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Arsen Milašinović
University of Vienna
Vienna, Republic of Austria

 

THE CROAT-BOSNIAK WAR: THE SELECT FINDINGS OF THE RECENT REGIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY

Vol. XXXIX, 1/2021, pp. 197–214
https://doi.org/10.29362/ist20veka.2021.1.mil.197-214

 

ABSTRACT/RESUME:

The War in Bosnia, virtually from its inception, helped produce a veritable stream of scholarly works. While war crimes, diplomacy, and political affairs attracted most attention, a good number of books were also devoted to local case studies. The Croat-Bosniak war, however, seems to have aroused no one’s interest. Except for the book by Charles Shrader (The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992–1994), who focused on the military aspects of that conflict, the scholars from the West dealt with the Croat-Bosniak war in broad and shallow brushes. But while their treatment was perfunctory, their claims about the causes and nature of the war were not hesitant. One such claim puts the lion’s share of the blame for the outbreak of the violence in 1993 on the Vance-Owen peace plan (VOPP). Recently, however, Davor Marijan and Mesud Šadinlija, historians from Croatia and Bosnia respectively, published integral accounts of the Croat-Bosniak war. Their studies were based on original war records and followed both political and military events, as they unfolded on the local level, in great detail. In this article, I zero in on the local violence in Gornji Vakuf in late 1992 and early 1993 as well as on the effects of the VOPP on the military and political events. I compare the account of David Isby (in Balkan Battlegrounds: A Military History of the Yugoslav Conflict, 1990-1995 Volume I), whom I take to represent the consensus view of the academic community, with the accounts offered by Davor Marijan and Mesud Šadinlija. My key findings are that (1) the hostilities started earlier and were rooted in the conflicting political goals of the Croats and Bosniaks (2) the VOPP at most encouraged the Croats to take the initiative in the conflict and that (3) the fact that war broke out in 1993 had ultimately to do with the fact that the frontlines against the Serbs had calmed down at that time. The two studies then help us fill the gap left open by the earlier research, which focused more on the impact of Western diplomacy, by outlining the frequently overlooked local political and military dynamics which, alongside the plans of international and regional capital cities, crucially influenced the course of events. Combining these perspectives might show which element prevailed at which stage of the conflict and would certainly invigorate the much-needed post-Yugoslav scholarly debate about the war.

 

KEYWORDS: Bosnian War, Hrvatsko vijeće obrane (HVO), Armija Republike Bosne i Hercegovine (ARBiH), Vance-Owen Peace Plan (VOPP), Gornji Vakuf, Croat-Bosniak war

 

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