Warfare to the Last Bosniak on the Drina: Guardians of Their Own Srebrenica Camp

Written by: Ćamil Duraković 

Srebrenica has long been, in the eyes of the media and key decision-makers - as they like to call themselves - more of a political phenomenon than a real city where people live. 

In those same views, its history of heroic resistance during the war and the genocide that occurred after its fall do not represent a point of respect, but rather a tool for grabbing a larger piece of power. Larger than what belongs to them, as local leaders, in political games at higher levels of government. I wonder why. And I somehow came close to an answer. 

Namely, our basic assumption in the joint fight against genocide deniers and extremists is that 'our' people are inherently good. The assumption is that despite the wavering of private interests, backroom deals, and 'positioning,' we all remain very aware of the common goal before us? Do we accept that our struggle is shared? Do we truly know the real will and motivation of each of us in our struggle?

Recently, through conversations about exchanging experiences of peoples who have gone through genocide and suffering, I heard that in Nazi concentration camps - there were prisoner-guards or Funktionshäftlinge. They were called the prisoner self-government, where certain inmates were tasked with supervising and controlling others. This reduced the costs of managing the camps, and the collaborators would very quickly immerse themselves in the role assigned to them by the criminal.

The thought that someone could become an overseer of their own people's suffering seems unimaginable to us, and then, when we think a little, we very easily find all possible justifications that person found, which perhaps the inmates themselves under their control also found for them.

 

More than twenty years have passed since the genocide, and I live in the entity of Republika Srpska. With every news item I watch on the so-called 'public' entity broadcaster, with every headline I read in the newspapers, and with every conversation about 'situation assessment,' I cannot get out of my head the thought that we still live in a camp, an open-air camp. This is not that already told story, but I want to offer you something else in support of this. 

We live under conditions of parole. In it, we accept leading relatively normal lives, provided we agree that there are significant limitations on what can belong to us and what we can demand from public authorities. This system breeds subjects; in it, political leaders very quickly become either 'too' rebellious - and the community marginalizes them, because it does not want 'problems with the authorities' - or they drown in comfort, becoming blind collaborators of the system that robs us of basic rights and attacks our freedom.

In such a context, Bosniaks agree to dialogue. They take positions, communicate with the authorities. From municipality to municipality, there are friendly mayors who consider themselves incredible simply because they treat non-Serb citizens and villages where Bosniak and Croatian returnees live equally in their work. Bravo! But is that supposed to be the pinnacle for us? 

Every month, our representatives go to sessions, where few ask them anything, and they themselves quickly get used to it being easier to play at crying and protesting than to bravely take stands and seriously prepare criticism of the regime. I do not blame them; their predecessors did not accomplish much there either, and we remember times when there were 15 or 16 Bosniaks in the National Assembly, so some things could not pass without their hands. Our disappointments do not end there. Then we have to be careful not to 'cause problems' for official Sarajevo, because the history of our local uprisings is, for them, a diary of additional burdens in negotiations about 'more important matters.' 

Brave individuals in institutions in Sarajevo manage to move some things, while accomplices from HDZ BiH put spokes in their wheels, so we barely manage to secure a minimum of funds and aid to maintain the dignity of our returnees in the RS.

The majority are silent, strong in their social media statuses, even louder at closed iftars and gatherings, but few offer concrete suggestions on what can be done. The price of all brave moves is, conditionally speaking, too high. The political culling of old cadres is always a risky business and an 'unnecessary' media burden. And some new and young people, well, they also come as a risk, because who wants to deal with faces from the Srebrenica bazaar, so it always goes along lines of least resistance. Hush up, turn a blind eye, please, get rid of them, settle them, calm them down, and so on. 

While we fight among ourselves on our own doorstep, we experience former enemies inviting us to peace, so they would impose some order among us according to their measure, while those from Sarajevo can't wait for something to be said about us, because it is better to talk about jostling in Srebrenica than about conflicts of interest among the bigwigs in the capital. And among us, among us it is more interesting for the people to watch video clips of clashes in Srebrenica mosques, while our discussions boil down to divided funds and broken promises of aid. All this happens on a personal level, all with the fifth coffee of the day already drunk, while our hardworking farmer works and minds his own business, the zoon politikon of Srebrenica at the Robna kuća or of Sarajevo in the cafes of Titova Street figures out how to appear smarter and stronger.

Our people are disappearing, and we agree to be slaves. Political leaders, ready to accept the role of camp guards for their own people. Years pass, and we wait for someone to come who will have the strength and authority to slam a fist and tell us all - which path we should take. And so, waiting for the arrival of some great leader who will not come, lost among ourselves, we only have the opportunity to wage war among ourselves until the last Bosniak on the Drina.