Religion, conflict and prospects for reconciliation in Bosnia, Croatia and Yugoslavia.

• Author: Powers, Gerard F.

Introduction

A history textbook used by high school seniors throughout Serbia blames the outbreak of the current conflict in the former Yugoslavia on the Vatican, which "launched a battle against Orthodoxy and Serbs through the catholic Church and its allies." The Serbs fought back, it goes on, "to prevent a repeat of the genocide they suffered in World War II."(1)

Josip Beljan, writing in the catholic journal, Veritas, declared:

The cross of Christ stands next to the Croatian flag, the Croatian bishop next to the Croatian minister of state....This was truly again a real war for the "honoured cross and golden liberty," for the return of Christ and liberty to Croatia. The church is glad for the return of its people from the twofold slavery -- Serbian and communist.(2)

In November 1992, the leaders of the Islamic, Roman Catholic and Serbian Orthodox communities in Bosnia stated "emphatically" that "[t]his is not a religious war, and that the characterization of this tragic conflict as a religious war and the misuse of all religious symbols used with the aim to further hatred, must be proscribed and is condemned."(3)

These three quotes reflect three differing perspectives on the role of religion in the brutal war in the former Yugoslavia. The "religious war" account, exemplified by the Serbian textbook, contends that specifically religious divisions give the conflict in the former Yugoslavia a dimension not unlike the religious wars Europe has known all too well over the centuries. The Veritas article provides evidence to support the "ethnoreligious war" account of the conflict. According to this view, the conflict is about nationalism, not religion per se, but religion has contributed to the rise of nationalist conflicts. The statement of the religious leaders reflects the "manipulation of religion" account of the war. This explanation acknowledges that religious fears and symbols have been manipulated and abused by cynical ultranationalists for their own ends, but downplays the role of religious differences or religious nationalism in fomenting conflict.

Clearly, there is a religious dimension to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. National and ethnic divisions correspond closely to differences in religious identity. Serbians have traditionally been Orthodox; Croatians are predominantly Catholic; and, in Bosnia, Muslim is both a religious and national identity. The hundreds of churches and mosques that have been intentionally destroyed, the ubiquitous appeals to religion in official propaganda, and the use of religious symbols in torture are just some of the ways the conflict has been defined according to a complex relationship between national and religious identity.

Nevertheless, the religious leaders are essentially correct in downplaying the religious dimension of this war. "It cannot be overemphasized," concludes Reverend Peter Kuzmic, president of the Protestant-Evangelical Council of Croatia and Bosnia, "that the genesis of the war was ideological and territorial, not ethnic and religious."(4) The conflict erupted out of the failure of the Yugoslav idea, a failure in which cultural, political, economic and other types of factors were far more prominent than religious ones. Yugoslavia dissolved in 1991 into a war over competing and mostly incompatible claims of self-determination. None of the six nationalities of the federation was satisfied with the seventy years of the Yugoslav experiment.(5) The Serbs felt that a more united Yugoslavia would end years of discriminatory treatment and give them the power and economic well-being commensurate with their numbers; fearing Serb domination, most of the other nationalities wanted a more decentralized Yugoslavia. After Tito's death, his fragile efforts to balance these competing views of Yugoslavia gave way to a process of economic and political decentralization and disintegration. Serious economic decline coincided with a growing political incompatibility after 1989 between the nascent democratic and nationalist movements in Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia and hard-line communist-turned-nationalist regimes in Serbia and Montenegro.

Unable to maintain a Serb-dominated, centralized Yugoslavia, Serb nationalists, backed by a Yugoslav army intent on maintaining its power, have fought for a more ethnically pure Greater Serbia that would incorporate and, in their view, protect most of the 30 percent of Serbs who live outside of Serbia. The official position of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia has been to seek independence, retaining the internal borders of the Yugoslav republics. However, like their Serbian counterparts, some Croat nationalists in Croatia and Herzegovina have sought to unite the Croat-majority areas of Bosnia into a Greater Croatia.

These conflicting claims of self-determination would be difficult to resolve in any situation. The genocidal character of the Yugoslav conflict has been due to the rise of aggressive and chauvinistic nationalisms in the late 1980s, first in Serbia and then in Croatia and Bosnia. Ultranationalists, especially Serbian leaders, have used all manner of violence, intimidation and propaganda to generate fear of other ethnic, national and religious groups and to destroy any prospects for resolving self-determination claims in nonviolent ways that respect the multiethnic, multinational, multireligious realities of the region.

Of the three accounts of the religious dimension to this conflict, the religious war thesis is the least tenable because it exaggerates the role of religion at least as much as it underestimates the role of other factors, particularly extreme nationalism. The role of religion in the spiral of nationalist violence has been less direct than the ethnoreligious account suggests, yet less a victim of external forces than the manipulation of religion account describes. Religious nationalism has been a factor in this war, especially though by no means exclusively on the Serbian Orthodox side. Religious leaders have been mostly well-intentioned and justified in nourishing the historic links between religious and national identity and in defending their community's rights in the face of grave threats. In doing so, they have unwittingly reinforced, or at least undermined their ability to counter, the ultranationalists' project of religious and national chauvinism.

In developing this argument, this article will first examine the claim that the war is a cultural-religious conflict. Next, the article will consider to what extent religion has legitimized extreme nationalism and violence? Finally, it will look at the prospects for the religious bodies to play a reconciling role after the Dayton Peace Accords.

Religion, Culture Wars and "Ancient Hatreds"

The religious conflict account of the war in the former Yugoslavia implicates religion in fomenting "ancient hatreds." According to this view, the Yugoslav conflict is merely the most recent in a long history of conflict between three major cultures, which are distinguished primarily by religion. "The conflict is about religion, not ethnicity," Henry Kissinger argues, "since all the groups are of the same ethnic stock [Slavs]."(6) Samuel Huntington also sees religion as a central factor in a clash of cultures in the Balkans.(7) He contends that the eastern boundary of western Christianity in 1500 today represents "the Velvet Curtain of culture" that has replaced "the Iron Curtain of ideology" as the most significant dividing line in Europe, a line which has erupted into conflict in Yugoslavia.(8) In Yugoslavia, differences in religion and culture have led to violent conflicts over policy, territory and populations, conflicts which are exacerbated by what he calls "civilizational rallying."(9) Western Europe, particularly Germany and the Vatican, rallied around their co-religionists, pushing for recognition of Croatia and Slovenia as independent states, muting criticism of Croat efforts to partition Bosnia, and arming Croatia. Russian politicians and the Russian Orthodox Church supported Serbia. And Bosnia became a cause celebre for Islamic governments and groups, especially fundamentalists.

Srdjan Vrcan, a Croatian sociologist of religion, blames the dominant religions in the former Yugoslavia for presenting political, social and national conflicts "as centuries-long conflicts between essentially opposed human types, types of cultures and civilizations" which are virtually beyond mediation and compromise. Moreover, he argues, they have presented "the one side as quasi-immaculate and as the side of the Good as such, and [have] depict[ed] the other in demonical or satanic terms as the incarnation of Evil as such."(10) The result is an identification of the state not only with a particular nation but also with a particular culture, a politicization of culture that breeds conflict and war.

The contention of Huntington and Vrcan and others that cultural-religious factors define and exacerbate the conflict mixes partial truths with questionable analysis. It is true that Yugoslavia's rise and fall is the story of an attempt, ultimately unsuccessful, to bridge the religious-cultural fault lines which run through the Balkans: between eastern and western Christianity, between Latin and Byzantine cultures, between the remnants of the Hapsburg and Ottoman Empires and between Christian Europe and Islamic Asia.

The religious leaders in the region are keenly aware of this cultural-religious chasm. Each in their own way feels they are at the frontier, protecting their respective religious and cultural traditions from threats from their two cultural neighbors.(11) The Catholic bishops, for example, argued in early 1991 that the democratic changes in Croatia and Slovenia were threatened by an alliance between communists and Greater Serbia nationalists (including "several of the leading personalities of the Serbian Orthodox Church"), both of whom...