3 - A Systemic Analysis of Resilience and Transitional Justice Impact in a Central Bosnian Village

Summary

This chapter focuses on the village of Ahmići in Bosnia-Herzegovina. During the Bosnian war, a massacre in the village resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Bosniak men, women and children. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in July 2019, the chapter argues that while many interviewees demonstrated resilience simply through everyday acts of getting on with and rebuilding their lives, Ahmići cannot be accurately described as a resilient community – the sum of its parts – because it has not dealt with what happened in 1993 as a community. A crucial reason for this is the existence of multiple systemic factors – including the politicisation of the Bosnian war, the absence of a cross-ethnic narrative and divided school systems – that have not allowed the community to come together as one and rebuild social connections. It demonstrates that transitional justice work – particularly the trials that took place at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia – further contributed to entrenching inter-ethnic divides. The chapter accordingly calls for a social ecological reconceptualisation and reframing of transitional justice, operationally linking this to adaptive peacebuilding.

Introduction

Visitors to Bosnia-Herzegovina (BiH) often spend a few days in the capital city, Sarajevo, before travelling to Mostar in the south-west of the country, and from there across the border into Croatia. Few tourists head to Central Bosnia, despite its relative proximity to Sarajevo. An area rich in both history and natural resources, including the spectacular mountains of Vlašić and Kruščica, this part of BiH was the scene of fierce fighting between the Army of BiH (ABiH) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) during the 1992–1995 Bosnian war. In April 1993, the HVO launched an attack on the Lašva Valley, culminating in the massacre of more than 100 Bosniaks in the village of Ahmići. I visited Ahmići for the first time in July 2008 and since then I have returned many times. I confess that I have a deep attachment to the place. Each time that I am there, I find myself thinking about pre-war Ahmići and wishing that I had been able to experience – albeit as an outsider – the village life that Bosniaks and Croats (Bosnian Croats) alike speak about with great nostalgia. They used to visit each other’s houses; jointly celebrate Christmas and Bajram (Eid); watch football matches together.

Today, although the village is peaceful, there is a distance between people and relationships have changed. The absence of a sense of community and the weakening of community ties constitute important resource deficits. Such deficits, moreover, exist alongside broader systemic and environmental stressors – including political rhetoric and segregated schooling – that have helped to keep the past alive. Drawing on my most recent fieldwork in Ahmići, carried out in July 2019, this chapter argues that, while some individuals have demonstrated resilience, despite suffering huge losses, overall the social ecologies in which they live offer few protective resources. This, in turn, has important implications for transitional justice, which is partly about social repair (Fletcher and Weinstein, 2002).

Several prosecutions took place at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in relation to the crimes committed in Ahmići. However, these trials had few positive effects and arguably contributed to further entrenching inter-ethnic divides; the supposed transformative impact of the ‘truths’ established within the ICTY’s courtrooms critically neglected the wider ecologies that have shaped popular interpretations of and responses to those truths. The broader issue is that transitional justice, in both theory and practice, has significantly overlooked the concept of resilience, which is quintessentially about entire systems (see Chapter 1) – and about ‘the interactions between an individual’s environment, their social ecology, and an individual’s assets’ (Liebenberg and Moore, 2018: 3). This chapter outlines the case for a social-ecological reconceptualisation and reframing of transitional justice. Operationally linking this to adaptive peacebuilding (de Coning, 2018), it argues that transitional justice processes can potentially contribute to resilience – which overlaps with core transitional goals such as peace and reconciliation – by giving more attention to the social ecologies that necessarily shape processes of dealing with the past.

Massacre in Ahmići, 16 April 1993

According to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE, 2018: 7), ‘The conflict in BiH … resulted in an estimated 100,000 dead and 2.2 million displaced. The mixed Croat and Bosniak cantons of Zenica-Doboj, Central Bosnia and Herzegovina-Neretva were all areas of intense fighting, which resulted in the substantial displacement of one of the two ethnic groups’. At the start of the Bosnian war, the ABiH and HVO were allies against the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The military alliance between the two armies, however, gradually began to break down, and a Trial Chamber of the ICTY found ‘compelling evidence to the effect that, starting in mid-1992, tensions and animosity between Croats and Muslims rapidly escalated’ (Prosecutor v. Kupreškić et al., 2000: para. 125). The first major flare-up in Central Bosnia occurred in October 1992 (Prosecutor v. Kupreškić et al., 2000: para. 163). The Vance-Owen Peace Plan, in January 1993, further contributed to the deterioration in relations between the two sides. It proposed the establishment of ten largely autonomous provinces or cantons in BiH, each of which would have an ethnic majority. Bosnian Croats were to be the majority in three cantons, including canton 10 – Central Bosnia (Prosecutor v. Kordić and Čerkez, 2001: para. 559). According to the ICTY, ‘In the minds of Croatian nationalists, and in particular of Mate Boban [the Bosnian Croat leader], this meant that Province 10 was Croatian’ (Prosecutor v. Blaškić, 2000: para. 369; see also Hoare, 1997: 132).

From January 1993, relations between the ABiH and the HVO further deteriorated as the latter sought to establish its authority over the aforementioned cantons. After ABiH forces ignored an ultimatum to either surrender to the HVO or leave the cantons by 20 January, ‘Croatian forces embarked on a series of actions intended to implement the “Croatisation” of the territories by force’ (Prosecutor v. Blaškić, 2000: para. 372). The situation started to come to a head in mid-April 1993. The HVO had set a deadline of 15 April for the then Bosnian President, the late Alija Izetbegović, to sign an agreement that would place ABiH forces in the three cantons under HVO command. This deadline passed and, at 8 a.m. on the same day, ABiH forces abducted an HVO brigade commander and killed his four escorts. This was one of the ‘provocations’ from the side of the ABiH that Croats in Ahmići often refer to when discussing subsequent events. A Trial Chamber of the ICTY found ‘direct evidence that the HVO planned an attack for the next day [16 April] at a series of meetings that afternoon and evening’ (Prosecutor v. Kordić and Čerkez, 2001: para. 610).

At 5.30 a.m. on 16 April 1993, the HVO¹ launched a concerted attack on the village of Ahmići (and on several other towns and villages in the Lašva Valley). Only Bosniak homes were set alight (Prosecutor v. Bralo, 2005: para. 12). Some Bosniak villagers were shot and killed as they tried to escape. In total, 116 people were killed in Ahmići that day. More than twenty victims are still missing. Bosniaks started to return to Ahmići from the late 1990s onwards. Every year on 16 April, a memorial service takes place – starting in Stari Vitez where many of the victims are buried and ending at the donja džamija (lower mosque) (see Figure 3.1) – to remember and honour the dead.

Figure 3.1 Ahmići memorial to the 116 men, women and children who were killed on 16 April 1993.

Photo by the author.

In Ahmići, there are many examples of individual resilience, in the sense of ‘positive adaptation within the context of significant adversity’ (Luthar et al., 2000: 543). Resilience, however, is not only about individuals. As Ungar and Liebenberg (2011: 127) underline, ‘resilience is the qualities of both the individual and the individual’s environment that potentiate positive development’. In Ahmići, resource deficits and environmental stressors have critically hampered the community and community relations. These same deficits and stressors, which contributed to limiting the on-the-ground impact of the ICTY’s work – both in Ahmići and in BiH more generally – ultimately underscore the need for a social-ecological reconceptualisation of transitional justice.

Individual Resilience in a Divided Community

My previous research in Ahmići, in 2008 and 2009, focused on inter-ethnic relations and reconciliation (Clark, 2012, 2014). More recently, in July 2019, I spent two weeks in the village. I wanted to explore how people had rebuilt their lives, what resources they had used to do so and the extent to which transitional justice processes – and specifically trials conducted at the ICTY – had contributed to fostering resilience, as manifested in the interactions between individuals and their environments (Berkes and Ross, 2013: 7). In total, I conducted ten semi-structured interviews with six men and four women. Seven interviewees were Bosniaks and three were Croats. In addition, a fourth local Croat (female) agreed to respond to questions via email, maintaining that she did not have time to participate in a face-to-face interview.

The relatively small number of interviews undertaken reflects the difficulties of doing research in this particular community. The place has an empty feel and there is no sense of bustling village life. Hence, there are few opportunities to interact with people. It is as if life in Ahmići today primarily takes place behind closed doors. Many people are also tired of telling their stories and dredging up painful memories from the past. The village receives large crowds on 16 April each year and continues to be the subject of media interest (see, e.g., Dajić, 2017). I relied primarily on a snowball sampling strategy, particularly for locating Croat participants. A local contact facilitated the interviews with Bosniak participants. Interviews typically lasted around forty-five minutes and were conducted in the interviewees’ homes in the local languages (Bosnian, Croatian). It would have been impossible to write this chapter while anonymising the name of the village. However, any details that could help to identify the interviewees have been removed.

Regardless of their ethnicity, all interviewees expressed a deep sense of pain and hurt (Clark, 2020a). As one of them underlined, ‘[a]t the end of the day, we are all losers’ (author interview, 9 July 2019). The Bosniak interviewees had lost several close family members in the attack on Ahmići. One of the Croat interviewees had lost family members in an ABiH attack on a nearby village. All interviewees, moreover, had lost the community that once existed, as well as neighbours and friends. More than twenty-five years on, the past thus remains raw. In the words of a survivor of the massacre who lost nine family members, ‘[t]ime goes by, the years pass by and the memories are fresh, the sadness is the same’ (cited in Anadolija, 2019). Nevertheless, people have rebuilt their lives, and the interview data provided valuable insights into some of the ways that they have done so. Three particular points stand out in this regard.

The first is that the attack on Ahmići resulted in the loss and destruction of multiple resources. The victims lost their homes, their animals, their livelihoods, their way of life, their sense of belonging and security. When asked how he had dealt with everything that happened in Ahmići, for example, one interviewee stressed: ‘You can’t describe it.’ He used to work hard and he had invested everything in his home; ‘[i]t was all destroyed in an instant’. What had most helped him to deal with everything that happened, he explained, was his desire to ‘return to where I was born’ (author interview, 8 July 2019). His land was charred and neglected, but it was still his ‘dom’ (home) and a fundamental resource, highlighting the fact that – particularly in rural parts of BiH – people often have a deep attachment to land (see, e.g., Tuathail and O’Laughlin, 2009: 1052).

Another intangible resource that both this interviewee and several others indirectly spoke about was their desire to live – and what they frequently referred to as ‘the fight for life’. Speaking only briefly about her own experiences on 16 April 1993, one interviewee stressed: ‘You have to live. You carry inside you everything that you saw and survived, but you have to fight and to go forward’ (author interview, 9 July 2019). The wish to live is an elemental resource that has similarly emerged prominently from other research on traumatic events. In his work with child survivors of the Holocaust, for example, Valent (1998: 520) found that many of them ‘cited an inner surge or compulsion to live, a will to survive, as the most important factor in their survival. They used whatever capacities they had to do so’. In this way, he linked their resilience to ‘the surge of life they manifested, a kind of sacred connection with a wider life force’ (Valent, 1998: 522–523).

For some interviewees, this ‘surge of life’ was closely connected to their faith. One interviewee who lost several members of his family in the attack on Ahmići stressed that, whenever he closes his eyes, he can see all of them and the suffering they went through. However, he also underlined that ‘[y]our relationship with God and prayer bring you some solution and relief’ (author interview, 11 July 2019). Faith had, in some cases, also contributed to meaning-making. One particular interviewee stood out in this regard. ‘It is very difficult to come to terms with what happened in Ahmići’, she reflected, ‘but if you believe that something had to be, this helps you to deal with it’ (author interview, 16 July 2019). According to Panter-Brick, ‘What matters to individuals facing adversity is a sense of “meaning-making” and what matters to resilience is a sense of hope that life does indeed make sense, despite chaos, brutality, stress, worry, or despair’ (Southwick et al., 2014). This particular interviewee had found a sense of meaning in her conviction that events in Ahmići were Allah’s will, and this, in turn, had helped her to move forward.

The second point to underscore is that resilience is not simply about having access to what Ungar (2008: 221) has termed ‘health-enhancing resources’, but also about the clustering of those resources. In his work on Conservation of Resources Theory, for example, Hobfoll (2001: 349) argues that ‘[t]here is strong evidence that resources aggregate in resource caravans in both an immediate and a life-span sense’. Elaborating on the concept of ‘resource caravans’, he further explains that ‘having one major resource is typically linked with having others, and likewise for their absence’ (Hobfoll, 2001: 350). Illustrating this, one of the interviewees expressed a strong sense of contentment. She had many resources, through her own efforts, and in this regard her ‘caravan’ was full. Describing herself as a ‘cheerful person’, she spoke with great pride about her children and stressed the importance of making the most of life, underlining that she had overcome many adversities (author interview, 9 July 2019).

Another interviewee, in contrast, had various material resources yet his ‘caravan’ was somewhat empty. He led a solitary life and explained that he felt bored and frustrated as he saw no prospects for himself in BiH (author interview, 8 July 2019). Similarly, the interviewee who had stressed his desire to return to Ahmići and to his land was similarly dissatisfied with life. He had not worked for many years and repeatedly complained that no one had helped him and his wife, overlooking the fact that external donors had funded the reconstruction of the family’s destroyed home (author interview, 8 July 2019). While his ‘caravan’ was relatively bare, he was not doing anything to change this and his entire demeanour exuded a sense of sadness and defeatism. The past had taken so much away from him and, although he had fulfilled his wish of returning to his land, he appeared to be observing life rather than actively living it.

The third point is that interviewees’ answers revealed a critical absence of community in Ahmići, thus restricting what the community environment provides for resilience (Ungar, 2017: 1282). As Liebenberg and Moore (2018: 2) observe, ‘[i]t is now widely accepted that resilience is associated with individual capacities, relationships and the availability of community resources and opportunities’. When asked about resources within the community, one interviewee underscored the importance of land and agriculture (author interview, 11 July 2019). Illustrating this point, another interviewee had been out picking fruit and she was going to use them to make teas (author interview, 17 July 2019). Overall, however, interviewees significantly struggled with the question about community resources. Some interviewees talked about their pre-war resources. Some interviewees made vague references to the mjesna zajednica (local community association) as a body that can offer limited help. Yet, when asked to elaborate, they were unable to provide more details. Moreover, while some interviewees claimed that there is one mjesna zajednica for Ahmići, others maintained that Bosniaks and Croats each have their own mjesna zajednica. The fact that the interviewees gave such conflicting answers is an important indicator of a lack of community engagement.

What also emerged was a strong conviction on the part of some of the Bosniak interviewees that, as regards resources, there is unequal treatment. One interviewee, for example, complained that Bosniaks have to pay more for land than Croats and that the latter had blocked his attempts to purchase some land. He further insisted that Bosniaks have a second-class status within the municipality of Vitez (which encompasses Ahmići) (author interview, 8 July 2019).² Another interviewee maintained that, as a Bosniak, she has no rights and that the Croats have taken everything for themselves (author interview, 9 July 2019). While many such assertions were unsubstantiated and/or could not be verified, the common feeling among Bosniaks that they do not have the same rights and benefits as their Croat counterparts has undoubtedly contributed to further undermining a sense of community. Equating resilience with community processes, Comes et al. (2019: 126–127) argue that ‘the ability to take part, benefit from and contribute to these processes becomes central if we are striving to ensure social justice’. In Ahmići, the perceived absence of social justice has undermined community processes that might contribute to bringing people together, including how the community deals with adversity and crises (Magis, 2010: 405).

Ahmići, in short, is a fragmented community where the overwhelming impression is that people simply get on with and live their own lives (see Figure 3.2). Some of them have demonstrated resilience in doing so, drawing on their own individual resources to move forward. However, Ahmići cannot be accurately described as a resilient community – the sum of its parts – because it has not dealt with what happened in 1993 as a community. A crucial reason for this is the existence of multiple systemic factors – which are central to the chapter’s insistence on a social-ecological reframing of transitional justice – that have not allowed the community to come together as one and rebuild the social connections that are ‘at the heart of resilient communities’ (Ellis and Abdi, 2017: 290).

Figure 3.2 Ahmići today.

Photo by the author.

Multi-Systemic Hindrances to Fostering Community Resilience in Ahmići

Brightly coloured Russian dolls can be purchased in BiH, particularly in tourist areas like Baščaršija in Sarajevo and the area around the Old Bridge (Stari Most) in Mostar. Stiles et al. invoke the analogy of Russian dolls to apply personal space boundary theory to traumatised adults in therapy. Likening the dolls to four different levels of personal space, they argue: ‘The largest outermost doll is the superficial public self. The next smaller doll is the thoughts and feelings perceived as “acceptable” to the client. The next smaller doll is the “deepest thoughts, feelings, secrets, and sins” of the client, and the innermost doll is the “inner spirit”’ (Stiles et al., 2009: 69). Extending the analogy, but in a different direction, I argue that Ahmići can be likened to a medium-sized doll. The smaller dolls inside it represent individual lives, but larger dolls – representing broader systemic influences – surround and encase it.

The massacre in Ahmići did not occur in a vacuum. It took place in the context of the Bosnian war, and both Bosniak and Croat nationalists subsequently co-opted events to promote and support their particular and conflicting ethno-narratives. These political machinations and persistent attempts at ethnic outbidding (Zdeb, 2017) themselves take place within a broader constitutional system and structure where ethnicity is the central pivot. Fundamentally, ‘The unique way in which Bosnia’s Constitution has been realised allows ethnicity to become the most salient identification marker in political life’ (Piersma, 2019: 937). The country’s tripartite Presidency, the plethora of ethnic-based political parties and the fact that ‘the confederal element of the Bosnian settlement transcends BiH’s borders’ (Bose, 2005: 327) – reaching into neighbouring Croatia and Serbia – powerfully highlight this. Involvement from these neighbouring states, moreover, also contributes to stoking nationalist flames.

In 2019, for example, the Bosniak member of the BiH presidency, Šefik Džaferović, criticised the then President of Croatia, Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović, for comments that she had made about Croats in BiH. During a speech in Mostar in November 2019, she told a large audience: ‘Croats have two homes, the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, but we are one soul and one nation. Therefore I will not stop until Croats in BiH secure what belongs to you historically, politically and constitutionally; that is, total equality and the realisation of your rights as a constituent people’. She insisted that anyone who expects Croats to simply kneel down and disappear from BiH is deceived, and further offered a guarantee that she would not repeat her two predecessors’ neglect of Croats in BiH (Radio Sarajevo, 2019; author’s own translation). President Džaferović responded by accusing Grabar-Kitarović of being part of ‘retrograde powers’ that seek to create ethnic and territorial divides. Claiming that she had charged Bosniaks of wanting BiH for themselves, Džaferović underlined that Bosniaks had been victims of genocide and expelled from huge swathes of territory (Hina, 2019). The victim narratives that both Presidents promoted highlight the existence of meta hermeneutical/interpretative frameworks, fundamentally intersecting with political systems, that strongly shape popular discourse about the Bosnian war. It is within these systemic dynamics that everyday life in Ahmići takes place.

In their work with internally displaced people in Lebanon, Nuwayhid et al. (2011: 511) argue that one factor that helped to build resilience was ‘a strong communal identity united around a common cause’. This common cause, in turn, ‘provided the affected population with a sense of collective identity’ (Nuwayhid et al., 2011: 511). Shiite communities particularly bore the brunt of Israeli military attacks (Telhami, 2007: 26), and ‘shared destiny and the feeling of being collectively targeted strengthened the communal cohesiveness of the affected community’ (Nuwayhid et al., 2011: 512). In Ahmići, no strong sense of communal identity exists, due to wider systemic influences that encourage division and the maintenance of ‘us’/‘them’ boundaries. There is a critical absence of space for discussion and reflection about the pain and hurt that exist on both sides (Clark, 2020a) – or for the development of shared narratives. Bosniaks continue to grieve for their loved ones who perished on 16 April 1993. One interviewee underscored that ‘[t]here are a lot of tears and sadness that cannot be wiped away’ (author interview, 11 July 2019). Croat interviewees, both in my most recent and previous research, have often expressed a sense of hurt that, as they see it, the suffering of their own people has been ignored (Clark, 2014: 80). Claiming that many ‘untruths and lies have been told about Ahmići’, one interviewee insisted that nobody talks about crimes committed in places such as Buhine Kuće.³ Politics, he maintained, was the reason (author interview, 11 July 2019).

While there is a critical absence of community cohesion in Ahmići, another type of cohesion arguably exists. Olson’s (2000) Circumplex Model of Marital and Family Systems, which emphasises cohesion as one of its three key elements (alongside flexibility and communication), identifies four different levels of cohesion – namely disengaged (very low), separated (low to moderate), connected (moderate to high) and enmeshed (very high). The model hypothesises that ‘the central or balanced levels of cohesion (separated and connected) make for optimal family functioning. The extremes or unbalanced levels (disengaged or enmeshed) are generally seen as problematic for relationships over the long term’ (Olson, 2000: 145). In a very different context, Winton’s (2008) work utilises the model in relation to the crime of genocide, and specifically as a way of explaining different perpetrator group dynamics. ‘Enmeshed cohesion’, he argues, ‘is demonstrated by a high level of emotional closeness within the perpetrator groups’ (Winton, 2008: 607). The group is perceived as ‘one big family’, and high levels of loyalty are demanded. Deviations in this regard are punished. In contrast, emotional distance, low levels of loyalty and high levels of group member independence are characteristic of disengaged cohesion (Winton, 2008: 607). The concept of enmeshed cohesion is particularly pertinent to Ahmići and illustrates – at least in part – the feasibility of applying Olson’s model to communities and societies as a whole.

In Ahmići, there are high levels of ethnic-based enmeshed cohesion in the sense of loyalty to a particular narrative, especially on the Croat side. In the hours after the massacre, the head of the British battalion within the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) in BiH, Colonel Bob Stewart, walked through charred shells of people’s former homes. Coming across three HVO soldiers in a vehicle, he asked them who was responsible for the massacre. All of them denied any knowledge or involvement (SENSE Centre, 2019). This denial has persisted. Local Croats, for example, commonly distance themselves from the events of 16 April 1993. One interviewee repeatedly insisted that he would never have returned to Ahmići if he had known what was going to happen (author interview, 16 July 2019). Another interviewee had been in the HVO but maintained that, at the time of the attack, he was not in Ahmići and did not know what was happening (author interview, 11 July 2019). Some locals blame ‘outsiders’ or a few rogue elements (Clark, 2012: 245).⁴ Furthermore, they often deflect attention from what happened in Ahmići by highlighting Croat suffering, in the same way that the conspicuous memorial cross, erected in the grounds of the local Catholic Church, only acknowledges Croat deaths in what it refers to as the 363-day Muslim siege of Vitez.

In April 2010, Ivo Josipović was the first Croatian President to visit Ahmići and he received a warm welcome. According to the then head of the Organisation of 16 April, the visit was ‘first and foremost an expression of good will’ that he believed would ‘contribute to establishing true neighbourly relations in Ahmići’ (Radio Sarajevo, 2010). The foundations for such relations, however, are necessarily highly unstable when they are linked to broader systems that contribute to fostering denial and the glorification of war criminals. In 2014, for example, the convicted war criminal Dario Kordić (discussed in the next section) landed at Zagreb airport following his release from prison. Bishop Vlado Košić was waiting to welcome him. Taking his hand, the Bishop declared that Kordić’s patriotism should be a model to other Croats (Belak-Krile, 2019). Kordić’s support from within the Catholic Church in Croatia – which often intervenes in politics (Vladisavljević, 2019) – has also provided him with several opportunities to speak in public. In April 2019, at the invitation of the Croatian priest Damir Stojić, Kordić delivered a lecture at a student dorm in Zagreb and spoke about how he had found God during his time in prison (Dnevnik, 2019).⁵ He has not spoken publicly about what happened in Ahmići or expressed any remorse.⁶

If indicators of enmeshed cohesion include ‘loyalty to the perpetrator group’ and ‘fear of negative sanctions for dissenting from the perpetrator view’ (Winton and Unlu, 2008: 49), these indicators are present in Ahmići – among both Croats and Bosniaks. During my most recent and my previous research in the village, Croats always refrained from denouncing convicted war criminals (this will be discussed more in the next section), and, in some cases, they directly or indirectly expressed support for them. At the same time, however, there is little space or incentive for Bosniaks to dissent from a powerful metanarrative – exemplified by the persistent instrumentalisation of the 1995 Srebrenica genocide (Nielsen, 2013: 30) – that underlines Bosniak suffering and victimhood, and to acknowledge ABiH crimes against Croats in places such as Buhine Kuće and Križančevo Selo.⁷ To cite Orentlicher (2018: 283), ‘many Bosnians [regardless of ethnicity] feel strong community pressure not to condemn atrocities committed by their own ethnic group’.

The education system has further contributed to fostering enmeshed cohesion. Laketa (2019: 175) notes that ‘[s]egregated educational landscapes work forcefully to entrench fixed notions of identity so that any deviation from the norm becomes highly visible’. In BiH, the most striking example of segregation within the education system (or, more accurately, systems) is ‘two schools under one roof’, whereby young people from different ethnicities attend the same school in different shifts or use different parts of the building. There are fifty-six schools operating as ‘two schools under one roof’ in three particular cantons within the BiH Federation (OSCE, 2018: 6). Central Bosnia Canton, which encompasses Ahmići, has the largest number of divided schools (Piersma, 2019: 941).⁸ In a 2018 report, the OSCE (2018: 4) stressed that what is common to all of these divided schools ‘is that they segregate children, and through this segregation teach them that there are inherent differences between them’. In this way, divided schools not only impede reconciliation and long-term stability (Swimelar, 2013: 172). They also undermine resilience, and in particular the ‘community capacity’ that might be used to ‘solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of a given community’ (Chaskin, 2008: 70).

In short, Ahmići is not a resilient community that has positively adapted to the shocks and stressors that occurred during the Bosnian war. Rather, it can be more accurately described as an ethnically based enmeshed community that responds to, and is constrained by, broader systemic influences. These influences have also reflected heavily on transitional justice work – and on the fact that it has had little impact on resilience.

Transitional Justice, the ICTY and Resilience

In May 1993, as the war in BiH continued to rage, the UN Security Council used its Chapter VII powers (dealing with threats to international peace and security) to establish the ICTY, the first international war crimes tribunal since the post-World War II Nuremberg and Tokyo Tribunals. During the Tribunal’s early years, several defendants stood trial for the crimes committed in Ahmići in April 1993. Two of the most important were Tihomir Blaškić and the aforementioned Dario Kordić, and their cases continue to provoke the most discussion in Ahmići today.

Blaškić was the HVO commander in Central Bosnia. A Trial Chamber of the ICTY assessed that he had ordered the attacks that gave rise to the crimes committed in Ahmići and other villages in the Lašva Valley (Prosecutor v. Blaškić, 2000: para. 437). It further found that ‘[i]n any event, it is clear that he never took any reasonable measure to prevent the crimes being committed or to punish those responsible for them’ (Prosecutor v. Blaškić, 2000: para. 495). On the basis of Blaškić’s individual criminal responsibility and superior criminal responsibility (reflecting his position as a commander), the Trial Chamber convicted him of crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions. It imposed a forty-five-year custodial sentence. The Appeals Chamber, however, admitted additional evidence and opined that the Trial Chamber had made a number of errors, including with respect to the constituent elements of command responsibility (see, e.g., Prosecutor v. Blaškić, 2004: paras. 372–422). It accordingly reversed several of Blaškić’s convictions and reduced his sentence to nine years’ imprisonment. Just four days later, he was granted early release.

Kordić was the former president of the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) in BiH. In 2011, the ICTY convicted him of crimes against humanity, violations of the laws or customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and sentenced him to twenty-five years’ imprisonment (upheld on appeal). The Appeals Chamber found that ‘a reasonable trier of fact could have concluded beyond reasonable doubt that Kordić, as the responsible regional politician, planned, instigated and ordered the crimes which occurred in Ahmići on 16 April 1993’ (Prosecutor v. Kordić and Čerkez, 2004: para. 700). In 2014, he was granted early release.

The cumulative effect of the trials that took place at the ICTY was to further entrench ethnic divisions in Ahmići (Clark, 2014: 63–63, 79–80), thereby undermining the function of both the community and systems of justice as potential resilience resources. The fundamental issue is that, for both Bosniaks and Croats alike, justice was not done. For many Bosniaks, the fault lies not only with the Tribunal itself (common complaints are that its sentences were too lenient) but also with their Croat neighbours. One interviewee reflected: ‘The trials did not have any positive influence. For Croats, Kordić is a hero. He and Blaškić are viewed as national heroes.⁹ So how is this useful or just?’ (author interview, 8 July 2019). Another interviewee stressed that, while she is glad that at least some perpetrators have been held to account, it greatly bothered her when Croats celebrated the release of people like Kordić (author interview, 16 July 2019).

For Croat interviewees, however, the very fact that Blaškić and Kordić stood trial was itself an injustice. One interviewee lambasted the ICTY as ‘a disastrous court that prosecutes innocent people’. While emphasising that he was not defending people like Kordić and Blaškić, he maintained that the Croats were completely surrounded in the Lašva Valley and that the ABiH made a huge mistake by not leaving a way out for them (author interview, 16 July 2019).¹⁰ Another interviewee insisted that people like the Kupreškićs and Drago Josipović¹¹ have no idea what happened in Ahmići and should have never gone on trial. Questioning why ‘the real perpetrators’ have not been prosecuted, although he failed to elaborate on who these individuals are, he stressed that many lives had been destroyed due to false testimony and lies (author interview, 11 July 2019). In a similar vein, a third interviewee opined that ‘Unfortunately, many war criminals and commanders are free, and innocent people … were found guilty’. She further argued that: ‘Mothers, spouses, children did not get the truth from the Hague Tribunal. Justice did not win’ (email correspondence with the author, 24 July 2019).

These examples underscore the fact that the Tribunal’s work did not contribute to resilience in Ahmići, at any level. Yet, it is also important to stress that resilience was never part of the Tribunal’s mandate, and this highlights a broader point. Transitional justice can potentially affect resilience, positively or negatively, in myriad ways (Wiebelhaus-Brahm, 2017). As one illustration, ‘proponents claim transitional justice processes can promote such outcomes as reconciliation, trust, and the rule of law, which development practitioners associate with more resilient societies’ (Wiebelhaus-Brahm, 2017: 142). It is striking, therefore, that the concept of resilience remains heavily neglected within the ever-growing field of transitional justice, including within the extensive body of scholarship that exists on the ICTY’s work. Several authors have explored whether the Tribunal’s work aided reconciliation (see, e.g., Clark, 2014; Hodžić, 2011; Meernik and Guerrero, 2014) – but not resilience. This section emphasises resilience as a new lens that brings an important systemic dimension to discussions about the Tribunal’s impact and legacy – and about transitional justice more broadly.

According to the ICTY (n.d.), for example, one of its achievements was that it ‘established beyond a reasonable doubt crucial facts related to crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia’. This is a deeply myopic assertion that overlooks critical systemic factors that have hindered and obstructed social acceptance of those facts. It would be equally myopic, however, to simply criticise the ICTY in this regard. Its claim exposes a more intrinsic and larger issue with transitional justice itself, as both a theory and a practice. Transitional justice processes are quintessentially about ‘dealing with the legacy’ of past human rights violations, with the aim, inter alia, of delivering justice, establishing the truth and fostering reconciliation (United Nations, 2010: 2). Yet, their primary focus on individuals – and specifically on victims and perpetrators – means that they often neglect the wider social ecologies that critically contribute to shaping the legacies of mass human rights abuses. This chapter has demonstrated that one of the legacies of the massacre in Ahmići is a broken and disjointed community.

The essential point is that, in order to understand this legacy, it is not sufficient only to focus on the crime itself or on the ICTY’s shortcomings. It is also imperative to take account of broader systemic factors, as explored in the previous section, that have influenced how people in Ahmići have dealt with the past – and how they responded to the ICTY’s work. Ultimately, what is needed is a social-ecological reframing of transitional justice that better reflects the realities of complex individual – environment interactions (Clark, 2020b). Such a reframing, in turn, has important implications for developing adaptive peacebuilding.

Social-Ecological Transitional Justice and Adaptive Peacebuilding

Various scholars have written about the relationship between transitional justice and peacebuilding. Baker and Obradovic-Wochnik (2016: 282), for example, note that ‘[t]he idea that one will lead to the other is often the underlying logic of external intervention, even though it is not always clear how the two practices ought to shape each other’. In her work on the Democratic Republic of Congo, Arnould (2016: 323) finds that ‘actors attach very different meanings and goals to transitional justice that are deeply embedded in broader peacebuilding goals’, thus underscoring how ‘deeply intertwined’ the two concepts are in practice. Pointing to the importance of strengthening the relationship between the two concepts, Muvingi (2016: 20) has emphasised the need ‘to reconfigure TJ [transitional justice] as processes of inclusion that facilitate and support societies affected by violence to address the legacies of the violence and chart pathways for more just and peaceable futures’.

Both in theory and in practice, liberalism – and more specifically the idea of ‘liberal peace’ – has frequently shaped discussions about peacebuilding and peacebuilding agendas (see, e.g., Joshi et al., 2014). de Coning (2018: 305), however, has pointed to a ‘pragmatic turn in peacebuilding’ at the UN level, marked by a shift away from liberal peace and a new focus on ‘identifying and supporting the political and social capacities that sustain peace’. His ‘adaptive peacebuilding’ (de Coning, 2018: 305) seeks to operationalise this new emphasis. It also provides a framework for rethinking the relationship between transitional justice and peacebuilding in a way that promotes resilience (see also Chapter 11).

Of critical importance in this regard is adaptive peacebuilding’s systemic approach, informed by complexity theory and its emphasis on the interactions and dynamics between complex and multi-layered systems (see, e.g., Norberg and Cumming, 2008). de Coning (2018: 305) underlines that ‘[i]nsights from complexity theory about influencing the behaviour of complex systems, and how such systems respond to pressure, should thus be very instructive for peacebuilding’. An approach to peacebuilding that highlights complex systems is similarly instructive for transitional justice, and more specifically for the development of new social-ecological ways of operationalising transitional justice.

McAuliffe (2017: 250) argues that ‘[t]he vigorously contested process of expanding the interdisciplinary spaces within transitional justice (and hence its ultimate goals) has taken precedence over study of actual post-conflict ecologies’. Foregrounding these ecologies, and the intersecting systems which form part of them, is essential for developing more sustainable ways of doing transitional justice that extend beyond dealing with the past to building more resilient systems and societies. In other words, the relationship between adaptive peacebuilding and transitional justice is symbiotic. The systemic approach that characterises adaptive peacebuilding is highly relevant for developing new social-ecological ways of doing transitional justice. Equally, the need to think ‘innovatively and creatively’ about transitional justice (International Center for Transitional Justice, n.d.) can contribute to actualising adaptive peacebuilding in practice.

In Ahmići, intersecting systems critically limited the on-the-ground impact of the ICTY’s work. A social-ecological reframing of transitional justice requires giving far greater attention to these broader systems, yet it is not about simply ‘correcting’ them through administrative reforms or lustration measures. Most importantly, it is about helping to foster resilient systems that can effectively and positively adapt to adversity. In this regard, de Coning (2018: 314–315) notes: ‘Adaptive peacebuilding recognises that conflict is a normal and necessary element of change. Its focus is on supporting the ability of communities to cope with and manage this process of change in such a way that they can avoid violent conflict’. Part of operationalising the synergy between adaptive peacebuilding and transitional justice, therefore, is to explore ways of fostering resilience within often-overlooked community-level systems.

In my previous work, I have emphasised the need for transitional justice processes to promote and harness fundamental connectivities between people, including common emotions, feelings and shared values (see, e.g., Clark, 2020a, 2020c). In Cambodia, for example, Phka Sla is an innovative and creative form of transitional justice that tells the stories of victims through the medium of dance. The power of movement, and its cultural resonance within Cambodia’s classical dance tradition, creates emotional connectivity and understanding in a way that words alone may not. Commenting on this, Shapiro-Phim (2020: 212) notes that ‘experiences that had in some instances triggered shame and whose suppression had kept people feeling isolated, now generate empathy and a sense of dignity and connection, along with contributions to the historical record’. In other words, a social-ecological reframing of transitional justice is partly about exploring and raising awareness of the core systems that connect people, and thus of strengthening local capacity to advocate for and exert pressure for broader systemic change as part of adaptive peacebuilding.

Conclusion

Žarkov discusses the British television drama Warriors (1999), which focuses on events in Ahmići and on a British battalion based in Central Bosnia. Warriors, she argues, ‘creates two ontological worlds: one for the male, Serb/Croat military Other who is totally dehumanized, and with whom no similarity is allowed; another for the UK soldiers and their families whose very humanity and ethics stand in the way of understanding or relating to the former’ (Žarkov, 2014: 190). War events in Ahmići and their filtering through, and instrumentalisation by, different interconnected systems have contributed to essentially creating two worlds in the sense that Bosniaks and Croats remain deeply divided about those events. The absence of any common narratives, in turn, has contributed to undermining the community’s resilience as a whole.

While the ICTY’s trials had little positive impact in this regard, this chapter has reflected on how a social-ecological remodelling of transitional justice – as part of developing adaptive peacebuilding – might target the systems (including political and education systems, attitudes and value systems) that both hinder and potentially facilitate resilience. de Coning (2020) emphasises that ‘complex systems cope with challenges posed by changes in their environment by co-evolving together with their environment in a never-ending process of adaptation’. A major challenge is for transitional justice and adaptive peacebuilding to evolve together to promote positive adaptation in systems that are seemingly resilient to change.