Could devastating floods help Bosnians heal their war wounds?
Merisa Krivdić, who helped to send a relief truck to Bosnia from the Bosnian Cultural Centre in Aachen, Germany, described how a local man claimed that the floods had opened his eyes. The man from the town of Prijedor said: “I did not realize that I don’t hate my neighbor until I actually spoke to him.”
Ethnicity as political capital
The recent spirit of unity presents a threat to Bosnia’s nationalist political elites. Political leaders have fostered and relied on the myth of ancient ethnic hatred to stay in power since the end of the war. Critics claim persuasively that the politicians use division as political capital to distract the population from issues such as corruption, which many allege was and continues to be particularly widespread during the selling of state-owned companies and assets.
The political elites have also had to face recent protest movements. In February 2014, a number of demonstrations and riots spread through Bosnian towns and cities. The marchers demanded the resignation of a corrupt government they feel has betrayed, abandoned and humiliated them over the last two decades.
In a country where the official unemployment rate sits at 44 percent, the slogan of the day was “I am hungry in three languages.” This came to symbolize the beginning of a unification process by the impoverished people of Bosnia in their struggle against divisive political leaders.
Floods as a catalyst for change
Analysts and ordinary Bosnians now say the floods have the potential to speed up that process.
Sudbin Musić, the secretary of the Association of Concentration Camp Survivors “Prijedor 92,” says he actually wishes the floods came sooner. Unlike Krivdić, Musić returned to his birthplace in Prijedor in 1998, after fleeing Bosnia in 1992 to avoid the violent forces of ethnic cleansing.
Prijedor was one of the most violent towns during the war. It housed the infamous Omarska, Karaterm, and Trnopolje concentrations camps set up by the local Serb authorities in 1992 to imprison the Bosniak and Croat population. Musić’s father was murdered in the town outside the Musić family home.
Yet despite the past and being unsure of how he will afford to renovate his flood-damaged home, Musić believes the floods have brought unity:
I am going to be blunt and say that I wish that these floods happened earlier. We needed this and I needed this feeling of unity and I needed these thousands of examples of human solidarity of Serbs, Bosniaks, Croats and all others.
It remains to be seen how this feeling — shared by many others — can be harvested to mobilize the people of Bosnia ahead of the general elections in October. Such a movement would have the potential to force corrupted political elites into the corner by draining them of their political capital.
At the same time, this would create an opening for a frank and honest dialogue about Bosnia’s bloody past — including perpetrators, bystanders, victims and all those in between. This would be the only solid foundation that could secure the future of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Damir Mitric is Adjunct Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology. This story is published courtesy of The Conversation (under Creative Commons-Attribution/No derivatives).
