BORDERS AND INTEGRATION: BECOMING A BOSNIAN-AMERICAN. (Memories of Judgment: Constructing the ICTY'S Legacies)

• Published date: 22 September 2020
• Author: Karamehic-Oates, Adna,Karamehic-Muratovic, Ajlina
• Date: 22 September 2020

I. Introduction 330
                II. Ethnic Cleansing and Genocide 331
                III. Bosnian Refugees and Temporary
                Protection Systems in Europe 334
                A. Temporary Protection as Repatriation 338
                IV. A Durable Solution to Displacement--Resettlement in The
                United States 341
                A. A Brief Overview of the US Refugee System 342
                B. Bosnians in the US Refugee System 343
                V. An Immigrant Success Story: Bosnian-Americans 345
                VI. Conclusion 348
                

I. INTRODUCTION

As a result of the conflict in the early 1990s, over half of Bosnia and Herzegovina's (hereafter simply 'Bosnia') 4.3 million people were driven from their homes. Of this number, over a million were internally displaced, while the rest left the country as refugees for various countries around the world. According to estimates by Bosnian authorities, at least 2 million people originating from Bosnia currently live outside the country, which is the highest number recorded by the Ministry since it began publishing an annual report on migration flows in the late 2000s. (3) Given that the migration outflows from Bosnia prior to the conflict were minor compared to the exodus triggered by the conflict, the vast majority of the Bosnian global diaspora is therefore constituted by forced or involuntary migrants.

For this fleeing population, the process of finding a safe haven was a tumultuous experience. Despite the protections outlined in the 1951 Geneva Convention, they encountered a tightening of borders and restrictive reception policies among former Yugoslavia's neighboring nations, where many refugees initially sought refuge. This 'border work,' using Jones and Johnson's (4) term, can be contrasted with the reception policies Bosnian refugees encountered in the United States, which offered them a permanent solution to displacement through resettlement. The possibility for 'normal life' through the 'border work' of the US government at that juncture in time has been manifested in the development and flourishing of Bosnian communities and a Bosnian-American way of life in the places identified by the US State Department for resettlement, such as St. Louis, Missouri.

This paper reflects on the immigration policies of European nations and the United States towards Bosnian refugees in the 1990s, comparing the conditions for integration provided by the policy framework in each case. It argues that the permanent solution offered by the United States offered more thorough conditions for integration and as such established the foundations for starting over and living normally in a new place and environment. This was critical given the cataclysmic events refugees had experienced in their homeland. In other words, while the conflict upended all notions of comfort and safety in Bosnia, US policies at that time gave Bosnian refugees the chance to rebuild their lives and communities. They have done so in various American cities and towns and thus represent an interesting case study in terms of successful social, cultural, and economic immigrant adaptation.

II. ETHNIC CLEANSING AND GENOCIDE

Over almost four years beginning in late 1991, Serb nationalists carried out a campaign of violent ethnic cleansing and genocide. Their leader Radovan Karadzic did not parse words in the methods they intended to use in order to transform Bosnia from a historically multiethnic homeland into an ethnically homogeneous territory: "They do not understand that there will be rivers of blood [...] and that the Muslim people would disappear." (5) As representatives from Helsinki Watch, a division of the organization Human Rights Watch, found when they traveled to Bosnia in the spring of 1992 in order to investigate violations of human rights, a process of extermination is exactly what Serb paramilitary units had begun:

The full-scale war that has been raging in Bosnia-Hercegovina since
                early April has been marked by extreme violations of international
                humanitarian law, also known as the laws of war. Indeed, violations of
                the rules of war are being committed with increasing frequency and
                brutality throughout the country. The extent of the violence inflicted
                on the civilian population by all parties is appalling. Mistreatment in
                detention, the taking of hostages and the pillaging of civilian
                property is widespread throughout Bosnia-Hercegovina. The most basic
                safeguards intended to protect civilians and medical establishments
                have been flagrantly ignored. The indiscriminate use of force by
                Serbian troops has caused excessive collateral damage and loss of
                civilian life. A policy of 'ethnic cleansing' has resulted in the
                summary execution, disappearance, arbitrary detention, deportation and
                forcible displacement of hundreds of thousands of people on the basis
                of their religion or nationality. In sum, the extent of the violence
                raises the question of whether genocide is taking place. (6)
                

The horrific nature of what was happening being clear to them, the authors did not hold anything back in their recommendation to the United Nations (UN) Security Council to exercise its authority under the 1951 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and intervene in Bosnia.

As is now well-known, the international community's response to what was occurring in Bosnia and to appeals such as the above was to remain noncommittal. In Gow's view, "bad timing, bad judgment, an absence of unity and, underpinning everything else, the lack of political will" were a combination that constituted "the essential characteristics of diplomatic dereliction." (7) For Bosnia's defenders, the implications of that dereliction were catastrophic, as European governments (and later US President Clinton, reversing his previous stance) refused to lift the 1991 UN arms embargo against Bosnian Muslims and Croats. (8) This essentially tipped the weaponry balance in favor of the Vojska Republike Srpske (Army of the Republika Srpska), or VRS, for the duration of the conflict, as they had inherited weapons stockpiles from the Yugoslav National Army. The policy facilitated a relentless assault on the country and its citizens by preventing the Bosnians from effectively fighting back.

An important factor that made the Bosnian and other Yugoslav conflicts so riveting to scholars of ethnicity and nationalism was how ethnicized and violent they became, given that, as Gagnon writes, "indicators on the ground, within specific communities, showed no sign of inevitable violence." (9) He and other scholars have pushed back on the explanation of the conflict as the product of 'ancient ethnic hatreds' which was promulgated widely among Western journalists, academics and policymakers, instead studying the process of ethnicization more critically in order to explain what occurred and why. For Gagnon, violence along ethnic lines was a policy pursued by certain Yugoslav elites in order to destroy existing social realities:

To motivate someone, it is necessary to tap into relationships, into
                relational senses of identity and self, or into environmental factors
                that do so. The violence of ethnic conflicts is thus not meant to
                mobilize people by appealing to ethnicity - that is, it does not tap
                into these relational processes. Rather, its goal is to fundamentally
                alter or destroy these social realities. Indeed, given the rootedness
                of such realities in peoples' everyday lives, the only way to destroy
                them and to impose homogeneity onto existing, heterogeneous social
                spaces is through massive violence." (10)
                

What this policy meant for Bosnians living in towns and villages throughout the country - particularly in mixed communities - is that, as if overnight, neighbors ceased to be neighbors and became perpetrators of war crimes. Anthropologist Tone Bringa illustrated the development of mistrust and fear among individuals previously peacefully sharing space and place in a conflict imposed from outside in the documentary "We Are All Neighbours". (11) This transformation of communities occurred across Bosnia: the safety and security of homes were transgressed as VRS militia and police forcibly entered and arrested 'suspects' or committed other heinous crimes while family members had no choice but to stand aside. (12) Buildings and cultural symbols associated with a particular ethnic group were severely shelled and damaged, and homes themselves were set ablaze, many burned down to just the foundations. (13)

This context is what hundreds of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, but also Bosnian Croats, left behind as they fled from an anticipated attack, or were simply expelled and forced to hand over keys and sign over ownership of their property. Their homes are now by and large in the Bosnian territorial entity the Republika Srpska, translated to "Serb Republic," which is comprised of territories that were violently attacked and cleansed of non-Serb residents. The formalization of the Republika Srpska at the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995 was thus a de facto acceptance of the results of the ethnic cleansing project that had been carried out over the previous three and a half years. It is also the place European policymakers envisioned repatriating the refugees that had sought shelter in their countries, as will be discussed in the following section.

III. BOSNIAN REFUGEES AND TEMPORARY PROTECTION SYSTEMS IN EUROPE

The first wave of migration triggered by the VRS' ethnic cleansing campaign occurred in 1992, the first year of the war. A second wave occurred in 1993-1994; and the last following the attack on Srebrenica in...