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Bosnian Spring? Understanding Social Conflict in Post-Dayton Bosnia with Tobias Greiff
Center for Narrative and Conflict Resolution
April 29th 2:00-4:00pm
The Metropolitan Building
3434 N. Washington Blvd, Room 5145
Arlington, VA 22201
In the shadow of the international attention towards the Winter Olympics in Sochi 2014, a wave of violent protests spread through Bosnia, leaving government buildings plundered and marked with slogans like “He who sows hunger reaps anger,” parts of the archives of the Bosnian Presidency torched, and many cars and public properties destroyed. These weeks of protests mark, in the wake of other violent events ranging from bombs thrown in front of Mostar’s city hall to attacks against the US embassy, for many observers the beginning of a new period in Bosnia’s peace process – a period in which large scale protests and political violence have reentered the public sphere – a period some already call “Bosnian spring.” This eruption raises several questions:
Why have all the nation- and state-building efforts, the infrastructure and economy support measures, and all the integration, reconciliation, and justice projects designed to reduce intergroup differences and promote economic prosperity, failed to install a sense of Bosnia as a democratic nation and to prevent the current social tensions? Have we, in the end, failed to address the right issues (root causes of the conflict)? Were some of us right with the assumptions that conflicts in Bosnia are too ancient and cannot ever be changed or solved? Or, have we failed to understand what conflict means in the first place?
With rising tensions, and the suspicion that the concepts used to explain conflict in Bosnia in the past might not only be insufficient in terms of capturing the current state of social unrest, but also potentially hindering our ability to see current developments, I suggest starting with radically challenging all the pictures, stories, and assumptions of life and conflict in Bosnia we have. Doing so will not only create space for new perspectives on Post-Dayton dynamics, it will also, in my opinion, fulfill an ethical obligation.