Coffee after cleansing?

Co-existence, co-operation, and

communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina
Anders H. Stefansson

Abstract: This article critically addresses the idea that ethnic remixing alone fosters
reconciliation and tolerance after sectarian conflict, a vision that has been forcefully cultivated by international interventionists in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Banja Luka, it presents a
multi-faceted analysis of the effects of ethnic minority return on the (re)building
of social relations across communal boundaries. Although returnees were primarily elderly Bosniacs who settled in parts of the town traditionally populated by
their own ethnic group, some level of inter-ethnic co-existence and co-operation
had developed between the returnees and displaced Serbs who had moved into
these neighborhoods. In the absence of national reconciliation, peaceful co-existence in local everyday life was brought about by silencing sensitive political and
moral questions related to the war, indicating a preparedness among parts of the
population to once again share a social space with the Other.
Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, co-existence, ethnic minority return, reconciliation, social relations
The good news is that the spirit of brotherhood
and unity (bratstvo i jedinstvo)Marshal Titos
famous slogan for rebuilding multi-national
co-existence in Yugoslavia after the atrocities of
World War IIis alive and well, even after the
brutal wars and ethnic cleansing operations that
haunted this part of the Balkans in the 1990s.
The bad news is that so far these positive feelings between former enemy groups seem to be
limited to a few prison cells in The Hague. At
least this is the reality as depicted in They would
never hurt a fly: War criminals on trial in The
Hague (2004) by the internationally recognized
Croatian author Slavenka Drakulic;. In the chapter titled Brotherhood and Unity, Drakulic;
provides a stunning and deeply ironic account

of the sense of cross-national solidarity and cooperation that prevailed among the indicted
war criminals in The Hague detention facility at
the time. Apparently without tension whatsoever, Slobodan Milos=evic; and his fellow detainees shared their meals and newspapers,
played handball together, and even wrote an informal anthem celebrating the peace that had
come to exist between them. This leads Drakulic; to conclude that in this place Serbs and
Croats and Bosnians, who for years fought each
other, live happily together Titos Yugoslavia
still seems to be alive (2004: 204f.).
As important as this situation is, it still applies
only to a very localized and extra-territorial setting, whereas developments in the post-Yugoslav

FocaalJournal of Global and Historical Anthropology 57 (2010): 6276

doi:10.3167/fcl.2010.570105

Co-existence, co-operation, and communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina | 63

home societies must be assumed to be more vital for the prospects of peace-building in the region. One might think that if such instigators or
perpetrators of radical violence against unwanted ethnic Others manage to live together in
peace bordering on harmony within the prison
walls, an even smoother process of reconciliation ought to occur among ordinary citizens,
who were often at the receiving end of brutality.
However, as Drakulic; points out, most people
in the former Yugoslavia seem considerably less
able to heal the wounds of war and to rebuild
functioning relationships across communal
cleavages than their war criminal compatriots
on trial in The Hague. The latter have reached
a compromise that enables them to live together,
something that people back home can only
dream about (Drakulic; 2004: 204). Many other
analysts have reached similar pessimistic conclusions with regard to the ability of the postYugoslav populations of undoing (ScheperHughes 1998) their recent history of antagonism
and of (re)building feelings of tolerance and
trust toward each other (e.g., Halpern and Weinstein 2004; Hayden 2007; Jansen 2003; Sorabji
2006).
This article tests and elaborates on these
negative judgments by analyzing the extent and
character of social reconstruction at the level of
local, everyday life in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovinaa multi-ethnic country that experienced
brutal sectarian violence and widespread ethnic
cleansing between 1992 and 1996.1 More specific, the article addresses the purportedly positive relationship between ethnic remixing and
processes of reconciliation as a specific kind of
hope that has been cultivated by international
interventionists as a peace-building strategy after the end of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina
and other parts of the former Yugoslavia, and
subsequently in post-conflict societies beyond
this region. This romantic vision of the safe return of displaced persons to their pre-war
homes, leading initially to co-existence between
former enemy groups and later to the rebuilding of inter-communal trust, has its roots both
in a morally based desire to right the wrongs of

ethnic cleansing and mass atrocity and in a more

pragmatic aim of re-establishing stability and
political integrity in this unstable part of Europe (Bose 2002).
However, in the case of Bosnia and Herzegovina the turning of such high hopes and noble intentions into a viable social reality has been
seriously hampered by the internal partition of
the country along ethno-national lines, institutionalized by the international community in
the 1995 Dayton Peace agreement, with its curious and contradictory blend of realism and idealism, of simultaneous division and integration
(Campbell 1999; Guzina 2007).2 A positive development in this respect has met further resistance from various local political and ethnic
elites and their constituencies. In particular in
the first five years after the end of the war, these
actors disputed the casting of post-conflict return and reconciliation in the light of a brighter
future, because they considered this hope
(read: worst nightmare) to be in opposition to
their war-time goals and achievements.3 Still,
until now more than one million refugees and
displaced persons have been estimated by the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to have returned, out of whom
around 460,000 are ethnic minority returnees.4
Although this figure is often stated by international institutions as an expression of a great
post-war success, the effects of these returns on
local-level social life and reconstruction are less
known.
In an effort to fill this gap in knowledge this
article explores the patterns and consequences
of ethnic minority return and inter-ethnic coexistence in the town of Banja Luka and its
surrounding suburbs and villages. Banja Luka,
which is situated in the northwestern part of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, is the second-largest
Bosnian town (after Sarajevo) and the capital of
the Republika Srpska. The analysis is based on
three months of ethnographic fieldwork carried
out in the summer of 2003, primarily among
Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) returnees and displaced Serbs. Results from long-term fieldwork
carried out elsewhere in the country serve in a

64 | Anders H. Stefansson

more indirect way to broaden and strengthen

the conclusions of this local case study.5

Return, reconciliation, and reconstruction

Social reconstruction and inter-communal reconciliation have emerged as key priorities in international interventions in war-torn societies,
as it has become increasingly clear that sustainable peace and democracy are not secured merely
by rebuilding destroyed houses and infrastructure and supporting economic development.
For the romance with remorse and with reparation, memory, and healingof the individual
and the social bodyhas emerged as a master
narrative of the late 20th century as individuals
and entire nations struggle to overcome the
legacies of suffering ranging from rape and domestic violence to collective atrocities of statesponsored dirty wars and ethnic cleansings
(Scheper-Hughes 1998: 126). However, in this
process it has also become clear that it is usually
a far greater challenge to rebuild social relations, trust, and tolerance in deeply divided societies than it is to reconstruct a building or a
bridge.
Reconciliation has been defined in a variety of
ways, but broadly it refers to a process through
which a society moves from a divided past to a
shared future (Bloomfield 2003: 12). Yet there
are widely differing perspectives on what a
shared future entails and on what road to take
to the promised land of sharedness and reconciliation. Generally speaking, idealist theories
within this field of research emphasize the need
for forgiveness, empathy, dialogue, truth, and
justice (or thick reconciliation; e.g., Amstutz
2005; Lederach 1997). Conversely, more realist theories are willing to settle, at least in the
short run, for peaceful co-existence, that is a certain level of social interaction and co-operation
between former enemy groups (or thin reconciliation; e.g., Chayes and Minow 2003; Sampson 2003). This article is mostly inspired by the
latter, pragmatic approach, which does not mean
that a more deep-seated type of reconciliation
what Michael Ignatieff terms a meeting of hearts

and minds (2003: 326)would not be beneficial for the future stability of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But due to the divisive and unsettled
political situation in the country peaceful coexistence seems so far to be the more realistic
scenario. A focus on co-existence also invites us
to study the ways in which people rebuild social
relations and tolerance in local everyday life,
whereas existing research tends to be concerned
with national reconciliationthat is, reconciliation at the political or state level.6 Yet national reconciliation cannot be said to have
advanced far in todays Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Certainly, the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina has improved significantly in the years
that have passed since the signing of the peace
treaty in late 1995, not least with regard to physical reconstruction, property repossession, freedom of mobility, security, and refugee return.
But a spirit of reconciliation in any deeper sense
has yet to take root at the political and elite levels. For example, relatives of the Srebrenica massacre victims had to wait until 2004 before the
Republika Srpska government finally acknowledged and publicly apologized for the war crimes
(and genocide) that took place. The apology
was made reluctantly and only after the parties
in power realized that the survival of the Republika Srpska entity was threatened by their
denial of the nature of war-time events in Srebrenica, which is why it was not interpreted by
Bosniacs as true reconciliation (Bougarel, Helms,
and Duijzings 2007: 25ff.). The reconciliation
process is held hostage by the continual territorial and political division of the country and by
the unresolved conflicts concerning internal
state construction, between those who favor further integration (notably the Bosniacs) and those
who prefer to maintain the current state of decentralization/autonomy, or ideally even future
secession (primarily Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Serbs). That the war ended without a clear
winner also means that there is no strong national leadership able to impose its hegemonic
model of reconciliation and national truth on
the population, like Tito and the Communist
Party had the power to do in the aftermath of
World War II in Yugoslavia. In this respect, the

Co-existence, co-operation, and communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina | 65

international protectorate-like regime installed

in post-Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina appears
to be extremely ineffective.
In these imperfect circumstances, can Bosnian citizens of different nationalities live together in peace and bridge their differences, and
if so how do they do it? As mentioned above,
official UNHCR statistics show that close to
half a million refugees and internally displaced
persons have returned to parts of Bosnia and
Herzegovina where another ethnic group is in
the majority. Not surprising, the international
institutions and organizations operating in Bosnia and Herzegovina have employed this figure
as evidence of the successful realization of the
hope that these humanitarian interventionists,
at least in their own self-understanding, have
brought to this country and other post-conflict
societies. In fact, with time ethnic minority return has become the central parameter of postwar reconstruction and reconciliation in Bosnia
and Herzegovina (Ito 2001; Phuong 2000). According to Richard Black, promoting ethnic
reconciliation has generally been seen as best
achieved through ethnic reintegration (2001:
183; see also Englbrecht 2001). But is it true that
ethnic minority return necessarily leads to reintegration and reconciliation?
Not according to most researchers who have
studied the dynamics of refugee return in Bosnia and Herzegovina. First, it is argued that in
practice permanent ethnic minority returns have
been relatively limited in number because of the
frequent practice of selling reclaimed homes or
not returning permanently to them, for which
reason UNHCR figures are likely to be inflated
(Cox and Garlick 2003; Tuathail and Dahlman 2004; Philpott 2005; Stefansson 2006).
Second, when minority returns have occurred
they have often resulted in the creation of ethnic enclaves, either in isolated rural areas or in
socially divided urban space: Where large-scale
return has taken place, returnees have usually
formed parallel institutions, led by returnee associations, serviced by token representatives in
municipal government and sustained by a largely
separate economy. Return has not yet resulted in
re-integration (ICG 2002: 16). It is also noted

how return often in reality is a matter of degree

as many minority returnees who have moved
back to their homes continue to perform their
daily tasksgo to work, send children to school,
visit doctorsin a part of the country where
they belong to the local majority group, usually
in places where they lived during exile (Jansen
2007). Similarly, substantial numbers of Bosnian refugees have developed transnational lifestyles that straddle their place of origin and
their new place of living in Western host countries (Eastmond 2006; Stefansson 2006). Third,
even in ethnically mixed urban locations interethnic contact seems to be scarce. For example,
based on a comparative study in the towns of
Mostar, Prijedor, and Vukovar (the latter in
Croatia) Corkalo et al. (2004: 143) argue that
people from opposing ethnic groups who once
lived together peacefully now harbor deep-seated
resentments and suspicions of one another,
making it difficult to renew social relationships
or to form new ones. In Mostar the ethnic divide is physically demarcated by the Neretva
river, while in Prijedor and Vukovar the groups
are separated by a psychological wall. A slightly
more positive perspective on return is found in
a film based on long-term work carried out by
the anthropologist Tone Bringa in a village in
Central Bosnia and Herzegovina, Returning home
(Bringa and Loizos 2001). It deals with the return of displaced Bosniacs to this village, which
both during and after the war was controlled by
Bosnian Croats. The film depicts former Bosniac and Croat neighbors as continuously divided, but it also shows how the returnees were
able to develop surprisingly cordial relations with
displaced Croats who during the war moved
into the village and often into the Bosniacs own
abandoned houses (see also Bringa 2005).7
My own anthropological study of ethnic minority return in the Banja Luka area to a large
extent mirrors Bringas ambivalent findings. On
the one hand, Bosniac returnees in Banja Luka
primarily settled in parts of town and surrounding villages traditionally populated by their own
ethno-national group where they generally did
not have much contact with the native Serb population. On the other hand, some level of inter-

66 | Anders H. Stefansson

ethnic co-existence and tolerance had developed

in particular between the returnees and displaced
Serbs who had moved into these neighborhoods,
among other things based on economic interdependence, an emerging sense of solidarity, and
a pragmatic need to avoid conflict in everyday
life. In the absence of a genuine atmosphere of
reconciliation at the political or national level,
peaceful co-existence between these communities in Banja Luka was brought about by collectively silencing sensitive political and moral
questions related to the recent war that could
lead to renewed conflict. In a striking parallel to
the culture of co-existence in pre-war Yugoslavia, this strategy indicates a deep-seated cultural knowledge of living with difference and a
preparedness among parts of the population to
share a social space, which under less divisive
political conditions may pave the way for the
bridging of more fundamental disagreements.
It needs to be emphasized that the primary
aim of this article is to explore the dynamics of
inter-communal social life, not to deconstruct
simplified understandings of the conflict in
the former Yugoslavia as a fight along clear-cut
ethno-national dividing lines. Although debunking essentialized categories of identity certainly is a vital project, it is also important to
investigate the consequences of essentialization,
a process that in the Bosnian context of violence, mass displacement, and ethnic identity
politics in time has turned national divisions
into pretty hard facts (Hastrup 1994). Thus,
whereas many Bosnians do not identify strongly
with any ethnic group, I have yet to meet a person in Bosnia and Herzegovina who is not
painfully aware of the very real effects of being
ethnically marked by their social surroundings.

Ethnic enclaves, national narratives

Although Banja Luka was not a direct war zone
but remained controlled by the Bosnian Serb
authorities throughout the conflict, journalist
Peter Maass characterized the town at the time
as the darkest of places in the darkest of worlds.
To be a Muslim or Croat in Banja Luka in

1992 was nearly as frightening as being a Jew in

Berlin in 1942 (1996: 68). Even though this
characterization may be slightly exaggerated,
the persecution of ethnic minorities in the
Banja Luka area did include torture, murder,
rape, beatings, harassment, de jure discrimination, intimidation, expulsion from homes, confiscation of property, bombing of businesses,
dismissal from work (Human Rights Watch
1994). As a result of this, almost all of the approximately 60,000 non-Serb inhabitants, primarily Bosniacs and Bosnian Croats, fled, or
were expelled, from the city at different stages
during the war. Most Croats took refuge in
neighboring Croatia, the border of which is just
forty kilometers to the north of Banja Luka. The
Bosniacs were more widely dispersed, both in
the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and
in several Western countries. As in many other
parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina the exodus of
the local minority populations was countered,
and to a certain extent fueled, by the influx of
displaced persons belonging to the dominating
ethnic group in the area, in this case Serbs from
other parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina and
from Croatia.
After the end of the war the local authorities
in Banja Luka, as elsewhere in the Republika
Srpska, strove to resist the reversal of ethnic
cleansing (an effort that was largely successful). But especially since 2000 most displaced
persons have succeeded in legally reclaiming
their pre-war housing. This in turn has fueled
some level of return. In 2003, at the time of my
fieldwork, an estimated five to ten thousand
persons had returned more or less permanently
to Banja Luka, mostly elderly Bosniacs, while the
Croats generally preferred to settle in Croatia
for good. Furthermore, many younger Bosniacs
now living as refugees, or naturalized citizens,
in the West visited their homes during the summer months. However, most of these permanent or temporary returns took place to parts of
town, or surrounding villages, that traditionally
were almost exclusively inhabited by Bosniacs,
while returns to the former multi-ethnic central
parts of town were rare. This shows that even in
an urban or semi-urban area like Banja Luka

Co-existence, co-operation, and communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina | 67

ethnic minority return is a heavily territorialized phenomenon, which tends to (re)create

small ethnic enclaves, like those described
above by researchers in other parts of Bosnia
and Herzegovina.
Minority return thus has a rather limited impact on processes of co-existence and reconciliation, as the geographical isolation minimizes
the level and need of inter-ethnic contact in these
local communities. Neither did the returnees perceive their homecomings as acts of reconciliation;
none of my informants in this group mentioned the desire to be reunited with former Serb
friends, colleagues, or neighbors as having played
an important part in their decision to return.
Instead their return was motivated by an intimate sense of belonging to their houses, land,
and neighborhoods as well as more abstractly to
Bosnia and Herzegovina as a national homeland
(DOnofrio 2004: 16). Some elderly people explained that they had returned in order to be
able to die and be buried in their home area
(Stefansson 2006). Many of the returnees perceived the society beyond the protective walls of
their house or the local neighborhood as a Serb
and non-homely place where they only went
when they had to for practical purposes. Thus,
for the most part they stayed at home, but even
here a sense of fear prevailed, which was observable for example in mistrust of strangers,
locked front doors, and a high number of fiercelooking watchdogs. Such feelings of insecurity
contrasted with memories of extreme pre-war
trust and openness in local, everyday life.8
Certainly, the Serb-dominated local authorities did not do much to make the returnees feel
comfortable in their hometown. For example,
many non-Serb place names had been symbolically replaced with Serb ones; an old part of
town called S+eher to where many Bosniacs returned had been renamed Srpske Toplice (Serb
hot springs). In 2001 there were massive riots in
connection to the ceremony of laying the foundation stone for the rebuilding of the famous
Ferhadija mosque that was blown up during the
war, and by 2003 it had still not been reconstructed.9 Moreover, the Bosniacs did not sense
any feelings of remorse among local Serbs who

rarely offered apologies for what took place

during the war in Banja Luka or expressed recognition of the suffering of the expellees. According to the returnees, the Serbs usually acted as if
nothing bad had happened to them, asking
questions like Oh, have you had a good time in
Scandinavia?, as if the refugees had merely been
away for a holiday (a large number of refugees
from Banja Luka ended up in Scandinavian
countries).
Reconciliation between the two groups was
also obstructed by widely differing memories
and moral interpretations of the war. Among
the Bosniacs the remembrance of the recent war
centered on their experiences of suffering and
persecution in war-time Banja Luka and their
forced exile. The Bosniacs regarded Republika
Srpska as having been established through ethnic cleansing and war crimes, and they did not
in the least identify with it. In contrast, the
Serbs generally perceived the war as a struggle
for liberation and self-determination, and the
creation of Republika Srpska as vital for their
survival as a nation. They saw Republika Srpska
as their national homeland, and being Bosnians
in a cultural sense but not in a national or political sense.10 Andrew Rigby argues that a central aspect of reconciliation is the preparedness
of people who have been divided to anticipate a
shared future (2001: 2). Yet in the context of
Bosnia and Herzegovina, continuously plagued
by the minority syndrome (Bose 2002: 259),
it is precisely the question and conditions of
sharedness that is still contested. For many Bosniacs reconciliation starts from political integration; for Serbs reconciliation must be based
on some level of ethno-territorial segregation.
These opposing national narratives did not completely preclude inter-ethnic encounters from
taking place, as some Bosnians strategically silenced their different political attitudes in order
to make local co-existence possible.

Coffee, co-operation, and consensus

Despite the significant level of physical and psychological distance between the ethno-national

68 | Anders H. Stefansson

groups in Banja Luka that has so far been depicted here, some degree of peaceful inter-ethnic socializing and tolerance did in fact develop
between the communities, mostly as a result of
shared economic interests. In line with Tone
Bringas findings from Central Bosnia and
Herzegovina, most of such inter-ethnic social
relations occurred between Bosniacs and displaced Serbs. In a demographic sense this was a
logical development, as most Serbs who lived in
these specific areas were displaced persons who
during the war had moved into the homes
abandoned by the Bosniac population or into
newly constructed houses. Some Bosniacs rented
out their reclaimed houses or part of their
houses to displaced Serbs, with the practical implication that occasionally Bosniac returnees and
displaced Serbs now lived in the same house.
Some Bosniacs rented out business premises or
fields to Serbs. Returnees often did their shopping in stores belonging to Serbs, and sometimes they employed Serb workers. Referring to
displaced Serbs as hamal (a Turkish word for
carrier) due to the physically hard, low-paid
work they were often forced to take, one welloff returnee from Sweden described how a group
of Serb workers had removed tons of debris
from outside his house for a very low salary. He
said that other Serbs were almost begging him
for employment in his newly opened grocery
shop. More informal, non-paid practical assistance, like helping each other with agricultural
activities, between the two groups also occurred.
Sometimes this practical interdependence resulted in coffee visits to each others homes, a
central custom in pre-war Bosnia and Herzegovina that worked to maintain harmonious
social relations in local neighborhoods by enhancing shared cultural values such as hospitality (Bringa 1995; Helms, this volume).
But can this pattern of limited inter-ethnic
economic cooperation that occasionally led to
collective coffee- drinking and other types of
inter-communal social life be interpreted as an
expression of reconciliation, when it is basically
based on material self-interest? According to the
idealist strand of research within this field, economic inter-connectedness and peaceful co-

existence amount to a kind of negative peace

that merely hides the unresolved structural conflicts between the groups, which threaten the
stability of society. For example, Jodi Halpern
and Harvey Weinstein argue that coexistence
without empathy is both superficial and fragile.
Just below the surface is mistrust, resentment,
and even hatred (2004: 570). In contrast, realist scholars stress the importance of rebuilding
functioning social relations in the everyday life
of ordinary people as a way to bridge differences and recreate trust and a sense of community (Chayes and Minow 2003).
Although this debate will continue on a theoretical level, the native Bosnian conceptualization of reconciliation seems to side with the
realist camp. Thus, almost all my informants in
Banja Luka and elsewhere in the country argued
that an improvement of their socio-economic
situation would make inter-ethnic reconciliation
easier, albeit by no means automatic. Conversely,
they explained that as long as their everyday
lives were characterized by problems of poverty,
unemployment, and lack of permanent housing, reconciliation remained too abstract and
somehow unimportant an issue for them to
start taking a serious interest in it. For informants the desire to improve their livelihoods and
to rebuild their sense of normal life were far
greater motivating forces than what can be characterized as the politics of identity. At this
point they seem to be in correspondence with
Laurel Fletcher and Harvey Weinsteins argument that reconciliationwhich requires empathy, forgiveness, and altruismdraws on
higher order manifestations of need that cannot
be addressed until the more basic needs are satisfied (2002: 625).
Not only did inter-ethnic co-operation for
material gain serve to improve participants livelihood situations, it also provided a first and
seemingly quite neutral stage for social interaction between members of different ethnic
groups on which a measure of respect, civility,
and tolerance for the Other had to be publicly
displayed, if not necessarily privately felt (see also
Pickering 2006). Working together or drinking
coffee together was not necessarily an expres-

Co-existence, co-operation, and communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina | 69

sion of love or deep friendship, but it was at least

a sign of the acknowledgment of local sharedness, the need for social exchange and, to a certain extent, mutual hospitality. As an elderly
Bosniac returnee rather pragmatically said: We
have to live together. We dont have to love each
other. We must respect each other and help each
other. Another returnee expressed the pragmatic need of co-existence by evoking a Bosnian
proverb: Your neighbor [in this case meaning
Serbs] is more important than your brother,
since your neighbor lives next door while your
brother may be far away. This indicates the
central value of good neighborliness (koms i= luk)
in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bringa 1995), a
type of social capital that may help to foster
co-existence in local communities in post-war
Bosnia and Herzegovina, as oldand new
neighbors strive to live together in peace.
Yet inter-ethnic relations between Bosniac returnees and displaced Serbs were not grounded
in physical closeness and economic interests
alone but also on an emerging sense of solidarity and sympathy. For sure, there were serious
conflicts and differences between members of
these two groups, not least stemming from the
fact that some of the Bosniacs had been expelled from their homes during the war by displaced Serbs or by their militias. Furthermore,
returnees accused displaced Serbs for frequently
having mistreated and looted their houses during stays as temporary occupants. Nonetheless,
their positions and experiences provided for
common ground in some regards and among
some inhabitants. Most obviously they shared
the experiences of losing home, flight, and the
hardships of refugee life.
Thus, when members of the two groups met
in Banja Luka it was common for them to exchange stories of refugee suffering, albeit without mentioning the problematic fact that the
displacement of the Serbs to a certain degree had
contributed to the flight of the Bosniacs. Both
groups also felt like marginalized outsiders in
Banja Luka, although in different ways. Whereas
ethnicity and religion made the Bosniacs feel like
strangers at home, the displaced Serbs were
disadvantaged in the eyes of the local popula-

tion because of the poverty, social problems,

and rural traditions with which they were associated. This tendency among native Serbs to
blame all ills in the town on the newcomers
found expression in ironic and patronizing
proverbs, such as Well exchange two persons
from Glamoc [referring to newcomers from a
provincial town in Bosnia and Herzegovina] for
one Muslim!11 As one displaced Serb who was
not otherwise very conciliatory in his statements
toward Bosniacs said: At least were united in
tragedy.

Silence, truth, and the limits

of reconciliation
Inter-ethnic encounters in Banja Luka were characterized and facilitated by a specific social behavior and communicative culture. During such
contact certain sensitive and divisive political
and moral issues related to the past, the war, and
the political situation were generally avoided
and collectively silenced. These were especially
questions about the causes of the war, responsibility and guilt, war crimes and the legitimacy
of the Republika Srpska and the state of Bosnia
and Herzegovina. Instead dialogue centered on
themes that were less emotionally charged and
contested, and on which a spirit of consensus
and sharedness could be formed. Such issues
pertained to common socio-economic problemscorruption, criminality and the good old
pre-war life. Moreover, often nationalism and
the dirty game of politics were criticized in general terms. Thus, what was noteworthy of such
encounters was the respectful, tolerant, and conciliatory atmosphere in which they occurred as
well as the careful and conscious efforts to stress
similarity and thereby to contain conflict and
difference as much as possible (see also Jansen,
this volume). Of course, the Balkans, and Bosnia and Herzegovina in particular, have a history of occasional communal violence but also
of long periods of peaceful co-existence after
such conflicts, such as in postWorld War II socialist Yugoslavia. It must be assumed that a connection exists between this cultural tradition of

70 | Anders H. Stefansson

conflict resolution and the strategies of interethnic co-existence that I have described from
Banja Luka, and that can be found in other parts
of the country. Due to their historical experience of life in multi-ethnic society, Bosnians
generally maintain a deep-seated cultural knowledge of living with difference, bridging difference, and to varying degrees accepting difference
(Bringa 1995; Lockwood 1975).
This strategy of peaceful co-existence raises
questions about the relationship between silence,
truth, and reconciliation in the aftermath of
violent conflict. Halpern and Weinstein argue
based on research carried out in different cities
in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia that although people from different ethnic groups
are working together and living as neighbors at
the present time we could not find a single example of what we would term empathy (2004:
570). In contrast, I tend to interpret the phenomenon of collective silence on specific issues
in inter-ethnic social life as a sort of unarticulated existence of empathy. It shows that ordinary Bosnians of different nationalities were
generally keenly aware of the different attitudes
and worldviews of the Other and, with some exceptions, abstained from challenging those feelings in direct interaction with the Other. If they
had been lacking in empathy, they would have
been unable to know on which subjects to keep
silent in order not to hurt the feelings of the
Other, or been unwilling to do so.
But empathy is different from acceptance,
and collective silence was thus an expression of
the awareness of difference and of the painful
knowledge that publicly articulating this difference could lead to open disagreement and conflict, which could have devastating consequences
for local inter-communal life. As one displaced
Serb woman whose sister was married to a Bosniac explained: We speak in a normal way with
our Muslim relatives. But we dont speak about
politics at all. Because we dont think that we
can discuss these issues. It would lead to a conflict. Instead, we talk about the economy and
other issues. This statement shows that Bosnians tended to prefer to articulate themes of

commonality and sharedness in order to maintain functioning social relations across ethnic
boundaries, rather than to risk destroying such
relationships by voicing their different truths
about sensitive issues.12 This cultural emphasis
on downplaying difference was evident before
the war too, though clearly in part sustained by
the legal risk of articulating criticism openly on
certain political and ethno-national issues in
communist Yugoslavia (Bringa 1995).
Yet, if consensus and collective silence allowed
for relatively unproblematic ethnic co-existence
at the local level, the potential for conflict also
indicates the limits of reconciliation in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina. During coffee visits and other social interactions Bosnians may
to some extent have bridged their ethno-national
differences but it is also obvious that such polite
and ritualized encounters indirectly reinforced
the division between the groups at another level,
through the avoidance of issues that could not
be debated or only articulated in a certain politically correct discourse. In other words, silence
was both a strategy of bridging difference and a
marker of difference.
Collective silence has its problematic potential, but open debate about political and moral
attitudes and truths can also be risky. The current hegemonic Western approach to postconflict reconciliation underlines the needs of
inter-group dialogue, establishing a common
truth about the past and engaging in a dialectic
process of apology and forgiveness in order for
the wounds of conflict to be healed. Andrew
Rigby, among others, criticizes this traumafocused perspective on how to overcome conflict:
I am not convinced of the appropriateness of
opening up the past and talking about it as a
means of dealing with the hurt. At a commonsense level it would seem obvious that most
people want to forget the pains of the past and
get on with their lives. [Y]ou can have too
much memory. Too great a concern with remembering the past can mean that the divisions
and conflicts of old never die, the wounds are
never healed (2001: 12).

Co-existence, co-operation, and communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina | 71

The counter-question is, how much silence

and public amnesia a society can contain without undermining its chances of returning to
normal and before the muted wrongs of the
past in a future situation of crisis provide fertile
ground for manipulation, mobilization, and a
desire for revenge.13 This intellectual and academic discussion of the virtues of public silence
and public memorialization/truth-telling is a
complex one, with both sides in the debate
seemingly having a battery of sensible arguments
in their favor.14
It is clear that in the absence of a genuine
spirit of national reconciliation in Bosnia and
Herzegovina ordinary citizens in inter-ethnic encounters have little room to debate the past and
their different truths, which leaves collective silence and respectful distance as their only, or at
least their preferred, strategy to foster peaceful
co-existence in local everyday life. Politicians
and other leaders in todays Bosnia and Herzegovina have not yet created a common discourse
of sharedness and tolerance. They remain stuck
in their bunker positions of defensive nationalism and ethno-national victimization that are
of little use for individual Bosnians striving to
live together and accommodate difference in
their local communities. To the contrary, this
non-conciliatory political rhetoric is a serious
obstruction to the normalization of inter-ethnic
relations, as it provides ordinary Bosnians with
a more or less well-founded fear of being ostracized by members of their own ethnic group for
socializing with the enemy. In the current situation inter-ethnic relations and reconciliation
actually take civil courage.

Conclusion: Researching reconciliation

By analyzing the complex and ambivalent realities of inter-ethnic co-existence in the Bosnian
town of Banja Luka after the end of the war this
article questions the uncritical casting, by many
international architects of post-war reconstruction, of ethnic minority returns as successful
acts of reconciliation in and of themselves. In

Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in other postconflict settings, minority return is relatively
limited in scale and paradoxically often reproduces scattered pockets of semi-isolated ethnic
minority communities, thus minimizing the
level of and need for social interaction across
communal boundaries. Moreover, return has
generally taken place against the will of local
elites among the ethnic majority group, and it
has primarily been motivated by a desire for
justice and longing to go home on the part of
the returnees themselves, rather than by a wish
for ethnic reconciliation. In fact, many Bosniac
informants in Banja Luka described the act of
return in terms of defiance, resistance, and stubbornness, a political and moral statement to
counter the Bosnian Serb project of ethnic
cleansing. Because most permanent returnees
are elderly people, this also raises the issue of
the long-term sustainability of local co-existence. In Banja Luka, like in a village populated
by Serb returnees in the Federation of Bosnia
and Herzegovina in which I later carried out research, dystopic visions of the future prevailed.
It was common to hear the claim that in ten or
twenty years there will be practically no trace
of their own group left in their home area, because by this time well all be dead, and our
children and grand-children will not return to
live here.
Anthropologists who study processes of reconciliation in post-conflict societies will thus be
well-advised to critically analyze international
paradigms of peace-buildingsuch as the notion that ethnic minority return and truth-telling
necessarily bring about co-existence/reconciliationexploring localized patterns of return and
co-existence, understandings of reconciliation
and visions of future life together. Obviously,
such a critical perspective does not imply that
inter-ethnic contact, co-operation, and sympathy across war-time cleavages do not occur.
This article points in particular to two avenues
of fruitful research on post-conflict reconciliation. One is forms of economic and practical
inter-dependence in multi-ethnic communities.
Although fundamentally based on material self-

72 | Anders H. Stefansson

interest such co-operation for purposes of improving meager post-war livelihoods can provide
a nascent sense of trust and local sharedness. Of
course, it should be noted that economic considerations may also lead to the cementing of
patterns of segregation brought about by violent conflict. For example, for the younger generations of Bosniacs from Banja Luka now living
as refugees (or as new citizens) in Western countries, permanent return to their hometown
would entail a dramatic decline in living standards and in their level of social security (Stefansson 2006). A second promising topic of
study centers on the ways in which informal
cultural codes of communication may facilitate
cross-communal social interaction, including
economic co-operation, by articulating issues
of sharing and consensus, and thus silencing
difference and division. Although such strategies of selective silence or cultural censorship
(Sheriff 2000) initially would seem to be a far
cry from jubilant visions of open dialogue between victims and perpetrators and mutual expressions of remorse and forgiveness, they do
seem to provide a rather effective mechanism of
peaceful co-existence in local communities.
Finally, it is becoming increasingly clear that
the concept of reconciliation itself is in grave
need of critical academic exploration. The vocabulary of international peace-building is
dominated by apparently positive and transparent terms such as reconstruction, reconciliation, and justice, but on closer inspection the
meaning and implications of these terms are
highly contested and politicized. What is reconciliation really? Do the arguably thin types of
reconciliation (i.e., inter-ethnic co-existence)
constitute acts of genuine reconciliation, or
are deeper processes of peace-making necessary
to (re)build a more inclusive, stable society?
Likewise, is reconciliation, even when it does
take place in either a thin or a thick version,
always a marker of progress? Is it healthy to forgive ones former enemies, or can resentment in
some cases be a more morally sound reaction,
as it has been suggested recently (Brudholm
2006)? Although scenes of inter-communal un-

derstanding and co-operation are emotional to

observeas I myself have felt during fieldwork
in the Balkansreconciliation can never be a
normative demand from above or from the outside, as this could produce a sense of re-victimization among disadvantaged groups (Ross
2001). Indeed, whose state-building, political,
and economic interests do national reconciliation projects serve (Humphrey 2005)?
By relying on essentialized understandings
of who the enemy sides in particular conflicts
are, discourses of reconciliation may also indirectly reinforce ethnic or social cleavages in
post-conflict societies that hopeful humanitarians actually set out to heal (see Jansen, this volume). Whereas this article makes references to
collective categoriesBosniacs, Bosnian Serbs,
and so onnot all people living in Bosnia and
Herzegovina identify with these groups, nor do
they all blame the war on whole collectivities of
Others (Markowitz 2007; Selimovic;, this volume). For example, when three long-term Bosnian male friends, whose names indicate that
they belong to three different nationalities, met
to drink coffee after the war were they then engaging in an act of reconciliation? From an
emic perspective the answer is probably no.
Although these men had fought in three different armies during the war, it did not seem as if
they had ever lost their ability to imagine the
enemy simultaneously as friendly individuals.
In post-genocide Rwanda, the governing regime
has sought to foster national reconciliation by
eliminating ethnic categories like Hutu and
Tutsi from public discourse altogether (BuckleyZistel 2006). In a similar vein, after World War
II the victorious Yugoslav communists recast
the meaning of violence in ideological, classbased terms, as a fight between fascists and antifascist Partisan forces, rather than as a clash
between ethnic groups. It needs to be further
researched whether or not such radical political
reinterpretations of the fault lines of conflict
lead to better prospects of post-war co-existence
and reconciliation than those understandings
that locate the roots of violence squarely in primordial identities.

Co-existence, co-operation, and communication in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina | 73

Acknowledgments
This work has been supported by grants from
the Danish Research Council for the Humanities and from the Swedish Agency for Emergency Planning (KBM). I want to thank Marita
Eastmond and Focaals two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on earlier drafts
of this article.

5.

6.

Anders H. Stefansson is post-doctoral researcher

at the Department of Anthropology, University
of Copenhagen. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the former Yugoslavia and Denmark, he
has analyzed questions of forced migration, return, place-making and post-war reconstruction. Among his publications is Homecomings:
Unsettling paths of return (2004), co-edited with
Fran Markowitz.
E-mail: andersstefansson@yahoo.dk.

Notes
1. Whereas the fighting itself ended in late 1995
with the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement,
the process of (forced) displacement continued
in some parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina after
this time, for example the exodus in early 1996
of Bosnian Serbs from parts of Sarajevo that
they had controlled during the war but that
were now to be reintegrated into the Federation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sell 2000).
2. Bosnia and Herzegovina is divided into two
entities: the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Serb Republic (Republika Srpska),
the former is further sub-divided into ten cantons.
3. This is particularly true of Bosnian Serb and
Bosnian Croat actors, while the dominant Bosniac (Bosnian Muslim) institutions generally
considered ethnic minority return to be in their
own national interest.
4. The figure of one million returnees lumps together widely different types of return: ethnic
majority return, ethnic minority return, and
the relocation of repatriated refugees who have
returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina but who
have not gone back to their home areas. This ar-

7.

8.

9.
10.

11.

12.

13.

ticle focuses exclusively on ethnic minority return, which has been defined as the return of
an individual to a pre-war home which is located in an area now under the control of another ethnic group, whatever the ethnic distribution in the area prior to the war (Cox 1998:
202).
These fieldworks took place in Sarajevo (1999
2001) and in the Krajina region in northwestern
Bosnia and Herzegovina (20072008).
Local, inter-personal perspectives on reconciliation can be found in Babo-Soares (2004);
Scheper-Hughes (1998); Wilson (2000).
Other relatively optimistic accounts of the effects of ethnic minority return on inter-ethnic
social relations in Bosnia and Herzegovina can
be found in Armakolas (2007); Helms (2003);
Kolind (2007); Pickering (2006); Stefansson
(2003, 2004).
For a more detailed analysis of senses of home
among returnees in Banja Luka see Stefansson
(2006).
In fact, rebuilding of the mosque did not begin
until the summer of 2007.
For more detailed analyses of Serb(ian) attitudes toward war, history and ethno-national
identity see, among others, Anzulovic (1999);
Jansen (2003); Judah (1997); van de Port (1999).
Explorations of the often significant differences
in historical memory between Serbs and Bosniacs include Duijzings (2007) and Miller (2006).
Another proverb states: Evict those who are
served everything, send back our Muslims! (in
Serbo-Croatian this is a rhyme: Otjerajte ove
gotovane, vratite nam nas=e Muslimane!). Nevertheless, such popular expressions that indirectly cast a positive light on the return of
Bosniacs were flatly rejected by the Bosniacs
whose rather cynical interpretation of the
proverbs was that local Serbs perhaps would
like to have the old days returned to them, but
certainly not the old inhabitants. For studies of
urban-rural tension as a result of war-related
migrations in the former Yugoslavia see, for example, Bougarel (1999); Jansen (2005); Stefansson (2007).
For a more general critique of dialogue-centered approaches to social reconstruction, see
Sampson (2003).
For example, it is often assumed that the Titoist
regimes ideological interpretation of World

74 | Anders H. Stefansson

War II in Yugoslavia, including public forgetting

of some war-time massacres and mass graves
issues that were not possible to debate openly
until the 1980scontributed to the whipping
up of fears that ultimately led to violent conflict
in the 1990s (see, e.g., Denich 1994; Hayden
1994). However, this popular argument also has
its critics (e.g., Ignatieff 2003).
14. Research and debate have centered in particular
on the effects of the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, as the most thorough attempt to date to create national reconciliation through open debate about the recent
past (see, e.g., Feldman 2002; Villa-Vicencio and
Verwoerd 2000; Wilson 2001). More general
studies on the politics of memory after violent
conflict or regime change include Hayner
(2001); Minow (1998); Rotberg and Thompson
(2000).

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