may have put themselves in harm’s way by joining the army and thus bear partial responsibility for their wounds (though forced enlistment should also be considered), they are also victimized by wars (Sriram, 2012, p. 164). The inclusion of military-defined victims has also practical and theoretical repercussions. Worldwide, some types of victim associations (e.g. victims of torture) gather both civilians and veterans, i.e. forming mixed

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INTRODUCTION

21

civilian-military categories with shared victimization. Such mixed categories have similar claims, not only because they pertain to equitable budgetary constraints but because their practical needs are comparable (e.g. therapies or prosthetic devices). Excluding victimized servicemen would limit the scope of the applicability of this design elsewhere and would fail to recognize the variance of victimization in other contexts.18 Nonetheless, demobilized war veterans without any specific victimization or harms are not studied as their victimization (service) is of a different kind to the permanency of disability or loss of a loved one.19 Each of the studied five groups in Bosnia has been treated differently at the state and the subnational (entity) level. Recognition and redress have been included in legal regulations that define the rights of each victim group. While families of missing people have been granted statelevel policies, other categories have either been included in entity-level legislation or have not secured any rights at all. As entities have extensive powers regarding victim and veteran policies, subnational (entity) level is an important part of the analysis here.20 Victim groups generally gather in associations (and their unions). As circumstances of injuries in battle are qualitatively different and as military and civilian victims have organized in distinct organizations, civilian and military war victims are studied as two separate categories despite some overlap in their source of victimization (i.e. injuries and killings). Only these two groups have organized on the basis of their distinct victimization and civilian/military identities. The rest of the groups are mixed (include war veterans and civilians) although victims of sexual violence are nearly exclusively civilians. Table 1.2 provides an overview of the different groups, their source of victimization, their organizational units and outcomes.21

1.7

Researching Bosnian Victims

Studying victims in a post-war states necessitates a contextualized and sensitive approach to data collection and analysis. This also entails overcoming many obstacles. Obtaining accurate data in Bosnia is unnecessarily challenging because of its fragmented political and administrative system. Reliable data about victimization and outcomes—from statistics to demographics—are hard to get as their collection is decentralized and methodologies differ significantly. There is also a reticence to release any country-wide data. For example, the first post-war census was only conducted in 2013. The official results, though, were not published

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Table 1.2 Victim groups, recognition and redress outcome Group

Victimization

1. Military War Victims

Physical injuries, Entity unions of disability and killings disabled veterans; of soldiers families of killed soldiers Physical injuries, Entity unions of disability and killings civilian war victims; of civilians associations of families of killed civilians Disappearance of Associations for soldiers and civilians families of the missing; Srebrenica and Prijedor associations Torture and abuse, Entity unions of incl. detention of ex-detainees soldiers and civilians Sexual violence and Entity rape of civilians (and Women-Victims of rarely soldiers) War associations, women’s sections of ex-detainees

2. Civilian War Victims

3. Families of the Missing Persons

4. Victims of Torture (ex-detainees) 5. Victims of Sexual Violence

Associations

Outcome Entity Laws

Entity Laws (registration expired in RS)

State Law

RS Entity Law

FBiH Law Amendment (and in RS Entity Law)

Source Author

until 2016 when the entities finally agreed on its publication after a strong pressure from the European Union (Toe, 2016). Official data are often subject to various official permissions and loopholes. In my case, some institutions have been responsive to official request of information (some cantonal ministries in FBiH) while entity and state-level institutions have often been more difficult to reach. Journalists and local analysts have thus been an indispensable source of information and knowledge. To ensure reliability of the collected material, I have triangulated it with international reports, secondary literature, media articles and especially expert interviews. However, statistical data presented here are by no means complete. While journalists and media sources were important for analysing discourses, most of the numbers included in such sources needed further verification. A more reliable source were experts in the field (social workers, lawyers, peace workers) who have worked with victims and have had access to a range of official and semi-official

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data. Consulting their reports and interviews conducted with them were instructive. Numbers and descriptive data about victimization provide only one piece of a complex story and limited knowledge. Instead, it is through close discussion with those who suffered and through a contextualized reading of the existing data that a more rounded picture emerges. Research on and with victims involves an engagement with sensitive, painful and potentially traumatizing stories. Each victim lives in a particular microcosm of memory, trauma and narratives that need to be respected and interpreted as sensitively as possible. In order to do so, understanding the local context, language and culture is important. At the same time, a wider anchoring is needed as Bosnian divisions, polarized narratives and conflicting memories lead to disjointed or partial interpretations of victimhood. As Clark lamented, conducting fieldwork in Bosnia is ‘an extremely disorientating experience, with members of each ethnic group insisting that their version of events is the correct and truthful one’ (2014, p. 104). This is why a large number of individuals (120) were interviewed for this research during prolonged stays in Bosnia—but also across the wider region of the former Yugoslavia. The field research conducted for this book consisted of four separate fieldwork trips, each lasting two to three months from early 2014 to late 2016, and a follow-up trip in 2019. Multiple trips allowed for the study of developments across time and to gain distance from the field to reflect on the data. It was also a strategy how to avoid turning into a Bostranac (literally ‘Bosnian foreigner’), i.e. adopting the Bosnian viewpoints and understandings of reality which may be tainted by individual experiences of trauma and suffering. The field research followed the main victim associations in the country, starting from prolonged stays in the capital Sarajevo, then Srebrenica, Banja Luka, Mostar, Biha´c and other areas (see stars marked in Fig. 1.1).22 The main selection criteria for the locations was the existence of a victim group and diversity of different views (i.e. Bosniak, Croat, Serb, different victim groups, gender, professional capability, etc.). The conducted semi-structured interviews differed depending on the respondent. Legal experts were able to elaborate on the nature of redress legislation while civil society workers were often important bridges between individual victim respondents and myself. The aim was to interview respondents with varied perspectives and knowledge bases in many locations to get a broader understanding of the issue of recognition and

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Fig. 1.1 Fieldwork in Bosnia and Herzegovina (adapted from www.Vector Stock.com/20422894)

redress. This meant interviewing ministers, leaders of NGOs, journalists, victim leaders and veterans. Overall, 120 respondents (70 males and 50 females23 ) were interviewed. I organized respondents into (1) direct beneficiaries, that is victims-survivors (45), (2) state and international elites (24) and (3) local and international human rights (HR) workers (51). I also organized them by the content of our discussion, i.e. by the types of victimization. Table 1.3 provides a breakdown of the distribution of interviews.24 In Table 1.3, I combine torture and rape, as well

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25

Table 1.3 Interviews by topics Group/Type of actors Direct beneficiaries Bosnian and international elites Local and international HR/NGO workers Total

Civilian and military victims

Missing people

Torture and sexual violence

General topics

Total

18

12

15

0

45

9

6

5

4

24

10

5

10

26

51

37

23

30

30

120

Source Author

as civilian and military victimhood into one topic, as these are later analysed in a comparative way in the individual chapters. All interviews that covered topics of victimhood and redress more broadly or that contained information about other topics are listed under ‘General topics’. Participant observation was a natural and indispensable part of the fieldwork. In some cases, certain victim/veteran associations have assisted me for longer periods of time and introduced me to other members of their networks. It was fascinating to observe the dynamics between different victims and veterans during commemorations, burials, exhibitions and cultural events (such as film screenings). Power hierarchies between groups and genders were palpable during such events. In the majority of cases, it was also clear that victim leaders dominated the discourse of their associations. Certain lines and phrases were repeated automatically without individual reflections. In one case, after 12 failed requests for an interview (and cancelled meetings) one victim leader referred me to her colleagues with the words ‘you don’t even have to say you have not spoken to me. She [her colleague] will tell you everything as I would’. This not only shows the uniform narratives within some associations but also hints to the limits of the ‘truthfulness’ of interview material, but also to the plain reality of Bosnia that has been over-exposed to foreign researchers. Additionally, my gender, knowledge of the language and previous professional life in Bosnia also predetermined my role as a researcher in

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the field. As Denzin noted, ‘interpretive research begins and ends with the biography and self of the researcher’ (1986, p. 12). It was noticeable that my access to some organizations was facilitated by my knowledge of the language and networks. At the same time, my background seemed to influence the responses as in some cases respondents wanted to ‘present themselves in a positive light to the interviewer’ or seemed to have a hidden agenda for their claims (González-Ocantos, 2016, p. 25). There may also have been a retrospective remembering bias when respondents recall only some events. It was thus critical to corroborate interview evidence with a broad variety of sources to build resilient arguments. Nonetheless, it must be recognized that the explanations in this book are the result of constraints in terms of access to respondents, availability of time and financial resources. These limitations of fieldwork-driven projects that rely on intensive, deep and ‘thick’ (Geertz, 1973) analyses are inevitable and must been acknowledged. However, their impact on the results can be minimized by relying on a vast set of sources. As for the other used sources, I created a collection of 420 media articles from the Infobiro 25 database, which is run by the Bosnian Media Centre and is currently the only accessible online database of Bosnian newspapers covering the post-war period (and prior). Using (rather basic) available search functions, I selected 70 articles for each victim group (and 70 articles on Srebrenica specifically), a number high enough to select at least two articles per year. I also added 70 articles that dealt with victims and redress in general. I further created a collection of 150 international policy reports and statements related to issues of transitional justice and victimization by the EU, OSCE, UN agencies, WB, IMF, IOM, Amnesty International (AI), HRW, ICMP, ICTY and other external charities and agencies that focussed on these issues in BiH. This collection is not an exhaustive list of all the research and advocacy about the studied categories and redress; however, it provides a good overview of the vast range of agencies, actors and research dedicated to this issue. When analysing this data (using NVivo and Zotero), the aim was to (1) Focus on the framing of the victim groups; (2) Assess described capacities, networks and skills; and (3) Examine how prioritized each group was by external actors. Together with the used secondary literature and primary sources obtained from respondents and during fieldwork, this book presents a rich description of the struggle for redress in Bosnia after 1995. Finally, it is important to stress that research in post-war contexts with populations that have been traumatized in war26 necessitates extra

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27

care during interviews, increased awareness about handing confidential data and reflexivity in order to represent the shared views truthfully but also reading between lines. I have adopted a variety of strategies to avoid discussions about direct war experiences. Clarity about the aims of my research, anonymity when requested and confidentiality were critical. Each respondent was briefed about the purpose of my research, presented with a consent form, and an authorization was gained to record the interviews.27 Although only five respondents asked not to have their names included for privacy reasons, I have not used names or specific identifiers of respondents who could potentially be harmed by having their names published. Although the risk of such harm is rather low, using less specific titles (as well as avoiding exact dates but only years) provided an extra layer of protection. In some cases, respondents asked to have their names included and I have done so. I only rarely conducted interviews with victims on the topic of their wartime experience but re-traumatization was a clear a concern as some of the discussed events were related to the war. I sought advice from several social psychologists in BiH (especially Vive žene in Tuzla), who proposed to let respondents talk without interruptions as a form of therapy. Such interviews often took several hours but provided very rich data. Several other considerations regarding expectations from respondents have resurfaced. Reciprocity was a running thread, which seems to feature in qualitative research on sensitive topics more broadly (Claridge, 2004). It became clear that some victims felt that previous researchers have made use of their views without providing anything ‘in return’. A member of a victim association in Sarajevo resisted to be interviewed as ‘there was no use of me’ unless I convinced ‘those at the top’ to help them. In such cases, it took several visits to gain trust and conduct the interview without overpromising from a position of a researcher (cf. Clark, 2017). The final concern regarded the presentation of the victims’ views. It became clear that some respondents wanted me to adopt their understandings of the ‘truth’. I experienced this most prominently in Banja Luka where several victim leaders denied internationally established war crimes and praised Ratko Mladi´c and Radovan Karadži´c as ‘great Serb heroes’. As a researcher, my role was not to discuss such assertions but understand their origins. Therefore, I present these views set in the framework of the polarized Bosnian war narratives. There has indeed been a great dissonance in the ‘truth’ and narratives my respondents shared; however, reflecting them—rather than engaging with them—has been an important part of

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this fieldwork research. Despite the above challenges, rigorous qualitative research in the field is possible with an open and honest approach to limitations and potential sensitivities.

1.8

Structure of the Book

The aim of this chapter was to demark the content of this book while stressing its limitations. The chapter also presented key definitions of terms as used in this book—victims, recognition and redress. The rest of the book is divided into six chapters. The second chapter offers a detailed examination of the analytical framework for redress and the main propositions about the role of international salience, moral authority and mobilization resources. The Bosnian context is presented in Chapter 3, which provides the overall historical and political background to the study of post-conflict Bosnia. Special attention is paid to the 1992–1995 war, the Dayton Peace Agreement, the political developments in post-conflict Bosnia and the emergence of victim associations and their demands. Three post-conflict phases are introduced that structure the arguments in the subsequent empirical chapters. This chapter demonstrates that recognition emerged as a victim demand only after the first post-conflict emergency phase had passed. The subsequent three empirical chapters are the ‘building blocks’ of the analytical framework (Eckstein, 1975). The victim groups are analysed in ‘paired comparisons’ (McAdam et al., 2001), i.e. as most similar cases with different outcomes. This strategy allows for the examination of cases in smaller comparative chapters. Chapters 4 and 6 show the different outcomes of comparable groups, while Chapter 5 is dedicated to what some experts call an outlier case of the Srebrenica survivors compared to other families of missing (Leydesdorff, 2011). The first building block (Chapter 4) compares civilian and military war victims that were physically harmed and families of those killed during the war. This chapter contrasts the combinations of high moral authority and resources for military victims with the combination of rather weak moral authority and international salience for civilian war victims. This chapter is more complex than the subsequent chapters as it deals with a series of legal changes across over twenty years. The second comparison looks at the case of families of the missing that were recognized in a state law enacted in 2004 (Chapter 5). The reason for the focus on one victim category only is that Srebrenica survivors have created a separate subgroup that

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has in many ways been treated as a special case because of its external and internal prominence. This chapter argues that not only international salience but also the two other components of capital were at high levels when status was finally conferred upon them in the for of the 2004 law. The final comparison is that of victims of torture and victims of sexual violence (Chapter 6). This is case where only parts of Bosnia have recognized sexual violence and torture in law. I explain this as the result of powerful mobilization resources and international salience in one case while the result of moral authority and mobilization resources in another. In the final chapter, I return to the major conceptual and theoretical arguments put forward in this book and elaborate on the empirical evidence. I first assess the five studied victim groups in comparison to each other. I then offer tentative explanation for the failed implementation of many laws of redress. The regional variation and wide-spread clientelism have accounted for much of the observed discrepancies in access. These explanations go beyond the ethno-national divisions of Bosnia but are in many respects related. The final observations focus on the emerging scholarship of the so-called ‘politics of victimhood’ (Druliolle & Brett, 2018) that depicts how different definitions and constructions of victimhood after conflict entail complex political battles while being closely related to the application of emotions, morality and creations of old and new identity divisions.

Notes 1. I use ‘Bosnia’ and ‘Bosnian’ as shorthand for ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina’ and its citizens. I use BiH (Bosna i Hercegovina) as is commonly used in the country. 2. Personal interview with Amir in Sarajevo, 2019. Bosnian currency is the so-called Convertible Mark or KM (1 Euro is 2 KM). 3. Interviews with war survivors/victims were pseudonymized or anonymized. Each interview was given a number and date for consistency in my own NVivo database. 4. Available data for the period from 2015–2019 indicate the current minimum monthly net wage is in FBiH ranges between 168 and 193 Euro while in RS it is 225.60 Euro (Obradovi´c et al., 2019, p. 10). Average salary is generally three times higher (ibid.). 5. Personal interview with Sabiha Husi´c, 2015. 6. One among many definitions of transitional justice is ‘the array of processes designed to address past human rights violations following

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7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

periods of political turmoil, state repression, or armed conflict’ (Olsen et al., 2010, p. 11). The term ‘capital’ was inspired by Robert Putnam’s social capital that describes social organizations, norms and trust and the overall set of relationships and perceptions about groups and networks within a society (Putnam, Leonardi, & Nanetti, 1994, p. 35). While there are differences in how it is used here—given its international dimension, for example—using the term capital is deemed as a suitable parallel to make. Additional evidence also suggests that socio-economically more privileged individuals prefer to identify as ‘survivors’ while poorer populations as ‘victims’ (Saeed, 2016, p. 176). Compensation was further included in the Rome Statute (Art. 75) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998. While different definitions of redress exist, the narrow usage of redress as representing socio-economic redress in this books is a deliberate effort to distinguish it from the wider term reparations that includes societal processes of responsibility and reckoning as outlines in the UN Guidelines above (Brooks, 1999; Ludi, 2006; MacDonald, 2013; Torpey, 2006). For example, in the Bosnian cases, Amnesty International uses the term war-related ‘social benefits’, World Bank war-related ‘social transfers’, while others label it as a ‘hybrid’ tool (Popi´c & Panjeta, 2010). I use the term ‘ethno-national’ to describe Bosnian identities, see Chapter 3 and Hronešová (2012). Other scholars titled this ‘tactical concessions’ (Risse & Sikkink, 2013). As explained in Chapter 3, the term ‘Bosniak’ re-emerged in 1993. Due to space constraints, I do not analyse the District of Brˇcko separately. I often mention it in comparison to the two entities. Its inclusion would not have strengthened or weakened my arguments. While sexual violence is a much wider term than ‘rape’ (Helms, 2013), I adopt these terms as they are used by the victim associations in the Bosnian context. They are often used interchangeably. A full discussion of victim categories is included in Kiza, Rathgeber, and Rohne (2006). I recognize that the inclusion of veterans may be difficult to accept for scholars of ex-Yugoslavia where veterans have often been included in the top echelons of the political structures. This choice is driven by both the theoretical arguments of this book as well by the need for a consistent research design. Moreover, rank-and-file servicemen have often found themselves in equally marginalized positions as civilian victims. A similar approach has already been applied. The 2005 reparations plan in Peru included individuals who suffered damages as soldiers, members of rural militias and the police (García-Godos, 2013, p. 248).

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20. The analytical framework proposed in the next chapter theorizes recognition outcomes at the state level for the sake of parsimony and applicability to other contexts. It is then in the empirical chapters, where the subnational level is re-introduced. 21. See Annex 1 and Chapter 7 for the full list of outcomes. 22. Although an analysis of the Brˇcko District is not analysed as a case in this book, fieldwork was conducted there in order to compare the views of local victims. 23. Only two female military victims were interviewed as service women were rare in the 1992–1995 war (Berdak, 2013, p. 9). 24. As most experts were in Sarajevo, I conducted 81 interviews in the Federation, 29 in RS, three via email/skype (and one in person in New York), three in neighbouring states and three in Brˇcko. 25. The database can be accessed on http://www.infobiro.ba/publikacije. 26. The fieldwork was conducted with the approval of the Oxford University’s Social Sciences and Humanities Interdivisional Research Ethics Committee. 27. In total, ten respondents provided an oral rather than a written consent and 21 respondents did not wish to be recorded.

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Orentlicher, D. F. (2010). That someone guilty be punished: The impact of the ICTY in Bosnia. New York: Open Society Justice Initiative and International Center for Transitional Justice. Payne, L. A. (2007). Unsettling accounts: Neither truth nor reconciliation in confessions of state violence. Durham: Duke University Press. Popi´c, L., & Panjeta, B. (2010). Compensation, transitional justice and conditional international credit in Bosnia and Herzegovina attempts to reform government payments to victims and veterans of the 1992–1995 war. https:// goo.gl/6crClh. Powers, K. L., & Proctor, K. (2017). Victim’s justice in the aftermath of political violence: Why do countries award reparations? Foreign Policy Analysis, 13(4), 787–810. Putnam, R. D., Leonardi, R., & Nanetti, R. Y. (1994). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ragin, C. C. (1987). The comparative method: Moving beyond qualitative and quantitative strategies. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Risse, T., Ropp, S. C., & Sikkink, K. (1999). The power of human rights: International norms and domestic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Risse, T., & Sikkink, K. (2013). The persistent power of human rights: From commitment to compliance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rombouts, H. (2004). Victim organisations and the politics of reparation: A case-study on Rwanda. Oxford: Intersentia. Rothberg, M. (2019). The implicated subject: Beyond victims and perpetrators. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Saeed, H. (2016). Victims and victimhood: individuals of inaction or active agents of change? Reflections on fieldwork in Afghanistan. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 10(1), 168–178. Satz, D. (2012). Countering the wrongs of the past: The role of compensation. In M. Williams, R. Nagy, & J. Elster (Eds.), Transitional justice (pp. 129–150). New York: New York University Press. Schimmelfennig, F., & Sedelmeier, U. (2005). The europeanization of central and Eastern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Schmid, U. (2016). Nation and emotion: The comptetition for victimhood in Europe. In S. Loren & J. Metelmann (Eds.), Melodrama after the tears: New perspectives on the politics of victimhood (pp. 281–293). Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Segovia, A. (2006). Financing reparations programs. In P. de Greiff (Ed.), The handbook of reparations (pp. 650–672). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Slyomovics, S. (2009). Waging war, making peace: Reparations and human rights. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press. Sriram, C. L. (2012). Victim-centered justice and DDR in Sierra Leone. In C. L. Sriram, J. García-Godos, J. Herman, & O. Martin-Ortega (Eds.), Transitional justice and peacebuilding on the ground: Victims and ex-combatants (pp. 159–177). London: Routledge.

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Stokes, S. C., Dunning, T., Nazareno, M., & Brusco, V. (2013). Brokers, voters, and clientelism: The puzzle of distributive politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Suboti´c, J. (2009). Hijacked justice: Dealing with the past in the Balkans. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Tarrow, S. (1994). Power in movement: Social movements, collective action and politics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Thoms, O. N. T., Ron, J., & Paris, R. (2008). The effects of transitional justice mechanisms: A summary of empirical research findings and implications for analysts and practitioners (pp. 329–354). Ottawa: Centre for International Policy Studies. Toe, R. (2016, June 30). Census reveals Bosnia’s changed demography. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2016/06/30/new-demographic-pictureof-bosnia-finally-revealed-06-30-2016/. Torpey, J. (2006). Making whole what has been smashed: On reparation politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Towle, P. (2018). History, empathy and conflict: Heroes, victims and victimisers. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. UN General Assembly. (1985). Declaration of basic principles of justice for victims of crime and abuse of power. A/RES/40/34. UN General Assembly. (2005). Basic principles and guidelines on the right to a remedy and reparation for victims of gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law (A/RES/60/147). UN. https://goo.gl/UosgNT. Vachudova, M. A. (2005). Europe undivided: Democracy, leverage, and integration after communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van der Auweraert, P. (2013). Reparations for wartime victims in the former Yugoslavia: In search of the way forward (Land, Property and Reparations Division—Department for Operations and Emergencies). International Organization for Migration (IOM). https://goo.gl/7AYUQk. van der Merwe, H. (2014). Reparations through different lenses: The culture, rights and politics of healing and empowerment after mass atrocities. In J.-A. M. Wemmers (Ed.), Reparation for victims of crimes against humanity: The healing role of reparation (pp. 143–154). New York: Routledge. Vinck, P., & Pham, P. N. (2014). Consulting survivors: Evidence from Cambodia, Northern Uganda, and other countries affected by mass violence. In S. J. Stern & S. Straus (Eds.), The human rights paradox: Universality and its discontents (pp. 107–124). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Wolfe, S. (2013). The politics of reparations and apologies. New York: Springer Science & Business Media.

CHAPTER 2

Victim Capital for Recognition and Redress

2.1

Understanding Recognition and Redress

Recognition and the design of state programmes of redress (in the form of socio-economic support) is the result of complex political, cultural and economic deliberations that vary hugely across contexts. In many cases, it is attached to other transitional justice mechanisms. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report contained a large set of recommendations about different material support and pathways to redress (Gibson, Meernik, & Mason, 2006). In Peru, a comprehensive programme of compensation was designed as one of the outcomes of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2003 (Laplante & Theidon, 2007). In other cases, victims’ redress becomes part of wider post-conflict measures. In Colombia, the 2011 path-breaking Victims’ Law institutionalized diverse victim-centric measures for nearly nine million victims (though majority form the displaced)—amounting to nearly 20 percent of the Colombian population (Sanchez & Rudling, 2019). In all of these cases, the actual delivery of these promises lagged behind, or fell short of respecting the legal obligations. For example, by 2018, only seven percent of victims have received financial compensation in Colombia (Zulver, 2018). In Bosnia, a piecemeal set of domestic legal measures has been adopted to redress some victims while ignoring others. Consistent to other post-conflict cases around the world (though there are exceptions1 ), only a few of those legally recognized have received material or © The Author(s) 2020 J. Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2_2

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service-based redress. The varieties of internal recognition raise a series of questions about who is ‘worthy’ of redress and what are the motivations for such measures in the first place. Even if actual access to redress does not materialize in many postconflict cases, legal recognition is highly important for both symbolic and practical reasons. At the symbolic level, it provides an acknowledgment of the source of victimization and individual suffering (e.g. sexual violence). This has wider social implications for identity and self-esteem of survivors (Brown, 1995). It also frames guilt outside of the victim’s agency. At the practical level, legal frameworks provide victims with a structure within which they can demand their rights through law. ‘The law comes first’, a Bosnian victim respondent stated when asked how to obtain redress.2 As the examples above indicate, implementation has invariable become a painfully burdensome and unsuccessful endeavour in post-conflict and divided states (Buford & van der Merwe, 2004). In the cases of South Africa, Colombia and Peru, this process is greatly influenced by financial and bureaucratic constraints. In the cases of identity-divided states such as Bosnia, it is even more influenced by multiple allegiances and perceptions of existential threat. This book offers tentative conclusions about the implementation obstacles; however, the key focus is on the act of recognition and redress policy as it is the sine qua non, without which victims’ misery is amplified by their ‘constant diminishment of dignity’ in the words of the above-cited victim respondent. This chapter outlines the mechanisms behind recognition and the implicated compensatory and rehabilitative policies (also synonymously referred to as redress) and puts forward an analytical framework for societies structured by various cleavages. It explains inter-group variation by a victim group’s international salience, moral authority and mobilization resources. As this chapter demonstrates, these concepts meld together instrumentalist and constructivist approaches to social sciences. Domestic policymakers rarely recognize victims until it offers some political, reputational or economic rewards. When a victim group and/or particular victimization starts featuring in such concerns, the status quo is offset and considerations for redress may enter the policy agenda.3 This chapter starts by explaining the wider contours of the context (scope and validity of the framework) before introducing the new concepts.

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Post-conflict Divided Societies

Many post-conflict countries manifest deep identity divisions that structure much of social, political and economic life. Post-conflict states following the end of the Cold War emerge from predominantly internal (civil) wars. As the existing conflicts literature shows, the internal nature of conflicts is driven by complex motives that are often sustained by underlying cleavages over identity, resources, economic interests and inequality (Collier & Sambanis, 2005; Collier, Hoeffler, & Rohner, 2009; Kalyvas, 2006). As these differences are rarely fully resolved by the conflict, they may manifest themselves in post-war politics, structuring political life around identity and conflict-related issues. Post-war states are often characterized by a variety of external governance models exercised by international actors, which would have previously been considered as intrusive into a state’s sovereignty.4 International organizations such as the UN have been increasingly guiding and managing war-to-peace transitions worldwide. They have been involved through an array of peace- and statebuilding missions that have employed security, economic and institutional strategies (Newman, Paris, & Richmond, 2009, pp. 8–9). The normative aim of these missions has been ‘liberal peace’; a concept derived from democratic principles5 and proposed as an antidote to violence (Paris, 2004, p. 4). The putative establishment of liberal peace as a goal has thus justified intrusions into sovereignty. Another characteristic of such states is that the combination of the internal nature of conflicts and external multilateral involvement is accompanied by the predominance of negotiated peace processes (or protracted peace negotiations) rather than clear military victories. Because victories are more frequent in states where one side is substantively stronger, ‘when the UN intervenes in a civil war, it increases the probability of both truce and treaty’ (DeRouen & Sobek, 2004, p. 311). In other words, such wars frequently (though not always) result in negotiated peace settlements rather than military defeats. This can lead to domestic power-sharing between politically relevant groups (Posner, 2004b) in the form of proportional representation, territorial autonomies and inclusive governments in order to accommodate collective interests and secure peace.6 Unlike inter-state wars when belligerents return to their home countries, the end of civil wars results in a negotiated peace where all sides live side by side (Mac Ginty, 2008) and where justice-related issues are not framed around victor’s justice but around negotiations and power

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divisions. In situations where important sections of the population do not identify with the post-war state, the so-called ‘stateness problem’, as internal opposition to the existence of the state in its current form by one or more groups (Linz & Stepan, 1996, p. 16), emerges and further compromise post-war stability. This is particularly relevant for society divided by instrumentalized identities like Afghanistan, Burundi, Bosnia, Iraq, Myanmar, Rwanda, South Africa and many others (Roeder & Rothchild, 2005b). In such ‘deeply divided societies’ (Horowitz, 2008; Lijphart, 2004; McEvoy & O’Leary, 2013; Roeder & Rothchild, 2005a), politics and society are structured along identity groups with different characteristics (religious, racial, ethnic or national) while political competition revolves around securitization of such cleavages.

2.3

Who Decides on Recognition and Redress?

In today’s post-conflict societies, recognition and redress is generally the outcome of negotiations and trade-offs between different factions of domestic political leaders. The result of negotiated peace is a situation where previously hostile parties may have to live together, tasked with the mission of jointly rebuilding their country. Their decisions, though, are highly influenced by international actors and their priorities. Domestic authorities are assisted—and often directly managed—by an array of international peacebuilding and/or military missions, as well as humanitarian organizations that focus on assisting local displaced and victimized populations. The wider victimized population, victim associations and non-governmental organizations supporting them also play an important part in setting agendas, advocating for change, and mobilizing. Post-war social and political life is thus defined by the coexistence of old and new actors, some of whom may be committed to democratic progress and redress for victims while others may resist any activities that could alter the war-generated power hierarchies. Domestic political authorities are here defined as ‘persons who are able, by virtue of their strategic positions in powerful organizations, to affect national political outcomes regularly and substantially’ (Higley & Gunther, 1992, p. 8), also referred to as elites. This definition suggests that such individuals and collectives are the primary policymakers, including elected officials in parliaments, party leaders, members of parliamentary committees, as well as ministers. While governments can initiate laws and steer the agenda-setting processes, adoption of new laws

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is in the hands of parliamentarians and key political party representatives. These political actors may be in competition with each other, depending on the balance of power between old and new elites, identity cleavages, their views about the previous regime, and their ideas about the future. Domestic authorities are not only defined by their specific institutional roles in governments or parliaments but also their party affiliations and group identifications. International peacebuilders and statebuilders are here referred to as international actors, often represented in international institutions.7 These include multilateral UN agencies,8 international agencies,9 militaries,10 financial institutions,11 regional organizations,12 international courts13 and others, whose decision-making powers vary in strength and depend upon their mandates. In post-war states, these actors are often deployed in the form of mandated peace- and state-building missions that Richard Caplan (2005) called ‘international administrations’. According to him, there are two basic types of such administrations. The first ones have ‘supervisory’ mandates through consultative functions and military peacekeeping (such as in Cambodia and Afghanistan). The second ones have ‘extensive’—or ‘heavy-footed’ (Newman, 2009, p. 32)—mandates with direct governance functions in the executive, legislative, and judicial sectors (e.g. Kosovo, Bosnia, and East Timor). Actors may be deployed with issue-focussed financial, security or judicial mandates, or as humanitarian agencies. International actors constitute an array of bodies with varied influences over domestic policymaking. Domestic victimized populations are represented by collective organizations (associations) of war victims, established by and for victims with the aim of changing their existing situation or advancing their demands within the political arena. Individuals are categorized by their war roles as either former military or civilians, and by their victimization (injury, loss, type of violence). Groups demanding recognition include associations of disabled veterans, civilian paraplegics, widows, victims of torture, victims of rape, victims of genocide, etc. Their organizations function as part of the civil society and formal representative bodies of survivors. Once victims gather in organizations under central leadership, they resemble formal pressure or interest groups (Rombouts, 2004, p. 2). Their leaders may demand policies in the form of drafted changes or as broad claims for monetary allowances, medical care, and other services. Their characteristics and mission may also be directed against people and groups that

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they feel have victimized them.14 Victim groups are generally assisted by activists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) or domestic provictim groups. Such advocacy groups often try to influence domestic policies through campaigns and mobilization.15 Each of these collective actors has a unique set of motivations, policy priorities, and understanding of reality. At the same time, a key consideration for some domestic authorities and most international actors remains the balance between ‘peace and justice’, i.e. whether the pursed policy will support peacebuilding or potentially jeopardize it. When stability is fragile, wounds are fresh and the dust has not settled yet, justice efforts might endanger peace by laying painful stories bare or threatening to prosecute former soldiers—as the recent developments in Colombia document (The Economist, 2019). The trade-offs between stability (preventing further violence) and building just democratic societies on principles of the rule of law are often very costly (cf. Kerr, 2007; Sriram, García-Godos, Herman, & Martin-Ortega, 2012; Baker & Obradovi´c-Wochnik, 2016). In divided societies, generally the main priority of domestic political authorities is the maintenance and advancement of their political power. They are primarily office seekers, whose actions are driven by powerseeking aims. In the vast majority of cases (with some notable exceptions such as in Colombia or North Macedonia), they prioritize peace only as long as it guarantees their political or physical survival. Preferences of political actors are a combination of potential power gains, i.e. they mainly respond to incentives that augment their political control. However, within this context, victims’ recognition may enter their policy preferences. In the ‘logic of transition’, North, Wallis, and Weingast (2013, p. 190) explained that elites find it in their interests to protect their privileges by turning them into people’s rights. From this perspective, recognition can serve several purposes. It can increase the credibility of those political actors who want to justify their rule by taking care of ‘their’ (i.e. their titular group) constituents or who want to show their commitment to welfare by caring for vulnerable groups. This may be important when political actors try to present themselves as the strongest defenders of their co-nationals (i.e. nationalist parties), run on social platforms (i.e. social democratic parties), or platforms using the language of liberal norms and human rights (i.e. liberal parties), and the like. External assessments of domestic elites also feature in domestic politics because they can boost a regime’s legitimacy, increase its international reputation, harness foreign assistance and investment, and increase

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chances of membership in international organizations (Dreher & Vaubel, 2004; Grabbe, 2006; Meernik, Aloisi, Sowell, & Nichols, 2012). Victims’ recognition can be advantageous as a sign of goodwill or progress and facilitate obtaining such benefits. For example, the EU has applied the mechanism of ‘conditionality’ as a top-down strategic employment of incentives to spur a shift in state policies or behaviour (Schimmelfennig & Sedelmeier, 2004, p. 663). Domestic elites are often driven by prospects of joining such organizations as it increases their domestic credibility and brings significant financial rewards (such as pre-accession funding mechanisms in the case of the EU). Recognition thus may constitute a symbolic and pragmatic opportunity. Incumbents may recognize victims when it comes with rewards, which can further their power and esteem. International actors’ short-term priorities are peace and stability, but their long-term priorities are that domestic elites accept the democratic norms of accountability and the rule of law which they consider as the most effective guarantees of long-term peace (cf. Gleditsch, 1992; Lake, 1992). The aims of statebuilding and democracy play out prominently. As Zürcher, Manning, and Evenson noted, ‘central to modern peacebuilding is the aim to bring peace and democracy to host countries’ (2013, p. 20). International administrations with extensive mandates also commonly include state-building efforts to ‘establish effective or autonomous structures of governance in a state or territory where no such governance exists or where it has been seriously eroded’ (Caplan, 2005, p. 3). Caplan lists public order and security, return of refugees and displaced persons, economic reconstruction, and functioning civil administrative and political institutions among the key priorities of international administrations. Similarly, Firchow and Mac Ginty argue that in post-war states international actors’ ‘main focus is often on constitutional, security, and governance reform issues rather than issues that are somehow seen as “soft” such as reconciliation and identity’ (Firchow & Ginty, 2013, p. 236). From the perspective of post-war security priorities, it still seems rare to include victims’ agendas on external agendas. But justice measures have been included as far as stability is maintained.16 Recognition may be included as part of measures of the growing moral dimensions of international peacebuilding (Stedman, 2002), even if recently eroded by more pragmatic approaches to peace. Since peacebuilding has started to draw on a new justification in the form of universal solidarity and protection

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of human rights in the 1990s (MacFarlane, 2002, p. 7), various postwar justice-related reforms have been included in peace deals, e.g. Nepal, Colombia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Kosovo. These developments were validated by the 2005 UN Reparations Principles that have increasingly been used as a global normative benchmark for state’s obligations towards citizens. The preference given to material redress is guided by the fact that international actors are constitutive parts of those international norms of justice that they profess. International actors may prefer to support some ‘value-laden causes’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 9) such as recognition to justify their missions globally. While the recent years have seen a slow erosion of this norm-based system, norms still play an important role in international organizations and peacebuilding situations (Goldsmith & Mercer, 2018). Alongside holding perpetrators accountable and narrating ‘truth’, victims pursue official state redress for a variety of reasons. Victims’ attention frequently turns to redress due to its potential to improve their quality of life and recognize their suffering.17 Individual preferences are channelled through victim associations and other civil society groups. The assumption here is that victims are represented by leaders in charge of demanding recognition, who formulate recognition claims and pursue them for both socio-economic and symbolic reasons on behalf of their members. The individual claims are shaped by the profile and sources of victimization and vary in their extent and scope. Material aspects of recognition feature especially prominently among impoverished victims, or those with special medical needs. Among the post-war states studied by Anna MacDonald, ‘in almost all cases, reparations and compensation are prioritized [by victims] over other processes, including, for example, trials’ (MacDonald, 2013, p. 43). In many poor post-war states, basic needs may thus trump the desires for justice. These findings differ from studies of victims of the Holocaust, women sexually violated by Japanese soldiers, or families of desaparecidos (disappeared) in Argentina, who primarily sought truth and apologies (Humphrey & Valverde, 2007; Wolfe, 2013). This difference can be explained by the lower socio-economic background of post-war victims in poorer countries who fear for the economic survival of their families (Laplante & Theidon, 2007; van der Merwe, 2014; Vinck & Pham, 2014). Nonetheless, some individuals may still refuse state-sanctioned recognition when it can lead to social stigmatization (e.g. when sexual violence brings ‘dishonour to the family’), personal feelings of humiliation or when

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the categorization as a victim bears security and legal costs (Adhikari, Hansen, & Powers, 2012; Laplante & Theidon, 2007). Being labelled as a victim may in small communities disrupt local dynamics by opening old wounds and/or stigmatizing individuals. In the case of missing people, accepting redress can also symbolize the act of giving up hope that the missing loved ones are alive (Hamber & Wilson, 2002, p. 45). When redress comes only in the form of material compensation, victims may reject it as hush payments, ‘blood money’ (Philpott, 2012, p. 3), or a tool to ‘buy silence’ (Olsen, Payne, & Reiter, 2010, p. 4). Frequently, such criticisms of material redress as a tool of justice have been voiced in the absence of other mechanisms—such as trials, apologies and truth-seeking mechanisms—that signal a broader culture of recognition and willingness to address victims’ needs in a comprehensive way. In situations where other attributes are already in place, state recognition can signal ‘solidarity’, i.e. the public and political acceptance that victims deserve to be redressed (De Greiff, 2006). Similarly, symbolic recognition and material redress may represent what Philpott called ‘acknowledgment fortified materially’ (2012, p. 196) and Vermeule ‘rough justice’ (2012, p. 151) because it not only offers the public recognition of people’s suffering but also the state’s willingness to bear responsibility and the cost of redress. The cost can be significant; in the case of Colombia, the estimated cost of the comprehensive reparation programme would amount to 52 billion USD (Zulver, 2018), i.e. 16 percent of Colombia’s 2017 GDP.18 In the case of South Africa, the proposed reparation budget of 82,500,000 USD was eventually deemed too financially burdensome. The individual amounts for around 22,000 victims were eventually significantly lowered to around 400 USD and 4000 USD in two instalments per victim (Aiken, 2016, p. 193). But even less ambitious programmes in countries such as Nepal and Afghanistan can provide a level of satisfaction because of its symbolism and assistance potential for the most vulnerable (cf. Sajjad, 2015; Saeed, 2016). In sum, assuming that most victims seek recognition, domestic political authorities seek to maintain or further their power and international actors seek stability and the adoption of the liberal norms that they advance, the political mechanism of redress comes into play. But only once peace has been consolidated and state capacities have been strengthened can redress be expected to start featuring in domestic policymaking. Given the potential economic cost and other policy concerns, elites are not expected to prioritize redress in early post-war years. Focussed on peace

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and stability, compensation enters international agendas only in as far as peace is secured and key institutions established. Finally, traumatized by harms done to them and losses suffered, victims can also be expected to seek recognition with a delay. They need time to organize, formulate their demands and recover in order to start their struggle for redress.

2.4

Victim Capital for Recognition and Redress

Under which conditions are domestic authorities willing to recognize a particular group of victims? The process of recognition starts with the identification of a problem, often manifested in victims’ demands and needs (e.g. lack of free medical care and education, etc.). Victims usually opt for different ways how to present them to political elites, including direct appeals, through civil society, protests or campaigns. They sometimes approach individual deputies, whom they consider as willing to listen, but more commonly, they launch broad public appeals. Assuming the state’s budget is limited, domestic political actors deliberate whether it is in their interests and within their means to legally recognize the claimants as victims (and in which form), or not. They will also consider the validity of the claims and the political rewards that could be reaped. Some victim groups may be seen more favourably than others. As argued here, the inter-group differences and the victims’ efforts in leveraging their ability to convince the domestic actors depends on the power of victim capital, i.e. the power of their international salience, moral authority and mobilization resources. It is the idiosyncratic combination of these aspects of victim capital (here also referred to as attributes and endowments) that can lift a group in policy prioritization and vice versa. Such combinations are what John Stuart Mill called ‘chemical causation’ (Ragin, 1987, p. 25). While the right blend of ingredients leads to a change, their absence generally maintains the status quo. While causation is beyond the analytical power of this book, the combinatorial nature of these key factors bears great explanatory power about how recognition enters policy priorities, or not. It is difficult to expect any one of the endowments on its own to ensure that recognition is adopted; however, in combination and when used strategically, they can increase the resonance of victims’ demands and result in success. It is highly unrealistic to study the moral, international and mobilization capital as binary variables (i.e. either present or not). Therefore, the assumption made here is that each victim group has a different

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quality of them that may change over time by both structural changes and the agency of the victims. As this book is a comparative study, each assessment of a group in the subsequent chapters is done in relation to the other groups within Bosnia. In other words, the quality of these attributes is not absolute or discrete but relative to the other cases discussed here. Before proceeding further, it is important to stress that examining elusive concepts such as authority or salience is a challenging exercise that requires a detailed understanding of the context. Moreover, linking concepts to observations necessitates making choices about measures and markers which meaningfully capture the studied phenomena. This is why ‘systematized concepts’ (i.e. the definitions of the endowments) are linked to measures and markers of the studied phenomena (Adcock & Collier, 2001, p. 531). The measures and markers have been designed by the use of the conducted interviews, media articles, secondary literature and policy reports that have been reviewed for this book. Given the complexity of the studied topic, they are not exhaustive and may vary across contexts. Some may be more important at a certain time and offset the lack of others while others may be related and influence each other.19 While this could be problematic for quantitative assessments, the purpose of these qualitative assessments is not to arrive at absolute numerical values but to compare the factors of the studied groups against each other. 2.4.1

International Salience

International salience in this book captures the extent and quality of external attention to the demands of victims, the levels at which a victim group is prioritized in the international human rights regime, and whether, how and to what degree its victimization features on international policy preferences. International salience has fundamentally two dimensions—a global one and a country-specific one—and its quality and level is influenced by global structural factors, idiosyncratic local context, and strategies of victims. First, the global dimension is encapsulated in advances in the developments in human rights priorities across the world, such as new UN conventions and prominent resolutions about warfare, minority or humanitarian issues, and the dominant topics of the day on the external humanitarian and human rights agendas. These can range from migration issues to establishing international institutions of criminal prosecution.

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Since the 1980s, a wave of new justice measures—a ‘justice cascade’— spread across many post-atrocity states, giving rise to a new international regime driven by norms of human rights and humanitarian law (Sikkink, 2011). With regards to victims, the 1984 Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (OHCHR, 1984) and the 1985 Declaration of Basic Principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power were some of the first documents which defined the term victim and where compensation was framed as a state’s responsibility (UN General Assembly, 1985). These documents opened a world-wide debate about the rights of victims. Other examples are the UN Resolution 1325 Women, Peace and Security (2000) on violence against women (UN Security Council, 2000), which drew attention to women’s experiences in war, the 2005 UN Reparations Principles, which directed more attention to the topic of post-war reparations, and the 2006 Nairobi Declaration by Kenyan women, which brought the world’s attention to sexual violence (Transparency International, 2006). Consequently, the domestic group’s demands can become representative of some broader trends, ranging from human trafficking, support for minorities and gender equality. Therefore, some groups may have a more favourable positioning at the international level given such prioritization. Since the 1990s, domestic and international politics worldwide has been influenced by assertions of victimization, victimhood and wrongdoing. This has manifested itself in a sudden increase in apologies for past wrong-doing and violence (Gibney, Howard-Hassmann, Coicaud, & Steiner, 2008). Such global changes have important implications for agendas of peace- and statebuilders in post-war states where they are present. International actors are not only under the influence of their consequentialist peace objectives but also under the normative pressure of advances (or impediments) in human rights and international law. Although domestic authorities may be resistant to normative pressures, international actors must take them seriously as they are constitutive parts of such trends and because complying with liberal norms justifies their interventions. While these principles are currently undermined by norm-evasive behaviour of global powers such as the United States and China (Stokes, 2018), international and ‘global’ public opinion still matters (Wood, 2014). Therefore, the individual victim categories and their demands will be ranked on external agendas, in relation to changes in international trends.

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Second, country-specific atrocities influence international salience of some groups over others. For example, the findings about the extent of sexual violence during the wars in Bosnia and Rwanda resulted in a ‘norm cascade’ (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998, p. 901) as campaigns against violence against women in conflict proliferated. Similarly, the US acknowledgment and apology to interned Japanese Americans during World War II in 1988 led to debates about inter-generational reparations for historical injustices in the United States, Canada and Australia (Wolfe, 2013, pp. 165–187). The series of apologies in the 1990s across the western world also resulted in an increase in compensatory measures (Gibney et al., 2008). Importantly, international court decisions bring attention to victims of some crimes and reveal information about atrocities, implicitly recognizing victims’ entitlements for redress in the international and domestic arena. Moreover, as Iavor Rangelov noted, trials open debates about crimes in the courtroom but later take on a ‘life of their own’ in the domestic public sphere and international arenas beyond the legal community (Rangelov, 2014, p. 51). Media is equally important. As Susan Sontag depicted in her ‘Regarding the Pain of Others’ on cases of Nigerian Biafra, Vietnam, Bosnia and Ethiopia, the imagery of human rights violations and media reporting about atrocities can increase victims’ international salience nearly overnight (Sontag, 2003). International salience is thus time-variant and fluid as it shifts from issue to issue, raising or lowering victims’ external resonance. While international salience is predominantly affected by global shifts in priorities, victim groups can adjust to these shifts and amplify some resonant narratives of suffering or identity. They can strategically align their demands with international trends and use them as an additional leverage for their demands, an idea that has already been expressed in Keck and Sikkink’s discussion about activists’ utilization of ‘informational’ leverage (1998, p. 23). Strategically using framing of victimhood or suffering can be very effective (Givan, Roberts, & Soule, 2010, p. 4). When victim leaders are aware of such trends, they can use them in their statements and policy demands to discredit domestic political authorities, expose local ignorance about global developments and point to the lack of commitment to international conventions. Victims often use poor records in human rights as evidence of their country’s lack of respect for international norms (cf. Díez, 2015). Beyond leveraging external developments to pressurize domestic authorities, they can also actively seek out international allies through their networks and participate in their activities and

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projects. They can implore international actors and insinuate their moral or aid responsibilities. A strategy that Keck and Sikkink called ‘moral leverage’ (1998, p. 23). They can appeal to the world’s public via traditional and social media by leveraging the potential complicity of international actors in crimes, which can facilitate an increased focus on some groups. They can also vocalize their demands and suffering during international days of remembrance and various campaigns. Vocal victims that feature in the international press often attract the attention of the world’s public, human rights activists and international actors that may prioritize them on their agendas and thereby increase pressure on domestic authorities. When international salience of a victim group resonates, domestic authorities can become more responsive to its demands in expectation of reputational rewards or in fear of punishments (Cortell & Davis, 1996). International actors can exert influence over policies that they prioritize through their financial and technical assistance, the prospect of membership in regional organizations or cooperation, or positive evaluations about the state’s progress. Organizations such as the International Monetary Fund, the Word Bank, OSCE, NATO and the European Union have pursued various strategies to nudge governments into policy adoption in return for rewards. Economic benefits such as loans, foreign aid and other financial support, which would stabilize public budgets and allow domestic elites to further their power, are especially effective (see Dreher & Vaubel, 2004). Also reputational leverage has been prominent in human rights issues. Finnemore and Sikkink argued that a state’s ‘international status or reputation’ (1998, p. 906) is an important factor in policy preferences of domestic elites. However, this can only apply in situations when domestic elites seek credibility on the international stage or membership in organizations. In such situations, when their reputation is at stake, they may adopt the sought policy.20 Therefore, groups with resonant international salience have better chances of pressing governments into recognizing them as victims when the domestic cost of rejection is higher (e.g. loss of foreign aid, reputation, or membership prospects) than the costs of adoption (e.g. financial cost). The markers used for international salience pose an operational challenge as it is a very broad concept; however, the aim is not to arrive at conclusive quantitative measures but to create proxies that would allow for an empirical study. The first proposed proxy is the world attention to the issue or group at a global level, i.e. the global developments

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regarding the issue. This is evaluated using UN declarations, international media reporting, and official reports by human rights organizations. World attention does not necessarily pertain to the studied context but to the general global trends. The second proxy is based on public statements documenting country-specific discursive support for each victim group or issue in the given context. Policy reports, foreign media articles, and interviews with policy actors (such as the UN mission staff) are useful sources for evaluating whether some groups have a special position on international peacebuilders’ policy agendas. The third marker is a rather simple one, the establishment of a special office and/or project in the studied country dedicated to the issue of the group. This may also include national action plans inspired by UN resolutions or EU guidelines. The last proxy is direct financial support by foreign donors for the categories. This can be measured from sources of funding of individual victim-specific projects and organizations. Each of these four markers may be present in different ways and each can weigh into the aggregate levels of salience differently. For example, heavy financial support may offset the first two markers; however, they will mostly be related to each other as preferring a category of country-specific agendas is likely to translate into financial support for a victim group. 2.4.2

Domestic Moral Authority

The second explanatory factor is the differential domestic moral authority—also defined as ‘deservingness’—ascribed to each of the victim groups in the domestic public sphere.21 Each victim group has a different moral authority among the citizens of its state. This can be the result of some idiosyncratic historical and cultural factors (Almond & Verba, 1963; Inglehart, 1988), ethnic (or other) identities (Brubaker, 2004), or war-related experience and narratives (Fernandes, 2017). It is a property of the category and a function of the cultural, historical and political context, but also the result of social constructions and the ability of others to empathize with victims and consider them as rightful recipients of mourning (cf. Sontag, 2003; Butler, 2006; Dunn, 2012). Social solidarity as the ability to empathize with the suffering of others is also what de Greiff identified as a key goal of reparation (2006). Moral authority is defined as the aggregate public recognition that a category has the right to be recognized and deserves to be redressed at a given time. Depending on the strength of such deservingness, groups are empathized

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with and perceived by the public and domestic authorities as legitimate policy claimants (see Dunn, 2012, p. 19). War survivors generally have higher moral authority than other citizens, but not all victims are ‘morally equal’ in the public eye. Hierarchies of victimhood, whereby some victims are considered as ‘moral beacons’ (Brewer et al., 2014) while others are silenced or forgotten, are often a consequence of different moral authorities (cf. Jankowitz, 2018, p. 5). Given our focus on divided societies, the ethnic, national, religious and other identity properties of a group are important aspects of moral authority. The willingness of domestic authorities to provide for their populations is related to how policy claimants correspond with the overall narrative of the nation or community, and its past. This also means that in divided states, domestic elites are more sympathetic to groups whose identity corresponds to theirs (Arthur, 2011). For example, legitimacy conferred upon Anglophone Tutsi in post-genocide Rwanda was superior to that conferred upon Francophone Tutsi because it aligned with the ruling elite (see Rombouts, 2004). Moral authority features in discussions about veterans’ participation on the ‘right’ national side and victims’ symbolic role as representative beacons of the nation’s suffering (Carpenter, 2006; Mosse, 1991). This also leads to the fact that moral authority attached to one (ethnic) group can be disputed by the others. For example, while Serb victims in Kosovo have a high moral authority among Serbs in Serbia, their moral authority varies across the wider postYugoslav region. This can create tensions in situations when policymaking is shared across different identity groups. When no single set of elites can unilaterally decide on its own which policies to adopt, the outcome must result from a compromise if such agreement is possible. There will be significant differences in divided states where one community’s victim may be another’s perpetrator. These differences are also related to ‘frames’ as the composite of public perceptions, beliefs, symbols and narratives attached to a group at a particular time (Entman, 1993; Snow, Rochford, Worden, & Benford, 1986). Frames are ‘deliberative, utilitarian, and goal directed’ (Snow & Benford, 1999, p. 624). They are symbolic tools and composites of public perceptions about a group and its role while it is framing as a strategic action that gives cognitive cues to evaluate such actions (Zald, 1996, p. 262). As some argued, ‘the political power of pressure groups (…) depends more on the government’s perceptions of it than any objective power it might have (Smith, 1990, p. 7). They can be narratives about a group’s

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past, identity or rights, which is highly relevant to post-conflict contexts and transitional justice.22 They are the result of both structural, historical and agency-driven factors. While some frames are rather resistant to change (e.g. gender perceptions), framing in a strategic fashion can be an extremely powerful resource to change narratives about a group (e.g. a victim category). This is highly relevant for discussions about wartime narratives and memory as a social construct (Olick, 2007). Victimhood frames can be strategically used by victims as political levers. But frames can also help people navigate through complex issues such as war experiences. Here, collective frames include types of victimhood, suffering and heroism, as well as some key war narratives. Resonant frames often relate to universal values of morality and shared societal ethics. Theda Skocpol showed that after the American Civil War, disabled veterans were viewed as deserving support for sacrificing their limbs for the state while women acquired a special morality through ‘the universal civic value of mothering’ (1995, p. 33). The universality of the ‘motherhood’ frame was later used to enact social policies for women in the twentieth century.23 As framing is aimed at garnering sympathy and public attention, universal frames (e.g. humanity, womanhood or motherhood) that tap into broader political or social developments have proven more effective than particularistic frames (e.g. ethnic victimhood) when seeking wider policies of recognition (Edelman, 1985; Kaufman, 2001; Payne, 2001). As Price argued, new moral codes or issues are more likely to be accepted when they can be ‘grafted’ onto some existing ideas and standards (1998). This is also related to what Keck and Sikkink called ‘issue attributes’ of causes (1998, p. 27; for a critique see Carpenter, 2007). They argued that the more understandable and widely applicable an issue was, the more resonant the demands of the activists were. They offered examples of slavery and women’s pursuit of universal suffrage as cases when either bodily harm or the protection of ‘innocent’ groups captured the public imagination. Victim-centric literature refers to such issues as relevant for clean-hand or ‘ideal victims’ (Christie, 1986) as groups with no responsibility attached to them (Fernandes, 2017, p. 2). Moral authority is thus shaped by some idiosyncratic features that can be rather resistant to change. However, victims that are able to change the existing frames through their activities, can alter their moral authority. While it is hard to imagine, for example, perceptions about victims of torture to transform from respect to loathing, they are not stationary.24

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Victim groups can increase their moral authority through ‘frame amplification’ or ‘strategic framing’ as the ‘creative constructions of social meanings with strategic considerations of political efficacy’ (Givan et al., 2010, p. 4). Each group can decide which frames to stress in their actions. Examples of such strategies include using labels such as motherhood and innocence or invoking testimonies about human suffering. There may be a selective approach to framing, i.e. choosing which stories to publicize and which to brush under the carpet. Such ‘utilitarian’ approach to stories often leads to the reduction of complexity of histories and experiences (Fernandes, 2017, p. 4). Stories that could attach guilt or responsibility to victims could negatively influence a group’s moral authority and can thus be expected to be ignored.25 Channelling demands through media domestically is a potent way to shape moral authority (Paulmann, 2019; Wilson & Brown, 2009). Media can be the main platform for amplifying frames strategically through publishing information, images, story-telling and other public appearances, which can gradually magnify a group’s perceived legitimacy for redress. This can also lead to destigmatization and the strengthening of victims’ cases for a policy change. The more exposed a group is in the public sphere and the more resonantly its demands are framed, the more its grievances and issues are discussed (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 18). Aligning with events such as local court decisions, new information emerging about crimes, the uncovering of mass graves and new domestic cultural projects such as pertinent films or exhibitions, can be used to increase visibility in the domestic public sphere. For example, the coverage and the final report of the Peruvian truth commission changed the historical record and narrative of the war as the Quechua were established as by far the most victimized group. These findings have had an impact on their moral authority. Compensation was later enacted too (Hayner, 2001, p. 37). Similarly, when a mass grave is uncovered, relatives of the disappeared are given media attention. There is a high level of serendipity in how moral authority is established as it is in some parts outside of the victims’ control. However, while constrained by the imagery of victimhood in a particular context, the leadership of each victim group can be strategic about how to mould its moral authority by amplifying suitable frames to achieve its demands. When a group seeks a state law from policymakers of various backgrounds it must frame its demands in a way that appeals to all stakeholders across the state. However, when it seeks recognition legislation from a smaller

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set of policymakers, it is more suitable to reduce the frame to appeal to political views of that particular set. Strategic framing within the boundaries of their system is an effective way to increase the resonance of their claims and their deservingness. On the contrary, it is difficult to envision a group without or with low moral authority being redressed. Therefore, it is to be expected that groups that have or are able to generate higher moral authority will be better placed to confront domestic authorities with their recognition and redress claims. Following from this, some markers of moral authority can be teased out. The first is supportive public discourse and exposure, evaluated by media articles about the group’s portrayals in the public sphere.26 It further includes statements by leading politicians, intellectuals and other key public actors that influence the public discourse. The alignment with war and/or national narratives, evaluated on the basis of secondary literature that deliver an assessment of the group’s deservingness within its national community, is also important. It assesses how a group represents the previous war’s suffering and frames, as well as how it fits into the overall identity of a community and nation. The third marker is a group’s invoking at significant events (of great importance) such as national holidays, remembrance services, press statements and court decisions. By studying the portrayals and participation of victims, we can evaluate how a group’s victimization features in collective memories or future directions of a community. The final one is a supportive cultural treatment of a group’s suffering and experience in domestic films, exhibitions and the like. This is a good proxy for how the group has been present in the public imagination. Not all groups must feature in cultural events and they may instead participate in significant events. Nonetheless, it is plausible to think that they will mostly co-exist. Combined, these four markers allow us to make an informed decision about the quality of each group’s moral authority in comparison to the others. The concept of moral authority and international salience may be at times related: how we perceive victims is co-determined by our worldviews. However, moral authority refers to the domestic arena and how a group features in the local discourse (which also varies across communities) whilst international salience refers to the priorities of outside actors. Therefore, these two factors are analytically distinguishable even if sometimes their effects are difficult to disentangle in practice because they may be co-constitutive, as many domestic and international factors are. For example, in the international discourse victims of sexual violence gain

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sympathy through the frame of ‘innocent victims’ with high international salience, whilst in some countries they are treated with shame as bringing dishonour to the family (i.e. have low moral authority). International discourse may alter these local perceptions but not dramatically over a set time period. The local ‘habits of the hearts’ and ‘frames of the mind’ (Elster, Offe, & Preuss, 1998, p. 11) prevail. 2.4.3

Mobilization Resources

Alignment with external priorities by amplifying international salience and using strategic framing to shape moral authority are closely dependent on the group’s resources to mobilize and challenge domestic (or external) authorities. Therefore, the final important factor that must be considered when analysing the process of victims’ recognition and redress is the ability of a group to mobilize, i.e. its mobilization resources. This concept differs from the first two and can be observed through the practical application of strategies and capacities. Theories of resource mobilization offer important insights into how differences in resources and goods between organizations explain why some groups are successful with their demands while others fail. The rationalist ‘resource mobilization theory’ pioneered by McCarthy and Zald in 1977 posits that the desired policy is the result of the available financial, organizational, and networking resources of contentious groups and the strategies these groups apply. Instead of stressing the role of political structures and top-down influences of institutions as stressed in the earlier scholarship in social movements,27 they focus on the role of agency and bottom-up dynamics of mobilization. Resources range from money, technical skills, support of important allies, to the density of mobilization networks (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Meyer & Minkoff, 2004). While this literature is based on the simple assumption that groups with more resources and broader networks are more successful and persuasive, it downplays the impact of structural constraints on shaping such resources (cf. McAdam, McCarthy, & Zald, 1996). According to these propositions, the higher the membership and its density, its structural and organizational qualities, financial and informational resources, professional skills and bureaucratic capacities, the more successful the organization will be. Those with large, robust and dense participation—especially those reaching out to a broad and varied sets of constituents—function as more effective pressure groups as they can mobilize many people and influence elections. However, even smaller

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categories that offset their lower numbers through technical skills and financial means, or via the assistance of key allies, can organize campaigns through other channels (Etzioni, 1968). Although the group size can be important, there is enough evidence to suggest that it is not critical to mobilize the public for a cause (Gleditsch, Olar, & Radean, 2015). In general, the better resourced a group is, the more it features in political calculations of elites because when its mobilization resources are activated on the street, online or via allies, it can dramatically change the political scene. The quality and extent of resources are further shaped by structural conditions as proposed in studies on political opportunities structure (Amenta, Caren, Chiarello, & Su, 2010; Tarrow, 1994). While such structural conditions place constraints on the types of resources victims can utilize, not all of them will be aware of the full scope of their resources and will opt for different mobilization options, such as protests, lobbying, campaigns and advocacy. Some of these choices may increase their resources and even lead to a dramatic rise of their international salience or domestic authority. Although some contextual changes may lead to a better access to resources (e.g. financial support for a victim group), such changes will mostly be incremental and will reflect the investments of victims into maximizing the effectiveness of their resources. One of the most effective ways of increasing resources is networking as the creation of ‘voluntary, reciprocal, and horizontal patterns of communication’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 8). A type of networking is for victim associations to create coalitions, which pool resources to jointly press domestic authorities. Conversely, when they become fragmented and represented by dissonant voices, or even when they become monopolized by one association that can be easily manipulated by domestic authorities, their mobilization resources decrease. A second type of networking is through pro-victim organizations, such as civil society and human rights groups. They can act as key allies, who further advocacy on victims’ behalf, empowering them via training and education about their rights and ways to progress their cause (Posner, 2004a). Early on after wars, there is often a clear imbalance between victims’ resources when some (such as military victims) are better situated to leverage their high numbers, power proximity and war-generated links. This will be more difficult for other victims with limited connections to wartime structures. Over time, though, this imbalance can be offset by shifts in international salience and victims’ strategic reliance on allies,

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pro-victim groups or advocates, and their networking capacities as case studies on Rwanda, East Timor, Nepal and other post-war states suggest (Kent, 2011; Sajjad, 2015). For example, after having studied Rwandan victim organizations, Rombouts suggested that victim organizations had over time become ‘rising stars’ in the politics of redress as they acquired new allies that allowed them to exert pressure on domestic authorities (Rombouts, 2004, p. 60). She argues it was their activism that led to their prominence and the accumulation of more types of resources. Once collective networking resources increase, they can be activated in practice through the vast repertoire of contention, ranging from petitions, appeals, meetings, litigations, awareness-raising campaigns, protests and strikes (Tilly & Tarrow, 2015). Protests and demonstrations, in particular, can lead to a government’s loss of power or physical instability. The literature on protest is very rich but the most interesting debates focus on the distinction between violent and non-violent protests, which increasingly demonstrate the long-term benefits of non-violence (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). For example, Gleditsch et al. in 2015 provided convincing arguments that non-violent protests can threaten the position of leaders by raising governance costs and causing defections from within ruling coalitions. Also less confrontational campaigns that consist of long-term and sustained non-violent tactics in pursuit of political goals and objectives may prove to challenge political authorities effectively (Ackerman & DuVall, 2000). Other strategies, such as understanding foreign aid mechanisms is important for money allocations and lobbying. Just as the normative literature that sees sustained activism as over time reaching saturation in the form of a ‘tipping point’ (Finnemore & Sikkink, 1998, p. 901), long-term mobilization can result in domestic tipping points when authorities concede. Therefore, while resources are also shaped by existing structural conditions, they can be increased and strategically utilized in order to improve the chance that recognition becomes plausible. Categories that are able to mobilize their resources are hard to ignore because their activities can be dangerous for the incumbents’ power ambitions. The broader and more diverse the networks and the higher their capacities, the more leverage categories can have over domestic political elites. Groups with access to vast resources, or groups that are able to generate resources for mobilization, will be better placed to confront domestic authorities with their demands. Certainly, activities to increase resources may simultaneously alter moral authority

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and international salience. Groups with higher resources may be able to amplify their frames of moral authority or international salience better. Indeed, constructivists see frames as a type of resource (Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Rombouts, 2004). This suggests that the three concepts are closely related—a key issue in any social science (Steel, 2004, p. 59). However, this does not mean that they cannot have different levels. For example, populous groups who pursue violent modes of activism may be negatively perceived by the public. Indeed, violence is rarely an expedient way to mobilize resources (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2011). Some aspects of mobilization resources can be quantified and obtained from newspaper articles, conducted interviews and policy documents. The first one is organizational capacities, assessed as the quality of the leadership and the internal characteristics of the victim associations. For example, some leaders are versed in lobbying and campaigning while others struggle to organize any types of awareness-raising activities. The second is the extent of networking and cooperation with other victim associations. This can be evaluated on the extent and numbers of networks and partnerships. The third indicator is the existence of allies and advocates both domestically among pro-victim groups and externally among activists. This can be assessed on the basis of groups working with the victims and advocating for their causes. The fourth are the financial means of the category for their activities, office and staff. As some measures may offset others, they are not all equal in ‘weight’. However, it is plausible to assume that most of them will be present at higher levels for groups with the highest resources.

2.5

Scenarios of Success and Incentives

Success as recognition and the adoption of a policy of redress can hardly be seen as the result of a group having only one components of the victim capital. More likely, it is the combination in a specific time and place that can explain the change. The combinations proposed below highlight that it is highly plausible that a group with at least two of the above concepts at high (or good quality) levels is likely to be recognized. It is impossible to establish the exact ‘levels’ on the proposed endowments as they are not binary and can be hardly measured by assigning numbers or percentages. Their values are more nuanced and offer a spectrum of results. It is best to think of the three concepts in terms of relative quality to the other groups in the system and evaluate them in relation to each other. Since

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none of them is stationary, this also means that their values may change over time. From the Bosnian case, I derive four combinations that can lead to success and four that lead to failure. It should also be stressed that contextual factors shape the incentives to which domestic authorities respond. The proposed combinations thus represent a mere foundation for further explorations and refinements. I anticipate that at a specific time a group with high international salience and moral authority as well as extensive resources is the most likely to succeed out of all the victims in the system. This is the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario. Domestic authorities will be significantly more receptive to a victim group that is prioritized by international actors, domestically seen as deserving and that is able to mobilize. Without a high level of moral authority of the group, international actors and domestic authorities risk delegitimizing themselves by recognizing ‘undeserving’ groups that would not be supported by the public. Victim groups with high moral authority can also leverage their international salience and raise domestic costs of rejection when elites seek external incentives. Finally, high mobilization resources allow them to channel their demands through a variety of avenues and apply more effective framing strategies. The next set of combinations are at least two factors at high levels (or of good ‘quality’), so that domestic authorities can expect significant returns from adoption. The first one is the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario, when high moral authority intersects with extensive resources to mobilize. This scenario is more applicable when domestic benefits trump potential external rewards. In some cases, post-war incumbents are unlikely to consider redress requests from groups without moral authority and resources because their domestic utility would be limited. There would be limited empathy with such groups. High moral authority on its own may not have enough leverage to make actors enact new policies in divided post-conflict states where other issues take priority over victims. Therefore, mobilizing resources represent effective ammunition for victims: they can challenge political legitimacy and power. Protests, campaigns, and other activities are effective tactics which can gain traction among the public and other critical social groups (such as workers’ unions) that can result in broader support for a policy change. The ‘Activist Route’ represents a case when a group that is highly supported by international actors and is able to mobilize effectively in the domestic public sphere. Such combination can be successful when

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domestic authorities are sensitive to external rewards. From this perspective, it is somewhat reminiscent of Keck and Sikkink’s arguments about the role of transnational advocacy networks (1998). In some cases, external salience and vigorous domestic activism can offset the lack (or low levels) of moral authority. Indeed, this combination may work best in situations when domestic authorities are sensitive to external rewards (‘carrots’) and/or are worried that ignoring victims would result in negative reactions from international actors (‘sticks’). Such benefits can include reputational benefits (or losses on reputation), direct economic aid and political support (or its retraction). A group that can mobilize well and is also prioritized by international actors may well be able to turn its demands into a legal change even if its general levels of moral authority are not too high. The last theoretical scenario called ‘Poster Child’28 expresses the idea that a victim group functions as a passive collective symbol soliciting compassion domestically and abroad. Even a group that does not possess extensive resources can be recognized. This can result from amplifications of victims’ suffering in domestic and international media or the growth of external and domestic attention to the plight of such victims. This may be the case for a group that symbolizes great suffering or a cause around the world as well as domestically. Even without many resources to mobilize, it may become an exemplary case of victimization that is recognized by domestic authorities who seek some strong reputational or political benefits from offering redress. While I do not find a case that perfectly corresponds to this in my empirical analysis, some civilian war groups partially comply with this logic, with relatively low levels of resources. Conversely, following from the previous debate, it is very unlikely that a group with low levels on all three types of capital would be redressed. First, this is caused by the fact that domestic political authorities cannot reap any benefits from recognizing a group that is perceived as undeserving, international uninteresting and poorly organized. Second, a group without any of the qualities described above can hardly be expected to feature at all in victim-specific policymaking—it is entirely invisible and/or silenced. Groups that possess low levels on two of the victim capital aspects will also have a harder time fighting for their recognition. Following from this, the expectation is that there will be essentially four negative and four positive combinations. While outcomes are presented as bivariate—failure or success—there are many cases of partial success in

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Table 2.1 Theoretical combinations of victim capital Capital at high level (good ‘quality’)

Positive outcome (success)

Negative outcome (failure)

Moral authority Mobilization resources International salience SCENARIO

✓

✓

×

✓

✓

×

×

×

✓

✓

✓

×

×

✓

×

×

✓

×

✓

✓

×

×

✓

×

Optimal Domestic Activist Poster Unrecognized/unredressed route pressure route child

Source Author

practice as discussed in the empirical material. It also needs to be highlighted that this presented framework is not aiming to be deterministic. Its purpose is to present a wide framework that can be replicated and utilized elsewhere. It also allows for the study of empirical data in a comparative and systemized fashion. I explore this further empirically and return to this point in Chapter 7. For the sake of clarity, Table 2.1 summarizes the universe of the proposed theoretical combinations with bivariate outcomes as success and failure.

2.6

Timing, Institutions and Democracy

The key features of the politics of redress described above do not exist in a vacuum. Contextual factors set the boundaries within which victims and other relevant actors can operate and how they make decisions. What theorists of social movements call ‘political opportunity structures’ are characteristics of the political regime that either invite or constrain the activation and mobilization of citizens (Kitschelt, 1986; McAdam et al., 1996; Tarrow, 1983; Tilly, 1978). They may also endow victims with different baselines of moral authority, international salience and resources. Political opportunity structures are exogenous and enhance or inhibit prospects for mobilization and claim-making. They influence the specific strategies that citizens and their groups use to affect institutions and top levels of power. While the previous section highlighted how these can shift in relation to external events and influence each group differently, in this

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section, I want to stress some structural factors that influence all victims. These include changing levels of pluralism, the level of economic development and the prominence of external interventions, among other things. The key argument here is that timing victims’ activities is important visà-vis the resonance of their actions. The effectiveness of the proposed factors thus varies over time depending on the existing political and economic constellations in a country. Levels of plurality and economic development have been positively associated with provisions of any types reparation (Adhikari et al., 2012; Olsen et al., 2010; Powers & Proctor, 2017). Powers and Proctor established that 62 per cent of countries with a Polity score of 8 or higher (a high level of democratic development) have introduced reparations (2017, 797). At the same time, redress is less plausible during austerity. Public interest in redressing victims falls in times of economic crises. The resonance of victims’ moral authority may lose its potency. However, its international salience may matter more if international actors can offer financial injections. In the contrary situation, once the public and domestic authorities become more interested in proving its democratic development and concern for human rights, frames of victimhood and suffering may become more resonant. This leads to the expectation that the more pluralism advances and the stronger the economy is, the more favourably domestic authorities may accept victims’ redress for all potential claimants. There may be more opportune periods for victims to increase their efforts when the state is economically and democratically stronger, which translates into responsiveness to citizens’ demands. Temporal distance from war is another important aspect to note. Only in societies that are beyond urgent peacebuilding, i.e. where state capacities are relatively stable and where state failure is no longer an urgent concern, is it conceivable to see how victims’ struggle can follow the scenarios above.29 Although there are some exceptional cases when redress enters peace agreements early on (e.g. in Colombia), it is more common to enter the agenda after the post-war emergency relief is over. The expectation is that the further a state progresses from the end of war, strengthening its economy and institutions, the more likely victims’ redress becomes. Naturally, this temporal distance is not unlimited, although some cases suggest that it is rather long (e.g. Korean ‘comfort women’ and interned Japanese Americans waited for over half a century). The distance from war may again be related to levels of economic development and pluralism that apply to the national level.

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Each group has some degree of control over when to voice its demands. Admittedly, in some cases good timing can come from serendipity and victim leaders have limited control over it. Nonetheless, when group demands are voiced at an opportune time, domestic elites are more likely to be responsive to them. This means that there may be many ‘windows of opportunity’ when domestic authorities can be more incentivized to react. These may include domestic power struggles (e.g. elections or intraparty splits), sudden external events when the public is more prone to pay attention to victims (e.g. court decisions), shifts in the strength of international actors (e.g. the conclusion of an international mission), or even changes in the regional environment (e.g. democratic openings in neighbouring states). Periods of power contestation can in fact present unexpected opportunities. Electoral campaigns in divided societies frequently include contested narratives about the past and definitions of the ‘true’ representative of a community. When domestic authorities try to discredit the opposition and augment their credibility, recognizing some victims can be expedient for their agendas. In such cases victims can increase their public exposure and gain influential allies, i.e. they may invest in amplifying their moral authority and increasing their mobilization resources. As noted, when a group has high moral authority, the public can support its requests, raising electoral stakes. Similarly, when victims press for redress at times when international actors steer governance in the country in question through peacebuilding efforts and human rights monitoring, local elites may be more responsive to external pressures. Reacting to victims positively may increase their reputation or produce direct economic benefits. At times when domestic authorities are dependent on external support, foreign aid, or external evaluations of their political candidacies to join international organizations, redressing victims may be seen as a gesture of democratic goodwill and respect for human rights.30 In periods when international actors can effectively support their cause, victims can leverage their international salience (and moral authority domestically) to raise the cost of rejection. To summarize, during domestic power struggles, leveraging moral authority and mobilizing maybe most effective because a victim group can offer symbolic backing to, for example, a political party competing in elections. Conversely, at times of heightened international involvement in the country of interest, leveraging international salience through appeals to international actors in the country may result in external benefits,

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Fig. 2.1 An analytical framework for redress (Source Author)

especially if the group also has high mobilization resources. At times of high levels of pluralism, victims may also be more successful with voicing their demands publicly across the different groups. While bounded by the parameters of the political and economic contours of their state, victims can be strategic about which frames and resources to utilize at a particular time. The framework is summarized in Fig. 2.1. It highlights the pervasive influence of contextual factors—on the contours of the three aspects of victim capital, the strategies that victims use and the reaction of the main policymakers.

2.7

Conclusion

Recognition and state-enacted victim redress in post-conflict situations necessitates discussions and negotiations over morality and international priorities, as well as skilful mobilization by victim groups. This chapter presented a framework that summarized the main mechanisms, constraints and opportunities for achieving recognition and redress. Introducing the concept of victim capital as a combination of moral authority, international salience and mobilization resources, it theorized how victim groups can influence policy outcomes. Differences in leveraging victim capital are thus also proposed to explain the within-state difference between victim groups successes in recognition and redress. While the resonance of victims’ demands may be time-variant, the more they invest

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in these their different aspects of victim capital, the more likely it is that political authorities concede and recognize them. The effectiveness of such strategies is context dependent. Victim leaders can time their strategies to align with domestic political developments, external trends and windows of opportunity when the likelihood of recognition increases. Different combinations of the three endowments then explain the different outcomes for a particular context. The propositions made here are aimed at explaining broad patterns of change rather than to capture the full ‘blooming and buzzing’ (King, Keohane, & Verba, 2001, p. 43) complexity of the real world. They lay the foundations for the empirical material that comes in the subsequent chapters but is also designed to serve for similar cases elsewhere. Case studies may have a limited potential for generalizability, and it is not possible to test a theory exhaustively on their basis. However, the suggestions and mechanisms suggested here can be adjusted and adopted for other settings. This is also why the intricacies of subnational variation have not been discussed in the framework although decentralization, devolved government and autonomies play an important role in many divided societies but may not be as important in other cases. These aspects are discussed in the next chapter where contextual complexities of the Bosnian case are added to this framework. Finally, it is in the empirical probes that follow thereafter where the focus on subnational variation is explored further by adding the dimension of access to redress (i.e. implementation).

Notes 1. In countries with high GDP such as Australia and Canada, payments have been successful. See, for example, Corntassel and Holder (2008). 2. Personal interview with a victim of torture, 2019. 3. For the sake of clarity and parsimony, the proposed framework explains redress outcomes only at the state level. I introduce subnational variation later in the empirical analysis. 4. For a summary see Caplan (2005, pp. 2–4). 5. Norms are here defined as ‘collectively shared systems of meanings’ (Risse, 2002, p. 598). 6. The most complex system is called ‘consociationalism’ (Lijphart, 1994; Roeder & Rothchild, 2005b). 7. The term ‘international actors’ is more suitable than the vague term ‘international community’ that misleadingly suggests that international

2

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

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actors are always uniform in their views and powers (Jansen, 2006, n. Footnote 2). E.g. the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). E.g. the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the World Health Organization (WHO). E.g. the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). E.g. the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB). E.g. the EU, the African Union, the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE). E.g. the ICTY, the ICC, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). For example, the Rwandan organization Avega Agahozo is not only an organization of widows but of Tutsi widows, whose husbands were killed by the Hutu. It should be noted that not all victims want to be categorized this way and belong to such organizations. The aim of this work, though, is to explain group outcomes rather than outcomes for individuals. Out of 84 transitions to democracy from 1970 to 2004 (including post-authoritarian cases) only 14 states implemented reparation (Olsen et al., 2010, p. 53). For example, instead of payments, Iraqi victims preferred mental health services, access to education, jobs and shelter in 2004 (Stover, Megally, & Mufti, 2005, p. 247). Colombia’s GDP for 2017 was 311 billion USAD. World Bank Data, https://data.worldbank.org/country/colombia, World Bank, accessed 7 February 2020. For example, advocacy campaigns may benefit from external resources while leadership capacities may improve advocacy campaigns. Good examples offer the compliance of Iran to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) about its denuclearization or candidates state to the European Union and their submission to conditionality. Public sphere is found between everyday life and the state (Habermas, 1991). Symbolic politics is based on a similar dynamics (Kaufman, 2001). In Latin American, maternal frames mobilized women against dictatorships (Noonan, 1995). For example, African Americans achieved a sudden surge in their moral authority in the early 1960s in the USA; however, the policy change came only later after a series of mobilization efforts. The negative reaction from Jewish victims to Hannah Arendt’s suggestion that Jewish leaders were partially responsible for the organized transports to death camps is an example of this phenomenon (Arendt, 1963).

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26. Infobiro media database was used. 27. Theda Skocpol is a representative of these approaches. She saw ‘political activities, whether carried on by politicians or by social groups, as conditioned by the institutional configurations of governments and political party systems’ (Skocpol, 1995, p. 41). 28. The term ‘poster child’ was originally used in the 1930s to refer to a child suffering from an illness whose picture was used in the media as part of fundraising (Krueger, 2007). 29. It can be argued that the first Colombian Victims Law was adopted already in 2005, i.e. before the end of the conflict. However, the Colombian civil war had a highly diverse regional impact across the country, with central institutions functioning quite effectively despite the ongoing conflict. This cannot be compared with limitless civil wars of the likes of Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq or Syria. For a refined conceptualization see Kalyvas (2009). 30. In a limited number of cases, international actors may be able to coax governments into adopting some policies directly when they have extensive peacebuilding powers like in Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor.

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CHAPTER 3

The Bosnian Conflict, Its Aftermath and Victims’ Demands

3.1

Introduction

The starting point for Bosnian victimization and the struggle for redress is the destructive Bosnian war that lasted from 1992 to 1995 and cost around 100,000 lives. While the conflict was marked by mass atrocities and brutalization of the civilian population, it is the post-war development that forms the basis of the current malaise of surviving victims and Bosnian citizens alike. Much has been written about the 1992–1995 war and equally enough has been written about the post-war peacebuilding efforts that tried to reverse the disruption of the Bosnian ethno-national patchwork. Yet it is also the political reality of the past decade in Bosnia, best described as a stagnation and at worst as a frozen conflict, that has fundamentally shaped victims’ struggle for redress. This is due to what a prominent Bosnian sociologist Dino Abazovi´c called a ‘predominant ethnicization of all aspects of social and political life’ in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina (2014, p. 35). Under such circumstances, it is easy to frame victims’ plight in ethno-national terms only. However, as this chapter outlines, the ethno-national and religious tensions have been refabricated, repackaged and securitized by key elites of the three so-called constitutive nations of the country. The imagined ethnicized security threats then easily trickle down to those citizens most affected during the war by sectarian and nationalist violence.

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3.2

The Bosnian War and Peace

Unlike the rest of Central and East Europe that transited from communism fairly peacefully, the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) plunged into ‘Europe’s bloodiest war since the Second World War’ (Hoare, 2010, p. 111) in the early 1990s. Nationalist rhetoric of the main political actors coupled with economic failures of Yugoslav socialism eventually led to the break-up of SFRY.1 After Croatia, the war took a savage course in Bosnia, the most multi-ethnic country of the socialist federation, where Bosnian Muslims (also now referred to as Bosniaks) only had a marginal majority over Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats (Burg & Shoup, 2000, p. 27). The swift pitting of its ethno-national communities against each other, the war’s ‘intimate’ nature where neighbours killed neighbours and brutal methods of ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the Bosnian Serb military and Serbian paramilitaries sent shockwaves across the world (Clark, 2014, p. 116). By 1995, nearly half of the 4.4 million pre-war population of Bosnia2 was displaced and over 100,000 died, majority Bosnian Muslims. Although the war was initially portrayed in primordial terms as a religious and ethnic struggle, it was a deeply political conflict, fuelled by nationalist rhetoric and territorial claims made by Bosnia’s two neighbouring republics—Serbia (officially called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia then) and Croatia, which were both ruled by authoritarian and power-driven nationalist leaders Slobodan Miloševi´c and Franjo Tud-man, respectively (Cigar, 1995; Gow, 2003). In the spring of 1992, Bosnia found itself caught between their territorial claims that were supported by local Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat separatists. The fundamental friction that lasted during the war (and continues to last to this day) was over whom Bosnia belonged to, i.e. which national community had a right to take over its territory and people (Bieber, 2006; Cigar, 1995; Hoare, 2004; Silber & Little, 1996). 3.2.1

The War as a ‘Problem from Hell’

War did not descend upon Bosnia overnight. Small skirmishes and violent incidents in the spring of 1992 across the country gradually engulfed the capital Sarajevo and other areas in the north and east. A full-scale war erupted on 6 April 1992 when Bosnian Serb forces began the indiscriminate shelling of the capital that lasted until the end of the war.3 Although the exact causes of the start of the war remains a matter for

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discussions and various theories compete, the conflict in Bosnia was part of a larger process of disintegration of SFRY, which had already begun in 1991 (Burg & Shoup, 2000; Gow, 2003; Jovi´c, 2001; Woodward, 1995). After SFRY de facto ceased to exist in the summer of 1991 when Slovenia and Croatia declared independence (followed by today’s North Macedonia) that was internationally recognized (Caplan, 2005a), Bosnia could either stay in rump Yugoslavia or become independent. Bosnian Serbs (31.5 percent of the population), Bosnian Croats (17.3 percent) and Bosnian Muslims (43.8 percent) each had a different idea about Bosnia’s future—whether it should declare independence, remain part of the rump Yugoslavia, or break apart into smaller territorial units.4 These opposing ideas were represented by the main nationalist political parties that overwhelmingly won the last pre-war elections in 1990. The Serb Democratic Party (SDS), Croat Democratic Union of BiH (HDZ BiH) and the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA) were all founded in 1990 as nationalist parties for ‘their’ people. In the case of Serb and Croat parties, the idea was also to potentially merge with their ethnonational brethren in neighbouring states (Manning, 2004). Main leaders of these parties became the key belligerents: Radovan Karadži´c for SDS, Alija Izetbegovi´c for SDA and Mate Boban for HDZ BiH. When on 3 March 1992 Izetbegovi´c (the then President of Bosnia) declared independence after a referendum that most Bosnian Serbs boycotted, the first clashes erupted. BiH independence was recognized by the US and European Communities on 7 April 1992. On 22 May 1992 Bosnia and Herzegovina became a member of the United Nations (UN Resolution 757). How to describe the war is another matter of dispute: while Bosniaks call it an ‘aggression’ and a ‘defensive-liberation war’, Serbs see it as a ‘civil’ or ‘patriotic war’ where they defended themselves after the Bosniaks declared independence while Croats (and Croatians in neighbouring Croatia) refer to it as a ‘homeland war’. These definitions remain key friction points. They are also critical national war-related ‘master frames’ of each group, as articulations and alignments of various events and experiences that ‘hang together in a relatively unified and meaningful fashion’ for each group (Snow & Benford, 1992, p. 137). These disputes notwithstanding, the war soon turned into a fundamentally multi-partite conflict with the involvement of neighbouring and external parties that supported armies in their own ‘nationalizing statelets’ as Brubaker called it (Brubaker, 1996).

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Serbia armed and supported Karadži´c who formally declared Republika Srpska (RS) on 9 January 1992 and formed a separate Army of RS (VRS).5 Its wartime seat became Pale near Sarajevo.6 Croatia supported Bosnian Croats who proclaimed their own separatist ‘Community of Herzeg-Bosna’ centred around Mostar (and a seat in Grude) and created their armed units as the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) (Bougarel, 1996, pp. 103–104). The Muslims (and those who wished for an independent Bosnia) were caught in-between and only gradually created the Army of BiH (ABiH) by the end of 1992. Because of the international arms embargo from September 1991, ABiH lacked equipment and weapons. According to Hoare, although ABiH had nearly 200,000 soldiers in its ranks as compared to 70,000 among VRS, VRS had ten times more tanks and armoured personnel carriers than the poorly equipped ABiH (Hoare, 2004, p. 112). HVO relied on supplies from neighbouring Croatia while VRS was supplied by the now disintegrated Yugoslav National Army (JNA). The military course of the fighting was tortuous. HVO initially fought with ABiH but this alliance broke down in the spring of 1993. The three official armies were thereafter pitted against each other—with support of various paramilitaries—until an agreement between Bosniaks and Croats about a united front was reached under heavy external pressure in Washington in March 1994. There was an additional inter-Bosniak conflict in north-western BiH between ABiH and the Army of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia led by a prominent SDA leader and businessman Fikret Abdi´c.7 Although the war was fought over political power and resources, ethnicity and religion were instrumentally applied to frame the animosities between the belligerents. The unresolved constitutional issues from the Yugoslav period and lingering traumas from World War II were manipulated by Serbian and Croatian political propaganda to demonstrate their rights over the Bosnian territory. Primordial notions of ethnic and national identities were exploited, creating a ‘collective paranoia’ (Woodward, 1995, p. 228) where ethnicity became the key framing tool of politics (Baker, 2015, p. 60). Stereotypes of bloodthirsty Croats as 8 and Muslims as barbaric Turks from World ˇ Ustaše, Serbs as Cetniks War II were revamped and amplified in the media. Moreover, many paramilitary units operating across Bosnia such as Željko Ražnatovi´c ˇ Arkan’s Tigers, Luki´c cousins’ White Eagles and Vojislav Šešelj’s Cetniks appropriated these labels and instilled further fear.

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Religious communities added an extra identity dimension. A Bosnian Catholic came to be taken for a Croat and an Orthodox Christian for a Serb. Bosnians, Muslims or ‘Yugoslavs’ (which no longer existed), i.e. those who were Muslims by religion or had Muslim-sounding names, were confounded about their identities, some even identifying with Croats or Serbs (see Campbell, 1998). As Bosnians of identifiable Muslim background were targeted for their religion (although many were nonpracticing), their previously secular and only historical identification with Islam strengthened.9 Faced with a lack of territorial identity, many Bosnians embraced a new political identity of ‘Bosniakhood’ that was resuscitated from the old Austria-Hungary in 1993 by SDA (Bougarel, 2007, p. 119) when the ‘Bosniak Congress’ adopted a decision to call all Muslims in Yugoslavia Bosniaks. Subsequently, while some Bosnian Muslims refused (and continue to refuse) the politicized Bosniak label embraced by the leadership of Alija Izetbegovi´c and SDA, the terms Bosnian Muslims and Bosniaks have become merged in general parlance. The result was a simplification of highly multi-layered identities and allegiances and the emergence of a ‘group think’, i.e. ideas of ‘us’ as Bosniaks against ‘them’ as Croats and/or Serbs (Bougarel, Helms, & Duijzings, 2007; Hronešová, 2012; Kolind, 2008; Olui´c, 2007). In addition to the multi-partite and ethno-nationalist nature of the war, it was also characterized by targeting civilians. As the subsequent international criminal investigations ascertained, the aim of the war was to ethnically cleanse10 territories and create mono-ethnic units. This was clearly expressed in the 1992 ‘Six Strategic Goals’ of Radovan Karadži´c (Donia, 2014). This strategy led to sky-high casualties, especially at the start and end of the war (Tokaˇca, 2012, pp. 180–181). Indeed, the greatest numbers of civilians died in the first and the last months of the war in eastern Bosnia, the northern region of Krajina with Prijedor as its centre, and the capital Sarajevo, which staged the longest civilian siege in European history. Yet war crimes were also committed by Bosnian Muslim forces (e.g. around Konjic and eastern Bosnia), criminalized gangs operating Sarajevo and especially the mercenary mujahideen fighters that came from Arab countries to help ‘fellow Muslims’ (see especially Li, 2020). The crimes committed during the war to many observers seemed incompatible with the putative victory of liberalism and human rights in the early 1990s: they included mass rapes, burning people alive, massacres of women and children (especially in and around Prijedor and

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in central Bosnia) and the well-documented killing raids of paramilitaries in north-eastern Bosnia in Bijeljina and Brˇcko. Already in March 1993, the Bosnian government submitted a case to the international Court of Justice (ICJ) against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for violations on the Genocide Convention. Comparing Bosnian Muslims to Jews in the Holocaust, the aim of the case was not only to incite intervention and punishment but also to lift the arms embargo on Bosnia (Mallinder, 2009, p. 42). The decision (see below) came only after an internationally recognized genocide was indeed committed but not pinned to what was by then Serbia. The atrocity that shook the western world to the ground and was ultimately defined as genocide by international criminal courts was committed in Srebrenica. In July 1995, roughly 8000 mostly Muslim men were killed by VRS soldiers under Ratko Mladi´c in the UN protected ‘safe zone’ of Srebrenica (see Chapter 5). The external failure of the UN protection forces (UNPROFOR) to save the unarmed men, who had been previously forced to give up their weapons, irreparably tainted the image of international peacekeeping and is often used as a tragic example of international peacekeeping missions. The controversial external involvement in the war—or rather its double-edged connivance and tardiness in response—is another legacy of the war that has influenced Bosnian post-war development. The then US Secretary of State Warren Christopher famously called the war a ‘problem from hell’ (Power, 2013). Due to the framing of the conflict as a religious clash between Christians and Muslims,11 fuelled by Serbian propaganda that all parties were ‘equally guilty’ (Williams & Scharf, 2002, p. 50), external reaction was slow and restrained. Diplomatic negotiations at international conferences, the deployment of UNPROFOR in demilitarized zones in Srebrenica, Žepa and Foˇca, and humanitarian aid through the UN and other agencies were the key tools used throughout the war. Additionally, given the extent of the crimes and reports about large-scale victimization, the UN agreed to create a war-crimes investigation commission under the legal scholar M. Cherif Bassiouni in October 1992 (Hagan, 2003, p. 41). Based on his findings but also due to the general abhorrence about such atrocities committed at the end of the twentieth century, the UN decided to set up an international court in May 1993—referred to as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

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Against the backdrop of all the other failed attempts to stop the war, this external justice tool was meant to symbolize that the main perpetrators of war crimes would not go unpunished and that further crimes will be deterred by this (Williams & Scharf, 2002, pp. 20–22). But the longer the conflict lasted, the clearer it became that local war thugs had little respect for justice or persecution and that a stronger message would be needed. Moreover, given the strong presence of foreign journalists in the country, the Bosnian war was under great scrutiny from the world’s public, growing dissatisfied with the lack of action—beyond humanitarian aid and diplomatic efforts. The so-called ‘CNN effect’ of the gruesome images (Bouris, 2007, p. 4; Sontag, 2003, p. 93) on the global public made external non-involvement increasingly untenable. The collected evidence also suggested that the death toll and atrocities were skewed to the Bosniak side, especially after Srebrenica. Shortly after Srebrenica, the US President Bill Clinton gave his consent to NATO forces to bomb Serbian posts in Bosnia (without a UN approval), forcing all sides to the negotiation table. At the time of the bombing, Bosnian Serbs controlled nearly 70 percent of the territory (though scarcely populated), but by the late autumn of 1995, Bosnian Army made major military headways and contemplated the takeover of Banja Luka, the heart of RS. The fact that Izetbegovi´c stopped short of taking over key Serb centres to this day puzzles observers. However, as Hoare documented, this decision was driven by the dictat of the United States as the US policy was to ‘stop the war’ rather than ‘help Bosnians win’ the war (Hoare, 2004, p. 124). Faced with potential strikes against his own forces, Izetbegovi´c decided to negotiate instead. By then, Bosnia was physically and psychologically decimated. The direct economic losses were estimated at around 60 billion USD. Industrial and agricultural production dropped by 80 percent (Cousens & Cater, 2001, p. 87). In addition, 2000 kilometres of roads and 445,000 houses were destroyed, while over 750,000 deadly land mines were scattered across the country (Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, 2007, p. 135). Over 300,000 soldiers emerged from the war only within Bosnia, many having spent their youth on the military lines. According to Hoare, midway through the war, ABiH disposed of 110,000 troops and 100,000 in reserves, VRS had 80,000 and HVO had 50,000 (Hoare, 2004, p. 112). Most importantly, the pre-war Bosnian patchwork of intermixed ethno-national groups had been reversed and territories had been

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ethnically homogenized (i.e. cleansed). Over half of the pre-war population of 4.4 million was uprooted, two thirds residing abroad. Around 2.5 million people were forced out of their homes: 537,000 persons fled to countries outside the SFRY, 714,000 to Croatia, 495,000 to Serbia and Montenegro and 810,000 were internally displaced in Bosnia (Tabeau & Zwierzchowski, 2010). According to UNHCR statistics, 80 percent of all refugees were Bosniaks, 13 percent Bosnian Croats, and 6 percent Bosnian Serbs (UNHCR, 2003). By the end of 1997, 540,000 Bosnians (i.e. around one fifth of the pre-war population of BiH) had already been granted permanent status abroad—with small incentives to return. Thousands of those who returned initially found their houses ruined, mined or inhabited by members of the ‘other’ group. The human loss was tremendous, but its true extent was a matter of speculation during the first post-war decade. While Bosniaks and external actors reported over 250,000 dead, the Bosnian Serbs claimed the number as low as 25,000 (Skrbic, 2006). The last pre-war census was carried out in 1991 and the first post-war census data was only released in 2016, leaving space for furious number wars. By 2007, a civil society run team of Bosnian investigators led by Mirsad Tokaˇca at the Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo established that 95,940 people were killed, mostly Bosnian Muslims (see Fig. 3.1). According to their findings, 64.6 percent of casualties were Bosniaks, 41 percent were civilians and nearly 90 percent were men (see Fig. 3.2). The fatalities were thus greatly 70,000

62,013

60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000

24,953

20,000 8,403

10,000 0

571 Bosniaks

Serbs

Croats

Other

Fig. 3.1 Fatalities of the Bosnian war by ethnic identity (Source Figure created from data included in the Bosnian Book of Dead [Tokaˇca, 2012, pp. 125–127])

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60,000

87

54,834

50,000 40,000 30,000

23,309

20,000 10,000

7,507

7,179 1,644

896

0 Bosniaks

Serbs Women

Croats Men

182

389

Other

Fig. 3.2 Fatalities of the Bosnian war by gender (Source Figure created from data included in the Bosnian Book of Dead [Tokaˇca, 2012, pp. 119–124])

skewed towards men, resulting in thousands of widows and fatherless children. While this is not the official record, it is widely cited as a realistic death-toll account. Moreover, these findings roughly corresponded to research done by the ICTY’s demographic unit, which concluded that war-related deaths amounted to 104,732, i.e. numbers higher to Tokaˇca’s initial findings (Tabeau & Zwierzchowski, 2010). This discrepancy has been mainly caused by the growing number of identifications of missing people (see Chapter 5). Additional investigations established that 20– 50,000 mostly women (but also men) were raped, up to 200,000 people were detained in war camps and over 32,000 people went missing (ICMP, 2017). As many as half of Bosnian citizens were estimated to suffer from the post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, although there are no clear data sources (Ramet, 2006, p. 467). 3.2.2

The Dayton Peace Agreement of 1995

While the international intervention was delayed, ineffective and controversial, NATO’s bombardment of Serb positions in Bosnia in the fall of 1995 helped to bring the adversaries to the negotiating table of the US diplomat Richard Holbrook. In November 1995 at a US military base in Dayton Ohio, Slobodan Miloševi´c of Serbia, Franjo Tud-man of Croatia and Alija Izetbegovi´c of Bosnia finally concluded the ‘General Framework for Peace Agreement’, better known as the ‘Dayton

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Peace Agreement’ or simply ‘Dayton’ (OHR, 1995). Although neither of the parties was satisfied with its final form, Izetbegovi´c famously calling it ‘unjust’, it appeared to have been the only agreeable compromise. Dayton has since then become a laboratory for political scientists, who have revelled in criticizing the agreement’s flaws while stressing its peace-making success (Bose, 2002; Chandler, 2000; Mertus, 1999; Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014; Weller & Wolff, 2008). On its 150 pages, Dayton presented a blueprint of comprehensive liberal peacebuilding. It covered extensive state-building clauses, ordered military consolidation, specified refugee return, proposed elections and included a series of key human rights agreements. It also introduced a new institution—the Office of the High Representative (OHR)—tasked with supervising the implementation of the peace accords. While Dayton was an unequivocal success for peace, it did not prove to be a framework for integrating Bosnia’s centripetal ethno-national elites—quite the opposite (Abazovi´c, 2014). Dayton set out a byzantine constitutional structure in its Annex IV (de facto Bosnian Constitution), based on far-reaching consociationalist power-sharing, decentralization, ethnic vetoes and proportionality. While power-sharing may be viable for states where some minimal level of accommodation is possible and some future political direction is shared, in the case of Bosnia—where the war was abruptly stopped by external intervention without solving the underlying issues of whom the country belongs or what its future should be like—such extensive power-sharing resulted in a ‘paralysis’ (Bennett, 2016). Dayton created two entities—Republika Srpska (RS) and the BosniakCroat Federation (FBiH)—with the territorial proportion of 49:51 respectively. These units were divided by the so-called ‘Inter-Entity Boundary Line’, which de facto legitimized the military gains and ethnic cleansing of the Bosnian Serb leadership by creating internal ethnic borders between Serbs and mainly Muslims. The anthropologist Stef Jansen described the two entities as ‘ethnic fiefdoms’ of nationalist political parties (Jansen, 2006, p. 179). RS became centralized and divided into five regions and 63 municipalities. In contrast, FBiH was sub-divided into ten cantons with wide self-governing powers, three of which were under Croat majority (West Herzegovina, Posavina, and Canton 10) and two mixed (Central Bosnia and Herzegovina-Neretva). Thereafter, cantons differed in terms of their administration and the structure of their municipalities. Two cities—Sarajevo and Mostar—were set to be ruled by special provisions, and the disputed and highly strategically

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located Brˇcko in the north-east was left to be decided later in an arbitration, which in 1999 defined it as a multi-ethnic internationally governed District. In 2009, it was included it in the Constitution, which became the first and only constitutional amendment. Therefore, most executive and legislative power was granted to the subnational level of entities, which, as Caplan argued, have enjoyed ‘many of the prerogatives of a state’ (Caplan, 2005b, p. 111). The central state was initially so weak that only around 20 percent of all state functions fell under the central institutions (Merdžanovi´c, 2015, p. 163). At the top is the tri-national rotating Presidency (consisting of members representing Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs), Council of Ministers (ipso facto central government) and a Parliamentary Assembly (henceforth ‘Parliament’) comprising the House of Representatives and the House of People. Only three ministries were created at the central level (Foreign Affairs, Foreign Trade and Civil Affairs). Entities were given control over the rest, including social care and veteran issues. Article 6 of the Constitution also established the central Constitutional Court (opened in 1997) as a hybrid institution consisting of three international and six domestic judges (two from each ethnonational community). Both entities were to have their own presidents, governments, ministries, assemblies, courts (including entity supreme and constitutional courts) and police forces. Each entity was also set to have its own parliamentary assembly (henceforth ‘Assembly’ to distinguish it from the state-level ‘Parliament’). As a result, Bosnia has had over 140 different ministries at various levels and seven separate electoral contests organized at different times. In FBiH, a significant level of authority was devolved further down to the cantonal level to allow for Croat self-administration. While the entity level adopts the so-called ‘umbrella laws’, each cantonal assembly adopts its own specific laws (Maglajli´c Holiˇcek & Rašidagi´c, 2007, p. 154). At the state level, people vote for the two parliamentary houses and the presidency. At the entity level, for assemblies, presidents and vice-presidents and in FBiH for cantonal assemblies and municipal councils. The legal quagmire has to this day plague the implementation of many laws. With regards to human rights, the entire Annex VI of Dayton included a substantial set of human rights provisions. Chapter 2 of the Annex established the Commission of Human Rights, consisting of the Ombudsman and the Human Rights Chamber, tasked with processing human rights violations. The Commission’s functions were to be revised in five years,

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but it existed until 2004, when its cases were transferred to the Constitutional Court. During its existence, the Human Rights Chamber was a key institution, processing claims of returnees, victims, but also other minorities. In addition to addressing war-related claims, it also processed cases of ethno-national discrimination, paradoxically often in clash with the Dayton provisions. According to Dayton, the three so-called ‘constituent peoples’ of Croats, Bosniaks and Serbs gained significant collective political rights at the expense of individual rights of citizens but also minorities, which are referred to as the ‘Others’ in the constitution. For example, on all issues deemed as ‘vital’ by any of the constituent peoples, a majority vote of all present delegates is required, effectively stalling many reforms (Bieber, 2002a, p. 215). Although Dayton also made Bosnia a signatory to every major international human rights treaty, which inherently contained anti-discrimination provisions, the ethnic key has been applied in all political functions and the local level,12 later leading to several anti-discrimination court cases. For example, in March 2002, after the so-called ‘Constituent Peoples Agreement’ of Mrakovica-Sarajevo, all citizens gained equal representation across the Bosnian territory (Chandler, 2000, p. 111). It has also effectively forestalled a viable creation of nonnational identities and civil citizenship concepts. Dayton also included a series of human rights conventions that obliged Bosnia to provide redress for victims and refugees.13 Acknowledging that this system may have difficulty functioning at first, authors of Dayton tasked the OHR with supervising the peace, ensuring compliance with the rules and coordinating the variety of externally deployed civilian organizations (in Annex X). In other words, the OHR was to ensure the transition of the country from war to peace and from chaos to stability. The High Representative (HR) was to be appointed and guided by the so-called Peace Implementation Council (PIC), an ad hoc coalition of 55 states and organizations that had come together independently of the UN to steer the implementation of the peace process. The OHR and the stipulations of Dayton were initially fiercely opposed by Bosnian Serbs as it left them in a state whose very existence they rejected. In contrast, Dayton was endorsed by Bosniaks—even if they called it ‘unjust’ as it recognized the Republika Srpska despite it being created by ethnic cleansing. Later, Bosnian Serbs became strong defenders of the Dayton-created statelets, but Bosniaks criticized it for freezing Bosnia in the state of 1995. A recent poll demonstrated that most Bosnians agree with the expert assessments that Dayton was a necessary measure to end

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the war but not a framework to build a state (Toal & O’Loughlin, 2016). Overall, because of its institutional provisions, the role of external actors, and the human rights clauses, Dayton has been constantly invoked in Bosnia’s post-war realities. As an interviewed Bosnian legal expert noted, ‘Dayton stopped us from killing each other … but we carry on fighting via different means’. This view tallies with the general opinion among political scientists in Bosnia, one of whom argued that Dayton ‘created fertile soil for political interventions with an ethno-national prefix’ (Abazovi´c, 2005, p. 195), suggesting that it solidified divisions created during the war.

3.3 Post-War Politics: Between Guardianship and Polarization Beyond internal divisions, post-war development in Bosnia can be characterized by complex dynamics between external and domestic actors. These interactions unravelled in different stages after the war. Their impact on daily life in Bosnia and the ability to move for both victims and ordinary citizens could not be overstated. The blocked nature of Bosnian politics and laggard economic progress have created various types of frustrations and apathies on the one hand but also social movements on the other. To provide more clarity to the post-war Bosnian developments, I structure this section by introducing three phases after 1995, defined by broader policy priorities of the main proximal actors with powers over victims’ recognition and redress. While the phases are not delineated by clear borders, there are several milestones to recognize that mark off the main post-war developments in Bosnia. They highlight the changing priorities of external actors and the levels of domestic cooperation and intransigency.14 They are as follows: 1. Emergency post-war stabilization (1995–1999); 2. Centralization and external state-building (2000–2006); 3. Flawed Europeanization and re-nationalization of politics (2007– present).

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3.3.1

Emergency Post-War Stabilization (1995–1999)

The final stages of the Bosnian war and the immediate post-war period were characterized by massive reconstruction efforts by a vast number of external actors, ranging from military organizations to humanitarian agencies. According to McMahon and Western, ‘17 different foreign governments, 18 UN agencies, 27 intergovernmental organizations, and about 200 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs)—not to mention tens of thousands of troops from across the globe—were involved in reconstruction efforts’ (McMahon & Western, 2009, p. 69). The key efforts of this multitude of actors was security, physical reconstruction, humanitarian aid and refugee return. After NATO’s military intervention in 1995, several peacekeeping missions were deployed to Bosnia. The wartime peacekeeping UNPROFOR forces were soon reinforced by 60,000 soldiers from the NATO Implementation Force (IFOR) that in 1996 turned into a Stabilization Force (SFOR). The initial policing was also taken over by a UN force (International Police Task Force, IPTF), which was not only tasked with policing but also vetting procedures and demobilization programmes, later taken over by the World Bank (Moratti & Sabic-El-Rayess, 2009). Over 10,000 civilian foreign officials were also deployed to secure the peace implementation under OHR’s supervision. The humanitarian aid offered to the country’s post-war reconstruction was immense. During the first five donor conferences (until 1999), external actors pledged to spend 5.25 billion USD (Bennett, 2016, p. 93). The IMF later established that between 1996 and 1999, 3.7 billion USD were spent on civilian aid in Bosnia (International Monetary Fund, 2005, p. 2).15 ‘On a per capita basis, the reconstruction of Bosnia-with less than four million citizens-made the post-World War II rebuilding of Germany and Japan look modest,’ McMahon and Western concluded (2009, p. 69). Bosnia was indeed inundated by foreign aid directed at physical reconstruction and infrastructure, financing the emerging NGO sector, and supporting up to 80 percent of the population (Cousens & Cater, 2001, p. 88). By 1997, nearly 1500 local NGOs were set up either as spin-offs of international NGOs or through international funds with the aim to supplement—or even substitute—some key state functions (Black, 2001, p. 180; see also Helms, 2014). While these efforts were an emergency response to the war, they later became a key feature of the Bosnian civil sector, which has been dominated by a small number of organizations whose lifespans and priorities were driven

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by foreign funding (see Belloni, 2001; Bieber, 2002b; Fagan, 2010; Maglajli´c Holiˇcek & Rašidagi´c, 2007; Sejfija, 2006). This first period was also marked by the highest number of refugee and displaced returns, a policy area included in Annex VII of Dayton. The agenda of returns, implemented by the new Return and Reconstruction Task Force (RRTF), was in line with the peacebuilding aims of the UN and the EU, both represented by the OHR, and in the case of the EU also by the newly set up Delegation of the European Commission (established in July 1996). Their aim was to re-create a multi-ethnic Bosnia and strengthen capacities for return at the central level (Jansen, 2007). Returns were initially slow due to security concerns: some returnees found their houses mined, others were intimidated and beaten. Despite over a thousand attacks by 2001, post-war returnee violence was relatively low though present (Boyle, 2014, p. 119). UN agencies (e.g. UNHCR and UNDP), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), OSCE, charities (such as Caritas) and EU agencies first focused on returns to areas under control of one’s own ethno-national community, where returnees faced lower security risks, so-called on ‘majority returns’ (ICG, 1998a). But as security improved by 1998, the emphasis shifted towards minority returns, i.e. people returning to areas where their ethno-national community was not in the majority (Black, 2001, p. 182). Despite the wider deployment of SFOR and IPTF, many understandably feared returning to an area ruled by the ‘other’ group. While Bosniak politicians encouraged minority returns, arguing that the international forces would protect returnees, Bosnian Croats and Serbs worked in the opposite direction to consolidate their territorial gains. They argued that minority returns would lead to the creation of fifth columns within their ethno-national turfs (Belloni, 2007, p. 128). Radovan Karadži´c famously led a fear-mongering campaign in 1996, threatening Sarajevo Serbs to move out unless they want to become victims of Bosniak vengeance. His campaign led to the 1996 exodus of up to 50,000 Serbs from Sarajevo, turning the capital into a largely mono-ethnic city (ICG, 1998b). The fearmongering nationalist rhetoric led to the fact that by 1998, only 570,925 individuals, i.e. 25 percent of the displaced population, returned to their pre-war homes (Belloni, 2007, p. 141). In addition to improving security, another strategy was needed. Property restitution was soon selected to offer an effective incentive encouraging people to come back. The HR in 1999 decided to amend procedures of the existing so-called Commission for Real Property Claims, which was created by

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Dayton, in order to facilitate people’s access to their pre-war property (Williams, 2004).16 These changes simplified administrative procedures, leading to an increase in returns. The following year, 2000, was later dubbed the year of returns when around a million people returned. By 2003, over 90 percent of all property cases were presumably resolved (Ferstman & Rosenberg, 2009, p. 511). Despite such success, property restitution also became a lucrative business. The main Bosniak party, SDA, controlled the new property funds in FBiH and soon misappropriated large sums using their informal networks and patronage (Pugh, 2002). In a notorious case in RS, the government accepted a financial support of one billion USD to restore Bosniak and Croat houses for 70,000 people, but only 3,700 were housed while the rest of the funds were embezzled (Belloni, 2007, p. 136). Refugees wanting to return to Croat parts of Mostar were equally prevented by HDZ BiH authorities that used intimidation and introduced bureaucratic obstacles to discourage any potential Bosniak returns and repossession of houses (Bojiˇci´c-Dželilovi´c, 2006, p. 212). The property reconstruction was thus a continuation of the clandestine economy and violence of the war (Andreas, 2004). It must be acknowledged that physical violence rapidly plummeted after 1995 (Boyle, 2014, p. 101). However, the domestic political constellation in this period was warlike. The same actors and conflicts created during the war remained in place, manifesting themselves in the first elections in September 1996, i.e. only nine months after the end of the war. Against the backdrop of electoral fraud, intimidation and voter manipulation, the belligerent nationalist parties won. The three presidential winners were the leader of SDA and the war-time President Alija Izetbegovi´c, the co-founder of SDS Momˇcilo Krajišnik and the former president of the separatist Herzeg-Bosna Krešimir Zubak of HDZ BiH. Amnesty was soon granted for desertion and all economic crimes (including illegal commerce, tax evasion and misuse of humanitarian aid) and only serious human rights violations and crimes under ICTY’s investigation were considered reasons for political vetting and decertification of electoral candidates (Zupan, 2007, p. 333). As some noted, ‘close relationships of loyalty and trust between nationalist politicians, the security apparatus and criminals’ that were forged during the war remained intact thereafter (Andreas, 2004, p. 44). In the absence of any substantial political vetting, their transition from war to politics was smooth.

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Politics was initially so confrontational that the first HR Carl Bildt stated that the peace ‘felt like another war’ (Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014, p. 59). Bosnian Croats refused to participate in governmental institutions of the Federation and the central state, further insisting on the creation of a third entity for Croats. Bosnian Serbs challenged the HR and led a political boycott of Dayton’s provisions. On the Bosniak side, internal conflicts within SDA led to the April 1996 creation of a new Bosniak political party under the former wartime prime minister Haris Siljadži´c—the Party for Bosnia and Herzegovina (SBiH). Initially created as a moderate Bosniak party, it later became the key vanguard of Bosniak nationalism. By the end of the first phase, its main aim became the centralization of the country and dissolution of the cantonal and entity system, best exemplified in its 2000 electoral slogan ‘Bosnia without Entities’ (Bose, 2005). Carl Bildt had only limited powers and was reliant on these intransigent actors for cooperation in implementing the peace agreement (Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014, pp. 58–59). As some poignantly argued at the time, ‘OHR’s powers are like those of the pope: it can issue an encyclical, but unless people believe, there is very little it can do about their behavior’ (Daalder & Froman, 1999, p. 111). The HR also struggled to control the multiplicity of external bodies and actors involved in Bosnian post-war reconstruction (cf. Caplan, 2005b, p. 36). For these reasons, Bildt’s successor Carlos Westendorp (in office from 1997 to 1999) demanded direct tools for dismissing politicians and imposing laws. The multilateral PIC allowed for such powers in December 1997 at a summit in Bonn (Merdžanovi´c, 2015, pp. 181– 183). It approved the HR to make decisions on ‘interim measures to take effect when parties are unable to reach agreement’17 and ensure the smooth running of institutions. In effect, these so-called ‘Bonn Powers’ gave Westendorp and all his successors the right to dismiss officials that violated legal commitments under Dayton, or in any other way obstructed peace implementation. This was used soon after when the HR imposed a new and more inclusive citizenship law in December 1997 (Merdžanovi´c, 2015, p. 258). The Bonn Powers were also used to sack some obstructionist politicians, such as in March 1999 when the HR removed the elected RS President Nikola Poplašen. Although the OHR expanded its powers only gradually, the institution became the key motor behind neoliberal reforms aimed at reducing welfare and state apparatus as remnants of socialism, while strengthening political institutions that had to be rebuilt after the collapse of the state. Among others, strengthening

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HR’s position also led to the creation of an FBiH Ministry for Veterans’ Affairs in 1999.18 3.3.2

Centralization and External State-Building (2000–2005)

In the second phase from early 2000, the HR (since August 1999 Wolfgang Petritsch) launched a series of state-building interventions while the EU began to play an increasingly important role. This period was dominated by the Office of the High Representative and the application of the Bonn Powers. A new state media law, imposition of a common currency, vehicle licence plates and national passports were all carried out through the Bonn Powers (Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014, p. 61). HR impositions were further used to introduce some key justice reforms. The Law on the State Court of BiH was enacted by the HR in 2000 and later adopted in 2002 by the Parliament, leading to the opening of the War Crimes Chamber in March 2005.19 The state ministries of Human Rights and Refugees (MHRR), Treasury for Institutions of BiH and European Integration (later Directorate) and the State Border Service in 2000 were also the result of these external powers. After Lord Paddy Ashdown took over the office in May 2002 (he also served jointly as the first EU Special Representative, EUSR), the impositions were on average used 14 times a month (Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014, p. 67). He pushed for the creation of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) in 2002, the Prosecutor’s Office (2002), the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (2002), Ministry of Justice (2003), Ministry of Security in 2004, Ministry of Defence in 2004 and joint Armed Forces of BiH in 2006. He also enforced the enactment of the new Criminal Code of BiH (2003) and enforced standard Value Added Tax (VAT) in 2006. His interventionist approach to administering Bosnia (until January 2006)—best demonstrated in his so-called ‘Bulldozer Initiative’ of November 2002 to dismantle all obstructions to the labour and business market—resulted in the establishment of some key central institutions. Despite positive centralization, by making key institutional decisions, the HR took over responsibilities of domestic elites, who had limited incentives for accommodation when the HR took ownership over difficult decisions. Until 2014, 921 decisions were imposed by the HR in economic, political, and constitutional matters (Butenschøn & Stiansen, 2016, p. 141). The external governance led to what some called a ‘dependency syndrome’ (Solioz, 2007) when external actors became the main

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guarantors but also culprits of any reform initiatives. The various views about the role of the HR to this day essentially revolve around two bipolar camps of those arguing for either too much or too little external input (see Merdžanovi´c, 2015). Some experts even dubbed BiH an ‘international protectorate’ while others compared it to the British colonial rule in India (Knaus & Martin, 2003), mainly due to the ‘proconsul’ style of politics by Paddy Ashdown (Pond, 2006, p. 156). Also because of the continuous presence of the HR, Bosnian democracy earned adjectives such as ‘faked’ (Chandler, 2000) or ‘controlled’ (Bojkov, 2003). The external practices of governance in Bosnia also produced a parallel world of international aid workers that Coles termed ‘Hyper-Bosnia’, where external actors became detached from the reality on the ground, often leading to domestic disgruntlement, opposition and eventually lethargy (Coles, 2007). The role of the HR—Paddy Ashdown in particular—has been debated to this day. However, given the previously intransigent local elites, there is little evidence to suggest that key reforms would have been carried out without some initial input by the OHR. Nonetheless, this phase also experienced a political moderation due to several factors. The ICTY indictments (and later trials) of Radovan Karadži´c, Momˇcilo Krajišnik and Biljana Plavši´c, among others, removed these key nationalists from the political scene in RS.20 Internal disputes in the nationalist Serb Democratic Party (SDS) also created space for a new political actor, Milorad Dodik and his Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD). Although Dodik served as an SDS-deputy in the RS Assembly during the war, he later created a reputation of a politician with whom international actors could negotiate. After the 1998 elections, supported by the OHR, he created a minority coalition government called Sloga (Concord), formally signalling to become a ‘moderate Prime Minister’ (see ICG, 2002). Though Dodik on paper vouched for Dayton’s implementation, he was as persistent about the separate RS state-like identity as the wartime government.21 As a pragmatic and power-driven politician, he instrumentally cooperated with external actors to receive aid, which had until then avoided RS, to address the sky-high unemployment. After the general elections of November 2000, the political monopoly of the three wartime parties (SDS, SDA and HDZ BiH) was further undermined (Hulsey, 2016, p. 55). Although ethnic voting prevailed, the SDA lost some of their votes to SBiH in the Federation and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) that won while the Party of Democratic

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Progress (PDP) won in RS. The subsequent governmental talks in FBiH led to a compromise and the creation of a reform coalition, ‘Alliance for Change’, under the wartime prime minister Zlatko Lagumdžija from SDP (Merdžanovi´c, 2015, pp. 280–288). The elections coincided with an escalation of the Croat question when HDZ BiH threatened a referendum on a new entity. This initiative was abruptly stopped in March 2001 by the HR and the removal of the Croat leader Ante Jelavi´c from the Presidency. Thereafter, Croats at last started cooperating with Bosniaks in the Federation and even submitted Croat soldiers to the new single Bosniak-Croat army. Probably the key factor in the willingness of nationalist parties to cooperate was the eroding authoritarian regimes in neighbouring Croatia and Serbia in the death of Tud-man in late 1999 and toppling of Miloševi´c in October 2000 (Pond, 2006, p. 154). Another factor was the departure of Alija Izetbegovi´c and the ascent of Sulejman Tihi´c as a more conciliatory SDA leader in 2001. Moreover, the political elites started to frame their politics towards the EU membership. The EU applied a combination of ‘carrots and sticks’, i.e. rewards and punishments, often called conditionality. The EU conditionality developed as a top-down pressure for democratic reforms in the form of compliance with the rules of the EU in exchange for significant economic aid and the eventual prospect of a membership. The preconditions included a range of neoliberal economic reforms but also stability of democratic institutions, rule of law and observance of human and minority rights. An additional set of reforms—especially vis-à-vis cooperation with the ICTY—was included for all ex-Yugoslav countries. The broad set of requirements was in March 2000 summarized in the EU Roadmap that stood at the beginning of the so-called ‘Stabilization and Association Process’ (SAP), guiding potential candidates through the EU accession path (Fagan & Sircar, 2015, p. 36). In June that year at the summit in Feira, the European Council stated the EU prospects of all countries in the Western Balkans, including Bosnia. The roadmap was in November 2003 adopted by the European Commission in the form of a Feasibility Study on the preparedness of Bosnia to conclude the Stabilization and Association Agreement (SAA), following the June 2003 Thessaloniki summit. This further crystallized into the ‘European Partnership’ document in June 2004 (updated in 2006 and fully amended in 2008) where Bosnia was asked to harmonize its legislation with the EU’s legal compendium, the acquis communautaire. The reform progress was monitored through

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annual reports by the European Commission (in the so-called ‘Progress Reports’). Since 2001 the main carrots became EU funds targeting democratic governance reforms, the civil sector, judiciary and technical assistance to Bosnian institutions.22 EU sticks came with the transfer of policing and military oversight when the EU Police Mission (EUPM) took over from IPTF in 2003 and EUFOR from SFOR in 2004. All in all, by early 2004, leading political parties formally subscribed to the Euro-Atlantic agenda although NATO remained a sore point for Bosnian Serbs because of its 1999 bombing in Serbia. By November 2005, BiH officially opened negotiations about the SAA that took three additional years to sign (June 2008) and was later frozen due to Bosnian failure to fulfil some conditions in the realm of constitutional reforms and human rights (Weber, 2014). However, EU conditionality was not the only type of mechanism for change applied in Bosnia. Other examples were NATO’s requirements for civilian control over the military (which was established in 2004), military property regulation and the Council of Europe’s (CoE) adoption of a variety of human rights requirements. CoE became an important critic of the persistent violations of human rights in the country. It conditioned membership to it on revoking several discriminatory legal clauses within Bosnian governance. Bosnia was eventually granted membership in CoE in April 2002. In economic and financial affairs, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction (EBRD) were tasked with setting up the Central Bank (established in June 1997) and proposed fiscal reforms while continuing to provide economic aid. The World Bank became the main Bosnian creditor and through the socalled Poverty Reduction Strategies pressed the government to comply with its priorities, again in exchange for economic support. In electoral affairs, the OSCE conditioned its approval for transfer of electoral organization to domestic institutions by the adoption of a new Election Law and the establishment of an Electoral Committee (adopted in 2001). Until 2002, elections were run by the OSCE. Thereafter, the OSCE became an important watchdog in areas such as education, democratic governance, human rights and social reforms (Stoessel, 2001). In sum, this period was defined by centralization and intransigent national authorities that at times cooperated when pressurized.

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3.3.3

Flawed Europeanization and Re-nationalization of Politics (2007–Present)

The third phase that has lasted for the past 13 years has been dominated by reform backsliding, increasing tensions between Republika Srpska and central institutions, and weak foreign policy of the European Union that has failed to convince Bosnia to move away from its sectarian politics. The precursor to the start of the third phase can be traced back to June 2006 when the PIC announced that the OHR was to be closed within 12 months and the democratic (no longer peace) transition was to be left in the hands of domestic actors. This move was a reaction to the intensifying EU convergence process for Bosnia. The idea was to move Bosnia from ‘Dayton to Brussels’, i.e. from imposed peacebuilding to assisted democratization (Belloni, 2007, p. 152). EU influence had grown since 2002 when the HR was merged with the EU Special Representative (EUSR) as a double-hatted position called HR/EUSR (under Paddy Ashdown). At that time, the multilateral (mainly US) interest in Bosnia started to wane. As a result, the EU took over the BiH stabilization agenda, focusing mainly on civil society, financial assistance and facilitation of a political dialogue (Fagan, 2010, p. 85).23 Its approach became part of its Europeanization approach to countries aspiring to join the EU. Instead of scaling down external interventionism, though, the initial period of this phase led to some of the greatest mishaps of interventionism in Bosnia. Two initial reform proposals of 2007 caused an uproar and a political crisis. In 2007, the new HR/EUSR Miroslav Lajˇcák tried to centralize the police to fulfil the last condition in signing SAA (originally proposed by Ashdown) and later reform the voting procedures used by the Parliament and the central government (Fagan, 2010, p. 87). Bosnian Serbs under increasingly nationalist Milorad Dodik strongly opposed these efforts, leading to a protest resignation of the Serb chairman of the government (de facto PM), Nikola Špiri´c, who famously said that if the HR was allowed to freely intervene into Bosnian affairs, he could be Bart Simpson for all it mattered. Bosnian Serb deputies started blocking the state Parliament through walk-outs as a form of protest against HR’s interventions (Bennett, 2016, p. 171). After a series of visceral and protracted negotiations, Lajˇcák was forced to abandon the original plans about a united police force and find a compromise, effectively allowing for entity-run

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policing (Weber, 2014). He managed to streamline the voting procedures but only at the cost of growing political opposition. This double crisis unfolded against the backdrop of broader constitutional debates. As Dayton was never meant to be a lasting document but a peace-management tool, a new constitution was needed and widely discussed. The report of the so-called ‘Venice Commission’ of the Council of Europe published already in March 2005 clearly outlined the need for amending Dayton, which was deemed discriminatory against the minorities in the country (Perry, 2016, p. 17). Four years later (in December 2009), these findings were confirmed by the European Court for Human Rights (ECtHR) that decided that Bosnia had to change its constitution so that Bosnian citizens, who do not belong to the three constituent nations, would be allowed to run for the state presidency and the House of the Peoples (in the so-called ‘Sejdi´c-Finci’ case). Although other judicial decisions had asserted this before (the 2005 case of Ilijaz Pilav) and also later (the 2014 case of Azra Zorni´c), any reform of the ethno-national principle would require an overhaul of Dayton. In what followed Sejdi´cFinci, the Bosnian Council of Ministers adopted an Action Plan and appointed a Working Group to work on the constitutional amendments. Several attempts were made—all to no avail: the so-called April Package in 2006, the Prud Agreement of 200824 and the Butmir Process of 2009 all demonstrated that finding a common ground about how to overhaul the ethnic framework, streamline political decision-making and introduce more effective policymaking was close to impossible.25 The Bosnian Central Election Commission also adopted the Action Plan 2010, detailing the necessary changes in the Election Law. A series of deadlines passed and the Constitution as well as the Election Law remained unchanged, not reflecting the 2009 ECtHR ruling. Changing the ethnically defined political system of Dayton’s Bosnia became an insurmountable problem. This was also caused by the fact that around this time wartime rhetoric was revamped in the nationalisms of Milorad Dodik and Haris Siljadži´c. Although it first seemed that welfare and EU accession instead of nationalism were the key topics of the time, the electoral campaigns of 2006 were again run on the wartime master frames propagated by Dodik and Siljadži´c. While Dodik used respect for Dayton as a safeguard to keep RS as a separate entity to the extent that independence became an option, Siljadži´c called for the abolition of RS and centralization, ultimately giving Dodik more ammunition to frame RS as under threat. Siljadži´c became the main champion of the frame that the Bosnian

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entity was a ‘product of genocide’ and that Bosnia lived in an ‘ethnic apartheid’, antagonizing Serbs further (Bennett, 2016, pp. 193–195). Dodik soon realized that juxtaposing centralization efforts was a ‘politically effective strategy’ as an interviewed political analyst put it.26 Gradually, Dodik not only reinvented ‘Srpska nationalism’, i.e. nationalism of the separate RS statelet, but also became the main denier of war crimes committed by Serbs. The aggressive nationalism initially paid off for both—Dodik and Siljadži´c won the 2006 general elections.27 In an atmosphere of ‘emotionally powered wartime rhetoric, securitization of ethnic issues in public discourse and tensions over BiH’s territorial structure and constitution’ (Bertelsmann Transformation Index, 2010, p. 2), the HR’s previously announced closure was soon conditioned by amending the Dayton constitution. Frequent clashes between Dodik and Siljadži´c dominated the failed reform debates, most prominently with Siljadži´c blocking the April Package in 2006 and Dodik increasing his pressure to close the OHR thereafter. As the failed reforms dominated the public sphere, several high-level corruption cases that revealed the extent of pillaging of state industries, companies and services went nearly unnoticed at that time (Bennett, 2016, pp. 214–218). Instead, Bosnian Serbs insisted on their increased autonomy, Bosnian Croats resuscitated the idea of a third entity and Bosniaks maintained their position that more centralization was needed. Political parties have remained dominated by ethno-nationalist parties even in the few instances where the old parties have been replaced by new political actors. The only non-national party at the time, the Social Democratic Party (SDP), was unable to trump such an ethno-nationally defined political landscape that awarded aggressive and ethnically driven discourse. Although it emerged as the strongest party in 2010, it soon lost its sway after 16 months of protracted governmental negotiations when a series of corruption scandals about its officials and procurement erupted (European Stability Initiative, 2014; ICG, 2014). After SDP de facto sacrificed its multi-ethnic platform in order to stay in power, it lost credibility. The next elections in 2014 saw a return to ethnic voting. Despite the passage of time and the fact that Bosnia in 2014 had a staggering number of registered political parties—one party per 20,000 citizens28 — the incumbents have since the war been from the ranks of the wartime nationalist blocs (Pasic, 2014). Milorad Dodik’s Alliance for Independent Social Democrats (SNSD) successfully replaced SDS but its radicalism is on par with its wartime predecessor—currently cultivating a culture of

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denial of war crimes. Challengers from the Serb Party for Democratic Progress (PDP), especially under Mladen Ivani´c, have also rarely offered anything other than nationalist platforms. In FBiH, the only political forces that have challenged the main war blocs were SDP, which effectively turned into a party of Bosniaks, the Party for BiH (SBiH), the Union for Better Future (SBB) and the Democratic Front (DF), which have at times successfully entered the governing coalitions (Touquet, 2012, p. 213). Among Croat parties, HDZ BiH and its radical splinter HDZ 1990 kept firm control over their constituencies. Parties such as Our Party (NS) that represent civic platforms have been limited to urban centres (and in the 2018 election gained control of Sarajevo). Overall, the party system remains swaddled in a contestation of nationalisms between Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats. As for international response, the OHR was overshadowed by the EU that has struggled to maintain a clear strategy. The EU’s carrots continued through visa liberalization to the EU for Bosnian citizens passed in December 2010 and through being ‘the largest single donor to the country’ (Fagan, 2010, p. 96).29 The HR has increasingly become toothless. The last use of the Bonn Powers by the current HR Valentin Inzko was in March 2011.30 At the same time, worried about potential destabilization, the EU has become more prone to lowering its benchmarks (Weber, 2014). Its progress reports have become catalogues of failures and occasional praise, rather than admonitions and incentives for reform. However, reforms are critical, as the economic crisis of 2008 (and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic) demonstrated. Hit hard by the reduction in remittances and external aid, external debt increased and public-sector spending skyrocketed, leading to frequent delays in the distribution of state salaries and pensions (World Bank, 2015). Domestic authorities attempted to use nationalist rhetoric to divert public attention from the decline in living standards with limited success. Social tensions and mass protests first erupted in June 2013, when new-born babies were not issued with identity cards, and then in full swing in February 2014 across the country and centred around Tuzla (see Lai, 2020). Although the protests failed to crystallize into a structured political opposition, they demonstrated the seriousness of the state failure and the dissatisfaction of the public. Using the slogan ‘we are hungry in three languages’, the public also signalled that Bosnians were concerned about the economy rather than nationalism (Belloni & Strazzari, 2014; Milan, 2019).

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The lack of any progress in these last years has thus been marked by a strenuous and inconsistent Europeanization of Bosnia, with Bosnian politics oscillating between nationalism and economic deprivation (SebastianAparicio, 2014, p. 6). With the direct interventionist powers of the HR long gone and with limited EU hard-power influence over Bosnia,31 the EU has struggled to face up to the centripetal tendencies of Milorad ˇ c. In April 2011, the Dodik but also HDZ BiH under Dragan Covi´ RS National Assembly voted to organize a referendum on the Bosnian State Court, a move interpreted as a direct attack on the fragile central state. It was later called off after a direct intervention by top EU officials, ultimately forcing the EU to take over the Bosnian democratization process and further marginalizing the OHR (also through splitting the previously double hatted HR/EUSR role) (Bennett, 2016, p. 215). But Milorad Dodik’s rhetoric only became more vulgar, separatist and proRussian, while Bosnian Croats reinforced their calls for more autonomy and Bosniaks radicalized their political nationalism. In September 2016, Dodik organized a referendum on celebrating the anniversary of the creation of RS in 1992 (9 January). As Bosnian Serbs voted in favour (with dubious 99.81 percent), Dodik ignored the previous decision of the Constitutional Court and EU warnings; he enacted 9 January as the ‘Day of Srpska’.32 As Jasmin Hasi´c rightly outlines in his political analysis of Dodik’s politics, his strategy is a simple political ruse ‘to redirect focus on ethno-identity issues to distract voters from multiple high-level corruption cases including the plunder of several public companies’ (Hasi´c, 2020, p. 30). In 2020, Dodik again threatened by boycotting state institutions and secession, caused by his attempts to ignore the Constitutional Court’s decision about agricultural land (Kovaˇcevi´c, 2020a). Ignoring decisions of the Constitutional Court has become commonplace in BiH— as of 2016, over 90 of its decisions were ignored (Toe, 2016). By 2020 this number dropped significantly to 15 (six at the state level, two in FBiH, one in RS—see above, and the rest at entity and municipal levels); however, three rulings from the ECtHR, including Sejdi´c-Finci still remain unimplemented (Kovaˇcevi´c, 2020b). Trying to refocus from human rights and the rule of law to the economy, the EU pledged one billion Euro in November 2014 over the following three years. It allowed for SAA to enter into force in 2015 despite previously conditioning it on addressing Sejdi´c-Finci, organizing a national census, adopting a new state aid law and creating an EU coordination body (Perry, 2016; Petr, 2016). In February 2016, BiH submitted

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its EU application despite failing to adopt some key reforms (Hronešová, 2016). Main rewards have become economic support and direct IMF loans. The IMF has periodically renewed its lending arrangements in return for pledges of economic reforms, which has kept entity budgets afloat with injections between 150 to 300 million Euro per year. It has continued to exercise its financial conditionality by postponing its cash injection in cases when desired reforms were not adopted. Meanwhile, the European Union became ‘distracted’ from its accession agenda by the 2015 migration crisis, the 2016 Brexit referendum, the rise of violent extremism and growing illiberal tendencies in membership countries. By 2019, the French President Emmanuel Macron effectively put a break on further enlargement until substantial changes to the European accession process were made (Anastasakis & Hronešová, 2019). While these changes were announced in early 2020, Bosnian prospects of joining the European Union are best expressed in a local wordplay ‘Ja BiH u Evropu’, which effectively reads ‘I would [go] to Europe’, substituting the conditional tense in Bosnian (bih) for the name of the country (BiH). The Bosnian legal scholar Goran Šimi´c compared the torn Bosnian statehood to an old car in our 2014 interview: ‘one group wants the windshields, the other bumpers, and the last group wants the roof, but no one wants the entire old car because it does not work’.33 Combined with the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Serbia, Croatia but also EU countries such as Hungary and Poland, Bosnian prospects for any dramatic progress seem unlikely. The 2020 pandemic crisis of COVID-19 has further laid bare the Bosnian inadequate capacities to provide basic services, including healthcare. Figure 3.3 depicts the key events in post-war Bosnia.

3.4

Victims’ Justice and the Status

Against the backdrop of these political developments, the thousands of people that were directly victimized by war crimes and violence had to adjust their lives to the new realities including the ethno-nationally structured social and political landscape. They emerged from the war with distinct identities produced by their wartime experience, but also by some of the existing socialist legacies that structured social relations. Given the levels of political polarization and the urgent need for security, concerns regarding justice for victims only gradually entered the public sphere in Bosnia in the early 2000s. Although victimhood became part and parcel of

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D ec 6 7 7 8 2 6 2 6 1 6 6 4 1 9 0 5 5 5 9 3 8 6 0 5 0 5 -9 ct-9 n-9 v-0 r-0 y-0 n -0 r-0 r-0 v-0 b-0 r-0 n-0 ct-0 ct-0 n-0 c-0 c-1 r-1 r-1 b -1 n-1 b-1 p -1 ct-1 n-2 Ja Ma Ma No Fe Ap Ju O Ja No Ap Ma Ju De De Ma Ap Fe O O Ju Fe Se O Ja

Dayton Peace Agreement Sloga Government of Moderates under Milorad Dodik in RS FBiH Ministry for Veterans created Elections resulting in the creation of the Alliance for Change in FBiH BiH accepted to the Council of Europe Paddy Ashdown becomes HR Bosnian State Court opens War Crimes Chamber at the State Court opened Venice Commission Report about constitutional changes EU Stabilization and Association Agreement negotiations launched Dodik becomes PM in RS Failed First Constitutional Reform (April Package) PIC announces closure of OHR within a year (later extended) General Elections and the rise of Dodik and Siljadžić Start of the Police Reform crisis under Lajčák SAA and interim trade agreement signed between EC and BiH Sejdić-Finci Ruling by the ECtHR Visa liberalization with the EU Last use of Bonn Powers (HR Inzko) RS Referendum of State Court crisis Mass popular protests across BiH SAA with the EU enters into force Bosnia's EU application submitted Dodik organizes referendum on Day of RS General elections Renewed secessionists threats by Dodik

Fig. 3.3 Timeline of key post-war political developments (Source Author)

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Bosnian life during the war with the high levels of war crimes and displacement and the new ad hoc court, the ICTY, justice-related programmes were rarely targeting victims directly (see Clark, 2014). Instead, the initial focus was on returning refugee and the criminal prosecution of perpetrators, while domestic actors worried about consolidating their territories. While ‘truth and justice’ became sought-after commodities in post-war Bosnia, they have been overshadowed by the trials held at the ICTY. Only gradually have victims started demanding not only legal justice and truth but also wider recognition and redress.34 This final section discusses the variety of their efforts in the aftermath of the war. While the rest of the book discusses these issues in more detail, the aim of this section is to introduce top-down efforts in transitional justice and how they shaped the later demands for victims. 3.4.1

Victimization and the Limits of Legal Justice

As some observers noted, ‘[i]n no other peace-building process in history has there been so much political emphasis placed on the need to employ the norm of justice’ as in Bosnia (Williams and Scharf 2002, xviii). The Dayton agreement already included over 70 references to human rights, 16 international conventions and commitments to cooperation with external judicial institutions, including the ICTY. Although victimization and justice have become key pillars of the three separate ethno-national identities—best exemplified in the various disputes over the nature of the conflict and numbers of fatalities—the main focus has since the end of the war been on the offenders (perpetrators) and the need for retribution rather than victims and their complex experiences and needs. Yet the scale of victimization outlined above provided only limited scope for creating clear-cut definitions of how each ethno-national group was victimized. While Bosnian Muslims have considered themselves the greatest victims of the war due to their mass death rates and crimes committed on them, Bosnian Serbs and Croats argue that their losses and suffering have been belittled and manipulated. Moreover, Serb leadership in particular has also argued that they have been victimized by staying ‘trapped’ in the post-war broken Bosnian state, which they did not desired (Hronešová, 2012). A variety of terms were introduced to denote these multiple wartime victimizations in the aftermath of the war. People have self-identified with victimhood frames defined by an injury, loss, impairment, their civilian or military belonging and their gender, gradually forming categories that

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represented their experiences. At the general level, some have referred to themselves as ‘victims of war’ (žrtve rata) while the broader usage of the term ‘survivors’ (preživeli) as those who came out alive from the wartime hardship has also been used (see Bougarel et al., 2007). Terms such as nestali (missing people), žene žrtve rata (women victims of war), paraplegiˇcari (amputees), logoraši (camp detainees) and ratni vojni invalidi (war military invalids) entered the Bosnian vocabulary during the war, some even taken over from World War II. However, the polarized postwar landscape of Bosnia further added an ethno-national characteristic to these distinctions. During the immediate post-war phase, the focus of victims was primarily on re-establishing their lives and reuniting with their families where and if possible. As many struggled with returns (both from abroad and internally), reclaiming and rebuilding their houses, and finding the truth about or whereabouts of their loved ones, many victims did not start organizing themselves until the late 1990s. While some victims renewed socialist unions of victims from World War II, hundreds of new ‘associations’ (udruženja) were established anew.35 As Bosnian Muslims accounted for a much higher number of victims-survivors, they also formed most of these associations, which became part of the fragmented and aid-dependent Bosnian civil sector. Similar to other victims around the world at the time, their demands were framed in terms of ‘truth and justice’. Truth and justice soon became synonymous with legal truth and legal justice because of the existence of an external arbiter that victims looked up to with much hope, the ICTY. During its first years of existence, the ICTY struggled with funding, external support and enforcement of its indictments (see Kerr, 2007). As a symbolic institution, it was put forward to signal that crimes committed in Yugoslavia would not go unpunished and that whoever tried to commit similar atrocities, would pay a heavy price. The principles of deterrence and non-repetition were thus at the heart of its creation. When the first indictees finally arrived to the ICTY in The Hague in 1996, there was much hope that the tribunal would remedy victims through punishing the perpetrators and delivering factual truth about the war. Indeed, when the first sentence of Bosnian Serb Dražen Erdemovi´c was delivered in 1996 after he pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity in Srebrenica, the world heard for the first time a direct testimony of a soldier, who executed civilian Muslim men.36 The ICTY later experienced its apex by prosecuting some key political orchestrators of the 1990s violence, including

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Slobodan Miloševi´c who was extradited to The Hague in June 2001 but later died in custody in 2006. Earlier that year, the breakthrough judgment of Radislav Krsti´c with a genocide conviction for Srebrenica marked a critical moment for Bosnian Muslims and their memory of the war. Thereafter, Srebrenica became officially termed as ‘genocide’.37 A series of other cases influenced each victim group differently. Injured survivors of the Sarajevo siege and families of the killed men in Srebrenica were waiting for Radovan Karadži´c and Ratko Mladi´c to appear at the tribunal. They celebrated when they were finally captured with much delay in 2007 and 2011, respectively. Amputees and families who lost loved ones in Sarajevo were also concerned with the Stanislav Gali´c case, which documented the brutal shelling under the siege of Sarajevo. Sexually abused women focused on the case of Dragoljub Kunarac, which in 2004 defined rape as a war crime, using previous jurisprudence of its sister tribunal for Rwanda. In total, 161 indictments were issued by the ICTY throughout its nearly 25-year-long existence, which was in many legal respects path-breaking.38 While the ICTY offered much hope, its rarefied nature, physical remoteness in The Hague in the Netherlands, subsequent inconsistency in judgments and lack of early outreach resulted in accusations of politicization and conspiracy theories about its political goals. Moreover, material reparation was never part of the ICTY’s legal mission. Although compensation was excluded from the Tribunal’s Statute (save restitution of property in Article 28), it was formally included in the original Rules of Procedure and Evidence as an option for domestic jurisdiction to pursue.39 Yet the ICTY never advocated its implementation or a reform of the current rules due to the fear that compensation claims would prolong the court proceedings (Ochoa, 2013, p. 210). The literature assessing ICTY’s legacy is rich and still inconclusive (Bass, 2000; Clark, 2014; Kerr, 2004; Meernik & Guerrero, 2014; Nettelfield, 2010; Orentlicher, 2010; Peskin, 2008; Steinberg, 2011). It is certainly the case that the ICTY problematized one-sided nationalist narratives about the conflict and increased the factual knowledge about important historical events.40 Yet the Tribunal was no panacea for breaking wartime divisions and narratives—quite the opposite. As the ICTY remained silent on defining the war and concentrated on legal findings, procedures and evidentiary standards that were often hard to translate into non-legal language, it did not convince the public about its impartiality and fairness. Its outreach came only in 1999 and delivered mixed results. Serbs and later Croats felt targeted by the ICTY while

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Bosniaks feared that guilt has been equalized and their suffering belittled (Gallup Balkan Monitor, 2010). Its findings also had only limited influence over the existing war narratives in the country. A 2010 survey found that around 70 percent of all respondents in BiH believed that the relevant facts about the war in BiH remained unknown (84.4 percent of Serbs, 57.9 percent of Bosniaks and 64.7 percent of Croats) (Kostic, 2013, p. 655). Especially after the 2013 acquittals of Ante Gotovina, Momˇcilo Periši´c and Ramush Haradinaj, the ICTY’s political agenda has been criticized even from the civil sector and the academic community, which had been previously positive about its work (Gordy, 2013b). Each community has kept its own master frame, often not only incompatible with the others but also directly contradictory. Similar to other existing prosecutions around the world, the Tribunal has adopted a prosecutorial strategy of plea-bargaining, which consisted of trade-offs between attaining factual information from low and midranking officials in return for lower sentences (Nalepa, 2012). To victims and especially witnesses who testified, this strategy represented politicized and compromised justice (Stover & Weinstein, 2004). Moreover, as exemplified on several cases in Latin America, when narrating their ‘truth’, perpetrators have often rationalized their actions and thus minimized their responsibility (cf. Payne, 2007). Victims have thus felt betrayed by the court for striking a deal with those who harmed them. According to the leader of the Bosnian Jewish community Jakob Finci, who is also one of the claimants in the famous Sejdi´c-Finci case, ‘a hero for one group is a criminal for the other’.41 As some scholars noted because compliance with the ICTY also became part of EU conditionality, the court turned into ‘a useful foil in the hands of political propagandists to solidify a sense that their national group is a misunderstood or unacknowledged victim of the conflict’ (Fletcher & Weinstein, 2004, pp. 600–601). Polarization thus accompanied every judgment delivered at the ICTY until its formal closure in December 2017 and continuation of cases under the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals. Nonetheless, the ICTY was also critical in creating a domestic judicial tool—the War Crimes Chamber at the State Court of BiH. Established in 2005 and originally staffed with international judges and prosecutors (until 2012), it began working in 2008 and focused on war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide cases, some of which have been referred from the ICTY. From 2004 to March 2013, Bosnian courts at all levels completed a total of 214 war crimes cases, convicting 235 individuals

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(OSCE, 2011). However, due to the complex nature of the Bosnian court system with entity-level courts often using different legal codes, there has been a great level of judicial parallelism leading to a lack of understanding about how the justice system works. The Bosnian judicial system copies the cumbersome administrative political system of the country. At the national level is the Court of BiH with its War Crimes Chamber. At the entity levels are ten cantonal courts in the Federation and six district courts in RS and a Court for the Brˇcko District. There are separate supreme courts for the entity level and an appellate court for Brˇcko. Cantonal and district courts as well as the judiciary in Brˇcko apply the socialist Criminal Code from 1976, which was in force during the 1992–1995 conflict, while the BiH State Court (and the War Crimes Chamber) applies the Criminal Code of BiH from 2003. In practice, for the same type of offence a different sentence can be delivered. Such labyrinthine structures are close to impenetrable to many victims. Although victims have a right to file civil cases to claim material compensation, the cumbersome and slow judicial system has rarely awarded them any. Only a handful of claimants had succeeded by 2019, especially in relation to sexual violence (see Chapter 6). Witness protection and counselling has also developed only slowly, resulting in several cases of domestic intimidation and violence on witnesses. Moreover, already in 2002, Bosnia also became the 44th member of the Council of Europe, obliging it to sign the broad human rights framework implied in the membership. Treaties that pertain to victims’ rights that Bosnia signed later include the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (with all later amendments), the European Convention on the Compensation of Victims of Violent Crimes, European Convention on the Non-Applicability of Statutory Limitation to Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes and the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence among others.42 Despite the signature of such treaties, the domestic legal practice numerously ignored these obligations, for example, frequently ruling that statute of limitations for war crimes can be applied (for more see Meški´c, 2017). Therefore, these issues have over time led to the fact that victims have become sceptical and distrustful of the overall legal system and the protection it offers them.

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3.4.2

Non-legal Forms of Justice: Truth and Recognition

Despite the failures of legal institutions to focus on victims, they have provided important information and leverage when demanding further forms of redress such as truth commissions and reparations. Initial efforts for truth-seeking efforts were launched in 1997 under the leadership of the US Institute of Peace (USIP) and with a wide-ranging societal participation (Hayner, 2001, p. 207). However, as ICTY’s work finally started progressing around that time, legal forms of justice were given precedence. The ICTY also partially opposed the creation of truth-seeking mechanisms, wary of their potential to undermine its own investigations (see Dragovi´c-Soso, 2016). Subsequent attempts from the civil society across BiH to establish a national Bosnian truth commission in 2000 also brought no progress. Jakob Finci who was part of the 2000 meetings that resulted in the ‘National Coordinating Committee for Establishment of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Citizens’ Association for Truth and Reconciliation’, described their objectives as follows: ‘Our idea was … to create a system of commemoration of the conflicts, so that we create a system of forgiveness without forgetting as we have to live together’.43 ‘We were inspired by South Africa but our situation was diametrically different,’ he added. Their final legal propositions not only failed to receive backing from the lawmakers but they also faced opposition from victim associations who worried that perpetrators might receive amnesty through the process (Mallinder, 2008, p. 138). In 2005 a proposal led by UNDP, Dayton Project and USIP for a ‘Truth and Reconciliation Forum’ also failed, mainly because of the opposition of Bosnian Serb leadership and the worsening political situation (Dragovi´c-Soso, 2016, p. 300). Although local commissions for Sarajevo and Bijeljina were set up in 2004 at the request of victim associations, both were riddled with political tensions and concerns over objectivity and legitimate leadership (Mallinder, 2008, p. 153). In the absence of top-down truth-seeking efforts, the civil sector created smaller and local initiatives. From early on, a plethora of NGOs stepped into a vacuum left by the malfunctioning state, to launch memory projects, offer psychosocial care for victims and re-educate victims. Gaining capacities, many victim associations later launched their own truth-seeking projects, partially increasing the cacophony of narratives and localized war interpretations. Ultimately, the only promising efforts have come with the regional ex-Yugoslav commission for the disclosure of facts

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and testimonies (called REKOM) in 2006. Although it initially gained momentum, it has so far failed to get wider support for its fact-seeking aims (see Jones, Jeffrey, & Jakala, 2013). After victims realized that their needs were not at the centre of external or domestic concerns, their mobilization intensified. The longer the postwar stabilization and lack of economic progress lasted, the more victims became concerned with socio-economic justice, rather than legal justice only. As some respondents noted, sentences for war criminals did not provide for victim families on the verge of poverty. The end of victims’ hopes for external reparations came with the final ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in February 2007 that Serbia was not obliged to pay reparations to Bosnia (ICJ, 2007). It also effectively defined the conflict as international. Although BiH filed a genocide case against Serbia already in March 1993 (i.e. before Srebrenica), it took 14 years for the final verdict to be delivered (for more see Rosenberg, 2008). The court ruled that although Serbia funded VRS operations in Bosnia, Srebrenica or any crimes prior were not carried out by the Serbian state institutions but by individuals.44 Subsequently, individual victims or smaller groups of victims have been filing their own cases at foreign and domestic courts, some resulting in victories and legal compensation payments (see Chapter 6). Such efforts represented unsystematic efforts for individual redress, rather than tackling the underlying lack of socio-economic redress for victims and their recognition. These concerns also became part of an effort to bring all transitional justice efforts in Bosnia under one roof. After a series of discussions with the civil sector, victim associations and international experts, the UNDP, Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees and the Ministry of Justice and civil society proposed a draft of a ‘Transitional Justice Strategy’ for Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2012 (Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, 2012). By involving some 200 experts, policy makers and representatives of the civil sector within Bosnia through open debates, the Strategy defined the most painful problems in BiH, while reducing its scope into issues related to non-judicial forms of transitional justice in the form of fact-finding, truth-telling, reparations, memorials and institutional reforms. Criminal prosecution is left out of the Transitional Justice Strategy but it referenced the Justice Sector Reform Strategy (2008) and National War Crimes Strategy (2008).45 Its references to other strategies only demonstrate how closely tied to other reform process the Transitional Justice Strategy for BiH was aimed to be. However, since its

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presentation to the Bosnian state Parliament in 2012, it has been laid ad acta. Some of the reasons were a high price tag (in the realm of 8,000,000 Euro), lack of consensus about the extent of categorizations but also due to some opposition of victim associations that voiced their concern over definitions of victims.46 Others suggested that victims’ opposition to previous effort for truth-seeking was related to their dependence on political parties but also to worries about retraumatization, especially of victims of sexual violence (Dragovi´c-Soso, 2016, pp. 305–307). Aware of the limits of legal justice but also unsatisfied with the existing efforts, victim associations turned their attention to achieving a victim ‘status’ granted by the Bosnian state that would entitle them to domestic benefits and privileges such as free healthcare, employment privileges and educational benefits for their children. The pursuit of ‘status’ has according to some scholars become an ‘obsession’ (Delpla, 2014, p. 246). The ‘status’, i.e. the formal institutionalized recognition of victimization, has not only provided monetary support, it has also encapsulated the recognition of suffering and de facto innocence of the beneficiary. Despite the meagre provisions related to such a status, for many victims it also represented a form of inter-generational social justice, offering their children a better life. Once the status demands became clearly formulated in the early 2000s, victim associations applied a variety of tools and approaches to secure recognition—some with higher success than others. It was especially between 2000 and 2006, when some of the key victim-centred policies were adopted. Despite the growing demands for status, Bosnian victims never ceased to insist on legal justice and the fight against impunity as one of their key demands (Delpla, 2007, p. 225). Therefore, although recognition rose during the second post-war phase as a key priority, legal justice has remained a source of leverage. Against the backdrop of the general feelings of victims’ injustice after the war, victim associations thus only gradually embarked upon a campaign to get what they believed was owed to them—recognition of their suffering and support from the state. During the last phase, the ICTY and domestic judgements remained critical as a validation of group victimization and justification for demands. However, victims’ efforts for justice have moved away from the ad hoc tribunal and concentrated on accessing their hard-won rights. They also invested in memorialization efforts, aimed at defeating the thriving culture of denial and relativization of wartime suffering. With the growth of nationalist rhetoric, victim associations have become defenders of

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wartime narratives and redress for individual victims. However, their ability to demand further rights has been limited due to the growing economic malaise in the country that has defined domestic and external policy priorities. Only limited adjustments to the victim-centric legislation were adopted in this phase. The later each new legal amendment was passed, the fewer victims were alive to be eligible, implicitly also affecting fewer families. To offer more clarity into the role of time and context for status outcomes, I summarized the political and justice developments in Bosnia in Table 3.1. It depicts the three post-war phases with the main priorities of external and domestic actors as discussed above. It also includes a summary of the main goals of victims that are further described in the next chapters. The aim of the table is to show the temporal progress of the victims’ demands and stress the delay in which recognition and redress entered into their justice preferences. In the first phase, where policymakers focused on returns and security, there was the dominance of ‘truth and justice’ and a focus on legal measures through the ICTY. In the second phase, with the rise of central institutions that included Table 3.1 Periodization of Victims’ Demands Phase

Period

External actors’ priorities

Domestic actors’ priorities

Victims’ demands

Emergency post-war stabilization

1995–1999

Peace, security and returns

Consolidation of ethno-national territories

Centralization and external state-building

2000–2006

Strengthening central institutions

Consolidation of power

Flawed Europeanization

2007–2020

Transfer to local authorities and EU reforms

Status quo/increase in territorial powers

Truth about whereabouts of loved ones and legal justice (ICTY) ‘Truth and justice’, ICTY, domestic courts, and reparations (ICJ), redress ‘Truth and justice’, focus on domestic courts, internal access to status, redress and memorialization

Source Author

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the strengthening of the domestic judicial system, these demands diversified into a variety of other non-legal claims. In particular, victims’ efforts turned to their socio-economic needs in the form of external and domestic reparations. While some individuals insisted upon external reparations, most claims for redress crystallized into articulated demands for status as a form of recognition and assistance from the Bosnian state. During the last phase, marked by the escalation of domestic politics and increased economic strains, victims continued with their previous demands but also insisted on implementation of the adopted laws and their expansion, as well as on memorialization of victims.

3.5

Conclusion

After wars history is written by the winner. But in the Bosnian cases, the war ended with no clear winner and many losers. Croats in Croatia got their independence and defended the territory, which was occupied by Serbs; Serbs created Republika Srpska as another Serb land outside of Serbia; and Bosniaks succeeded to prevail even if they were attacked from both sides. In such a situation, when Serbs consider it a civil war and Bosniak an aggression, …, it is very difficult to understand who owes what to whom.47

This excerpt from my interview with Jakob Finci underlines the complex legacies of the Bosnian war and the inherent controversies about its nature, which have structured post-war political life in Bosnia and victims’ efforts to claim justice. It was my aim here to explore the war and the post-war conflicts to set the scene for the victims’ struggle for redress that I analyse next. Understanding the early 1990s when Bosnia was fragmented into ethno-national turfs is critical for studying its post-war developments. War-generated divisions have not only become institutionalized by the consociationalist structures of the Dayton peace framework but also by visceral rivalries of the main political actors, which have later used frames of victimhood to justify their claims for power. Although many external actors steered the post-war stabilization phase, the external guardianship of Bosnia led to domestic conflicts that directed external attention towards stability and peace, rather than creating a socially inclusive political system. Especially until 2006, external actors dominated domestic policymaking, forcing the main nationalist parties towards

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cooperation and centralization. But with the end of externally guided policymaking, the start of the economic crisis and the beginning of inconsistent Europeanization thereafter, Bosnian politics returned to the polarized and nationalist discourse of the 1990s that has lasted until now. While the short second phase saw some critical centralization reforms in a rather short period of time, the last phase has lasted for 13 years without much progress. On the contrary, it has been characterized by threats of separatism, intransigent elites, growing nationalism and economic malaise. The context outlined here has posed many challenges to victims’ efforts and in many respects shaped the strategies they were able to pursue. As Louise Mallinder noted in her detailed overview of transitional justice in BiH until 2009, ‘what is striking about the Bosnian experience is the extent to which decisions on justice issues have been made by political elites, either domestically or internationally, with relatively little engagement with domestic civil society actors’ (Mallinder, 2008, p. 162). Yet she is not entirely correct to argue that ‘unlike the experiences in Uruguay, Argentina and elsewhere, civil society groups have not spearheaded mass mobilisations to demand truth and justice’ (ibid.). While the weakness of civil society in Bosnia when compared to other cases is clear, as the rest of this book shows, had it not been for victim associations’ and civil society efforts, little would have been achieved across BiH regarding post-war justice. In fact, baffled by and unsatisfied with the exogenous forces of justice applied in Bosnia, their demands became directed at the divided domestic institutions and an insistence on the creation of a broader framework for victims’ recognition within the Bosnian state. Although some victims initially believed in formal redress delivered through legal means such as the ICTY or the ICJ, it soon became clear that the disputed nature of the judicial process would not satisfy them. By the end of the first postwar phase, many victims started mobilizing for new policies as a form of material assistance and recognition of their victimization from the central and entity governments. A key goal became the pursuit of a formal ‘status’, i.e. a legal recognition of a victim category as eligible for material and in-kind support. However, as the following chapters suggest, some victim groups have been more successful with such demands than others due to their positioning in the post-war state and their victim capital.

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Notes 1. For literature review of the various theories of the Yugoslav disintegration see Jovic (2001); Dragovi´c-Soso (2008). 2. It should be stressed that some recent research suggests that given the high Gastarbeiter population of Bosnians working in Germany and abroad, the pre-war population might have been lower, closer to 4 million (Judah & Vracic, 2019). 3. The aim of this section is to provide an overview of the war to inform other sections of this book. For more detailed and thorough accounts see Gutman (1993), Vulliamy (1994), Bennett (1995), Cigar (1995), Woodward (1995), Glenny (1996), Maass (1996), Rieff (1996), Silber & Little (1996), Rohde (1998), Hoare (2004), Burg & Shoup (2000), Ramet (2005), Magas & Zanic (2013). 4. These data come from the 1991 census (Burg & Shoup, 2000, p. 27). 5. For a full account of the war military see Hoare (2004). 6. Banja Luka became the capital only after the war. 7. Its members have been called pejoratively autonomaši (de facto separatists). The inter-Bosniak conflict lasted from 29 September 1993 until 7 August 1995 (Andreas, 2004; Magas & Zanic, 2013). ˇ 8. Cetniks were extreme monarchists fighting for the restoration of Serbian domination under Draža Mihailovi´c during World War II. Ustaše were Nazi-supporting Croatian nationalists that ran an independent puppet state of enlarged Croatia under Ante Paveli´c during the same period. 9. It was only in the 1971 census when Bosnians were given the option to identify with their nation under the term Muslimani, with capital M to distinguish nationality from the religious muslimani (Babuna, 2005). 10. The term ethnic cleansing was re-introduced with the Bosnian war (Petrovi´c, 2007). 11. The infamous ‘ethnic hatred thesis’ was advocated in Robert Kaplan’s unscientific analysis of the wars. The paradox of Christian Croats fighting against Christian Serbs was downplayed (Kaplan, 1994). 12. For example, mixed municipalities in FBiH informally agreed to have a Bosniak mayor and a Croat deputy or vice versa (Touquet, 2012). 13. The key agreements according to Annex VI are as follows: 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; 1949 Geneva Conventions I-IV on the Protection of the Victims of War, and the 1977 Geneva Protocols I-II thereto; 1950 European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, and the Protocols thereto; 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1966 Protocol thereto; 1957 Convention on the Nationality of Married Women; 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness; 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial

3

14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

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Discrimination; 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the 1966 and 1989 Optional Protocols thereto; 1966 Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women; 1984 Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; 1987 European Convention on the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child; 1990 Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families; 1992 European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; 1994 Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (The General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1995). The third phase could be further divided into two to reflect the growing marginalization of the HR after 2011. However, for the arguments presented here, the three phases are sufficient. According to Fagan, the EU alone has spent over 2.5 billion Euro in BiH from 1991 until 2010 (Fagan, 2010, p. 95). In 2008, the number of returnees reached a million. For the history of the meetings, see the OHR official website, http:// www.ohr.int/pic/default.asp?content_id=5182#11, accessed 7 May 2019. Under the title of Ministry for Issues of Veterans and Disabled Veterans of the Defensive-Liberation War. For an overview of the court system see OSCE (2011). Karadži´c was later sentenced to life imprisonment in 2019, Krajišnik to 20 years in 2009 (released in 2013) and Plavši´c to 11 years (released in 2009). Milorad Dodik was RS’s Prime Minister from 1998 to 2001 and 2006 to 2010 and the President of RS thereafter. He is currently in the Bosnian Presidency. These were the Community Assistance for Reconstruction, Development and Stabilization (CARDS) and within the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights. Technical Assistance for Civil Society Organizations has been another key EU signature project. Only in 2000– 2004, CARDS distributed nearly 400 million Euro in BiH. See the EU Delegation in Bosnia website at http://europa.ba/?page_id=496, accessed 1 February 2018. Already in 2003, BiH was identified as a potential EU candidate. The Prud Agreement was initially driven by the main political parties due to their EU aspirations but it was buried together with the rest of the reform attempts later (Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014, pp. 154–157). The only tangible results were the final inclusion of the Brˇcko District into the Constitution and the decision to organize a census in 2011. It was organized only in 2013 with results published in July 2016.

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26. Personal interview with a political analyst in Sarajevo, 2015. 27. The only outlier was the election of Croat Željko Komši´c from SDP as a Bosniak member of the presidency. 28. According to the 2014 data, the Bosnian electorate was 3.28 million with 7,748 candidates on the list. See online the official Central Election Committee, https://goo.gl/an242G, accessed 4 May 2017. 29. A key instrument of economic aid in 2008 when an agreement was signed became the so-called IPA funds (Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance). 30. For all decisions see the OHR website online, http://www.ohr.int/?page_id = 1196, accessed 20 January 2018. 31. The EUFOR mission was in 2012 scaled down to 600 soldiers (Christopher Bennett, 2016, p. 216). 32. Bosniaks celebrate 1 March as the ‘Day of Bosnian Independence’, i.e. the day of the 1992 referendum, and with Croats also the ‘Day of Bosnian Statehood’ on 25 November as the historical creation of BiH in 1943. 33. Personal interview with Goran Šimi´c, 2015. 34. The WB and the WHO launched rehabilitation projects for Bosnian victims in 1996, but by 2002 these efforts were transferred to local NGOs (Maglajli´c Holiˇcek & Rašidagi´c, 2007, pp. 157–158). 35. This term was used in ex-Yugoslavia. There were over 300 associations listed in the various registries across the country across 2016. Their vast majority gathered veteran organizations. The list is with the author. 36. For his guilty plea at the ICTY, see https://www.icty.org/en/content/ dra%C5%BEen-erdemovi%C4%87, accessed 8 April 2019. 37. Prosecutor vs. Krsti´c, IT-98-33. See online at http://www.icty.org/case/ krstic/4, accessed 9 May 2018. 38. The full list of cases can be found online here: https://www.icty.org/ en/cases, accessed 24 March 2019. 39. ICTY, Rule 105 and 106, in Rules of Procedure and Evidence (IT/32), adopted on 14 March 1994. 40. In 2005, ICTY published a film of Serbian paramilitaries executing Bosniaks in Srebrenica, shaking the public opinion in Serbia (Gordy, 2013a). 41. Personal interview with Jakob Finci, 2015. 42. Council of Europe’s Treaty list for BiH can be accessed online, https:// www.coe.int/en/web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/cou ntry/BOS?p_auth=YN7oPBL8, accessed 5 May 2019. 43. Personal interview with Jakob Finci, 2015. 44. In February 2017, Bosniak representatives resubmitted the case to ICJ but it was rejected on procedural grounds because the submission was not endorsed by the then President of the Presidency (Latal, 2017).

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45. These are especially the Revised Strategy of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the Implementation of Annex VII of the Dayton Peace Agreement; Public Administration Reform Strategy from 2006; Gender Action Plan from 2006; and the currently debated Programme for Improvement of Status of Women Victims of War Rape and Sexual Harassment and Torture in BIH, 2012–2016. 46. Personal interview with a victim leader, 2019. See also Clark (2017, pp. 160–165). 47. Personal interview with Jakob Finci, 2015.

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CHAPTER 4

‘Why Is My Leg Worth Less?’ Disability and the Loss of Life of Military and Civilian War Victims

4.1

Introduction

‘I have not become this through my own doing. It is the war which did this to me and now I want the state to make it better, so that I can live a normal life like anyone else,’ says Sabina, pointing to her limp left arm and leg.1 She lost mobility in her limbs during her childhood after a splinter from an exploded shell damaged her backbone in 1992. She was 29 years old when we met in 2015 and probably the youngest leader of a what is in Bosnia referred to as ‘civilian war victim’ association. Civilian war victim in Bosnia is a term generally used for individuals who were disabled or severely physically hurt during the war, distinguishing them from victims of torture, sexual violence and families of the missing. Although her war disability made her eligible for a monthly disability payment and free healthcare enacted in 1999, she was only able to gain access to these provisions in 2004. Even then, though, her entitlements were significantly lower than the benefits offered to military victims who had suffered similar injuries. According to the law of the Federation of BiH, Sabina is entitled to 70 percent of monthly payments granted to a military victim. Her ‘additional benefits’ that in the case of military victims include rights for employment, free transportation, tax exemptions and other support, are reduced to basic free healthcare. Although Sabina is glad to receive some support, she cannot hide her disappointment. ‘Why is my leg worth less?’ she asks. © The Author(s) 2020 J. Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2_4

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Across BiH civilians who were injured or lost relatives during the war have been subject to restrictive recognition and redress. Meanwhile, military victims of war—that is families of fallen soldiers and disabled veterans—have been recipients of much broader redress benefits in both entities, FBiH and RS. In this chapter, I contrast the two groups of victims and offer explanations to why they have been treated differently by the post-war Bosnian law. Through the case of military war victims, I illustrate the scenario of Domestic Pressure, which proposes positive outcomes as the result of a combination of high mobilization resources and high moral authority. Through the case of civilian war victims, I illustrate the Poster Child scenario, when recognition is driven by high international salience and moral authority. However, as civilian war victims were only able to benefit from this combination for a short time, this scenario applies only partially. This chapter represents the first building block of my arguments and lays out the structure for the remainder of the book. I first characterize the studied victim groups and the drivers for their demands. I then review how they formulated their demands and describe the varied outcomes that have been achieved. The main part of the analysis focuses on explaining the outcomes based on their victim capital. I then discuss the context and the specific combinations that led to policy changes. Unlike in the following chapters, I do not include a separate section on access (i.e. implementation) here. As recognition of military and civilian victims was initially enacted during the war as a legacy of socialism, demands of these groups have focused on the expansion of the existing legal frameworks, or their preservation, rather than an adoption of new ones. Therefore, enhancing implementation (i.e. access to payments, broader eligibility/recognition and wider services) adopted during and immediately after the war have formed their main demands.

4.2 Characterizing Civilian and Military War Victims It is first important to outline some of the main characteristics of civilian and military victims of war as they represent diverse victim groups. In Bosnia, the main general distinction between war-generated groups is made between the civilian and military ‘war populations’ [ratne populacije]. The so-called civilne žrtve rata (civilian war victims) have since the end of the war formed a distinct category of civilian paraplegics, civilians injured during the war and the immediate families of civilians killed

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in the war (i.e. children, spouses and parents). While this label in theory includes all civilian survivors of war (including victims of sexual violence, camp inmates and families of the missing), the primary connotation of civilian victims in Bosnia refers to injured or disabled civilians and the families of those who were killed only. This is mainly due to the fact that victims of sexual violence, camp inmates and families of the missing have created their own associations, identities and organizations. For the sake of clarity, in this book the term ‘civilian war victims’ thus only means injured civilians (as direct victims) and families of civilians who were killed (as indirect victims). I further introduce the term ‘military war victims’ to denote the population of military paraplegics, soldiers severely injured during the war and the immediate families of fallen soldiers. This category consists of so-called ‘war military invalids’ (ratni vojni invalidi) and families of fallen soldiers. Though victimized, they concurrently also belong to the broader ‘fighter population’ (boraˇcka populacija) that includes veterans from the different army units during the war (Berdak, 2015). As noted in Chapter 1, military-related groups have been studied through the prism of security as potential ‘peace spoilers’ (Hoddie & Hartzell, 2010) rather than victimized individuals (unless their injuries resulted from illicit warfare). However, in many conflicts, soldiers become victimized by wars and families whose members are killed on the battlefield face similar exigencies and losses as those of civilian victims (Ballinger, 2003, p. 135). Moreover, in cases where soldiers enter wars under duress, their victimization can result from their unwilling participation. While many power differences remain between civilian and war military victims—as discussed in this chapter—it is useful to study these groups side by side due to their similarities in order to examine their recognition. In Bosnia as well as elsewhere, they have suffered comparable impairments or personal losses, are organized in mono-ethnic associations with hierarchical structures and have been legally ‘treated’ by their respective authorities. Both groups have suffered from direct and indirect victimization with irreversible consequences. They have also organized into representative associations across Bosnia although they each identify with their respective civilian or military belonging. Moreover, both categories have benefited from the socialist legacies of war payments that make them dependent on each other: civilian redress benefits are calculated as a proportion of the military benefits. Their demands have thus concentrated on ensuring that legislation is either expanded (in the case

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of civilian victims) or maintained (in the case of military victims). Therefore, I have included them alongside each other to underline some of the different ways in which they have pursued their common goal of redress but also to illustrate the propositions presented in Chapter 2. The two studied categories are not only conceptually difficult to define but there is also a lack of statistical data about their exact populations after the war. Data about their sizes are incomplete because of a decentralized registration system of beneficiaries and a lack of evidence at the state level. However, using several sources, we can arrive at some estimates. As for wartime injuries, existing records suggest that 174,000 people were seriously injured during the war, out of which 83,550 were members of the military (Bieber, 2007, p. 157). However, the scale of these injuries has never been recorded precisely. As for the direct casualties, around 100,000 people were killed in the war as discussed in the previous chapter. Therefore, it can reasonably be assumed that such large numbers of casualties would result in hundreds of thousands of bereaved relatives. While over 40 percent of all causalities were civilians across all sides, the death toll is clearly skewed towards Bosniaks: 81 percent of all civilian deaths were Bosniaks (Tokaˇca, 2012, pp. 116–124). More than half of all military fatalities (54 percent) were also among Bosniaks (ibid.). Furthermore, as Fig. 4.1 depicts, the civilian casualties among the non-Bosniak groups were lower while the death toll among civilian and military Bosniaks is comparable in size. Other Croats Serbs Bosniaks 0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

50,000

60,000

Bosniaks

Serbs

Croats

Other

Civilians

31,107

4,178

2,484

470

Military

30,906

20,775

5,919

101

70,000

Fig. 4.1 Casualties of the Bosnian War by military/civilian deaths (Source Tables created from data included in the Bosnian Book of Dead [Tokaˇca, 2012, 112–113])

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However, given the passage of time since the end of the war (25 years), large-scale resettlements of Bosnians abroad and identification with other victim categories, the current victim population is likely to be manifold smaller. Current data is therefore needed. The available data from the entity registries merges direct and indirect civilian victims. According to the obtained data of the FBiH Ministry of Labour and Social Policy for 2015, there were 10,318 registered civilian victims, most of whom were residing in Sarajevo (4072). Data I received from the equivalent RS ministry stated that there were 3369 civilian victims for 2014. In contrast, in 2013 military redress in FBiH was provided for 47,787 family members of fallen soldiers and 54,000 military invalids (Bartlett, 2014, p. 37). Obtained data for 2014 in RS suggested that there were 26,103 family members of fallen soldiers and 34,250 military invalids. Therefore, the total numbers of registered military victims across BiH (around 162,200) are currently vastly higher than the registered civilian victims (around 13,700). As I discuss below, this is also caused by how victims are able to register their injuries. Table 4.1 summarizes the estimates of the current populations with data from 2013 to 2015. As noted, both groups are represented by a variety of associations. Given their large numbers (several hundreds), the focus of my analysis are the most outspoken associations.2 In FBiH, civilian war victims fall under the umbrella Union of the Associations of Civilian War Victims in FBiH (Unija udruženja civilnih žrtava rata FBiH , henceforth ‘FBiH CWV Union’), which was set up as the renewal of the socialist civilian war victim association established in 1971 (Delpla, 2007, p. 221). As many registered disabled civilian victims live in Sarajevo, their key representative body is the cantonal association in Sarajevo with 3500 members.3 In RS, the main representative body is the RS Union of Associations of Civilian War Victims (Unija udruženja civilnih žrtava rata RS, henceforth ‘RS CWV Union’) whose membership is made up of disabled civilians and Table 4.1 Registered civilian and military victims as of 2013–2015 (rounded)

Territory/group

FBiH

RS

Total in BiH

Civilian war victims Military war victims

≈10,300

≈3400

≈13,700

≈101,800

≈60,400

≈162,200

Source Author’s data provided by entity ministries

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families of killed civilians from the 63 municipalities in RS. It reports a total membership of 3200.4 Finally, the small Mostar-based cantonal Union of Civilian Victims of the Homeland War (Udruga civilnih žrtava domovinskog rata) gathers a few hundred Croat victims. I refer to it only marginally as it is not very active or prominent but at times cooperates with the other organizations.5 As for military victims, families of fallen soldiers have primarily gathered in veteran associations (or cooperated with them), while disabled veterans have created their own unions of invalids. Veteran associations initially grew from the pre-war Yugoslav veteran organization for Partisan veterans from World War II, which had its regional branches across SFRY.6 Each military unit from the recent war established its own veteran and disabled veteran associations. In 1994, war invalids started uniting all cantonal associations in FBiH. Members of the mainly Bosniak Army of BiH joined the Union for War Disabled Veterans BiH (Savez ratnih vojnih invalida BiH ) and Bosnian Croats of the HVO the Association of Croat Disabled Soldiers of the Patriotic War (Hrvatski vojni invalidi Domovinskog rata, HVIDRA).7 In 2017, there were some 1800 veteran associations registered in FBiH (Spaic, 2017). The Union of War Disabled Veterans of RS (Savez ratnih vojnih invalida RS) for members of the VRS was formally established in 1993.8 These organizations created coordination committees that gather all associations of military-related individuals relevant for each ethno-national group. Families of fallen soldiers in RS have organized mainly under the Organization of Fighters of RS (Boraˇcka organizacija Republike Srpske, BORS). In FBiH families gathered also in the Unified Organization of Fighters (Jedinstvena Organizacija Boraca, JOB) and the newer local Associations of Demobilized Fighters (Udruženje demobilisanih boraca, UDB). Thus, military victims of the Bosnian war have become part of the broader movement of Bosnian war veterans.

4.3

Goals and Outcomes: Status and Reforms

Civilian and military war victims were the first victim groups to include various forms of redress such as monetary compensation among their goals both during and after the war. Given the large numbers of injured civilians in Sarajevo, the civilian victim cantonal association in Sarajevo became a leading group pressing for recognition, rehabilitation, requalification and other material and mental support, as well as for legal justice.9

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In the words of the current leader of both the cantonal and the FBiH entity unions, Senida Karovi´c: ‘we do not need a truth commission but to prosecute all perpetrators and compensate all victims’.10 Similar demands were voiced in RS. Likewise, military victims demanded compensation and rehabilitation for the harm suffered during combat as a ‘debt’ owed to them by their authorities. Recognition of their suffering and material benefits stood at the forefront of their demands from early on, with the justification that they had sacrificed their limbs, health and ‘sons’ for the state (or ethno-national community).11 All surviving soldiers initially received vouchers from the entity governments of RS and FBiH that they could use to buy business assets or property. However, the military vouchers soon turned into a speculators’ business and most veterans sold them for a sliver of their initial value to ‘war profiteers’ as the new wargenerated class of businessmen has been called (Bieber, 2007, p. 392). After ‘we realized that the vouchers were the first fraud [prevara] in a series of scams to come, we started demanding as much as we could get’, a leader of a military victim association in Mostar explained.12 The initial legislation protecting these groups was taken from exYugoslavia in both entities (Karge, 2010), so neither group started from zero (unlike most groups dealt with later). In FBiH, redress for military victims of the Army of BiH (though aimed to cover the whole territory of BiH) was initially stipulated in the Law on Basic Rights of War Invalids and Families of Killed Soldiers, adopted in 1992. After the war, the law had to be amended to include the variety of armies and units that emerged during the war.13 Although the Federation’s Ministry for Veteran Affairs (i.e. for Bosniaks and Croats) was established at the end of 1999, it took additional four years to create an FBiH Ministry of Defence and another year to agree upon a new law. Until then, cantons had powers to decide how to implement the existing legal stipulations. In 2004, the FBiH Law on the Rights of Defenders and their Family Members14 was adopted to address all military victims and war veterans. This law finally overruled the previous Yugoslav system and located veterans’ rights within the newly created ministry. As a consequence, demobilized fighters lost their rights for monthly payments that were much higher than average salaries at that time. Due to cost-cutting measures described below, veteran benefits lowered with the 2004 law. The specific provisions for military victims (Section VI of the Law), allocated rights-based funds (i.e. not means-tested) and fourteen additional rights to all military victims. The two main reforms of the

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law were enacted in 2007 and 2010, at first increasing and then reducing the provisions for military victims.15 The 2010 reform was later declared unlawful and put on hold, leading to patchy implementation across FBiH. Since then, veterans demanded a unified registry of all ex-fighters that would be verified and an overhaul of the haphazard system that befitted highest ranking officials and special-award holders. However, after years of protests and pressure, in July 2019 a new amendment to the Law was adopted that dramatically expanded rights of demobilized soldiers, their families and military victims.16 It specified a monthly payment for each month spent in war (up to 5 Bosnian Marks, KM) for soldiers over 57 years of age without jobs and 16 additional rights, including free transport, healthcare, employment preferences, housing benefits and others. Unemployed veterans older than 57 years of age that spent at least 48 months in the war are now entitled to approximately 120 Euro per month (around half of the minimum wage). RS applied the existing Yugoslav legislation for war veterans until it also adopted a new law in 2004. In May 2004, the RS Law on Rights of Fighters, Military Invalids and the Families of Fallen Fighters of the Defensive-Liberation War entered into force.17 The Law stipulated rights for military victims, irrespective of their income or employment and provided them with monthly payments. Similar to FBiH, the Law has also granted 14 additional social and health benefits (e.g. housing, wheelchairs provisions and other material aid). These benefits have ranged from preferential employment and retraining to additional medical benefits and free legal support. The law was first reformed in 2007. In 2011, a more streamlined system was introduced with an additional monetary bonus paid out to all veterans on the basis of the amount of time spent in the war (Bartlett, 2014). This special ‘fighters’ bonus’ was calculated on the basis of each month spent in war (around 1.35 Euro) on top of a monthly payment of around 200 Euro (Rudic, Vladisavljevic, Lakic, & Haxiaj, 2018). The method of calculating disability is painstaking set of measurements and assessments. In both entities, veterans with disabilities of over 20 percent of bodily harm,18 along with dependent parents, spouses and children of fallen soldiers, have been eligible for monthly payments and additional rights. In order to be granted the necessary ‘status’ granting this support, all military victims were issued with a medical and military certificate after the war. This certification was distributed by the respective subnational ministries (entity and cantonal), confirming that

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the individual was a member of one of the recognized military units and suffered in the war. The base amount for the monthly allowance was set annually as a proportion of the entity’s mean salary. In 2015, the full FBiH military disability pension with bonuses amounted to 1884 KM (942 Euro) per month (i.e. more than double the mean salary in BiH19 ) and the lowest category of support was set at 109 KM (54.5 Euro).20 The allowances have been consistently lower in RS as its economy has been weaker. Families of fallen soldiers have received payments calculated as a percentage of the baseline amount for disabled veterans based on how many immediate family members were eligible (Boži´c, 2014, p. 180). Both amounts peaked in 2010 in FBiH and in 2011 in RS (OSCE, 2012, p. 15). In general, military-related populations received the vast majority of resources spent on social protection in BiH, mainly due to their much higher numbers (IBHI, 2013). With the new 2019 law in FBiH, this number will probably grow. The socialist legislation (from 1974) for civilian war victims was also still in force during the war. It only recognized serious physical harm and allowed for pensions of the deceased to be transferred to their surviving family members (Karge, 2010, p. 81). The existence of two entities with separate administrative powers (and later the District of Brˇcko) resulted in the fact that after the war civilian war victims’ rights came under entity legislation, just like military victims. While the socialist practice continued, there was a real need to adopt new entity laws given the chaotic implementation.21 FBiH rather hastily adopted the Law on the Principles of Social Protection, Protection of Civilian Victims of War and Protection of Families with Children in 1999.22 This law copied the 1974 Yugoslav law and adjusted it to suit the FBiH institutional arrangements (ONASA, 1999). The rights it granted to victims were limited and on par with the pre-war legislation. The law further tasked each canton with enacting their own law to regulate the payments and nine additional benefits (Art. 38). While Sarajevo and Tuzla cantons passed the necessary cantonal laws, others such as Posavina, Central Bosnia, Canton 10 and HerzegovinaNeretva did not enact such legislation until 2004. This is why Sabina had not received her redress benefits until 2004. The amendment of 2004 reasserted that cantons must enact special cantonal legislation and specified that compensation amounts were to be set at 70 percent of the amount awarded to disabled veterans for the same type of injury (see IBHI, 2013, pp. 45–47). Therefore, civilian victims became dependent on the entitlements of military victims. The law also

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clarified three main types of eligible victims: disabled and injured civilian victims with over 60 percent bodily harm (divided into six subcategories), families of killed persons (for women over 55, men over 65 and children until they start working) and families of missing persons (Art. 54).23 The Federation was to bear 70 percent of the financial cost and cantons the rest, including the distribution of other services. A 2004 law for missing people and a further reform in 2006 affected victims of sexual violence as discussed in Chapters 5 and 6. The 2006 amendment also allowed civilian victims who moved from RS (and Brˇcko) to FBiH to claim their rights in FBiH (Ninkovic-Papic, 2014, pp. 48–50). The Law on the Protection of Civilian Victims of War in Republika Srpska was first adopted in December 1993.24 Its actual stipulations were nearly identical to the socialist Yugoslav law. Yet the Law set a fiveyear deadline for applying for a certificate to be recognized as a civilian victim, including for deceased family members or a medical assessment of disability after the end of the war (Art. 37). It was further extended in early 2007 and then again in 2010. However, currently no further victims can register as all deadlines have expired—a point of vigorous criticism from local pro-victim organizations (Delbyck, 2016; Mallinder, 2009). The law was similar to the one in FBiH in terms of establishing entitlements for those who had sustained bodily harm, as well as benefits for affected families. It further specified that ‘people who were members of enemy forces and their accomplices’ were not eligible (Art. 4), which allowed for a very loose interpretation. It was later deleted (but again introduced for the new Law on the Protection of Victims of Torture in RS discussed in Chapter 6). The allocated amounts were up to three times lower than in FBiH (World Bank, 2012, pp. 36–39). Therefore, although civilian victims were formally recognized and entitled to redress during the war under the previous socialist legislation, their benefits were much lower than those of military victims. Only later (in 2004) was this system adjusted to widen the scope of the law, but victims still only partially achieved their demands. While the legal reform allowed victims to be granted their victim ‘status’, most of the additional services have never been practically implemented. The level of harm has not been lowered from 60 percent and their baseline amount has not been adjusted to match military victims. In RS, civilian victims have further demanded an extension to the deadlines established within the existing law as well as an increase in the payments. While civilian victims demanded an expansion of their rights, military victims have mainly sought to maintain the status

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Table 4.2 Recognition of civilian and military victimsa Group/region (authority level)

FBiH

RS

State

Civilian war victims

Partial success: Victim status recognized in the 1999/2004/2006 Law but not equalized with military victims Success: 2004/2007/2019 Laws granted broad benefits

Partial success: Victim status recognized in the 1993/2007/2010 Law but registration expired in 2011 Success: 2004/2007/2011 Law granted benefits

N/Ab

Military war victims

N/A

Source Author a This table only includes the original laws and the key amendments. It does not include the provisions for Croat victims (since July 2006 subject to payments from Croatia) and Brˇcko b When victims have not formally demanded recognition at this level, I mark this as not applicable (N/A)

quo and after 2010 an implementation of their rights. Military victims were ultimately successful but civilian victims have achieved only partial success. The legal situation is summarized in Table 4.2.

4.4

Explaining Redress for Civilian and Military War Victims

It is certainly the case that military-linked claimants are generally more successful with their demands than civilians in any post-war setting. As Theda Skocpol showed in her book Protecting Soldiers and Mothers that traced the development of the modern social security system in the United States after the Civil War, veterans are revered for serving their country and mothers for their suffering (Skocpol, 1995). However, the situation is rather complex in multi-sectorial wars where several veteran identifications are present such as in Bosnia but also Zimbabwe, Timor Leste and other countries (Bieber, 2007; Boeckh & Stegmann, 2011; Kriger, 2003; Roll, 2014). Recognition of injuries (and military service) is thus not automatic but often the result of political and social battles. Ultimately, most military victims across BiH have been treated preferentially; however, ‘ordinary’ rank-and-file demobilized soldiers have not been as privileged in the post-war Bosnian social system (see Berdak, 2015) and only secured some of their rights in 2019. While this group is not discussed here as it

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does not belong among the victimized populations, it provides an interesting comparison. To make sense of these discrepancies, it is necessary to look beyond the traditional ‘military covenant’ principle applicable to the western world, i.e. the idea that governments are responsible for looking after their veteran populations (see Skocpol, 1995). Instead, the differing outcomes are best explained by the different victim capital of the civilian and military victims. 4.4.1

International Salience: The Spectacle of War and the Economy

International salience of civilian and military victims, defined as the international attention given to a group or its demands, has fluctuated since the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia. Similar to other post-war situations, the initial focus of international actors in Bosnia was on security and the demobilization of soldiers, which did partially affect military victims. Beyond that, little effort was invested in military victims and they have rarely engaged with external actors. Conversely, injured and killed civilians featured prominently in the international media coverage of the Bosnian war and humanitarianism. The savagery of the Sarajevo siege shaped a new generation of war correspondents who prompted the UN to increase its humanitarian aid (Bouris, 2007, p. 5). Nonetheless, although the salience of civilian victims was significant immediately after the war, they were superseded by other victims by the end of the first post-war phase. This section provides an overview of how military and civilian victims featured among international priorities. 4.4.1.1 Humanitarianism and Legal Justice Since 1985 when the UN first called for states to take over responsibility for compensating injured civilians and the families of those killed in conflict, civilian victims have been formally included in post-war approaches to peacebuilding (UN General Assembly, 1985). The Bosnian war provided additional justifications for external efforts in assisting victims of war and protecting civilians. The media coverage of atrocities committed against Bosnian civilians played an important role in this. Vivid images from the long siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces were broadcasted around the world and transformed war correspondents from spectators into participants of the war.25 Gruesome images of mutilated bodies, children without limbs in desperate need of proper medical treatment and people shelled while queuing for water or bread resulted

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in a concentration of humanitarian efforts being directed at the city. Symbolizing many others, the case of seriously injured five-year old Irma Hadžimuratovi´c, who needed urgent evacuation from Sarajevo, resulted in August 1993 in the intervention of the then British Prime Minister John Major. Major sent a special aircraft to evacuate the wounded girl to London, triggering a subsequent large-scale evacuation of the wounded from the city, called ‘Operation Irma’.26 Irma became a poster child for the need to increase medical evacuations from the city (although she later died of her injuries). As journalists continued feeding the world’s media with more evidence of the war’s savagery, the suffering of Sarajevans became a ‘spectacle’ for foreign audiences (Hammond, 2007, p. 39). The injured and killed represented a tangible evidence of the war’s brutality and the international community’s reticence to save civilians. It was later established that 13,952 people (Tokaˇca, 2012, p. 123) were killed in Sarajevo (i.e. every 25th resident of the city), a number that the victim association mention in their demands and campaigns. Yet the sheer scale of killings and injuries have also led to a growing recognition of the need for redress schemes to deliver compensation and rehabilitation projects. Several such projects were designed by the World Bank (called the War Victims Rehabilitation Projects) in the first post-war years. The UN, WHO, European Community’s Humanitarian Office and the ICRC also concentrated on humanitarian relief and providing material assistance to people disabled by the war (Maglajli´c Holiˇcek & Rašidagi´c, 2007, pp. 157–158). These projects were short lived and Bosnian civilian victims were unable to successfully maintain the external attention to their plight. As the prominence of other victim groups (especially victims of Srebrenica) gradually grew, the initial media and humanitarian frenzy focussing on injured and killed civilians gradually wore off by the early 2000s. The large group of international actors and organizations in Bosnia was also swayed by the vast media attention accorded to the war crimes prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY. The establishment of the ICTY in May 1993 gave victims hope not only that crimes would be stopped and investigated, but also that victims might be redressed through an external mechanism. But this expectation was been matched by the mission and work of the Tribunal whose work was not directly targeting victims (see especially Clark, 2014). Although ICTY gathered evidence about war crimes and heard many

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victims’ testimonies, it had not been involved in any national mobilization for changing the existing legislative provisions that would target the disabled or bereaved families after the war. The Tribunal has primarily invested its efforts in establishing the number of casualties and delivering facts about the scale of civilian victimization, rather than advocating for support for civilian victims and their truth-seeking efforts (see Clark, 2009). Certainly, its judicial work had had knock-on effects on the Bosnian judiciary in the long run (see Nettelfield, 2010) but that had limited bearing on victim-related legislation and redress. Although the ICTY has not prioritized civilian war victims as part of its agenda, external judicial processes have had an impact on how civilians amplified their demands for recognition. ICTY judgements have featured in victims’ leaflets and appeals as justification for their demands. As the highest number of disabled civilians in Bosnia were the result of the shelling of Sarajevo, victims there utilized three key trials of the orchestrators of the Sarajevo siege—the 2003 ruling against Stanislav Gali´c and the trials of Ratko Mladi´c and Radovan Karadži´c. Victims viewed these cases as an opportunity to draw attention to their suffering and leverage the fact that the court established ‘commander’s responsibility, which means the political structures were guilty of what happened’ as an interviewed respondent-victim noted.27 The 2003 Gali´c judgment (ICTY, 2003) in particular was used as proof of their suffering and to press domestic institutions to reform existing legislation, especially forcing cantons to adopt their respective legislation through new legal submissions for reforms. When in 2004 the existing law (from 1999) was to lower victims’ benefits by two thirds, civilian victims staged street protests invoking the Gali´c judgment to justify their rights and pointing to the large numbers of people without limbs as established by the Tribunal (Nezavisne novine, 2004a). As discussed below, the law remained intact and cantons were tasked with taking over financial responsibility over its implementation (Seksan, 2004). Civilian victims also eagerly followed another external institution—the International Court of Justice, ICJ—which processed the inter-state case between Bosnia and Serbia (ICJ, 2007). Victim associations were deeply involved in this case—both emotionally and through the process of investigations and evidence-gathering. However, the ICJ’s 2007 decision de facto exonerated Serbia of direct responsibility for the Srebrenica genocide, Sarajevo siege, crimes in Krajina and several other war crimes that resulted in civilian deaths and mutilations. The president of the FBiH

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CWV Union, Senida Karovi´c, described her reaction to the judgment as sheer shock: ‘It was an outrage—Serbia should have paid [reparations]!’ She further explained that the decision prompted her members to redirect their focus on domestic institutions: ‘Once Serbia was off the hook, it became clear to us that we have to ask Bosnia to compensate us because it failed to protect us as its citizens.’28 This frustration was preceded by the 2006 death in ICTY custody of the former Serbian president Slobodan Miloševi´c, before the judgment on his role in the Bosnian bloodbath could be delivered. Much later additional controversial acquittals of prominent Serbian military and political wartime leaders such as Momˇcilo Periši´c, Jovica Staniši´c and Franko Simatovi´c29 reaffirmed victims’ conviction that external actors ‘stopped caring’ about them, as a respondent-victim noted. Indeed, since the mid-2000s, civilian victims became only one small part of the external concern for public spending and transitional justice projects that have had limited impact on their demands. Civilian victims at first benefited from the support of external financial institutions like the World Bank that advocated for a more equal system of distribution of public spending in BiH. These changes had some effects on civilian victims who had been until 2004 generally unable to access their redress anywhere outside of Sarajevo and partially Tuzla. Yet the external financial pressure had some negative side effects on their claims, as discussed below. More recent external attempts to create comprehensive reparation frameworks have so far failed to materialize. As early as 2007, UNDP in Bosnia started designing a new project with the aim of creating a comprehensive transitional justice strategy for Bosnia. The strategy emerged out of a series of intensive discussions with the civil sector, victim associations, state-level ministries and international experts to create a plan for addressing issues of the past war by 2012; however, despite the active involvement of many victim associations, it was never adopted as it lacked support from the RS deputies who feared centralization efforts (Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees, 2012). A less ambitious project on reparations for victims was launched in 2012 by the International Organization for Migration, IOM, in cooperation with several other external organizations operating in Bosnia.30 Its recommendations and findings have also so far fallen on deaf ears. Yet international salience has played out in the aspirations of domestic authorities to join the European Union. For example, formal recognition of rights of disabled persons is included in the Bosnian Constitution

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(i.e. Annex IV of Dayton), which references and incorporates a range of international agreements. Bosnia adopted a new ‘Disability Policy’ in May 2008, followed by entity disability strategies and action plans (Džumhur, 2010). Under pressure from the Council of Europe, and in the context of Bosnian aspirations to join the EU, it also signed the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Optional Protocol to the Convention in 2009 (UNHCR, 2010), which led to the establishment of the Council for Persons with Disabilities at the state level (OSCE, 2012). These efforts somewhat raised awareness about the disabled population in general and increased the range of offered rehabilitation services (Hammarberg, 2011, p. 13). However, as some of my respondents noted, this concern came far too late for civilian war victims, some of whom died in the meantime. Only limited changes were in fact implemented in the subsequent period as other priorities dominated the domestic policy agendas. 4.4.1.2 From Security to Economic Concerns As for military victims, the initial policy priority of external actors in Bosnia was on security, establishing negative peace and what some call the ‘demilitarization of politics’ (Hoddie & Hartzell, 2010, p. 221). At the time, the now ubiquitous programmes of Demobilization, Disarmament and Reintegration, DDR, were still in their infancy, with the focus on the ‘Ds’, rather than the ‘R’ (cf. Torjesen & MacFarlane, 2007). The objective was to pacify rather than reintegrate the diverse veteran population returning from the war. While soldiers and officers were demobilized and screened through a series of external programs run by the World Bank, UN and IOM during the initial post-war years, military victims did not feature prominently in any of the international support packages (see Martin-Ortega, 2012). Senior officials of IOM argued that because of the fear of relapse into violence, priority was given to demobilization rather than retraining, psychosocial support, educational programmes and other services to ease the transition from the battlefield to the workplace.31 As military victims (rather than demobilized soldiers) were injured/disabled or families of fallen soldiers, they were not perceived as posing a risk to the peace process and were not prioritized. International funding for their associations and activities has been virtually non-existent—both after the war (Gregson, 2000) and as of today.32 As a disabled war invalid in Mostar noted, external actors ‘have always seen us as criminals so we don’t even dare to ask for support from them’.33 Therefore, military victims

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have only been an external priority for the maintenance of stability, not directly for support. As security concerns waned, so did any attention paid to the general military population (Moratti & Sabic-El-Rayess, 2009, p. 21). Instead, effects on the broader wartime military have been limited to growing efforts for centralization in Bosnia (e.g. the creation of a new state army in 2006) and reforms of Bosnian public finances. The main concern of external actors in the country vis-à-vis this population soon turned from security to the economy. Given the size of the veteran population and their families (jointly estimated to be nearly half of the Bosnian population), external financial institutions and later the EU began exerting pressure on Bosnian entity veteran ministries to adopt reforms to cut the existing veteran and military victims’ benefits.34 Since the early 2000s, the WB and IMF started pressing the entity governments to create registers of ex-soldiers in order to monitor payments, avoid duplication, prevent registration of incorrectly certified veterans (the so-called ‘fake-fighters’) and reduce the overall spending in this area.35 According to one international expert, the WB increased pressure to reform military benefits in 2004, including the deployment of a team of financial experts to propose reforms.36 However, as each new round of negotiations was preceded and followed by massive veteran protests across all military categories, such reforms were largely unsuccessful (Bassuener, 2016). Instead of reducing veteran payments, FBiH authorities threatened to lower civilian victims’ payments, a move that victims vigorously opposed. Eventually, the external pressure contributed to the adoption of new entity laws in 2004, instead of reducing civilian benefits. However, the new laws copied the previous levels of benefits while superficially complying with the WB’s requirements to reform the military-related legislation. Three years later, new benefits for military victims were introduced. The WB’s engagement concluded with a 2009 report that provided a detailed account of the catastrophic state of Bosnian public spending. It stressed that financing was heavily skewed towards the military population, with two thirds of all social spending (World Bank, 2009). Additional pressure came from the IMF, which had been providing Bosnia with periodic loans. The situation in FBiH became even more convoluted as a result of the intermittent reluctance of Croat authorities to cooperate in the process of ascertaining numbers of veterans and victims. ‘There has been a high degree of corruption, forging medical documentation and certificates to get the benefits and to inflate their

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[Croat cantons] numbers to get more from the entity budget, so they did not want to verify their numbers,’ an international expert explained.37 However, in light of the urgent need for IMF loans after the 2008 economic crisis began, and the gradual drop in foreign aid, the FBiH government partially caved to external pressure in 2009. In 2010, it announced plans to revise veteran pensions and compensation for military victims. The changes were again preceded by vigorous veteran protests in April (see below). A new law was eventually adopted in order to satisfy external funders and secure cash injections; however, it has never entered into force.38 In any case, the new reform would not substantially changed the opaque system of veteran payments and compensation provisions for military victims (World Bank, 2012). It was aimed at lowering unemployment benefits and introducing new verification measures for military victims, including an income census, i.e. means testing (International Monetary Fund, 2014; Weber, 2014). The means-tested assessments, common in other countries (cf. Gal & Bar, 2000), were meant to pertain only to the lower categories of military victims that were considered as capable of work, not the general military victim population. It would affect those whose salaries were higher than around 1000 Euro a month (Zapcic, 2010). According to a senior World Bank representative, ‘out of the fear’ of a strong backlash from veterans, benefits for military victims has not been drastically reduced.39 The law was finally amended in the summer of 2019 when international leverage in Bosnia lowered and even financial pressure diminished. Military victims were satisfied to some degree (as were demobilized soldiers) as the law extended their benefits and provided them with a monthly payment for time spent in war as discussed above. Registration of ex-fighters as well as financing of veteran associations, though, still needs further reforms. Unlike FBiH after the war, RS was subject to an international embargo on foreign assistance, resulting in even more exigent gaps in funding military victims (World Bank, 1997). By 2008, though, RS was equally benefiting from external loans. IMF’s and WB’s pressure required a response from Banja Luka. While domestic veteran categories in RS protested against the IMF, their leaders had been co-opted by Milorad Dodik’s Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, SNSD, the leading political party. RS was in urgent need of the external funding. After a series of negotiations between the government and the military leaders, a new reform was eventually passed in 2011. The RS reform led to a simpler distribution of benefits across all military populations, including

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military victims. The number of categories was reduced, payments were streamlined, monitoring improved and demobilized fighters’ payments changed into a flat rate. Yet military war victims largely maintained their benefit levels.40 According to a veteran in Banja Luka, the RS minister for veteran affairs admitted in a private conversation that the government had to make some concessions and ‘do something’ because ‘20 percent of the RS budget was dependent on another IMF tranche’.41 While rankand-file ex-soldiers were the main ‘losers’ of the reform, military victim benefits were kept nearly intact: as the leader of a disabled veterans’ association confirmed, ‘given our economic problems, my category [military victims] has been satisfied.’42 The IMF and the EU with its NGO-focussed funding subsequently became the primary external organizations pushing for a revision of the existing system of benefits in both entities. As the IMF’s loans have become an indispensable source of funding for entity budgets, financial pressure has been increasingly more successful in achieving reform. In 2012, the IMF again conditioned releasing further loans to Bosnia on the reform of the overall pension system, including making changes to war-related payments (International Monetary Fund, 2013). From then until 2019, FBiH government has adopted several reforms trying to lower the highest payments, in general affecting high-ranking ex-officers and holders of war medals.43 This was part of a move towards the 2019 reform. ∗ ∗ ∗ The previous discussion demonstrates that the international salience of civilian and military victims has changed since the end of the war. Civilian victims were initially treated by the international media as a ‘spectacle’, resulting in extensive foreign and humanitarian aid that directly supported this group. Thereafter, attention to this group has only risen in the wake of key judicial decisions such the Gali´c case at the ICTY. Unable to generate more attention to their causes and demands, by the early 2000s, civilian victims were overshadowed by other victim groups (discussed later) that had much higher levels of international salience. Therefore, their international salience dropped from rather high to medium-low levels. In contrast, military victims have not benefited from international support for their claims in the same way as other war victims in Bosnia. Although they were initially included in programmes of demobilization, they later became the target of external pressures that sought

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to lower their benefits. Perceived as a burden on the local budgets, international financial institutions prioritized them in the opposite direction—for cost cutting. Instead of supporting their claims, they used financial leverage to retract veteran benefits, marginally affecting military victims too. Although their international salience became negative, partially influencing their lowering benefits and complex negotiations, the broader veteran population was rather successful in pushing back and maintaining their privileges. 4.4.2

Moral Authority: Cults of Victims and Fighters

The second component of victim capital that I consider is groups’ moral authority, defined as the extent to which each group is perceived as deserving of support at a domestic level. Civilian victims featured prominently in the public discourse on victimization after the war. However, while they were initially used as proof of the crippling effects of war and the extent of the death toll, their moral authority gradually waned. Similar to their international salience, the perception that civilian victims ‘deserve’ support declined by the early 2000s as they were unable to strategically frame their demands. Conversely, invoking their war credentials to justify their claims, military victims have enjoyed high moral authority and generated higher levels throughout the post-war period. As I discuss below, victimized combatants seem to have an unshakeable moral authority that is linked to their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their communities—a phenomenon that is rather prevalent around the world (Towle, 2018). 4.4.2.1 From Symbols of the Scale of Suffering to Oblivion Both during and immediately after the war, the issue of the prevalence of disability and the human cost of the war made headlines in the national media, particularly among Bosniaks in Sarajevo (see Ahmetaševi´c, 1995). The over 700 children killed and injured during the shelling of Sarajevo were central to the imagery used to showcase the suffering and horrors experienced in the capital during the siege.44 Civilians shelled while queuing for bread and water became symbols of victimhood and the tendency to focus on the suffering of the Bosniak side of the war. In FBiH, they subsequently featured prominently in the discourse of the Bosniak leadership of the two nationalist parties SDA and SBiH as convenient manifestation of the scale of Muslim suffering.

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During commemorations and anniversaries of attacks and killings, victim leaders stood would stand side-by-side the political leadership of Bosniaks, remembering the pain they survived. The new concept of Bosniakhood, introduced in 1993, rested on the extent and brutality of the victimization of Bosniaks throughout the war—targeted for their religion, historical roles and ethno-national identity. As civilian victims played an important role in the newly forged Bosniak identity, leaders of their associations have also used their ethnonational identification for their appeals and during campaigns to increase their recognition and benefits. However, the ‘cult of the victim’ as a pillar of Bosniak identity has, according to the human rights expert Refik Hodži´c, only ‘solidified’ the rifts between the ethno-national groups in Bosnia with a counter victim cult exercised by Milorad Dodik (Hodži´c, 2017). The victim cult has become a political instrument for the main Bosniak political parties and the rivalries between them. When some political leaders tried to disentangle victimhood from Bosniakhood, they faced public uproar. In 2008, the then leader of SDA, Sulejman Tihi´c, tried to remove the ‘philosophy of the victim’ from the Bosniak identity (Nezavisne novine, 2008). Bosniak victim associations and Tihi´c’s main opponent Haris Siljadži´c from SBiH accused him of belittling Bosniak victims’ suffering and the extent of war crimes committed by Bosnian Serbs. Tihi´c’s attempt to move away from victimhood failed and was never repeated. Instead a victim cult competition erupted in full in the summer of 2007 when the Research and Documentation Centre, led by Mirsad Tokaˇca (since 2003), announced preliminary findings of their Bosnian Book of Dead, a statistical analysis of the final war death toll (Tokaˇca, 2012). Although the final number of the total deaths was much lower than Bosniaks claimed during the war (just over 100,000 as opposed to the 250,000 claimed by the Bosniak side), it clearly showed that main casualties were on the Bosniak side, especially in areas such as eastern Bosnia and Krajina, and that the numbers of Serb and Croat casualties were much lower than the ethno-national leaders of the other two communities claimed. The research was later validated by the ICTY that arrived at comparable numbers a couple years prior (Tabeau & Zwierzchowski, 2010). But Tokaˇca’s findings are to this day attacked by Republika Srpska and its victims’ associations as being biased, poorly done and manipulated. As political analyst Srd-an Puhalo noted, ‘if the official numbers were approved, the political manipulation with victims, and myths about

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the war, would be over’.45 It did not help Tokaˇca’s case that he was later accused of financial mismanagement by the very funders who sponsored the project (especially the Norwegian embassy).46 Despite these controversies, The Bosnian Book of Dead is today generally accepted as a fairly accurate source of the war-time fatalities skewed towards civilian Bosniaks (see Fig. 4.1). Such framing of Bosniaks as the main victims of the war was vigorously rejected by Bosnian Serbs, who responded with their own frames of civilian victimization. Although the ICTY established in its judgments that most crimes were committed by the Bosnian Serb Army and Serb paramilitaries (Clark, 2014, p. 98) and that most civilian casualties were Bosniak/Bosnian Muslim, both Serb political authorities and victim associations in RS insisted that the numbers of Serb victims had been underreported and that Bosniaks were trying to appropriate a victimhood monopoly (Nezavisne novine, 2010). In these conflicts over numbers, civilian victims became bargaining chips, ‘statistics’ and ‘dead heads’, as described by some of my respondents. The tensions over numbers increased after the emergence of the main champion of RS nationalism, Milorad Dodik, who used death statistics to ‘paint the bloodiest picture of the other side’.47 In 2008, Dodik established the Republican Centre for the Investigation of War48 to create a counter-narrative about Serb victimhood. Interviewing the Centre’s investigators was an insight into parallel war narratives and denial: they disputed not only Srebrenica but insisted that the found bodies were relocated from other regions of BiH and even Kosovo. Interestingly, the interviewed officials in the Centre generally accepted Tokaˇca’s findings as far as Bosniak deaths were concerned— mainly as it lowered the previously stated 250,000 casualties. But they strongly disagreed about the numbers of killed civilian Serbs (according to Tokaˇca only around 4000) and disputed that the main perpetrators were Serbs. As a director of one of the sections claimed in our interview in 2015, ‘these 60,000 dead Bosniaks are being put on the account of Serbs but people ignore the fact that many of them died in 1993 in the conflict with HVO and many Muslims died during the entire war in Western Krajina in a conflict between Muslims—between the 5th Corpus and Abdi´c. The two Muslim armies were killing each other.’49 In other words, the Centre has become a mechanism of interpretative denial to use Stanely Cohen’s term (Cohen, 2001), i.e. accepting that an act has happened but changing the interpretations.

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Against the backdrop of such tensions over statistics, by the mid-2000s the FBiH FBiH CWV Union introduced a new frame of civilian victimhood in their appeals and media appearances. It attempted to present civilians as being on equal footing with military victims by contributing to war efforts. During commemorations, in media statements and during important anniversaries such as the start of the war in Sarajevo, they altered the frames of helpless victims and ‘numbers’ into active defenders through issuing media statements. For example, a disabled civilian stated in 2004 for the media that ‘we were working hard behind the lines just like soldiers were fighting but we are now not equally treated’ (Oslobod-enje, 2004). This has also led to the fact that their leaders began justifying their demands as a rightful debt owed by the state to its civilian citizens because they were also a ‘product of the war just like [soldiers] were’ (Dnevni Avaz, 2010). This new framing was heavily resisted by both war veterans and military victims. For example, in 2007, the coordination body for all veteran associations in FBiH sent a protest letter stating that they were against any planned equalization of benefits, arguing that civilians owed their lives to the military ‘because the aggressor would have killed them all’ (Oslobod-enje, 2007b) had it not been for the military. Others expressed a view that soldiers had no choice but to put themselves in harm’s way, but civilians should have fled. According to this logic, it would seem as if it was the civilians’ fault that they were hurt. The military thus pushed back by trying to frame civilian victims as ‘collateral damage’ rather than as victims deserving the same treatment as them.50 Subsequently, civilian invalids have come to be perceived as ‘social cases’ rather than a war category deserving recognition. ‘People in Bosnia do not understand what disability means’, Sabina explained. ‘Since my school days people thought I was “retarded” because I could not walk properly. … They did not make the link between the war and my disability in the same way they would if I were an adult man’, she added in our interview. Indeed, as previous research established, persons with disabilities in BiH are viewed with little understanding (Cerimovi´c, 2012; see also IBHI, 2013). They have been ‘victims…of second class as they did not suffer while serving the country like the servicemen’.51 This has been compounded during the last post-war phase with the public becoming increasingly weary of the constant talk of victims and the war (with some exception as discussed in later chapters). As one person put it, such talk ‘gets on people’s nerves’52 because some view civilian victims as profiting off their lost relatives. It is also important to stress that in some rare

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cases individuals might have been able to forge documents to register as military victims and thus receive higher benefits. The former veterans’ minister in FBiH explained that the number of war veterans in FBiH overall increased from 300,000 in 1995 to 585,000 in 2015. Instead of these numbers going down due to natural deaths, they are growing. ‘That is suspicious,’ he stated.53 Given civilian victims’ ongoing struggle to obtain redress when their injuries fall under the benchmarks of 60 percent, military benefits have become the only source of income for many such families. However, as these stories have come to light, the public perception that civilian victims are deserving of state support declined.54 While dead civilians are still invoked during commemorations (such as a famous project the Red Line in Sarajevo in 2012 to commemorate killed Sarajevans by empty chairs, see Fig. 4.2), survivors’ moral authority has decreased to moderate levels.

Fig. 4.2 The Red Line Commemoration Project in Sarajevo in 2012 (Source Photo by the author)

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4.4.2.2 Protectors of ‘Ethno-Nations’ Military victims of the war have drawn their moral authority from two key sources: by framing themselves as descendants of the socialist ‘Partisan heroes’55 from World War II and as the protectors of their respective ethno-nations. During the socialist period, disabled veterans were generously cared for through a combination of payments, special housing and other privileges, while families of fallen soldiers were socially respected and celebrated (Popi´c & Panjeta, 2010, p. 6). This ‘cult of the fighter’56 (kult borca) remained largely untouched after the war. The previous cultural treatment of Partisan heroes in films and literature has in many respects been transposed to the new post-war state and has influenced the levels of moral authority across the ex-military, which the legal provisions for this category have reflected. As a journalist explained, ‘disabled veterans are considered as heroes who victimized [žrtvovali] themselves for our cause, so no one dares to touch them’.57 Like elsewhere around the world, war veterans and military victims in Bosnia have been treated as citizens who are deserving of special privileges but with the added glorification of the Partisan legacy that veterans in BiH have invoked. Indeed, veterans are perceived as having a statebuilding (and nation-building) role which endows them with a special social position.58 Theda Skocpol demonstrated that after the American civil war, disabled veterans were viewed as worthy of support for sacrificing their limbs for the state (Skocpol, 1995, p. 33). As there is no single state-founding myth of Bosnia, but rather at least three ‘master frames’— to borrow Snow and Benford’s term (1992, p. 137)—of the war, each veteran community (Bosniak, Serb and Croat) has become a guardian of its own frame. Veterans of ABiH see their role in the war as fighting for the survival (opstanak) of a Bosnian state that has been attacked from multiple sides by aggressors. Veterans of the other armies see their roles as defending their communities (Berdak, 2013, p. 2). RS legislation refers to its veteran population as borci, meaning ‘fighters’. The word ‘fighter’ again draws on the Serbian culture of a ‘liberation fight’ from World War II (Remington, 1978). The idea of RS borac is abundantly evoked in the public space—from the name of the football team in Banja Luka (Borac), murals across Banja Luka and other RS cities to frequent mentions in the media. In the legislation of the Federation of Bosnia, the ex-military are referred to as branioci in the Bosniak and branitelji in the Croatian language versions (both meaning ‘defenders’), suggesting an implicit aggressor (i.e. mainly the Serbs).

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However, there is a special value attached to military victims. Disabled veterans and families of fallen soldiers in BiH have a distinct social identity. Military victims have been able to claim a more privileged position than ‘ordinary’ rank-and-file veterans because they suffered huge personal and highly visible losses for the ‘greater cause’ of their ethno-nations. Adding a religious layer to these various frames of the war military, Bosnian Muslim fallen soldiers are also referred to as šehidi (Muslim martyrs) to indicate their sacrifice for Islam (Bougarel, 2006, p. 482).59 Military victims regularly remind Bosnian public of their losses in order to maintain the belief that they are more deserving than other victims.60 Their superior moral authority has thus also become important political capital for Bosnian politicians and has been invoked in public gatherings, commemorations and national days in an attempt to increase their political credibility. The different army sections are also visible across Bosnian cities to this day (see Fig. 4.3). Military victims’ moral authority indeed became ‘untouchable’61 early on: when in 2002 the social democratic Prime Minister Zlatko Lagumdžija called Bosniak veterans protesting ˇ against potential cuts behaving as ‘Cetniks’ who previously demolished mosques in Banja Luka, they threw oranges at him for comparing the FBiH branioci to the nationalist ‘bloodthirsty’ Serb fighters of World War II (Bougarel, 2006). The moral authority of Bosnian Serb and Bosniak military victims is thus concentrated in their respective entities. Due to the scale of crimes committed by the RS Army, its veterans are framed in FBiH as criminals, but they are revered as protectors in RS, featuring prominently in commemorations, celebrations of the Day of Republika Srpska on 9 January and other public events. Criminal prosecution of war crimes both at the ICTY and domestically has not changed these perceptions in RS. On the contrary, as a respondent noted, the indictments have in practice only re-framed veterans as ‘victims once again: first they suffered for their nation, sacrificing their health and lives and now in front of an international tribunal they are sacrificed again.’62 The president of a municipal disabled veterans’ association in Banja Luka, Stanislav Brki´c, complained in our interview that ‘they [Bosniaks] keep calling us genocidal and telling us that we, the Serbs, are the ones guilty of what happened here as if they were all innocent’.63 In fact, Bosniak veterans are often framed as ‘Islamic fighters’ in RS. A similar situation exists among the Croat-Bosniak military population in the entity. Most Croat veterans are regionally separated between three cantons in Herzegovina and draw

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Fig. 4.3 Flag of the Army of BiH at the Jajce Fortress (Source Photo by the author)

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on their frames as defenders within their respective communities. Therefore, there are three distinct military moral authorities in the country that draw on the various juxtaposed narratives of war. Overall, military victims have enjoyed some of the highest moral authority among Bosnian war-generated categories throughout the postwar years. Their right for recognition and redress has rarely been questioned—especially among key political parties. Existing survey data suggest that the public perception of the military has been steadily high (National Democratic Institute, 2010). Given the fact that most adult men over the age of 45 fought in the war, public respect for this population is also this high because most families have a personal stake in it (Berdak, 2015). This consistency of their moral authority has differed from civilian victims, whose frames of victimhood have changed over time. Therefore, military victims have at their disposal a powerful tool to aid in pressing domestic authorities when resisting any retraction of their compensation—high moral authority within their ethno-national communities. ∗ ∗ ∗ Moral authority of civilian victims during and after the war was relatively high. Their numbers and the scale of suffering were used in the media, by political leaders and the victims themselves, mainly as proof of the brutality of the ‘other’ side. However, as other victim groups such as victims of sexual violence and missing persons families gradually gained more prominence, they have slowly been pushed aside, unable to generate higher moral authority. In contrast, military victims have been perceived as actively sacrificing their limbs and lives in battles against the enemy. They actively supported the master frames of the war—whether it was an aggression or civil war—within their ethno-national communities. During events of national importance, both categories continue to be presented as symbolic representatives of the scale of suffering; however, it is the military victims that continue to be under the spotlight—as late as in 2019 when they became beneficiaries of a new law. The analysis above has also demonstrated that while the moral authority of civilian victims has dropped to moderate levels, military victims of war have been able to maintain high moral authority due to their usage of the longstanding tradition of glorifying fighters as heroes.

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Mobilization Resources: Protests and Networks

The final element of victim capital that has a significant bearing on recognition and material redress for victims is a group’s quality of mobilization resources. While constrained by their ability to access resources, organizations with large, robust and dense participation—especially those that are able to reach out to a broad and varied set of constituents—function as more effective pressure groups as they can mobilize people and endanger incumbents. Although civilian victims have suffered from a serious lack of resources, when their rights were under threat, they were able to utilize their small networks and organize in protests. For the most part, though, they have been relatively poorly equipped to put pressure on domestic authorities and only relied on the civil sector (unlike victims of Srebrenica and sexual violence discussed later). In contrast, military victims have been well organized and skilled protestors that have drawn on their large networks of political allies, in many respects mimicking the pre-war inclusion of Yugoslav veterans into political bodies. 4.4.3.1 Civilian Victims’ Uphill Struggle Civilian victims of war have had only low mobilization resources throughout the post-war period. Given the cost of human life and the number of injured, civilian victims could have had the potential for very high membership within their associations and large networks. However, total membership has never reached beyond a few thousand and their networks have always been rather scattered. Although the formal establishment of the entity unions came early on, their leaders have been poorly skilled and lacked powerful allies. The Bosnian Serb associations lacked resources because they could not draw on either civil-sector support or foreign humanitarian aid after the war. As most humanitarian aid was directed to the Federation,64 the only benefits directed to RS focused on resolving the housing situation of victims, offering some rehabilitation services and provisions for children (Delpla, 2014, p. 239). Such structural constraints have limited their access to important resources. Civil-sector support in FBiH somewhat increased victims’ capacities to run their own activities, including street protests and campaigns in the mid-2000s. In 2004, supported by local NGOs,65 civilian victims organized a protest of thousands of invalids in front of the FBiH Assembly in Sarajevo to fight against the proposed reduction of disabled civilian victims’ benefits (Dnevni list, 2005). As the reform would have affected all

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civilian invalids by reducing disability limits, including non-war invalids, a broad protest coalition was created that brought several thousand people to the streets. The proposed reduction was also rejected by the World Bank that advocated for reductions in military benefits (Nezavisne novine, 2004b). FBiH political authorities eventually adopted an amendment that retained existing provisions and simplified registration procedures at the entity level. This movement was short lived, though. While another amendment came in 2006, this change was driven by victims of sexual violence as I discuss further in Chapter 6. In fact, the 2004 movement is a rare example of civilian victims in FBiH successfully mobilizing to retain their benefits (cf. Delpla, 2014, p. 245). Similarly, in 2006 RS victims pressed the government, with support from its growing civil sector, to renew expired legislation and remove some discriminatory clauses from existing laws (such as the residence of the claimants) to allow new victims to register. After a series of protests, appeals from the civil sector and external actors in BiH, the RS Assembly agreed to extend the law that allowed civilian victims to register for benefits for one additional year in 2007, even if they had moved from the other entity (RS or FBiH). Thereafter, civilian victims’ campaigns and protests across BiH have been poorly run and experienced only limited results. (The only exceptions were joint coalitions with missing people’s families and victims of sexual violence.) For example, only 100 people attended a 2009 rally in support of the ratification of the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities at the state level (Oslobod-enje, 2009b). While the Convention was later adopted, this was the outcome of EU requirements for funding and joining the EU rather than the victims’ mobilization powers (Cerimovi´c, 2012). As some of my respondents noted, the civilian victims’ leadership has been rather passive in seeking out powerful allies beyond ‘old-fashioned’ public appeals. Their ability to use online tools in recent years has also been negligent, or rather non-existent. In addition to exercising pressure through civil society, victims also pursued access to entitlements through ‘legal mobilization’ (McCann, 1994; Woodward, 2015) in the form of—rather haphazard—class actions. The FBiH CWV Union in Sarajevo commenced litigation campaigns in 2005 suing the entity of RS for the siege of Sarajevo. Following a series of favourable court decisions in which officers of the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) were found responsible for the indiscriminate shelling of Sarajevo citizens, individual victims of the siege filed cases against RS

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(Oslobod-enje, 2007c). While this initiative gained momentum among other victim groups, including the associations for camp inmates, these individual cases have not succeeded. The courts have mostly ruled that the victims filed their cases too late and that the statute of limitations for making complaints had expired.66 ‘They are turning us into victims again’, those affected commented on the judgments.67 As noted, while they were able to join efforts of other victim categories such as victims of sexual violence, torture or missing people, cooperation with other civilian victim associations within this category has been poor. As Delpla in her analysis of victim associations suggested, civilian victims have limited their networking to within their own small groups without reaching out to other associations or cantons (Delpla, 2014, p. 241). Sabina confirmed that cooperation is rarely the case as local associations are at times informed about the plans of the ‘Sarajevo centre’ through secondary sources. As noted, the FBiH CWV Union has been attempting to push through a reform of the distribution of disability benefits that would put civilian victims on par with the military population. The main point of controversy has been whether to means-test beneficiaries in a similar fashion as military officers were to be, a measure that most victims opposed.68 Means-testing for war-time victimization would effectively seal the definition of Bosnian redress system as within the realm of needs-based social welfare rather than rights-based redress (cf. Camins, 2016). The introduction of this point, though, was not offered up for wider debate among the civilian victim population and has instead been decided upon in Sarajevo. ‘I found out about it from the media’, Sabina complained. The coordination of the various associations partially improved thanks to a post-Yugoslav initiative called REKOM that aimed at bringing victims together to support a single regional truth commission (see Dragovi´cSoso, 2016). While this initiative has so far failed to gain the necessary momentum, it has brought some associations together.69 The president of the RS CWV Union Predrag Babi´c explained that there have been some recent attempts to resuscitate an association at the state level for all civilian victims that existed pro forma in 1997.70 The urgency for cooperation is much higher among Serb victims, as they have had only limited access to foreign projects and aid. Overall, as a respondent noted in 2015, leaders of associations for disabled civilians and families of killed civilians ‘are old and often do not even know how to use a computer’.71 Because of their lack of skills and leadership, many associations have closed. The

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mobilization resources of the civilian victims are among the lowest of all victim groups in BiH, demonstrated by the absence of important allies, poor networks and an ill-equipped leadership. 4.4.3.2 Between Politics and Flexing Muscles In contrast, the mobilization resources of military victims have been substantial thanks to the wide networks of political allies that they gained and maintained as a result of their wartime roles. McAdam’s concept of ‘structural availability’ of mobilization resources is best expressed for this category as the vast network of allies, contacts and bonds stemming from their shared war participation (McAdam, 1986, p. 65). As noted, together with family members of the 60,000 killed soldiers in BiH, disabled veterans have, since the end of the war, closely cooperated with the population of demobilized fighters, or have been parallel members of their associations within their ethno-national communities. Most of the varied ex-military associations have held regular meetings with the goal of encouraging demobilized fighters’ organizations to present their joint demands and statements to their respective governments. For example, in Sarajevo, there is a coordination committee of all Bosniak fighters’ associations, including disabled veterans and families of those who were killed, that is comprised of ten organizations. Their ability to lobby the domestic political authorities with a single united voice was advantageous when their benefits were at risk or when they demanded increases in payments.72 The interviewed leader of the main veteran association in FBiH, JOB, argued that disabled veterans and demobilized fighters, ‘stand as one body when we deal with the government, and with one voice’.73 He went on to describe how in 2015 all veteran associations successfully came together and prevented budgetary cuts by giving the FBiH government their ‘recommendations and suggestions about the new budget’. They effectively used their leverage to lobby the government. The diverse military population has a key mobilization resource that is potentially dangerous for any government: they can rapidly organize protests that may turn violent. This potential explosiveness has materialized frequently on the Bosnian streets, especially at times when military benefits have been threatened. Examples from Tuzla to Sarajevo demonstrate that veterans have the power to be politically destabilizing. The first protests of disabled veterans were organized in the north-eastern city of Tuzla as early as spring 1996 when military

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payments were delayed (ONASA, 1996). Additional large-scale protests were organized during the first negotiations with the WB and IMF in 2003 and 2005. Both successfully prevented dramatic reductions in veteran benefits (Oslobod-enje, 2005). In fact, a law reform in early 2007 in FBiH reintroduced some of the previously excluded individuals. Most prominently, in 2009, when the Federation government, under SDA’s Mustafa Mujezinovi´c, signed an austerity agreement with the IMF to reduce spending on veteran benefits and introduce the above-mentioned means testing, mass protests of over 10,000 veterans and military victims erupted and the FBiH government building was violently attacked and set on fire (Dnevni Avaz, 2011). As a result, the proposed reform was scrapped. The following year, their compensation was proposed to be lowered by estimated 10 percent (although precise numbers are hard to obtain) instead of by the proposed reduction of up to a third (Oslobod-enje, 2009a). An interviewed disabled veteran leader from Mostar stated that ‘burning houses was a means to show Mujezinovi´c that he should not mess with us’.74 Indeed, the final reforms in 2010 were described by a senior World Bank representative as ‘cosmetic changes’ without any value.75 Moreover, since FBiH government was not created until 2011 and as the law was challenged at court, the implementation of the new changes never entered into force. It was only the 2019 change that finally resolved this issue under the minister Salko Bukvarevi´c—after years of mass protests, strikes and sit-ins of veterans across FBiH. However, the most important resource of military victims has been their ability to generate links with the main political echelons of the Bosnian entities (in the case of Croats—cantonal governments). While individual military victims are not directly linked to the top political elite, their leaders have been de facto co-opted into the Bosnian political structures. Direct negotiations have been the most effective and accessible way of influencing laws. Since the end of the war, the main nationalist political parties have recognized their respective veteran associations and provided their members with generous housing benefits and even private businesses since shortly after the end of the war (World Bank, 1996). All war veteran associations have gained representation in their respective entity assemblies through elected deputies and ministers (i.e. they became policy insiders). Key politicians in FBiH such as the former member of the Presidency Željko Komši´c and the FBiH Prime Minister Živko Budimir made their

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political career by invoking their war credentials. One of the first presidents of the Union of Disabled Veterans in FBiH was Zahid Crnki´c, who in 2006 became the Minister for Fighters’ Affairs. His appointment was one of the key factors in the 2007 amendment of the fighters’ law that increased compensation to families of killed soldiers and military invalids (Omeragi´c, 2007). His successor, Safet Redži´c, in 2010 even suggested that all political party candidates that fought in the war should sign a memorandum of cooperation with the Union out of duty (Oslobod-enje, 2010). Military-related associations have been declared as ‘organizations of special interest’ and received direct governmental support. This allegiance has been even stronger among Croat associations that have been in the minority in FBiH (see Bojiˇci´c-Dželilovi´c, 2006). It should be stressed, though, that veterans and military victims have been deeply dissatisfied with how they have been represented by their leaders, especially since 2004. Since then, continuous demonstrations and vigorous veteran rallies of former members of ABiH and HVO often paralyzed traffic and made headlines in FBiH (Prodanovi´c, 2018), most notably in 2018 when they blocked main routes from Tuzla. Their demands included the resolution of payments to rank-and-file ex-soldiers and to cease financing veteran associations that most ordinary veterans and military victims deeply distrusted and accused of self-enrichment and patronage. In RS, a similar situation existed after the war with veteran associations linked to the wartime’s SDS leadership. Apprehensive about the ascent of Milorad Dodik, SNSD and his lip service to external actors in Bosnia, military victims were initially critical of his reform proposals for budgetary savings in 2007. However, after their associations were granted annual funding in 2009, military victims disassociated from SDS and joined the main veteran association BORS in its support for Dodik and SNSD. As a veteran in RS explained, the former leader of BORS, ´ Pantalija Curguz, was a close ally of Dodik, benefitting from generous RS ´ funding. He argued that ‘thanks to the close partnership of Curguz and Dodik, all military populations [in RS] eventually got a better law’.76 All RS military associations have also become part of the Serb Movement of National Associations, SPONA (Bjelajac, 2008),77 which has acted as the primary protector of Srpska nationalism and in support of Dodik (Katana, 2008). RS authorities under SNSD have also been aware of the events in FBiH and the potential explosiveness of the ex-military. ‘Flexing their muscles’,78 as a political analyst described it, represented by street

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protests in expectation of any reforms, has become part of the relationship between the veteran population and domestic political authorities. ‘They [political authorities] would not dare to cut the benefits. They would rather take money from pensioners than touch the military population and especially the disabled fighters,’ a former RS fighter explained.79 ‘They know that if the veteran associations get mad, this could mean the end of the government [ciao vlast !]’, he added.80 Indeed, when in 2015 Milorad Dodik wanted to effectively ‘buy’ the allegiance of the most prominent war-time RS leadership by granting them special benefits, VRS veterans and military victims staged such wide-spread protests that the government retracted the proposal (Prodanovi´c, 2018). Although direct links between association leaders and the main political parties seems as the main avenue for change, the potential of military victims and their veteran allies protesting on the street has featured heavily in their political calculations. As a Bosnian analyst noted, all military associations are ‘an electoral machine but also a Pretorian guard, which can be reactivated.’81 While there is currently much more fragmentation than in the past, this statement is still valid. Frequently, the lead-up to elections is accompanied by veteran protests designed to ‘demonstrate that we are still here and they must factor us in’.82 Indeed, clearly noting this relationship, a cantonal functionary of SDA in our interview in 2015 admitted: ‘Do not forget that all we care for is to stay in power. That is why we must quench the thirst of those veteran organizations’.83 Thus, the close links to parties and protests of military victims within the broader veteran movement have allowed military victims to be successful in realizing their demands. ∗ ∗ ∗ Military and civilian victims have had dramatically different resources to mobilize after the war, mainly due to the existing broad range of political allies of military victims that have often acted on their behalf and created strong networks within their entities with close ties to prominent demobilized soldiers’ associations. The extent of their resources has been visible especially in the immediate period before elections when they organize what can be called ‘flexing-the-muscle’ protests directed at the leading political parties to signal that their support is a sine qua non for their re-election. These resources have thus even offset their lack of advocacy and other campaigns. In contrast, civilian victims have had a poor starting

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position to access resources, but they have demonstrated a poor capacity to utilize their existing links to the civil society and other—more prominent—victim associations that are discussed in the next chapters. Relative to other victim categories, civilian victims have been poorly coordinated in their campaigns and access to alternative sources of financing beyond the direct local and humanitarian funding. Their campaigns for changes through protests, litigation and appeals have been only partially successful due to their lack of organized networks and limited involvement with other victims.

4.5

Context and Combinations for Success and Failure

So far, this chapter has analysed the different aspects of capital separately. Yet it is clear from the discussion above that victim capital means the various mixtures of different levels. In the first post-war emergency phase up to 1999, the confrontational nature of politics made it difficult to influence any major reforms to the old Yugoslav system, which remained in place. Military victims emerging from the war on all sides benefited from the generally accepted special provisions for the military and invoked the existing ‘cult of the fighter’ in their demands. They additionally became the main protectors—both in a symbolic and physical sense—of the nationalist parties and their new regimes; their moral authority was high. This, combined with the high mobilization resources that manifested themselves through wide networks of political allies and better access to policymakers, made them well placed to directly demand benefits through lobbying and other forms of direct pressure. The result was a preservation of the generous Yugoslav system in FBiH and RS until 2004. In other words, military victims utilized the combination proposed in the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario of high mobilization resources and moral authority to maintain their benefits. At that time, civilian war victims also held significant moral authority within their ethno-national communities but later failed to maintain it. Their numbers and injuries were initially tangible evidence of the extent of suffering of each ethno-national community and their share in civilian targeting by the ‘other side’. Their international salience at this time was also rather high, especially thanks to the media coverage of the war in Sarajevo. As a result, despite the need to reduce public spending, civilian victims benefited from the 1999 law in FBiH that recognized the most

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serious injuries and allowed families of the killed to access their property. Although the law followed the restrictive Yugoslav legislation, it represented a symbolic recognition of civilian victims at the entity level.84 The combination of the generally recognized need to provide war victims that featured among the main Bosniak parties and the support of the victims from the World Bank resulted in the law’s enactment. Meanwhile, RS kept its wartime law from 1993 which was again a copy of the Yugoslav legislation. It was in force until 2000 when it expired but was later extended. Overall, adoptions during the war and in the first phase were driven by the previous understandings of victimhood from Yugoslavia, i.e. only severe injuries were considered. Yet the post-war attention to the injured and the need to cater for a population that was under both domestic and foreign spotlight resulted in some minimal redress in 1999. In other words, civilian victims partially correspond to the ‘Poster Child’ scenario that I outlined as the combination of high moral authority and international salience. During the second phase of centralization, which lasted until 2006, military victims actively expanded their networks and allies (i.e. mobilization resources) and their moral authority became unshakeable as a critical component of the ethno-national vanguard in both entities. In FBiH, the key issue was how to ensure that the entity government controlled both the Croat and Bosniak fighters. The benefits system became an important part of this ‘control’. The unification of the Croat and Bosniak military forces, through the creation of an entity ministry for veteran affairs in 1999, paved the way for the adoption of entity legislation that catered for the needs of military victims through a generous system of services and payments in 2004 (World Bank, 2009). But the international salience of the ex-military started to shift in a negative direction as financial institutions such as the IMF and WB pressed both entities to reduce their public spending on veterans and consolidate their military forces under centralized state structures. In response, the ex-military population started demonstrating their potential destabilizing power on the street, through sit-ins, hunger strikes and road blockages. The first time a political party, SDP, tried to reduce general ex-military benefits in order to assuage external pressures and address domestic shortages in the FBiH budget, they faced mass veteran backlash (Helms, 2013, p. 205). They accused the SDP of dishonouring veterans’ sacrifice and being unpatriotic, eventually contributing to the fall of the SDP coalition government in 2002. Also in RS, military victims of war, following an explosive period

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of shifting alliances between the wartime SDS and the SNSD, consolidated as a strong power bloc behind the ruling coalition, alongside the powerful BORS. Although both entities adopted new laws in 2004 to satisfy external creditors, military victims’ benefits were preserved. Overall, the outcomes for military victims in this period reflected the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario. Meanwhile, the international salience and moral authority of the civilian victims declined due to the changes in international salience but also their poor skills to strategically use the attention given to other categories. The triage of victimhood, i.e. the selective prioritization of some victim categories over others, decreased civilian victims’ ability to be viewed as symbols of suffering in the international arena. They were also impacted by the declining amount of humanitarian aid sent to Bosnia, which they had benefited from until the early 2000s (Maglajli´c Holiˇcek & Rašidagi´c, 2007, p. 158). In this period, they began leveraging the findings of the ICTY to amplify frames of their suffering through legal means. Assisted by the civil sector, they used litigation that largely failed. Their mobilization resources at times temporarily increased: when redress of all civilian invalids was under threat in 2004, due to the imminent reform of veteran payments, civilian victims and all invalids responded with protests. As the public cuts were occasioned by the World Bank pressure to reduce public spending for the military victims, i.e. not civilian victims, the reductions were scrapped. As some respondents noted, the FBiH government realized that the savings would have been minimal. Instead, an agreement was found in distributing the financial burden across cantons and ensure that each canton adopted appropriate legislation. In RS, civil society pressure resulted in reopening the window for victims’ registration in 2007 and 2010 but with only a few dozen additional victims to register. As a respondent noted, the aim was to show goodwill to ‘internationals’ and ‘formally satisfy their demands … without any real consequences for the victims’.85 Civilian victims were only partially successful with their demands in this phase as they achieved broader access to the existing legislation without significant reforms. These successes are closest to the ‘Poster Child’ scenario because of the category’s fluctuation between high and moderate international salience and moral authority. During the last phase (since 2007), the increased attention given to constitutional reforms, including from the EU, combined with poor economic development has influenced the varied success of the demands of the two groups. From 2008, the worsening economic situation eroded

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the military’s ‘electoral machine’, as some sections of the broader veteran population were affected by verification and austerity measures imposed by external creditors. Military victim organizations created new political alliances and domestic authorities became increasingly weary of their potential to turn against the incumbents. No longer in full control of the political elites, military victims and veterans started to be a dangerous political movement. In FBiH, they were viewed as more difficult to control by the main political party blocs.86 Due to the external pressures by the IMF, new reforms were adopted in 2010 and 2011 in FBiH and RS, respectively. Although the RS created a more transparent system, these reforms were again a sign of the domestic reluctance to reduce military benefits. Moreover, unlike demobilized soldiers, whose pensions were cut in 2013, military victims maintained their levels of benefits and then had them expanded in 2019. Indeed, legislation for the broader ‘fighters’ population’ has continued to be revised, usually as a response to external pressure of creditors. Yet as the external pressure lowered in the past decade and as nationalist aims started to grow again, veteran causes regained traction, resulting in the 2019 change. In other words, the negative international salience played an important role at times but has failed to overhaul the system of privileging military victims. Civilian victims were affected by decreasing external involvement and domestic financial difficulties to a higher degree. The substantial drop in funding of the civil sector since 2008 (i.e. following the first drop in the early 2000s) left NGOs, their main ally and mediator with domestic authorities, scrambling for funds (Bartlett & Uvalic, 2013). Consequently, while maintaining their litigation efforts, civilian victims of war have since 2008 focused more on advocating for the maintenance of the current legislation, even if disadvantageous and meagre. Despite some formal changes being implemented during the processes of the European integration, particularly regarding disability, they have not been able to align their goals with any concrete policy measures and frame their demands as indispensable reforms. Economic downfall was later exacerbated by 2014 floods that again diverted attention to other vulnerable groups (see IBHI, 2013). The parallel rise of nationalism and separatism that has trumped any concern for Europeanization has also led to politics of fear-mongering as an efficient political strategy especially in RS. ‘Since Dodik came with his rhetoric that RS will be abolished [da nestane], his electoral support has grown,’ an analyst noted.87 The effect on civilian victims has been negative: ‘They [politicians] no longer care about any

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European standards. People are homogenized by fear not the aspiration to join the EU,’ a respondent stated.88 As a result of these structural changes, no significant reforms were passed regarding their war-related provisions. The following timeline (Fig. 4.4) summarizes the key milestones. It shows how structural changes shaped victims’ abilities to align themselves with some external and domestic events while utilizing their existing resources and generating new ones.

3 3 5 9 9 2 3 3 4 4 4 7 7 7 9 9 0 0 1 6 8 9 l-9 t- 9 -9 r -9 c-9 r -0 r -0 c-0 r -0 - 0 -0 - 0 -0 l-0 l-0 c-0 -1 r -1 c-1 r -1 - 1 l-1 Ju Oc Jun Ap De Ma Ma De Ap May Jun Jan F eb Ju Ju De F eb Ap De Ap Aug Ju

RS Law on civilian victims Military victims' associations created Civilian victims' associations created FBiH Law on civilian victims Ministry for Veteran Affairs in FBiH created Mass Veteran Protests in FBiH Central Ministry of Defence created Stanislav Galić judgment at the ICTY FBiH Law on veterans and military victims RS Law on veterans and military victims FBiH Law on civilian victims reformed RS Law on civilian victims' registration extended ICJ Decision on BiH-Serbia genocide case FBiH and RS Laws on veterans and military victims reformed Start of negotiations with IMF about further loans UN Convention on disability adopted in Bosnia FBiH Law on veterans and military victims reform Mass veteran protests across Bosnia RS Law on fighters and military victims reformed Mass protests of war veterans across FBiH, hunger strikes FBiH veteran protests and traffic blockage New FBiH Law on demobilized fighters and military victims

Fig. 4.4 Milestones in redress for civilian and military victims (Source Author)

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171

Conclusion

The answer to Sabina’s question of why her leg was worth less than that of a military war invalid was at the heart of this chapter. The main answer lies in the superior victim capital of the military victims. The moral authority of military victims that has been partially inherited from the former Yugoslavia in the ‘cult of the fighter’ combined with their vast resources, connections and networks after the war made them well poised to leverage their victim capital and insist on keeping the socialist special treatment of the military in place. This represents the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario when a group possesses high mobilization resources and moral authority, using it to exert pressure on domestic authorities. Civilian victims were initially also able to draw on some existing minimal socialist legal frameworks. Their ability to secure material redress was first the result of their high moral authority and international salience. They were able to follow what I called the ‘Poster Child’ scenario as a victim group that is both domestically and internationally given attention and features on political agendas as worthy of redress. However, poorly equipped and resourced to navigate the post-war political world, civilian victims have subsequently been able to pose only a limited challenge to domestic political authorities. This chapter also introduced two key tensions that have accompanied all victim-centric policies in Bosnia since the end of the war. The first one is the competition between victim groups over status and its material consequences, best highlighted in the adamant opposition of military victims to increases in benefits for other victims. Arguing that civilians did not contribute during the war as much as the military, they used their moral authority and resources to prevent expanding rights of civilian victims. The other aspect is the role of external actors, best exemplified in the attempts by the WB and IMF to cut down veteran benefits. By pushing for structural reforms that would reduce the levels of provisions for war veteran, not only military victims, these external organizations have produced some negative side effects. As Bosnian authorities were under pressure to cut public spending, they turned to the already meagre civilian victims’ benefits and threatened to lower them. Yet reductions in military victim benefits—without additional structural reforms—would indirectly reduce benefits for civilian victims too. This highlights the complexities of the enactment of domestic redress policies in divided political contexts. Ethno-national and military affiliations influence how

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war victims access their status and how their victim capital can be leveraged. The new hierarchies of victimhood and values have only reinforced the perception of discrimination experienced by civilian victims such as Sabina and the other victim groups discussed next.

Notes 1. Personal interview with Sabina, 2015. 2. For a list in Federation of BiH see the FBiH Ministry of Justice’s website, www.fmp.gov.ba/index.php?part=tabele&vrsta=ug, accessed 2 February 2019. 3. Personal interviews with civilian victims’ representatives in FBiH in 2015. 4. Personal interviews with civilian victims’ representatives in RS in 2015. 5. There are many other associations such as Užas, Parents of Killed Children in Besieged Sarajevo 1992–1995 and three ethno-national associations in Brˇcko. 6. Called the Union of Associations of Fighters from the National Liberation War (SUBNOR). 7. Personal interviews with several veteran associations in FBiH, 2015–2016. 8. Personal interviews with a veteran association in RS in 2015. 9. As stated in the leaflets of the associations and according to the leaders of the organizations. 10. Personal interview with Senida Karovi´c, 2015. 11. Personal interviews with victim leaders, 2015–2016. See also Nezavisne novine, 2006. 12. Personal interview with a military victim leader, 2015. 13. In FBiH, these are the Army of BiH, police forces and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) from 18 September 1991 to 23 December 1996. RS recognizes soldiers of the Yugoslav National Army (JNA) from 17 August 1991 to 18 May 1992 and the Army of RS (VRS) thereafter until 19 June 1996. Veterans of the army of Fikret Abdi´c in the Biha´c pocket are not recognized, but since 2004 children of fallen soldiers have been able to claim some benefits. 14. Official Gazette FBiH, 33/04, 56/05, 70/07, 9/10. 15. Personal interviews with international experts, 2015. See also World Bank (2012). 16. Law on the rights of demobilized fighters and their families [Zakon o pravima demobiliziranih branilaca i cˇ lanova njihovih porodica’, Official Gazette of FBiH, 54/19, 26 July 2019, http://www.fmbi.gov.ba/ userfiles/file/ZAKON%20DB%20bos(1).pdf, accessed online 20 February 2020. 17. Official Gazette of RS, 46/04, 53/04, 20/07, 59/08, 118/09, 134/11.

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18. A respondent explained that the loss of an eye is considered as 50 percent disability, loss of leg below the knee is 70 percent disability, while a loss of leg above the knee is full disability. 19. 1 Euro is approximately 2 Convertible Marks (KM). According to the Agency for Statistics of BiH , the net mean salary for 2015 in BiH was 830 KM. 20. According to the World Bank, BiH is an upper middle-income country. BiH’s GDP per capita in 2015 was 4,700 USD, which is similar to countries such as Algeria, Belize, Jamaica, Iran and Libya for 2015, World Bank data, see https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP. CD?end=2015&most_recent_value_desc=false&start=2009, accessed 20 January 2020. 21. Personal interviews with NGO workers and veterans, 2015, 2016. 22. Official Gazette of FBiH, 36/99, 54/04, 39/06, and 14/09. 23. Missing people had to declare dead their missing relatives. See the next chapter. Additionally, non-war disability must be established at 90 percent to enable the beneficiary to make any claims for support. 24. Official Gazette of RS No. 25/93, 32/94, 37/07, 60/07, 111/09, 118/09, 24/10. 25. Reports by Christiane Amanpour, Stuart Little, John F. Burns, Roy Gutman and many others, reported daily about the varieties of survival strategies in the besieged Sarajevo (Bouris, 2007; de Franco, 2012; Paulmann, 2019; Sontag, 2003). 26. For a life account of the events, see Jaganjac (2015). 27. Personal interview with a civilian victim, 2016. 28. Personal interview with Senida Karovi´c, 2015. 29. See ICTY cases: Prosecutor vs. Periši´c (IT-04-81) and Prosecutor vs. Staniši´c and Simatovi´c (IT-03-69). See also Clark (2014, 72). 30. Personal interviews with NGO and international workers, 2015, 2016 and 2019. See also Van der Auweraert (2013). 31. Personal interviews with IOM officials, 2015. 32. Some small rehabilitation projects were implemented by the WB in 1996 (called ‘Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project), but the scale was rather small (World Bank, 1996). Only in 2017, have there been some new projects launched by the US development agency (USAID) directed at the broader veteran population. 33. Personal interview with a disabled veteran, 2015. 34. There are various estimates of the veteran population (HeinemannGrüder, Pietz, Duffy, & Davidson-Seger, 2003). 35. Personal interview with a representative of a ministry in FBiH, 2016. 36. Personal interview with an international expert, 2015. 37. Personal interview with an international expert, 2015. 38. Personal interview with international actor, 2016.

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39. Personal interview with international actor, 2016. 40. For example, veterans under 60 you get 150 KM per year, while those over get additional 1.60 KM per month spent in war. Personal interview, 2016. 41. Personal interview with a veteran, 2015. 42. Personal interview with a military victim leader, 2015. 43. Personal interviews with NGO workers and political scientists, 2015, 2016, 2019. 44. For more on this see Maˇcek (2009). 45. Personal interview with Srd-an Puhalo, 2015. 46. Personal interviews with human rights activists, 2015 and 2016. 47. Personal interview with an NGO worker, 2016. 48. See official website: http://www.rcirz.org/index.php/lat/, accessed 2 March 2018. 49. Personal interview with Goran Krˇcmar, 2015. 50. Personal interview with an NGO worker, 2015. 51. Personal interview with a human rights activist, 2016. 52. Personal interview with a social worker, 2015. 53. Personal interview with Zukan Helez, 2014. 54. Tokaˇca estimates that around 5000 ‘false families’ accepted military benefits. Personal interview with Mirsad Tokaˇca, 2015. 55. Partisans were communist fighters led by Josip Broz Tito during World War II. Tito subsequently ruled socialist Yugoslavia from 1945 to his death in 1980. 56. Interviews with an NGO worker, 2014. 57. Personal interview with a prominent journalist, 2015. 58. Most theories of nationalism include the army as a key institution that unifies states (see Anderson, 1991; Gellner, 1983). 59. However, many individuals resist this religious terminology. 60. See, for example, Oslobod-enje (2007a). 61. Personal interview with a political scientist, 2015. 62. Personal interview with a human rights activist, 2016. 63. Personal interview with Stanislav Brki´c, 2015. 64. By 1997, 98 per cent of all humanitarian aid went to FBiH due to the foreign aid embargo imposed on RS (Boyd, 1998, p. 47). 65. These were, for example, the Center for Life (Centar za življenje) and the Foundation Light (Svjetlo). 66. For an overview of the early and later successful cases see Nowak (2005). I analyse these rulings in Chapter 6. 67. Personal interview with a civilian victim, 2015. 68. The means-testing policy considers both monthly income as well as property of each beneficiary. Means-testing is less common in post-war countries than in advanced economies such as the United States (but also Israel). See Lewin and Stier (2002), Tennant (2012).

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69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88.

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Personal interviews with NGO workers, 2015. Personal interviews with Predrag Babi´c, 2016. Personal interview with a human rights worker, 2015. For example, the funding distributed across victim associations in Mostar in 2006 was 22 times higher for military than civilian victims (data obtained from the Mostar municipality is with the author). Personal interview with a veteran leader, 2015. Personal interview with an HVO veteran in Mostar, 2015. Personal interview with an international expert, 2015. Personal interview with a VRS veteran, 2015. SPONA has acted as what in other contexts has been termed GONGOs, i.e. government-organized NGOs (for an explanation of the origins of the term, see Fagan 2010). Personal interview with a political analyst, 2015. Personal interview with a veteran, 2015. Note that in 2004 pensioners’ mass protests contributed to the fall of Dodik’s government. Personal interview with a political analyst, 2015. Personal interview with an HVO veteran, 2016. Personal interview with a municipal SDA official in Una-Sana canton, 2015. Personal interview with an NGO worker, 2015. Personal interview with an NGO worker in RS, 2016. Personal interview with a political scientist, 2015. Personal interview with a journalist, 2016. Personal interview with a human rights worker, 2016.

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Clark, J. N. (2009). The limits of retributive justice findings of an empirical study in Bosnia and Hercegovina. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 7 (3), 463–487. Clark, J. N. (2014). International trials and reconciliation: Assessing the impact of the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Abington: Routledge. Cohen, S. (2001). States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. Hoboken: Wiley. de Franco, C. (2012). Media power and the transformation of war. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Delbyck, K. (2016). Compensating survivors in criminal proceedings: Perspectives from the field. TRIAL International Bosnia and Herzegovina. Delpla, I. (2007). In the midst of injustice: The ICTY from the perspective of some victim associations. In X. Bougarel, E. Helms, & G. Duijzings (Eds.), The new Bosnian mosaic: Identities, memories and moral claims in a post-war society (pp. 211–234). Farnham: Ashgate. Delpla, I. (2014). La justice des gens: Enquêtes dans la Bosnie des nouvelles après-guerres [Justice of the people: Investigation of the new post-war in Bosnia]. Presses universitaires de Rennes. Dnevni Avaz. (2010, March 29). Ho´ce da dijele sudbinu boraˇcke populacije [They want to share the fate of the military population]. Dnevni Avaz, 9. Dnevni Avaz. (2011, October 11). Protesti ako se usvoje zakoni [Protests if the law gets adopted]. Dnevni Avaz. Dnevni list. (2005, February 4). Briga o civilnim invalidima prebaˇcena na Federaciju [Care for invalids moved to the Federation]. Dnevni list. Dragovi´c-Soso, J. (2016). History of a failure: Attempts to create a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1997–2006. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 10(2), 292–310. Džumhur, J. (2010). Special report on the rights of persons with disabilities. Ombudsmen for Human Rights in BiH. Fagan, A. (2010). Europe’s Balkan Dilemma: Paths to Civil Society or State-Building? London: I.B. Tauris. Gal, J., & Bar, M. (2000). The needed and the needy: The policy legacies of benefits for disabled war veterans in Israel. Journal of Social Policy, 29(4), 577–598. Gellner, E. (1983). Nations and nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Gregson, K. (2000). Veterans’ programs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. ESI. Hammarberg, T. (2011). Report by the Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe following his visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina on 27–30 November 2010 (CommDH(2011)11). Council of Europe. Hammond, P. (2007). Media, war and postmodernity. Abington: Routledge.

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Heinemann-Grüder, A., Pietz, T., Duffy, S., & Davidson-Seger, M. (2003). Turning soldiers into a work force: Demobilization and reintegration in postDayton Bosnia and Herzegovina. Bonn International Center for Conversion (BICC). Helms, E. (2013). Innocence and victimhood: Gender, nation, and women’s activism in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Hoddie, M., & Hartzell, C. A. (2010). Conclusions. In M. Hoddie & C. A. Hartzell (Eds.), Strengthening peace in post-civil war states: Transforming spoilers into stakeholders (pp. 220–235). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hodži´c, R. (2017, May 28). Karadži´ceve ideje mogu se poraziti ljudskoš´cu i vizijom, a ne kultom žrtve [Karadži´c’s ideas can be defeated by humanity and a vision, not by the cult of a victim]. Dnevni Avaz. IBHI. (2013). Budžetske novˇcane naknade za socijalnu zaštitu u BiH - Šta funkcioniše, a šta ne [Budgetary monetary payments for social protection— What works and what does not ]. IBHI and Maastricht School of Governance. https://goo.gl/2bvYku. ICJ. (2007). Application of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro). International Court of Justice. http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/91/13685.pdf. ICTY. (2003). Prosecutor vs Stanislav Gali´c (IT-98–29). http://www.icty.org/ case/galic/4. International Monetary Fund. (2013). Bosnia and Herzegovina: Second review under the stand-by arrangement and requests for waivers of applicability and modification of performance criteria (IMF Country Report 13/121). Staff Report. Press Release; and Statement by the Executive Director). IMF. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2013/cr13121.pdf. International Monetary Fund. (2014). Bosnia and Herzegovina: Fifth review under the stand-by arrangement and requests for waivers of applicability and extension and augmentation of the arrangement (Country Report 14/39). http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/scr/2014/cr1439.pdf. ˇ Jaganjac, E. (2015). Sarajevska princeza [Sarajevo Princess ]. Carobna knjiga. Karge, H. (2010). Transnational knowledge into Yugoslav practices? The legacy of the Second World War on social welfare policy in Yugoslavia. In K. Boeckh & N. Stegmann (Eds.), Veterans and victims in Eastern Europe during the 20th century: A comparison (pp. 75–86). Leipzig: Comparativ. Katana, G. (2008, February 27). SPONA htjela mirno, ali nije im se dalo [SPONA wanted peaceful but did not try much]. Oslobod-enje. Kriger, N. J. (2003). Guerrilla veterans in post-war Zimbabwe: Symbolic and violent politics, 1980–1987 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Lewin, A. C., & Stier, H. (2002). Who benefits the most? The unequal allocation of transfers in the Israeli welfare state. Social Science Quarterly, 83(2), 488–503. Maˇcek, I. (2009). Sarajevo under siege: Anthropology in wartime. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Maglajli´c Holiˇcek, R. A., & Rašidagi´c, E. K. (2007). Bosnia and Herzegovina. In B. Deacon & P. Stubbs (Eds.), Social policy and international interventions in South East Europe (pp. 149–166). Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Mallinder, L. (2009). Retribution, restitution and reconciliation: Limited amnesty in Bosnia-Herzegovina (SSRN). Queen’s University Belfast. https://papers. ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1531762. Martin-Ortega, O. (2012). Building peace and delivering justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The limits of externally driven processes. In C. L. Sriam, J. Garcia-Godos, & J. Herman (Eds.), Transitional justice and peacebuilding on the ground: Victims and ex-combatants (pp. 139–159). Abington: Routledge. McAdam, D. (1986). Recruitment to high-risk activism: The case of freedom summer. American Journal of Sociology, 92, 64–90. McCann, M. W. (1994). Rights at work: Pay equity reform and the politics of legal mobilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees. (2012). Strategija tranzicijske pravde u Bosni i Hercegovini, 2012–2016. Radni text [Strategy of transitional justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina 2012–2016 (draft)]. https://goo.gl/nRvAyI. Moratti, M., & Sabic-El-Rayess, A. (2009, June). Transitional justice and DDR: The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina. International Center for Transitional Justice. National Democratic Institute. (2010). Public opinion poll—BiH . Ipsos. https:// goo.gl/QALaKt. Nettelfield, L. J. (2010). Courting democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Hague tribunal’s impact in a postwar state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nezavisne novine. (2004a, May 7). Predložene izmjene i dopune Zakona o socijalnoj zaštiti [Law amendment on social protection drafted]. Nezavisne novine. Nezavisne novine. (2004b, October 26). Novac za invalide u BiH loše je raspored-en [Money for invalids in BiH is poorly distributed]. Nezavisne novine. Nezavisne novine. (2006, March 28). Nezadovoljni brigom Federacije BiH i države [Unsatisfied about the care from FBIH and the state]. Nezavisne novine. Nezavisne novine. (2008, December 27). Tihi´c laže i vrijed-a Bošnjake [Tihic lies and hurts Bosniaks]. Nezavisne novine. Nezavisne novine. (2010, November 6). Otvorena izložba o stradanjima Srba [Exhibition about the suffering of serbs opened]. Nezavisne novine.

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Ninkovic-Papic, R. (2014). ‘We are here’ and overall position of PwDs in BiH . IBHI. Nowak, M. (2005). Reparation by the Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. In K. Feyter (Ed.), Out of the ashes: Reparations for victims of gross and systematic human rights violations (pp. 245–288). Cambridge: Intersentia. Omeragi´c, D. (2007, July 27). Proširena prava boraˇcke populacije! [Fighters’ population’s rights broadened]. Oslobod-enje, 8. ONASA. (1996, September 20). Ratni vojni invalidi blokirali saobra´caj u Tuzli [RVI blocked traffic in Tuzla]. ONASA. ONASA. (1999, April 28). U Sarajevu zasjeda Zastupniˇcki dom Parlamenta Federacije BiH [House of Deputies in Session in Sarajevo]. ONASA. OSCE. (2012). The right to social protection in Bosnia and Herzegovina— Concerns on adequacy and equality. Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. https://www.osce.org/bih/107168?download=true. Oslobod-enje. (2004, August 8). I civili su bili branitelji [Civilians were also defenders]. Oslobod-enje, 4. Oslobod-enje. (2005, March 16). Najavljuju nekontrolisane demonstracije [Uncontrollable demonstrations announced]. Oslobod-enje. Oslobod-enje. (2007a, April 19). Ratni i neratni invalidi nisu isto [War and non-war invalids are not equal]. Oslobod-enje. Oslobod-enje. (2007b, April 29). Demobilisani borci protiv dvostrukih naknada [Demobilized fighters against double payments]. Oslobod-enje. Oslobod-enje. (2007c, November 29). Hiljadita tužba protiv Republike Srpske [1000th case against RS]. Oslobod-enje, 7. Oslobod-enje. (2009a, April 21). Trebalo je 45.000 stradalnika rata ostaviti bez prava [45,000 war injured should have stayed without rights]. Oslobod-enje. Oslobod-enje. (2009b, December 24). Limiti i za ratne vojne invalide [Limits also for war invalids]. Oslobod-enje. Oslobod-enje. (2010, August 10). Savez RVIBiH potpisuje sporazum s kandidatima? [RVIBIH signing a memorandum with party candidates?]. Oslobod-enje. Paulmann, J. (2019). Humanitarianism and media: Introduction to an entangled history. In J. Paulmann (Ed.), Humanitarianism and media: 1900 to the present (Vol. 9). New York: Berghahn Books. Popi´c, L., & Panjeta, B. (2010). Compensation, transitional justice and conditional international credit in Bosnia and Herzegovina Attempts to reform government payments to victims and veterans of the 1992–1995 war. https:// goo.gl/6crClh. Prodanovi´c, D. (2018, March 9). Veteransko pitanje u Bosni i Hercegovini. Crvena Kritika. https://www.crvenakritika.org/vesti/protesti/461-vetera nsko-pitanje-u-bosni-i-hercegovini.

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Remington, R. A. (1978). Civil-military relations in Yugoslavia: The partisan vanguard. Studies in Comparative Communism, 11(3), 250–264. Roll, K. C. (2014). Inventing the veteran, imagining the state: Post-conflict reintegration and state consolidation in Timor-Leste, 1999–2002. Oxford: University of Oxford. Rudic, F., Vladisavljevic, A., Lakic, M., & Haxiaj, S. (2018, October 8). Balkan War veterans still battling for state benefits. Balkan Insight. https://balkanins ight.com/2018/10/08/balkan-war-veterans-still-battling-for-state-benefits10-05-2018/. Seksan, V. (2004, July 9). Civilne žrtve i rata i mira [Civilian victims of war and peace]. Dani. Skocpol, T. (1995). Protecting soldiers and mothers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (1992). Master frames and cycles of protest. In A. D. Morris & C. McClurg Mueller (Eds.), Frontiers in social movement theory (pp. 133–155). New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the pain of others. Hamish Hamilton. Spaic, I. (2017, September 1). The everyday desperation of Bosnia’s protesting veterans. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2017/09/01/the-eve ryday-desperation-of-bosnia-s-protesting-veterans-09-01-2017/. Tabeau, E., & Zwierzchowski, J. (2010). The 1992-95 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Census-based multiple system estimation of casualties’ undercount [The Global Cost of Conflict]. ICTY. Tennant, J. (2012). Disability, employment, and income: Are Iraq/Afghanistan-era US veterans unique. Monthly Labor Review, 135, 3. Tokaˇca, M. (2012). The Bosnian book of the dead: Human losses in Bosnia and Herzegovina 1991–1995. Sarajevo: Research and Documentation Center. Torjesen, S., & MacFarlane, S. N. (2007). R before D: The case of post conflict reintegration in Tajikistan. Conflict, Security & Development, 7 (2), 311–332. Towle, P. (2018). History, empathy and conflict: Heroes, victims and victimisers. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. UN General Assembly. (1985). Declaration of basic principles of Justice for Victims of Crime and Abuse of Power (A/RES/40/34). United Nations. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/40/a40r034.htm. UNHCR. (2010). Consideration of reports submitted by States parties under article 40 of the covenant. Second periodic report of States parties. Bosnia and Herzegovina (International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights CCPR/C/BIH/2). United Nations. Van der Auweraert, P. (2013). Reparations for wartime victims in the former Yugoslavia: In search of the way forward (Land, Property and Reparations Division—Department for Operations and Emergencies). International Organization for Migration (IOM). https://goo.gl/7AYUQk.

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Weber, B. (2014). The limits of the EU’s transformative power in BosniaHerzegovina: Implications for party politics. In C. Stratulat (Ed.), EU integration and party politics in the Balkans (pp. 95–106). Brussels: European Policy Center. http://media.institut-alternativa.org/2014/09/pub_ 4716_eu_integration_and_party_politics_in_the_balkans.pdf Woodward, J. (2015). Making rights work: Legal mobilization at the agency level. Law & Society Review, 49(3), 691–723. World Bank. (1996). Bosnia and Herzegovina—Emergency Demobilization and Reintegration Project (English) [World Development Sources]. The World Bank. http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/908041468743939 020/Bosnia-and-Herzegovina-Emergency-Demobilization-and-Reintegra tion-Project. World Bank. (1997). Bosnia and Herzegovina—Transition Assistance Credit Project (No. 16671; p. 1). The World Bank. http://documents.worldbank. org/curated/en/123551467997275751/Bosnia-and-Herzegovina-Transi tion-Assistance-Credit-Project. World Bank. (2009). Social transfers in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Moving towards a more sustainable and better targeted safety net. https://goo.gl/qyrjmA. World Bank. (2012). Bosnia and Herzegovina challenges and directions for reform: A public expenditure and institutional review. https://goo.gl/XzQwgi. Zapcic, A. (2010, April 23). BiH ide u bankrot, ako ne smanji povlastice [BiH is going bust unless it lowers benefits]. Tportal.Hr. https://www.tportal.hr/ vijesti/clanak/bih-ide-u-bankrot-ako-ne-smanji-povlastice-20100422.

CHAPTER 5

Graves and Redress: Families of the Missing Persons and the ‘Srebrenica Effect’

5.1

Introduction

‘I have never experienced anything similar before or after’, a human rights activist from Sarajevo explained when I asked about the negotiations that preceded a legal reform for families of missing persons in 2004. ‘Mirsad Kebo, the then Minister of Human Rights and Refugees from SDA, put a blank paper on the table and said, “this is the Law on Missing Persons”. So we all got to work and produced a draft, which I think turned out to be very good,’ she added.1 By ‘all’, she meant the civil sector, governmental advisors and leaders of victims’ associations. The result of their work was a new law that granted a variety of material and social rights to families of the missing and offered them redress at the state level. Responding to the victims’ demands, the BiH Parliament unanimously adopted the law in October 2004. The Law on Missing Persons (henceforth ‘Law’) remains the only legal provision for Bosnian war victims successfully adopted at the state level. It foresaw the creation of a new state institution for the search of the missing, a central registry of all names and a special fund for families. ‘The Law was phenomenal – on paper’, a victim representative concluded. ‘But no one has ever been tasked with making sure families get what the Law promised,’ she added disappointingly.2 While the Law represented an unprecedented success in victims’ redress, it soon got bogged down by the divided Bosnian policymaking.

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Unlike in the previous chapter, where I discussed the ‘Domestic Pressure’ and ‘Poster Child’ scenarios of victim capital, in this chapter I stress the combination of all three components of victim capital. In other words, I illustrate the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario when high salience, authority and resources combine. Families of Bosnians who went missing during the war were exposed to high levels of external attention because this group included victims whose suffering came to define Bosnian post-war transitional justice: Srebrenica survivors. The Srebrenica genocide of July 1995 not only conferred superior international salience and moral authority upon families of the missing among Bosniaks but Srebrenica associations have enhanced their two sources of leverage by huge personal investments in their mobilization resources too. In what follows, I first characterize the missing persons’ families and the associated legal outcomes. I then discuss how their victim capital influenced the design of the 2004 Law. The final two sections analyse the conjuncture of these factors in the second post-war phase, and the lack of access to the provisions of the Law thereafter.

5.2 Characterizing Families of Missing Persons in Post-War Bosnia Families of missing persons form a category that belongs to the so-called ‘indirect’ (secondary) victims, i.e. victimized by the loss of a loved one (alongside families of the killed). In Bosnia, the term ‘missing’ [nestali] is used for both civilians and soldiers who disappeared during the war without any knowledge of their whereabouts. The 2004 Law defined the missing persons as individuals ‘about whom their family has no information and/or are reported missing based on reliable information because of the armed conflict that happened on the territory of the former SFRY’.3 Families of missing persons share victimization of what some called ‘ambiguous loss’, caught between the past and the future without knowing whether their loved ones are dead or alive and without the ability to bury their bodies and mourn over their graves (Clark, 2010, p. 431). Anthropological work in Bosnia by Sarah Wagner but also previous work from Latin America has shown that entire families are affected by the absence of closure after the disappearance of a family member (O’Keeffe, 2009; Stover & Weinstein, 2004; Wagner, 2008). The lack of knowledge has been in Bosnia compounded by the active efforts of the Bosnian Serb authorities to cover up traces of the crimes by dispersing bodies in

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multiple graves and questioning whether the disappeared individuals ever existed. An interviewed victim tearfully said, ‘they killed my son, threw his body God knows where and now they deny he ever existed. What worse can there be for a mother?’4 As Hamber and Wilson argued, ‘[t]his eradication of the identity of the victim leave survivors in a state of profound ontological insecurity’ (Hamber & Wilson, 2002, p. 40). Gaining information about graves and finding bodies or bones of their loved ones not only provides families with personal relief but can also be an important sign of reckoning (Stover & Shigakane, 2002, p. 850). As bodily remains represent forensic evidence of crimes, their recovery through information shared by potential perpetrators is an important sign of solidarity and societal willingness to move on. Enabling families to bury their loved ones can function as a gesture of reconciliation and personal closure. At the same time, while most families of the missing demand to know what happened, finding out about their death can result in double victimization—that of an ambiguous loss and that of a full loss after the remains of the loved ones have been identified, ending any possibility that they may still be alive (Barakovi´c, Avdibegovi´c, & Sinanovi´c, 2014, p. 340). The issue of nestali has featured prominently in Bosnian daily life until today, as discoveries of mass graves have been a common occurrence: in 2015, over 800 bodies were identified across the country while the number was 135 in 2018 (Rovcanin, 2019). Although there are still over 6500 people missing, 80 percent of the missing from the Bosnian war were identified by 2020—the highest percentage of any post-war country according to the International Commission for Missing Persons’ (ICMP) data.5 As discussed previously, there have been significant controversies over numbers of victims, including missing people, whereby each ethnonational group has tried to inflate ‘their’ numbers. However, thanks to the work of ICMP, it has been established that around 31,500 civilians and soldiers went missing between 1992 and 1995 in Bosnia.6 Bosnia thus accounts for nearly 80 percent of all the disappearances from the wars in ex-Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The ICMP further established that most missing victims were Bosniaks/Muslims (88 percent), followed by Serbs (9 percent), Croats (3 percent), and a very small number of other groups (Wagner, 2008, p. 86). The vast majority of the reported disappearances were men (over 90 percent), resulting in those left behind being mostly their wives, parents and children (Barakovi´c, Avdibegovi´c, & Sinanovi´c, 2013). In addition, nearly half of the reported missing people were in

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the eastern parts of Bosnia along the Drina River (Podrinje) and the majority in and around Srebrenica (one quarter of all cases). There has thus not only been a great predominance of Bosniak victims, but also a regional distribution of where people went missing, providing good evidence about the course of the Bosnian war and where the main atrocities were committed. Figure 5.1 depicts the regional distribution. It also indicates the total numbers of identified bodies by 2017. Given such distinct type of victimization and the regional distribution of the disappearances, Bosnian families of missing persons organized themselves separately from the rest of Bosnian victims. They initially set up small local organizations run by returnees who were located close to the areas where their loved ones went missing in the hope that they would come back or be found. This is particularly the case with female Bosniak

965 1,406

Posavina

1,234 1,657

Herzegovina

Other

Central Bosnia

Sarajevo

Upper Podrinje

Lower Podrinje

512 1,731 1,553 2,224 1,649 2,240 2,141 3,686 2,575 4,069 5,060

Krajina (incl. Prijedor)

6,539 6,968

Srebrenica and Žepa 1995

7,754 Identified by 2017

Reported Missing

Fig. 5.1 Missing persons by regions/events as of 2017 (ICMP data, 2017)

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survivors of Srebrenica, who created several organizations in Tuzla in north-eastern Bosnia in 1996 and Sarajevo, such as Mothers of Srebrenica and Podrinje, Women of Srebrenica, and the Movement of Mothers of the Enclaves Srebrenica and Žepa (henceforth ‘Movement’), which has over 8000 members. In my interview with Women of Srebrenica, one of its leaders Nura Begovi´c provided this explanation for how the association was set up: We could not just roam around the streets of Srebrenica on our own and keep trying to enter our houses, demand information and our rights. It was dangerous and without much effect. If we wanted to work with institutions and be heard, we had to be some sort of a legal entity, which is what Hajra ˇ c] and I did in May 1996 by registering the association.7 [Cati´

Around the same time, Bosniak families created twelve municipal associations of missing civilians and soldiers in eastern Bosnia outside of the Srebrenica area. They united in 2001 in the Bosniak Union of Associations of Families of Missing Persons (henceforth ‘Bosniak Union of the Missing’).8 Given the lower numbers of victims among the other ethnonational groups, Bosnian Serb and Croat associations were less visible. In 1996, the first organization for families of missing Serbs was established as the Republican Board of Families of Missing Persons (Sarkin, Nettelfield, Matthews, & Kosalka, 2014, p. 124). Later, eight associations created an umbrella organization known as the Republican Organization of Families of Captured and Fallen Fighters and Missing Civilians RS (henceforth ‘Republican Organization’) in Banja Luka that has since dominated the discourse on Bosnian Serb missing. A splinter minority Union of Serb Associations of Missing Persons was also set up in Bijeljina and another one in Eastern Sarajevo in 2012.9 Croat victims accounted for the smallest number of victims and gathered in municipal associations that unionized as late as 2011. In total, it is estimated that there are at least 35 associations of families of missing persons in BiH10 with a membership of around 40,000 (Juhl, 2009, p. 257; see also Sarkin et al., 2014).

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5.3 Goals and Outcomes: Bones, Return and Recognition As the source of victimization of the families of the missing differed from other groups, information was an inherent part of the remedy they demanded. They campaigned to reveal the truth about what happened to their loved ones and recover their bodies. ‘Our mission is to find bones of our loved ones. And then that perpetrators are brought to justice,’ the president of the Movement Munira Subaši´c stated in our interview.11 These efforts have also been matched by calls for being able to return home and ensure dignified burials in the area of Srebrenica. Their need was emotional and urgent. This urgency led to early protests, appeals and silent demonstrations (Delpla, 2007, p. 223). In particular, mothers, daughters and wives of those who ‘disappeared’ in Srebrenica appealed to international and domestic authorities to investigate what happened in July 1995. But they also wanted to be able to return to their homes that had been occupied by Bosnian Serb families. Once the extent of the crime was obvious after first openings of mass graves, the women turned their attention to where to bury their families and how to commemorate them. A Bosnian expert on transitional justice Aleksandra Leti´c explained that the hope of finding bodies of relatives at first ‘kept the women alive’, while the memory of them and their commemoration later became ‘the purpose of their lives’.12 Their initial goal was that of ‘“right to know” … the right to have their relatives’ remains returned to them; and the right to a sanctified burial of those individual sets of recovered remains’ (Wagner, 2008, p. 248). By the early 2000s, material redress became a key part of such aims as survivors began to face existential problems (Delpla, 2007, p. 224). As most of the missing were men and thus the main breadwinners in the rather traditional rural parts of Bosnian society, their wives and families were exposed to economic vulnerabilities in the precarious post-war state. The mainly female survivors realized that in addition to demanding the location of graves and punishment of those responsible, they also needed material benefits such as housing, help with burial costs and benefits for children.13 ‘We had nothing when we came back. Our houses were empty. They burnt everything, even photos. And we were scared’, a survivor described her return in 2002.14 Another victim from Srebrenica in our interview explained: ‘I want them to admit what happened, that my son was killed the way he was. I want them to be held responsible.

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But they won’t. So some compensation, some reparation or whatever it is called… There is no money that can replace my child. But so be it, at least some satisfaction, if there is no other punishment.’15 Families also struggled to exercise their inheritance and property rights because of the complex governance structures of post-war Bosnia and the lack of documentation that had been lost during the war. As the Dayton framework devolved social welfare to the subnational level of entities and cantons, families whose loved ones had gone missing in the other entity struggled to obtain documents that would entitle them to their property and economic rights until the early 2000s. While FBiH and later RS formally included missing persons in their entity laws for civilian victims, families were asked to declare their relatives deceased and present evidence of property ownership to be able to return to their homes, receive benefits, pensions and inheritance.16 A state-wide framework of redress was thus needed. Such a framework came into existence in 2004 when the abovementioned Law on Missing Persons was adopted.17 Alongside the War Crimes Chamber set up in 2005, the Law became the only state-wide legal framework directly targeting Bosnian war victims. The Law was aimed to enable survivors to exercise property rights, bury their loved ones wherever they chose fit, commemorate their memory, enter into new marriages, receive benefits for their children and a variety of other social benefits, alongside monetary redress (Dewhirst & Kapur, 2015, p. 27). The Law established a time frame (30 April 1991–14 February 1996) in which a person that went missing could be considered a direct victim, and clarified that all immediate family members (spouses, parents and all dependents) were eligible for redress as indirect victims. To satisfy the families’ search for truth, the Law prescribed the opening of the state Institute for Missing Persons (Institut za nestale osobe, INO) and the creation of the Central Records of Missing Persons (Centralna evidencija nestalih, CEN) that all missing persons had to be entered into. Within three years, all missing were to be declared deceased (Art. 27). This later became a topic of dispute as many families did not want to declare their relatives dead (cf. Citroni, 2014). However, for legal reasons—for example, to receive pensions of late husbands or obtain children benefits for children of missing soldiers—many were eventually forced to do so. Recognition of the status of victims was an important part of the Law. It guaranteed families the right to know about the fate of their missing family members, the circumstances of their disappearance and the right

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to receive their bodily remains. In an attempt to at least formally standardize victims’ rights, it invoked the need to treat all bereaved ‘on equal conditions, regardless of whether a missing person had been a member of the armed forces or a civilian’ (Art. 10). Most importantly, the Law foresaw the establishment of a Fund for the Families of Missing Persons (henceforth the ‘Fund’). The Fund was to provide families with financial support including the period after the remains have been identified. However, this right would cease once a spouse remarried or a child finished schooling. The Law specified that relatives could choose whether to benefit from compensation under this Law or other entity laws for civilian victims (as families of the killed). Although the Law only spoke of full financial support at the amount of 25 percent of the mean salary in the respective entity, it was to help the most vulnerable individuals by additionally providing other social and medical services. These included educational and social privileges for children, preferential employment and free healthcare. The Fund was to cover the cost of burials, memorials, commemorative events and finance all victim associations. On the ‘International Day of the Disappeared’18 on 30 August 2005, INO was formally founded as the first unified domestic body tasked with the search for missing people. Since its operational opening in 2008, it has established offices across Bosnia with the aim of carrying out investigations and liaising with prosecutorial offices, supporting the families, and generally complementing the forensic and scientific work of other (previously entity-based) institutions. Mimicking the three-sided administrative structures of Bosnia, INO is led by a Supervisory Board consisting of one Croat, one Bosniak and one Serb. Representatives of the families are part of its six-member Advisory Board (two from each ethno-national group) with the aim to ‘convey what the families were thinking about the governing body and to act as a stream of information from families up’.19 Finally, by merging twelve local and investigative databases and sources, an official list of names was created in 2014, which is in the last phases of verification as of 2020. As a result, this database might emerge as the most accurate victim statistics in BiH. As demanded by the victims, the Law included a mechanism to streamline the search for the missing that has until then been divided and managed by entity commissions, offer socio-economic support to relatives and finance activities of victim associations. Therefore, evaluating outcomes on the basis of demands and achievements, the Law’s adoption

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Table 5.1 Outcomes for families of missing persons Level

FBiH

RS

State legislation

Families of missing persons

Included in entity legislation

Included in entity legislation

2004 State Law on Missing Persons

Source Author

was a clear success at the state level, as depicted in Table 5.1. As families for missing persons were formally included in entity laws alongside families of killed, no additional claims were made at entity authorities. However, as I discuss below, the Fund was never established and INO has been much criticised for its slow pace of work. Therefore, despite the initial ‘success’ at the state level, families of the missing have had to rely on entity legislation rather than the Law to receive any redress.

5.4

Optimal Victim Capital of the Missing

In many respects, the 2004 legal breakthrough seems rather anomalous in the history of policy adoption for victims in BiH. Bosnian policymaking in the realm of redress and social policies has only rarely been conducted at the state level, given that entities have significant governance rights. State-level laws have usually addressed areas of key importance, such as security (state army), taxation, judiciary and state symbols. It was thus remarkable that a victim category was treated at the state level. In this section, I demonstrate that the primary reason for this outcome is the combination of domestic and international resonance of the nestali issue because of the Srebrenica genocide of July 1995 combined with the high levels of activism and mobilization of the victim associations. High levels of overall victim capital among the Srebrenica associations brought the rest of the families together and towards a state Law. Their success thus represents the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario, when a category has high levels of all three factors. 5.4.1

International Salience: Srebrenica and Its Aftermath

The external attention given to the issue of missing persons is critical for understanding the adoption of the 2004 Law. The levels of international salience were far superior among families of the missing and their

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demands to any other Bosnian victim group. The key reason is that the issue gradually became identified with the Srebrenica genocide. No other crime during the Bosnian war has been given such international attention as the fall of the Srebrenica enclave and the disappearance of 8000 Bosniak men under the auspices of UN soldiers. As the anthropologist Wagner argued, ‘if inaction characterized the international community’s response to the events in July 1995, then documenting the story of the enclave and its fall, its mass graves, and its missing has become a principal means of redressing the failure to act’ (Wagner, 2008, p. 21). Indeed, thousands of articles, reports and books have been written documenting the genocide. It has since become a point of reference invoked when reporting about other war crimes and atrocities around the world, including contemporary violations in Syria and Iraq (Noack, 2016). 5.4.1.1 The Shame of Srebrenica and Legal Justice Between 11 and 19 July 1995, around 8000 Bosniak men and boys ‘went missing’ from the UN-protected ‘safe haven’ of the enclave of Srebrenica after the Bosnian Serb Army under general Ratko Mladi´c seized the enclave. The enclave had been established under UN protection and demilitarized in May 1993. Its aim was to offer protection of refugees from areas surrounding Srebrenica. The vast number of documents and eye-witnesses allows for an accurate reconstruction of the events in July 1995 that are briefly sketched out here.20 After the RS Army gained full control over the enclave on 11 July 1995, it loaded around 2000 men who had previously sought refuge at the UN compound in Potoˇcari onto buses. The paralyzed Dutch UN battalion (UNPROFOR Dutchbat) of 347 soldiers showed poor resistance and ultimately under pressure assisted the RS soldiers with loading the buses. The Bosniak men were executed in the nearby fields, schools and warehouses. The victims’ bullet-filled bodies were later found in over 90 mass graves scattered across eastern Bosnia (Rohde, 2015). Some body parts were uncovered in multiple graves, indicating an active effort to cover up traces of the killings.21 The men had their hands tied and were unarmed,22 thus classifying them as civilians. Women and children were separately driven to the nearby city of Tuzla. Additional 15,000 men fled to the woods but only 9000 made it out alive (Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013, pp. 9–14). The rest were executed by the VRS forces of Ratko Mladi´c and Serbian paramilitaries (such as the Scorpions).

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Once the first reports about the killings appeared in the media, public bodies and human rights activists worldwide demanded an urgent investigation of the crime and punishment for the executioners. Human Rights Watch (HRW) soon after the massacre argued that Srebrenica ‘made a mockery of the international community’s professed commitment to safeguard regions it declared to be “safe areas”’ (Human Rights Watch, 1995, p. 1). It further called for external actors ‘to fulfil their moral and legal duty’ and bring those responsible to justice. In reaction to the international failure, the UN Special Representative for Human Rights Tadeusz Mazowiecki resigned from his post and accused international actors of a ‘lack of consistency and courage’ in Bosnia (Mazowiecki, 1995). The ‘shame’ of not preventing Srebrenica has haunted the UN and international actors after the war and has also shaped their subsequent operations.23 Srebrenica pushed Western countries to intervene in the conflict and commit to Bosnian peacebuilding. Some authors even claim that while the act of establishing the ad hoc Tribunal, the ICTY, in 1993 was merely a ‘public relations device’, it was Srebrenica that impelled external actors to commit to its work (Williams & Scharf, 2002, p. 92). While the ICTY had already been under growing pressure from human rights activists who were firmly set on seeing it succeed (Orentlicher, 2010), Srebrenica certainly helped its operationalization: only after Srebrenica did the ICTY gain sufficient resources and foreign assistance to indict and capture suspected war criminals (Nettelfield, 2010, p. 83). By the end of the war in November 1995, the ICTY indicted the two main suspects of orchestrating Srebrenica—the former RS President Radovan Karadži´c and the VRS general Ratko Mladi´c. And only after Srebrenica did US President Bill Clinton give his consent to the NATO bombing of Serb forces in Bosnia, leading to the US management of the Dayton peace talks. The ensuing diffusion of the international norms of justice and the ‘Responsibility to Protect’ of 2005 are partially also the result of the UN dismal failure in Bosnia.24 The international and media interest was critical for local victim associations that were able to leverage this attention to drive home the message that their loved ones must be found and identified. The ICTY soon became an important ally as it legally defined their suffering as amounting to genocide. As early as November 1996, a low-ranking soldier of the RS Army Dražen Erdemovi´c pleaded guilty to crimes against humanity in executing hundreds of Srebrenica men and shared valuable information about other perpetrators.25 Yet the key turning point came in August

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2001 when the Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krsti´c was found guilty of the charge of genocide. In its judgement, the ICTY established that at least 7500 civilian Bosniak men were executed in and around Srebrenica with a clear and proven intent to annihilate Bosnian Muslims as an ethnic group.26 This case (as well as later cases of Vujadin Popovi´c and Zdravko Tolimir) featured prominently in the victims’ understanding of their plight as they began to frame themselves as internationally recognized victims of genocide in their appeals and campaigning activities. Until 2020, 14 individuals were found guilty of participating in the Srebrenica genocide and ‘related crimes’ at the ICTY, including Karadži´c and Mladi´c.27 The framing of the missing as victims of genocide has functioned as powerful leverage among political authorities in the Federation (The Economist, 2002). Nettelfield has argued that the ICTY findings about genocide provided victims with the capital to ‘make claims of accountability and mobilize on behalf of their missing relatives’ (Nettelfield, 2010, p. 210). The Srebrenica associations became witnesses, interlocutors and commentators of the work of the ICTY (and later the domestic War Crimes Chamber). They assisted the Tribunal in collecting information, as well as mobilizing the diaspora to testify and provide information (Delpla, 2014, pp. 267–273). International organizations (such as UN bodies, ICMP ICRC, OHR and Pax from the Netherlands) supported their work and sponsored their trips to The Hague to follow trials in person. While Srebrenica victims also acted as the Tribunal’s critics because of uneven sentencing and controversial decisions such as the destruction of personal belongings of Srebrenica victims (Simi´c, 2014), ICTY allowed the victims to take a much more central role in transitional justice. The international attention they were given was critical for both their external and domestic positions, especially in the first and second post-war phases when human rights organizations incessantly advocated for their rights and recognition. Among others, Amnesty International appealed in 2003 to domestic institutions to recognize all missing people’s families and provide them with material benefits. It referred to some of the most famous cases of missing persons, such as the disappearance of the Bosniak general Avdo Pali´c, and invoked Srebrenica to advocate for ‘a genuinely equitable system for the reparation of victims’ (Amnesty International, 2003, p. 48). Beyond identification, the other concern of survivors was the burial of remains and returning home. ‘So many identified bodies were there

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so we started asking ourselves where to bury them – in 2001, I think, ˇ c explained. ‘Our authorities first said that we can do it was’ Hajra Cati´ it in Kladanj. But we said we would never do that – how is Kladanj and Srebrenica related? We wanted them to be here, in Srebrenica. So we started seeking the ownership of the land in Potoˇcari’, she added.28 One of their colleagues facilitated meetings with the US ambassador who was visiting the area regularly. The women pleaded with him repeatedly to convince the OHR to assign the area of the UN military compound in Potoˇcari as a burial site. They succeeded. In 2000 the first large ceremony was organized in 2000 with financial support and endorsement from the HR Wolfgang Petritsch and the participation of international politicians (Duijzings, 2003, p. 157). A year later, the OHR set up a foundation with the objective of establishing a memorial (OHR, 2001). The Executive Board of the foundation was appointed by the OHR and included US and European ambassadors, as well as the Grand Mufti of the Islamic Community in BiH. In September 2003, the ‘Memorial Complex Srebrenica-Potoˇcari’ was inaugurated by Bill Clinton. Thereafter, world leaders and regional politicians began streaming to Srebrenica for the annual 11 July commemoration and the Memorial received generous external funding. The annual commemoration turned into a large annual gathering in Potoˇcari, accompanied by the burial of newly exhumed bodies (or their parts).29 Yet the ‘failure of international community’, though, as the primary frame of the genocide has haunted external actors—it has even made it onto the entrance board of the newly established museum in Srebrenica-Potoˇcari (see Fig. 5.2). In the period prior to the Law’s adoption, family associations became important public actors for another reason—their participation in global scientific progress. While the issue of missing people was by no means new in international affairs,30 it was not until the Bosnian war that new identification methods were developed. As early as 1992, the growing advocacy for the right to know the truth led to the adoption of the UN International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (UN General Assembly, 1992). A series of initiatives led by the ICRC and Physicians for Human Rights followed, aimed at documenting the possible places of disappearances in Bosnia. Eric Stover, a prominent American human rights activist working on cases of the disappeared in Latin America and later for the ICTY, relocated to Bosnia to assist with the development of new forensic methods (Fondebrider, 2009). These efforts were supported by the OHR but needed an umbrella

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Fig. 5.2 Sign on the entrance to the Srebrenica-Potoˇcari museum (Source Author)

institution, which the US administration eventually sponsored. In 1996, the US government established the ICMP in Sarajevo with a laboratory and centre in Tuzla, giving it a mandate to provide technical assistance in the search for missing persons.31 As physical peace was established relatively quickly, Bosnia was able to host such an enterprise, despite the tripolar entity structure of the country that led to many technical issues in terms of sharing of information and technology.32 The ICMP gradually took over the previously piecemeal search for the missing that was divided into entity commissions and supplemented by ICRC efforts (Sarkin et al., 2014, p. 27). After Srebrenica, the search for large numbers of reported missing people needed a new forensic approach too. The issue was identified in the Dayton Peace Agreement, which asked all parties to ‘provide information through the tracing mechanisms of the ICRC on all persons unaccounted for’ (Annex VII, Art. V). Consequently, the OHR and the ICRC set up a working group to cooperate

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with the two entity commissions and families, and hen the ICMP. Yet the ICRC did not have the technology for identification and until the end of the 1990s, it was difficult to bring entities together as each mostly searched for people of their own nationals in their separate commissions (one in FBiH and one in RS). Until 2001 only 140 bodies from Srebrenica were identified via traditional means (i.e. identifying clothes or by ID cards if found) (Wagner, 2008, p. 82). Identifications necessitated a high level of scientific expertise to analyse the skeletal remains, as well as a comprehensive approach involving the police, investigators, prosecutors, but also the victims themselves. The ICMP brought these efforts under one roof by working with the state institutions, scientists and family associations. All victim respondents unequivocally confirmed what a critical role the ICMP played in depoliticizing the search for the missing and uniting identification efforts. ‘They [ICMP] kept organizing meetings and asking us what we wanted – all of us, no matter which people [nacija] we were from. This meant they truly represented all of our needs and understood us,’ Nura Begovi´c explained.33 By 1999 it also oversaw the establishment of the Podrinje Identification Project that has exclusively focused on Srebrenica and is currently administered by the Tuzla Municipality (Wagner & Kešetovi´c, 2016, p. 46). In 2001, it developed a new path-breaking DNA-based analysis of matching body parts to family members following a large campaign of gathering blood samples that significantly accelerated and pioneered the scientific identification process, not only in Bosnia but around the world (Wagner, 2008, p. 90). By 2017, 6968 bodies from Srebrenica (out of the 7754 eventually reported missing) were identified (see Fig. 5.1 above). 5.4.1.2 Benchmarking Victimization Nonetheless, the external focus on Srebrenica victims left other victims’ families in its shadow. Srebrenica became ‘the benchmark of victimhood which we use for all other victims’, a respondent noted.34 Families of victims in the Prijedor municipality, central Bosnia and other areas of eastern Bosnia rarely had the opportunity to voice their views in the same fashion as Srebrenica survivors despite ICMP’s efforts (Ahmetaševi´c, 2015b). Nearly 3200 mainly Bosniaks and Croats went missing during the war in and around Prijedor, many in the notorious camps such as Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm. Yet the external attention to these crimes has over time become limited as they were never legally deemed to

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have amounted to genocide (Djolai, 2019). The Prijedor-focussed association of victims Izvor-Prijedorˇcanki (Source—Women of Prijedor), set up in 1996 in Sanski Most, tried to bring attention to these crimes by engaging the diaspora, foreign governments and the civil sector. However, it has taken them over a decade to attract external attention. The low levels of external interest in the other cases was a source of regret for the other victims early on. Ahmet Grahi´c, the leader of the Bosniak Union of the Missing, argued that in terms of numbers ‘two Srebrenicas’ were committed across eastern Bosnia (which is in fact not accurate given the numbers, see Fig. 5.1) but ‘internationals did not care about the rest of us because of Srebrenica where all the resources went’.35 The external generous spending on Srebrenica is indeed true. In its 2002 report (see below), the Dutch government calculated that from 1996 to 2002 only, nearly 34 million Euro were sent to Srebrenica-related projects. As an NGO worker noted, ‘you could have paved roads to Srebrenica with golden coins from the international aid that it received – where it all went, I do not know.’36 Even more prominently, Bosnian Serb families were excluded from the international agenda (with the exception of ICMP). Given their low numbers and the general perception of the war as mainly caused by Serb aggression, Bosnian Serb associations became the most marginalized and were rarely mentioned in external reports before 2004. The only external organization that has included them in its work was again the ICMP, which included their blood samples and also encouraged them to cooperate across entity (and ethnic) lines so that more graves could be located. The leader of the (RS) Republican Organization, Nedjeljko Mitrovi´c, stressed during our interview that apart from the ICMP, his organization never received any international support because the external focus was on Bosniak victims. To him, Bosnian Serb nestali were intentionally ignored and their numbers underestimated. This effectively intensified the Serb victims’ struggle for what Horowitz called ‘relative group worth’, where one ethnic group (usually the minority) competes with another over its value, in this case in the sphere of victimhood (Horowitz, 1985, p. 143). Despite this lack of external concern for other representatives of the nestali families, Srebrenica mounted the issue high on the external agenda of transitional justice. Because of the need to collect blood samples and evidence from all relatives, the ICMP had to cooperate with all families.37 The spotlight on Srebrenica thus advanced the inclusion of all nestali associations in the negotiations about a new law. The ICMP

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together with the ICRC, OHR and OSCE began to pressure the central government to simplify the search for the missing and assist their families. Yet it also insisted on including all families in the process. Matthew Holliday, head of the ICMP’s Western Balkans section, in our interview stressed that their work could not have proceeded without the families because they set out the agenda and provided invaluable information. This cooperation facilitated a process that was launched at the beginning of the second post-war phase: in 2000, the ICMP symbolically announced plans to open a domestic institution, the national Institute for Missing Persons, INO.38 However, this was only a formal inauguration; it did not begin functioning until eight years later after it was included in the 2004 Law. The ICMP launched and mediated a dialogue between the families and the government. The result was the start of official debates in 2002 between family associations, the civil sector, international organizations and representatives from the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees (MHRR) about the future design of a state law. Subsequently, a panel of families was set up in March 2003 to become part of a working group led by the MHRR’s legal advisor Saliha Ðuderija. As alluded to in the introduction to this chapter, these debates and the involvement of the civil sector and family associations was unprecedented. All existing family associations from the three ethno-national groups and from Brˇcko were invited to participate. In retrospect, the Bosnian Serb associations also appreciated the process because it guaranteed non-discrimination and equal treatment for all families across BiH.39 Although the process was officially managed by MHRR, in our interview Ðuderija acknowledged that ICMP’s leadership and insistence on legally streamlining the search was an important aspect of how it started. She recognized that although the issue was a ‘political question’, the financial support of the ICMP and OHR for this mission convinced all parliamentarians to ‘raise their hands’ for the law in October 2004. ‘We did not have the technologies and the money to create such a project, so the financial support and expertise of ICMP was the only chance for the families to see a comprehensive approach to the search and their rights to be realized’, she explained.40 Moreover, victims across the country stood behind the proposal (unlike for other proposals such as the Transitional Justice Strategy and others). The law was unanimously adopted during the 45th session of the Bosnian Parliament on 12 October 2004. It came into force on 9 November 2004. ∗ ∗ ∗

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Thanks to the vast international interest and public attention given to the genocide in Srebrenica, international salience of the nestali issue has been significant since the Bosnian war. While external actors—led by the ICMP and OHR—needed to provide some remedy for survivors of Srebrenica as it came to embody international humanitarian failure, domestic victim associations aligned their efforts to leverage the international shame further (Wagner, 2008, p. 89). This also led to the establishment of new institutions as ways of contributing to delivering ‘factual and objective information’ (Boraine, 2006, p. 20) about the causes of death, identities, and numbers of the missing. Victims also demanded funding to support their commemoration activities as well as the direct physical reconstruction of the area. Although the focus on Srebrenica pushed other victim associations to the background, families of the missing ultimately benefited from the superior international salience of Srebrenica amplified by their vigorous activism. 5.4.2

Moral Authority: The Epitomes of Suffering

In addition to the prioritization of the Srebrenica case, Srebrenica families have also had a high moral authority in the Federation, whose politicians were keen on framing Bosnian Serbs as the key perpetrators of the war. In particular, any criticism directed at Srebrenica victims has become apostasy among Bosniak politicians. This was compounded by the female identities of the survivors and the scale of individual suffering as some women lost several (or all) immediate male relatives (sons, brothers, husbands and fathers). This unimaginable suffering has been ‘monumentalized’ (Henig, 2017, pp. 46–47) in the Bosniak remembering of the war and resonates among the public in FBiH until today—but also in the very scarce liberal circles of RS. Moreover, at the time of the Law’s adoption, missing persons’ moral authority was symbolically accepted by leading political authorities in RS because of an unprecedented acknowledgment of guilt for the Srebrenica atrocity. 5.4.2.1 ‘Do Not Forget Srebrenica!’ ‘So that it is not repeated and forgotten’ (Da se ne zaboravi i ne ponovi) has become the key slogan of domestic collective memory of Srebrenica. The crime and its survivors have domestically gained prominence as the most discussed, commemorated and invoked event of the war. The events of July 1995 became the defining turning point of the Bosnian war, the

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‘crime of crimes’ (Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013, p. 16) and the key lieu de mémoire 41 of the new Bosniak national identity (Bougarel, Helms, & Duijzings, 2007, p. 26). The genocide proved the disproportionate Bosniak victimization that was during the war relativized by external actors. It further justified the existence of an independent Bosnian state and SDA’s wartime case for the Bosnians’ right to sovereignty due to the scale of suffering.42 Appropriating the memory of the war, SDA leaders have not only led the July commemorations but actively supported the creation of a nearly religious aura of martyrdom around the killed men (and several women). Especially the commemoration in Potoˇcari of 11 July has turned into the largest annual event of grief in Bosnia and the wider ex-Yugoslav region. It became a macabre example of ‘dead body politics’ (Verdery, 1999, p. 3) when bodily remains began to be used as a tool to create new national cosmologies and as a means to vilify the enemy rather than mourn the victims (cf. Henig, 2017). Instead of allowing survivors to grieve for their lost loved ones in peace, it has become a platform for Bosniak authorities to present themselves as protectors of their community, to demonstrate the scale of the crime and to juxtapose the victims (read Bosniaks) and the perpetrators (read Serbs). Especially before elections, pictures of politicians alongside the women, Islamic symbols and green caskets with the victims’ bodies have been used as ‘performative victimhood’ (Sivac-Bryant, 2014). A Bosnian commentator noted already in 1998 that even after their death, Srebrenica men became a tool of ‘pre-electoral campaigning’ (Beric, 1998). The religious dimension of the commemoration is critical as Srebrenica’s victims have become the epitome of the Bosniak suffering and the genocidal targeting of Muslims for their religion. The anthropologist Henig extensively studied the role of Srebrenica in the Bosnian Islamic tradition. He argues that the Islamic Community has turned the commemoration into a semi-religious day by introducing 11 July into the Muslim calendar (Henig, 2017, p. 48). Despite the opposition of some individual families, the ceremony is conducted as a clear Muslim burial (dženaza) and the recovered Srebrenica men are referred to as Islamic fallen soldiers-martyrs, šehidi, as killed soldiers are otherwise labelled (see also Wagner, 2008, pp. 215–221). Since 2005 the dženaza has also been preceded by the so-called Peace March (Marš mira), a four-day pilgrimage-like trek accompanied by collective prayers even by non-practicing Muslims and foreigners. Mostly against their volition, women in white headscarves crying over green caskets became the

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main symbols of Bosniak suffering. They have been framed as ‘mothers of the nation’ that have sacrificed their loved ones and their suffering has been monumentalized (Wagner, 2008, p. 66). As Bosniak victimhood has become equated with womanhood due to the statistical preponderance of female survivors, they have been seen as perfect and innocent victims (see also the next chapter). However, this framing was actively supported by some female survivors. As Helms demonstrated, some women’s groups in Srebrenica such as the Movement used these frames to drive home the message that Srebrenica was not only a crime against humanity but also against motherhood and the traditional values of family (see Helms, 2013). ‘Us, mothers, we have achieved so much for our children and our country’, Munira Subaši´c from the Movement told me. ‘Neither the whole of Europe nor any other country could have succeeded what we, mothers, have been able to do. Our children are able to tell evil from good and judge people on the basis of their character, not nacija. They are now successful doctors, professors and engineers all over the world,’ she added, also stressing the traditional role of women as good mothers. Figure 5.3 shows the sculptural representation standing in front of the former Dutchbat and the newly opened Srebrenica Museum in Potoˇcari, depicting weeping women and a child. The close link between Srebrenica and the Bosniak nation was forged early on. Immediately after July 1995, Srebrenica women demanded the truth about what happened. They sought an explanation from the Bosnian Army general Rasim Deli´c and wartime President Alija Izetbegovi´c for why the commander tasked to protect Srebrenica, Naser Ori´c, had been called off just weeks before the genocide (Duijzings, 2007, p. 156). The first leader of the Srebrenica victims, Ibran Mustafi´c, made Izetbegovi´c uneasy as he continued to claim that Srebrenica’s men were sacrificed by the Bosniak leadership in agreement with external actors to legitimize military action (Beric, 1998).43 However, Srebrenica associations soon stopped enquiring and the failure to protect Srebrenica was pinned on the Dutch and UN forces (see Bougarel, 2012). Duijzings suggested that the reason for this was the worry among the victims that any conflict with the main Bosniak political party over Srebrenica could halt their other activities, such as the burials in Potoˇcari, and influence trials (Duijzings, 2007, p. 157). Although victim associations opposed such accusations (Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013, p. 128), the subsequent support for SDA by the Movement in the public sphere suggest that some form of a tacit alliance was forged: the group would stand behind

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Fig. 5.3 Sculpture in front of Potoˇcari Dutch battalion building (Source Photo by the author)

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SDA as long as the party continued its support (Delpla, 2014, p. 283). While other Srebrenica victims opposed such an alliance, there was a clear hierarchy in whose name which associations were speaking, with the Movement taking over a dominant role. Its subsequent litigation and protests were directed at the UN and the Dutch government (as well as neighbouring Serbia and the other entity RS) but rarely against the Bosniak-led governments (Nettelfield, 2010, pp. 113–116). Nonetheless, the public and the SDA supported the victims, acknowledging that Srebrenica women survived a ‘living hell’ during and after the war.44 Bosnian media articles about Srebrenica from the first two post-war phases document the suffering of those who survived and their ‘life after genocide’ as a constant struggle with Bosnian Serb authorities to gain information and be allowed entry to their pre-war homes (Omeragi´c, 2007). These were matched by numerous commemorative and educational events, exhibitions (such as a photo exhibition by a famous Bosnian photographer Tariq Ramadan in 2004), films (e.g. Gori Vatra in 2003 about a father searching for his son in Tešanj) and projects dedicated to missing people’s families (e.g. conferences and seminars). By 2004, the moral authority of Srebrenica survivors in the Federation became elevated, despite some dissenting voices about the political links between several victim leaders and the main Bosniak parties—SDA and SBiH. The great moral authority of Srebrenica in FBiH alone could not have led to a state law as the consent of the other two ethno-nations was also needed. 5.4.2.2 Between Denial and Forced Acceptance The willingness of Bosnian Serb authorities and victim associations to accept the existence of genocide committed by Bosnian Serb forces was extremely limited from the start. As Philippe Sands argued victims of genocide tend to have a reinforced victimhood identity while genocide perpetrators tend to have a reinforced sense of hatred for being framed as genocidaires (Sands, 2003). As the opposition to Srebrenica grew in RS, the Bosniak sense of victimization intensified, further alienating Serb feelings of victimhood marginalization. Victim associations have been part of this phenomenon, especially as the Srebrenica debate turned poisonous after 2006, pitting Serb against Bosniak victims. Some prominent Srebrenica women in the Movement actively supported the discourse of Haris Siljadži´c and his SBiH, framing Serbs as genocidaires and RS as a ‘genocidal creation’ (genocidna tvorevina). Nedeljko Mitrovi´c tried to make a strong case to compete with Srebrenica’s scale of victimization by

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claiming a number of Serb missing three times higher than official data of around 3000 (9 percent of all missing).45 Mitrovi´c has vigorously supported the official RS master frame of the war, advocating the idea of Serbs as ‘perennial victims’ of both Muslims and Croats. This notion of Serbs as an oppressed people featured in RS commemorations such as the annual Jasenovac events46 and political rallies of the nationalist parties. The additional components became what Eric Gordy called ‘pure denial or impure avoidance’ (Gordy, 2013, p. 89) as a political strategy to reject existing evidence about crimes, even in the face of growing scientific, legal and forensic documents. This has also been combined with the strategy of tu quoque (meaning ‘you too’), that is the claim that Bosniaks were just as guilty of war crimes—if not more—than Serbs (Gordy, 2013, p. 89). ‘They all keep working on finding Bosniaks so that they get more evidence in trials against Serbs… It is important to talk about what happened in 1992 in Prijedor when the first victims were Serbs,’ Mitrovi´c told me. ‘They [Bosniaks] want to turn RS into a product of genocide. But they forget that RS was created as a reaction to the outvoting of the Serb nation in the assembly of BiH,’ he added, later outlining the history of the conflict and speculating about the established course of the war with a few conspiracy theories.47 Similar encounters remain common with Bosnian Serb representatives in the victim and veteran community. However, the domestic resonance of Srebrenica combined with its international salience led to several investigations in RS. At the request of 49 relatives of the Srebrenica victims, the Human Rights Chamber in Sarajevo in 2003 investigated whether the families’ right to know the truth about their relatives, as guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights, was violated by RS authorities and their biased report about Srebrenica from 2002, which denied any wrongdoing and instead offered a series of conspiracy theories about how the missing Muslim men perished.48 The Chamber found that RS had not provided all information about potential mass graves in and around Srebrenica and ordered RS to disclose such information and pay the equivalent of two million Euro to Srebrenica victims (Karˇci´c, 2015). The victims decided to give the money to the Memorial Centre instead. The judgement was supported by renewed pressure by the High Representative Paddy Ashdown, who further implored RS authorities to create an investigative commission (Nettelfield, 2010, pp. 122–128). The result was the ‘Commission for Investigation of the Events in and around Srebrenica between 10 and 19

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of July 1995’ (ICTJ, 2004, p. 8). While it was not the first RS commission (the first was in 2002), it was the first one that included domestic and foreign experts aiming to deliver verified facts. The first documentation efforts misreported numbers, so the HR restructured the commission, which eventually established that around 7779 Bosnian Muslims were indeed ‘liquidated’ in Srebrenica. The report also yielded a list of 20,000 names of persons implicated in the genocide that was shared with the Prosecutor of BiH for further investigation (Stan & Nedelsky, 2013, p. 41). Prompted by these findings and the fact that his close colleagues particˇ c ipated in the commission, the RS President at that time Dragan Cavi´ from the war-time Serb Democratic Party (SDS) issued an unexpected and unprecedented televised public apology for the killings in Srebrenica soon after, in June 2004 (Ferstman & Rosenberg, 2009, p. 495). He stated that Srebrenica was a tragedy and a ‘black page in the history of the Serb people’ (Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013, p. 251). Later, the RS government issued an official statement of apology to the families where it expressed its ‘true regret’ about what happened in Srebrenica and apologized to the survivors ‘for the tragedy they experienced’ (Milanovic, 2006, p. 255). In the following year, first Bosnian Serb indictees were transferred to the ICTY. Although the statements fell short of calling the ˇ c’s apology was at the time path-breaking. He July 1995 genocide, Cavi´ subsequently faced strong condemnation by RS nationalist circles in both RS and Serbia. However, the admission of the existence of the crime was critical for the acceptance of the surviving families and their demands, paving way to the recognition of victims of the ‘other side’—until then a rare occurrence in BiH (De Vlaming & Clark, 2014, p. 178). Thereafter, Bosnian Serb victim associations temporarily relaxed their discourse of belittling Srebrenica victims and accepted negotiations at the state level. Only after 2006 did Mitrovi´c publicly criticize the earlier declaˇ c and the findings of the commission. But in 2004, he ration by Cavi´ agreed to take part in the negotiations on the new Law and supported the creation of a state institution. As the RS-based political analyst Srd-an Puhalo noted in our interview, victim associations’ financial dependence on RS authorities determine their formal stance as they need to be ‘of the same opinion as the political elites’.49 Therefore, the 2004 willingness of Serb associations to participate in state-wide efforts trumped their nationalist discourse. As the number of mass graves excavated across the country shifted public attention from one region to another—from Prijedor to

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Upper Podrinje—other nestali associations came together, even if under the Srebrenica leadership. The only exception gradually became Izvor in Prijedor that increasingly succeeded in amplifying the Prijedor crimes in the public discourse independently and through courageous bottom-up fact-finding. However, such efforts came to the forefront only after 2004. Until then, the pull of Srebrenica’s authority and the need for cooperation brought the associations together. ∗ ∗ ∗ Questioning the moral authority of Srebrenica families became a taboo in Bosniak circles soon after the war. Srebrenica victims have not only gained important public empathy in the Federation due to the extent of their suffering and their ability to align with the main war narratives of Bosniaks, but they were also appropriated by the main Bosniak leadership, keen on supporting the survivors’ demands. Frames of the ultimate suffering of Srebrenica culminated during the second post-war phase through the commemorations of 11 July in Potoˇcari and the powerful imagery of grieving women. Though overshadowed by such ‘monumentalization’ of the crime, other associations of families of the missing benefited from the stir the issue unleashed domestically. With the public recognition of the killings in June 2004 by the President of RS at the time, Bosnian Serb leadership (that had denied the crime before and soon after the admission) temporarily relaxed its discourse and allowed for a state-wide approach to the issue of the missing. Even if this move was linked to international pressures and the judicial ruling of the Human Rights Chamber, it allowed all victims to be viewed as deserving of a statewide law. Srebrenica survivors had high moral authority in the Federation and tacitly and temporarily accepted moral authority in RS. Moreover, the Law was aimed at addressing the demands of Bosnian Serb families, thus not exclusively focused on Bosniaks. 5.4.3

Mobilization Resources: Remembrance and Allies

While the combination of international salience and moral authority of the families generally represented by the Srebrenica victims was potent, the additional leverage of this category stemmed from its ability and resources to mobilize. As explained above, families of the missing were driven by their urgent need to find out what happened and to bury their loved ones.

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This objective prompted immediate action rather than passive suffering. Already during the war, families mobilized in protests, appeal actions and campaigns for truth. While their organizational resources and energetic activism were at first higher than that of other victim groups, they initially suffered from poor skills and access to policymakers. However, due to their resilience, networking and legal strategies, this gradually changed. This section explains the quality of their resources and argues that the aggregate mobilization resources of this category contributed to convincing their political authorities that the issue must be tackled as a priority. 5.4.3.1 Protests and Allies of Srebrenica’s Women Mobilization resources of missing people’s families in the early post-war years can be defined as a combination of intensive protests and campaigns for truth. In 1996, 2000 Srebrenica women organized a rally in front of the ICRC offices in Tuzla demanding information about the whereabouts of their missing men (Bougarel, 2012, p. 108). They refused to believe what had happened, hoping their men were instead on forced labour in Serbian prison camps across the border. Many did not accept death certificates provided by the ICRC, which were necessary to receive pension benefits and claim property rights (Stover & Shigakane, 2002, p. 855). Thereafter, they started spontaneous protests and gatherings, sharing information but also jointly pressing authorities. These resulted in the creation of formal victim associations as outlined above. They organized awareness-raising events to find out the truth (Helms, 2013; Leydesdorff, 2011; Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013). For example, from 1995, the prominent and highly respected association Women of Srebrenica was among the first to organize such actions and on every 11th day of the month staged a silent protest with banners, ‘Let us not forget’ and ‘We are searching for our missing’ in Tuzla. These improvised protests were organized with limited financial and organizational resources but due to the women’s persistence and perseverance they later transformed into the commemoration service in Potoˇcari (Wagner, 2008, p. 73). (The monthly protests are still held today.50 ) Although the women often did not have more than a dozen participants at some events, their resolution and the resonance of their message contributed to their frequent presence on the media (Dnevni Avaz, 2015). ‘They kept telling us we were mad and that we were wasting our time but we never

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stopped. And now the whole world knows of Srebrenica,’ representatives of the Women of Srebrenica told me.51 Nonetheless, they needed moral and in-kind support, which soon came from the civil sector. NGO assistance increased their technical and legal capacities. Organizations such as Amika, Bosfam, Centar za žene IVA, Medica Zenica, Viva žene, and later Snaga žene ran therapies in Tuzla and provided case-by-case support to families. Branka Anti´c-Štauber from Snaga žene, who had worked with Srebrenica women since the war, explained how before the war survivors in eastern Bosnia lived in a rural patriarchal setting in large families. The war fully disrupted their lives and furthermore deprived them of the main sources of income. Despite NGO support and humanitarian aid, they struggled to survive economically. But Srebrenica survivors showed a remarkable resilience and ability to learn. The Movement under Subaši´c, Women of Srebrenica under Nura Begovi´c ´ c, as well as some individuals such as Hasan Nuhanovi´c and Hajra Cati´ became the public faces of the genocide and campaigners for justice for the survivors.52 They used their personal stories to raise awareness about the Srebrenica crime and its victims (see Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013). Women of Srebrenica also started publishing a bulletin that can be used a good resource to track all activities and events of the associations since 1999.53 Also thanks to their international salience, they were able to attract powerful allies, such as the HR, foreign ambassadors, Bill Clinton and celebrities such as Bianca Jagger. They also received support from foreign NGOs, including Dutch Pax that even organized a trip for the women to Iraq to compare their situation to that of Kurdish families that have since 1988 been looking for 180,000 of their loved ones.54 This joint support provided the women with a vast set of learning resources regarding justice issues that they later utilized in their appeals. An interviewed journalist rather disparagingly noted that ‘these women were housewives before the war…. But history has pushed them to the foreground and they now talk to Ban Ki Moon and Angelina Jolie’.55 While some organizations such as the Movement have certainly been catapulted to the center stage of victims’ politics that they engaged with, others such as Women of Srebrenica remained truthful to their original aims and members. As their resources and networks gradually grew, their ad hoc actions turned into more sophisticated activities in the second post-war phase. By the early 2000s, the victim leaders became acquainted with some basic legal principles regarding human rights and even with the fundamental

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functioning of the Bosnian legal system, both of which they used to pressure domestic authorities. As noted above, they initiated dozens of court cases at the Human Rights Chamber against RS and its military personnel and later filed civil claims at the State Court. After the first UN report on Srebrenica was published in 1999, supported by domestic NGOs and lawyers, they sued senior UN officials for failing to protect the UN enclave.56 Thereafter, they directly lobbied the UN Secretary General for compensation and the creation of a victims’ fund (Nettelfield, 2010, p. 113). They equally mobilized against the Dutch government, which eventually published its own investigation in 2002 at the Dutch Institute for War Documentation, whose condemning conclusions led to the fall of the Dutch government in the same year (ibid., 112). The victim groups have further brought their claims to international courts, including the ECtHR (Ventura & Akande, 2013). Using legal leverage and their wide networks, Srebrenica survivors gradually developed into potent activists and campaigners. For example, by 2009, the European Parliament recognized 11th July as Srebrenica Remembrance Day (European Parliament, 2009) and by 2015 called on all EU members not to deny the crime (European Parliament, 2015). Both resolutions were adopted after an active lobby of the Movement and other Srebrenica groups. The strategies they have chosen were only rarely directed against the Bosniak government in Sarajevo although Munira Subaši´c would complain in our interviews about the treatment they have recently received domestically. As Srebrenica is a municipality in Republika Srpska, it has always been a key concern for Bosniak parties to prevent the election of a Bosnian Serb mayor in the municipality. Srebrenica associations became vigorous electoral mobilizers in Bosnia and among the diaspora, encouraging Bosniaks to register and ensure that the municipality remains under a Bosniak government, an effort that came in vain with the election of a Serb mayor in 2016 (Reuters, 2016). Before the municipal elections in Srebrenica in 2012, Subaši´c supported SDA and pleaded all former Srebrenica inhabitants to record their residency there (even if they lived elsewhere), as ‘every mother who has a son buried in Potoˇcari must be ashamed of herself if she does not come and register’ (SDA Official Website, 2012). In 2013, she admitted that she was aware of the mobilization and political power of her Movement: ‘we can both activate and silence people’, she asserted in an interview (Ahmetaševi´c, 2015a).

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5.4.3.2 Unionization of the Rest of Family Associations Unlike the visible campaigning resources and allies of the Srebrenicaassociated organizations, resources of the other nestali associations have mainly relied on the support of the external allies and their ability to align with the Srebrenica issue (Juhl, 2009, p. 257). By 1999, this cooperation extended beyond the Bosnian borders when a ‘Regional Coordination of the Families of the Missing in the Territory of former Yugoslavia’ was set up as a body to coordinate all efforts by survivors in the former Yugoslavia who were searching for their relatives (Sarkin et al., 2014, p. 127). Such a regional organization was the first of its kind in ex-Yugoslavia and facilitated the exchange of information and experience across borders. Most families of missing persons were initially scattered across the country and lacked strong organizational capacities. In FBiH, Bosniak associations started collaborating much later than Srebrenica associations. The Bosniak Union of the Missing at the entity level was set up in 2001, while the Croat Union was created as late as in 2011. Although they immediately began organizing fact-sharing and joint activities, they generally lacked financial and organizational resources. Their activities were rather haphazard and dependent on available financial support. This is how Ahmet Grahi´c described the beginnings: We had been searching since 1992, trying to see whether there are survivors and whether we could exchange them. But we could not get any answers. After the end of the war, we had a lot of false information and statements that the bodies were thrown into a dam. Others were saying that they were burnt… But we did not believe them. So in 1996 we created a local association of families searching for the missing people. This was a smaller group of families where we tried to make lists that we consulted with mayors of small towns who knew who had lived there before the war. We realised that we could not do it on our own, so we created a regional association out of nine local associations. … And then we started working even more intensively to find our people. We started contacting friends and older people who stayed in those areas. But we realised that without help from Serbs we could not get anywhere as we could not even cross the entity border. So we needed a wider approach.57

While the situation gradually improved due to ICMP’s work and its collaboration with victim associations, Bosniak Union subsequently became dependent on local funding through annual grants and public calls for projects rather than a beneficiary of external funding. ‘I

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remember one early meeting where Jacques Klein [from the UN mission to BiH] told us that he was not interested in victims from 1992 but only those from the protected areas in 1995… This divided victim territorially and regionally,’ he noted.58 While such claims are difficult to verify, the focus on Srebrenica is undisputable. Victim associations have been aware of both their financial dependencies on local authorities as well as preferences given to Srebrenica survivors. This was also why they insisted on incorporating into the 2004 Law the creation of a state-level Fund that would finance all associations equally. Bosnian Serb associations were initially active protestors and in 2003 threatened to stage wide demonstrations against the RS government, which later took place (Nezavisne novine, 2003). Various local Bosnian Serb associations—in Bijeljina, Višegrad and Eastern Sarajevo—pressured the incumbents in Banja Luka to expedite the identification processes and provide material benefits for families. Their protests waned around the time of the Law’s adoption as the Republican Organization under Nedeljko Mitrovi´c established a monopoly over the issue of nestali by aligning first with the incumbent PDP (from 2002 to 2006) and then with Milorad Dodik and his SNSD. Rather than a political challenger, the Republican Organization became ‘part of the official structures’, supporting the main political parties in return for funding and informal recognition.59 As an organization of ‘special interest’ to RS,60 the Republican Organization has been directly funded from the government’s annual budget and thus has not struggled financially as much as others.61 Mitrovi´c, whose son went missing in combat, is a good example of what we may call a co-opted victim leader. Lacking independent capacities from international sources and feeling ‘offended’ by the Bosniak discourse about Republika Srpska’s role in the Srebrenica genocide, Mitrovi´c’s alliance with the political incumbents has been a rational marriage of convenience. The only organization outside of Srebrenica with strong leadership and independent capacity to organize protests and campaigns has been the above-mentioned Izvor that has built its resources from bottom up through its own work and diaspora links. Led by Edin Ramuli´c, himself in search for his missing brother, the organization has also functioned as a research institution. By collecting testimonies from the Krajina area, Ramuli´c published a register of the death toll in the area already in 1998 (Izvor, 1998). The document has served as an important source

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of information about the extent of victimization in the region. Izvor has gradually become the only association of the missing that has been able to organize widespread campaigns, run commemorative events during important international days such as the ‘Human Rights Day’ or the ‘International Day of the Disappeared’ and create a broader network of allies and supporters (Hodži´c, 2015). According to many respondents, Izvor has also been the only association that was willing to cooperate with Serb victim associations. ‘Edin always calls all the Serb associations from Bijeljina, Banja Luka and Višegrad to their gatherings. Even if they never come’, a respondent noted.62 It established a network of civil-sector organizations and gradually built up a reputation as a respectable and active victim association. Unlike the rather fragmentized FBiH associations and the semi-political RS Republican Organization, Izvor has invested in the creation of a culture of remembrance with a focus on engaging the youth from other independent organizations such as Kvart.63 ∗ ∗ ∗ The mobilization resources of families of missing before 2004 varied across the victim associations but ultimately benefited from the resilient and persistent activism of the Srebrenica victims. The prominent female associations such as the Movement and Women of Srebrenica organized early on through their urgent protests. Later supported from abroad, by NGOs and by the Bosniak parties, they gradually expanded their networks and tools. Their vigorous work substantially helped to promote the issues they were facing and shame domestic authorities into action. Direct protests moved from the streets to the courtrooms as victims increased their skills to pressure domestic governments for redress. Since the second phase (early 2000), Srebrenica associations intensified their efforts in holding external actors and RS accountable, yet without directly threatening the Bosniak leadership. In RS, most nestali association became dependent on their incumbents and had limited independent capacities. While there was a great discrepancy across the country in 2004, the ability of Srebrenica associations to launch campaigns, acquire funding, and network increased the resonance of their actions, making their aggregate mobilization resources rather high.

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5.4.4

Context for the Optimal Route Scenario

In the previous sections, I discussed how the three proposed components of victim capital and sources of leverage featured in the demands of the families of missing. However, it is highly unlikely that the presence any of these factors on its own would have resulted in the successful 2004 outcome. Not even the high international salience of the category seems to have sufficed without the corresponding domestic willingness to offer redress. Instead, it was rather the nexus between the discussed components of victim capital at high levels that can offer more fruitful explanations for the legal change for missing people’s families in the fall of 2004, as proposed in the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario. Despite the tendency to present Srebrenica as an outlier case of victimhood in Bosnia because of its high international resonance, it would be too simplistic to argue that the 2004 Law was the result of the category’s external prominence only. Instead, because of the domestic uses of Srebrenica victims as symbolic representatives of wider Muslim suffering and identity, and the persistent mobilization actions of the survivors that attracted public and international attention, the nestali issue gained substantial traction from early on. In the first post-war phase (until 1999), the international salience of Srebrenica played an important role in the objectives of criminal prosecution and identification of recovered bodies. The priority of the missing persons’ issue can be already noticed in the early provisions included in the Dayton Peace Agreement that sought to streamline the search for the missing persons that later materialized in the creation of the ICMP. Although the majority of external actors in the country focused on preventing further conflict and offering humanitarian aid, the ‘shame of Srebrenica’ functioned as moral leverage to address the failure of the UN forces to protect the enclave from early on.64 However, this did not necessarily have to translate in a state-wide redress policy per se. While the attention to the families galvanized external actors to support the issue of the missing early on, material redress was not the main objective until victims formulated it as their aims. Meanwhile, families of the missing Srebrenica men became embodiments of Bosniak suffering, a frame that some victims later amplified further. Srebrenica appropriated the issue of the missing persons across BiH with their ‘ultimate’ victimhood that became inextricably linked

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with the new Bosniak identity. Srebrenica survivors have been what Nils Christie called ‘ideal victims’ (Christie, 1986), that is victims that are ideally female, blameless and have the purest combination of power, influence and sympathy. Victims themselves also employed a range of protest actions in this period and framing strategies in their public appeals, directed at recovering bodies of their loved ones and establishing the truth but without directly accusing domestic authorities. By the end of this phase, Srebrenica as well as other nestali groups turned towards recognition, socio- economic demands and material redress while organizing legal actions against external actors or the ‘other’ ethno-national group. These objectives in the second post-war phase coincided—and were reinforced—with external efforts in state-building (until 2006). In this period, the ICMP became fully functional and made increasing progress in identifications. The ICTY in 2001 also established that genocide was committed in Srebrenica, giving the survivors even more moral tools to leverage. As external pressure at the time was also linked to financial aid, the ICMP’s support to create a central institution was important. Prompted by the victim associations, the ICMP in 2003 met with the tri-partite presidency to discuss the option of creating a state-level institution for the search for the missing (Ball, 2015, p. 85). It was clear that without its technical knowledge of DNA analysis, the search for missing would become very difficult.65 Including families in discussions was an important aspect of giving the process legitimacy that led to the inclusion of material redress into the Law. The willingness to cooperate was induced by a temporarily more lenient RS narrative about the war and significant external pressure that delivered both financial resources and institutional backing. The formal recognition of the victims by the top RS politician in June 2004, i.e. a few months before the state-law was adopted, resulted in victims’ deservingness being formally accepted by Bosnian Serbs too. The Law was discussed in the period before municipal elections when ethno-national politicians wanted to satisfy ‘their’ victim populations as some of my respondents stressed. The Law of 2004 was thus adopted in a favourable ‘window of opportunity’. Indeed, in the period prior to 2004, the main ethno-national groups came together and the previous denial among Bosnian Serbs regarding Srebrenica was undermined. The 2001–2002 social democratic ‘Alliance for Change’ government in FBiH forced nationalistic parties out of office (assisted by the HR), prompting them to regain their electorship

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through new policy platforms. At the same time, the leadership among the main ethno-national elites had changed by then and the wartime leaders were replaced by Sulejman Tihi´c among Bosniaks and Dragan ˇ c among Bosnian Serbs. Bosnian Croat HDZ BiH was internally Cavi´ divided from 2002 and a more moderate fraction was in the making. Consequently, Bosnia was going through its peak period of rapprochement between the former enemies and entities. This period was also the apex of major institutional reforms initiated by the HR Paddy Ashdown who has since become one of the most polarizing HRs in Bosnian history, with Bosniaks strongly supportive views and Bosnian Serbs very negative ones (see Merdžanovi´c, 2015).66 During this period, membership in the EU became the stated goal of the main political representatives in the country, demonstrated by the fact that only a year after the Law’s adoption in November 2005, Bosnia fulfilled several conditions that allowed it to open the negotiations about the EU Stabilization and Association Agreement (signed in June 2008). Victim associations in this period generated higher mobilization resources, demonstrated by their shift from street demonstrations to more sophisticated tools such as collective legal action. Some of their legal successes were critical at the opening of the Srebrenica debate in RS, where the genocide was denied, most notably ˇ c’s recognition of the crime. The formal apology demonstrated by Cavi´ for Srebrenica (even if limited) led to the support of a state law by the Serb authorities and missing people’s families that were mostly in line with their political incumbents. Indeed, a state-level law could not have been passed in BiH without the support of Bosnian Serb deputies in the state Parliament.67 As the context at the time of the adoption offered domestic authorities several financial and reputational rewards from its enactment due to the progress of Europeanization and the strong role of external actors, the result was a positive response to the victims’ pressure. Figure 5.4 depicts the key milestones that preceded the adoption of the Law.

5.5

Access After the Adoption of the 2004 Law

Adoption is only the first step in the struggle for redress. Access as legal implementation is the second—and practically more important—step. This book does not outline theoretical propositions for access; however, it is important to discuss how access played out in the case of missing people. While the 2004 legal change was a great victory, it has not ensured

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4 3 3 4 6 1 4 1 3 4 8 2 5 0 1 96 0 96 r -99 95 18 99 01 r -02 0 -0 -0 t- 0 t- 0 t- 0 ep-0 ayl-9 an- 9 pr l-0 l-0 un-0 nnpngvgar ar a Ju Ju Ju Ja J Ju J Ju Ap Oc Oc Se S Oc A M M M Au Au M No

Fig. 5.4 Milestones in the adoption of the law on missing persons (Source Author)

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Local victim associations created Srebrenica Genocide Srebrenica Women Protests in Tuzla Izvor established ICMP established Ex-Yugoslav Regional Coordination, First UN Report on Srebrenica First Potočari Commemoration Bosniak Union of the Missing estabished DNA analysis developed First ICTY conviction on genocide (Krstić case) Dutch Report on Srebrenica and the Dutch cabinet resigns ICMP launches debates about the state law Panel for victims organized at MHHR ICMP meeting with the Bosnian Presidency Potočari Memorial Complex opened Čavić's acknowledgment of Srebrenica Municipal Elections Law on Missing Persons passed by the Bosnian Parliament Institute for Missing Persons opened Preliminary CEN created Dodik official renounces the 2004 report

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the change that victims hoped for. After the Law’s adoption in 2004, victims believed that the process of identification would accelerate and that they would be recognized and receive the same redress across BiH. The first post-adoption years provided hope. Mechanisms were put in place to collect existing documentation from the entities, victim associations and international bodies so that the CEN could be created. The new Institute for Missing Persons, INO, was opened in 2008, providing associations a stake in its running through an Advisory Board.68 The first board was efficient, according to both the ICMP, as well as the Bosniak Union of the Missing’s leader, Ahmet Grahi´c. ‘We had really good cooperation and we could press INO for reports; whatever we wanted to know from investigators and we received it’, Grahi´c noted.69 However, the material stipulations were not carried out as planned. The Fund was never established (Ball, 2015, p. 151). The main conflict was about the method of its financing. The RS government refused to agree on a proportional contribution to the Fund, worried that its contributions would have to be much higher as most of the mass graves were located on its territory (Clark, 2010, pp. 5–6). Some respondents further argued that since the Fund would distribute money across all family associations equally, regardless of their background, victim associations would become independent and could afford to criticize nationalist parties more forcefully. This was dangerous for any Bosnian political party that ran on nationalist platforms, i.e. the majority (Zuber & Szöcsik, 2019). Similarly, children of missing parents should have priority in employment. As several respondents noted, that has rarely been the case. For example, in one case a young woman whose parents went missing in Srebrenica applied for a position for which she was not only qualified but for which she should have been interviewed according to the law. Instead, the role was offered to a candidate with links to a political party. Štela, as biased partisan employment is called in Bosnian, seems to be above any law. As the Law was not fully implemented in terms of its material provisions, the state-level ‘status’ of an indirect victim as a relative of nestali has existed only on paper but not in practice, as neither the Fund nor other benefits stemming from the Law have been implemented at the state level. With limited access to the Law’s provisions, families of the missing adopted a variety of strategies on how to demand their status and rights. As the existence of missing persons is recognized in the current entity legislation for veterans in RS, families have been able to access the material rights (such as pensions) of their family members if declared

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deceased. In FBiH, both civilian and military entity laws recognize families of the missing but condition the attainment of rights by certification about the circumstance of disappearance, which is for many difficult to attain. Nonetheless, entities have at least agreed to financially sponsor the burials and ceremonies of the uncovered bodies. Furthermore, individual victims’ adaptation strategies have been similar to those of civilian victims of war. ‘Status shopping’ has become an important strategy of navigating the post-war complex system of redress in BiH. However, many individual victims have not been able to exercise any rights. Similarly, while the number of missing has been established by the ICMP, it has been challenged as biased mainly by Bosnian Serbs. The domestic INO continues to face harsh criticism from many victim associations. While Bosniak and Croat associations complain about its slow pace of work and Srebrenica bias, Bosnian Serb organizations see it as anti-Serb (Ball, 2015, p. 146). For example, the Bosniak member on the Board of Directors, Amor Mašovi´c, has been continuously accused of SDA bias as he is also a deputy at FBiH’s Assembly representing SDA: For years we have been protesting as one of the directors – Amor Mašovi´c – is in conflict of interests with the Law on Missing (Art 5, point 5) where it says that directors of INO cannot be part of the judiciary or hold executive functions. He has again been selected as a deputy to the FBiH parliament for SDA, so a parliamentarian is at the same time in charge of implementing a law. This is impossible!70

At the level of associations, Srebrenica groups have leveraged their moral authority and international salience in FBiH, increasing their legal mobilization, while other associations (with the notable exception of Izvor) have increasingly become financially dependent on their municipal governments. As the moral authority of Srebrenica victims could not be questioned, over time they became more prominent in their actions and increased their mobilization resources—sometimes even directed against Bosniak authorities. The ICJ’s ruling in 2007 (that Serbia was responsible for not preventing and punishing the genocide but not directly responsible for its commitment) relieved Serbia of any obligation to pay any reparations to Bosnia (ICJ, 2007). Srebrenica survivors were devasted by the ruling and decided to stage mass protests in Sarajevo (Dnevni Avaz, 2007). Earlier in 2007, some Srebrenica survivors—but with only limited participation by the leading female victim association Movement—started

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a public campaign for the ‘special status’ of Srebrenica. They threatened the SDA government in the Federation, noting that unless they negotiated a special status for the Srebrenica municipality and turned it into a separate district alongside Brˇcko, they would register as residents in FBiH, thus reversing the ethnic structure of the municipality. The Bosniak member of the Presidency and the main competitor to the SDA, Haris Siljadži´c, came to their support and addressed a letter of appeal to the UN on their behalf. The OHR subsequently created a special envoy to investigate the initiative (Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013, pp. 126–131). The initiative was ultimately unsuccessful because it received only lukewarm support from the Movement that preferred to direct its contentious actions against external actors, rather than their Bosniak political leaders. Indeed, the Movement sued the Netherlands and the UN for not preventing the genocide in 2007, also prompted by the February 2007 ICJ decision (Nettelfield, 2010, pp. 99–100). The conflict over the ‘special status’ showed that victim associations had drifted apart and that their lack of unity compromised their ability to lobby the main political authorities to implement the Law. Unfortunately, the prominent Srebrenica associations subsequently polarized the victimhood landscape. In one of the most famous cases in 2008, Munira Subaši´c in an interview stated that although she ‘lived like a lord’ she was unsatisfied with her income of 2000 Euro per month, an amount eight times higher than the mean salary in FBiH at that time (Dani, 2008). The Bosnian weekly Dani that published the interview called her bahata (arrogant). As her income was the result of private donations from the state-owned company BH Telecom, she has for many of my respondents become yet another ‘professional victim’.71 As some noted, Subaši´c would never speak against Naser Ori´c despite his dubious past. She indeed evaded questions regarding these topics when I visited her offices in Sara˙ jevo 2019. It is notable that the office was fully equipped with TIKA 72 stickers (Turkish Development Agency) on all its equipment. Turkey’s current regime has been a close ally of SDA. Nonetheless, many victim associations accept support from wherever they can get it. While Women of Srebrenica rely on Dutch NGO support, the Movement relies either on local municipalities and cantons or Turkish support. Meanwhile in RS, the revolutionary 2004 admission of guilt was ˇ c began forgotten a year later. After much criticism within RS, Cavi´ to dispute the results of the investigation and his admission was soon retracted (Dragovi´c-Soso & Gordy, 2010, p. 205). The subsequent

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advent of the nationalist politician Milorad Dodik, who advanced an efficacious ‘culture of denial’, reinvigorated opposition towards the Srebrenica victims and their moral authority among Bosnian Serbs (Nettelfield & Wagner, 2013, p. 259). The Bosnian Serb mounting denial of crimes committed in Bosnia during the war has resulted in a stalemate regarding any state-level consensus of victim-related affairs. While neighbouring Serbia has already issued two formal apologies for the Srebrenica ‘massacre’ (still evading the word genocide), the RS leadership invented the concept of the ‘Srebrenization’ of Bosnia, accusing Bosniaks of hijacking Srebrenica to justify the creation of the Bosnian state (Obradovic-Wochnik, 2009).73 These efforts became prominent in 2008 when Milorad Dodik set up the ‘Historical Project of Srebrenica’ as an entity-funded commission of denial, aimed at disputing the numbers of victims in Srebrenica.74 He later also funded new institutions of investigating war crimes on Serbs and missing people. By 2018, Dodik at a special session of the RS Assembly fully denied the 2004 report as enforced and fabricated (NSRS, 2018), calling for new commissions for investigating events in Srebrenica and Sarajevo to be created in 2020 (Sorguˇc, 2019). While Srebrenica became a pillar of Bosniakhood, its denial has after 2005 become the pillar of the Bosnian Serb identity. ‘Accepting [Srebrenica as a genocide] would be accepting that RS is an entity that was created on genocide, which no political leader can afford to do and only few Bosnian Serbs dare to say’, a former Bosnian Serb soldier admitted in our discussions.75 Also at the local level, clear opposition to state-level policies and denial culture took root. For example, in Prijedor, any efforts to implement a state-wide law have become increasingly difficult since Marko Pavi´c took office after the municipal elections in 2006.76 The ‘fortress of silence’ that Pavi´c created in Prijedor led to Izvor being framed as ‘tainting the image of Prijedor’77 and its members have been threatened and attacked if they disclose information or speak against the mayor.78 The culture of denial in RS has only grown in the last decade, intersecting with the growth of ethno-populism of the RS leadership. An interviewed leader of a victim association in Eastern Sarajevo shared his view that the genocide was an international conspiracy and that it was the ICTY that had brought the bodies to eastern Bosnia. He was later arrested (and then acquitted) on charges of inciting hatred after he had called Srebrenica ‘God’s punishment’ (Muslimovic, 2017). During our three-hour long interview in Banja Luka in 2015, Mitrovi´c steered his answers to provide a historical

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elaboration of Serb suffering on the Bosnian territory from the Ottoman Empire to the recent war. He also described Srebrenica as a tool to demonize and dehumanize Serbs, who in his words have in fact ‘been the main victims of Bosniaks’ in recent history. Mitrovi´c’s endorsement of Srpska nationalism also manifested in his unfaltering support for Milorad Dodik. In 2009, when Dodik faced corruption charges by Bosnian state’s prosecution, Mitrovi´c stated that ‘an indictment against Dodik is an indictment against RS’ (Šegrt, 2009). ‘Many of these victim leaders get involved in high politics instead of serving the population which they represent’, an interviewed human rights activist noted.79 The politicization of many victim associations has become part of the public life in BiH. This also had clear repercussions for the Law’s implementation. Matthew Holliday of ICMP stressed that soon after the Law’s adoption, it became clear that RS authorities—both among the SDS politician and SNSD—wanted to return to divided institutions, which would each publish their own data and propose their own narratives to underpin their policies.80 Yet some organizations such as Women of Srebrenica but also smaller local associations have tried to stay outside of politics mainly due to the wide support they have received from external actors and NGOs. While such organizations have been able to maintain their independence and diverse support, other nestali organizations have become increasingly isolated. Since the start of the economic crisis of 2008 that decreased the amount of external aid coming to Bosnia, they have become fully dependent on municipal financing, which has only increased their internal competition for funds.81 For example, although missing Croats account for the smallest percentage of the missing (around 3 percent), in some regions such as in Brˇcko and Mostar, they are formally entitled to the same support as other associations. As a leader of a Bosniak municipal organization in Brˇcko mockingly noted, ‘Croats search for two people and get 30,000 KM [15,000 Euro] and an office just like we do.’ In other areas where resources have been limited, local politics has been conducted in a transactional manner (see Hulsey, 2016). A cantonal governmental official in Biha´c explained that only those victim associations that are ‘close to the political option’, i.e. which support the governing party, have generally been financed from public funds. Matthew Holliday lamented that the current members of the Advisory Board of INO are ‘deeply influenced by politics’.82

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Conclusion

Reflecting on the lessons of Srebrenica for the Syrian war, Derek Chollet, a former senior advisor on foreign affairs in several US administrations, described the effects of the UN failure to act in July 1995 as follows: [Srebrenica], the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, one that occurred while UN peacekeepers stood by fecklessly and NATO refused to intervene — shamed the international community, and its lessons still loom over the debate about US military intervention today. (Chollet, 2015)

Not only dominating debates about intervention at the international level, Srebrenica also came to define debates related to victim-centric policies in Bosnia after 1995. Its prominence, combined with the ability of the survivors’ leading associations to amplify the resonance of their suffering and leverage it in their mobilization, ultimately led to the adoption of the state-wide 2004 Law on Missing Persons. The case of the families of the missing people presented in this chapter illustrates the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario of a victim group with strong overall victim capital. Despite the success of the Law’s adoption at the state level, its implementation has stalled because of the internal fragmentation of the victim associations, the growing political divisions between the entities and the dwindling external commitment. While international salience was critical in convincing Bosnian Serb authorities to agree to a central mechanism to the search for the missing, it has not been effective in convincing them to commit to its work. As the politics of denial, separatism and victimhood competition started dominating Bosnian politics in the past decade and half, there has not been another window of opportunity to put the 2004 redress provisions into practice. At the same time, dominating the Bosnian victimhood landscape, some Srebrenica associations have overshadowed other victims. The disregard for other than Bosniak— and mainly Srebrenica—victims has driven other victim groups with fewer resources and lower authority and salience towards full dependence on their political patrons. This has been clearly the situation in RS. Victims have also been forced to resort to status shopping in order to received material redress. Although the ICMP has been the only international organization that has tried to include all associations across the country, its efforts have been frequently constrained by financial priorities of the main donors and the general international concern for Srebrenica. ‘In

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Srebrenica, they focus on their victims, not ours. … If we all understood that, forcing the Parliament into implementation together, we could make a change; we could succeed. This way – divided – we fail’, a representative of a victim associations from Brˇcko summarized the situation in 2015.83

Notes 1. Personal interview with a president of a human rights NGO in Sarajevo, 2014. 2. Personal interview with a victim in Srebrenica, 2019. 3. Art. 1, Law on Missing Persons, Official Gazette of BiH No. 50/04. 4. Personal interview with a victim in Srebrenica, 2019. 5. For more see ICMP’s official website, https://www.icmp.int/. 6. The exact figure was 32,169 in 2017 (ICMP, 2017). 7. Personal interview with Nura Begovi´c, 2019. 8. There were later other associations (Delpla, 2014, pp. 282–283). 9. Eastern Sarajevo is the mostly Serb-inhabited part of Sarajevo that belongs to RS. 10. There are also three ethno-national associations in the District of Brˇcko. 11. Personal interview with Munira Subaši´c, 2016. 12. Personal interview with Aleksandra Leti´c, 2015. 13. Personal interview with a social worker in Tuzla, 2016. See also Nettelfield (2010, p. 108). 14. Personal interview with a victim in Srebrenica, 2019. 15. Personal interview with a victim, 2019. 16. Personal interview with a lawyer in Sarajevo, 2014. See also Williams (2004). 17. Official Gazette of BiH No. 50/04, 9 November 2004. 18. Set up in 1981 in Costa Rica as a day to commemorate those abducted in Latin America in the 1970s. 19. Personal interview with an ICMP representative in Sarajevo, 2015. 20. For full accounts, see Human Rights Watch (1995), Rohde (1998), Nuhanovi´c (2007), Wagner (2008), Leydesdorff (2011), Nettelfield and Wagner (2013). 21. Several women were also uncovered in the graves, as well as Croats. 22. The UN previously ordered all men in Srebrenica to surrender their weapons so that the zone could be demilitarized. 23. Shame later featured in commemoration projects, most notably in a memorial called the ‘Pillar of Shame’ in 2010 in the shape of letters ‘U’ and ‘N’ filled with shoes symbolizing disappearance (Simi´c, 2012). 24. Of course, disasters in Somalia and Rwanda featured as a motivator too (Chandler, 2009).

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25. See the case online at http://www.icty.org/case/erdemovic/4, accessed 4 May 2018. 26. Prosecutor vs. Krsti´c, IT-98-33. See online at http://www.icty.org/case/ krstic/4, accessed 9 May 2018. 27. For all Srebrenica-related cases, see online at https://www.irmct.org/spe cials/srebrenica20/, accessed 14 May 2018. ´ c, 2019. 28. Personal interview with Hajra Cati´ 29. During the largest ceremony in 2010, 775 exhumed bodies or their parts were buried (Associated Press, 2010). 30. The issue entered public awareness in the late 1970s when families of civilians that had disappeared during dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, among others, mobilized to demand the truth about their children’s whereabouts (e.g. Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo in Argentina) (Quinn, 2014; Stover, 1985). 31. It has been funded by the US government, C. S. Mott Foundation, European governments and the EU For history see Wagner (2008), Sarkin et al. (2014). 32. As Srebrenica became part of RS, physical access to some locations was initially dangerous. 33. Personal interview with Nura Begovi´c, 2019. 34. Personal interview with a human rights activist, 2014. 35. Personal interview with Ahmet Grahi´c, 2015. 36. Personal interview with an NGO worker in Tuzla, 2015. 37. This is documented by frequent news about such meetings (ONASA, 1999). 38. Since 2003, Bosnia has become the world’s hub for the search for missing persons. ICMP identified victims of the 9/11 attacks, Hurricane Katrina, and the Haiti tsunami, among others (Wagner, 2008, pp. 245–265). 39. Personal interview with a victim representative in Banja Luka, 2015. 40. Personal interview with Saliha Ðuderija, 2015. 41. Literally, the ‘place of memory’ (Nora, 1989). 42. Personal interview with a political analyst in Sarajevo, 2014. 43. See also Hoare (2004, 118). 44. Personal interview with an NGO worker in Tuzla, 2015. 45. Personal interview with Nedeljko Mitrovi´c, 2015. 46. Jasenovac was a concentration camp located in northern Bosnia where Croatian nationalist Ustaše during World War II executed around 80,000 people, over half of whom were Serbs. 47. Personal interview with Nedeljko Mitrovi´c, 2015. 48. In the so-called ‘Srebrenica Cases’, Selimovi´c and 48 Others (CH/01/8365), Decision on Admissibility and Merits, Human Rights Chamber for Bosnia and Herzegovina. 49. Personal interview with Srd-an Puhalo, 2015.

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50. During the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020, the women for the first time decided not to go out on the street but instead asked their friends and supporters to send them photos with names of the missing to display online. 51. Personal interview with Nura Begovi´c, 2019. 52. They have later created transnational networks with other similar goals elsewhere (Nettelfield, 2010, p. 104). 53. Some issues of the bulletin can be found online on scribd. 54. Personal interview with representatives of Srebrenica organizations, 2019. 55. Personal interview with a journalist, 2016. 56. The UN Secretary General published a report about the ‘Fall of Srebrenica’ in 1999 (53/35). Another report was commissioned by the French National Assembly in 2001 (see Wagner, 2008, pp. 21–22). 57. The board consisted of Munira Subaši´c and Ahmet Grahi´c for Bosniaks, Vanda Havranek and Zvonimir Kubinek for Croats, Boro Perili´c and Smilja Mitrovi´c for Serbs. 58. The board consisted of Munira Subaši´c and Ahmet Grahi´c for Bosniaks, Vanda Havranek and Zvonimir Kubinek for Croats, Boro Perili´c and Smilja Mitrovi´c for Serbs. 59. Personal interview with a political analyst, Banja Luka, 2015. 60. There were 29 RS organizations of special interest as of February 2016, which are allocated direct funding, one third of which belong to one of the veteran and victim categories. 61. For example, it received 30,000 KM (app. 15,000 Euro) from the RS government in 2014. (Data provided by the RS the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.) 62. Personal interview with a victim leader, 2015. 63. Diaspora support has been critical for its financial sustainability. During my interview with Ramuli´c, he was approached by members of the US diaspora offering donations. 64. Srebrenica has never ceased to capture external attention: the US Congress (in 2005), the European Parliament (in 2009) and most recently the United Nations (in 2015) all submitted proposals for resolutions condemning Srebrenica (for more see Dragovi´c-Soso, 2012). The UN initiative failed in July 2015 because of a Russian veto. 65. Personal interview with INO investigator, 2015. 66. While Srebrenica women state in our interviews that they are most indebted to Paddy Ashdown for what he has done for them, victim associations in Banja Luka called him a criminal. 67. As noted, the issue of the missing was less prominent among Croats, which accounted for a fraction of the nestali. Yet some Srebrenica victims were also Croats, so Croat groups generally supported their Bosniak counterparts.

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68. Personal interview with an international expert in Sarajevo, 2015. 69. The board consisted of Munira Subaši´c and Ahmet Grahi´c for Bosniaks, Vanda Havranek and Zvonimir Kubinek for Croats, Boro Perili´c and Smilja Mitrovi´c for Serbs. 70. Personal interview with a Bosnian Serb victim leader, 2016. Article 5 of the Law states that: ‘Officials with duties related to the tracing of missing persons cannot carry out this duty if they are members of steering and other boards, or executive bodies, of political parties, or if they are politically engaged representatives, and must not follow political party instructions.’ 71. The concept of ‘professional victimhood’ as an approach to legitimize whatever claims on the basis of pure victimization without any acknowledgment of suffering of the others (see Meister, 2002). 72. Main Bosniak political parties are very close to the regime of Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan (Firat Buyuk, 2019). 73. In 2015, the former Serbian Prime Minster Aleksandar Vuˇci´c pledged 5 million Euro to Srebrenica after he had attended the Potoˇcari commemoration (Deutsche Welle, 2015). 74. The commission is chaired by Stefan Karganovi´c. It has so far received 1,923,900 KM (close to 1 million Euro) from RS. See http://us.srebre nica-project.org/, accessed 24 March 2020. 75. Personal interview with a political analyst, 2015. 76. He is the leader of the Democratic National Union and previously served in RS government under Milorad Dodik. 77. Personal interview with a Prijedor-based activist, 2015. 78. Together with a youth NGO Kvart they set up the ‘Day of White Armbands’ in 2012, to remember all Bosniaks forced by Bosnian Serbs to wear a white ribbon on 30 May 1992 to mark them as Muslims. 79. Personal interview with Aleksandra Leti´c, 2015. 80. Personal interview with Matthew Holliday, 2015. 81. Personal interview with a Bosniak victim leader, 2015. 82. Personal interview with Matthew Holliday, 2015. 83. Personal interview with a Bosniak victim leader, 2015.

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European Parliament. (2015). European Parliament resolution of 9 July 2015 on the Srebrenica Commemoration (2015/2747(RSP)). European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-8-20150276_EN.html. Ferstman, C., & Rosenberg, S. P. (2009). Reparations in Dayton’s Bosnia and Herzegovina. In C. Ferstman, M. Goetz, & A. Stephens (Eds.), Reparations for victims of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity: Systems in place and systems in the making (pp. 483–514). Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Firat Buyuk, H. (2019, July 8). Erdogan’s Sarajevo visit may affect Bosniak leadership race. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/07/08/ erdogans-sarajevo-visit-may-effect-bosniak-leadership-race/. Fondebrider, L. (2009). The applications of forensic anthropology to the investigation of cases of political violence: Perspectives from South America. In Handbook of forensic anthropology and archaeology (pp. 67–75). Abingdon: Taylor & Francis. Gordy, E. (2013). Guilt, responsibility, and denial: The past at stake in postMiloševi´c Serbia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Hamber, B., & Wilson, R. A. (2002). Symbolic closure through memory, reparation and revenge in post-conflict societies. Journal of Human Rights, 1(1), 35–53. https://doi.org/10.1080/14754830110111553. Helms, E. (2013). Innocence and victimhood: Gender, nation, and women’s activism in postwar Bosnia-Herzegovina. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Henig, D. (2017). Prayer as history: Of witnesses, martyrs, and plural pasts in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina. Social Analysis, 61(4), 41–54. Hoare, M. A. (2004). How Bosnia armed. London: Saqi Books. Hodži´c, R. (2015). Flowers in the square. ICTJ. https://www.ictj.org/sites/def ault/files/subsites/flowers-square-prijedor/. Horowitz, D. L. (1985). Ethnic groups in conflict. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hulsey, J. (2016). Party politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In V. Perry & S. Keil (Eds.), State-building and democratization in Bosnia and Herzegovina (pp. 41–60). Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Human Rights Watch. (1995). The fall of Srebrenica and the failure of U.N. peacekeeping. ICJ. (2007). Application of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide (Bosnia and Herzegovina v. Serbia and Montenegro). International Court of Justice. http://www.icj-cij.org/docket/files/91/13685. pdf. ICMP. (2017). Statistics of missing persons per municipality of disappearance. https://goo.gl/XGAh2t.

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ICTJ. (2004). Bosnia and Herzegovina: selected developments in transitional justice. International Center for Transitional Justice. https://goo.gl/ LnmzM5. Izvor. (1998). Knjiga nestalih op´cine Prijedor. Ni krivi ni dužni. [The book of the missing from the Municipality of Prjedor: Neither guilty nor beholden]. IPC Patria. Juhl, K. (2009). The problem of ethnic politics and trust: The missing persons institute of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Genocide Studies and Prevention, 4(2), 239– 270. Karˇci´c, H. (2015). From the Selimovi´c case to the Srebrenica Commission: The fight to recognize the Srebrenica genocide. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 35(3), 370–379. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004. 2015.1080951. Leydesdorff, S. (2011). Surviving the Bosnian genocide: The women of Srebrenica speak. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mazowiecki, T. (1995). A letter of resignation. NY Books. http://www.nybooks. com/articles/1995/09/21/a-letter-of-resignation/. Meister, R. (2002). Human rights and the politics of victimhood. Ethics & International Affairs, 16(2), 91–108. Merdžanovi´c, A. (2015). Democracy by decree: Prospects and limits of imposed consociational democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Stuttgart: ibidem. Milanovic, M. (2006). Narratives of justice for the Balkans: Establishing responsibility for genocide in the Bosnian War. Serbian Yearbook of International Law, 2, 1–30. Muslimovic, A. (2017, May 24). Bosnia court acquits Serbs of Srebrenica hate speech. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2017/05/24/bos nia-serbs-acquitted-for-srebrenica-hate-incitment-charges-05-24-2017/. Nettelfield, L. J. (2010). Courting democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Hague tribunal’s impact in a postwar state. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nettelfield, L. J., & Wagner, S. (2013). Srebrenica in the aftermath of genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nezavisne novine. (2003, July 3). Protesti ukoliko se ne ispune zahtjevi [Protests unless demands fulfilled]. Nezavisne novine. Noack, R. (2016, December 14). Two decades before Aleppo, there was Srebrenica. “Never again,” the world promised. Washington Post. Nora, P. (1989). Between history and memory: Les lieux de mémoire. Representations, 26, 7–25. NSRS. (2018). Okonˇcana 29. Posebna sjednica: Usvojeni Zakljuˇcci u vezi s Informacijom o Izvještaju komisije o dogad-ajima u i oko Srebrenice od 10. Do 19. Jula 1995 [29th Special Session Ended: Conclusions Adopted on Information on the Commission Report on Events in and Around Srebrenica

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from 10 to 19 July 1995]. National Assembly of RS (NSRS). https:// www.narodnaskupstinars.net/?q=la/vijesti/okon%C4%8Dana-29-posebna-sje dnica-usvojeni-zaklju%C4%8Dci-u-vezi-s-informacijom-o-izvje%C5%A1tajukomisije-o-doga%C4%91ajima-u-i-oko-srebrenice-od-10-do-19-jula-1995. Nuhanovi´c, H. (2007). Under the UN flag: The international community and the Srebrenica genocide. Sarajevo: DES. Obradovic-Wochnik, J. (2009). Knowledge, acknowledgement and denial in Serbia’s responses to the Srebrenica massacre. Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 17 (1), 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/147828009028 44719. OHR. (2001). Decision establishing and registering the Foundation of the Srebrenica-Potocari Memorial and Cemetery. http://www.ohr.int/?p=67761. O’Keeffe, M. (2009). Evidence and absence: Documenting the Desaparecidos of Argentina. Communication, Culture & Critique, 2(4), 520–537. Omeragi´c, A. (2007, June 3). Kako preživjeti život? [How to survive life?]. Oslobod-enje. ONASA. (1999, March 11). H. Silajdži´c razgovarao sa šefom Ureda ICMP u Sarajevu [H. Silajdži´c in discussion with the director of ICMP in Sarajevo]. ONASA. Orentlicher, D. F. (2010). That someone guilty be punished: The impact of the ICTY in Bosnia. Open Society Justice Initiative and International Center for Transitional Justice. Quinn, A. M. (2014). Identifying Desaparecidos: The development of forensic anthropology in Chile. University of Syracuse. http://surface.syr.edu/honors_ capstone/802/. Reuters. (2016, October 17). Srebrenica elects as mayor Serb who denies massacre was genocide. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2016/oct/17/srebrenica-elects-mladen-grujicic-mayor-serb-deniesmassacre-genocide. Rohde, D. (1998). Endgame: The betrayal and fall of Srebrenica, Europe’s worst massacre since World War II . Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Rohde, D. (2015, July 17). Denying genocide in the face of science. The Atlantic. Rovcanin, H. (2019, August 29). Passing time makes search for Bosnia’s wartime missing harder. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/08/29/pas sing-time-makes-search-for-bosnias-wartime-missing-harder/. Sands, P. (Ed.). (2003). From Nuremberg to the Hague: The future of international criminal justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sarkin, J., Nettelfield, L. J., Matthews, M., & Kosalka, R. (2014). Bosnia and Herzegovina. Missing persons from the armed conflicts of the 1990s: A stocktaking. Sarajevo: ICMP.

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SDA Official Website. (2012, July 26). Munira Subaši´c prijavila prebivalište u Srebrenici [MS reported residence in Srebrenica]. SDA Official Website. http://sda.ba/home/munira-subasic-prijavila-prebivaliste-u-srebrenici/. Šegrt, R. (2009, February 24). Nedeljko Mitrovi´c: Prijava protiv Dodika udar na RS [Nedeljko Mitrovi´c: Accusations against Dodik are a strike against RS]. Nezavisne novine. Simi´c, O. (2012). ‘Pillar of shame’: Civil society, UN accountability and genocide in Srebrenica. In O. Simi´c & Z. Volˇci´c (Eds.), Transitional justice and civil society in the Balkans (pp. 181–200). New York: Springer. Simi´c, O. (2014). Memorial Culture in the former Yugoslavia: Mothers of Srebrenica and the destruction of artefacts by the ICTY. In P. D. Rush & O. Simi´c (Eds.), The arts of transitional justice: Culture, activism, and memory after atrocity (pp. 155–172). New York: Springer. Sivac-Bryant, S. (2014). The Omarska Memorial Project as an example of how transitional justice interventions can produce hidden harms. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 9(1), 170–180. Sorguˇc, A. (2019, February 25). Bosnian Serbs’ war commissions: Fact-seeking or truth-distorting? Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2019/02/ 25/bosnian-serbs-war-commissions-fact-seeking-or-truth-distorting/. Stan, L., & Nedelsky, N. (2013). Encyclopedia of transitional justice (Vol. 3). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Stover, E. (1985). Scientists aid search for Argentina’s ‘Desaparecidos’. Science, 230(4721), 56–57. Stover, E., & Shigakane, R. (2002). The missing in the aftermath of war: When do the needs of victims’ families and international war crimes tribunals clash? International Committee for the Red Cross Review, 84(848), 845–866. Stover, E., & Weinstein, H. M. (2004). My neighbor, my enemy: Justice and community in the aftermath of mass atrocity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The Economist. (2002, February 7). One brought to justice, many at large. http:// www.economist.com/node/975892. UN General Assembly. (1992). Declaration on the protection of all persons from enforced disappearance (A/RES/47/133). http://www.un.org/docume nts/ga/res/47/a47r133.htm. Ventura, M., & Akande, D. (2013, September 6). Mothers of Srebrenica: The obligation to prevent genocide and Jus Cogens—Implications for humanitarian intervention. Blog of the European Journal of International Law. https://goo.gl/c9u7lY. Verdery, K. (1999). The political lives of dead bodies: Reburial and postsocialist change. New York: Columbia University Press. Wagner, S. E. (2008). To know where he lies: DNA technology and the search for Srebrenica’s missing. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Wagner, S. E., & Kešetovi´c, R. (2016). Absent bodies, absent knowledge: The forensic work of identifying Srebrenica’s missing and the social experiences of families. In D. Congram (Ed.), Missing persons: Multidisciplinary perspectives on the disappeared (pp. 42–73). Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press. Williams, P. R., & Scharf, M. P. (2002). Peace with justice? War crimes and accountability in the former Yugoslavia. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Williams, R. C. (2004). Post-conflict property restitution and refugee return in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Implications for international standard-setting and practice. NYU Journal of International Law and Politics, 37, 441–553. Zuber, C. I., & Szöcsik, E. (2019). The second edition of the EPAC expert survey on ethnonationalism in party competition—Testing for validity and reliability. Regional & Federal Studies, 29(1), 91–113. https://doi.org/10. 1080/13597566.2018.1512975.

CHAPTER 6

Between Recognition and Oblivion: Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture

6.1

Introduction

When Sabiha Husi´c, the director of the women’s charity Medica Zenica, embarked on the campaign ‘For the Dignity of Survivors’ of wartime sexual violence in early 2006, she was hopeful but cautious. Changing the existing legal provisions for victims of wartime sexual violence and granting them a ‘victim status’ would mark the first official recognition of survivors of sexual violence and rape in Bosnia and the wider ex-Yugoslavia.1 Yet the atmosphere in the larger Bosnian entity in early 2006 was exhilarating. A young Bosnian director just won a prestigious international award for her film Grbavica—Esma’s Secret about a child conceived of wartime rape. The civil sector, victim associations, as well as the public, galvanized behind the cause to remedy victimized individuals. After several months of petitioning, in June 2006 lawmakers in the FBiH Assembly granted the affected survivors modest benefits. Survivors of sexual violence and rape2 were jubilant, but victims of torture were despondent. Although the term ‘torture’ was proposed for inclusion in the same legal provision, only sexual torture and rape made it into the final amendment. As a result, victims of torture were unable to claim their ‘status’ on the basis of their victimization. As the change pertained only to the larger Bosniak-Croat Federation, survivors residing in Republika Srpska remained unaffected until a 2018 legal change (Maglajlija, 2018; Sorguˇc, 2018). © The Author(s) 2020 J. Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2_6

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How do we explain these variations between victims of sexual violence and torture’s recognition and redress? In this chapter, I discuss the victim capital that assisted victims in pushing through a change. I highlight the gradual increase in women’s international salience and mobilization resources prior to 2006 while also stressing the rise of their moral authority since the end of the war. In contrast, victims of torture have leveraged their existing political connections and organizational skills as their domestic authority and external salience fluctuated. The success of survivors of sexual violence in FBiH illustrates the ‘Activist Route’ while the partial success of victims of torture and sexual violence in RS partially conforms to the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario—however, with important caveats outlined below. As the last building block of the proposed framework, this chapter primarily focuses on the first two post-war phases when legislation changed. As the change materialized in June 2006 and June 2018, I pay attention to the second and third post-war phases (since 2000) that differed in terms of external support and openness of domestic politics. I follow the same structure as previously, starting from the groups’ general characteristics and their differential outcomes. The main section is dedicated to salience, authority and resources and their effect on recognition. I discuss their combinations under specific contextual factors of the second and third phases before addressing questions of access.

6.2 Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture and Their Associations Much has been written about wartime suffering of women (and more recently men) that were raped and sexually abused during the Bosnian war. It is hard to do justice to the wealth of literature that has been published on the topic of Bosnian women’s activism in this area (Cockburn, 2002; Deiana, 2018; Helms, 2013; Hunt, 2004; O’Reilly, 2016; Pupavac, 2006) and their experience of suffering in Bosnia (Allen, 1996; Clark, 2017a; Skjelsbaek, 2011; Stiglmayer, 1994). Much less has been written about the up to 200,000 of individuals who were tortured in wartime camps on the territory of Bosnia. This discrepancy offers the first glimpse into the different treatment of these groups in post-war Bosnia in terms of their salience and authority. While victims of torture were not only civilian men and servicemen of all three ethno-national background but also women (many of whom also suffered sexual violence),

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women who underwent sexual violence largely organized themselves separately from their male counterparts. The exact number of raped individuals (mostly women but also men) is usually estimated between 20,000 (Clark, 2017a) and 50,000 (Vladisavljevic, Lakic, & Begisholli, 2019) while the number of victims of torture (also called ex-detainees) could have been up to 200,000 (Jouhanneau, 2013a). It is further estimated that up to 3000 men were victims of various forms of sexual violence (European External Action Service, 2013, p. 5). However, precise numbers remain unavailable and probably unattainable due to the passage of time, silence among many survivors and chaotic wartime situation (see All Survivors Project, 2017; Clark, K., 2014, p. 111). Survivors of torture (also former detainees or ex-detainees) and survivors of sexual violence share some commonalities in the patterns of victimization through forced detention in camps and daily abuse that has left life-long scars for many (see Clark, 2017a). Torture and sexual violence as a strategy to humiliate, brutalize local population, send a message and fragment entire communities have been well documented in cases such as Sierra Leone, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda and Bosnia, among others (see for example Boesten, 2017; Hajjar, 2013). The additional method of rape and enforced pregnancies also correspond to the strategy of turning multi-ethnic into monoethnic communities.3 In Bosnia, the most heinous crimes committed in camps were in the region of Bosnian Krajina (especially the notorious Omarska, Trnopolje and Keraterm camps), Sarajevo and eastern Bosnia (in Foˇca, Zvornik, and Višegrad). Beatings, starvation, forced sexual acts between family members (including between men), rape of teenage girls, forced pregnancies, sexual abuse through penetration with foreign objects and prolonged violent rapes were only some of the reported instances of violence committed in over 700 camps across BiH (see Allen, 1996; Amnesty International, 1993; Stiglmayer, 1994). Although torture and rape could not be pinned to Serb forces exclusively, the scale of crimes committed by the various Serb forces was greater than among the other belligerents (for more see Clark, 2017a, pp. 43–44). The systematic nature of the abuse was also identified for Serb-run camps. Individuals victimized by such crimes emerged from the war with traumatizing experiences that have not only shaped their demands for justice but also their urgent needs. Many were displaced and struggled to return home both for security and psychological reasons while others suffered from a variety of physical and mental harm. Post-traumatic stress disorder,

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(PTSD) became very common among such victims (see Delbyck, 2016; Husi´c, 2014). Yet lasting traumas necessitated a variety of psychosocial support that Bosnia was poorly equipped to provide in the 1990s (Shelton, 2007; Skjelsbaek, 2011). Consulted Bosnian social workers during this project suggested that due to the lack of therapy, it was only after the initial shock passed and individuals gathered the strength to face the hostile post-war authorities that victims started to voice their demands and organize in a more systematic manner.4 They united in associations for war detainees (in Bosnian logoraši) and female detainees (logorašice). Survivors of torture and sexual violence preferred the term ‘detainee’ to specific mentions of rape or torture, which were too closely associated with the shame and humiliation of abuse.5 However, the silence and taboo surrounding these crimes was broken only gradually. Even today, the full scale of the crimes remains unknown due to the reluctance and fear of many survivors to speak out (UNFPA, 2015). Despite these precarious and traumatizing starting points, leading survivors organized themselves under three umbrella victim unions, divided by ethno-national characteristics and by regions. Within the Federation, Bosniak victims set up their own Union of Camp Detainees of BiH (Savez logoraša Bosne i Hercegovine, henceforth ‘SLBH’) in Sarajevo in 1996.6 Although it was meant to act as a Union for all logoraši in BiH, Croats by 1998 established their own Association of Camp Detainees of the Homeland War in BiH (Hrvatska udruga logoraša domovinskog rata, henceforth ‘HULDR’) in Mostar and Serbs the Association of Camp Detainees of Republika Srpska (Savez logoraša RS, henceforth ‘SLRS’) with a seat in Banja Luka in 2002. Mirroring the administrative structure of BiH, the Bosniak and Croat unions in the Federation established cantonal and municipal associations while SLRS organized in municipal associations.7 The highest membership of SLBH and HULDR was around 58,000 in total8 while SLRS claimed around 50,000 military and civilian ex-detainees (Srna, 2015). While this is a number twice smaller than the estimated number of wartime detainees, it can be assumed that some were killed during the war, some left after the war while many do not wish to become members of the unions. After much delay, independent victim associations for predominantly female victims of sexual violence were set up in FBiH (in 2003) and in RS (in 2013) as outlined below.9

6

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On the Path to Redress: Justice and Care

Unlike in the case of families of missing persons, wider redress and recognition were introduced as a key demand of these associations early on alongside various other forms of retribution and legal justice. By the end of the 1990s, the existing logoraši unions stated as their main goal the attainment of a victim status of their members. At that time, torture without physical injuries of at least 60 percent was not included in the existing civilian legislation, which left many suffering from PTSD without any formal care.10 The lack of recognition of non-physical wounds was the result of the transposition of socialist laws that provided compensation only to those who either lost someone or were disabled (Karge, 2010, p. 81). Therefore, survivors of torture and sexual violence who could not prove the defined levels of physical harm were not recognized and were not entitled to monthly allowances, rehabilitation services and free healthcare. Thus, they were not treated as equivalent to other victims. While many NGOs stepped in and supported unrecognized individuals, the disregard for non-physical suffering (or allegedly ‘milder forms’ of physical suffering) created a hierarchical categorization of victimhood early on. Moreover, gender was an important defining feature of victims’ representation. The logoraši associations were run by male survivors that subsumed the women’s agenda. The mostly Bosniak SLBH created a women’s section in 1997 but women did not play a prominent role in setting its agenda until the early 2000s.11 Logoraši in the Federation initially searched for the most suitable form of recognition beyond the generic ‘truth and justice’ efforts (ONASA, 1998). While punishing perpetrators has never ceased to feature strongly in the associations’ demands, official recognition in the form of a victim status soon took priority. News and magazine articles from this first period suggest there was no clear consensus of where, how and from whom to demand redress. Unlike other groups discussed previously, opinions among the leading representatives of ex-detainees in FBiH varied from class actions against the Bosnian state to initiating cases against RS. The two unions in FBiH also oscillated between demanding amendments of the existing laws, to creating a new entity or state law. The latter option generally dominated, leading in 2000 to a poorly prepared submission of a draft state law for all Bosnian victims of torture (there was no RS Union at that time) to the Bosnian Assembly (Tabuˇci´c, 2003) that was

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later revised in 2006, 2011, and 2017 (Bajtarevi´c, 2019). The draft has still not been discussed in Parliament until today. After the RS Union was established in 2002, the Bosniak SLBH started pushing for an entity law that would apply only to FBiH rather than a state law that would include RS. In 2005, SLBH representatives specifically asked the FBiH Assembly to treat civilian logoraši in the same way as civilian victims or disabled veterans (Oslobod-enje, 2005b). Again without any success, they later returned to their pursuit of a state law, inspired by the 2004 success of the families of the missing. Their subsequent insistence on a state law became the fundamental raison d’être of SLBH but never canvassed enough support across BiH.12 As many SLBH members were also former soldiers, SLBH’s leaders started to justify a state law as an expression of a united BiH that they both fought for during the war and desired thereafter. In addition to this aspirational justification, they also presented the state law as an expression of the principles of non-discrimination since all ex-detainees across BiH would be recognized (Dnevni Avaz, 2014). The Croat HULDR later agreed with this strategy but never gained support of Serb logoraši (Kandi´c, 2007, p. 47). The SLRS was adamant that a state law was not on its agenda as their objective was to defend Serb rights in RS as a matter of priority. RS authorities subsequently periodically stopped any meaningful vote on a state law (Lakic, 2017). Against the backdrop of these fluctuations in demands, female victims of sexual violence in FBiH were increasingly vocal within SLBH through their section, which was highly dependent on the male leaders. By 2003, some members set up a new organization Women-Victims of War (Ženežrtve rata) under Bakira Haseˇci´c. The organization stated clear goals: to facilitate victims’ return to ‘normal life’, to break the silence about sexual violence and rape, to assist in the delivery of truth and justice and to change the entity law in FBiH, rather than the state legislation.13 The primary objective was to allow women, who formed the vast majority of survivors of sexual violence, to re-establish their lives in ‘dignity’. In RS, the SLRS only created its female section in 2012 under Olga Draško but it never gained prominence and soon ceased to exist. In 2013, the section was replaced by the self-standing Women-Victims of War of RS under Božica Rajli´c-Živkovi´c with around 600 members who pursued an entity law for Serb female victims of torture, rather than female victims of all ethno-national background in RS (Lakic, 2018).

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A key turning point came on 8 June 2006 when the FBiH entity legislation was extended to include victims of sexual violence as eligible for redress (Art. 6, amending Art. 54).14 The reform introduced sexual violence as a unique type of harm. It broadened the existing definition of harm in FBiH from ‘physical injuries’ into ‘organism’s injuries’, i.e. in theory also mental harm. This change was so minimal and restrictive that only a small number of logoraši qualified for any type of redress (see Popi´c & Panjeta, 2010). Nonetheless, the reform allowed victims of sexual violence to claim identical benefits as civilian victims with full disability, which for 2015 translated into 586 KM (293 Euro) per month. Together with a personal monthly payment, they were formally granted financial support for their children, medical care, professional training, priority employment, psychological assistance, legal aid and priority housing (Art. 58). Thereafter, those who wanted to register as victims of rape were no longer required to undergo medical assessments, but an interview with a victim association that would forward their application for further evaluation. Yet the reform was applicable only to FBiH as at that time no RS association for female victims even existed. The division with the various logoraši organizations escalated in 2017 and 2018 when any semblance of previous state-wide coordination and cooperation disappeared. While SLBH remained adamant that only a state-level law was acceptable, SLRS decided to mobilize for an entity law that would offer redress to victims living in RS (i.e. not those who lived on the territory of RS before the war). SLBH has never succeeded. In the current legal practice in FBiH, only bodily harm and physical disability with some exceptions (and in FBiH sexual violence) are recognized as types of victimization that entitle survivors to redress at the entity level. Unless severe physical impairment is established as a result of PTSD or other mental harm, victims of torture in FBiH do not have any entitlements, linked to their wartime victimization (Bajtarevi´c, 2019; Lakic, 2018; Vladisavljevic et al., 2019).15 In contrast, SLRS succeeded with much delay and a new law was passed in 2018 granting all victims of torture and sexual violence who prove their victimization within five years of the law’s adoption a victim status.16 Serving Serb victim only, the law has been criticized as discriminatory by leaving victims of different ethnonational identity out (Maglajlija, 2018; Sorguˇc, 2018). In sum, while victims of torture have sought redress from entities and the state level, survivors of sexual violence focused only on entities. This is summarized in Table 6.1.

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Table 6.1 Redress for victims of torture and rape Group/territory

FBiH

RS

State

Victims of torture (ex-detainees) Victims of sexual violence

– 2006 Law Amendment

2018 Law 2018 Law

– –

Source Author

6.4

Explaining Recognition of Victims of Sexual Violence and Torture

How do we explain the relative success of victims of sexual violence against victims of torture in FBiH and the 2018 adoption in RS? Although the main leaders of the logoraši unions argue that they have not been redressed for such a long time due to the lack of financial resources, the existing evidence suggests that budgetary constraints are not the deciding factor in awarding redress to victims. In fact, as previous chapters demonstrated, military victims’ benefits increased in the past decade despite austerity while the recent change in RS necessitates around 500,000 Euro per annum (Maglajlija, 2018). While the RS law has been poorly implemented, it is clear that financial considerations were only one aspect that was at stake. As discussed in this section, the differing outcomes can be explained by varieties in victim capital. While our knowledge about the advances in women’s rights and sexual violence in the country is advancing, there is only limited understanding regarding the former detainees. Beyond victim capital, this chapter thus also offers new insights into the polarization of the issue of victims of torture in BiH. 6.4.1

International Salience: Fighting Violence Against Women

The international salience of survivors of sexual violence and torture underwent several changes after the war. Initially, both groups were under extensive foreign media spotlight. In 1992, the two main portrayals of the Bosnian victims were likes of Ed Vulliamy’s photos of cadaverous men behind barbwires at the Omarska camp that evoked horrors of Auschwitz (Hagan, 2003, p. 46) and bereft fleeing Muslim women reporting of brutal rapes and abuse, periodically covered by Newsweek’s Roy Gutman, CNN’s Christian Amanpour, ITN and others. Foreign journalists became some of the key advocates of intervention and a human-rights approach

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to ending the atrocities. As Mallinder noted, ‘the images they recorded were broadcast around the world and had a profound impact on raising international awareness’ (Mallinder, 2009, p. 28). In addition to foreign media, a series of institutional developments in the international arena of transitional justice and human rights boosted the cause of victims of sexual violence, ultimately leading to a number of new projects and advocacy campaigns. This section traces how the two victim groups were influenced by such external attention and how they responded. 6.4.1.1

The Rising International Concern for Victims of Sexual Violence

They pushed us on the floor. Two of the men held me down while two others raped me. I shouted at them and tried to fight back but it was no use. As they raped me they said they’d make sure I gave birth to a Serbian baby, and they kept repeating that during the rest of the time that they kept me there. (Burns, 1992)

This account of a Bosniak teenage girl was published in The New York Times in 1992, one of the first accounts of hundreds to follow. Since the first news reports focused on sexual atrocities committed during the war as early as April 1992, it seemed as if women were the key victims of the Bosnian war (Helms, 2013, p. 27). International advocacy organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International highlighted crimes committed in camps and the targeting of Bosniak and Croat women who had been ‘singled out for humiliation on account of their nationality and sometimes as a form of retribution’ (Amnesty International, 1993, p. 8). As Helms explained, the coverage of foreign media showed distraught Muslim women dressed in traditional clothes and in headscarves marching ‘for peace’, invoking empathy and implicitly linking Bosnian war suffering to women (Helms, 2013, p. 99). Publications and documentaries with testimonies depicted gruesome images of girls and women serving as sexual slaves and objects of murderous pleasure for (mostly Serb) soldiers. Reports about ‘rape camps’ and forced pregnancies steered the global attention towards women’s experiences and suffering in war to an unprecedented degree (Skjelsbaek, 2011, p. 63). The most prominent account of the scale of the abuse was documented by the 1992 UN Commission of Experts that was eventually chaired and deployed by M. Cherif Bassiouni in 1993. The Commission documented

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systematic torture and violent rapes of mostly Bosniak and Croat women (but also men and Serbian women) in 715 detention camps located across the country but with the highest concentration in eastern Bosnia and the Krajina region. The Commission’s report from 1994 provides some of the most gruesome depiction of the crimes committed across Bosnia that had been carried out as part of the policy of ethnic cleansing. It documented testimonies of women who had been raped with the intention of impregnation, so they would ‘bear children of the perpetrator’s ethnicity’ (Bassiouni, 1994, p. 60). Later it was established that forced pregnancies through rape became part of the wider military strategy (Žarkov, 2007, p. 118). The Commission estimated that over 20,000 mostly Bosniak and Croat women (and men) had been raped by that point (Bassiouni, 1994, p. 84). Mass rapes and sexual crimes on Serb women were also recorded. As the issue of rape affected primarily—but not solely—women, sexual victimhood in the international discourse became synonymous with an invasion of women’s bodies and their militarization, i.e. the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war that is detached from more ‘natural’ sexual drives (Nebesar, 1998; Seifert, 1996). The majority of literature on sexual violence in war thus perceives sexual violence as part of wider structural inequality and gender power dynamics (Card, 1996; Cockburn, 2001; Enloe, 2000).17 Subsequently, the key aspect that further raised the salience of sexual violence was the novel legal interpretation of rape as a crime against humanity by the ICTY, the Rwandan ad hoc tribunal, ICTR, and later the ICC.18 ICTR and ICTY quickly anchored sexual violence in their legal practice as a war crime and crime against humanity in an unprecedented fashion (Walsh, 2008). Victimized women became key witnesses and sources of evidence (Koomen, 2013). Previously, rape was considered as part of warfare and as a side effect of large-scale violence and ‘spoils of war’ (Card, 1996). Yet a landmark verdict against Jean-Paul Akayesu at the ICTR in 1998 for the first time defined rape as a crime against humanity, as a ‘physical invasion of a sexual nature, committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive’.19 Four years later, the ICTY sentenced a Bosnian Serb commander Dragoljub Kunarac stating that he led a campaign of sexual abuse and enslavement in Foˇca in eastern Bosnia, which constituted a crime against humanity.20 Sexual violence was included in the Rome Statute of the ICC in 2002 and later became part of the crime of genocide. The new legal practice was a watershed moment for victimized women who suddenly became ‘legally defined’ as victims

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of war and crimes against humanity (Skjelsbaek, 2011, p. 163). As some scholars argued, sexual violence and rapes in BiH worked as a ‘condensation point’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998, p. 181), giving momentum to a global campaign against sexual violence in conflict within international justice and advocacy (Cockburn, 2001; Korac, 2006). Media reports and legal evidence of the widespread abuse of women in Bosnia and Rwanda led to the development of a new interest within the UN in the female experience of war in other ravaged countries such as Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo. After a series of UNHCR reports and OSCE documents about sexual abuse of refugees and displaced women in Bosnia and around the world, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1325 titled Women, Peace, and Security in 2000 (UN Security Council, 2000). Its aim was to address the various impacts of wars on women and called for women’s inclusion in peacebuilding and post-war reconstruction. It later became the founding document for the inclusion of women in peacebuilding (for more see Ward, 2013). Thereafter, seven additional UN resolutions,21 the 2007 Nairobi Declaration and the creation of the UN special office in 2010—UN Women—demonstrated the burgeoning international agenda of women in war.22 The growing attention to women in conflict worldwide was further exemplified by the introduction of a new term in human-rights advocacy—‘conflict-related sexual violence’ (CRSV).23 Women in particular were identified as disproportionally targeted in war but also marginalized in peacebuilding processes—a reality that the Bosnian case exemplified brilliantly as women were excluded for the country’s top-down peace processes (McLeod, 2019). Given the still rather low numbers of female fighters in conflicts worldwide (with some notable exceptions) and the marginalization of women in politics overall, women were presented as victimized by the existing patriarchal relations (Allen, 1996; Hunt, 2004; Leydesdorff, 2011; Stiglmayer, 1994). The direct effects of these developments on Bosnian victims were threefold. First, the external pressure on gender-based policies intensified, documented in many reports by the UN published since 2005 and 2006 on the state of human rights in BiH that highlighted the need to remedy victims of sexual violence and rape (cf. Kälin, 2005). Second, the UN formal commitments had a gradual trickle-down effect on associations in Bosnia such as the new Women for Women (Žene ženama) NGO together with Women in Black in neighbouring Serbia (Irvine, 2013). Such local female NGOs became increasingly active across Bosnia and the wider

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former Yugoslavia. They frequently used the external legal commitments in campaigns for women’s rights and advocacy for gender issues, including the protection of female victims of war (McLeod, 2019). As the Dayton Peace Agreement included a range of human-rights conventions, local activists demanded compliance with human rights requirements stemming from the agreement. Irvine further argued that feminist organizations in Bosnia used the existing conventions and UN resolutions (especially 1325) as a ‘reverse boomerang’, alluding to Keck and Sikkink’s model, pressuring external actors in their home countries to deliver on what was agreed in the international arena (Irvine, 2013, p. 25). Importantly, these developments were also reflected in the agenda of the European Union, which started to play a key role in Bosnian post-war reconstruction after the launch of the new Stabilisation and Association Process with Southeast Europe in 1999. The growing EU integration process of Bosnia formally included gender equality as a core principle of the EU value system and as part of the accession legal package of the acquis (Papi´c, 2007, p. 26). After a series of NGO campaigns supported by OSCE projects, the High Representative responded by creating gender projects in the country (co-funded by Finnish donations, among others), resulting in the state Parliament passing the Law on Gender Equality in 2003.24 A year later, the double-hatted HR/EUSR Paddy Ashdown pushed through and funded new gender agencies in both entities, FBiH and RS, which became umbrella institutions for gender-based issues with specific attention paid to sexual violence (Pupavac, 2006). In 2005, new Laws on Protection against Domestic Violence were passed by the entities.25 The EU also launched two projects in 2005 to support civil society organizations that dealt with sexual violence. The first five-year BiH Gender Action Plan was adopted at the state level in 2006 that for the first time introduced systems about measuring and implementing gender equality policies (USAID/Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2016, p. 20). By 2010, the Bosnian government adopted the first action plan to implement the 1325 UN Resolution as the first country in the former Yugoslavia.26 Since early on, projects on women’s empowerment in BiH were favoured by funders and women-focussed projects in the civil sector proliferated (Helms, 2014). The inclusion of gender aspects and mainstreaming soon became a sine qua non for most NGO projects in the country. Several gender-based educational and activist projects of organizations received external financial support and institutional backing in the early 2000s.27 As a result, Medica organized a conference in 2003 titled

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‘Wartime rape, ten years later’ (Helms, 2013, p. 203) as an opportunity to stress that ‘women did not have their status resolved, despite constant political pledges’.28 The conference was one of the first of its kind. It was well attended not only by local women’s NGOs but also by foreign academics and human rights activists (including the later Ombudsperson Jasminka Džumhur and OHR’s human rights expert Madeleine Rees), boosting the external resonance of the women’s cause.29 Its findings about the need to redress women were subsequently submitted to the FBiH Assembly with a request to create a process where victimized women would be treated with dignity. Such debates of women’s victimization at the international and domestic level were critical to boosting the profile and capacities of pro-victim activist groups such as Medica and the nascent victim associations, which used this momentum to increase their fight for redress. 6.4.1.2 Limited Foreign Attention to Victims of Torture Unlike the high international salience of women that surged after the war, the trajectory of external attention given to former detainees went through high to extremely low points. Initially, their abuse featured prominently in the international outcry regarding the war. The wartime media coverage and the Bassiouni report both stressed the ghastly conditions in which prisoners of war were kept, their starvation, beatings, sexual torture of men, other kinds of maltreatment and murder.30 The image of Fikret Ali´c from Trnopolje on the cover of the Time magazine with a title ‘Must it go on? For justice!’ became a visual symbol of the plight of Bosnians during the war (John, 2017). The Daily Mirror’s front-page titled ‘Belsen 92’ with the same photo presented Bosnia as the recurrence of Nazi camps, an image that ran against the post-Cold War discourse of humanitarianism and human rights (Hagan, 2003, p. 46). While some of these portrayals were instrumental in motivating later Western intervention, the graphic detail and the monstrous nature of the crimes reported sent shockwaves across the world in the 1990s (Hammond, 2004, p. 175). The Bassiouni Commission described the cruelty exercised in camps operated by Serbs as follows: In several instances, prisoners have been forced to inflict injury on each other, sometimes as entertainment for the guards. In other instances, prisoners are mass executed by machine-gun fire. … [P]risoners are killed on a daily basis. Their bodies are sometimes left to rot on camp grounds,

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disposed of in mass graves abutting the camps and thrown into rivers, ravines, mine shafts and mining pits. (Bassiouni, 1994, pp. 53–55)

Despite these chilling reports, by the end of the 1990s, victims of these crimes were not topping external justice efforts. The reason was the quick shift towards other victims—such as survivors of sexual violence and missing people’s families. This victimhood triage directed international actors to focus on what they considered the most urgent issues and appalling atrocities. Moreover, as already noted previously, there was a gender dimension to the triage too. Women represented the ideas of clean and ‘pure victimhood’, i.e. victimhood with limited agency regarding wrongdoing as femininity is linked to peace-lovingness (Baaz & Stern, 2009, p. 499). The view was that the war was fought by men and women were thus sufferers rather than active participants. As a result, Bosnian war victims soon became ‘sexualized’ (Clark, 2016, p. 77) due to the emphasis on sexual crimes on females while the male experience, including male rape, was pushed to the background.31 As Blagojevi´c argued, it seemed as if the ‘victimhood paradigm was exclusively attached to women’ (Blagojevi´c, 2013, p. 165). Also the ICTY, which tried dozens of cases of torture in camps, since mid-2000s focused on crimes of sexual violence and missing people as a matter of priority.32 On the contrary, some of the most brutal camps were out of focus: 14 out of the 20 withdrawn indictments by the ICTY pertained to Prijedor (Krajina region), where these camps were located (Clark, J. N., 2014, p. 60). Analysing the ICTY documents, it is clear that the prosecutorial focus was on ‘rape as torture’ or ‘rape and torture’, rather than torture only.33 Nonetheless, while torture appears to have been overshadowed by other crimes, its inclusion in the international human rights arena influenced Bosnia as well. Inhuman treatment of prisoners of war has been part of international standards in war since the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (see Hajjar, 2013; Peters, 1996). Much later, in 1984, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment was adopted by the UN and soon signed by most countries in the world, including BiH. In 2002, BiH also became a member of the Council of Europe and thus a signatory of the 1987 European Convention for the Prevention of Torture.34 Thereafter, a series of external human rights reports by Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty

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International stressed the lack of concern for victims of torture (see Amnesty International, 2017a; Human Rights Watch, 2008). In December 2005, the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) released its report on BiH expressing concerns that the UN framework had not being implemented as survivors of torture remained legally unrecognized (Kälin, 2005, p. 32).35 The report stressed that rape victims in particular were vulnerable and in need of rehabilitation and compensation. Although the main ex-detainee unions used these documents to justify their demands; their resonance was rather weak. Moreover, because of the mixed civilian-military identities of the logoraši unions, some external actors also argued that despite the dire conditions of some ex-detainees in Bosnia, most logoraši were eligible to claim either military pensions or other civilian benefits.36 Their plight was thus not seen as urgent. Addressing victims of torture was not marked as a priority by the OHR, OSCE and the other actors focusing on human rights in Bosnia until recently although they all formally supported the need for their recognition (cf. OSCE, 2011). Nonetheless, after the exclusion of victims of torture in the June 2006 legislation in FBiH, some international organizations such as the ICMP, ICRC and UNDP formally endorsed the need for a reform to include victims of torture in a new legislation.37 Mimicking the 2003 conference organized by women, in September 2006, SLBH with financial support from ICMP organized a conference titled ‘Transitional Justice: Reparations for War Victims, Models and Recommendations’ with the participation of lawyers and experts on reparations (such as the leading expert in transitional justice Pablo de Greiff) and local activists.38 One of the main concerns of the discussion was how to create a more systematic approach to compensation for victims of torture. The leadership of logoraši used the conference’s findings to appeal to foreign and EU embassies in Sarajevo to establish a ‘Reparations Fund’ for all victims, invoking the idea of ‘shame’, used in the case of Srebrenica too, arguing that international actors ‘should have stopped the war’.39 While the issue of rape provoked a ‘rhetorically charged public debate’ worldwide (cf. Htun, 2003, p. 4), the issue of torture went without great external engagement until recently. In 2013, the IOM launched a reparations project for ex-Yugoslavia (Van der Auweraert, 2013) and new EU-funded projects such as the ‘Network for Victims of Torture’ were launched in 2014.40 Since then, there has been a noticeable growth in attention to victims of torture in

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BiH (Amnesty International, 2017a; Bajtarevi´c, 2019; Delbyck, 2016; John, 2017; OSCE/ODIHR, 2016; TRIAL International, 2019a). Most notably, the UN CAT periodically published its assessments of the Bosnian situation, arguing for an urgent need to establish compensate and redress all victims, especially those that have been left out from any social frameworks, i.e. victims of torture.41 In 2019, in a landmark case— and a first of its kind globally, UN CAT ordered Bosnia and Herzegovina to pay ‘fair and adequate compensation’ to a victim of sexual violence as it constitute torture and to provide free medical and psychological care to the victim.42 I discuss this case further below. ∗ ∗ ∗ The external discursive support for the two groups differed after the war. While sexual violence rose on the international human rights agenda in the late 1990s and crystallized in a series of new commitments to the protection of women, Bosnian ex-detainees lacked such preferential external focus. Although the issue of war torture has been part and parcel of human rights since World War II, it was overshadowed by new types of victimization, mainly related to gender-based violence and conflict. The international coverage of the war in Bosnia made it seem as if women were the only victims of the war. Although sexual violence in war was never a crime exclusive to women, it was merged with a growing gender agenda, which became a priority for both funders and external organizations. This concern for women (including Srebrenica women) was subsequently leveraged in the female victims’ associations campaigning and advocacy.43 In contrast, Bosnian logoraši represented by mostly men were rare recipients of foreign funding and support until recently. As a result, while women and women-focussed NGOs were targeted through special projects prior to 2006, including those established by the OHR, logoraši did not benefit from such endeavours until around 2013–2014 when their associations became rather weak and disjointed as discussed below. International salience of victims of torture can thus on average be assessed as moderate while that of victims of sexual violence high, also due to the changes in the international human rights arena.

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Moral Authority: Womanhood and Politicization

Moral authority as the publicly accepted legitimacy for redress, i.e. deservingness, also varied across the groups and across time. While neither group ever reached such a high level as military war victims or Srebrenica families, the moral authority of victims of torture was initially high, while individual victims of sexual violence had to face shame and societal marginalization. As already noted, survivors of sexual violence felt stigmatized as rape allegedly tarnished female chastity, virginity and purity (see especially Delbyck, 2016; Skjelsbaek, 2011; Žarkov, 2007). In contrast, victims of torture initially assumed a prominent public role as key witnesses to wartime horrors and harbingers of legal justice. Gradually, though, victims of sexual violence with domestic pro-victim activists raised awareness about sexual crimes, partially destigmatizing the survivors of such crimes. Meanwhile, the leadership of logoraši became so closely associated with political parties that their claims on victimhood and redress became dubious. As this section traces, the moral authority of victims of sexual violence has been on an upward trajectory since the war while that of victims of torture was decreasing. 6.4.2.1 Between Silent Suffering and Voice ‘It is in our emotional genetics to suffer in silence. This is how we were brought up’, the renowned Serbian actress Mirjana Karanovi´c noted. ‘It is an alleged sign of decency not to share what happened to us and talk about it,’ she continued (Karanovi´c, 2017). Karanovi´c, who later became important for opening debates about rape in Bosnia as the main protagonist of the film Grbavica, referred to the marginalization of Bosnian women and the public outrage they faced when speaking about their experience of rape during the war. Helms in her detail ethnographic account of women’s organizations in Bosnia highlighted that even some prominent politicians in Bosnia (especially in RS) were heard after the war saying that decent women would not talk about rape in public (Helms, 2013, p. 205). In some cases, raped women were even rejected by their families as ‘dirty’ and as ‘whores’ or as being at fault for their plight (see Bidey, 2014; Citroni, 2012; Justice Report, 2014; UNFPA, 2015). In general, ‘the loss of virtue besmirches not only the individual but also the honour of the men of her family’ (Duggan & Abusharaf, 2006, p. 634). Children born out of rape were in many cases rejected by their mothers too.44 Others felt ashamed of what happened to them and unable to speak

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out.45 Rape and sexual violence were perceived not only as an assault on the women’s body but also as a direct assault on the sacred institution of family (for more see Cockburn, 2002; Djuri´c, Drezgi´c, & Žarkov, 2008; Korac, 2006; Majstorovi´c, 2011). While in some cases silence became a tool of regaining agency as a way to re-establish neighbourly relations and coexistence (Eastmond & Selimovic, 2012), in the case of sexual violence, it was often a necessary strategy to live on. However, some women in Bosnia and Croatia spoke out about their experiences to NGOs, starting a process of gradual confidence building early on during the war. As the director of one of the women’s organizations noted, ‘when some women spoke out in 1992 about being raped, it was an outrage and people judged them, but this slowly changed’.46 The opening in the taboo was also influenced by the fact that Bosniak public authorities weighed in, utilizing mass rape of Muslim women as a symbol of an attack on Bosniaks as a nation, with the aim ‘to prompt action in its support by foreign governments’ (Burns, 1992). Leading politicians of the Bosniak SDA used women’s sexual victimization as a tool to amplify international sympathy, demonstrate the brutality of Bosnian Serbs, influence external actors to intervene, lift the arms embargo and stop the war (Helms, 2013, p. 82). In 1993, the BiH ambassador to the UN Muhamed Sacirbey famously appealed to the UN, asking the world nations to stop the arms embargo and intervene. He argued that, Bosnia and Herzegovina is being gang raped. Once forced into a submissive position by acts of violence and aggression…[t]he victim calls out for help. The strong and gallant hear the cries and rush to the scene of the crime. … Afraid to confront the criminal, the strong avert their eyes. The gallant explain their inaction by the age-old excuse that the “victim was asking for it”. … As we know, systematic rape has been one of the weapons of this aggression against the Bosnian women in particular.47

The analogy could not have been clearer—the raped woman stood for Bosnia being attacked from all sides and pleading for help, which the ‘strong and the gallant’ (read the Western countries) refused to offer.48 In a 1995 interview published in the main daily Oslobod-enje, a German sociologist Ruth Seifert explained the idea that ‘the body of a woman, whose entire existence is destroyed in that brutal manner [rape], becomes an image-symbol of the defeat of a nation’ (Oslobod-enje, 1995). The link between women’s rape and the ‘rape’ of Bosnia was a resonant frame.

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Initially, the Islamic Community in Bosnia—aware of the patriarchal character of some of the community—issued a fatwa (Islamic ruling) asking families to reintegrate raped women, framing them as heroic martyrs in the Islamic tradition (šehids ) who sacrificed their bodies for their nation (Skjelsbaek, 2011, p. 99). SDA reaffirmed this position, calling for the acceptance of raped women into their communities and discouraged abortions, allegedly to repopulate Bosnia. Gender became closely linked to the Bosnian nationhood early on. After the war, with new political challenges, violated women were domestically overshadowed by the massacres in Srebrenica while the stigma of rape became re-attached to them (Husi´c, 2014, p. 117). Although Bosnian pro-victim groups such as Medica Zenica (since 1993), Vive žene (since 1994), Žene ženama (since 1997), and Snaga žene (since 1999) tried to re-open these questions and put women back on the political agenda, sexually violated women were largely marginalized (cf. Dunn, 2012). One of the psychologists in Vive žene explained that ‘the political priorities after 1995 were different and women struggled to return home, overcome their traumas and re-establish their lives’.49 The issue resurfaced as late as 1999 with the publication of a controversial collection of women’s testimonies edited by the president of SLBH Irfan Ajanovi´c titled ‘I Begged them to Kill Me’ in an attempt to bring attention to his category through using the female experience of torture (Helms, 2013, p. 82; Simi´c & Volˇci´c, 2014). The book was widely criticized by female victims, who were not consulted in how their stories were interpreted and who felt betrayed by the sensational style of the book that suggested they would have rather died than live with the stigma of rape. As Helms noted (2013, p. 82), it underlined the tropes of uneducated, repressed and feeble Muslim women, who became lost without their husbands and fathers, a portrayal resisted by survivors.50 Nonetheless, it advanced Muslim women as the epitomes of victimhood and suffering—frames that later came to define the women’s activities but that also became widely criticized by feminist scholars (Clark, 2017a; Simi´c, 2009; Žarkov, 2007). Previous scholarship already demonstrated the close link not only between national discourse and women but also how sexual crimes can be amplified into solely female and submissive suffering (O’Rourke, 2013; Yuval-Davis, 1997; Žarkov, 2007). Helms argued that the links made between womanhood and innocence, as well as women’s moral purity and their lack of responsibility for the war, became

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the cornerstone of the women’s claims on the state (and entity) authorities (Helms, 2013, p. 82). While feminists generally resist the use of the term ‘victim’ that invokes passivity and prefer to use ‘survivor’, Bosnian female victim associations adopted the term žrtva (victim), potentially because of its use in the courtrooms (cf. Fernandes, 2017, p. 28) and the wider transitional justice projects in BiH that apply this term.51 Indeed, the name of the 2003-established association representing such women was called Women-Victims of War (Nezavisne novine, 2003a) rather than Women—Survivors of War. This was part of the efforts to amplify the message that women were not to be blamed for their plight but were bearers of their fate (Helms, 2013, p. 66). My findings correspond with Nena Moˇcnik who noted that her respondents used the terms victims and survivors interchangeably while stressing that they felt as survivors of rape but as victims of the post-war politics (Moˇcnik, 2019, pp. 8–9). She also argued that ‘survivors have a defined goal of claiming their agency, which can be achieved through the perpetuation of an established idea of victim and victimhood’ (ibid.). These frames were reinforced by the activism of the leader of WomenVictims of War, Bakira Haseˇci´c, a main defendant of the Bosniak ˇ war memory. She has referred to the war as a ‘Cetnik aggression’, a description of the war generally used by intransigent Bosniaks. She also insisted that rape should be included as part of genocide in Bosnia (Karup-Druško, 2007). Previously, some feminists attempted to present rapes by Serb forces as part of the strategy of genocidal annihilation of Bosniaks (Allen, 1996; Copelon, 1995; MacKinnon, 1994), effectively essentializing the experience.52 Haseˇci´c pursued her efforts through numerous (and often contentious) commemorative and protest actions that were supported only by some victims. Yet she soon established a ‘monopoly’ over narratives about wartime rape in Bosnia (cf. Moˇcnik, 2019, p. 11). In addition to reaching tangible objectives in recognizing women, the promotion of the frames of genocidal suffering has also become an emotional strategy for coping. As a respondent originally from Višegrad explained, ‘for us the lack of the word genocide means a lack of condemnation of the atrocity’.53 Victim hierarchization and the desire to be put on par with Srebrenica came to the forefront of these efforts. Driven by her personal experience with rape and imprisonment, Bakira Haseˇci´c also had the legitimacy to speak in the name of victims.54 She has been admired by many and loathed by some. Several respondents acknowledged her as a ‘heroine’ who started a victims’ movement

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but who was also a ‘savvy’ and pragmatic leader.55 Haseˇci´c encouraged women to speak out and testify at courts, arguing that it was their moral duty to break the silence, not only to fight the rape stigma but also to show the extent of the Serb atrocities.56 This was critical because survivors were important witnesses in trials, even if testifying under protected identities.57 Women’s voices and war experiences were also lacking during the post-war peacebuilding processes in the public sphere, which these efforts somewhat rectified (Koomen, 2013). The only available platform at the time was provided by the ICTY and the Human Rights Chamber in Sarajevo that investigated 26 cases of rape during its existence until 2004 (Garbett, 2010, p. 567).58 Together with this gradual narrative build-up that NGOs, the women’s section of logoraši and Haseˇci´c’s association pursued, the most critical event which raised the issue of sexual violence in public consciousness and increased the moral authority of women came in February 2006. A feature film documenting the life of a girl born from rape won the Golden Bear Film Award in Berlin. Directed by a young female Bosnian film director, Jasmila Žbani´c, the film Grbavica—Esma’s Secret, where the above-mentioned Mirjana Karanovi´c played the lead role, galvanized the public behind the cause of violated women. With her film, Žbani´c not only brought the topic of rape into the public spotlight and sparked a public debate, but she also showed the broad psychological and material repercussions of rape on women as well as the impact on the lives of children born under such violence.59 The film fought against the silence surrounding sexual crimes and demonstrated that the act comes with generations-long consequences. As a result, wartime sexual violence resurfaced in early 2006 in FBiH, giving women hope that they would finally be recognized.60 Caring for raped women was framed as the return of humanity to Bosnia. In a review in one of the main Bosnian dailies Dnevni Avaz, the film director Haris Pašovi´c sang praise not only to the artistic brilliance of the film but also its humanity: ‘Grbavica is a little film that becomes large in its human grandiosity. It teaches us to be better people. Grbavica takes us back to our humanity and responsibility to the civilized respect for human life’ (Pašovi´c, 2006). The notion of humanity contrasted to the monstrosity of the crimes committed during the war and its wounds had been discussed in Bosnian intellectual circles. Pašovi´c’s reference to this notion was important as it signalled that through proper

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care, these wounds can be healed. Nonetheless, the shame attached to sexual violence was not fully dispelled in 2006—especially within rural communities. Many women were unable to talk about their wartime experience out of shame and fear of local backlash (Amnesty International, 2009). 6.4.2.2 Witnesses of Horrors or Political Actors? From early on, logoraši posed themselves as the key defenders of truth and justice. As the main ‘guardians of memory’ (Jouhanneau, 2013b), they advanced the idea of logoraši as surviving witnesses to the war horrors and the ultimate chroniclers of the war history. Alongside other Bosniak victim associations, the Bosniak Union, SLBH, propagated Bosniak war narratives (‘Serb aggression’ and ‘genocidal RS’) and amplified stories of suffering as testaments to Serb brutality, genocidal intent and attack on Bosnian sovereignty. For example, Ejup Gani´c, a prominent SDA wartime minister, spoke at SLBH’s second general meeting, stressing the detainees’ roles as living witnesses of the atrocities committed on Bosniak victims, including genocide (ONASA, 1998). These framings were particularly used during exhibitions, important state visits, commemorations on days of camp liberations and other important days of remembrance. The newly established ‘Day of Logoraši’ was set on 9 May as a deliberate appropriation of the day of ‘Victory over Fascism’, i.e. the end of World War II (Jouhanneau, 2013b, p. 28). Such a prominent place in the public discourse of victimhood and war testaments, though, was located only within the respective ethnonational communities. SLBH soon antagonized the Croat HULDR as there was limited space for the Croat war experience. Even after SLBH took a more ‘multi-ethnic’ direction with Murat Tahirovi´c becoming the Union’s new president in 2005 (Jouhanneau, 2013a, p. 199), the leadership kept amplifying frames of Bosniak suffering in genocidal terms. The Bosniak-focused narratives made initiatives for an entity law (that necessitated the support of Croats) and state law (that necessitated the support of Serbs) very difficult. It especially antagonized Serbs that have advanced their counter-narratives of Serbian ‘perennial victimhood’ in the hands of Muslims and Croats since SLRS’s foundation in 2002, often invoking atrocities of Jasenovac (see Chapter 5). Branislav Duki´c, the first president of SLRS (in office until October 2019), became the primary defendant of Republika Srpska’s sovereignty. These tensions often escalated, such as when SLRS’s deputy Slavko Joviˇci´c-Slavuj (wartime SDS functionary and

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later politician) launched a campaign against the former detainee and SDA leader Sulejman Tihi´c in 2003. Joviˇci´c-Slavuj accused Tihi´c of appropriating Bosnia, marginalizing Serb victims and mislabelling the Bosnian war as an aggression to re-victimize Serbs (Nezavisne novine, 2003b). These mnemonic wars (wars over memory61 ) became highly politicized by 2006. At that time, Duki´c and other prominent members of SLRS voiced strong opposition towards the processes of centralization, the High Representative’s actions and state-level efforts in transitional justice in BiH. They opposed prosecution of Bosnian Serbs (especially Radovan Karadži´c and Ratko Mladi´c, who were both at large and indicted by the ICTY), rejected any ‘transfer of jurisdiction’ (prenos nadležnosti) to state institutions and called for RS’s sovereignty to be respected as it was allegedly under threat from the putative Bosniak and HR conspiracy to destroy Srpska (Radosavljevi´c, 2007). At an annual commemorative conference in Banja Luka in 2007, revealingly speaking after the PM Milorad Dodik, Duki´c referred to the constant ‘persecution of Serbs’, presenting Serb victims as not only forgotten and belittled but also portrayed by Bosniaks as a ‘genocidal nation’ (Antoni´c, Velimirovi´c, & Luki´c, 2008, pp. 27–29). As some of my respondents noted, SLRS became an inherent part of Dodik’s obedient coterie and a follower in what Srd-an Puhalo called the ideology of ‘RS as the highest Deity’.62 This discourse was also pursued by the new RS Women-Victims of War association set up by Božica Rajli´c-Živkovi´c in 2013. In an intense letter to the RS Assembly in 2015, littered with emotionally charged language and typographical errors, she demanded a new law for Serb women victims of torture because they had been marginalized compared to Bosniak and Croat women.63 Her insistence on an ethnically delineated law was not only unconstitutional but in 2015 resulted in a protest letter by female activists in FBiH led by Women Organizing for Change in Syria and Bosnia, appealing to the RS assembly to solve the status of women ‘without any concern to ethnicity’.64 Rajli´c-Živkovi´c appeals and lobbying at the Assembly were later successful in the inclusion of women as a specific category in the new legislation passed in 2019. However, there were additional issues raised regarding the legitimacy of ex-detainee claims. In contrast to military victims that have been framed as heroes, their mental harm went largely unnoticed. The civilianmilitary composition of logoraši resulted in the fact that many civilian men benefited from limited public sympathy as their incarceration was not the result of their military duties (see Chapter 4). Men who did not take up

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arms during the war were pejoratively called podrumaši (cellar dwellers, aka cowards) (Bougarel, 2007; Maˇcek, 2009). The truthfulness of the Union leaders was questioned in particular. Murat Tahirovi´c, the 2005– 2011 leader of SLBH and later founder of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide, was accused of being a ‘sham detainee’ (lažni logoraši) because he was allegedly imprisoned by the Bosniak separatist Bosniak army of Fikret Abdi´c in north-eastern Bosnia, and not Serb forces.65 Also Branislav Duki´c’s past allegiance to the Army of BiH later caused a great stir in RS and resulted in the disassociation of the main RS veteran association (BORS) from SLRS (Faktor, 2015). Duki´c was further accused of misappropriating the RS Union’s funds in the amount of 400,000 KM (Misljenovic & Kusmuk, 2015). Though well documented, he dismissed these allegations and labelled the whistle-blower as a ‘traitor’ of RS. Casting anyone who spoke out against any formal institutions in RS as treasonous has been a powerful tool for silencing any opposition to Dodik. Yet many ‘ordinary’ logoraši became fierce critics of Branislav Duki´c’s leadership as venal and motivated by self-interest.66 Political affiliations of Duki´c were well known in RS as he was also made the president of SPONA that defended Milorad Dodik’s politics (Faktor, 2015). Legitimacy issues in FBiH intensified especially during the presidency of Jasmin Meškovi´c (2013–2019). In 2015, interviewed respondents noted that he was enriching himself from his position. Despite public accusations and gradual fragmentation of SLBH into his supporters and opposers, nothing seemed to change. Meškovi´c not only led the Union but he also set up two museums of genocide in Sarajevo and Mostar that many of my respondents called pljaˇcka (robbery) and a lucrative business opportunity on ‘people’s suffering’. In November 2019, echoing similar accusation I heard in 2015 and 2016, a leader of a small ex-detainee association explained: ‘Since he became the president, we fell apart. The financial reports were full of errors already at our meeting in Brˇcko in 2014. … He appointed his people and started making money on our suffering’. The same respondent later sent me a message in December 2019 when Meškovi´c was arrested for fraud related to the running of the museums with a comment: ‘He is finally done!’ Jasmin Meškovi´c was arrested for fraudulent accounts regarding the sale of museum tickets and misappropriation of 2.5 million Euro, which had been originally

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awarded to SLBH (Omerovi´c, 2019). While local associations of exdetainees who opposed him were jubilant, the case provided evidence for the criminalization of victim affairs. ∗ ∗ ∗ Moral authority of the two victim groups shifted after the war as a combination of political and societal changes and the victims’ activism. Initially, victims of sexual crimes struggled to ward off the stigma attached to rape while ex-detainees were poised as witnesses of atrocities. Yet their moral authority changed thereafter. Although the pre-war traditional biases and the shame attached to rape were never fully defeated, the concerted efforts of pro-victim NGOs, Bosnian journalists and ultimately the victims themselves raised awareness and understanding about sexual crimes and slowly increased the women’s moral authority to moderate levels. On the contrary, logoraši’s key associations and their leaders amplified their polarizing particularistic and political aims. While political links are generally accepted as natural for military war victims who are perceived as heroes, the political and divisive character of logoraši does not resonate with the public. Their inability to stand united undermined their credibility of their efforts further. Therefore, the trajectories of victims of sexual violence and torture went in opposite directions in the pre-2006 period. While victimized women increased theirs from low levels, victims of torture have been discredited. 6.4.3

Mobilization Resources: Partisanship, Litigation and Campaigns

Both survivors of torture and sexual violence have initially rather limited organizational resources—weak leadership, lack of knowledge about their rights and scattered membership. This was partially due the fact that some were displaced abroad while others were reluctant to speak out and associate with any formal organizations out of fear. Victimization by torture and especially sexual violence such as rape not only traumatized survivors but it also made them feel isolated, ashamed and unwilling to speak out.67 As noted, victims of torture gradually established smaller local groups of ex-detainees that gathered both male and female individuals. They started leaning on political allies and lobbying in the hope of being treated akin to military victims. After setting up their own associations, victims of

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sexual violence have chosen a much more activist approach that relied on campaigns, public protests and demonstrations. 6.4.3.1 Activism and Mobilization for a Life with Dignity Given the stigma attached to sexual violence and rape in particular, survivors of sexual crimes started from positions of deprivation, shame and isolation. Initially, they focused on various local activities and socialization events that featured small-scale campaigning and gainful actions such as selling manufactured products (Helms, 2013, pp. 193–194). Yet there was a gradual build-up of their networking and campaign capacities. Alongside associations from Srebrenica, they gained experience through the training and education given to them by civil society projects. Womenfocused NGOs—some drawing on socialist women’s organizations whilst others set up as spin-offs of external organizations—were funded and trained by international humanitarian and human rights organizations with the aim of supplementing the malfunctioning state support for victims (Helms, 2014). Yet the key justice-related role of any formal associations at that time was to prepare victims for court testimonies through psychosocial support.68 Later, with the establishment of the women’s section of logoraši in Sarajevo under Alisa Muratˇcauš (in 1999) and Women-Victims of War (in 2003), which jointly gathered hundreds of survivors of rape, their networks grew into a much wider movement that was able to get some external financial support. This movement made itself more visible by 2003 through a variety of protest actions, local campaigns and first individual litigation cases (Justice Report, 2016). Haseˇci´c specifically campaigned in her hometown Višegrad in eastern Bosnia (in RS) where the infamous Luki´c cousins and their ‘White Eagles’ paramilitary ran ‘rape camps’ in places such as hotel Vilina Vlas (Simi´c & Volˇci´c, 2014). Her aim was to place memorials in locations where women suffered and mark them with the word genocide (Oslobod-enje, 2004). The other strategies focused on mobilizing survivors to speak out and testify in order to provide evidence to prosecute perpetrators. In particular the cases of Sredoje and Milan Luki´c led to Haseˇci´c testifying at the ICTY alongside her other members. Milan Luki´c was sentenced for life and Sredoje for 27 years (ICTY, 2012). In addition to fighting impunity, fighting for women’s rights and their recognition became an important mission of the organization as it had been until then fully subsumed by ex-detainees.

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The civil sector played an important role in raising their cause. In particular, Medica Zenica under its directors Monika Hauser and Sabiha Husi´c acted as the pillar of their activities, support and activism. The organization built up a reputation of a dedicated local women’s organization from its establishment in April 1993. With combined incomes from the local government, external networking programmes and international donors, it escaped the usual portrayal of Bosnian NGOs as ‘foreign spies’ and part of the internationally funded civil society (cf. Sejfija, 2006). Medica was critical for the efforts to frame redress for survivors as a right rather than a need. It also fought against some of the existing stereotypes that the violated women were uneducated and were to be blamed for their suffering (Merry, 2006). Medica and Tuzla-based organizations organized conferences, meetings and campaigns with the victim associations. Since early 2000s, they presented several legal proposals for all victims of rape and torture—regardless of nationality—to claim redress in the Federation. Husi´c explained that a state law would not have been possible to implement given the weakness of central institutions, so an entity legislation that would not be costly and would not mention ethnonationality (because of Croat victims) was considered a more feasible option.69 These proposals were discussed at the above-noted conference in 2003, which gave an impetus to the director Jasmila Žbani´c—who was a frequent visitor to Medica—to write the screenplay for Grbavica so that it would authentically reflect the women’s experience. A discussion followed in the press about recognizing sexual survivors either on par with military (raped women were at times painted as heroines akin to soldiers) or civilian victims (e.g. Nezavisne novine, 2003c). After the success of Grbavica, Žbani´c, Medica and 34 other NGOs came together and organized a campaign ‘For the Dignity of Survivors’ in March 2006 with a petition to solve the socio-economic situation of the survivors of rape. Torture was also included in the initial proposals but it was not a key point of the campaign that clearly focused on women. The campaign was endorsed by veteran associations in the Federation and most other victim associations. Haseˇci´c’s association as well as the female sections of logoraši were part of the campaign, giving it a victim’s face. Film screenings were preceded and followed by the signing of the petition. On 27 March 2006, the 50,000 petition signatures were presented to SDA deputies Muhamed Ibrahimovi´c and Nermina Kapetanovi´c at the House of Representatives of the Assembly of FBiH with extensive media

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coverage (Oslobod-enje, 2006a). Several parliamentary debates and open discussions followed against the backdrop of continuous campaigns on the street and criticism voiced by Žbani´c. As some commentators noted, Žbani´c’s firm condemnation of Bosniak authorities in their lack of support for women gave domestic politicians a ‘moral trashing whose kind they never experienced before’ (Šagolj, 2006). When the amendments were finally adopted in June 2006, the public response was victorious. The change signalled that public activism was a fruitful approach to influence policymaking (Oslobod-enje, 2006b). The campaign eventually received political backing from the Bosniak SDA politician and Zenica-resident Kapetanovi´c, who had been in conversation with Medica for many years, and Saliha Ðuderija from the Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees (MHRR), who had participated in the design of the Law on the Missing Persons and eventually drafted these changes too. Social democrats also had to support the proposal as individual deputies had been advocating for this change previously (Helms, 2013, p. 204). Also Croat HDZ deputies had an incentive to listen because Croat victims supported the campaign and the proposal was assessed as not putting any major financial burden on their cantonal budgets. Yet the biggest ally was the public. Newspaper articles from 2006 suggest that the public mobilization of the campaign was truly unprecedented. Sabiha Husi´c in our interview stressed that after the campaign, political authorities in the Assembly could ‘no longer ignore’ them. As the Bosniak SDA was worried about the upcoming elections, demonstrating its concern for the issue was an instrumental political move. It was not only the gradual build-up of the women’s cause and their extensive mobilization campaign, but also the rational calculation of political actors who understood that the potential number of beneficiaries would be low because many women still feared to register. Reinforced by the growing mobilization of the women and their international salience that promised reputational rewards, the legal change was politically expedient. Mobilization of women in RS came much later in 2013—not only due to the fact that the numbers of affected victims were significantly lower but also because of the dominance of male ex-detainee and other victim associations in RS (all are run by male leaders). ‘The issue of rape was a taboo in RS until recently’, a respondent from the media sector noted in Banja Luka. Even when the Women Victims of War in RS were set up in 2013, it was clear that they were much weaker than their FBiH

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counterparts. As noted, this was due to the clear ethno-national distancing of its leader, Božica Rajli´c-Živkovi´c, who shared with me many times that her cause was the cause of Serb women only. In the context of growing separatist and nationalist tendencies in RS and a strong culture of denial of war crimes, this strategy eventually paid off. While with poor networks and with very limited financial backing, Rajli´c-Živkovi´c managed to gain support of the new Republican institutions investigating war crimes on Serbs set up by Milorad Dodik in his efforts to counter the official versions of the war and victimization. She also gained support of the RS Gender Centre (Amnesty International, 2017c, p. 35). Her organization did not opt for campaigns and demonstrations like in FBiH. Instead, she focused on leveraging political support and direct lobbying in the Assembly of RS, convincing deputies and other victim leaders to include victimized women in the legislation (ATVBL, 2018). The final change in 2018 was not the result of a wider popular pressure as in FBiH but rather the result of an alignment of her cause to the RS leading party SNSD that has by that point dominated RS politics. 6.4.3.2 Partisan Networking and Co-Optation of Logoraši Mobilization resources among ex-detainees and their strategies were qualitatively different. Despite their large numbers of up to 100,000 members in the three unions, internal divisions among the associations and lack of committed leadership lowered their impact on policymaking. As many prominent logoraši were at the same time politically active, the unions relied on direct lobbying and negotiations behind the closed doors with their political allies instead of public campaigns and advocacy work at the state level. Given the polarization of Bosnian politics, this was a precarious strategy with small pay-outs for victims, but with great personal benefits for leaders who sided with the right parties. In the Federation, logoraši were caught between rivalries of radical and less radical Bosniak parties, and the contest with social democrats. In RS, the situation became simpler after Milorad Dodik firmly gripped power from early 2006 and only one feasible political allegiance remained. All leaders of SLBH generally identified with the strongest Bosniak parties in FBiH, which financially supported their activities.70 The founder of SLBH Irfan Ajanovi´c71 and the top leadership of the logoraši in the Federation were the ‘Founding Fathers’ of SDA in the early 1990s.72 The close ties to SDA later extended to Haris Siljadži´c’s and

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Safet Halilovi´c’s SBiH after its more radical turn and attraction of some prominent SDA members. After 2001, the more conciliatory SDA politics of Sulejman Tihi´c was criticized while the intransigent SBiH’s rhetoric gained much popularity among SLBH leaders. These political allegiances were also the reason why SLBH and HULDR struggled to cooperate. The founder of the Croat HULDR Mirko Zelenika was a close supporter of the nationalist HDZ BiH. As entity laws are passed by Bosniak and Croat deputies, the lack of unity weakened their leverage. The leadership of Bosnian Serb logoraši made it clear that it did not seek any close cooperation with Bosniak or Croat ex-detainees (Tabuˇci´c, 2003). As noted, SLRS’ leader Duki´c stood in the vanguard of Milorad Dodik’s nationalism73 as the leader of an ‘organization of one person’ (organizacija jednog lica), a term used for many victim associations with seemingly lifelong leaders.74 While SLBH oscillated between an entity and state law, Duki´c has kept his opposition to a state law. The 2006 changes in FBiH had limited immediate impact in RS but the exclusion of torture from the amendment drew a further rift between the regional associations in FBiH. Some logoraši turned against their Sarajevo-based leadership, accusing them of venality and lack of interest in the population they represented.75 Local associations subsequently resorted to street protests, threats of hunger strikes and issuance of letters to foreign representatives in the country. Internal divisions within FBiH intensified in April 2009, when a Bosniak ex-detainee Zijahud Smailagi´c set up a splinter United Union of Camp Detainees in Banja Luka as an inclusive organization for detainees of all background.76 This weakened the power of a singular voice of logoraši even more. Local units started organizing their own events and promotional happenings without SLBH’s participation. Since 2013, the new leader of SLBH Jasmin Meškovi´c (a supporter of SDP) attempted to submit draft law proposals at both the entity and state level. Although he had a troublesome relationship with the new moderate leader of HULDR Andjelko Kvesi´c,77 they jointly pushed a draft state law into the state Parliament in December 2013 based on a memorandum between the three unions. By June 2015, the Joint Commission for Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly BiH discussed the law and created a working group. But the draft was never debated by the Council of Ministers (see Gavri´c, Hadži´c, Bošnjak, Zagorac, & Hanuši´c, 2016). The key reason for its failure was SLRS’s withdrawal from the proposal, allegedly on the intervention from Dodik, who saw any state laws as breaching the sovereignty of RS.78

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Animosity and rift between the unions continued despite periods of cooperation. When an NGO in Sarajevo set up a project ‘Mapping Camps in BiH’ in 2013, all three unions rebuked its aims as redundant since all Bosnian camps had already been mapped by them.79 Jasmin Meškovi´c further insisted that the project wanted to ‘equalize guilt’, pointing to his disagreement with the high number of camps run by the Bosnian Army.80 United by their opposition to the project (though for different reasons), Meškovi´c and Duki´c surprisingly addressed a joint protest letter to donors in BiH, devaluing the project. Yet the political rifts between the leadership and the growing tensions between the entities ultimately led to two different pathways. While SLBH effectively fell apart in the subsequent period due to the above-outlined arrest of Jasmin Meškovi´c, Branislav Duki´c’s personal enrichment became tolerated because of his support for Dodik. By the time Duki´c finally left his positions in 2019, the new law in RS was passed, effectively promising only meagre support for a limited number of ex-detainees but at least formally recognising them (Srpskacafe, 2019). Prior to these developments, the ICJ’s decision that Serbia was not obliged to pay reparations to Bosnia in 2007, led SLBH to pursue litigation in civil proceedings at the entity level. It was chosen as the most efficacious strategy to help victims in the short term and push the entity government into legislation in the long term (so that the state prevents further individual payments).81 This approach was encouraged by an older breakthrough case of the above-mentioned Smailagi´c.82 In 2003, the municipal court in Banja Luka ordered a compensation in the equivalent of 2330 Euro for the 17 months he spent incarcerated in Banja Luka (Oslobod-enje, 2006c). The case was an important sign that a judicial path may be effective. The process started in March 2007 (i.e. a month after the ICJ ruling) when SLBH hired a Croatian lawyer Josip Sladi´c, who submitted several thousand cases at the Banja Luka municipal court (Kulaga, 2011). Yet Sladi´c worked in BiH illegally and SLBH had to re-run the procedures, ultimately burdening victims with heavy financial costs.83 Other lawyers then had to take the cases over and restart the process in 2010. In response, Duki´c stated that FBiH’s ex-detainees were aiming to bring RS to the verge of bankruptcy, calling them ‘destroyers of Srpska’ (rušitelji Srpske) (24sata, 2014). He encouraged his members to start litigation against FBiH. By 2015, as many as 30,000 former exdetainees, including some rape victims, were seeking non-material damage across BiH (Delbyck, 2016; TRIAL International, 2019a).

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Eventually, most cases were dismissed at the entity level and passed onto the Constitutional Court (TRIAL International, 2019a, pp. 11– 15). In December 2013 the Constitutional Court (in the case of Hamza ˇ c) ruled that civil cases for nonmaterial damage by war victims should Ceki´ have been filed within five years of the declared end of the war in June 1996 and rejected the victims’ claims due to this statute of limitations (zastara) (Delbyck, 2016; TRIAL International, 2019a, p. 13).84 In this decision, the Court changed its previous position and argued that victims were only allowed to seek compensation from their direct perpetrators in civil proceedings. For civil cases victims would either need access to free legal aid or pay for a lawyer.85 ‘And just like that victims were left without anything’, Nedžla Šehi´c who represented many claimants noted.86 Criminal proceedings not only tend to last many years, but the majority of accused perpetrators declare to be in a ‘poor financial situation’ (loše imovinsko stanje) or transfer property to family members, leaving victims with limited prospects of obtaining any payments. Moreover, in many cases just a few individuals might be responsible for mass victimization, in theory obliged to pay out hundreds of victims. Finally, civil proceedings require survivors to disclose their identity, posing additional risks to their security or wellbeing.87 Instead of compensation, all claimants-victims were subsequently asked to cover the court costs. The order of such payments was declared unconstitutional only in 2018 by another ruling of the Constitutional Court (see TRIAL International, 2019a), by which point several hundred of them had already paid. ‘This created a great sense of mistrust and re-traumatization among the victims’, Šehi´c stated, stressing that the Constitutional Court ruling of 2013 was not only inconsistent with its previous rulings but also the international practice.88 For example, BiH’s 2004 signing of the European Convention on the Compensation of Victims of Violent Crimes, as well as other signed UN conventions, obliged the state to award compensation of damages to victims in criminal proceedings (see Meški´c, 2017). Subsequently, individual exdetainees relied on NGOs (such as TRIAL International89 ) rather than SLBH to initiate civil proceedings, going as far as to submit their cases to the ECtHR in Strasbourg.90 They have argued that Bosnian courts cannot afford to redress all logoraši individually ‘according to Strasbourg’s

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money’ (i.e. large amounts), which is why they believe a new law is much more feasible.91 ∗ ∗ ∗ Mobilization resources of victims of sexual and torture were different in their strategic reliance on political allies and civil-society networks. While the three logoraši unions have had a much larger membership than female victims, female associations in FBiH had a better access to the civil sector and streamlined their activities into a number of high-profile campaigns and advocacy actions. This way, they enhanced the resonance of their mobilization and utilize their resources to their maximum. The NGO networking of sexual violence victims was especially critical during a campaign in 2006 that ultimately tilted the scale towards recognition. Instead, victims of torture relied on direct lobbying with their political allies, who had limited interest in redressing groups whose leadership they controlled. Although logoraši later changed their strategy and pursued litigation, their lack of unity, political disagreements and vagueness about their demands contributed to the overall failure of their demands. The partial success in 2018 in RS was the result of the emergence of the women’s cause that joined the efforts and raised the issue, mobilization strategies as well as the changing levels of pluralism in RS as discussed next. 6.4.4

Understanding the Context: Between Cooperation and Polarization

The different positioning, abilities, strategies and resources of each of the groups outlined above were not only the result of victims’ decisions but also the contextual parameters. The high prioritization of issues related to wartime sexual violence by international actors, women’s ability to utilize these developments and a domestic campaign that tipped the scale towards adopting a legal amendment in the Federation happened at a time when international leverage mattered and the public was still sensitive to victim issues. The context of 2006 provided an opportunity for a reform prior to the start of constitutional disputes, tensions between entities, full-scale politics of denial in RS and intensive financial exigencies. In this section, I first summarize how high mobilization resources and international salience coincided in favour of the cause of sexual violence

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in FBiH in what I call the ‘Activist Route’. Second, I also analyse how the latest amendment in RS happened, partially mimicking the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario but no longer in a situation of plurality but increasingly politically closed system dominated by one rhetoric of genocide and war-crimes denial in RS. When the FBiH amendment was adopted in June 2006, CRSV was highly placed on the international agenda of human rights and transitional justice. The Bosnian war coincided with the mass victimization of women in Rwanda, leading to a growing concern over sexual violence. Combined with the novel legal anchoring of rape as a war crime at the ICTY and ICTR (where jointly over 30 cases involving rape were tried), victims of sexual violence finally became prioritized on international agendas of transitional justice. These developments were transmitted to Bosnia through the work of the ICTY but also through the policy preferences of external humanitarian agencies, funders and peacebuilders that were active in Bosnia since the end of the war, as well as local activists. Yet in the first post-war phase, female survivors were poorly equipped and organized to leverage these developments. However, the externally funded civil sector reflected the international trends in their projects and activism. It was the second phase (until 2006), when the victimized women in FBiH where the majority of those affected resided not only mobilized but also used the gradual build-up of external policies, UN conventions, and institutions for their cause in the ways they framed their rights. Supported by the civil sector, they extended their networks and justified their demands for recognition and material redress on the basis of the existing conventions and agreements. Such strategic framing was important for their objectives: networks of pro-victim groups assisted them in forging alliances with external organizations and raising awareness about the issues they faced. While the so-called ‘transnational advocacy networks’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998) played an important role, their influence was at times mediated through the external actors in the country, such as the HR/EUSR and their policy preferences. An additional contributing factor was the role of domestic victim associations and their ability to frame their war victimization in terms of gender and its links to nationhood, raising their deservingness. Using such frames, women by the second phase rose from silenced and stigmatized victims to symbols of (mainly Bosniak) suffering and victimization. These efforts combined in 2006 when Grbavica won the Golden Bear in Berlin. The film’s director Žbani´c, who became an overnight celebrity,

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strongly supported the women’s causes and mobilized the public to join their efforts. Although there had previously been many debates about a legal reform, there had never been a critical mass that would have advocated for women’s redress in public. But the film and the campaign propelled the issue to the foreground. While their authority did not reach levels of Srebrenica victims and disabled veterans, its growth from low to moderate levels helped the women’s cause too. The conjuncture of high international salience and high mobilization, and growing (though still moderate) moral authority, the women were well poised to succeed with their goals with such victim capital. The inclusion of women and exclusion of logoraši was also a pragmatic move that needs to be analysed against the backdrop of the political developments at that time. The ‘Dignity’ campaign in 2006 came at a particularly favourable time before the October 2006 general elections when nationalist parties SDA and HDZ faced social democrats and were keen on presenting themselves as protectors of their ethnonational groups. In the Federation, SDA was challenged by both social democrats—who initially took over the victim agenda but then had to drop it—and Siljadži´c’s SBiH, who stood as a strong supporter of the legal change and the framing of rape as a genocidal strategy to annihilate Bosniaks. The leader of SDA Sulejman Tihi´c had previously been criticized by victims as belittling them because he was willing to recognize crimes committed by Bosniaks (Oslobod-enje, 2005a). The amendment served as a symbolic gesture on the part of all parties in the Assembly (especially SDA) without being too divisive given the lack of agreement among logoraši on their goals. As several respondents noted, SDA representatives had to react to the campaign if they wanted to be seen as credible political and national representatives of Bosniaks. Siljadži´c subsequently won the elections on a nationalist platform, as did the Croat nationalist HDZ. However, until June 2006, media articles describing the legal reform did include logoraši—even if as a marginal afterthought. Yet without much public notice, torture was eventually excluded from the final change. When I questioned Saliha Ðuderija about why all efforts of logoraši failed, she listed several reasons. Their unions had not been united, they were seen as politicized and their numbers disputed. She also speculated that many probably exercised their rights through other affiliations and pension schemes (mainly the army).92 The high numbers of exdetainees may have acted as a double-edged sword. As the unions of

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detainees have claimed to have at least 100,000 members but numbers were disputed, the cost of potential reform has been unknown but assumed to be high. Even Ðuderija as one of the best-informed legal experts on the matter in Bosnia was unable to estimate the cost of a state or entity law for all victims of torture. Moreover, logoraši were not considered a politically explosive category because of their cooptation into the main political echelons. While it is difficult to assess the exact decision-making processes, several experts independently suggested that FBiH deputies excluded logoraši precisely because of such political considerations. A critical aspect was also reputation. The EU Stabilization and Association Agreement negotiations opened a year prior. The campaign represented an unwelcomed disturbance on domestic authorities’ plans to poise themselves as committed to the EU values, including gender equality and human rights. They were scrutinized by UN human rights committees as well as the OHR in Sarajevo that created special offices for gender issues. Politicians in FBiH were aware of their formal commitments to human rights, which had conditioned funding and external support on their EU path. Indeed, the 2006 change was met with positive external appreciation and was used as a token of human rights protection (Šagolj, 2006). The coalescence of these factors thus came at an opportune time, bringing political and reputational benefits for political authorities in FBiH. This ‘Activist Route’ scenario points to the confluence of structural and actor-centric arguments, i.e. the role of contextual factors and the role of the agency of the victims. The positioning of ex-detainees played out differently. During the first post-war phase, victims of torture were symbols of suffering due to heightened interest in their experience as a result of foreign media reporting and their important roles in testifying at the newly created ICTY. Although the existing UN and European conventions stressed the issue of torture, most discussions addressing wartime torture were directly linked to the issue of sexual violence as a particularly gruesome permutation. In addition, ex-detainees also relied on their partisan networks, pursued particularistic objectives and failed to create broad platforms for their—often conflicting—demands. By aligning with the dominant ethno-national parties, the logoraši leadership was also seen as providing for a select group of people at the top through direct financing, while the vast majority of former detainees were waiting for their ‘status’. Consequently, although ex-detainees in FBiH enjoyed significant moral

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authority after the war, they experienced only limited growth in their moral authority thereafter. After external actors reduced their interventionism, entity nationalism and political intransigency surged. This was also compounded by the start of the financial crisis after 2008 when the structural failures of the Bosnian economy became obvious. Most recently, their credibility was undermined by the arrest and current prosecution of the SLBH leader accused of fraud and embezzlement. Domestic politics returned to nationalist and polarizing rhetoric that made any enactment of a state law a hard sell. As some respondents maintained, it was the lack of cooperation among the top political leadership, which had led to an ongoing stagnation in enactment of any new victim-focussed regulations. As a result, other victim associations became wary of the introduction of new compensation categories out of fear that their own benefits could be lowered (Delpla, 2014, p. 241). In RS, political affiliations and lobbying were extremely strong from the start, leading to tensions at the local branch levels of the union. Branislav Duki´c as the self-poised defender of Serb victims’ rights has been abundantly financed by the RS government in return for the promotion and advocacy of ‘preserving Srpska’ and framing Milorad Dodik as RS’s main protector. This not only delegitimized their true cause in the eyes of the public but has led to several internal divisions that ultimately cost their organizations a united front. However, as Milorad Dodik’s grip on power grew since 2006, turning RS into a closed society where dissenters are framed as traitors, the loyalty of ex-detainees was eventually rewarded. Already since 2008 the RS government invested significant resources in institutionalizing a culture of denial that would opposed the ICTY’s legal findings regarding the wartime victimization and questions of guilt (see Hasi´c, 2020; Mulaj, 2017). Setting up new institutions for crimes investigation and projects for denial, but also favouring Serb victims’ discourse became important aspects of Dodik’s political strategy to poise himself as the only true protector of RS. After the creation of a female organization for victims of torture in RS in 2013, the voice for a new legal reform gained on potency. The eventual change in 2018 that recognized victims of torture in RS corresponds with the current efforts to frame Republika Srpska as a collective war victim rather than an illegitimate statelet created on ethnic cleansing and genocide as it is often framed in the other entity (and internationally). This change can thus be further explained by nationalist politics that makes use of politically symbolic groups. The key milestones and developments are outlined in Fig. 6.1.

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6 8 4 9 0 -18 ug- 19 -06 eb-07 ar -07 eb-13 e c-13 -14 -02 e c-02 ay- 03 ay- 03 eb-06 -15 t- 0 r -9 y- 9 ug- 9 ug- 9 J un Jun J un J un J un F F F Oc D D M Ma A A A M M Ma

Bassiouni Report on War Crimes in Bosnia (stressed sexual violence) SLBH for Bosnian ex-detainees created in FBiH HULDR created for Croat ex-detainees Women's section of SLBH created UN Resolution 1325: 'Women, Peace, and Security' Kunarac judgment on rape as a war crime SLRS created in Republika Srpska Women-Victims of War created in FBiH Gender Law passed by the State Parliament Grbavica won the Golden Bear and 'For the Dignity of Survivors' campaign starts a month later Law Amendment recognized sexual violence in FBiH ICJ decision in the genocide case of BiH against Serbia Ex-detainee litigations started in FBiH against RS (followed by RS ex-detainees) Women-Victims of War created in RS Constitutional Court rejectes litigation cases (zastara) Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict First decision in BiH to pay out victims at the Court of BiH RS passes new law on victims of torture CAT report about the need for a Victims' Fund and compensation

Fig. 6.1 Milestones in redress for victims of torture and sexual violence (Source Author)

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Struggles for Access and Distribution

Similar to other cases discussed previously, adoption of new measures for victims does not automatically translate into broad access. Although the 2006 (and 2018) change was nominally important as it recognized and offered formal redress to a category of victims that had been previously marginalized, the number of actual beneficiaries has been painfully low due to a raft of procedural obstacles in access. By 2014, only 890 rape victims (mainly women and around 100 men) obtained the ‘victim status’ in FBiH (Husi´c, 2014, p. 15) and the numbers are not significantly higher by 2019 (Vladisavljevic et al., 2019). Moreover, apart from the financial monthly payments, none of the other services defined by the law have been implemented as cantonal levels differ. While some women are still unwilling to identify as survivors of rape,93 the differences in economic capacities of cantons and the lack of willingness of the entity government to distribute payments widely have led to delays and a poor provision of healthcare and psychosocial services. Additional problems resulted from the badly managed registration procedures. Although the law did not detail the role of victim associations specifically, the ex-detainee unions and especially Bakira Haseˇci´c took over the certification process and then forwarded all approved applications to local Centers for Social Work across cantons (Helms, 2013, p. 212). According to Husi´c from Medica, many women wrongly believed that they would need to present a criminal conviction, testify, or reveal their identity if they wanted to register (see also Delpla, 2007, p. 227). While confidentiality is guaranteed by law, there had previously been cases of women’s identities made public. Some applications were rejected out of personal animosities or allegedly conditioned by party membership.94 Clark also noted that some of her respondents were wrongly told by Haseˇci´c that they needed two witnesses while another was rejected as she was raped by Bosniak forces (Clark, 2017a, pp. 179–181). The incompetent and politicized management of certification implicated Haseˇci´c’s lack of professionalism. These growing allegations suggest what several experts on the ground described Haseˇci´c turning into a ‘victim entrepreneur’ with a monopoly on who can acquire ‘status’ and thus be recognized. Other scholars called adaptive strategies of victims to respond to what is expected as ‘victim industry’ (Best, 1997). Renewed interest in the issue of wartime rape in 2010 provided an opportunity to draw attention to these flaws. The Hollywood actress

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and director Angelina Jolie stirred up a controversy with her film In the Land of Blood and Honey in 2010. The film’s leaked plot was deemed as disparaging and humiliating for the survivors by Women—Victims of War (Clark, 2017a, p. 66), mobilizing Haseˇci´c to lobby the FBiH Ministry of Culture to revoke Jolie’s filming license. Although it was later revealed that the leaked plot was incorrect, Haseˇci´c continued to oppose the film unlike the women’s section of logoraši that instead resisted Haseˇci´c’s tendency to speak on behalf of all victims (Simi´c & Volˇci´c, 2014). Media headlines claimed that Jolie’s film ‘divided’ Bosnian victims (Oslobod-enje, 2010). Despite these controversies, the attention helped the women’s and pro-victim organizations raise the visibility of raped women once again. Subsequently, women in RS mobilized for the first time. A conference organized in November 2010 featured UN representatives such as Margot Wallström who promised to ‘take the sighs of raped women with her to the UN’ (Dnevni list, 2010). Jolie was later appointed Special Envoy of UNHCR and partnered with the UK Secretary William Hague, whose close aid Arminka Heli´c was a former Bosnian refugee. Together, they launched a new initiative on the prevention of sexual violence in armed conflict in May 2012 (Hague, 2012).95 In 2014, they led the organization of the Global Summit to End Sexual Violence in Conflict that also resulted in a new Declaration.96 In the same year, the UN Secretary General published a Guidance Note on Reparations for CRSV.97 It not only recognized both male and female sexual violence in conflict but it also specifically asked states to ensure that survivors are redressed. Additional conferences and roundtables followed after the film in Bosnia. At a conference organized by the UN in Sarajevo in 2012, victims spoke about their experience and needs, stressing that socioeconomic rights and justice were still their priorities (UNFPA, 2012). In 2012, UNFPA started a project aiming to implement a nation-wide strategy for victims of all types of torture and sexual abuse. In 2013 Bosnia also ratified the Council of Europe’s Convention against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (USAID/Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2016, p. 14). In June 2013, the Special UN Envoy Rashida Manjoo reported about the situation of women in BiH, pressing domestic authorities across BiH ‘to recognize the existence of civilian women victims of rape and torture regardless of their ethnic or religious backgrounds, and to ensure that they have equal access to remedies and services’ (Manjoo, 2013, p. 19). Several new projects focussing on women victims of war were launched, one as an EU-funded cross-entity initiative, a true novelty.98

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While some of this was short lived, the external attention propelled the wider issues of torture and sexual violence to the foreground again. In 2013, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women published a report noting several shortcoming regarding reparations for victims of sexual violence and torture as well as slow progress in prosecutions of sexual violence (see USAID/Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2016, p. 91). The result was greater awareness across in Bosnia. In May 2015, one of the first Women’s Courts was organized in Sarajevo by several feminist organizations, human rights activities and the victimized women themselves (Clark, 2016; O’Reilly, 2016). Eventually, having discussed the problematic distribution of certificates at length, Medica with other NGOs successfully convinced the Minister for Human Rights and Refugees Semiha Borovac in 2016 to present a legal amendment that created a commission of victim support association to certify claimants.99 Additional side effects of these developments included an increase in legal prosecutions of war crimes involving rape and direct court compensation of victims. In May 2015, the BiH Criminal Code was amended to define crimes of sexual violence as ‘war crimes against civilians’ and crimes against humanity as specified in international law already and in line with the UN CAT (Amnesty International, 2017c, p. 20). From 2014 to 2016 the Court of BiH tried 36 war crimes cases that included elements of sexual violence (Muslimovic, 2017). This brought the total number to 136 from 2004 to 2017 (Amnesty International, 2017c, p. 11). Despite the growth in prosecutions, victims were unable to obtain compensation through court proceedings due to a cumbersome system whereby they had to file a civil case at entity courts after criminal proceedings were over as discussed above. This confronted them with additional several emotional and financial strains that only few could bear. The first domestic ruling to pay out directly a victim of sexual violence through legal proceedings was issued in June 2015 in the cases of Slavko Savi´c and Bosilja and Ostoja Markovi´c (TRIAL International, 2019a).100 According to TRIAL International, since 2015 14 rulings in total with 22 perpetrators awarded victims amounts ranging from 7500 Euro to 30,000 Euro.101 However, perpetrators refused to make any payments, citing lack of means to pay out such high amount. In response, one of the victims represented by TRIAL submitted a case to the CAT arguing that the state of BiH has failed on its obligations. In a revolutionary decision in August 2019 CAT sided with the victim and ordered the state to create a Fund for victims that would provide the victim with non-material damage

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payments and demanded an apology (TRIAL International, 2019b). The path-breaking nature of this ruling also delegitimized previous decision of the Constitutional Court about the statute of limitations of three to five years vis-à-vis the above-discussed legal proceedings of ex-detainees against entities. In 2019 for the first time two perpetrators directly paid compensation to their victims (Dizdarevic, 2019). While women in FBiH have been successful despite harsh odds, victims of torture achieved only partial access—specifically in RS after the legal change in 2018. In the Federation, caring for ex-detainees remains within the realm of the NGO sector as they remain unrecognized (unless they can prove physical injuries either as military or civilian victims). While some are again able to ‘shop’ for other benefits according to the civilian or military laws if they had physical injuries, others rely on family support (Bajtarevi´c, 2019). A state-level law has been rejected several times by RS representatives and the union in FBiH is anything but united (Lakic, 2017). In RS, administrative obstacles, delays in payments and politicized registration prevented many from getting their certification (Lakic, 2018). Moreover, the RS law generally caters only for Serb victims. All potential claimants need to be approved by RS authorities, allowing for wide clientelism. As TRIAL and Amnesty International noted, ‘such a restrictive provision could create an insurmountable barrier for victims whose cases have not been documented by authorities in Republika Srpska but who are registered in the Brˇcko District of BiH, the Federation of BiH and at the state level’ (Amnesty International & TRIAL International, 2018). The additional point of contention was the five-year deadline to apply for rights, a practice common in RS regarding civilian victims. Ultimately, the divisions and polarizations between entity politics, as well as the lack of strategy among ex-detainees in FBiH provide only limited hope that their situation would improve. ‘And even if they adopt a law next year, how many of us will still be alive and eligible?’ an ex-detainee association noted. ‘They know that not many, which is why they keep postponing it’, he added.102

6.6

Conclusion

‘We missed our chance in 2006 when there was still some money in the budget and when politicians listened to victims and foreigners’, sighed a leader of a small local association for logoraši.103 The reference to the year 2006 is not only a reflection on the redress success of survivors of sexual

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violence in FBiH, but also an assessment of the deteriorating political and economic situation thereafter. This missed opportunity has indeed continued to haunt ex-detainees across the Federation. The complex politicized victimhood of logoraši, their internal divisions and lower levels of international salience have prevented them from convincing domestic authorities that recognizing them would bring political or economic benefits. Their mobilization has been invalidated by their political links, making their claims and protests toothless. Ultimately, co-opting the leadership into political ranks neutralized their opposition. This paid off in RS for a small number of victims eligible to claim benefits under the 2018 legal change that was adopted to underpin the growing separatist and nationalist politics of Milorad Dodik. Victim protection is currently implemented in a clientelistic fashion. Moreover, while torture has been stressed by human rights advocates as a crime that has never been dully addressed in BiH (Amnesty International, 2017b), this attention has mostly come at times when external actors in the country have been weak and when other issues—mainly of economic nature and more recently with regards to radicalization—have dominated their agendas. Given the current economic state, political tensions, and weakness of external pressures, the context for adopting redress is less favourable today than in 2006. Although 2006 was a favourable window of opportunity, it was thanks to the vigorous efforts of the survivors of sexual violence and the civil sector that they were recognized. As an established Bosnian journalist mused, ‘many people do not understand what these women achieved, not only for themselves but for the entire Bosnia’.104 The women’s growing deservingness in the Bosnian landscape of victimhood, their fierce activism and the surge in international prioritization of the issue of sexual violence made domestic authorities in FBiH realize that redressing women would bring reputational benefits from external actors without breaking the state budget in 2006. Combined with the political struggles in FBiH where the main Bosniak party SDA under Tihi´c was challenged by social democrats and radical Bosniak parties, SDA saw clear political returns from recognizing representatives of such a topical issue. While this success was remarkable in post-war Bosnia, only under a thousand individuals have been able to register and benefit from these legal changes. Many survivors across the country still live unrecognized and in poverty (Amnesty International, 2017b). The deteriorating political situation and the dwindling numbers of survivors gives limited hope for any collective changes. As

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Janine Clark noted in 2017, ‘BiH and its victims are old news’ for the outside world (Clark, 2017a, p. 1). However, the latest court-awarded payments ‘has empowered and encouraged victims that justice is possible and achievable’105 and so even with a delay, some redress may eventually come in one form or another.

Notes 1. Personal interview with Sabiha Husi´c, 2015. 2. Rape is used here as a subcategory of sexual violence that involves direct oral, vaginal or anal penetration without consent (cf. Clark, 2017a, p. 2). The Rome Statute of the ICC in Article 7 states ‘Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity’ belong among crimes against humanity in addition to torture, enslavement and other crimes (International Criminal Court, 2011). 3. Cynthia Enloe distinguished between various types of sexual violence during wartime such as recreational, national security and systematic mass rape (Enloe, 2000). 4. Personal interview with a victim, 2014. 5. Referring to ‘detention’ in the names of the associations was also common in ex-Yugoslavia. 6. The first association was set up for north-eastern Bosnia in 1994. For the history see Jouhanneau (2013a, p. 136). 7. According to its founders, it has 63 local, six regional, and four diaspora associations (US, Germany, and two in Denmark). 8. By the early 2010s, HULDR had only around 2860 members (Boži´c, 2014, p. 182). 9. Many other local associations such as Mirsad Duratovi´c’s ‘Prijedor-92’ are not addressed here unless they became prominent in pushing for new legislation. 10. Physical harm was assessed starting from 60 percent for civilian and 20 percent for military victims, respectively. See Chapter 4 for the assessments. 11. Personal interviews with female victims, 2015 and 2019. 12. Personal interviews with detainees in 2015 and 2019. See also Bajtarevi´c (2019). 13. See also http://www.accts.org.ba/misija.html, accessed 10 March 2019. For a detailed account, see Helms (2013). 14. Amendment to the ‘Law on Principles of Social Welfare, Protection of Civilian Victims of War’ (FBiH Official Gazette No. 39/06), June 2006.

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15. There are further no special provisions for victims of torture or rape in the District of Brˇcko. However, since 2015 victims with psychological harm and victims of sexual violence pertain to a newly amended decision on the protection of civilian victims. As the decision is very restrictive and require certifications, not many victims have gained access (Amnesty International, 2017c, pp. 35–36). 16. ‘Law on the Protection of Victims of Torture’ (RS Official Gazette, 90/18), June 2018. 17. For a critical discussion on the different portrayals and essentialization of the female experience, see Clark (2017a, pp. 64–68). For individual explanations of rapes, see also Baaz and Stern (2009). 18. Until 2016, 32 individuals were convicted for crimes of sexual violence. See especially Banovi´c (IT-02-65/1) Omarska and Keraterm Camps; Kunarac et al. (IT-96-23 & 23/1) Foˇca; Furundžija (IT-95-17/1) Lašva ˇ Valley; Muci´c et al. (IT-96-21) Celebi´ ci Camp; Sikirica et al. (IT-958) Keraterm Camp; Simi´c, Milan (IT-95-9/2) Bosanski Šamac; Tadi´c (IT-94-1) Prijedor; Todorovi´c (IT-95-9/1) Bosanski Šamac. See ICTY official website, see http://www.icty.org/en/in-focus/crimes-sexual-vio lence, accessed 7 May 2019. 19. ICTR vs. Akayesu (ICTR-96-4), Para. 688, see http://unictr.unmict. org/en/cases/ictr-96-4, accessed 7 February 2020. 20. See ICTY vs. Kunarac et al. (IT-96-23 & 23/1), see http://www.icty. org/case/kunarac/4, accessed 7 February 2020. 21. UN Resolutions 1820 (2009), 1888 (2009), 1889 (2010), 1960 (2011), 2106 (2013), 2122 (2013), 2242 (2015), 2467 (2019), and 2493 (2019) belong among the important ones regarding the role of women in peace. See PeaceWomen, ‘The Resolution’, http://www.peacewomen. org/why-WPS/solutions/resolutions, accessed 7 February 2020. 22. That year, the UN Secretary General also appointed a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict. For a full history see Ward (2013). On women as victims see also individual chapters in Gámez Fuentes, Núñez Puente, and Gómez Nicolau (2020). 23. According to the UN definition, it ‘refers to rape, sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization and other forms of sexual violence of comparable gravity perpetrated against women, men, girls or boys that is linked, directly or indirectly (temporally, geographically or causally) to a conflict’ (UNSC, 2015). 24. See Official Gazette of BiH, 16/03, 102/09 and 32/10. 25. See Official Gazette of FBiH 22/05 and Official Gazette of RS 118/05. 26. See Official Gazette of BiH 92/10, for more see Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees (2013). 27. Personal interview with a human rights expert, 2015. 28. Personal interview with a Bosnian civil society worker, 2015.

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29. Personal interview with a human rights expert in Sarajevo, 2016. 30. Already in August 1992, Roy Gutman published an article titled ‘Death Camps’ in the American Newsday followed by Yves Heller, Christiane Amanpour, David Rohde, Robert Fisk and Steve Crawshaw among many others. 31. This was also caused by the patriarchal and traditional culture in rural Bosnia that allowed only for a limited space to narratives regarding male sexual abuse and suffering (Clark, 2017b). 32. In one of the first and most notorious sentences at the ICTY of the case of Duško Tadi´c, the trial chamber established that he forced prisoners into brutal sexual acts on each other. 33. See the ICTY website, http://www.icty.org/en/about/tribunal/achiev ements, accessed 15 March 2020. 34. See the Council of Europe, http://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/bos nia-and-herzegovina, accessed 29 March 2020. 35. See http://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CAT.aspx. Similar reproach has been echoed in several European Commission Progress Reports on Bosnia since 2010. See https://ec.europa.eu/nei ghbourhood-enlargement/countries/detailed-country-information/bos nia-herzegovina_en, accessed 29 March 2020. 36. Personal interview with a World Bank representative, 2016. 37. Personal interviews with international actors in Sarajevo, 2015 and 2019. 38. See ICMP, https://www.icmp.int/press-releases/reparations-for-war-vic tims/, accessed 20 March 2020. 39. Personal interview with a SLBH member in Sarajevo, 2015. 40. The joint project of UNDP, UN Women, IOM and UNFPA was launched in September 2014 although a pilot has been in place since 2012. 41. See, for example, the 2017 UN CAT report for Bosnia and Herzegovina (CAT/C/BIH/Q/6), https://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/15/tre atybodyexternal/Download.aspx?symbolno=CAT/C/BIH/6&Lang=en, accessed 7 May 2019. 42. UN CAT, ‘Decision adopted by the Committee under article 22 of the Convention, concerning communication No 854/2017’, 22 August 2019, https://trialinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/ 2019/08/Decision-CAT-A-BIH-2August2019.pdf, accessed 7 March 2020. 43. It should be stressed that individual survivors often resist such portrayals (see Clark, 2017a). 44. There are no reliable data about the extent to which children were born out of rape but anecdotal evidence shows the variance in which mothers reacted to the birth of their unwanted children (Carpenter, 2007, 2010).

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45. Clark notes that this is particularly prevalent among male rape survivors who are extremely reluctant to speak of their experience for a vast variety reasons such as shame, attack on their masculinity and worries about how their sexuality would be perceived (Clark, 2017a, p. 49). 46. Personal interview with a social worker in Tuzla, 2015. 47. Cited in Mestrovic (2004, p. xi). 48. It should also be noted that Bosnia was metaphorically compared to the case of Kitty Genovese who was brutally killed in New York while her neighbours were allegedly ‘bystanding’. While this was a misrepresentation of the story, the parallel was used even in the US Congress by the democrat representative Steny H. Hoyer in his arguments for intervention in Bosnia (see Tatum, 2010). 49. Personal interview with an expert from Vive žene, 2015. 50. For similar arguments see Blagojevi´c (2013, pp. 164–165), Majstorovi´c (2011, p. 281). 51. Janine Clark in her 2017 book stresses that individual victims prefer not to use this term; however, my research showed that in questions of redress, it is widely used by victim leaders alongside the term survivor. However, it is difficult to generalize about a deeply personal identity matter. 52. The additional part of this argument was a pure lack of acknowledgment of rapes committed by other but Serb forces. 53. Personal interview with a victim in Ilidža, 2014. 54. Haseˇci´c’s sister died of the inflicted rape injuries, while Haseˇci´c’s daughter was raped in front of her. After her release, Haseˇci´c joined the Army of BiH (Delpla, 2014, p. 250). 55. Personal interviews with victims, 2015 and 2019. 56. Personal interview with lawyer Nedžla Šehi´c, 2019. 57. Many of my respondents testified at different courts for a variety of crimes. Interestingly 39 out of the 79 survivors of sexual violence interviewed by Janine Clark also testified at various courts (Clark, 2017a, p. 125). 58. From 2005 until 2013 the State Court completed 76 more cases (OSCE, 2014, p. 8). 59. The plot is about a teenage girl who seeks a certificate from her mother that her father was a fallen ABiH soldier, so that she can go on a school trip without paying. 60. Interview with Sabiha Husi´c, 2015. 61. On the usage of ‘mnemonic’ tools, see Bernhard and Kubik (2014). 62. Personal interview with Srd-an Puhalo, 2015. 63. The original of the letter was provided by Rajli´c-Živkovi´c to the author. 64. The original appeal email was sent to the author by a Bosnian activist. 65. Allegations made by several respondents in both FBiH and RS.

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66. Personal interviews with ex-detainees in RS, 2015. 67. For example, some military logoraši felt emasculated since they were unable to protect themselves from capture and the horrific abuse. (Personal interview with a former inmate in Bijeljina, 2016.) See also Clark (2017a), TRIAL International (2019a). 68. Personal interview with social workers in Tuzla, 2015. 69. Personal interview with Sabiha Husi´c, 2015. 70. SLBH belongs among organization of special interest, entitling it for regular funding from local budgets. 71. Ajanovi´c later became a deputy and in 2015 stood as an SDA candidate for the presidency. 72. For the history see Jouhanneau (2013a, pp. 120–180). 73. Duki´c has also been a member Dodik’s Staff for the Protection of RS Constitutional Position. 74. Personal interview with a journalist, 2015. 75. Personal interview with ex-detainees in Mostar, 2015. 76. Personal interview with Zijahud Smailagi´c, 2015. 77. Personal interview with an NGO worker, 2014. 78. Personal interviews with ex-detainees in Sarajevo, Brˇcko and Mostar, 2015. 79. See the project’s website: http://tranzicijska-pravda.org/projekti/, accessed 2 April 2019. 80. Personal interview with Jasmin Meškovi´c, 2015. 81. Personal interviews with ex-detainees in Sarajevo, 2015. 82. This followed a Constitutional Court ruling that statute of limitations does not apply to civil cases of wartime damages and that victims do not need to wait until the end of the criminal proceedings but can start civil cases whilst criminal proceedings are ongoing (TRIAL International, 2019a, p. 11). 83. See the official website, http://www.logorasi.com/index.php/dokume nti/tuzbe, accessed 1 October 2018. 84. In its ruling, the Court relied on ECtHR ruling about an insurance claim in Baniˇcevi´c vs Croatia from 2012, conflating war-crime damages with peacetime proceedings. 85. While free legal aid access has improved since 2015, it is accessible mainly in urban centres (email communication with Selma Korjeni´c form TRIAL, 2019). 86. Personal interview with lawyer Nedžla Šehi´c, 2019. 87. Personal interview with lawyer Nedžla Šehi´c, 2019 and email communication with Selma Korjeni´c from TRIAL, 2019. See also Clark (2017a, p. 170). 88. Personal interview with lawyer Nedžla Šehi´c, 2019.

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89. TRIAL International (Track Impunity Always ) is an international organization that provides free legal advice to victims and legally represents them. ˇ c et al. vs BiH at ECtHR, 2009; 90. Some key compensation cases are Coli´ Prosecutor vs Trbi´c at Court of BiH, 2010; Maktouf vs BiH at ECtHR, 2013; Prutina et al. vs BiH at HR Committee, 2013; Mujkanovi´c et al. vs BiH at ECtHR, 2014; Markovi´c et al. vs BiH at State Court BiH, 2016. See also Clark, K. (2014). 91. Personal interview with Zijahud Smailagi´c in Banja Luka, 2015. 92. Personal interview with Saliha Ðuderija in Sarajevo, 2015. 93. Personal interview with NGO worker, 2015. See also Clark (2017a). 94. A respondent from Tuzla suggested that Haseˇci´c was conditioning her certificate by joining SBiH. See also Helms (2013, p. 219). 95. This initiative later led to the 2014 UN Guidance Note Reparations for Conflict-Related Sexual Violence (see http://www.ohchr.org/Docume nts/Press/GuidanceNoteReparationsJune-2014.pdf). 96. For full information, see the UK Government’s information website: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/2014-global-summit-toend-sexual-violence-in-conflict, accessed 3 May 2018. 97. Guidance note of the United Nations Secretary-General: Reparations for conflict-related sexual violence, OHCHR and UN Women, 2014, https://www.unwomen.org/en/docs/2014/6/repara tions-for-conflict-related-sexual-violence, accessed 3 May 2018. 98. The joint project of UNDP, UN Women, IOM and UNFPA was launched in September 2014. 99. According to Sabiha Husi´c, Medica Zenica, Vive žene, Snaga žene became also eligible to certify women in 2015. 100. For more on these two cases see also Clark (2017a, pp. 171–175). 101. Email communication with Selma Korjeni´c from TRIAL, 2019. 102. Personal interview with an ex-detainee in Sarajevo, 2019. 103. Personal interview with an ex-detainee in RS, 2015. 104. Personal interview with journalist Nidžhara Ahmetaševi´c, 2015. 105. Email communication with Selma Korjeni´c from TRIAL, 2019.

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Peters, E. (1996). Torture (Expanded ed.). Oxford and New York: University of Pennsylvania Press. Popi´c, L., & Panjeta, B. (2010). Compensation, transitional justice and conditional international credit in Bosnia and Herzegovina attempts to reform government payments to victims and veterans of the 1992–1995 war. https:// goo.gl/6crClh. Pupavac, V. (2006). Empowering women? An assessment of international gender policies in Bosnia. In D. Chandler (Ed.), Peace without politics? Ten years of international state-building in Bosnia (pp. 85–99). London and New York: Routledge. Radosavljevi´c, R. (2007, October 24). Posebna sednica o ostavkama u RS. Blic.rs. https://www.blic.rs/vesti/republika-srpska/posebna-sednica-o-ostavk ama-u-rs/y7l8cbk. Šagolj, M. (2006, February 25). Dvostruka pobjeda “Grbavice” [Double victory of Grbavica]. Oslobod-enje, 9. Seifert, R. (1996). The second front: The logic of sexual violence in wars. Women’s Studies International Forum, 19(1–2), 35–43. Sejfija, I. (2006). From the ‘civil sector’ to civil society? Progress and prospects. In M. Fischer (Ed.), Peacebuilding and civil society in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Ten years after Dayton (pp. 125–140). Berlin: Lit-Verlag. Shelton, D. (2007). The right to reparations for acts of torture: What right, what remedies? Torture, 17 (2), 96–116. Simi´c, O. (2009). What remains of Srebrenica? Motherhood, transitional justice and yearning for the truth. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 10(4), 220. Simi´c, O., & Volˇci´c, Z. (2014). In the land of wartime rape: Bosnia, cinema and reparation. Griffith Journal of Law & Human Dignity, 2(2), 377–401. Skjelsbaek, I. (2011). The political psychology of war rape: Studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina. London: Routledge. Sorguˇc, A. (2018, May 28). Bosnian Serbs finalise war torture victims law. Balkan Insight. https://balkaninsight.com/2018/05/28/bosnian-serbsagree-on-torture-victims-law-05-28-2018/. Srna. (2015, March 22). Duki´c: U Savezu trenutno 50.000 bivših logoraša [Duki´c: Union of Detainees had 50,000 former detainees]. Nezavisne novine. https://goo.gl/NTVV58. Srpskacafe. (2019, September 3). Branislav Duki´c se povlaˇci sa cˇ ela Saveza logoraša RS [Branislav Duki´c steps down as leader of the union of ex-detainees in RS]. Srpskacafe. http://srpskacafe.com/2019/09/branislav-dukic-se-povlacisa-cela-saveza-logorasa-rs/. Stiglmayer, A. (1994). Mass rape: The war against women in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press.

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Tabuˇci´c, I. (2003, June 27). Logoraši ho´ce zakon i odštetu [Camp inmates want a law and compensation]. Nezavisne novine. Tatum, D. C. (2010). Bosnia-Herzegovina: The Kitty Genovese of the Balkans. In D. C. Tatum (Ed.), Genocide at the dawn of the twenty-first century: Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Darfur (pp. 59–108). Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-10967-4_6. TRIAL International. (2019a). Seeking justice for wartime crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina: General allegation regarding the application of statutes of limitations and court fees to victims. TRIAL International Bosnia and Herzegovina. https://trial.ba/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/General-AllegationBiH-07-01-2019.pdf. TRIAL International. (2019b). Saop´cenje za javost. BiH propustila da provede obaveze iz UN Konvencije protiv muˇcenja [Public release: BiH failed to implement obligations from the UN convention against torture]. TRIAL International. UCLA. (2017). All survivors project: Legacies and lessons sexual violence against men and boys in Sri Lanka and Bosnia & Herzegovina. School of Law. https://goo.gl/WMO6tw. UN Security Council. (2000). UN SC resolution 1325: Women, peace, and security. https://goo.gl/rXxDES. UNFPA. (2012). Ensuring justice, reparations and rehabilitation for victims of CRSV . https://goo.gl/BVvXPh. UNFPA. (2015). Stigma against survivors of conflict-related sexual violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina—Research summary. United Nations Population Fund BiH. https://goo.gl/l6jaLM. UNSC. (2015). Conflict-related sexual violence (Report of the secretary-general S/2015/203). United Nations Security Council. https://www.securitycoun cilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9% 7D/s_2015_203.pdf. USAID/Bosnia, & Herzegovina. (2016). Gender analysis report for Bosnia and Herzegovina (Monitoring and Evaluation Support Activity (Measure) AID168-C-14-00003). USAID. Van der Auweraert, P. (2013). Reparations for wartime victims in the former Yugoslavia: In search of the way forward (Land, property and reparations division—Department for operations and emergencies). International Organization for Migration (IOM). https://goo.gl/7AYUQk. Vladisavljevic, A., Lakic, M., & Begisholli, B. (2019, June 19). Compensation comes late for rape survivors of Balkan wars. Balkan Insight. https://balkan insight.com/2019/06/19/compensation-comes-late-for-rape-survivors-ofbalkan-wars/. Walsh, M. (2008). Gendering international justice: Progress and pitfalls at international criminal tribunals. In D. Pankhurst (Ed.), Gendered peace: Women’s

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struggles for post-war justice and reconciliation (pp. 31–64). New York, NY: Routledge. Ward, J. (2013). Violence against women in conflict, post-conflict and emergency settings. UN Women. http://www.endvawnow.org/uploads/modules/pdf/ 1405612658.pdf. Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Women, citizenship and difference. Feminist Review, 57 (1), 4–27. Žarkov, D. (2007). The body of war: Media, ethnicity, and gender in the break-up of Yugoslavia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Victimhood, Recognition and Redress from a Comparative Perspective

7.1

Introduction

The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both. (Havel, 1978)

A multitude of interactions between the seemingly powerless victims and the powerful domestic and international elites have been explored in this book. Leveraging victim capital through different means and paths has led to significant changes in how survivors of war atrocities and crimes have been recognized and redressed in post-war Bosnia. The aim here was not to provide a critique of what should have been done at a normative level but to demonstrate how tortuous the path to recognition and redress of thousands of victims who survived the most brutal conflict on the European soil in recent history has been. While what is now considered a traditional tool of transitional justice—court prosecution—was part and parcel of addressing the Bosnian war, victim-centric measures that would allow those most affected by the war to ‘move on’ and re-establish their lives have remained an afterthought. Despite the common portrayal of Bosnian post-war politics as managed from the outside, it was the domestic activism of victims and their allies that placed the issues of recognition and redress on the policy agenda. Far from unidirectional, © The Author(s) 2020 J. Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2_7

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this struggle for redress has involved experiments with social activism and transitional justice alike. It has involved bottom-up mobilization of victim groups that have transformed into crime chroniclers and data collectors, supporting wider legal pursuits of justice. It has also included victim advocacy that nudged international actors towards scientific advances in the identification of missing bodies. It has utilized cultural and political avenues to shift public opinion. This struggle—which still continues 25 years after the end of the Bosnian war—is in many respects admirable, but it also provides a cautionary tale of how polarizing victim capital and its leveraging can be in a divided society. Explaining the variety in recognition and redress of various victim groups in Bosnia was the main motivation for this book. While each individual victim’s needs and suffering differ, the main interest here was in the way how imagined collective identities and actions of victims who share victimization are addressed by post-war authorities. Why have only some groups been recognized as ‘victims of war’ while others have been forgotten? I offered answers in the different quality of victim capital that each victim group can leverage, as well as its changes. What was called here international salience, moral authority and mobilization resources succinctly summarizes some of the fundamental aspects of victims’ positioning, capability and perceived legitimacy for achieving recognition and redress. Yet as I argued, the post-war Bosnian development and the heightened polarization of wartime narratives in the past decade have influenced the options for pressing domestic authorities and demanding redress. Such concerns and constraints are further explained in this final concluding chapter. On the following pages, I also reflect on the utility of the attempt of this book to analyse victims’ recognition and redress outcomes in a more systematic way that could be applicable in other contexts. Finally, I ponder over some lessons that can be drawn from this book. In particular, what is clear from the previous chapters is that the traditional portrayal of victims as powerless and at the mercy of politicians is misguided even if victims’ playing field is by no means even.

7.2 Revisiting Redress: ‘Status’ and the Varieties of Success This book has argued that redress represents the domestic willingness to materially assist people disproportionately affected by wars by first recognizing their suffering and then providing them with in-kind assistance.

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The empirical chapters have demonstrated that symbolic recognition and material redress have been some of the key demands of the diverse Bosnian victim population, especially once victims realized that no international institution would redress them. Yet redress was needed: as a respondent noted, ‘for a woman raped daily for months, Radovan’s 40 years behind the bars does not mean much if she cannot care for her children’.1 This realization can be traced to the early 2000s. While yearning for punishment of perpetrators and truth has never ceased to play a key role in victims’ motivation, it soon became the formal ‘victim status’ that dominated the discussions. In the words of the anthropologist Delpla, victim ‘status’ has become an ‘obsession’ (Delpla, 2014, p. 246). This is understandable as it became a more tangible policy than the often impenetrable and technocratic array of transitional justice tools. While the concept of status may sound strange to a foreign audience, it drew on the pre-war legacy in the former Yugoslavia where the veteran ‘status’ endowed its beneficiaries with privileged social positions, a certain level of societal respect and higher societal esteem (see Karge, 2010).2 After the 1992–1995 war, it was extended to victims given the vast domestic and external concerns for the massive victimization in Bosnia. In practice, the studied groups have attained many statuses that differed by the types of symbolic recognition, financial support and additional services. The type of redress has borne only little connection to the level of harm suffered or need required by the victims, beyond its symbolic dimension. The highest levels have been legally attributed to military victims. Unlike civilian victims who had only the most severe injuries recognized in law (over 60 percent of bodily harm), disabled veterans have ‘only’ to prove 20 percent to be entitled for the basic status. Victims of sexual violence secured their status in 2006 and have been eligible for benefits equivalent to full civilian invalids (i.e. 100 percent of bodily harm). By contrast, victims of torture have never been recognized in the Federation and only belatedly in Republika Srpska in 2018 under very restrictive conditions that impose time limits and strict registration procedures. The differences have thus not only been between groups but also across Bosnian regions. In RS, civilian victims who failed to register in time are unable to claim their status any longer. Among families of missing persons, there has also been a great discrepancy despite their success in securing a state-wide recognition in 2004. Although the 2004 Law for Missing Persons was enacted for all families on the Bosnian territory, the subsequent lack of access has led bereaved families to claim either civilian

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or military war victim status in their entities. The empirical material has thus introduced the nuances in which victims can be redressed—from no redress, restrictive redress, to extensive redress. It is safe to say that only military victims of the highest levels of bodily harm secured extensive redress. The other cases where success could be noted in terms of what was demanded were families of missing persons and victims of sexual violence. On the contrary, victims of torture have been the clear ‘losers’ of the transitional period either remaining unrecognized (in FBiH) or obtaining very restrictive recognition 23 years after the end of the war with quite restrictive redress measures (in RS). Other civilian war victims have achieved parts of what they demanded. They were recognized in law and granted some levels of support but were not placed on a par with military victims as they demanded. Therefore, it is more suitable to talk of ‘partial success’ for victim groups that have achieved only some of their demands. In other words, recognition and redress outcomes can be evaluated as success, partial success and failure. The full range of outcomes in Bosnia is, of course, much more nuanced; however, for the sake of the clarity of arguments it can be summarized by looking at demands and outcomes. This is depicted in Table 7.1. Success marks the positive achievement of what was demanded, failure its rejection and partial success when some parts of demands were accepted. When a group did not voice demands at the state or entity level, it cannot be assessed and is marked as non-applicable (N/A). The table also lists the main representatives of the studied groups in this book. Nonetheless, the term ‘success’ seems to present a misnomer in a situation where the vast majority of surviving victims live in poor socioeconomic conditions (Bajtarevi´c, 2019; Lai, 2016) despite the astronomically high social spending on the various war victim categories, though primarily veterans (Stubbs, 2020, p. 9). Though a sine qua non for the creation of a culture of reckoning and dealing with the past, victim recognition and redress in Bosnia have fallen short of offering what transitional justice scholars consider reparatory as they did not include societal acknowledgment of responsibility, rights-based in-kind assistance and the establishment of a culture of remembering (Brooks, 1999; Brophy, 2008; De Greiff, 2006; Gibney, Howard-Hassmann, Coicaud, & Steiner, 2008; Mani, 2002; Torpey, 2006). While such high bar is rarely achieved in postwar situations, the blatant lack of acknowledgment of responsibility in particular has been deeply felt across Bosnia society. As this book showed, Bosnian domestic redress policies have only limited results in terms of

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Table 7.1 Status by groups and regions in BiH Group (associations)

Adoption Entity of Federation of BiH (FBiH)

Entity of Republika Srpska (RS)

State of BiH

1. Military War Victims (e.g. entity Unions of Disabled Veterans )

SUCCESS Law on the Rights of Defenders and their Family Members (2004, 2005, 2007, 2010, 2017, 2019)

N/A

2. Civilian War Victims (e.g. entity Unions of Civilian War Victims )

PARTIAL SUCCESS (restrictive) Law on the Principles of Social Protection, Protection of Civilian War Victims and Protection of Families with Children (1999/2004/2006) N/A (Victims ‘shop’ for other means of redress as group 1 or 2)

SUCCESS Law on Rights of Fighters, Military Invalids and the Families of Fallen Fighters of the Defensive-Liberation War (1999/2004/2011) PARTIAL SUCCESS (expired) Law on the Protection of Civilian Victims of War of RS (1993/2007/2010)

N/A (Victims ‘shop’ for other means of redress as group 1 or 2)

SUCCESS Law on Missing Persons (2004)

FAILURE

PARTIAL SUCCESS (restrictive) Law on Victims of Torture (2018)

FAILURE

SUCCESS Amendment of the Law on Civilian Victims of War (2006)

PARTIAL SUCCESS (restrictive) Law on Victims of Torture (2018)

N/A

3. Families of Missing People (e.g. Mothers of Srebrenica and entity Unions of Missing People) 4. Victims of Torture (e.g. entity Unions of ex-Detainees ) 5. Victims of Sexual Violence (e.g. entity WomenVictims of War) Source Author

N/A

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satisfaction of victims when denial of their suffering is practiced by those who are seen as potential victimizers. This mirrors the findings of studies on socio-economic and distributive justice for victims that argue a wider array of measures is needed for victims’ satisfaction (Boyle, 2016; GarcíaGodos, 2013; Laplante, 2008; Sharp, 2014; Shaw et al., 2010; Sriram, 2014). Yet even the restricted and unequal redress policies in Bosnia have been for survivors to live on. As Clark (2017), among others, showed ‘some form of socio-economic justice’ is prioritized by victims who are in need of ‘healthcare, jobs/an occupation, economic security and general support’ (Clark, 2017, p. 155). Adopting policies to provide such a socioeconomic buffer is important and is a key aspect of redress so that victims can focus on mental, social and physical healing. Yet as I argued here, Bosnian domestic political elites have been able to pay lip-service to the adoption of various redress measures without delivering on implementation. In some respect, this finding is consistent with other scholarship on transitional justice tools adopted in the former Yugoslavia that have been adopted half-heartedly and often under duress (Orlovic, 2012; Rangelov, 2006; Spoerri, 2011; Suboti´c, 2009). Policy implementation in Bosnia has also been hampered by the uneven distribution of economic resources across its diverse regions, poor local-level capacity, intransigent elites resisting state-level cooperation and the prevalence of clientelism (Bieber, 2006; Fagan & Sircar, 2015; Hromadžic, 2015; Kadribasic, 2014; Nardelli, Dzidic, & Jukic, 2014; Perry & Keil, 2015; Pugh, 2002; Sebastian-Aparicio, 2014; Stubbs, 2020). Most of these causes are linked to the extensive subnational powers of both entities and FBiH’s cantons. In particular in the past decade, there has been a growing lack of political cooperation at the central level. For example, the Fund for missing persons’ families that would have distributed financial support has never been created due to disagreement between the two entities about its funding sources and location. Since 2006 the political brinkmanship within the leading nationalist political elites of the nationalist SDA, SNDS and HDZ BiH has prevented any compromise on this issue. As politics has become an increasingly tense zero-sum game (Belloni & Ramovi´c, 2020), victims from the ‘other’ ethno-national communities have been denied their rights and their suffering has been belittled. A case in point are the establishment of separate investigative commissions in RS into war crimes (aimed at denial) in 2008, manipulations with numbers of missing people in Srebrenica and the latest announcements of new investigative

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commissions about crimes on Serbs in Sarajevo and Srebrenica (Sorguˇc, 2019). These efforts led by the current Serb member of the Presidency of BiH Milorad Dodik have not been aimed at arriving at facts but at justifying separatism and nationalist tendencies. In such a divided context, access to any state-level services and other provisions has been extremely challenging for all citizens, not only victims. At the entity level, differences in regional capacities also explain the lack of access. With the exception of families of missing persons and victims of torture, victim groups have mainly demanded material redress from their entities. In RS, access has been hampered by clientelism and restrictive measures that imposed a great ‘knowledge’ burden on victims (or good connections) that have to register by short deadlines and with a set of certificates. In FBiH, each canton adopts its own legislation that must comply with the umbrella entity legislation but that can specify its own procedural mechanisms of implementation (see Keil, 2014). This has led to a great variation in the additional rights afforded to victims in the realm of healthcare, education and social services. There has been a particular divide between urban centres where victims have better opportunities of accessing services (mainly thanks to NGO support) and rural municipalities of poorer cantons and regions where victims are isolated.3 Additionally, some cantons (e.g. Sarajevo Canton) have bigger budgets to distribute payments while other cantons such as Neretva-Herzegovina and the Central Bosnian canton consistently struggle with distribution (Amnesty International, 2009; Popi´c & Panjeta, 2010; UNDP, 2010). The key aspect of the varied access is also clientelism.4 As noted, Bosnia is a decentralized country of under three million residents and a strong war legacy of black markets where personal connections to sources of power remain the most efficient way to distribute public goods.5 Individuals and victim leaders that have been well connected to the incumbents or individuals in power have been able to attain their benefits and secure direct cash transfers. This has also influenced the distribution of certification, registration procedures and the functioning of victim associations. Some victim leaders have been co-opted into the main structures of power, such as the former leader of ex-detainees in RS Branislav Duki´c, leaders of military victims but in several aspects also leaders of the Movement of Mothers of Srebrenica—the quintessential symbols of suffering and victimhood. Given the victim associations’ dependence on local funding, victim leaders have become entangled in the wide web of

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Bosnian transactional politics and thus gradually neutralized as potential political and truth contenders.6 While top-level victim leadership has benefited from such linkages, individual victims continue to lack access to their status. As Jouhanneau noted, this dichotomy between ordinary victims as sufferers and their associations’ leaders as pursuers of selfinterests has become more pronounced in the aftermath of the global economic crisis in 2008 (Jouhanneau, 2013b, p. 24). The impact of this co-optation of victimhood has been a lack of trust among individual victims, traumatization and the pursuit of alternative ways to attain some livelihood.7 As a victim noted, ‘even if we don’t engage in politics, politics engages with us’.8 Therefore, the experiences examined here suggest that access to redress is driven by complex sets of factors that may vary over time and contexts. What this book has established, though, is that military victims across Bosnia seem to have achieved the highest levels of access with over 162,000 beneficiaries of various military benefits (although many respondents have complained about humiliating conditions regarding revisions of their injuries through medical commissions). Levels of access of other categories seem rather low. Only 13,700 of civilian victims have been able to access their benefits and there has been a great variation across Bosnian regions. Just 890 women were registered as victims of sexual in FBiH in 2014 and the certification procedures have been widely criticized. Most strikingly, families of missing persons have not benefited from the state-level Fund as it has never been established. More importantly, as many victim-respondents complained, the fact that adopted laws are ignored is felt as humiliating and increasing a sense of being left behind, forgotten and unimportant. ‘We cannot talk about any type of satisfaction for victims here’, an interviewed human rights expert noted. ‘We can only talk about some minimal payments so that they are able to survive on a daily basis’, she added.9

7.3

Bosnian Victims’ Salience, Authority and Resources

Returning to the mechanisms behind formal change that are at the heart of this book, the relative levels of victims’ success reflect how victim associations challenge and confront powerful actors, and how they are able to position themselves in the collective memory of the previous war. Throughout this book, I argued that various qualities of victim capital as

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combinations of international salience, moral authority and mobilization resources explain such variation. I proposed and illustrated a framework of victim capital that suggested that when two of these endowments combined at rather high levels under certain contextual conditions, they provided victim groups with sufficient leverage over domestic authorities so that a new redress policy was secured. This has not been assessed through stringent numerical values but in comparison to each group as relative values of high, medium and low. In this section, I assess the propositions presented in Chapter 2 and evaluate the five studied cases before discussing how their combinations influenced the outcomes. 7.3.1

Salience: Shame and External Priorities

The first proposition of this book was that a victim group that has or is able to generate high international salience has a higher likelihood of recognition and redress adoption. This proposition is based on the assumption that domestic authorities are significantly more responsive to groups with high international salience either because they expect to accrue some economic rewards such as foreign aid or reputational benefits such as positive evaluations of their candidacy to join international organizations. Groups that I have studied were under shifting international attention due to some wider trends in human rights, externally run legal transitional justice processes, international management under the Office of the High Representative, among others, and Bosnia’s process of moving closer towards the EU. While some groups benefited from such trends and priorities and were able to align with them, others have been marginalized by them. In particular, since the end of the war, families of missing persons have been under the spotlight of external actors because of the execution of approximately 8000 Bosniak men in Srebrenica whose bodies were buried in unknown mass graves in eastern Bosnia. Srebrenica—legally recognized as a genocide in the 2001 ICTY Krsti´c judgment—painfully embodied the ineffectiveness of the UN military forces deployed to Bosnia. It later resulted in what some called ‘the Bosnia generation’ of humanitarian activists, lawyers and politicians that became sensitive to questions of civilians’ protection in wars (Heinze & Steele, 2013). Most importantly, the search for the bodies of those who disappeared on Bosnian Serb convoys later transformed into a general reparative approach for the bereaved families. The ICMP was created in Bosnia with a pioneering

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mission to develop new technologies in identification. The international salience of Srebrenica across the world and within Bosnia led to an intensification of international efforts to react to victims’ demands at a time when external actors had a series of rewards and sticks to use, especially economic aid, the opening of the EU membership process and the use of the Bonn Powers. Gradually more aware of such developments, the Srebrenica victims have been able to frame their demands in the language of human rights and the international obligations of BiH towards its citizens. The combination of such vast international attention and their subsequent strategic engagement with the external developments facilitated the adoption of a state-wide law for families of missing persons in 2004. The second group with the highest international salience represent victims of sexual violence in the Bosniak-Croat Federation where most of the affected resided. Their salience rose with the internationally accepted legal definition of rape as a war crime, crime against humanity and genocide. No longer being treated as spoils of war, victimized women in particular started to play a more prominent role in approaches to postwar transitional justice after the end of the Bosnian war. By 2000, the UN adopted path-breaking Resolution 1325 on wartime violence against women for the first time recognized both the needs but also the roles of women in peacebuilding. Over the next decade and a half, seven similar resolutions followed; the women’s agenda assumed a prominent place in peacebuilding. Such external prioritization also affected the distribution of funding and project aid for domestic and international advocates that supported local women’s organizations in FBiH (less so in RS). Again, while such structural developments shaped the prominence of victims of sexual violence, some Bosnian leaders were able to align their demands with these changes. Subsequently, reputational benefits stemming from redressing victims was one of the rewards that featured in the successful political deliberations to extend victim status to survivors of sexual violence in 2006. Civilian war victims were initially given extensive media coverage (through the so-called ‘CNN effect’). Immediately after the war, they became beneficiaries from humanitarian aid and rehabilitation projects. However, as the humanitarian phase waned, so did their prominence on external policy agendas. Once the external attention to disabled civilians waned, their ability to redirect international attention to their demands

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and needs has dropped. Only at times were they able to leverage judicial judgments (such as the Gali´c case on the shelling of Sarajevo at the ICTY) and to use moral pressure over the EU. Yet their salience gradually dropped as they were overshadowed by the other previously mentioned groups. Such a triage of victimhood negatively affected their ability to use salience in their domestic campaigns for redress. Therefore, the international salience of civilian victims dropped from high to moderate levels. Victims of torture (or ex-detainees) also initially benefited from extensive media attention that they utilized in their testimonies and public appeals. Presenting themselves as survivors and witnesses of horrors, they featured prominently in the first legal interventions of transitional justice in Bosnia. Thereafter, though, their victimization was given only moderate external attention and care as other categories were perceived as more in urgent need of support by external actors. By the end of the 1990s when leaders of victims of torture assisted in framing the issue of torture in sexual terms, they inadvertently lowered the salience of their own demands and partially drove attention away from their issues to the issue of wartime rape. Unable to re-attract international attention, crimes committed in the wartime camps on male survivors came second in terms of external priorities. It has only been in the past two years that the issue of torture started featuring in external reports on Bosnia more prominently. Overall, though, victims of torture (ex-detainees) have only had moderate international salience. The international salience of military victims has been qualitatively different. They initially entered policy agendas of military organizations deployed in BiH due to the need to disarm and demobilize soldiers. However, since the early 2000s, the World Bank and later the IMF have pressed local entity governments to reduce spending on all ex-military personnel, including military war victims. Military victims reacted negatively to such efforts and often directly clashed with external actors in protest. Although the negative international salience of their demands (i.e. the push to curtail rather than maintain their benefits) led to small reductions of their benefits, their superior moral authority and mobilization resources mostly offset this external effect. Moreover, while subsequent reforms reduced unemployment benefits and pensions for demobilized soldiers, military war victims have been affected only marginally. When laws for the military were enacted during the Bosnian war and in the first

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post-war years, their salience on external agendas was very limited and later went in the opposite (negative) direction. Overall, missing persons’ families, victims of sexual violence and civilian war victims received formal redress (in law) when their international salience was high due to external prioritization and their ability to maximize this opportunity. Concurrently, domestic authorities were receptive to external economic and reputational rewards. In contrast, ex-detainees with lower international salience have been largely unsuccessful until recently. Similarly, once civilian victims’ international salience decreased, they have not been able to change their existing provisions. The case of military victims suggests that international salience can work in both directions, i.e. lead to the retraction of benefits (even if only marginal in the case of military victims). International salience as a tool influenced by exogenous developments in the international arena and victims’ ability to increase it or align to such developments during some opportune moments is an important aspect of redress adoption. Groups that have been able to seize such opportunities and help to generate higher international salience (such as Srebrenica victims) have been more successful with their demands. 7.3.2

Authority: ‘Deservingness’ and Identities

Groups that have or have been able to generate higher moral authority by using strategic frames of victimhood and suffering are better placed to confront domestic authorities with their redress demands and have a higher likelihood of success. I suggested that post-war domestic authorities recognize and redress groups that attract public sympathy and are considered ‘deserving’ of assistance. In this way, domestic authorities amass public (especially electoral) endorsement. I argued that depending on the strength of such deservingness, a group may be empathized with and perceived by the public and domestic authorities as a legitimate policy claimant. Strategies for securing redress are related to the use of framing around concepts such as heroism, victimhood, motherhood and suffering, often defined in opposition to the ‘other’ ethno-national groups. In Bosnia, domestic elites have subdivided victims according to their ethno-national identities. The highest levels of moral authority within their respective ethnonational groups have been attached to military victims across BiH that have been able to maximize this position. Military victims have been

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framed as defenders of their ethno-national communities due to their perceived sacrifices on the battlefield. In Bosniak circles, fallen soldiers have been also called šehidi, suggesting martyrdom. Military victims have often invoked the preceding Yugoslav ‘cult of the fighter’ that has remained a potent frame even after the war despite the legal cases against many of the wartime military forces and the later interventions of financial institutions to cut their benefits. They have been able to maintain the narrative that redressing military victims is an important role of the state, whereby ethno-national elites have in turn promoted their role as protectors of their ethno-national groups. Therefore, this combination of previous legacies and the active ‘investments’ of military victims to maintain these frames has made their moral authority rather resistant to external influences. Nonetheless, the link to nationhood has played out most prominently in the case of Srebrenica, whose survivors became the epitome of the Bosniak wartime suffering and became the cornerstone of the Bosniak identity. Representing the broader category of families of the missing, their high moral authority significantly influenced the approach of Bosniak political authorities to their claims. The Srebrenica genocide ‘endowed’ them with a higher moral leverage over Bosniak authorities. Their subsequent memorialization efforts and utilization of frames of motherhood have amplified this narrative. In 2004, their moral authority was accepted beyond the Bosniak communities in RS, whose political leaders formally— though only temporarily—recognized the crime. As the subsequent 2004 state law was adopted for a victim category that consisted of Serb and Croat victims too (rather than Srebrenica’s victims only), its beneficiaries became victims of all ethno-national background. Victims of sexual violence had low to moderate levels of moral authority in 2006, but this has subsequently risen to even higher levels due to their activism. Gender has played an important role in framing strategies of Srebrenica female survivors and victims of sexual violence too. Due to the high numbers of women among the bereaved and raped, war victimhood in Bosnia has been linked to women’s suffering through not only their statistical preponderance but also the advocacy efforts of the victimized women and their allies (both domestic and international). For example, when some Bosniak deputies advocated for the adoption of legal reform in 2006 in FBiH, the key female beneficiaries presented themselves as Bosnian ‘mothers, daughters and sisters’ (Oslobod-enje, 2006). However, as victims of sexual violence continued to battle with the stigma

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attached to rape, their levels of moral authority remained moderate in 2006. Thereafter, their public campaigns, news appeals and petitions have gradually been raising the authority of their claims. As with their international salience, civilian war victims initially assumed the rather passive role of exemplary victims during the war and immediately thereafter. Since their injuries and losses were visible and the death toll theoretically countable, they were invoked by domestic authorities as living proof of the ‘other side’s’ brutality. In particular, the history of wartime Sarajevo—a city besieged and daily shelled—was a narrative frequently leveraged by victim associations when justifying their needs in appeals and open letters. However, soon the urgency of their injuries and human losses stopped featuring in the public sphere. The suffering of other victim categories surfaced in the early 2000s, turning human loss into abstract statistics of counting heads. While disabled veterans have been presented as sacrificing their limbs for the nation, disabled noncombatants have increasingly been framed as ‘social cases’ by military victims as well as by some political actors. Unable to fight off such framings, by the mid-2000s, their moral authority was already at moderate levels. When compared to other victim groups, the moral authority of torture victims has never reached high levels. Despite their high initial moral endowments as the guardians of memory and witnesses of horrors, their political activities, direct links to political parties and their mixed civilian-military identity have tained their reputation as ‘innocent’ victims. Initially, ex-detainees featured in the domestic sphere as chroniclers of the war’s atrocities and brutalization. Yet the close relationships the leaders of their associations developed with the main nationalist parties and their involvement in political rallies and elections lowered the general levels of publicly perceived ‘deservingness’ of this category. Moreover, some veteran associations have at times presented them as emasculated or as scroungers who were not able to defend themselves. Unable to the find a resonant frame and receptive audience for their demands, they have remained unrecognized in the Federation and belatedly recognized in RS. In sum, each of the studied groups has had a different level of moral authority that was the result of some pre-existing imageries of the group’s suffering combined with their identity and the subsequent ability of the group to modify and amplify such frames. Just like international salience, the ability of victims to maximize their moral authority has been shaped by the domestic political context. Although the absolute levels of moral

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authority are difficult to establish, relative moral authority is possible to assess when victim groups in the Bosnian system are compared to each other. Those with the highest levels—military victims and missing people’s families—have achieved either broad benefits (military victims) or state-level redress (missing people’s families). While even categories with moderate moral authority have attained some recognition and redress (i.e. victims of sexual violence), the empirical material here suggests that there is generally a positive relationship between moral authority and redress. 7.3.3

Resources: Unity, Networks, and Leadership

Finally, I proposed that victim groups that have access or can increase their resources for mobilization would be better placed to confront domestic authorities with their demands and have a higher likelihood of success. I argued that groups with high mobilization resources, defined in terms of their ability to campaign and network, can be more effective in securing redress compared with groups without such resources. Resources for each group have been largely constrained by the nature of the political and economic system. However, as some victim leaders strategically decided to invest in some types of networks or allies more than in others, the ‘quality’ and extent of such resources has been changing after the end of the war. Even groups with lower membership were able to offset their numbers through protests or by cooperating with a variety of pro-victim organizations and allies. As the previous chapters demonstrated, military victims, victims of sexual violence and families of the missing all attained varied mobilization resources, which they used to advocate for the adoption of compensation reforms. The highest and best access to mobilization resources have been among military war victims. As this group belongs to the umbrella veteran movement in BiH, they have drawn upon their wartime capacities, links and leadership, making them better poised to press for redress from the start. In some instances, military victims have had potent allies in top political positions, especially in the main ethno-national political parties. Their superior starting position in terms of access to resources was thus mainly determined by the political opportunities structures of the postwar state explained in Chapter 3. This has allowed them to mobilize their resources in effective protests at times when domestic authorities threatened to shrink their benefits. Their well-connected leadership, capacities and networks have not only offset the lack of their advocacy campaigns

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but also allowed them to increase the potency of their resources through ‘flexing their muscles’ and directly lobbying with their key allies. The second highest mobilization resources were among the families of missing people, specifically among the survivors of Srebrenica. Mainly female survivors of Srebrenica, supported by external allies and driven by their urgent need for truth, became potent mobilizers that featured in most war-related events and memory projects. Although their access to financial resources and information was very limited, their dedication, energy and incessant activism have expanded their networks and improved their capacities to campaign and advocate for their cause. They have also decided to confront external actors rather than domestic elites that have seen this as an opportune strategy. Srebrenica associations have been in many respects trailblazers for the wider issues plaguing missing people’s families in Bosnia, ultimately nudging a wider cooperation under ICMP’s patronage. Victims of sexual violence also started with negligible resources: they were poorly organized, intimidated to publicly voice their experiences and lacked prominent political allies for redress. However, by strategically leaning on the civil sector and networking with international advocates, their delayed mobilization gradually developed into effective campaigning and networking with many domestic and external allies. By 2003, rape victims founded their independent association in the Federation outside of the structure of victims of torture, distinguishing their cause from that of the former detainees. From the film director Jasmila Žbani´c to the critical support of Medica Zenica and international allies, they benefited from a broader advocacy coalition for their cause. Their 2006 domestic campaign in FBiH that was heavily supported by the civil sector galvanized the public behind their demands. This case demonstrates that a well-timed public campaign with broad civil-society support and clear objectives can be an effective way to press for recognition. Conversely, victims of torture never succeeded in raising their resources for mobilization to such levels. As a mixed military-civilian category, they opted to lobby with their political allies rather than the civil sector and prominent international advocates. Yet they failed to present their demands in a consistent manner and to unite both within and across the various ethno-national associations. For a state law to be adopted, cross-country cooperation would have been necessary. For entity laws, they would have had to invest in well-organized campaigns or protest actions. The other option was to accept belated and restrictive measures

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that would serve their political patrons as was the case in RS. As leaders in FBiH oscillated between different ideas and relied on their nationalist parties rather than creating broader coalitions, their political networks clashed with their ability to mobilize all stakeholders for their cause. Their resources thus remained rather limited and moderate. Finally, civilian war victims consistently had some of the lowest mobilization resources. This has been caused not only by their poor access to political, civil-sector and external allies but also by their rather delayed activism and ability to create broader coalitions. Their leadership lacked the skills and capacities to organize broader awareness-raising campaigns and to create networks. Rarely targeted by external funding and agencies, they have also struggled with financial survival although their unions have received municipal and local support for core activities. The Sarajevo-based and Banja Luka-based unions acted as the group’s main representatives but their leadership never became as prominent as, for example, Women-Victims of War or Mothers of Srebrenica mainly due to their lack of strategy to gain public resonance.10 Their mobilization resources have thus been rather low. Questions remain in relation to the relative effectiveness of each type of resource in securing recognition and redress, and political support through mobilization. An important insight from the empirical chapters is that the size of the group does not seem to play a key role in relation to redress—in fact, in some cases it may be the opposite for financial reasons. While the high number of military victims has contributed to the effectiveness of their protests, the much smaller mobilization campaign of victims of sexual violence was also effective. It seems that the ability to create networks, access important allies and pick a dedicated leadership can increase chances of redress adoption. The threat of large protests has also played a role. Weary of the explosive power of military victims, domestic policymakers chose to pursue more reconciliatory policies for this group. Finally, although groups were endowed with different resources to start with, they have opted for different strategies to make the most out of them. Those that have strategically invested in their most effective resources (e.g. allies) seem to have been more successful in their pursuits. There indeed seems to be a positive relationship between mobilization resources and redress outcomes.

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7.3.4

Combinations for a Formal Change

The arguments presented in this book are based on the conjunctural logic of change; there is also no ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution. In the previous chapters various outcomes were presented at the backdrop of the changing post-war character of Bosnian society and politics. The concept of victim capital was used to qualitatively describe the various aspects of victims’ endowments (salience, authority and resources); however, as argued here, there are various options how to influence such endowments and dynamically change them. There is thus no determinism in terms of varieties of victim capital as it can be influenced by victims’ actions. First, groups able to leverage the overall high victim capital would be the most likely to be redressed in the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario. The statelevel law addressing missing people represented their superior position in the Bosnian victimhood landscape that some refer to as the case of ‘ultimate victimhood’ (see Helms, 2013). Despite the strong culture of denial among Bosnian Serbs, the externally nudged and domestically accepted necessity to address the demands of this group through nation-wide legislation is the result of the optimal combination of the three factors. The context and timing of the adoption of the Law in the fall 2004 was a particularly favourable window of opportunity as external actors were influential and domestic authorities responsive to electoral and external rewards. Although other alternative combinations resulting in the same outcome cannot be ruled out,11 this scenario has been the only route in Bosnia that has led to an adoption at the state level. In the ‘Domestic Pressure’ scenario, I explored a combination of high levels of authority and resources in the cases of military war victims and to some degree victims of torture in RS. The skilled and well-connected leadership of military victims played a vital role in leveraging frames of heroism and sacrifice while effectively mobilizing alongside the rest of ex-military categories in a variety of contentious events. This combination proved to be particularly effective as domestic elites sought political endorsements and support in elections. However, unlike other victims who have sought an expansion of status, military victims demanded maintaining the status quo of the 1990s Yugoslav legislation. Although it was arguably easier to demand the maintenance of their status rather than demand changes,12 other military categories with similar mobilization resources (e.g. ex-soldiers) were successful with their demands only after significant delays in 2019. This suggests that the high moral authority of

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military victims resulted in additional benefits for this group. A respondent from Mostar noted, ‘when you see a defender [Croat veteran] in a wheelchair protesting, then you know that the government is in trouble’.13 Victims of torture leveraged similar strategies, relying on personal political contacts of the leadership. After domestic authorities in RS embarked upon a large-scale war-crime denial production and alternative victimhood competition, redressing a rather small number of eligible victims (given restrictions in access) became more likely. The third possible combination of two factors at high levels was presented in the ‘Activist Route’, which explored high resources combined with international salience. This was illustrated through the case of victims of sexual violence in 2006. The starting point for this group was characterized by high stigma, displacement and lack of organization. However, despite the delay in mobilization, this category achieved success in 2006, which later inspired other victims in Bosnia and the wider ex-Yugoslav region (see below). Although their perceived levels of deservingness in 2006 were moderate, they benefited from their prominence on the peacebuilding and transitional justice agendas of external actors. Their gradual build-up of capacities and information through cooperation with pro-victim networks resulted in the June 2006 reform in FBiH.14 The timing and clarity of their demands was critical. With the acclaim of the film Grbavica, the campaign ‘For the Dignity of Survivors’ was strategically organized within a favourable context, thus securing compensation outcomes for victimized women. I outlined the final combination for positive outcomes in the ‘Poster Child’ scenario, i.e. when high moral authority is combined with international salience. As illustrated, civilian war victims bore the closest resemblance to the proposed scenario. Civilian victims of war are a complex case to assess because they also initially drew on the previous socialist legislation.15 During the war and immediately thereafter, injured civilians, especially children, where used by domestic authorities as exemplary cases of the crippling effects of the war and the statistical scale of human suffering. At the same time, given the foreign media presence in the country, images of injured children and killed civilians prompted large-scale humanitarian efforts. The attention given to the group explains their early inclusion into the basic social welfare legislation, both during the war and the first post-war phase. However, due to their poor ability to utilize these frames and their poorly run activities, they only partially succeeded in changing the procedures to access redress in 2004.

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Finally, victims of torture in FBiH still represent a case of failed redress as they have never been recognized. Their inability to unite in their positions and demands, their close political links, lack of international allies, and the decrease in external attention to their demands together form a viable explanation of their negative outcome. Since the end of the war, their leadership has fluctuated between demanding entity laws, reforms and a state law, depending on how they cooperated with other ethno-national entities. An ex-detainee summarized the situation as follows: ‘If you do not know what you want, you cannot get it.’16 Their final self-inflicted wound was their early effort to link torture to rape. By appropriating the mostly female experience in FBiH, they inadvertently framed the torture experience in sexual terms. Once female victims became independent of their influence, the moral sway of ex-detainees dropped. Their current fragmentation and the recent criminal allegations make their current demand for recognition within state law all the more challenging. The full findings are summarized in Table 7.2, which depicts the relative values of victim capital, combinations and redress adoption. It also shows the time changes (e.g. marked as high dropping to moderate). The table also marks at which level of governance redress was demanded and achieved. As ex-detainees in FBiH have not achieved any redress, their access cannot be evaluated and is marked as N/A. Table 7.2 Redress outcomes and scenarios for success Victim capital/Victim group Military victims Civilian victims Families of the missing Victims of sexual violence Victims of torture

International salience Negative

Domestic moral authority High

High → Moderate

High → Moderate

Low

High

High

High

High

Moderate

Moderate → High

Optimal Route Activist Route

Moderate

High → Moderate

Moderate→ High

Domestic Pressure

Note Time changes are marked by → Source Author

Mobilization resources

Scenario

High

Domestic Pressure Poster Child (imperfect)

Recognition and redress adoption Success (entity) Partial Success (entity) Success (state) Success (entity) Partial success (in RS)

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It is important to highlight that these combinations are closely related to the changing political scene in post-war Bosnia. The manner in which political actors responded to victims’ demands was influenced by the political and economic context. As theories of social mobilization suggest, context is important for structuring the opportunity of social groups to organize and make public demands (see McAdam, Tarrow, & Tilly, 2001). Most reforms were adopted prior to 2006—the year when the Bosnian political scene started to witness a return to a polarized nationalist discourse. The parallel and gradual scaling down of the international HR, the subsequent inconsistent Europeanization and the impact of the economic crisis after 2008 lowered the power of reputational rewards for political elites while increasing the value of political and economic rewards. Consistent with theories of political opportunity structures, the decreasing pluralism (especially in RS) especially after the 2010 general elections and lack of alternative sources of funding, has pushed most victim organizations closer to the leading political elites and stifled their ability to mobilize. Nonetheless, victims have continued to play a role in political calculations; however, it is their moral authority and their role of symbolic beacons of suffering that has been most exploited rather than their ability to garner sympathy among external actors or organize powerful campaigns.

7.4

Assessing Alternative Explanations

It could well be argued that other explanations—top-down external impositions, transnational advocacy networks and distributive politics (or identity-based clientelism)—account for the differences in which war victims-survivors have been treated by the Bosnian authorities. While each of these explanations influences the dynamics of redress and has the potential to explain some aspects of how redress has been enacted for certain groups, none of them addresses the full variation of adoption in Bosnia. In order to evaluate some of these theories, I use two strategies: the ‘most-likely case’ selection design and the theory’s ability to explain the full range of outcomes. In some cases, I use a strategy that Bennett summarized as follows: ‘a theory that fails to explain a “most likely case” … is strongly impugned’ (see Bennett, 2004, p. 36). I thus scrutinize those cases from the empirical material that would most easily be predicted by these theories. In other cases, I assess their broad applicability to explain the full observed variation.

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Propositions of top-down external peacebuilding impositions and democratization suggest that policy choices of domestic policymakers are determined by the imposed preferences of external actors (such as the UN or EU). In the Bosnian case, the second post-war phase from 2000 to mid-2006 was indeed dominated by external interventionism and topdown statebuilding efforts represented mainly by the High Representative whose role was at that time also to function as the main EU representative. While external actors and their brokerage with domestic elites on behalf of victims is an important part of redress politics (i.e. international salience), redress did not enter their policy agendas without the involvement of victim associations and pro-victim groups. The initial focus on legal justice through the ICTY and the return of refugees overshadowed any interest in victim-centric measures. The most-likely case on which to assess these claims is the case of missing persons as the category with the highest international salience. As I demonstrated in Chapter 5, external actors were important intermediary force that significantly raised the position of the missing people on both external and domestic agendas. Yet it was the agency of victim associations and their participation in the process which ultimately led to the inclusion of redress into the 2004 Law. While the ICMP had an interest to establish a central state institution for the search for the missing, the actual Fund for families was included only after being requested by the victim representatives during the negotiations. Therefore, the 2004 state law was not the result of external imposition, but of the combination of high international salience, domestic perceptions of deservingness of the victims to be redressed and their vigorous activism. Transnational advocacy networks were also very important to empower domestic NGOs in Bosnia and increase skills of their leadership. The model of the so-called ‘boomerang effect’ (Keck & Sikkink, 1998) suggests that transnational networks act as mediators between the domestic civil sector and activists to press recalcitrant governments to enact new policies and changes. As explained in Chapters 3 and 6, external actors in Bosnia were of a different nature than those theorized in his model. Rather than transnational networks pressing the government from the outside, external actors that were present in Bosnia with direct powers to influence policy. While human rights advocates played their role in raising issues, national narratives of suffering and victimhood have often trumped such efforts as the cases of both military victims and victims of torture suggest. Domestic moral authority is an aspect that lacks in these

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theories to be able to explain the full spectrum of results. Moreover, the uneven engagement of such advocates in Bosnia (for example their advocacy against military victims) does not clearly tally with the full range of outcomes. Despite their support for victims of torture initially and more recently, this group has not been fully recognized. While transnational networks informed the domestic civil sector about global trends in human rights and victims utilized the information and capacities that they provided, they did not replace the domestic activist groups as advocates for policy change. Importantly, the 2006 campaign of victims of sexual violence was not directed by foreign activists but local organizations with victims. The campaign certainly benefited from externally transmitted information and support, but it was the mass mobilization on the streets that pushed the FBiH deputies to adopt the reform eventually. Finally, distributive politics would explain redress as the result of active targeting of victim groups by the government in an attempt to secure the support of ‘core’ political constituencies or ‘swing’ voters. The distributive model is based on the assumption that there exist clear and predictable alignments between the citizenry and the party system. By distributing policies to either core (i.e. reliable voters) or swing (i.e. tipping-the-scale voters), they can predictably manipulate electoral results in their favour. In Bosnia, ethno-national affiliations of voters indeed signpost voters’ electoral preferences (Huski´c, 2014). This may be useful to predict some preferences, such as that of military victims and victims of torture in RS. However, such predictions are less reliable in the case of other groups, such as civilian war victims. Moreover, as Kramon and Posner argued, in post-war and developing countries, when it is less clear who will eventually benefit from adopted policies, it is difficult to clearly predict voting behaviours across diverse categories (Posner & Kramon, 2011). As victim groups in some cases consist of a varied electorate (e.g. in the Federation both Croat and Bosniak and across the state all three communities), their electoral preferences have at times been difficult to assess with certainty, even if ethno-national voting prevails. Nonetheless, as I argued throughout this book, Bosnian nationalist parties have in some cases indeed targeted ‘their’ key victims. I incorporated this aspect into the concept of moral authority as well as into the response of political authorities driven by political interests. Politics of redress where distributive explanations and clientelism may be more applicable is at the level of policy implementation, which has not been directly theorized in this book. Implementation has been hampered

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by structural, organizational as well as political factors of clientelism. Distributing benefits of redress has been used as a form of electoral clientelism when ‘access to employment, goods and services is exchanged for a citizen’s vote’ (Kitschelt & Wilkinson, 2007, p. 2). While these explanations are valid when explaining individuals’ access, they do not reliably explain the adoption. Therefore, while acknowledging many benefits of the three alternative explanations and their insights for particular victim groups, they cannot provide satisfactory answers to the full range of differential policies in Bosnia. Instead, the framework I proposed captures multiple pathways to recognition and redress (or their lack) by considering varying combinations of victim capital.

7.5

Wider Applications Outside of Bosnia

The case of Bosnia and Herzegovina was used here as a particularly illuminating country setting for the puzzle driving this enquiry. However, it seems plausible to suggest that the present findings may be applicable to other post-conflict contexts—with adjustments and variations. In particular, the developed analytical framework may have utility for post-war contexts with varied victim populations, relatively open political regimes and reasonably stable economies and governments so that victims can direct their claims at state authorities and expect a response, i.e. in contexts where immediate relapse to war is no longer the main threat. Under such conditions, we can expect victims to organize in associations or other formal groups and demand redress alongside other transitional justice demands. Beyond Bosnia, my propositions could be applied to other post-war cases where certain victim-centric provisions have already been adopted and a variation in compensation outcomes can be studied. In this section, I briefly propose two cases that may be considered—Croatia and Rwanda—before offering broader future applications. Post-war Croatia is a suitable case for comparison as it bears several similarities to Bosnia, yet has had a rather varied set of outcomes for its victim population. Croatia emerged from the Yugoslav wars at the same time as Bosnia with a diverse victim population but democratized much quicker by the mid-2000s. While military victims and seriously injured civilians have been recognized, victims of sexual violence as well as victims that represent national minorities were left on the margins (Turkovi´c, 2002). In general, redress has been framed in terms

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of deservingness and sacrifice to the Croatian state, and later with consideration to Croatian EU aspirations.17 Military victims and some victims of torture have been celebrated for their heroism and war-time sacrifices. In contrast, any mention of victims of sexual violence remained taboo for nearly two decades after the war (Berdak, 2013). Not only did rape symbolize the failure of Croatian men to protect their women (see especially Clark, 2016; Žarkov, 2007) but as many of the victims were ethnically Serb, i.e. enemies, their victimhood was denied by the nationalist Croatian governments. However, in May 2015, the Croatian Parliament adopted a new law18 that recognized the over 2500 victims of sexual violence (Vladisavljevic, Lakic, & Begisholli, 2019). The victimized individuals became eligible to a one-off payment in the equivalent of 13,500 Euro, monthly support in the equivalent of 340 Euro, free counselling, medical and legal support (Pamukovic, 2015; see also Clark, 2017, p. 175). Prior to this outcome, the affected survivors in Croatia leveraged their growing campaigning networks and the already strong international concern for sexual violence. They also used the 2006 example of neighbouring Bosnia. As the main concern and funding of international actors in ex-Yugoslavia was initially directed at victims in Bosnia rather than elsewhere, victims in Croatia were disadvantaged by fewer opportunities to amplify their international salience.19 For example, the first comprehensive assessment on the extent of wartime rape in Croatia was only conducted by the UNDP in 2013, i.e. a nearly decade after similar research was done in Bosnia (Žunec, Bagi´c, Gali´c, Bulian, & Gašpar, 2013). The question gained particular prominence after the launch of new UK-funded projects on sexual violence in war in May 2012 (see Chapter 6) and during the progress towards EU membership. UNDP, the British government, as well as the Council of Europe and the EU encouraged the Croatian government to address the issue of wartime sexual violence as a matter of urgency (British Embassy Zagreb, 2014). With the exception of Serbia, Croatia was at that time the last country in post-war former Yugoslavia to recognize this victim group.20 Given their previous gradual build-up of local and regional organizations, victims became better resourced, connected and informed through a growing web of international networks. As a result, their campaigning and awareness-raising intensified in 2014.

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At the same time, the political context changed, influencing their ability to mobilize more effectively. In an effort to demonstrate its liberal outlook, the social democratic government at the time (2011–2015) moved toward endorsing human rights standards and domestic political scene somewhat liberalized—also on thanks to vigorous efforts of the civil society. The then minister for veteran affairs eventually defended a new law as path-breaking and progressive while deputies from the opposition nationalist HDZ walked out of the Parliament during the vote (Cartier, 2015). Croatian veterans (called ‘defenders’) protested against the law because they felt targeted as potential perpetrators of the sexual crimes. However, the victims harnessed domestic and external allies and their campaigns influenced the public opinion in their favour. The government felt pressurized to provide for a victim category whose moral authority had grown and that featured prominently on external agendas. The change was met with positive evaluations both domestically (with the exception of veterans and HDZ) and internationally (Commissioner for Human Rights, 2016). The Croatian case illustrates another example of the ‘Activist Route’ where victims effectively mobilize mainly through campaigning, leveraging their authority, and draw on their high international salience. The second country I want to briefly discuss is Rwanda. The example of Rwanda differs in many aspects but is suitable for several reasons. It is a post-war country that has been exposed to external peacebuilding and transitional justice where stable institutions and reasonable pluralism were established during its first post-war period (before the subsequent closure of any political opposition). Rwanda has a burdensome victim legacy: the 1994 genocide of the Tutsi (and moderate Hutu) resulted in up to 800,000 deaths and thousands of tortured, raped and maimed victims (Mamdani, 2014). The category with the highest moral authority in Rwanda were surviving Tutsi family members, referred to as rescapés (survivors of the genocide) (Rombouts, 2004, p. 243). This category organized under the umbrella of IBUKA association (meaning ‘Remember!’) immediately after the genocide.21 In 1998, they became a beneficiary of the National Assistance Fund, FARG.22 Established by the Rwandan government in 1998, FARG has offered mainly Tutsi rescapés basic educational, psychosocial and health services (Rombouts, 2004, pp. 398–404). Although large numbers of moderate Hutu also perished and suffered in the genocide, Hutu survivors were mostly excluded from the fund.23

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Akin to Srebrenica, given the external shameful failure to act during the genocide, rescapés attracted external public attention and became beneficiaries of a new ad hoc tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) that defined the atrocity as genocide. Moreover, IBUKA’s leaders (mostly widows) became vocal campaigners and mobilizers in the Rwandan public sphere, connecting rescapés in the mountainous Rwanda terrain as well as abroad (Human Rights Watch, 2004, p. 40). IBUKA relied on extensive diaspora support and an externally funded civil sector to launch a series of educational and memorialization projects (see Ibreck, 2012; Rombouts, 2001). With its wide domestic networks, diaspora support, prominent international allies (including UN agencies and a variety of charities) and high moral authority of the leadership of IBUKA, its demands materialized in the FARG. Domestic authorities in Rwanda were under both domestic and external pressures to tackle transitional justice in one way or another (Forges & Longman, 2004). The then government of ‘Democratic Renewal’ benefited from establishing FARG both domestically, as a symbol of reconciliation, as well as externally, as a sign of commitment to transitional justice and democracy (see especially Hankel, 2013; Rombouts, 2001). FARG was co-funded by external donations (mostly from the Netherlands), so financial considerations were secondary to the need for victims’ redress. Admittedly, the conflict and crimes in Rwanda were of a different nature and scale than in Bosnia or Croatia, and thus necessitated a different approach. Rwanda also had lower state capacities than the exYugoslav countries, resulting in a novel institutional build-up represented by FARG (alongside other measures such as the gaˇcaˇca hearings). Additionally, the Rwandan remembering of the atrocities has been one-sided (Ibreck, 2012) with very limited opportunities for micro-level narratives regarding crimes committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) under Paul Kegame, who has ruled Rwanda since the war in a gradually authoritarian fashion. Nonetheless, although the Rwandan experience differs in several significant ways, the context, types of victimhood and the manner in which victim-centric recognition and redress policies have been demanded and accepted bears similarities with the ‘Optimal Route’ scenario. Given the current large-scale victimization in Syria and Iraq, it is reasonable to expect that redress claims will continue to be made. For example, Yazidi women from Iraq could represent a category of victims

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that may succeed in securing redress once stability is established. Domestically, they are framed by Iraqi authorities as epitomes of the terror of ISIS (‘Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’) and thus have high perceived moral authority across the Iraqi population. They have been supported by external advocacy groups and human rights lawyers (Akhavan, Ashraph, Barzani, & Matyas, 2020; Oehring, 2017; Van Schaack, 2018). Given the current focus on the protection of women in conflict, they are well positioned to feature on external agendas. World media and human rights advocates have already been advocating for their redress, invoking their ‘unimaginable horrors’ and harrowing experiences of rape (Amnesty International, 2016). Their international salience has been high. Importantly, Yazidi women have chosen not to suffer in silence but to bear witness to their victimization. They created a global Yazda organization24 with a growing global membership not only in Iraq, but also among refugees through their wide diaspora. Their mobilization resources are thus to be expected to grow because of the empowerment such organizations offer to victims. One of the rape survivors Nadia Murad won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her campaigns to protect victims of rape (BBC, 2018). These examples suggest that variation in redress and the political rise of some victims over others are phenomena that deserve study more broadly. The common thread in these examples is that political, domestic and international prestige, external financial benefits and domestic reputation weigh in during deliberations about whom to recognized and redress and whom to ‘forget’. Each situation is different and calls for distinct approaches. However, there are notable similarities in how victims organize and how post-war domestic authorities respond to their demands.

7.6

Concluding Remarks

It took five minutes to turn people into enemies and it will take 50 years to reconcile them … We do not kill each other but we hate each other. We refuse to face up the facts about camps, crimes, and victims because they are the mirrors of our consciousness. We are building a country on shaky foundations.25

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The theoretical and empirical contributions made in this book are aimed at furthering our understandings of how post-war societies deal with legacies of their violent past, a concern that has been at the heart of studies in transitional justice. Specifically, this book zoomed into the questions of how post-war authorities in Bosnia have addressed the needs of those most affected by the 1992-5 war and recognized their victimization in the past 25 years. As the citation above suggests, Bosnian way of dealing with the past has been extremely half-hearted and inconclusive. The same can be said about how redress has been enacted. As a policy of recognition and assistance that victims demand and politicians resist, redress challenges many propositions of the overly normative transitional justice literature. Rather than a tool of post-war justice that is driven by ideas of what is just and fair only, state-distributed redress in the form of new laws and policies is mainly driven by deliberations about benefits and costs. The variation in enactments can be explained by political utility and hardwon battles over authority, salience and resources rather than by the logic of justice. Victims’ redress has also offered a unique lens into the political and social dynamics in post-war Bosnia that has reflected some key political tensions over power, sovereignty and national identity. This book also demonstrated and argued that socio-economic dimension of transitional justice needs to be taken into serious consideration when designing postwar justice models (cf. Clark, 2017). The justice dimension is particularly important for victims-survivors who do not feel it right to be treated on par with other ‘social cases’, i.e. those vulnerable and poor, but as special cases whose suffering is worth recognizing. The reality in Bosnia, though, is that the existing victim support has been framed as precisely such—social benefits, eschewing deeper and much more important discussions about victimization and responsibility. As a respondent noted, ‘only once we recognize what happened here and once everyone accept their responsibility, only then will we become a politically mature society’.26 Motivations and actions of domestic actors—victims and political authorities—in addition to external peacebuilders have been particularly critical for tracing how redress comes about. Victims have generally been perceived through the lens of trauma and passivity instead of empowerment and agency. However, the Bosnian cases demonstrate how redress has been influenced by victim leaders’ agency even in a country that has previously been dubbed a trusteeship of international actors (Chandler, 2006). While constrained by the limits of their divided and dilapidated post-war state, they have exercised a significant degree of deliberation

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in pursuing redress and justice. This is an important finding for transitional justice literature and practice that has increasingly been coming to terms with the fact that victims are important actors in the political arena. Problematizing victimhood and its political usage is a critical aspect of understanding how victimization influences political dynamics in post-war societies. The interactions between the powerful external and domestic policymakers and the putatively ‘powerless’ victims have provided many insights into the societal dynamics of redress. The variety of ways in which victims have influenced socio-economic redress in post-war Bosnia is complex but points towards the necessity of a deeper dive into such ‘politics of victimhood’ (Helms, 2013; Jouhanneau, 2017; Lawther, 2015; Meister, 2002; Strassner, 2013). The varieties of redress analysed here further represent a cautionary tale of how post-war victim-centric policies may become polarizing. Activities of Bosnian victim groups resulted in path-breaking changes in redress with repercussions reaching beyond Bosnia. However, an accompanying side-effect has been the creation of new sites of contestation over material and symbolic tools. The various types of material redress and recognition enacted in Bosnia have forged new layers of divisions, categorizations and ‘us-them’ dynamics that are destabilizing for any post-war order. Such divisions have not only been across groups and territories, but also within groups as many victim leaders have silenced heterogeneity and individual voices within their own ranks. The victim experience—and thus policies to address it—has become dominated by a handful of victim voices. Their mobilization has often been based on comparing degrees of suffering, making it difficult to unite victim movements for a shared cause.27 What we have observed on such a ‘victimhood market’ is a ‘championship for victimhood’28 whereby victim leaders compare each other’s plight. Victim capital can thus act as a double-edged sword—it can help victims to achieve their goals within their communities but antagonize others. Given the fairly strong evidence linking higher levels of equal and fair distribution of policies and services to stable democracies, such complex varieties of redress may be another factor to consider when assessing the impact of post-war justice.29 The tensions between military and civilian victimhood also highlighted that it is important to move beyond narrow legal definitions of victimization and to include military redress into wider discussions of transitional justice. Torture and loss of loved ones is not alleviated by military belonging. Families of missing persons and victims of torture

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may demand recognition of suffering not on the basis of whether their losses and suffering happened in the army or outside, but purely on the basis of social acknowledgment and solidarity. Yet the Bosnian experience suggests that the portrayal of the Bosnian war as soldiers versus civilians (see Kalyvas & Sambanis, 2005) has played out in post-war politics where disabled veterans and families of fallen soldiers continue to be socially valued over civilian suffering. The higher social value of the military has also translated into material benefits, leading to further tensions over new post-war social hierarchies and wellbeing. While the general tendency of transitional justice was to set issues of the former military to peacebuilding studies and DDR, the discussion presented here shows how closely related the two issues are—normatively and practically. A final important lesson of this book is about the multitude of inadvertent effects of external involvement into the hierarchies of victimhood. The cases presented here caution against espousing the generally normative claims about positive effects of transitional justice on postwar societies. To meaningfully redress victims necessitates not only the adoption of socio-economic redress but its inclusive adoption without the creation of further divisions.30 While giving voice to victims has already entered the policy priorities of many international organizations, not enough analytical attention has been paid to how supporting and giving voice to some victims may marginalize others. The lessons of international salience expose the risks of inadvertent triage of victimhood, which can undermine the cohesion of local communities. While the main empirical findings and theoretical propositions in this book are far from exhaustive, they aim to start a dialogue among scholars, practitioners and policymakers about the different aspects of victim capital and the role of redress. Given the growing numbers of states that fail to consolidate longterm peace and build resilient democracies after wars, we need a better understanding of how victims-survivors participate in policies of post-war recognition, redress and ultimately justice.

Notes 1. Personal interview with a human-rights expert, 2015. In March 2016, the former RS President Radovan Karadži´c was sentenced to 40 years of imprisonment by the ICTY. He has appealed the judgement and in 2018 received life sentence.

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2. While it had also existed for victims of World War II, it was rather restrictive and had a much narrower appeal than the veteran status. 3. Personal interview with a social worker, 2015. 4. For an overview on clientelism see Kitschelt and Wilkinson (2007). 5. On the job market, the term used is štela (UNDP, 2009). 6. On co-optation see Rochon and Mazmanian (1993). 7. Various aspects of access are described by Delpla (2014), Helms (2013), Jouhanneau (2013a). 8. Personal interview with a victim in Sarajevo, 2014. 9. Personal interview with a human rights expert, 2015. 10. As noted, this group’s recognition was initially rolled over from the preexisting Yugoslav legislation. Therefore, its mobilization after the war appeared less urgent than that of the other groups, which had not been recognized in the previous socialist legislation. While it is challenging to assess the extent to which the urgency of the needs is an important aspect of victim mobilization, it deserves attention in future research. 11. It is plausible to think that not all factors were necessary to be at high levels given the great levels of salience and authority of the missing people’s families in Srebrenica. 12. The literature on dismantling public policies argues that societal backlash against policy reductions is often more intensive (and thus effective) than pressures for the adoption of new policies. See especially the framework developed by Bauer and Knill (2012). 13. Personal interview with a veteran, 2014. 14. At that time, there was not a single victimized women’s association in RS. The recently created is not only poorly resourced but considered as nationalist by both the domestic civil sector and external actors. 15. Similar to military victims, the case of civilian victims sheds light on the role of path-dependent policy outcomes (Pierson, 2000). 16. Personal interview with a victim, 2015. 17. Croatia became a member of the European Union on 1 July 2013. 18. The full title is The Law on the Rights of Victims of Sexual Violence during the Armed Aggression against the Republic of Croatia in the Homeland War (64/15). 19. Although the Bassiouni Report from 1994 also mentioned Croatian women, their victimization was overshadowed by Bosniak victims. 20. Kosovo adopted a law that granted raped women recognition and a monthly support of 220 Euro already in November 2014. On the evolution of the issue of rape in Kosovo, see Di Lellio (2016). 21. See their mission at http://survivors-fund.org.uk/what-we-do/local-par tners/ibuka/, accessed 3 May 2017. 22. Le Fonds d’assistance aux rescapés du genocide (Assistance Funds for Survivors of the Genocide). It was established by Law 02/98 on 22 October 1998 and reaffirmed in 2008.

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23. Three categories of victims in Rwanda are recognized: direct survivors of the genocide, families of killed victims in Rwanda and families of killed victims outside of Rwanda (De Greiff, 2007, p. 9). 24. See their official website at https://www.yazda.org/, accessed 3 May 2017. 25. Personal interview with the human-rights activist Aleksandra Leti´c in Bijeljina, 2015. 26. Personal interview with a lawyer Nedžla Šehi´c, 2019. 27. John Mack called this phenomenon ‘egoism of victimization’ when deeply victimized groups lack the ability to empathize with victims from the other side (Mack, 1990). 28. Helms called it ‘arms race’ in victimhood (Helms, 2013, p. 198). Cf. Clark (2014, p. 172). 29. For key debates see Acemoglu and Robinson (2012), Ansell and Samuels (2010), Boix (2003). 30. This idea was expressed by Bosnian victims that I interviewed who often argued that ‘it is not the amount that matters but the attitude’ (nije bitan iznos ali odnos ).

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Annex: List of Key Legislation

Year Law/ regulation/ reform

Title in Bosnian

Regional coverage Legal number and amendments

1992 Law on Fundamental Rights of the Disabled Veterans and Families of the Killed Soldiers 1993 Law on the Protection of Civilian Victims of War

Zakona o osnovnim BiH (de facto pravima vojnih invalida only Bosniaki porodica palih boraca controlled territories)

Official Gazette of RBiH Nos. 2/92 and 13/94

Zakona o zaštiti civilnih RS (de facto only Official žrtava rata Serb-controlled Gazette of territories) RS Nos. 25/93, 32/94, 37/07, 60/07, 111/09, 118/09, 24/10 (continued)

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 J. Barton-Hronešová, The Struggle for Redress, Memory Politics and Transitional Justice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51622-2

335

336

ANNEX: LIST OF KEY LEGISLATION

(continued) Year Law/ regulation/ reform

Title in Bosnian

Regional coverage Legal number and amendments

1999 The Law on Principles of Social Welfare, Protection of Civilian Victims of War and Protection of Families with Children 2004 Law on Missing Persons

Zakon o osnovama socijalne zaštite, zaštite civilnih žrtava rata i zaštite obitelji s djecom

FBiH

Official Gazette of FBiH Nos. 36/99, 54/04, 39/06, 14/09

Zakon o nestalim osobama BiH

BiH

Official Gazette of BiH No. 50/04 Official Gazette of FBiH Nos. 33/04, 56/05, 70/07, 9/10, 90/17, 54/19 Official Gazette of RS Nos. 46/04, 53/04, 20/07, 59/08, 118/09, 134/11 Official Gazette of FBiH No. 39/06

2004 Law on Rights of Zakon o pravima Defenders and their branilaca i cˇlanova Families njihovih porodica

FBiH

2004 Law on Rights of Fighters, Military Invalids and the Families of Fallen Fighters of the DefensiveLiberation War of the RS

Zakon o pravima boraca, vojnih invalida i porodica poginulih boraca odbrambenootadžbinskog rata RS

RS

2006 Amendment to the Law on Principles of Social Welfare, Protection of Civilians Victims of War (sexual violence) 2018 Law on the Protection of Victims of Torture

Zakon o izmjenama i dopunama zakona o osnovama socijalne skrbi, zaštite civilnih žrtava rata I zaštite obitelji s djecom

FBiH

Zakon o zaštiti žrtava ratne torture

RS

Official Gazette of RS, No. 90/18