Synthetic report - EURAC

8. Conclusion
Three types of general conclusions can be made.
First, addressing the type of the conflict, the Macedonian conflict with the
Albanians comes closest to the “classic” conflict about the extent of minority
rights, addressing questions such as granting political participation/autonomy,
defining a set of rights in the sphere of education, mother language use, and so on.
The fact that the Albanians kept putting forward the Yugoslav-rhetoric postulate of
becoming a “constituent nation” does not change the very nature of the problem.
The Kosovo conflict is, on the contrary, not a conflict about the extent of minority
rights, but rather a conflict of who – Albanians or Serbs – should be the majority.
The Albanians are the majority in Kosovo taken alone, whereas Serbs are the
majority, if Kosovo is taken together with Serbia. The conflicts in Croatia and BiH
can be regarded as conflicts over the subject and scope of the right to selfdetermination.
Second, addressing the nature of the ethno-mobilization process, the
present survey suggests that it was a top-down process driven by the emancipated
political elites of the republics or its parts (BiH). None of the initially presented
models can claim exclusivity as an explanation. It can be said to have been a
“constructionist” process initially, especially with regard to its economic
dimension. It turned into an “instrumentalist” process which, after some time (the
shift of the cognitive frames), also activated a “primordial” process which since
then has been running parallel with the “instrumentalist” process. An exception
from this is likely to be made for Macedonia, where the ethno-mobilization of
Macedonians had predominantly “constructionist” traits. 229
The establishment of a “point of no return” is the final question to be
addressed here. Rejecting historical determinism in any form, it must be stated
that ethno-mobilization ultimately leading to a violent ethnic conflict was
extremely difficult to reverse by political means after Tuđman and the HDZ came
into power in the elections in April/May 1990. In this sense the seizure of power by
this political faction can be regarded as a point of no return with regard to Croatia.
There are also good reasons to argue that the same point of no return (the
elections in Croatia) applies to the conflict in BiH, even if the cognitive frame had
not yet changed there. On the basis of the present survey, it may be regarded as
proven that manifold strong pressure was exerted from Croatia and Serbia. In fact,
this pressure was not the only, but definitely a major factor triggering ethnomobilization
in BiH. Given for example the “letter of intention” of President
Izetbegović conditioning BiH’s staying in Yugoslavia on Serbia and Croatia staying
too 230 , one my claim that without the Serbo-Croatian antagonism affecting the
Bosnian population disastrously, the stability of this country could have been
preserved. The collision course of these two (Serbia and Croatia) was a long history
in which economic factors should not be underestimated. This collision course was
definitely set with the result of the Croatian elections and by this event – this is
229 This is, what can be deduced from the comments of Ilievski who is arguing that “Macedonian
ethno-nationalism wasn’t only ‘not dominant as, for example, Croatian was in Croatia’,
but it was mobilized predominantly in the struggle for international recognition of the
state, in lobbying for the ‘name dispute’ with Greece and the struggle for rights of the Macedonian
minority in Bulgaria, Greece and Albania.”, Ilievski, 34. On the other hand, the
ethno-mobilization of Albanians in Macedonia does not seem to differ much from the general
scheme.
230 See the reference in the Footnote 213.
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