The Confession That Never Was
Continued from Mein Abkommen – Part II
Well, in our common purpose of getting rid of Tito’s Yugoslav creation – we had a little problem: “Muslims”. And I don’t mean simply “Mohammedans” as a religion, although neither Slobo nor I were big fans of that stuff either. You know, our Croat ancestors fought the Ottomans for centuries under the Austrian and Hungarian crowns. The Serbs were conquered and oppressed by the Ottoman Empire for centuries. Even though that was almost two hundred years ago, we have an aversion to anything related to them.
Because of four centuries of Ottoman domination over Serbia and Bosnia, an awful lot of Christian people embraced the Islamic religion. And when the Austro-Hungarian Empire finally conquered Bosnia, those who had converted were still there. They stayed because they really weren’t from Turkey – the heart of the Ottoman Empire – but from Bosnia. And Bosnia-Herzegovina became a separate province under Austro-Hungarian rule. You get me?
As any serious historian, like myself, will tell you – in the period of the Middle Ages – the people of Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, and almost anywhere else in the world really didn’t understand what “nation” or “nationality” they belonged to in the way we do today.
Before the Ottoman Empire, the people of Bosnia called themselves Bosnians. Under the Ottomans and Austro-Hungarian Crown – Bosniaks. No matter what religion they professed. But here’s a catch, my friend! They named themselves after the land, not a nationality. They didn’t know, but they were!
Well, when the Austro-Hungarian Empire disintegrated, the concept of “nation” became clear even in our lands. Serb and Croat emerged as modern national identities – no longer merely as demonyms – and were, I must say, correctly imposed on the people by the Serbian and Croatian intellectual elites. The main differences between us were language, religion, and a few clearly distinctive first and last names, although we share many of the same ones.
Sorry, as a historian, I may go into too much detail. Just stop me if you already know this. I suppose you know it, of course.
As you can already tell, there was an inconvenient anomaly in the formula. In Bosnia and some other territories, there were people whose religion was Islam; they spoke the same language as the Serbs and Croats – practically unifying it and demonstrating, de facto, that it was the same language – and their first names and last names were far more distinct than those separating the two emerging nations. Although, of course, they shared many surnames with both. You couldn’t even tell anymore whether their ancestors had been ancestral “Croats” or “Serbs”. A travesty!
Immediately after Austro-Hungarian rule ended, the Serb and Croat elites established the “Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes”. Curiously, the Slovenes were indisputably Slovenes even then, heheh. Anyway, the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes happily organized the country into smaller chunks, but never, as you can see from the name of the new state, even recognized the existence of any other nation besides themselves.
The Bosniaks failed to emerge as a nation when the nations were emerging. They weren’t a nation. Never! The Serbs considered them Islamized Serbs, while the Croats considered them Islamized Croats. And the same happened when the country was reorganized into the “Kingdom of Yugoslavia” some years later.
The Serbs tried to apply the same equation to the Croats – saying we indeed were just Catholicized Serbs – and, naturally, as we weren’t – we were an emerging nation, not a mere regional identity – a great deal of conflict followed. They even killed some of our politicians who stood in the way of their interests.
When World War II began, some Croatian politicians chose to join Hitler’s cause – forming an armed pro-Nazi militia, the Ustaše (“Insurgents”). In exchange, he would help them build the result of our thousand-year dream – the Independent State of Croatia. The Ustaše claimed Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina as ancestral Croatian lands and cleared the territories of Serbs who refused to accept their Croatian ancestry, using some violent methods. Of course, everything has been wildly exaggerated by the Serbs. They talk about a million deaths. Don’t misunderstand me – I publicly despise such methods myself, but the Independent Croatian State was really the dream of our nation.
The Serbs had their own collaborationist regime under German occupation. Their main armed nationalist movement was the Četniks (“Combatants”). They were frequently helped by the Italian fascist occupiers and, as the war progressed, spent far more time fighting Tito’s Partisans than the Axis. The Italians and Germans found them useful against their common enemy – the communists.
The Četniks carried out ethnic cleansing and committed terrible atrocities against the “Mohammedans” in Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially along the border with Serbia – the Drina River. The “Muslims” weren’t eager to join either side at first. But when the Četniks massacred their villages, the Nazis mobilized thousands of them and formed a special “Division”. As early as 1941, the “Muslim” elite and religious leaders from across Bosnia condemned the Ustaše atrocities and demanded security and equal treatment for all citizens of Bosnia, regardless of their faith, in the face of the anarchy imposed by the occupying forces. An awful lot of “Muslims” eventually deserted and joined Tito’s Partisans. They even formed the 16th “Muslim Partisan Brigade”.
I was a very young member of Tito’s resistance – the Partisans. The Ustaše even captured me once, but I outsmarted them and escaped. As you can tell, it was a hell of a war – a civil war inside a world war.
And we won the war. Despite everything. And built a new Yugoslavia: the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Tito even defied Stalin. The guy was something. But then he made a big mistake. He eventually made the “Muslims” a nationality as they allegedly were neither Serbs nor Croats. And Bosnia-Herzegovina returned in its “original” form. Well, almost – Tito gave some of its territories to one of the new republics – Montenegro.
I don’t know if “Muslims” were too happy about their new name. We couldn’t call them Islamized Croats or Islamized Serbs anymore, but as at least a few generations had passed since the last time they had called themselves “Bosniaks”, the vast majority of them didn’t even remember the term. But well, there is always someone, ain’t there, dear? At first, it was some poet, then another intellectual, whatever – slowly but surely, they remembered this invented Bosniak nation. And finally, when Yugoslavia fell apart, it was as if a time machine had brought them back, skipping the last hundred years and throwing all our efforts into the garbage.
End of Part III
Continue to Mein Abkommen – Part IV