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Title: Anarchists in the Bosnian Uprising Author: CrimethInc. Date: February 18, 2014 Language: en Topics: Bosnia, Direct Democracy, interview Source: https://crimethinc.com/2014/02/18/anarchists-in-the-bosnian-uprising
The past two weeks have seen a fierce new protest movement in Bosnia,
commencing with the destruction of government buildings and continuing
with the establishment of popular assemblies. Unlike the recent
conflicts in Ukraine, this movement has eschewed nationalistic strife to
focus on class issues. In a region infamous for ethnic bloodshed, this
offers a more promising direction for the Eastern European uprisings to
come.
To gain more insight into the protests, we conducted two interviews. The
first is with a participant in Mostar, Bosnia, who describes the events
firsthand. The second is with a comrade in a nearby part of the Balkans,
who explains the larger context of the movement, evaluating its
potential to spread to other parts of the region and to challenge
capitalism and the state.
Give us a brief timeline of the important events.
On Wednesday, February 5, workers from several local companies that were
destroyed by post-war privatization organized another protest in front
of the Cantonal Government Building in Tuzla. Those workers have been
protesting peacefully for a decade, organizing strikes and hunger
strikes—which were very common in Bosnia until this month—but nobody
listened. For just about the first time in post-war Bosnia, young people
organized over social networks to express solidarity with desperate
workers. Almost 10,000 people supported their protest on Thursday,
February 6; that was when the first clashes with the police happened,
and the first attempt to enter the government building.
On Friday, February 7, more than 10,000 people gathered in the
post-industrial city of Tuzla in front of the Cantonal Government
building, asking for the Prime Minister’s resignation. The Prime
Minister arrogantly refused to resign. None of the officials came out to
speak to them, so people broke through the police lines, entered the
building, and burned it down.
On the same day, solidarity protests with the workers of Tuzla were
organized in almost all the industrial towns of Bosnia. News from Tuzla
spread fast; people in Bihać, Sarajevo, Zenica, and Mostar felt that
this could be a moment to try to win a change. After the police attacked
protesters in Sarajevo, during which some of the people were pushed down
and thrown into the river Miljacka, the crowd fought back, forcing back
the police and burning down the building of the Cantonal Government, as
well as the buildings of the Presidency (including the state flag), the
municipality of Sarajevo Center, and several police cars and vans. In
Bihać, people attacked the building of the Cantonal Government and
smashed it up. The same thing happened in Zenica.
Everyone was anticipating the events in the ethnically divided city of
Mostar. More than 4000 people gathered in front of the Cantonal
Government, demanding resignations. Soon, the first rocks were thrown,
to great applause. From that moment, more and more people were putting
t-shirts, balaclavas, masks—whatever they could find—over their faces;
without any police resistance, within a few minutes, the building was on
fire. Then people went to the City Hall and burned it down, as well as
the building of the cantonal Parliament, Mostar Municipality, and the
offices of two leading nationalist political parties that have ruled
this city since 1991. That made quite a statement.
Protests are still going on, and people have organized themselves in
plenums [assemblies]. Four cantonal governments have been forced to
resign. Two of them are negotiating with plenums about forming
governments of people who are not active members of any political
parties. The authorities are fighting back hard—spreading fear of
another civil war, arresting people, beating them, pressing charges for
terrorism and attack on constitutional order…
Who participated? How and why did the protests spread? What limits did
they reach?
The participants were from all social groups. Workers, unemployed,
pensioners, many young people, demobilized soldiers, activists, football
fans, human rights activists, parents with their children…
The people of Bosnia and Herzegovina are the poorest in Europe.
Unemployment is over 50%; among young people, it is over 70%. At same
time, Bosnian politicians are among the best paid in southeast Europe,
and the most corrupt. The healthcare system is the worst in Europe, and
social safety nets are almost nonexistent. The society that was one of
the most egalitarian in Europe 25 years ago now has a huge social gap.
Capitalism and the process of privatization have completely destroyed
the local economy; all the big factories and companies that were saved
during the war have been privatized and shut down. All the wealth is
concentrated in the hands of a few. There is no production in Bosnia any
more, only import. The authorities are taking bigger and bigger loans
from the IMF, knowing that they have no way of paying them back—so we
can expect to be forced to privatize Bosnian Telecom and
Electro-energetic system, the last viable pubic companies.
Those are the main reasons for the protests. It’s hard to speak about
the limits; the movement is still continuing on a daily basis, the
protests as well as the meetings of the plenums. The demands that are
being made by the plenums are clearly social: the revision of the
privatization process and the like. Politicians are terrified of losing
their privileges, their positions, their wealth, and their freedom; this
is causing different political parties to unite against their own
people. They are using the mainstream media to discredit protests and
plenum participants. Religious leaders are pushed to speak against the
protests in churches and mosques. People are being threatened with
losing their jobs, and it is very difficult to get a job here. In
Mostar, a trade union activist was brutally beaten up by “unknown
persons.” In Sarajevo, a red Hummer car drove into the crowd of
protesters.
What organizational structures were involved in the protests? Did any
pre-existing groups or organizations play an important role? How were
decisions made? Have new relations or networks resulted?
The protests in Tuzla were sparked by the two Trade Unions of Dita and
Polihem Tuzla, but they swiftly grew much bigger. None of the
preexisting structures had the credibility or capacity to organize that
many people. The protests themselves were spontaneous and chaotic. After
a few days, the first organizational structures were formed, The Plenums
of Citizens; this is the first time in recent history that the people of
Bosnia and Herzegovina are practicing direct democracy. Decisions are
made collectively at Plenum meetings. It’s a process, and we are all
still learning it. All the Plenums of Bosnia and Herzgovina are
currently working on forming an interplenum coordination.
Describe the political and strategic differences among the people who
took to the streets. Have there been internal conflicts?
As no preexisting political groups had control over the protests, many
different people are involved, with different political agendas. The
main differences are about the use of force in self-defense and the
limits of civil disobedience. But all the people are united when it
comes to the social demands. During the plenum meetings, everyone speaks
in his or her own name and takes part in the decision-making process, so
there are no real internal conflicts yet. Some political parties are
attempting to cause such a conflict, but people are sticking together
and so far we have resisted this successfully.
Which concrete tactics did protesters employ? Which ones were effective?
How did different tactics spread?
Right now, protesters are primarily using road blockades as a form of
pressure. Often, they block several roads in the town centers at the
same time for hours, which makes the authorities react. It all depends
on how many people are in the street on that day. New tactics and
strategies are being discussed. Road blockades are proving quite
effective, but the downside is that if they occur on a daily basis, some
people begin to turn against the protesters because this disturbs their
daily routine—they can’t get to work or go shopping or whatever.
The tactic that made the politicians fear for the first time in last 18
years—that made many of them resign, that forced them propose many legal
acts based on the demands of the protesters—was burning down the
institutional buildings and political party offices. Many of the
politicians were afraid that people would come to their homes to get
them. Some have left the country.
Setting institutional buildings on fire is not going to solve any
problems by itself. But most people agree that if this hadn’t happened,
the politicians would have never resigned, or heard the people’s
demands. None of us could even imagine 15 days ago that people would
organize plenums, that politicians would be forced to negotiate with the
people about forming nonpartisan governments, revising privatization, or
cutting their salaries down to an average worker’s wages.
Speak about nationalism and ethnic tensions in the protests. What has
changed since the 1990s?
I am so happy and even proud to report that there is absolutely no
nationalism among the protesters, including the demobilized soldiers.
This is one of the things that everyone keeps repeating: these protests
are social, not national. All the nationalist political parties have
tried to turn the social conflict into a national conflict, but so far
they have failed. Solidarity among different social groups, different
cities, different ethnic groups, and direct democracy experiments mark
the biggest change since the 1990s.
Has there been any influence in Bosnia/Herzegovina from the nearby
uprisings and protest movements in Greece, Slovenia, Turkey, or
elsewhere? What connections exist between comrades in Bosnia/Herzegovina
and elsewhere in the Balkans and Europe? How should we compare what is
happening in Bosnia/Herzegovina to the conflicts unfolding in Ukraine,
for example?
The Turkish and Ukrainian protests have inspired people here to some
extent. We are all aware of the repressive nature of the regimes there;
if they could rise, why can’t we? Most of the active people of Balkans
are connected. This is a small geographic area, and the radical left,
anarchist, and non-institutional movements are small and weak, so the
contacts are mainly individual, rarely resulting in concrete
cooperation. Most often, we organize solidarity actions for each other,
solidarity protests. The Balkan Anarchist Book Fair is one of our common
projects.
The Bosnian protests have a much different character than the Ukrainian
protests. The protests here are strictly social, unlike in Ukraine. It
seems that the main demand there is loosening the ties to Russia and
approaching the EU; there is a lot of neo-Nazi and radical right
involvement. By contrast, the Bosnian protests are openly
anti-nationalist.
Is there any chance of a wider wave of uprisings in Eastern Europe,
following the so-called Arab Spring? What would that look like, if it
did happen? What would be the possibilities and dangers?
It is hard to imagine a Balkan or Eastern European spring. But then
again, if desperate and divided Bosnians could rise together against
privatization and corruption, organize in plenums and practice direct
democracy, then anything is possible! All the conditions are there. This
region is poor, the privatization process ended tragically in all the
new states, and there are a lot of people without any perspective for
the future. If it does happen, it could play out in many different ways.
One possibility is that the connections between the neighboring
countries would strengthen, potentially taking new forms of economic and
financial unions, based on principles that would be much more
egalitarian that the present ones. This could posse a threat to the
corporate European Union, and it could inspire people to rebel inside
the EU.
The danger is obvious—that politicians will succeed in turning the
social conflict into an inter-ethnic conflict. This is what they are
trying to do in Bosnia at the moment. If capitalists feel seriously
threatened, European and US structures will play this card. They have
great previous experience with it, in the ex-Yugoslavian region
especially.
Are there possibilities for a struggle to develop in Bosnia/Herzegovina
that doesn’t just call for a new and more honest government, but that
rejects the legitimacy of capitalism and the state altogether?
There is a possibility for an anti-capitalist struggle to develop. There
are already lots of anti-capitalist banners at protests. Some people’s
demands are explicitly anti-capitalist. But to reject the legitimacy of
the State, there is hardly any possibility. In many people’s minds,
there are still fresh memories of fighting a war to get an independent
state. The majority of people here feel that if the state disintegrated,
there would be another war. They have no experience, or even historical
memory, of organizing without leaders, political parties, trade unions,
or religious institutions. Only a few people know anything about
anarchist political theories and practices.
What does the future hold?
We are going to see a minimal increase in social justice, for sure. We
are going to see massive cuts to the privileges, benefits, and salaries
of politicians at all institutional levels. But it’s not going to change
the social picture of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The governments will need
more funds, they will borrow money from the IMF and other global
financial institutions, the debt will increase, and so will social
unrest.
It’s clear that people are not willing to go on hunger strikes any more,
to commit suicide for not being able to feed their children or pay back
loans. They are ready for new forms of organizing. Spring is coming soon
and more and more people will look for justice in the streets and, based
on recent experience, in non-institutional forms. The current Bosnian
economic, political, and institutional situation is so difficult that no
one dares to make any long-term predictions, especially in the light of
the recent events.
Is there a shared context between the events in Bosnia and the other
recent explosions in Eastern Europe—Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania,
Slovenia? They have taken different forms, but do they spring from
common conditions?
These struggles are connected on various levels, in particular in former
Yugoslavia. It’s not just the shared history and language, nor the
attention that our mainstream media focuses on events in other
ex-Yugoslavian countries—it is also the fact that Yugoslavian republics
were always multi-national, which only increased during and after the
war. So information flows widely here, not just between activists. New
methods of struggle and mobilization resonate in the collective
imagination, and people adopt and adapt them.
As for what is common throughout the former Eastern bloc, I think people
are experiencing the same basic problems. After more than twenty years
of privatization, concrete memories of the repressive socialist years
are fading, being replaced with a constructed nostalgia for a “good old
days” that never existed. Meanwhile, people have become disillusioned
with capitalism and all those promises about the free market and choice
and democracy. In this situation, we see three basic demands over and
over.
The first is to preserve the social state that is withering away, to
stop the privatization of companies that always ends in massive layoffs
and the elites making off with tremendous profits. The second is to
throw out the current political representatives, and, more abstractly,
opposition to “the system” in general. In former Yugoslavia, everyone
has watched for years as the former socialist elites transformed into
new capitalist ones, stealing millions while the people got even poorer.
Elsewhere in the Eastern bloc, people who started from the same position
and ideology of relative social(ist) equality have become interconnected
with capitalist elites, using their political power to smooth the way
for capitalist accumulation. This brings me to the third common demand:
opposition to corruption, a logical conclusion of the other two demands.
During social explosions, these demands can produce different results.
Many people seek a new “savior”—in Ukraine, this means the European
Union, while elsewhere it means fresh political parties, such as Syriza
in Greece. The pace at which cooptation of such explosions can occur,
and the degree to which participants are radicalized, both depend
largely on how well-organized anarchists and other anti-authoritarians
are, and how quickly they respond to events. In Greece, for instance,
Syriza knows they have very little mobilization potential compared to
anarchist or communist organizations, so it is difficult for them to
take over struggles.
What does it tell us that participants in these protests are refusing
the forms of nationalism that have inflicted so much suffering in the
region?
To understand the situation, we must back up to look at the whole
picture. The solution that the “international community” (organizations
like the UN, NATO, and EU) offered for the ethnic war of the 1990s was,
of course, simply the continuation of this war by different means. With
the Dayton “peace” agreement, they divided Bosnia into three major
parts: Serbian, Muslim, and Croatian. All the institutions were tripled,
everything was divided—streets, neighborhoods, villages and towns,
cemeteries, hospitals, everything.
Practically, that means that if you graduate from a university in the
Muslim part of Bosnia, the degree will not be recognized in the Serbian
part. If you try to buy a ticket for Serbia in the Muslim part,
sometimes they will not sell it to you, and vice versa. These problems
caused by nationalism imposed by the elites just compound all the other
problems I already described: unchecked privatization, corruption,
economic and social breakdown. In Bosnia, unemployment is around 45
percent—60 percent for young people. Ten jobs are canceled every day,
while prices and living costs are rapidly increasing.
What is happening now can be understood better in light of the movement
Dosta (“Enough”) that started in 2006. Dosta grew from a small internet
forum into regular weekly meetings of people in the central square in
Sarajevo, getting bigger every week and addressing economic and social
issues. It was the first moment after the war in which people came
together regardless of nationality, and without being forced to be a
part of a tripartite structure. Most of the protests were peaceful at
first, but after a young person was stabbed on a tram, they became
bigger and more oriented towards direct action. The parliament in
Sarajevo was stoned and actions took place against some individual
politicians. The organizational structure of Dosta spread into different
cities, but it was politically diverse—including everyone from
libertarian comrades to people who used it as an opportunity to form
communist and social-democratic parties.
So, many years ago already, people turned away from the kind of
nationalism that would divide them into Croat, Serb, and Muslim. The
problem is that the solution for this was assumed to be that everyone
should identify instead as Bosnians. Though it is exciting how
anti-nationalistic today’s protests are, the problem is that this
rejection of nationalism is premised on a new national identity, and
there is little opposition to this sort of nation-building process
intended to produce a new unification of people. On one level, this is
better than remaining divided into three hostile parts that can be
played against each other by the elites of Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia.
Yet as anarchists, we do not see building national identities as a
solution for anything.
What are the fault lines within this movement? What will happen next?
Tuzla, the starting place of the protests, used to be one of the most
industrialized cities in Yugoslavia, with left-wing (socialist) unions
and workers. Privatization hit Tuzla very hard. Workers from five
factories were protesting in front of governmental and local
institutions for months, if not the whole year—always peacefully, trying
to engage someone in conversation. Finally, they simply had enough, came
prepared, and started riots.
They were supported by protests in 33 cities. Some people from the
traditional left are joining the current administration in calling for
new elections, but the message from the streets is clear: no one
represents us. After the parliaments, party headquarters, police
stations, and other symbols of authority were burned, the institutional
left realized that they were not in control of the narrative or of the
way the protests were developing. As a result, they want to “normalize”
the protests by delegitimizing diversity of tactics. As usual, their
efforts intersect with the efforts of the government to crush the
movement by means of direct repression: numerous arrests, injuring
people during interrogations, and so on.
Right now, the plenums that emerged from the movement are drawing up to
1000 people in Tuzla, Sarajevo, and other cities. The fact that so many
people wish to participate in these plenums reflects how alienated
people feel from the so-called democratic process of the parliamentary
system, in which the only form of participation is to vote for
politicians who differ merely in name. These plenums don’t just express
deep dissatisfaction with the parliamentarian system, they are also a
step towards building alternative horizontal decision-making processes.
As for the content of these plenums, the proposals raised there vary
from reformist to radical. With such big plenums, it can often happen
that there are unequal power relations, excluding women or people who
don’t have the same experience with public speaking.
Another danger is that people will accommodate themselves to merely
making demands. Mainstream media and politicians ceaseless repeat the
same old questions: Who are you? What do you want? Who can we talk to?
What are your demands? It can be hard not to fall in this trap. But to
establish mutual understanding and solidarity, we need time to develop
our ideas and desires. It takes time to imagine alternatives beyond
reforming the existing system; identifying demands at the beginning of a
revolt only closes the political space in which we could form a new
vision together. When the elites try to impose their understanding of
time and the rules of their game, refusing to cooperate makes us
stronger, not weaker. It can also thwart the emergence of authorities
within the movement, keeping it decentralized and horizontal.
It’s hard to say which direction the revolt will develop. But we can
already say that this is an important step towards building a culture of
resistance in the Balkans, which can serve as an inspiration elsewhere.
Similar demonstrations have already spread to neighboring Montenegro.
Given the experience from Croatia, Slovenia, and other similar
struggles, I am afraid that the political space that opened on the
streets will close soon, due to the absence of organized networks of
libertarian activists. It appears that the dominant discourse will be
channeled into the nation-building process—new elections, new parties,
and the like—repressing the most radical ideas and class consciousness
of this resistance, which is still emphasized by those who remain on the
streets. This is not unexpected. My hope is that anarchist and
autonomist groups and individuals who found each other on the streets
will now be capable of building a stronger network and general culture
of resistance, so as to be more prepared next time something like this
happens. Because it will.
What is happening is exciting and important, but it is just one episode
in a longer struggle. Because of our region’s socialist past, we don’t
have a living history of anti-authoritarian movements; we need to
develop the ability to practice horizontal decision-making and direct
action during this and future struggles. In that regard, every opening
like this is an opportunity to move forward.