Bosnia journals 2024,
Introduction:
Meeting the environmental
activists of Bosnia-Herzegovina
2024 Journal
index
Introduction: Meeting the environmental activists
Journal 1:
Ozren is Not for Sale
Journal 2: Pecka
and vicinity: biologists on front line; scandal of coal
Journal 3: The
Pliva River, from the headwaters to the Jajce waterfalls
Journal 4: Coal in Ugljevik; Lithium on Mt. Majevica
Journal 5: With Hajrija Čobo at Mehorić;
Visiting Robert Oroz in Fojnica
Previous journals and articles
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click here.
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What follows is a series of five informal journals about my recent
visit to Bosnia. In the spring of 2024, I published
an essay discussing Bosnian grassroots activism against
international mining companies: "International
Companies Wreak Havoc on the Environment: Is Bosnia-Herzegovina
Becoming One Big European Mine?" I suggest taking a look at that
essay, as it's good background and will make the content of these
journals clearer.
I wrote that essay from home, with much help from consultants in
Bosnia, and a couple of long-distance telephone interviews. But
there's always more to learn; I felt the need to meet the activists
in person and to become more familiar with the terrain—the beautiful
land that is under dire threat.
I focused on two of many environmental threats that are ongoing. I
spoke with
Zoran Poljašević, who lives in the Republika Srpska on Mt. Ozren,
where residents are fighting the threat of destructive mining
activity by Lykos Metals. And I spoke with Hajrija Čobo, a leader
from the central Bosnian town of Kakanj. The water of that town has
already been polluted by the runoff from a mine near Vareš, operated
by Adriatic Metals.
During my October 2024 visit, I went to meet both Zoran and Hajrija
in person, and to get an update about environmental activism in
their communities. I also traveled to the area between Mrkonjić
Grad, Šipovo, Jezero, and Jajce, home to the headwaters of the
beautiful Pliva and Sana rivers. There, I became acquainted with
additional threats of mining—for coal, lithium, gold, and other
minerals, as well as the damage done by wanton construction of
mini-hydroelectric dams.
Moving back to northeastern Bosnia, I met the activist Andrijana
Pekić in Ugljevik, and she took me to Lopare on Mt. Majevica, ground
zero for lithium prospecting in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
At least a half-dozen times, activists spent a day or more showing
me around their lovely hills and rivers, explaining the danger of
mining and dams—in some cases already underway—and describing what
they and their communities were doing to protect their homes and
lands. I have always found doors to be open in Bosnia, but during
this visit—partly in response to the essay I had written—people were
particularly eager to show me their love for their land and their
determination to protect it. I felt a strong interest on the part of
local residents in having the world abroad learn about their
struggles.
*
After nearly thirty years of covering postwar activism in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, I find new inspiration in meeting the
environmentalists. From the late 1990s on, I focused on grassroots
campaigns, principally the movement for refugee return. That
naturally led to the struggle for "truth and justice," as people
often called it, which included the apprehension and trial of the
war criminals; the location and identification of the missing;
combating discrimination against returnees and newly constructed
minorities; and the campaign for memorialization.
All these struggles are ongoing, as is the crucial fight against
atrocity denial and historical revisionism (see my brother Roger's
Balkan Witness web site).
However, in recent years, as I've maintained my
Bosnia blog,
I have often felt that nothing really new happens. Young people
leave the country by the thousands (and the not-so-young along with
them); corruption is the air people breathe; and international
officials and entrenched profiteer/politicians, buoyed by the rotten
Dayton system, collaborate to plunder the land.
In this context I find the vibrant, nearly ubiquitous fights against
international corporate ransacking of Bosnia's natural resources and
accompanying environmental destruction refreshing. The problem is
everywhere: in the cities, in the hills, in the rivers, and on the
land. There's a local saying, "You don't kill the ox for a kilo of
meat." But that is, metaphorically, what local officials are nearly
unanimously working to do: to enable Swiss, British, Australian,
Chinese, and other corporations to violate the land. The local
leaders are integral to the dynamic of plunder, and they are the
only Bosnians who profit.
The mass emigration of the population is something that helps this
plunder take place, because local communities poised to resist the
damage become smaller and weaker. The fragile rule of law is another
part of the problem. Many are the rules on the books that should
prevent unauthorized clear-cutting of forests, illegal dumping of
hazardous wastes, and poorly planned, badly located mini-dams, but
the laws are ignored. A third damaging factor assisting the
corporate exploitation is the Dayton political infrastructure, which
ensures that people are artificially divided into ethnic "corrals,"
leaving their near-immortal "leaders" free to thrive in corruption.
On the other side, activists leading the environmental campaigns
have an advantage in that there are many who are young and thus less
burdened by the memories of the war. In my recent visit I witnessed
many instances of people with all kinds of ethnic backgrounds
working together to protect their country.
There is thus, in these environmental campaigns and the widespread
resistance that they manifest, a chance for people to "move
forward," as we carefully say. Not to forget recent history, but to
work together across the boundaries against a common threat.
But I hesitate to call this a "movement" yet. The question I can't
answer is to what extent people not only share a common vision, and
a common understanding of the threat, but also how much they can
develop a common program of action. There is at least some amount of
organizational competition, and some residue of inflated, unhelpful
ethnic pride. I have not seen these things hamper cooperation,
however, and I hope they will not. The hope is for people to grow
together in their fight—and I see signs of this happening. Enduring
victories will only be accomplished with the creation of a
sustainable movement.
Scene from Mt. Ozren
There's something I've asked myself for many years: What is to be
the role of Bosnia-Herzegovina in Europe? Here I refer to Bosnia's
political and economic role, rather than its cultural role, because
Bosnia is and has long been part of Europe. Its educational system
is European; its citizens look and feel European; and its diversity
is European. But there has been an economic separation since Ottoman
times and before and, for a long time, Westerners thought of the
Balkans as a separate category, akin to the "Near East" (see Rebecca
West, for example). Since the development of the European Union as a
political and economic entity, Bosnia and its neighbors have been
all the more separated.
In the postwar period, joining the EU—that is, "going to
Europe"—nearly had the cachet of "going to heaven." That turned out
to be not only a false promise, but a foil concealing the
perpetuation of the divisive Dayton infrastructure by the very
people—the international officials—who regularly decry the
corruption and stagnation that thrives in the environment fostered
by that infrastructure.
Thus the inertia that works for the Bosnian profiteers works for the
their international partners as well. The representatives of the
international corporations—who, as I wrote in my essay, are
sometimes called "Ambassadors"—are satisfied to leave things the way
they are. Illustrations of this dynamic could fill a book.
The critical raw materials that the European Union needs for its
"green transition" are the reward for this partnership in
profiteering—but for the people and the land in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
that transition is anything but green.
Examining this dynamic of exploitation points with clarity to the
answer to my question. Bosnia is a weak state with a succession of
useless international governors in the Office of the High
Representative. Its function in relation to the European Union is to
be a provider of inexpensive and well-educated labor, along with
natural resources. These resources, such as lithium, also exist
under the ground in places like Germany and Portugal. But the
Germans and the Portuguese have something that the Bosnians don't:
rule of law. So at least to some extent, they can protect themselves
against the poisoning of the atmosphere.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, not so.