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Background Report on
Bosnia-Hercegovina
Report originally written in 1994. Only the sections of
Issues / Analysis and the Postscript have been updated since then.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Current Crisis
If you know it, you know if for …
Caveat on statistics
Geography
People and culture
Economy
History
World Reaction
Postscript
Bibliography
NOTE: Except in the very earliest part of the History
section, "Bosnia"
is used below to refer to Bosnia-Hercegovina. "Communist Yugoslavia" refers to the Yugoslav state
1945-1991, composed of 6 republics - Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia - and Serbia's 2 autonomous
provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina. "Yugoslavia"
refers to the present Yugoslavia,
i.e., the former Communist Yugoslav republics of Serbia
and Montenegro.
THE CURRENT CRISIS: Civil war has raged since Bosnia
declared its independence from Yugoslavia in March 1992.
There are reports of ethnic cleansing (the new euphemism for murdering or
exiling anyone not of your particular tribe), detention camps, mass rape and
daily casualties. An estimated 10,000 people have died in Sarajevo
alone in the past 2 years.
IF YOU KNOW IT, YOU KNOW IT FOR (an attempt to help you
integrate what you might already know of this nation): Its capital, Sarajevo,
was site of the assassination of Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand, which
triggered World War I. It was also the site of the
1984 Winter Olympics, whose stadium has since become a massive graveyard.
CAVEAT ON
STATISTICS: They are almost non-existent for the 2 years since Bosnia
declared its independence. I have given them for Bosnia
when available; on occasion, as noted, I have
given them for Communist Yugoslavia.
Geography Back to table of
contents
SIZE: 19,741 sq. mi. (roughly the size of New
Hampshire and Vermont
combined)
CAPITAL: Sarajevo,
pop. 525,980 (1991), seat of the head of all Muslims in Communist Yugoslavia,
of a Roman Catholic archbishop and of an Orthodox metropolitan (roughly the
equivalent of an archibishop).
TOPOGRAPHY: Mostly mountainous and densely forested,
with arable land less than half the total, most of it in the north. Bosnia
has about 12 mi. of coastline, where the Neretva
River flows into the Adriatic.
WIDER GEOGRAPHICAL SETTING: In the Dinaric
Alps on the eastern side of the Adriatic Sea,
bordered by the Communist Yugoslav republics of Serbia
(to the east, with 34,116 sq. mi.), Montenegro
(southeast) and Croatia
(north & west).
CLIMATE: Hot summers, cold winters.
People & Culture Back to table of
contents
POPULATION: 4,364,000 (1991 est.); 220.6 persons per sq.
mi. Life expectancy (1980-82): women 73, men 68. Most of Bosnia's
population are Southern Slavs, but they divide
themselves into three groups. Ca. 1991, when independence was declared and
before the movement of massive numbers of refugees, those groups were Muslim
Slavs at 43.7% of the population, Eastern Orthodox Serbs at 31.3% and Roman
Catholic Croats at 17.2%. Thus one can be a Bosnian Serb or a Bosnian Croat - not to be confused with
Serbians from Serbia
and Croatians from the Communist Yugoslav republic (now independent) of Croatia.
RELIGION: See "Population," above. In
Communist Yugoslavia as a whole, ca. 1991, the breakdown by religion was 43%
Orthodox, 30% Catholic, 14% Muslim.
LITERACY RATE: 85.5% of adult population
LANGUAGES: Serbo-Croatian
CULTURAL ACHIEVEMENTS: Best known writer is Ivo Andric,
a Bosnian Croat, Nobel-winning author (1961) of The Bridge on the Drina.
TIDBITS: At the dirt-poor mountain
village
of Medugorje (near Mostar), on 24
June 1981, 6 teenagers claimed to see a miraculous apparition of
the Virgin Mary (still not officially recognized by the Catholic Church). It
was the first such apparition since those of Lourdes,
France in 1858 and
Fatima,
Portugal in 1917. From
Stanley's
Eastern Europe on a Shoestring:
" 'Religious tourism' is being developed Yugoslav-style as if this were
a beach resort . . . The highlight of any visit to Medugorje is an apparition and these are usually on
Monday and Friday. . . . Miracles
also occur. . . . It's possible to arrange audiences with the original visionaries who saw the Virgin in
1981 . . . [they] still receive daily messages from the Virgin and on the
25th of each month a message to the world is passed on through them" (p.
838).
Issues: Why do racist disagreements
necessarily lead to violence? Why do religious differences also lead to
violence?
Analysis
Bosnia
has a double whammy: its rival ethnic groups are also irreconcilable
religious enemies, i.e., Serbians of the Orthodox Church, Croatians who are Roman
Catholic, and Muslims, whom you could call Bosnian Muslims or Muslim Slavs.
Racism means one judges a man not by his ideas and
actions, but by an inherited trait: his race. "Racism," wrote Ayn
Rand, "is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is
the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man's
genetic lineage - the notion that a man's intellectual and characteriological
traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. . . .
Racism claims that the content of a man's mind (not his cognitive apparatus,
but its content) is inherited: that
a man's convictions, values and character are determined before he is born,
by physical factors beyond his control." ("Racism," The Virtue of Selfishness, p. 172.)
Because they believe race rather than mind matters,
argument and persuasion are seldom used by racists against their enemies. A
Bosnian Serb will shoot a complete stranger who happens to be a Bosnian
Muslim, for no other reason than that he was born a Muslim.
If that weren't trouble enough, the differing ethnic
groups in Bosnia
also have different religions. Like philosophy, religion offers a
comprehensive view of man and the world: what reality is like, what men are
like, how they ought to behave. Unlike philosophy, religion is based on
faith, on accepting ideas without evidence or proof. Since the ideas cannot
be proved or disproved, reasonable argument is, in the end, useless. For
those who have only religion to guide them, serious disagreements lead
inevitably to fisticuffs. The strong religious elements in Bosnia
make the racist elements even more deadly.
FURTHER READING
On religion vs. philosophy, see Ayn Rand, "Faith
and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World," Philosophy: Who Needs It?, pp. 70-92 (hardcover).
On racism, see Ayn Rand, "Racism," Return of the Primitive, ed. P.
Schwartz, pp. pp. 179-188 (paper).
On racism in Nazi Germany, see Leonard Peikoff, The Ominous Parallels, p. 48
(hardcover).
All the above are available through the
Ayn Rand Bookstore.
Economy Back to table of
contents
PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS: Timber, grain, fruit, vegetables,
tobacco and minerals (coal, iron ore, bauxite, zinc, mercury, manganese);
used to produce much of Communist
Yugoslavia's armaments. Agriculture used to occupy about 2/3 of the
population. GDP (1991) $14 billion. Main source of foreign exchange was the
tourist trade (mostly cheap package tours to the Adriatic coast), which has
largely ceased due to the civil war.
CURRENCY: No data. The dinar was the currency of
Communist Yugoslavia. In late 1991, after a bout of 2000% inflation and
subsequent revaluation of the currency (10,000 dinars became one new dinar),
US$1 = 22 dinars.
INFLATION RATE: No data.
PER CAPITA INCOME: Average monthly income in Communist
Yugoslavia ca. 1991 was $400, but most Yugoslavs received "free"
health care and subsidized housing, and worked 2-3 jobs.
Issue: Like any other nation, Bosnia
would need to become economically self-sufficient to survive.
Analysis
Bosnia
will never become a wealthy country through agriculture (not enough arable
land) or maritime trade (land-locked, except for a 12-mile stretch of coast).
It has some mineral resources and some armaments factories left over from its
Communist days, but these are prime targets for any enemies, internal or
external.
This doesn't mean it's condemned to poverty. Countries
much smaller and less fertile (Bermuda, or Hong
Kong under British control) have become prosperous when they had
the proper political and economic outlooks: recognition of individual rights,
including property rights, which is to say: capitalism.
Not surprisingly, given Bosnia's
recent history as part of a totalitarian, Communist state, the proper ideas
are not in circulation.
FURTHER READING: Ayn Rand, "What Is
Capitalism?" Capitalism, The
Unknown Ideal, pp. 11-34 (and other essays in the same volume).
Available through the
Ayn Rand
Bookstore.
QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: Ayn Rand wrote, "The
recognition of individual rights entails the banishment of physical force
from human relationships: basically, rights can be violated only by means of
force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others. The only
function of the government, in such a society, is the task of protecting
man's rights, i.e., the task of protecting him from physical force; the
government acts as the agent of man's right of self-defense, and may use
force only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use; thus
the government is the means of placing the retaliatory use of force under objective control. ("What Is
Capitalism?", ibid. p. 19). Given this, what is the main factor in Bosnia,
aside from Communist ideology, that would prevent the introduction of
capitalism?
History Back to table of
contents
Bosnia-Hercegovina was historically two separate
territories: Bosnia,
the area around the Bosna river, and Hercegovina, a small territory ruled by
a *herceg* (similar to a duke).
When our knowledge of the area begins, it was inhabited
by Illyrian tribes. By the early first century A.D. it had been conquered by
the Roman Empire and was ruled as part of the
province
of Illyricum. When the Empire was
divided in 395, the present Bosnia
and Croatia
stayed with the Western Empire, while Serbia
went to the Eastern Empire. This helps explain why
most Serbians are Eastern Orthodox, and most Croatians are Roman Catholic.
The Slavs (cf. the "Population" section above)
moved into central Europe from Asia
beginning in the 5th c., in the mass migrations that occurred during the
decline and fall of the Roman Empire. The Slavs were
so often captured and sold other peoples of Western Europe
that the word "slave" in English, and its equivalent in German,
French, Italian, Spanish and Arabic, come from the word "Slav."
Most of Bosnia's
population is of Slav descent, specifically of the branch called Southern
Slavs (vs. the Russians, who are East Slavs,
and the Poles and Czechs, who are West Slavs).
Bosnia
first became a separate political entity in the 10th century. Under King
Kulin (ca. 1180-1204?) the Bosnians embraced the Bogomil heresy, which
declared that the visible, material world was a creation of the devil and
that Christ could therefore never have been incarnated. Hence the Bogomils
rejected baptism and the Eucharist, and not surprisingly earned the enmity of
the Catholic Church. Although the King of Bosnia eventually renounced this
heresy, it persisted among the nobility. In the 13th c. the pope described
the country as "overgrown with thorns and nettle and a breed of
vipers."
The Turks invading Bosnia
in 1386 were repelled by King Tvrtko (d. 1391), who conquered surrounding
territory and led Bosnia
to the height of its power. When the Turks invaded again in the 15th c.,
however, the king of Bosnia
was captured and beheaded, and the area became a province of the Ottoman
(Turkish) Empire. The nobility, many of whom were still Bogomils, converted
en masse to the Muslim faith, although they never adopted polygamy. It is
their descendants who now form the large Muslim population in Bosnia.
In the 16th-17th c. Bosnia,
by now thoroughly assimilated into the Ottoman Empire,
was on the front line of the war between the Empire and the Christian West.
It remained under Turkish control almost continuously until 1878, despite
frequent rebellions by Christians and Muslims, both of whom hated the corrupt
Ottoman bureaucracy.
In 1877, by secret convention, Russia
recognized Austria-Hungary's right to occupy Bosnia
in return for Austro-Hungarian neutrality in Russia's
forthcoming war with Turkey,
and after the Russo-Turkish War (1877-78) Bosnia
was assigned to Austria-Hungary.
Banjamin Kállay (d. 1903) ran Bosnia
for Austria-Hungary
for 21 years, aiming to evolve a "Bosnian" consciousness, to check
Serbian national feeling and to create dissensions between Serbs and Croats. Bosnia
was formally annexed to Austria-Hungary
in 1908 and given its own parliament, but no say in national affairs.
Dissent was still rampant by 1914, when the Archduke of
Austria Francis Ferdinand and his wife visited Sarajevo and were assassinated
by a Bosnian Serb (Gavrilo Princip) - the shot that triggered World War I.
Austria-Hungary blamed the independent nation of Serbia for the assassination
and declared war; Russia and France came to the aid of their ally Serbia;
Germany came to the aid of its ally Austria-Hungary; and so on.
Bosnia
formally became a part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in
1918, renamed Yugoslavia
(i.e. "land of the South Slavs") in 1929.
Divided between Germany
and Italy
during the Second World War, Bosnia-Hercegovina was reunited and became one
of the republics making up Communist Yugoslavia in 1945. The Communists had gained support during
the war by promising to expel the occupying forces and achieve "ethnic
equity" in a new Yugoslavia.
Josip Broz (Tito) - a Croatian who deliberately tried to
suppress the power of the Serbs - led
Communist Yugoslavia from its inception until his death in 1980. Communist
Yugoslavia officially had 2 alphabets (Latin and Cyrillic), 3 religions
(Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Muslim), 4 languages (Serbo-Croatian,
Slovene, Macedonian, Albanian), 6 republics (Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia,
Montenegro, Bosnia-Hercegovina and Serbia, plus Serbia's 2 autonomous
provinces, Kosovo and Vojvodina), and 7 major nationalities, including
Albanians and Hungarians, among whom Serbians were the largest group, at
about 40%. "Ethnic diversity" was apparently encouraged, e.g., minorities
were guaranteed the use of their native language in local government and
elementary schools.
After Tito's death a collective presidency was
established, with one member from each of the 6 republics and the 2
autonomous provinces. This system started to unravel when various ethnic
groups began demanding autonomy. (They had demanded it under Tito, too, but
he reacted with a "return to Leninism" - party purges - and threats
of military force.) Bosnia
declared its independence of Yugoslavia
in March 1992, following the examples of
2 other republics, Croatia
and Slovenia,
in June 1991; Serbia
and Montenegro
then joined to form a smaller Federal Republic
of Yugoslavia. The Serbs living in Bosnia
(who had boycotted the independence referendum) objected violently to being
governed by non-Serbs and immediately blockaded the Muslim part of Sarajevo
off from the rest of Bosnia.
They were supported by the Serbian Serbs (the dominant group in the new Yugoslavia),
who now regretted that many of Communist Yugoslavia's armament factories had
been built in Bosnia.
The Serbs are a force to be reckoned with: mostly veterans of the army of
Communist Yugoslavia, they were trained in guerrilla tactics in case their
country was invaded by the Soviet Union. Bosnia,
with its mountains and dense forests, is perfect territory for guerrilla
warfare. (Note that this makes air strikes in the area fairly useless, as the
U.S. ought to
know from its bombing of Vietnam.)
The Serbs in Bosnia
began "ethnic cleansing" of the territory within Bosnia
that they controlled, expelling Muslims and Croatians and creating some
700,000 refugees. By summer 1993 Bosnian Serbs held about 70% of Bosnia's
territory, had declared their own government, the Serbian
Republic of Bosnia
and Hercegovina, and were besieging Sarajevo
and other Muslim strongholds (Maglaj, Srebrenica, Zepa, Bihac, Gorazde). The
aim of many Serbians is a "Greater Serbia" that would include Serbia
proper, its two former autonomous provinces, and the predominantly Serbian
parts of Croatia,
Bosnia-Hercegovina and Macedonia.
They are unlikely to achieve this aim, or to give it up, without full-scale
war.
Bosnian Croats began as allies of the Muslims against
the Serbs, whom both groups hate. For the past 10 months, however, Bosnian
Croats have been at war with the Muslims in southwest Bosnia,
where many Croats would like to add territory that they dominate to the
independent Croatian state: a "Greater Croatia." Bosnian Croats
have declared the city of Mostar
capital of their own independent republic. In Mostar 50,000-65,000 Muslims
have been besieged by Croatians for 9 months, and the damage from heavy
artillery is worse than in Sarajevo.
Croatia
denies sending any regular troops to help Bosnian Croats, but seems to be
fudging by sending troops who have signed a statement that they are
"volunteers." A cease-fire between Muslims and Bosnian Croats was
signed in late February 1994.
The Bosnian Muslims presently control a swath of
territory in central Bosnia
and half a dozen cities isolated and besieged by the Serbs, including
Sarajevo.
Lest it sound as though the Muslims are on the defensive
everywhere, Muslims have Croats surrounded in several central-Bosnian cities:
Busovaca, Kiseljak and Konjic.
Issue: Is there any justification for
keeping Bosnia-Hercegovina intact, given the continuing murderous dissension
among its ethnic groups?
Analysis
A country's right to exist depends on the nature of its
government and the willingness of the majority of its citizens to be governed
by that government. If many of the citizens believe the government is flawed,
they have the right to attempt to change it by peaceable means, to move
elsewhere, or (as a last resort) to form their own state.
Yugoslavia,
as created after World War II, was an artificial construct: its separate
territories did not have anything in common except geographical proximity,
and were torn apart by ethnic conflicts. After the death of
Tito,
Yugoslavia's first and
only leader, four Yugoslav provinces achieved independence. The significant
difference in Bosnia
is that the different ethnic groups are scattered throughout the country, not
in tidy areas that could form their own governments.
FURTHER READING:
Ayn Rand, "The Nature of Government," Virtue of Selfishness, pp. 107-115 (paper). Available through the
Ayn Rand Bookstore.
QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: The United
States has often been described as a
"melting pot." It was certainly not ethnically homogeneous in 1776,
and is not so today. What attitudes do Americans share (and not share) that
keep the U.S.
from sinking into the sort of brutal civil war that is raging in the former
provinces of Yugoslavia?
Geographically, Bosnia-Hercegovina is not a promising site
for a united nation; mere acquaintance with one's neighbors has always been
difficult. Geography is obviously not a determining factor, however: other
countries with similar terrain (Greece,
for instance) have managed to survive without civil war. Bosnia's
problem is that it's always been on the dividing line between specific and
often fanatical ethnic and religious groups, as far back as the break-up of
the Roman Empire and the battles between the Ottoman
Turks and the Western Europeans. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rulers
of the area - the Austro-Hungarians, the Germans and Italians who controlled
the area during the Second World War, and Tito's Communists - all dealt with
the Bosnians in terms of specific groups, ethnic and/or religious.
FURTHER READING:
Peter Schwartz, "Multicultural Nihilism," Return of the Primitive pp. 245-269 (paper). Available through
the
Ayn Rand Bookstore.
QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: Is Bosnia's
insistence on the importance of race and religion significantly different or
significantly similar to the present American emphasis on multiculturalism?
QUESTION FOR DISCUSSION: In Balkan Ghosts, A Journey Through History, Robert Kaplan notes
that "Macedonia
. . . defines the principal illness of the Balkans: conflicting dreams of
lost imperial glory. Each nation demands that its borders revert to where
they were at the exact time when its own empire had reached its zenith of
ancient medieval expansion"(p. 57). How does this apply to Bosnia,
Croatia and Serbia?
By what rational rules are a nation's boundaries are set? If purely on
historical precedent, why shouldn't the present residents of Rome
still rule over all the former Roman Empire, from Spain
to Turkey?
World Reaction Back to table of
contents
Sanctions imposed by United Nations in May 1992 have
devastated Serbia
economically, but had no notable effect on its military intervention in Bosnia.
There is an embargo on arms shipments and a no-fly zone for military aircraft
over all of Bosnia.
The U.N. has peace-keeping troops in Bosnia
(none of them supplied by the U.S.)
and is sending relief shipments to besieged cities, where possible.
The European Community, the United
States and the United Nations debated for
months over what might justify airstrikes on Serb positions. Finally NATO -
which, if you remember, was created 44 years ago to deal with Soviet
aggression, not civil war - was "authorized" by the United Nations
to act on the U.N.'s behalf. In February 1994, NATO issued an ultimatum to
Bosnian Serbs: move all heavy artillery 12.5 miles away from the center of
Sarajevo
or turn it over to U.N. forces; otherwise it will be bombed. The Serbs turned
in old, broken equipment and shifted much of the rest from Sarajevo
to positions from which they can attack other Muslim-dominated cities. NATO
judged that the ultimatum had been met and decided not to implement an air
strike. Meanwhile the siege of Sarajevo
continues: only the shelling has stopped.
The United States is at the moment (3/1/94) subscribing
to a plan that would divide Bosnia into 3 republics along ethnic lines and
would join the Muslim- and Croatian-dominated sections, while at the same
time subdividing them into municipalities defined as Muslim or Croat,
depending on which has a majority. In early March 1994, the Muslim and Croat
republics agreed to be joined in an economic federation with Croatia.
As for the Serbs, the Administration seems to hope (quoting the *NYTimes*, 2/25/94,
p. A8) "that the Serbs will somehow prefer to be aligned with what the United
States envisions as a democratic,
economically vibrant entity." There is no indication that the ethnically
divided Bosnia
which the Administration advocates would become either democratic or
economically self-sufficient. The Serbs are adamantly opposed to the reunion
of Bosnia;
the plan calls for them to give up nearly a quarter of the territory they now
control. Clinton has repeatedly
promised not to send ground troops into Bosnia,
although he has agreed to send a third of the 50,000 troops for a
peace-keeping force, once a peace treaty is signed. As the *Christian Science
Monitor* pointed out ("US Troops in Bosnia?",
9/22/93), "Allowing
American troops to ratify the borders of a state acquired through mass murder
and territorial aggression would be a dangerous precedent."
There is some danger that the conflict in Bosnia
will escalate due to foreign intervention. The Russians sympathize with the
Bosnian Serbs, who are not only fellow Slavs (most Bosnians are) but also
fellow Orthodox Christians; Russian troops have been sent to support the
Serbs in Sarajevo. Vladimir
Zhirinovsky has promised, if/when he comes to power in Russia,
to intervene militarily on behalf of the Serbs. The Islamic Conference
Organization, with 50 Muslim member countries, considers Western failure to
intervene militarily on behalf of Bosnian Muslims an insult to the Muslim world; millions of dollars of aid has
been raised, and Iran
has sent arms and is prepared to send troops. Turkey,
NATO's only predominantly Muslim member and a vital base for U.S.
planes during the Gulf War, has also expressed considerable dissatisfaction
with Western failure to come to the aid of Bosnian Muslims, and has been
clandestinely sending arms to them.
Issue: What is the proper role of foreign
governments in a civil war?
Analysis: Any foreign citizen can go fight in Bosnia
if he wishes (as a mercenary or volunteer), but a foreign government must be
able to justify military intervention on grounds of the rational
self-interest of its citizens. Are military or economic values at risk? Can
military intervention solve the problem that is causing the war? When Saddam
Hussein and the Iraqis invaded Kuwait,
U.S. military
involvement was justified, to preserve the oil fields and restrict access to the
sea by a bloody tyrant. We have no vital interests in Bosnia,
and the presence of foreign soldiers cannot prevent random Bosnian Serbs from
killing random Bosnian Croats or Muslims; such troops merely provide more
targets.
FURTHER READING:
Peter Schwartz, "Foreign Policy and the Morality of Self-interest,"
The Intellectual Activist, IV:5 (March
24, 1986) and IV:6 (April
29, 1986).
Postscript (August 2000) Back to table of contents
In March 1994, the Muslims (or Bosniaks, as they are
presently called) and the Croats signed an agreement creating the
Bosniak-Croat Federation of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Federation signed an
agreement toward the end of 1994 with the Bosnian Serbs, dividing
Bosnia-Hercegovina roughly equally between the Federation and the
"Republika Srpska" for the Bosnian Serbs. Between 1990 and the time
the Dayton Agreement was signed, about 250,000 died and over 2 million were
displaced. A NATO peace-keeping force is still present in Bosnia.
Serbia and Croatia
are both still disputing with Bosnia
over Croatian- and Serbian- dominated parts of Bosnia.
The situation is far from stable.
Bibliography (for the original report)
Back to table of contents
Academic American
Encyclopedia, online edition, Grolier Electronic Publishing,
Danbury,
CT, 1993: s.v. Bosnia,
Serbia (by Norman
G. Pounds), Slavs (Bernard S. Bachrach) and Yugoslavia.
Encyclopedia
Britannica (1970) III, 983-5.
Software Toolworks
World Atlas, distributed by The Software Toolworks, 1991 version.
Sowell, Thomas. "A Quagmire Beckoning." Forbes Magazine 3/14/94,
pp. 64-5. A nice summary of why the U.S.
shouldn't get involved in Bosnia.
Stanley, David. Eastern Europe on a Shoestring. 2nd ed. Hawthorn,
Vic,
Australia: Lonely
Planet, 1991. On Yugoslavia,
pp. 727-865; on Bosnia
in particular, 835-44.
General background: assorted articles over the past 2
years in the Christian Science Monitor,
available on-line through Compuserve.
Addenda to the Bibliography, 4/16/94
For more background on the Balkan region, I
recommend Robert D. Kaplan's
Balkan
Ghosts: A Journey Through History , 1993. Kaplan does not cover Bosnia
in detail, but he gives a reasonably clear history of the Balkans since the early
20th century, which helps explain current events in the area.
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