interview by Nerzuk CURAK
FILIPOVIC: Without any doubt, the independence referendum is a turning point in the history of Bosnia-Hercegovina. In that context, it can only be compared with ZAVNOBiH, which is nevertheless the crucial event in our history, mostly because after 480 years it brought about the reestablishment of a Bosnian state as a multilateral commonwealth. We could say that the referendum, in its significance for our history, is right next to ZAVNOBiH.
Why?
Because it determined the future of BH in several ways. It charted the events that were tragic but nevertheless have the potential to bring about the final resolution of the historical essence of BH; of course, depending on whether Bosnian political forces will demonstrate the ability to find a solution that is dictated to BH by history, rather than the solution that certain current, national and international political concepts are offering.
It seems that the Bosnian political forces are neither capable now nor were that in the past, starting with the referendum, to find a solution that corresponds to our history?
Yes, it could be said that political forces in BH are not up to that task.
Interesting situation: on the one hand political forces are not up to such an important act as an independence referendum, and at the same time those forces voted in the parliament to hold that referendum.
Look, history would not be what it is if it did not include such inconsistencies. Just imagine what history would be like if it had some sort of a logical flow, with always clear and obvious consequences of historical events. That dichotomy, that on the one hand we had political parties that were not able to realize such a radical decision, that Bosnia become an independent state, in the way that would not endanger the future of the country, and on the other hand those political parties nevertheless displayed enough political consciousness to take that step, was forthcoming from the situation in 1991 and 1992 everywhere in the former Yugoslavia. We were confused in that situation.
What affected that confusion?
Bosnia was offered two solutions. Either leave Yugoslavia, which was increasingly turning into an extension of Serbia, or stay within the federation and wait for a resolution based on the general positive European developments that were bound to influence BH and Yugoslavia, respectively. At that point it was already clear that Communism was falling and that democracy would prevail. We had the option of shutting ourselves off, taking a stance of a hedgehog and waiting for the positive development of events, and we were convinced that those events would take place in the future. On the other hand we could leave Yugoslavia and thereby in a way create new territory for our political, social, historical and economic development.
Did BH chose the right time to leave Yugoslavia?
See, I always knew that every political opinion based on metaphysical and religious premises is unhistorical and has no appreciation of time as a factor of historical and political events. Consequently, I was very concerned whether our policies, which were greatly influenced by those elements, would be capable of assessing time and choosing the right moment. Unfortunately, it turned out that they weren't. Adil Zulfikarpasic and I were convinced that we should have declared independence together with Croatia and Slovenia. That step would, above all, in that case be much more palatable for Europe and would give additional support to the Slovenian and Croatian departure from Yugoslavia; secondly, it would greatly bring into question any sort of justification for the Serb aggression.
Do you believe that BH, given that Slovenia and Croatia had already declared independence, at that moment should not have demanded independence, again given that it hadn't achieved independence in the same package with Slovenia and Croatia?
Yes, I was convinced that any belated declaration of independence would necessarily result in a war. If we declared independence together with Slovenia and Croatia we had significantly greater chances of avoiding war and of blocking any military action by Serbia in cooperation with the international community. That would be possible because we would have a block of states and a geopolitical combination within which we could offer to Milosevic a treaty about the establishment of a very loose confederation between these three states and the rest of Yugoslavia and thereby neutralize any possibility of war; conversely, if he decided to do something, our chances of defending ourselves successfully would have been greater. I would like to bring attention to a historical moment. In early April 1991, Adil Zulfikarpasic and I were in Ljubljana and Zagreb and had talks with all the relevant political factors; all of them agreed that the departure from Yugoslavia, and all of them had already made the decision to secede, would be much stronger, much more significant, much more relevant and convincing for Europe and in the region, if Bosnia-Hercegovina joined. Immediately after these talks, on April 11, I came to Sarajevo and visited Alija Izetbegovic and told him about these alternatives, which he rejected, because he feared the reaction of the Chetnik forces. I told him then that Chetniks were not a problem, but that the main problem was the Yugoslav People's Army, but he told me that he had received certain guarantees from the Army regarding peace in Bosnia.
To what extent should the then leadership of BH be blamed for failing to leave Serb Yugoslavia together with Slovenia and Croatia?
I think that it is fully responsible for failing to do that. Every following moment was less favorable for several reasons. First, we were aware that the Serbs were arming themselves and organizing their forces in Bosnia; secondly, we were isolated; thirdly, we provoked a negative reaction by the Croats. A lot in the later behavior of Croats with respect to Bosnia, which was not positive, which even inflicted a lot of damage on Bosnia, including the Croat aggression against Bosnia, can to a certain extent be interpreted as a result of our decision to view the YPA attack on Croatia as an external event that had nothing to do with us. If we left Yugoslavia together with Croats in April 1991, our position with respect to Croats would have been different, there would be no reason for Croat secession and Tudman's policy, regardless of his deeply ingrained anti-Bosnian views, would not be valid, because we would have signed relevant treaties that would be tripartite treaties etc. Therefore, our position would have been much better.
To what extent were Croatia and Slovenia interested in being included in that arrangement?
They offered to us to even wait a month until we finish internal preparations.
Who told you that?
Tudman and everyone in Ljubljana - Bavcar, Bucar, Jansa, Kucan...
If all of that is true, it is difficult to understand Izetbegovic's indecisiveness.
I think that he did not understand clearly enough the relations in Yugoslavia and that he did not understand that Yugoslavia could not survive if Croats and Slovenes seceded and that in that case our situation would be much worse, because in case we stayed within Yugoslavia, we would be transformed by force into a minority in a Serb state that would be dominated by Serbs, and on the other hand, if we did secede after that, the consequences would be much worse, as that could be treated as an internal question.
But, how is it possible that in such a short period of time there is lack of understanding of historical processes, and then soon afterwards there is a vote to hold a referendum?
See, I think that Izetbegovic realized, once he missed an opportunity to leave Yugoslavia, I am convinced, at the time when consequences would have been much less severe, that the decision to stay within Yugoslavia carried numerous risks with it. I personally did not think that the risks of staying within Yugoslavia compared with the risk of war, because I was convinced that it was better to avoid war as long as Yugoslavia recognized sovereignty of BH and BH was not divided.
Here is a question of a comparative nature. Given the development of the situation in Kosovo and the fact that the number of ethnic Albanians killed by Milosevic's regime was incomparably lower than the number of people killed in Bosnia by the very same regime and its epigones, would you agree that Albanians had a much better policy than Bosniaks?
Yes, they did, without doubt. Demaqi, who charted that policy, was much smarter. He advised Albanians - be patient, no one stays in charge forever; we could have done the same in the situation when survival was at stake. I advocated that we stay within Yugoslavia provided we were given all sorts of guarantees by Yugoslavia (with the possibility of a new internal reorganization of the country) and the international community, while we would wait for the turn of events that could not under any circumstances be favorable for Milosevic.
I'm sorry, but in that constellation, the Croats would have never accepted that.
The Croat factor was not of crucial importance in that. They served Tudman's policy - BH was supposed to enter the war and take some burden off Croatia. Unfortunately, we tried to play a double game, we were giving Croats the impression that we would enter the war on their side, that we did not want our men to go fight in Croatia... We created among Croats an illusion that we would ultimately fight as their allies, while on the other hand we did not take any decisive steps to stop obvious signs of Serb aggression and abuse of territory of BH against Croatia. We had to play a clear game. We had to provoke a big international scandal because of the abuse of Bosnian territory by Perisic's Corps and attacks from Bosnian territory on Dubrovnik, and the attack on the village of Ravne near Capljina. I find it very interesting and indicative that Serb-Croat clashes in Bosnia did not result in many casualties and big battles. This indicates to me that these were simply scuffles whose purpose was to mark territories in advance of the final division of Bosnia between Serbs and Croats. We were passive in that. That was an example of incompetence of our politicians. On the other hand, our authorities did not take into account another important circumstance that had to be very important in our policy. We had to realize that neither Serb nor Croat nationalism could be a friend of Bosnia and that they would always find a way to agree on the account of Bosniaks. That is why we had to be much more clear in that sense. We either had to side with Croats totally, and immediately in 1991, or stay with Serbs and then neutralize their actions with respect to Bosnia and wait for a suitable time. We had a chance to leave that whole drama of the Balkan region without a war. We had demographic, cultural, intellectual and economic propulsion, we were not only the most numerous but also the dominant group in BH and a very significant factor in the context of regional policy, and all these elements in case of peaceful development, regardless of circumstances of that development, would have worked for us. My estimates indicate that by year 2001, today, we would have been 62 percent of overall population of Bosnia-Hercegovina, we would have been economically strong, especially if the state implemented some measures to return confiscated property... On the other hand, we would have had moral integrity both with respect to Serbs and Croats; however, that opportunity was missed, but I was never able to understand why Izetbegovic, despite clear indications that secession meant war, chose secession, although he kept saying that there would be no war. My guess was that he had some guarantees; unfortunately, it turned out that he had no guarantees and that he took us into an adventure that, regardless of objective reasons for it, was not fully necessary, but was to a large extent a consequence of our political incompetence and lack of understanding, and especially mistakes in the reading of the historical and political moment.
To what extent did so-to-speak "astral" concept of statehood advocated by the SDA contribute to the combination of these political mistakes? The SDA believed that territory was irrelevant for nationhood.
Nerzuk, you are correct. That could be proven in several ways. Their exclusive linking of the identity of Muslims, i.e. Bosniaks, to religion, rather then to the Bosnian state and its thousand years old tradition, proves that they actually reduced the meaning of statehood to the existence of Islam and Muslims, which implies the possibility that Muslims, in some other configuration, survive. Another indication of that is the fact that the SDA requested opinion of some distinguished Muslim intellectuals as early as in 1991 regarding whether the Muslim political leadership should consider the possibility of the division of Bosnia. For me that was absolutely impossible because I was aware that if we abandoned the terrain of the Bosnian state and its territorial, state-legal, and historical integrity, we would abandon every possible political terrain that could be effectively defended in any aspect. The lack of that feeling for territory, which is ultimately obvious from the fact that the SDA did not even attempt to defend some territories that were a priori written off as non-Muslim, and therefore, non-Bosnian, as the implication was that every Serb territory was a part of Serbia and every Croat territory a part of Croatia in some final version, confirms that the SDA was not a Bosnian but a Muslim political party. And Bosnian Muslims do not have and do not need a separate national program. Their program is democratic BH as a shared country because we can survive only under such conditions.
Let me ask you a question that may strike you as being strange. Do you believe today that for the existence of Bosniaks a wider statehood framework, wider than BH, is a better solution than any form of Bosniak unilateralism?
Look, we are not a nation that has a legacy of narrow national concept of statehood. The old Bosnian state was a multilateral state; similarly the Ottoman empire, which had a lot of influence on us Muslims was not based on ethnicity and did not provide conditions for developing a narrow national concept of statehood. Therefore, we were used to wider, not national, but supranational and multinational state framework and that is a very important moment; ultimately, that is why we accepted to live in such states. Another facet is that we had many reasons to view Yugoslavia as one of possible solutions for us because many Bosniaks live in Montenegro and Serbia. Third, we had cultural and spiritual unity that was expressed in the Islamic Religious Community which we so easily discarded in favor of a local Islamic community neglecting the fact that the Islamic Religious Community was a vary important factor in bringing all of us together and that it emphasized the supranational integration side of our spiritual attitude and life. Now, we are going into new integrations because we should not be bothered by European integration or some wider Balkan integration.
In that case, what is the origin of national exclusivism of the more recent Bosniak politics?
I was also surprised by the sudden prominence of the idea of a national state even at the expense of the existence of the Bosniak people and Bosnia as a state. That was irresponsible with respect to other Bosnian nations, because Croats in Tudman's version of their policies fully accepted the solution that they are not a Bosnian nation but simply Croats, Serbs that they are not a Bosnian nation but simply Serbs living in the territory called Bosnia, which does not necessarily have to be known by that name; therefore, we brought into question all the dimensions of our historical existence for the sake of an option that was at that time very questionable. On the other hand, we neglected a very important issue - that history never offers final solutions and that, therefore the option with independence did not have to be the ultimate solution of everything, and that's how we behaved. With greater political wisdom and more skilled use of historical circumstances we could have done better. Much was done in BH to convince the Bosniak public that the war was absolutely unavoidable and that in any case we would be an object of extermination. That is literally a lie. If any group did oppose Yugoslavia, Muslims from Sandzak did. They organized themselves here in the war and fought against Yugoslavia, the YPA and Serbs and on the other hand they expressed their opposition to the attack and aggression in Sandzak itself and they were not exterminated. That means that it is not true that if we did not secede from Yugoslavia we would have been exterminated.
Izetbegovic declares that for his big dilemma. Whether he acted correctly, and what would have happened otherwise?
Nothing would have happened. The international attention was already focused, and on the other hand we are now pariahs. Here, we have a state in which we are not masters, in which we are supervised by both Croat and Serb nationalists, in which we have to go to Svilanovic [Yugoslav Minister of Foreign Affairs] and Djindjic [Prime Minister of Serbia] or Racan [Prime Minister of Croatia] to find out whether we can or cannot do something on our own, Petritsch [High Representative for Bosnia-Hercegovina] visits other states on our behalf and negotiates, etc. Please, what does that mean? In that Yugoslavia, regardless of what it was like, we had much better conditions for preserving all the dimensions of our statehood, probably with more forceful political, propaganda and police control; I'm trying to say that in history one must take time into account and be patient. After all, see what happened with Albanians. They patiently suffered since 1971 sanctions, restrictions, abolishment of autonomy, this and that, and waited until circumstances were ripe so that no one, including Serb nationalism, as exemplified in Milosevic, could prevent Albanian self-rule and autonomy.
Today, Kosovo is a de facto independent state without formal independence, and BH is a legally sovereign state, while actually it is a big sovereign nothing.
We do not even have legal sovereignty. In history, what matters is the de facto state which has the potential to be transformed into de jure state as no one can deny the right of 90 percent of citizens of a state to decide about its fate, especially if those 90 percent are smart and do not risk de facto freedom and rule over the state for some 10 percent of illusion, which is what we did.
After ten years, when you compare BH that participated in the March 1992 referendum, with the one we have today, did Bosnia gain or lose?
We got an illusion of independence, while actually we regressed 50 years to the past. We shall need at least 30 years to get back to the intensity and quality of all modes of life we had in 1990 and 1991, before the war. This will happen in new circumstances. I don't know what will at that point happen with our independence. We shall probably by then be a part of a great union where it will be totally irrelevant whether we function as some sort of an independent and sovereign country. That is the irony of history, which, when it is not understood, plays games with people.