MOSTAR`S CENTRAL ZONE: Battles over Shared Space in a

MOSTAR’S CENTRAL ZONE: Battles over Shared Space in a Divided City Emily Gunzburger Makaš Mostar found itself in relative peace after the signing of the March 1994 Washington Agreement ending the armed conflict between the forces of the Bosnian government and the Hrvatska Republika Herceg-­‐
Bosna (Croatian Republic of Herceg-­‐Bosna).1 Signers of the Washington Agreement, including Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdžić, Herceg-­‐Bosna President Krešimir Zubak, and Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Granić, agreed to a special provision regarding the city of Mostar that had been added by the American arbitrators, including United States envoy to Bosnia, Charles Redman, and US Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith. This eight article of the Washington Agreement between Croatia and Bosnia recognized that governing the polarized and contentious city of Mostar was a highly sensitive and important issue, so designated the European Union as responsible for administering the city for a two-­‐
year period. A few months later a foreign commission designated as the European Union Administration of Mostar (EUAM), headed by Hans Koschnick, the former mayor of Bremen, Germany, was established by another agreement reached in Geneva, Switzerland.2 The EUAM’s goals included establishing security, facilitating the return of refugees and displaced persons, and restitution of essential services in the city.3 Two years later, in March of 1996, as the EUAM’s mandate neared its end, the Interim Statute of the City was reached as a temporary solution for the self-­‐governance of Mostar.4 With this Statute, the de facto division of Mostar into Croat and Muslim sides that had occurred during the war was institutionalized in the city’s postwar government. Seven largely autonomous municipal districts were established within the city, three in the west with Croat majorities, three in the east with Muslim majorities, and a small jointly controlled Central Zone. Though each “side” was composed of three separate municipal units, they often acted in unison, and the three Croat Majority municipalities even 1
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Washington Agreement, signed in Washington, DC, United States, March 1, 1994. Memorandum on Understanding, signed in Geneva, Switzerland, July 5, 1994. John Yarwood, Rebuilding Mostar: Urban Reconstruction in a War Zone (London: John Yarwood, 1999), 7 Interim Statute of the City of Mostar, signed in Rome, Italy, February 20, 1996. This document and the “Agreement on Mostar” which was issued at the same conference on the same day are collectively referred to as the Rome Agreement. 1 signed a formal agreement of inter-­‐cooperation. In practice this meant the continuation of a Croat west Mostar and a Muslim east Mostar, and a city as divided as Cold War Berlin, with as clearly demarcated “sides.” These seven municipalities within the City of Mostar covered an area of 1,175 km2 (453.7 m2) but the city’s population of about 100,000 was largely concentrated in the urban center, which included only the Croat controlled Southwest Municipality and the Muslim controlled Old Town Municipality as well as the Central Zone between them. The other four municipalities encompassed the suburbs and surrounding countryside, including many distinct villages. In addition to the Municipalities, the Interim Statute also established a central city administration including a mayor, deputy mayor, and city council. This citywide government was weakened by the designation of most powers to the municipality level as well as by redundancies. For example, each municipality and the city council established its own separate urban planning institutions and proceeded to restore and develop the city simultaneously, but in isolation from one another. The shared city government was given jurisdiction over the seventh municipality, the shared Central Zone. This paper is about that Central Zone, primarily during the period of the city’s formal political division between 1996 and 2004. It explores of those who participated in the discussion of the Central Zone’s parameters including the last minute boundary changes made at the signing conference in Rome. This paper will also document and analyze the attempted and completed reconstruction and new construction projects that occurred within and adjacent to the Central Zone, with a particular focus on the Liska Street Cemetery (excluded from the zone and a source of contention), the thwarted attempts to build a Croatian National Theater and Catholic Cathedral, and the begrudging sharing Old Gymnasium. Finally, this paper will also discuss the way the Central Zone has been depicted and programmed in various maps of the city that produced since the 1992-­‐1995 war in Bosnia. The Central Zone During the process of negotiating the boundaries of the administrative divisions in the Interim Statue in the spring of 1996, the city witnessed the first of many international debates concerning buildings and property during the rebuilding of Mostar. The EUAM was the participant who had proposed including the Central Zone as a seventh, jointly administered municipality. As the only politically shared space in the city, EUAM administrators hoped the Central Zone could foster discussion and interaction between 2 the two sides, though the language of the actual Rome agreement was not explicit. They also hoped the Central Zone would provide a physical starting point for a reunited city when the Interim Statue was eventually replaced with a permanent one. Because the Central Zone was clearly designed to undermine the city’s division and “nationally exclusive rule” it was the most contentious issue of the Interim Statue negotiations.5 Debate over the borders of the Central Zone incited the passions of everyone involved, regarding both questions of how much area of the city it should include and precisely which buildings should fall within its boundaries.6 Each participating group came to the discussion with different aims and offered different proposals for the Central Zone’s parameters (fig. 1). Mostar’s Bosnian Croat political leadership, represented by the mayor of the Croat side of the city, Mijo Brajković of the Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica (Croatian Democratic Union, HDZ), advocated the status quo and wanted to divide the city along the line of separation determined by wartime fighting, that is along the river in the north and the Boulevard in the south, with no Central Zone at all.7 The city’s Bosnian Muslim delegation was headed by the mayor of the Muslim side of the city, Safet Oručević, at that time a member of the Stranka Demokratska Akcija (Party of Democratic Action, SDA). The Bosnian Muslim political leadership supported a Central Zone that encompassed one third of the city’s urban center, meaning equal parts would be shared, and under the exclusive control of each of the two national groups.8 The EUAM listened to these proposals and tried to find an intermediate solution, suggesting an area slightly less than half the size of Oručević’s proposal, or about a sixth of Mostar’s urban area. 5
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ICG, Building Bridges in Mostar, Europe Report No.150 (Brussels: ICG, November 20, 2003), 1. Marko Herceg, “Stotine Ljudi Pohrlilo u Zapadni Dio Mostar” [Hundreds People Stampeded in the West Part of Mostar], Hrvatska Riječ, February 24, 1994, 6; ICG, Reunifying Mostar: Opportunities for Progress, ICG Balkans Report No.90, Brussels: ICG, April 19, 2000, ii; Suzana Mijatović, “Korak Naprijed a Onda Nazad” [A Step Forward, and then Back], Slobodna Bosna, February 23, 1996, 10; Sneježana Mulić, “Do Konačne Podjele” [Up to the Final Division], Dani March 1996, 26-­‐27; Sneježana Mulić, “Ili će Biti Jedan, ili Bosne Biti Neće” [It will Either be One, or Bosnia Won’t Be], Dani, February 1996, 26-­‐29; Senad Slatina and Samir Nožić, “Smrt Fašizmu, Sloboda Kretanju” [Death to Fascism, Freedom to Progress], Slobodna Bosna, February 23, 1996, 7-­‐9; Samir Zožić, “Lijevo Ovacije, Desno Demonstracije” [Ovations on the Left, Demonstrations on the Right], Slobodna Bosna, February 9, 1996, 5-­‐6. ICG, Reunifying Mostar, 43, 45; Mulić, “Ili će biti jedan,” 26; and Slatina and Nožić, “Smrt Fašizmu, Sloboda Kretanju,” 5. Slatina and Nožić, “Smrt Fašizmu, Sloboda Kretanju,” 8 3 The public announcement of the EUAM proposal incited street riots by Mostar’s Croats leading to attacks on the EUAM headquarters and on Koschnick personally.9 NATO peacekeepers had to be called in to protect the city’s foreign administrators. After this show of force and fierce negotiations, the EUAM’s proposal was begrudgingly approved by both sides in the city. However, at the meeting in Rome a few weeks later where the agreement was to be signed, Mostar’s Croats reopened their demands and international negotiators continuously gave into them, whittling away at the borders of what was for many, particularly among the city’s Muslims, an already compromised Central Zone. The debate was not just about the size of the Central Zone or the percentage of the city that it represented, but also over whether specific symbolic and economically vital sites would or would not be included within its boundaries. The jointly controlled territory’s two most important losses during the Rome negotiations were the Liska Street cemetery, containing both Muslim and Croat graves, and the city’s water supply control facilities. Both of these sites ended up under exclusively Bosnian Croat control. On the other hand, the bus and train station and gymnasium, two other controversial sites, remained within the Central Zone’s boundaries. The changes were made to the already well-­‐debated boundaries because the negotiators in Rome included high-­‐level representatives without local expertise and whose concerns were much broader than Mostar alone. For the international community, the negotiations in Rome, and therefore the final Central Zone boundaries, were determined by the US State Department and the EU Presidency, rather than the EU Administration of Mostar. Similarly, the two “sides” were represented by the Bosnian and Croatian Presidents, rather than Mostar’s mayor and deputy mayor. US and EU officials quickly abandoned Koschnick’s hard won plan and Bosnia’s President Izetbegović conceded sites considered essential to Mostar’s Muslims, believing these few blocks were not so important in the greater context of the war and discussions about the country’s fate.10 Following the implementation of the Interim Statute and the Rome Agreement, both the EUAM and Mostar’s Muslim leadership felt the city had taken another step backwards from its prewar 9
Sumathra Bose, Bosnia after Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Intervention (London: Hurst and Co., 2002), 109; Jelena Lovrić, “Mostar Unbridged,” War Report 39, February – March 1996, http://www.iwpr.net/index.php?apc_state=heno-­‐archive_warreport_39.html&s=o&o=archive/war/war_39_ 199602-­‐03_02.txt); and Nožić, 6. 10
Slatina and Nožić, “Smrt Fašizmu, Sloboda Kretanju,” 7; Mulić, “Do Konaćne Podjele,” 26. 4 multicultural, unified position. Not only had division been legally formalized, but also the possibility of future reunification was weakened by the diminished size of the Central Zone. Hans Koschnick resigned from the EUAM in frustration, unable to incorporate any unifying structures and mechanisms into the Interim Statute.11 East Mostar Mayor Oručević also submitted his resignation, but it was denied by President Izetbegović.12 Nationalist Croats in Mostar on the other hand, who had rioted in the street when Koschnick originally announced the Central Zone’s proposed boundaries, were satisfied with the concessions they received.13 In addition, they found that the wartime status quo had indeed been maintained since the administrative structure of the Central Zone was so weak that in the months and years following they were initially able to obstruct changes needed to enforce it and oftentimes to completely deny its existence.14 The Fate of a Key Excluded Site: Liska Street Cemetery The implications of the boundaries of the Central Zone can be best understood by examining the fate of one of the most important sites included within the EUAM’s recommended area, but excluded by the decision in Rome: the Liska Street cemetery, which ended up in the western, Croat-­‐controlled part of Mostar. The Liska Street Cemetery was one of the few truly shared spaces in the city at the time Mostar, but rather than providing an opportunity for coming together, it has served as a flash point for confrontation in the past two decades and has furthered inter-­‐communal divisions in the city. Before the recent war, there was a park on Liska Street, which may have included a few, isolated eighteenth and nineteenth century Muslim graves and markers. During the first siege of the city, the park was converted into a cemetery, and its composition reflects the nature of that first battle, when the city’s Croat and Muslim populations fought together against the Vojska Republika Srpska (Army of the Republika Srpska, VRS) and Jugoslovenska Narodna Armija (Yugoslav People's Army, or JNA), and its graves include both Bosnian Muslims and Croats, as well as a few Bosnian Serbs. Traditionally in Bosnia-­‐
Hercegovina, even during the communist era, people tended to be buried in separate, religiously 11
Bose, Bosnia After Dayton, 110; and Slatina and Nožić, “Smrt Fašizmu, Sloboda Kretanju,” 8. ICG, Reunifying Mostar, 10. 13
Only the Bosnian Croat leadership of Mostar received unconditional support from its backers at the negotiations in Rome. The government of Croatia fought for its positions and therefore Mostar’s Croats were the most satisfied with the Agreement’s outcome. Slatina and Nožić, “Smrt Fašizmu, Sloboda Kretanju,” 7; and Mulić, “Do Konaćne Podjele,” 26. 14
ICG, Reunifying Mostar, 43, 45; and Mulić, “Do Konačne Podjele,” 27. 12
5 demarcated cemeteries, since events like birth, marriage, and death were the few religiously oriented aspects of life in the former Yugoslavia. But as a result of the unusual wartime circumstances, everyone was buried together in Liska Park, and crosses were interspersed among the oblong traditional Bosnian Muslim nišani. Instead of leading to mutual understanding or the acceptance of commonalities in Mostar, this accidental sharing of space led to one of the most violent incidents in post-­‐Dayton Bosnia-­‐Hercegovina. In 1997, during the Bajram holiday, when it is customary to visit the graves of family members, a group of a few hundred Mostar Muslims, led by then Mayor Safet Oručević, and head of the Islamic Community in Mostar, Mufti Seid Efendi Smajkić, approached the cemetery to pay their respects. Coincidently, a larger group of Bosnian Croats was celebrating Carnival in an outdoor festival on the Rondo public space a few blocks away. Allegedly to keep these two groups separate and avoid confrontations, the west Mostar police set up roadblocks to prevent the Muslim group from progressing into west Mostar.15 As soon as the Muslims crossed the Boulevard and approached the cemetery, the west Mostar police began beating them with batons, continuing the assault even as the Muslims attempted to retreat. Finally, police officers in plain clothes began firing into the group, killing one man and injuring dozens more.16 The incident was followed by an evening of sporadic attacks by Muslims on Croats and Croats on Muslims throughout the city, as well as the eviction of twenty-­‐three Muslim families still living in west Mostar from their homes.17 According to a report prepared by the UN International Police Task Force (IPTF) stationed in Bosnia-­‐
Hercegovina at the time, the actions of the west Mostar police were unwarranted and unprovoked, as the two groups of celebrators never had visual contact, let alone appeared confrontational.18 In addition, the government of the Municipality Southwest had been notified of the peaceful intentions and proposed route of the Bajram observers in advance, and had used that information to plan the deployment of police and roadblocks, rather than to protect either group.19 Clearly the Municipality 15
Bose, Bosnia after Dayton, 141; Hasan Eminović, “Ni Parka, ni Groblja” [Neither Park, nor Cemetery], Hercegovačke Novine, June 7, 2003, 11; and OHR, “Bulletin 36, February 11, 1997,” OHR, February 11, 1997, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-­‐dept/presso/chronology/bulletins/default.asp?content_id=4961#1. 16
Robert Wasserman, “Report in Pursuance of the Decisions on Mostar of 12 February 1997,” UN International Police Task Force, February 24, 1997, http://www.ohr.int/other-­‐doc/fed-­‐mtng/default.asp?content_id =3604 . 17
ICG, Reunifying Mostar, 19. 18
Wasserman, “Report in Pursuance of the Decisions.” 19
Following the IPTF report, criminal proceedings were initiated against the participating members of the west Mostar police. However, those cases eventually disappeared and were never settled. OHR, “Transcript of the 6 Southwest authorities were not interested in sharing the cemetery on Liska Street, or of allowing public, organized expressions of Islamic faith on “their” side of town.20 A few days after the altercation, “west Mostar politicians suggested that the Muslim graves in the Liska Street cemetery should be exhumed and transported across the river for reburial in the ‘Muslim’ part of town.”21 This was recommended as a precautionary solution to prevent the occurrence of additional clashes, but also demonstrated the prevailing attitude that everyone, including the dead, should be separated into nationally differentiated spaces within the city and within Bosnia-­‐Hercegovina. In the years following that incident, even long before political reunification in 2004, tolerance within Mostar improved and people crossed from one side to the other without threats of violence. In addition, many Muslim families returned to their prewar homes in what was west Mostar. But the plans to remove the bodies from the cemetery on Liska Street continued. Appeals that all those buried there be exhumed and reburied in either Muslim, Catholic, or Orthodox cemeteries alongside their families and ancestors in subsequent years were disguised in language asking that the park be returned to its prewar appearance and function.22 Public opinion among Mostar’s Croats tended to support this idea, and a petition was even circulated in support of it by family members of Catholic Croats buried there, who felt their loved ones “would find their final peace in their own cemeteries, not in Liska Park.”23 They argued the only reason their relatives had been buried in the park was because of its relative safety during the daily shelling at the time of their deaths. These surviving family members believed that now that there was no obstacle, these persons should be buried in separate cemeteries, as they would have been under normal circumstances.24 In a clearly duplicitous attempt to strengthen their case that all bodies should be removed from the park, the Mostar Southwest Municipality hired sanitary inspectors 20
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Press Conference in Mostar,” Kristen Haupt, June 5, 2002, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-­‐offices/mostar/transcripts/ default.asp?content_id=8664 . Veso Vegar, “Dogođanje Naroda Podijelilio Mostar!” [Happening of the People Divided Mostar], Hrvatska Riječ, March 15, 1997, 10. Bose, 142. Sanja Bjelica, “Parku u Liska Ulici Vratiti Prijeratni Izlged” [Park on Liska Street to Return to Its Prewar Appearance], Dnevni List, April 8, 2003, 12; Jelana Dalipagić and Vera Soldo, “Obnova i Rekonstrukcije u Mostaru na Svakom Koraku” [Renewal and Reconstruction in Mostar at Every Step], Dnevni List, July 22, 2003, 15; Eminović, “Ni Parka, ni Groblja,” 11-­‐12; Vera Soldo, “Liska Park – Novi Povod za Politizaciju?” [Liska Park – New Occasion for Politicization?], Dnevni List, June 21, 2003, 15; and Z. Skoko, “Što Mislite o Ideji da se Parku Liska Vrati Prijeratni Izgled?” [What do You Think about Returning Liska Park to its Prewar Appearance?], Dnevni List, April 28, 2003, 13. Bjelica, “Parku u Liska Ulici,” 12. Soldo, “Liska Park,” 15. 7 who reported that the cemetery, located near a hospital and playground and in the center of the city, presented a health hazard.25 The Mostar Southwest Municipality also provided financial assistance to families who could not afford to move and rebury their loved ones themselves, and moved bodies with no surviving family members to decide for them. During the war, 465 people were buried in the makeshift cemetery in Liska Park. By the summer of 2003, approximately 265 of those had been exhumed and reburied.26 These were almost all removed according to the wishes of their Croat Catholic and Serb Orthodox families. A group of Muslims with relatives buried in this cemetery circulated their own petition that protested all the exhumations, asking that the dead “be left in peace.”27 Muslim families have for the most part have chosen not to exhume and move their relatives, but the relocation of most of the Christian bodies has left the cemetery largely Muslim today. Because the people in this cemetery died together fighting the same battle, this cemetery had presented an almost unique opportunity in the city to celebrate a universally supported cause related to the recent war on a universally significant site. However, instead of proposals to build a shared memorial or to honor this cemetery for what it represented, this space too has been divided. Stalled Attempts to Build in Central Zone Controversies and debates have also encircled two never completed, large-­‐scale construction projects proposed by members of Mostar’s Croat community for sites within the Central Zone. Because both the proposed theater and church revealed the tensions between what some saw as the public display of minority identity and others saw as secessionist sentiments, questions about whether they would be finished were questions about whether the city would move psychologically closer together or further apart. Even now that the city has reunified and the Central Zone no longer exists as a separate administrative unit, these buildings remain partially constructed, suspended in time, blending in with the ruins of buildings destroyed during the war, but reminders to those within the city of postwar conflicts instead. 25
Eminović, “Ni Parka, ni Groblja,” 12. Soldo, “Liska Park,” 15. 27
Dalipagić and Soldo, “Obnova i Rekonstrukcije,” 15; Eminović, “Ni Parka, ni Groblja,” 11; and Soldo, “Liska Park,” 15. 26
8 The company of the Hrvatsko Narodno Kazalište (Croatian National Theater, HNK) was founded in 1994 by members of Mostar’s federal-­‐era National Theater company who sought to establish a separate, parallel group for the western, Croat side. For its first few years the HNK was financed by the government of the short-­‐lived Herceg-­‐Bosna and it met and performed in the recently renamed Hrvatski Dom (Croatian Cultural House) in Mostar Southwest Municipality.28 Construction of a theater building to serve as a permanent home for the HNK began in 1996, stalled within a year because of funding problems, was later resumed, and then finally was stopped again in 2002 by the shared City Council because of property ownership concerns.29 It was determined that the land on which the HNK was being built had been acquired inappropriately, if not illegally, in an underhanded act of privatization during the post-­‐socialist, wartime confusion.30 Though further construction on the new theater building was forbidden, the Mala Scena (Small Stage) in the basement was already complete. This so-­‐called small theater seats more than twice as many as Mostar’s “regular” National Theater, a damaged building awaiting rehabilitation that continues to host performances on the other side of town. As an almost cliché example of the drain on resources caused by the creation of parallel institutions in the divided city, the east side had a theater building, but no money and few professional actors, while the west side had financing, equipment, and actors, but only a half-­‐finished building. At the time when the City of Mostar stopped construction of the HNK, the Mayor was Hamdija Jahić, a Muslim and member of the SDA party, and the Deputy Mayor was Neven Tomić, a moderate Croat who had been rejected by the nationalist HDZ party a few years earlier for his refusal to support the formation of a autonomous Croat entity in Bosnia (the revival of Herceg-­‐Bosna) and for his clear interests in reuniting Mostar. The decision to stop construction of the HNK was motivated not only by property ownership concerns, but also by the project’s location within Mostar’s Central Zone. For many residents of the city, a theater fit perfectly within the requirements for building in this district because the precise wording of the Interim City Statute reserved it for government and public buildings and “for 28
Dženana Alađuz, “Valja Nama Preko Neretve: Pozorište i Kazalište u Mostaru” [We Have to Cross the Neretva: Theater and Theater in Mostar], Slobodna Bosna, March 20, 1999, 50. 29
“Više od Godinu Dana Moralo se Čekati na Kazališnu Premijeru u Mostarskome HNK!” [We’ve had to Wait more than a Year for the Theatrical Premier in Mostar’s HNK], Hrvatska Riječ, May 19, 2001, 42. 30
OHR, “‘Večernji List’: Construction of Mostar’s HNK Banned,” BiH Media Round-­‐Up, May 22, 2002, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-­‐dept/presso/bh-­‐media-­‐rep/round-­‐ups/default.asp?content_id=8298 . 9 the encouragement of local cultural activities.”31 However for others, including the city’s mayors, the HNK did not fit within the spirit of that Statute – or of the Rome Agreement of which it was a part – which had called for unifying the city and designated the Central Zone as a shared space. Therefore, the construction of institutions clearly linked to a single group or religion in the Central Zone was interpreted by many Mostar residents and the international community as a violation of the district’s neutrality.32 Nationalist Croats rightly believed that construction was also stopped because many of the city’s Muslims did not want a Croatian National Theater in Mostar at all, regardless of its location. They and other supporters of a shared Bosnia-­‐Hercegovina were, and are, disturbed by the desire to build institutions that have closer psychological and physical links with Croatia than with Bosnia-­‐
Hercegovina.33 According to Mijo Brajković, President of the Commission for building the HNK and General Director of Aluminija, a local factory and major financer of this project, the new theater “is a symbol of one national culture, but is the heritage of all peoples.”34 However, most have trouble reconciling its symbolism of and dedication to one group with the idea of universal ownership. In the local Croat media, opposition to the theater was interpreted as a campaign against “the building of institutions of national or religious meaning for Croats” and was understood as yet another attempt to deny their distinct cultural identity and their right to publicly celebrate it.35 They claimed the “Muslim side” has a theater so the “Croat side” needs and deserves one too. Yet the HNK’s critics were more interested in shared institutions and thus view the HNK Company, and the permanence represented by its building, as one more unnecessary doubling in the city. They could not understand why Mostar’s Croats are unable to share any spaces or institutions.36 31
“Agreement on Mostar.” “New Cathedral: A Provocation,” Politika, February 13, 1996, http://www.hri.org/news/balkans/serb/1996/ 96-­‐02-­‐13.serb.html ; Jozo Pavković, “Bitka za ‘Nićiju Zemlju’” [Battle for No Man’s Land], Hrvatska Riječ, May 10, 1997, 18-­‐19. 33
Sanja Šarić, “Made in HDZ,” Slobodna Bosna, October 19, 1997, 57. In 2006, this drive for ties with Croatia continued as plans were actively underway, with the support of the Croat member of the Bosnian Presidency, to establish a Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Mostar. FENA, “Jović: Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts in BiH by 1 May,” March 6, 2006, http://www.fena.ba/uk/ vijest.html?fena_id=FMO112435 . 34
Nermin Bise, “Scena za Sve Mostarce” [Theater for All Mostar Residents], Oslobodenje, May 1, 2003, http://www.oslobodjenje.com.ba/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=34834& Itemid=0 . 35
“Smetaju im Sve Hrvatske Nacionalne Institucije” [All Croatian National Institutions Bother Them], Hrvatska Riječ, January 18, 1997, 10. 36
Alađuz, “Valja Nama Preko Neretve,” 50; Nermin Bise, “Šta je Starije: Kažalište ili Pozorište?” [Which is Older: Theater or Theater?], Oslobođenje, November 10, 2002, 15; Vedrana Petrić, “Četrdeset Pet Minuta za 32
10 Nearly six years earlier, in February 1996, the EUAM had stopped the construction of another highly controversial institution being built in the area under consideration as the Central Zone and which would be officially designated as such a month later in Rome. Not only was this planned new Catholic Cathedral located within the proposed Central Zone, but its particular site had the added complication of having formerly been a Muslim cemetery that had been appropriated by the Austo-­‐Hungarian administration in the late nineteenth century. Mostar’s Islamic Community, led by Mufti Smajkić, believed the property should be returned to them rather than developed, and especially rather than used for a new Catholic Cathedral.37 Croat nationalist sources claimed “the Muslims” were inventing arguments and were simply opposed to specifically Croat institutions and religious symbols.38 Eventually, the Diocese of Mostar abandoned the active pursuit of a new Cathedral in large part because it did not have the funds to build it anyway. Instead, it completely repaired the “old” Cathedral of the Mother of the Church, which had been built in the 1970s and was only slightly damaged during the recent war by intermittent, though targeted shelling by Serb forces in 1992.39 This rehabilitation work was completed in 1999. The original idea to build a new, bigger cathedral persisted for a number of years though as the older church was considered neither monumental nor prominent enough. Its humble scale was argued to reflect the anti-­‐religious communist-­‐era during which it was constructed, and the demand from clergy and parishioners to build a new cathedral was argued to reflect a desire “to erase the mark of the previous system.”40 An even more likely explanation for the Diocese of Mostar’s interest in a more prominently located and monumental Cathedral was their competition for visibility and size on Mostar’s 37
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‘Kazališni Sat’”[Forty-­‐Five Minutes in a ‘Theater Hour’], Hrvatska Riječ, October 11, 1997, 22; and Šarić, “Made in HDZ,” 57. “New Church Location Causes Rifts in Divided Bosnian City” Catholic World News, March 4, 1996, http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?Recnum =125 ; “New Cathedral.” “Bošnjaci se Protive Izgradnji Katedrale u Mostaru Iako za to Nemaju Argumenata!” [Bosniaks are Against Building a Cathedral in Mostar without any Arguments], Hrvatska Riječ, March 9, 1996, 1, 12-­‐13. Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly, “War Damage to the Cultural Heritage in Croatia and Bosnia-­‐
Herzegovina,” prepared by Colin Kaiser, January 19, 1993, as Appendix C in “The Destruction by War of the Cultural Heritage in Croatia and Bosnia-­‐Herzegovina presented by the Committee on Cultural and Education,” report prepared by Jacques Baumel, Doc 6756, February 2, 1993, http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/ Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc93/EDOC6756.htm ; and I.M., “Bljesnula Katedral” [The Cathedral Shined], Slobodna BiH, February 19, 1999, 19; Ž. Mrkonjić, “Katedrala u Novom Ruhu” [Cathedral in New Clothes], Slobodna BiH, October 9, 1998, 16. Mrkonjić, “Katedrala u Novom Ruhu,” 16 11 skyline. The rivalry in this case is not so much with the many mosques of the city and their minarets, but rather with the Franciscan Church and its colossal new bell tower. The reason the city administration, with the support and encouragement of the international community, stopped construction of both the new Cathedral and the HNK was in part to preserve the neutrality and multiculturalism of the Central Zone and to save that space for shared institutions that would serve as a foundation for the city’s eventual reunification, but these decisions also contributed to the solidification of the city’s spatial division by ensuring that all Croat and Muslim cultural and religious institutions were built only within religious-­‐national enclaves on either “side.” The city authorities did not allow for the possibility that the two separate communities could overlap in the center, building their own institutions within close proximity of one another and thus interacting in the shared spaces around those buildings. The Central Zone was the only place where this could have happened during the city’s decade of division. Instead, because the Central Zone was kept free of structures with particular associations and the because only communal institutions built there were the city and federation government buildings, the result was actually to create a zone of interest to neither group and thus a true buffer that prevented even accidental contact between the groups and the familiarity and understanding that might facilitate. During Mostar’s decade of division when construction of the theater and cathedral were stopped, other institutions were established within the Mostar Southwest Municipality in close proximity to the Boulevard reinforcing the former border. 41 Even after the political division of the city ended, the Jubilee Cross on Hum Hill, the Franciscan bell tower, the Croatian cultural center Napredak, the HVO veterans’ office, and the building sites for the new Catholic Cathedral and the Croatian National Theater do in fact form a line along the city’s divisive Boulevard (fig. 2). On the other hand, these projects were conceived of separately and independently, so were not a premeditated or organized attempt to establish a firm border. Nevertheless, collectively they have indeed marked the line of division in the city and if all had been completed, would certainly have defined the entry into the formerly Croat-­‐controlled and still Croat-­‐dominated half of the city with imposing, exclusively Croat institutions. 41
Bose, Bosnia after Dayton, 141; Chris Hedges, “On Bosnia’s Ethnic Fault Lines, It’s Still Tense, but World is Silent,” New York Times, February 28, 1997; and Heiko Wimmen, “New Nations, Imagined Borders: Engineering Public Space in Post-­‐War Mostar, Bosnia-­‐Hercegovina,” paper presented as part of the Beirut Conference for Public Spheres, Beirut, Lebanon, 22-­‐24 October 2004, 1. 12 Mapping and Planning Visions for the Central Zone Around the year 2000, Mostar’s Southwest Municipality developed a map of the city into which most of the Central Zone was absorbed within the Croat-­‐controlled municipality, rather than shown as distinct (fig. 3). Thus the map explicitly denies the existence of the Central Zone, cartographically reinforcing what the Southwest Municipality’s building programs in this part of the city had attempted to argue. Even more tellingly, the entire city east of the Neretva River is not even included, though implied through the map’s title of Mostar: Zapadni Dio (Mostar: Western Part). The most prominent sites indicated on the map produced by Mostar’s Southwest Municipality were the buildings sites for the Croatian National Theater and Catholic Cathedral (as well as a prewar sports arena), which legally were not within the municipality, but were de facto treated as such because of its relative strength in comparison to the shared City Council that was supposed to be administering the Central Zone.42 Numerous streets and spaces are renamed on this map produced by Mostar’s Southwest Municipality in ways that undermined the idea of shared space within the Central Zone. Most notably, the street that marked the line of division during the war, the patriotic communist-­‐era Bulevar Narodne Revolucije (Boulevard of the National Revolution) had become the Bulevar Hrvatskim Braniteljima (Boulevard of Croat Defenders).43 The attempt to rededicate the Boulevard to Croat Defenders was forbidden by a 2002 decision of the shared City Council that required all streets in the Central Zone to keep their names as of April 6, 1992, the day the war began.44 Nevertheless, this map produced in Mostar Southwest Municipality and published on their website for many years afterwards, continued to label this particular street as the Boulevard of Croat Defenders and to deny the Central Zone’s existence. Though perhaps motivated by altogether different aims, another plan for Mostar that disregarded the boundaries of the Central Zone was adopted in May of 2001 by the Muslim controlled Old Town Municipality, the eastern part of Mostar’s urban area. This Old City Municipality Master Plan had been developed between 1999 and 2001 through a collaboration of the local office of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) and the New York-­‐based World Monuments Fund (WMF).45 This plan, which focused on 42
Općina Jugozapad Mostar, “Mapa,” c.2000. Općina Jugozapad Mostar, “Map”. 44
M.L., “Adresa Obnovljene Zgrade na Bulevaru je Bulevar Narodne Revolucije” [The Address of Restored Buildings on the Boulevard is the Boulevard of the national Revolution], Dnevni List September 11, 2002, 15. 45
Amir Pašić, Celebrating Mostar: Architectural History of the City, 1452-­‐2004 (Gračanica: Grin, 2005), 133-­‐5. 43
13 the historic core of the city according to Mostar’s boundaries in 1918, was in turn based on a plan developed in 1990, before the war, by the organization Prostor. The AKTC/WMF plan divided the urban center of the city into three concentric zones, none of which corresponded to the administrative boundaries of the municipalities and Central Zone at that time (fig. 4). The smallest zone, called A – Old Town, encompassed the area immediately surrounding the Old Bridge as well as along the main streets on either side of the Neretva River. The next zone, called B – City Center, included some additional areas, such as around the Rondo on the west side and a few traditionally-­‐scaled neighborhoods on the east side. The third zone, called C – 1918 Historic Area encompassed, as its name suggests, the rest of the urban area that had been developed by the end of the Austro-­‐Hungarian period. This plan, prepared by international non-­‐governmental organizations concerned with cultural heritage, but then adopted by one of the city’s municipalities before Mostar’s reunion, ignores the boundaries of the Central Zone in an attempt to claim this space. However, the Mostar Southwest map had absorbed most of the Central Zone into its own boundaries of a re-­‐centered, new city in the west, erased the rest of the city, and implied the perpetuation of two separate cities. On the other hand, the Old City Municipality Master Plan presumed a reunited city within which the historic center becomes the center of the entire city once again, and the divisions negotiated at the end of the war, including not only the Central Zone, but also the municipalities themselves, are no longer relevant for planning discussions. Indeed, when Mostar’s historic core was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2005, the year after the reunion of the city, the designated area and its buffer zone corresponded more closely with the boundaries of Zone A of the 2002 Old Town Municipality Master Plans than with previous or current administrative areas of the city (fig. 5).46 On the other hand, other master plans produced by various local and international constituencies have continued to envision the Central Zone as a shared space, and often even incorporated the half-­‐built theater and cathedral buildings into that vision. Most notably, in 2002, the Urban Planning Institute of the City of Mostar prepared a Preliminary Urban Plan for the Central Zone (fig. 6). This plan uses those two institutions as the defining axis around which the central portion of the proposal is organized. 46
th
ICOMOS, “Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina),” Evaluations of Cultural Properties. Report prepared for the 29 Session of UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee in Durban, South Africa, July 10-­‐17, 2005 (April 2005), 184. 14 Though construction was halted on these two institutions just a few years previously by the same city government they become organizing factors in this never officially approved plan whose approval process was stalled in 2003. This reflects the overwhelming tendency within the city today to accept illegal construction rather than to have them destroyed. The theater and cathedral building are also central structures influencing the unsolicited scheme proposing a possible redevelopment for this part of the city suggested by local architect Amir Pašić and published in his 2005 book Celebrating Mostar (fig. 7).47 The proposal, which recommends renaming a major intersection known since the war as the Spanish Square as Unity Square, calls explicitly for the “completion of the Croatian Theater and the New Cathedral and the construction of [an] Islamic Center between them.”48 A new Federal Building is also proposed for a lot between the two institutions linked specifically with the city’s Croat community. Thus, present in this scheme proposed by Pašić, is the idea of using these blocks within the former Central Zone as site for institutions for each community individually (cathedral and theater for Croats, Islamic center for Muslims) as well as institutions for all Mostarians (Federal Building, stadium, gymnasium, a convention center and other educational and cultural buildings). Conclusion – Slow Steps Towards Shared Space Mostar was governed and administratively organized according to the temporary solution reached in Rome in 1996 until a new city statute was finally implemented in 2004. In mid-­‐2003, drafting this new statute and reunifying Mostar had become one of the top four priorities of High Representative Paddy Ashdown. The Office of the High Representative (OHR) established a commission of Mostar politicians to explore the problem and propose a solution, and appointed as its chairman Norbert Winterstein, a former Mayor of Ruesselsheim, Germany and former EUAM official.49 After a series of failed negotiations ended with walk-­‐outs, no new Statute was prepared. By September of 2003, the OHR had established a Second Mostar Commission, each member of which was required to sign a formal 47
Pašić, Celebrating Mostar, 157-­‐9. Pašić, Celebrating Mostar, 157. 49
OHR, “High Representative Welcomes Establishment of the Mostar Commission and Provides Eight Principles for its Work,” OHR Press Release, April 23, 2003, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-­‐dept/presso/pressr/default.asp? content_id=29772. 48
15 commitment to “participate constructively” until an agreement was reached.50 The Second Mostar Commission submitted a draft Statute to the OHR by its December 2003 deadline, and its publication was immediately followed by a heated public debate and general discontent in Mostar. However, the OHR decided the Statute was good enough and issued a decision ordering its implementation in March 2004. This represented an important structural change for the city’s government as the six municipalities became voting districts within a single municipality and the Central Zone was disbanded and absorbed within what had been the Southwest and Old Town municipalities (fig. 6). In the past decade, during and after Mostar’s political division, developments toward sharing the Old Gymnasium, located on the central Spanish Square along the divisive Boulevard and within the boundaries of the former Central Zone, have mirrored in microcosm the reunion of the city. Like the Liska Street cemetery, the Gymnasium could have been a shared space in the city center that served as a starting point for cooperation, but instead caused additional controversy in the first decade after the war. However, recent developments at the Gymnasium have revealed a glimpse of hope that institutions and spaces in the city may slowly begin the process of reunifying with the assistance and encouragement of the international community. Despite the late-­‐nineteenth century Gymnasium’s front-­‐line location, its wartime damage was superficial compared to many other sites in the city, and it remained structurally sound. The building was contested during negotiations for the boundaries of the Central Zone in 1996: the local Croat authorities wanted it within the Mostar Southwest Municipality, while the local Muslim authorities and EUAM wanted it within the Central Zone, which is where it ended up. Despite the fact that its Central Zone location was meant to preserve it as a shared space, Mostar’s Southwest Municipality partially repaired the first floor of the building and opened the Brother Dominik Mandić Grammar School within it in 2000.51 This school was intended for Catholic Croat students and was named after a Franciscan priest to reinforce its exclusivity. Its opening was quickly followed by protests from Mostar’s Muslim population and officials, to which the regional office of the OHR responded by “mediating an agreement 50
Commission for Reforming the City of Mostar, “Recommendation of the Commission and Report of the Chairman,” ed. Norman Winterstein, Mostar: December 15, 2003, 9-­‐10. 51
A. Dedić, “Obnova ‘Stare Gimnazije’” [Renewal of the “Old Gymnasium”], Slobodna BiH, October 29, 1998, 16 16 between the two sides on ‘future joint use’ of the gymnasium premises.”52 According to this agreement, once the building was restored, both Croat and Muslim-­‐run high schools should operate separately on the same premises. It was over two years until the second, Muslim-­‐controlled school opened, and only after repeated complaints from Mostar’s Old Town Municipality that their schools were overcrowded and that they too should be able to make use of the largely unoccupied Gymnasium building.53 This second school operating within the same building was called the Aleksa Šantić Gymnasium, as the prewar school had been known. The two schools maintained separate administrations, curriculum, students, and even separate entrances. This truly segregated system, with “separate but equal” schools, was not only sanctioned by the local governments and the international community in Bosnia-­‐Hercegovina, but was proposed and run by them as well. In the summer of 2003, at the time when talks on the political reunification of Mostar were underway, the international community began discussing proposals for integrating these two separate high schools. The OHR and the Organization for Security and Co-­‐operation in Europe (OSCE) proposed combining the administrations as well as the math and science curricula of the two schools.54 This proposal was viewed as a preliminary test of how cooperative the nationalist HDZ and SDA parties, still controlling much with in the city, were actually feeling.55 That fall, all the city’s elite high school students began learning together in a school known simply as the Mostar Gymnasium. Though they shared a school name, administration, and physical building, the students still studied in separate classroom with separate teachers. Once Mostar’s residents and educational authorities had taken these preliminary symbolic – yet largely superficial steps – towards reuniting the Gymnasium, donations to fund the restoration of 52
Bose, Bosnia after Dayton, 136; OHR, “HRCC Human Rights Quarterly Report, May 15-­‐August 31, 2000,” August 31, 2000, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-­‐dept/hr-­‐rol/thedept/hr-­‐coord-­‐cent/info-­‐reps/hr-­‐reports/default. asp?content_id=5101; and “Stara Gimnazija za Sve Učenike” [The Old Gymnasium for All Students], Slobodna BiH, July 25, 1999, 3. 53
Jelana Dalipagić, “Zahtijevamo Korištenje Gimnazije u Središnjoj Zoni” [We Demand the Use of the Gymnasium in the Central Zone], Dnevni List, October 30, 2002, 15; and “Neiskorištena Zgrada Gimnazije” [Unused Gymnasium Building], Jutarnje Novine, October 30, 2002, 3. 54
OSCE, “Transcript of the Press Conference in Mostar,” by Richard Medić, OSCE, July 16, 2003, http://www.ohr.int/ohr-­‐offices/mostar/transcripts/default.asp?content_id=30323; and OSCE/OHR, “Mostarska Stara Gimnazija: Plan Integracije” [Mostar’s Old Gymnasium: Integration Plan], Advertisement, Dnevni List, July 16, 2003, 13. 55
Zvonimir Jukić, “Mostarska Gimnazija: Test Iskrenosti za HDZ BiH” [Mostar’s Gymnasium: Test of the Honesty of HDZ BiH], Dnevni List, July 10, 2003, 8; and Vildana Selimbegović, “Kakva Gimnazija, Takav i Grad” [Whatever kind of Gymnasium, That kind of City], Dani, July 25, 2003, 22-­‐24. 17 the building came from the governments of Spain, Germany, Norway, Canada, Great Britain, Turkey, and Bosnia-­‐Hercegovina.56 These offers were all hinged on the idea of continued moves towards a shared school, and the City’s Ministry of Education was asked to research integrating the more sensitive subjects of language and history and to provide recommendations. Articles and editorials in both Croat and Muslim local papers continued to debate the name of the gymnasium as well as raised concerns about what mechanisms would ensure students would be instructed in their mother tongues in this potentially unified school.57 Croatian and Bosnian vary slightly in vocabulary and grammar, but are virtually indistinguishable to outsiders and many native speakers. Recent efforts to differentiate these and argue they are separate languages are attempts to create distinctions among people and reinforce separate identities. Despite the rhetoric and insistence of the international donors, in 2006, the final phase of the Gymnasium’s restoration began though two largely separate schools continued to operate inside it. Though its total unifying objective was not achieved, Mostar’s Gymnasium partial merger was nevertheless advocated as a model for combining segregated schools elsewhere in the Federation, including Rama, where two primary schools, one for Croat children and one for Muslim children, were similarly operating within a single building. Merging the schools but maintaining separate curricula for certain subjects was proposed for Rama “following the example of Mostar Gymnasium.”58 In addition, in 2005, an EU initiative attempted to unify the two universities in Mostar with pilot projects including a joint applied biology training lab and an EU language center.59 56
Hasan Eminović, “Gimnazija Opet Mostarska” [The Gymnasium is Mostar’s Again], Hercegovačke Novine, July 19, 2003, 3-­‐4; and Ivica Glibušić, “Imaju li Hrvatska i Bošnjačka Djeca Pravo na Materinski Jezik?” [Do Croat and Bosniak Children have a Right to their Mother Tongue?], Dnevni List, July 30, 2003, 9; 57
Eminović, “Gimnazija Opet Mostarska,” 4; Glibušić, “Imaju li Djeca Pravo”; “Gimnazija,” commentary on RTV-­‐
Mostar, reprinted in Most 76 (August 2003): http://www.most.ba/076/ 000.htm; Hercegovina Franciscan Province, “U Povodu Brisanja Imena Fra. Dominka Mandića Gimnaziji u Mostaru” [On the Occasion of the Erasure of the name of Brother Dominik Mandić Gymnasium in Mostar], Mostar, March 4, 2004, http://www.franjevci.info/gimnazija.htm; Selimbegović, “Kakva Gimnazija,” 22. 58
Anja Vrebac, “Incident in Rama is to be solved Following the Example of Mostar Gymnasium,” Dnevni List, September 21, 2005, translated and reprinted by OSCE, http://www.oscebih.org/ public/default.asp?d=6& article=show&id=1102 . 59
“Joint University Structures at the City of Mostar,” Europe and Balkans International Newsletter 2 (April 2005): http://137.204.115.130/newletters/aprile%202005.pdf?PHPSESSID=097e6039f2038d0c32273e06b 4881bc5 . 18 In 2003 and 2004, public discussion of how the Old Gymnasium would be organized and of how the city of Mostar would be reunited were linked, and the fate of these two plans were seen as intertwined, as indicated in the headline of one news magazine article, “Whatever Kind of Gymnasium, that Kind of City.”60 Indeed, the process of integrating Mostar’s Gymnasium represented Mostar’s recent history in microcosm. It was taken step by step: first the building, then non-­‐controversial natural science subjects, and perhaps in the future, a fully unified school will be formed. The process was also driven by the international community, whose pressure and threats to withholding financing moved the project along. Both sides of local constituents were reluctant, but in the end came together in a forced marriage, as in the reunification of the city itself. Both the city and the school remain socially and culturally divided today, despite their common administrations. Mostar Gymnasium’s new shared administration and the city’s new shared political structure have only symbolically plastered over the very different attitudes and interests of Mostar’s separate communities, visible so clearly in many other projects being built and rebuilt throughout the city. As was the case for the New City Statute itself, the odd Gymnasium arrangement seems to have been accepted by the international community as close enough, despite its shortcomings. The Central Zone that separated the two communities during the city’s decade of division remains something of a buffer area today. Seven years after the political reunification of the city and the dissolution of the Central Zone it remains an underutilized portion of the city, avoided by all because there is little there: neither shared spaces nor many exclusive ones. While regulation and decisions about whether construction projects for the area will continue remain in limbo, so does the fate of Mostar’s former Central Zone. 60
Selimbegović, “Kakva Gimnazija,” 22. 19 FIGURES Figure 1: Map of Mostar showing the boundaries of the EUAM and SDA proposals for the city’s shared Central Zone, and its final boundaries as designated in the Rome Agreement, 1996. (image: author) Figure 2: Map of key institutions and monuments associated with the city’s Croat community established or attempted along the Boulevard in Mostar. (image: author). Figure 3: “Mostar -­‐ Western Part” according to the Croat-­‐controlled Mostar Southwest Municipality, c.2002. (image: Općina Mostar Jugozapad) 20 Figure 4: “Ideal Solution for a Regulation for Central Urban Zone” according to the Croat-­‐controlled Mostar Southwest Municipality, c.2002. (image: Gradska Vijecnica) Figure 5: Area of Mostar nominated to the World Heritage List and its designated buffer zone, c.2005. (image: ICOMOS) Figure 6: “Ideal Solution for a Regulation for Central Urban Zone” according to the Croat-­‐controlled Mostar Southwest Municipality, c.2002. (image: Gradska Vijecnica) 21 Figure 7: “City Center Urban Planning Proposal Map,” prepared by architect Amir Pasic, c.2005. (image: Amir Pasic) Figure 8: Map of the City of Mostar showing boundaries of the six administrative districts as designated in the City Statue of 2004. The yellow and red indicate the approximate area of the former municipalities of Mostar Southwest and Old Town, respectively, both including part of the former Central Zone that was between them. (image: City of Mostar) 22