Yugoslavia: A History of its Demise - Indymedia

UNWANTED INDEPENDENCE 191
Muslim party under the leadership of Alija Izetbegović had to call itself “the
Party of Democratic Action”. The fear of ethnic polarization was indeed only too
justified, but the chosen solution was unserviceable, and the ban had to be lifted
later. In the cities, above all in Sarajevo but also in Tuzla, many people,
especially younger people, managers, and intellectuals, wanted to escape the
national obsessions and their dangers, and the privileged supranational groups.
The communists now subscribed to an (ethnically neutral) reform course. The
new, all-Yugoslav party, the “League of Reform Forces”, established by Prime
Minister Marković in early August 1990, also entered the race. 39
The first free elections in Bosnia-Herzegovina were set for 18 November 1990,
a week after the elections in Macedonia. Visiting Bosnia three weeks before the
elections, I found the atmosphere tense and highly-strung; there had been no
“political spring” in Bosnia and no enthusiasm for democracy. In fact, the
politicians and populations of all three nationalities would have preferred it if there
had still been a modestly authoritarian but “liveable” Yugoslavia, which would
cover up national antagonisms and render difficult decisions unnecessary.
The reason for the bad prospects for stability must be sought primarily in the
orientation of the Serbian Democratic Party and its leader, Radovan Karadžić, a
psychiatrist from Montenegro who had moved to Bosnia. As Karadžić told me on
the eve of the elections, 40 his party would not accept Bosnian secession from the
Yugoslav federation under any circumstances. Even a confederal Yugoslavia
was unacceptable for Karadžić, let alone an independent Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The Serbs would be a “minority” in such a state, and this was absolutely
unbearable for them. If his concept did not prevail, Karadžić said, the Serbian
people in Bosnia-Herzegovina would declare themselves “sovereign” and
proceed to establish autonomous Serbian areas.
The other nationalities of Bosnia viewed the Serbian attitude as nothing less
than blackmail, noting that the Serbs were openly threatening to stage an uprising
and that, in the Serbian view, all districts in which Serbs lived, even where they
were in the minority, had to be “Serbia”. At that time, this was still considered to
mean that the Serbs would have the authority in those areas, but not that they
would resort to expelling or murdering the non-Serbs. This Serbian blackmail
had operated in Bosnian politics already from 1988 on. Many members of the
LCY Central Committee or parliamentary deputies from the republic, above all
Muslims and Croats, would have regularly voted with the Slovenes and Croats in
the appropriate federal forums, but they could not do so, because the Serbian
delegates from Bosnia wanted to support Milošević, and they thought it best to
give in to them in order to safeguard the cohesion of the republic.
The Muslim party under Izetbegović held the view that a federation such as
that advocated by Serbia, would, after the withdrawal of Slovenia and Croatia,
necessarily assume the form of a Serb-dominated structure. But it could not be
demanded of Muslims and Croats that they live in a Serbian dependency. Thus,
in Izetbegović’s view, 41 a “Bosnian consensus” was essential. This state
community would be neither Muslim-ruled nor would it simply remain within a