SURVIVING THE PEACE The Struggle for Postwar Recovery in Bosnia-Herzegovina

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March 31, 2020
The Coronavirus epidemic hits Bosnia-Herzegovina

It's time to write about the Coronavirus in Bosnia-Herzegovina. There is, after all, hardly any other news from there.

People argue about whether the worldwide calamity that the Coronavirus brings on is a "war" or not. Ok, it's not a war...because it's not. But it sure reminds me of one in some ways. As during a war, the present crisis brings out the best and the worst in people. You can't necessarily predict who will behave well and who will behave badly. I believe that most people are good and want to help each other. Sometimes you can find that even a few political officials will behave well. And then, there are those (politicians and civilians) who won't, or can't.

In Bosnia, as elsewhere, I see chaos and lack of preparation—for a problem that no one could really have been prepared for. I see people behaving well and some behaving badly, and then there are those who behave quite recklessly.

Some 420 people have tested positive for Coronavirus in Bosnia-Herzegovina as of March 31. A dozen have died. This is up from 185 positive on March 27, when there were four deaths. For a population of between 2.5 and 3 million, these figures tell me that the epidemic is in an early stage in Bosnia. By my simple arithmetic, the US rate of confirmed infections is about four times greater per capita than that of Bosnia. Of course, this might be meaningless, given the shortage of tests available in both countries. One Bosnian epidemiologist estimates that the plague will peak around the end of May. What that means in terms of destruction in the meantime is not predictable.

The first case of Coronavirus in Bosnia was detected on March 5th, with the virus initially brought in from nearby Croatia, Serbia, and especially Italy. The state and entity governments began taking measures to prevent the spread of it a few days later. By mid-month, states of emergency and curfews (6:00 p.m. in the Federation, and 8:00 p.m. in the RS) were established in both entities. People under 18 and over 65 were told not to leave their houses (more recently this was adjusted to allow older people to leave briefly to pick up their pensions). Entrance of foreigners across international borders was severely restricted, and all Bosnian citizens coming home from abroad have been placed under a 14-day quarantine.

Serbia and Montenegro have closed their borders with Bosnia, and Croatia has restricted entrance from Bosnia as well.

With the help of the armed forces, tents were set up at border crossings to quarantine citizens. Imports were restricted as well. After a period of chaos it was determined that some imports had to be allowed to cross the borders. Then truck drivers were still quarantined—some in the cabs of their trucks, and others in tents. Returning Bosnian men were put in tents, while women and children were afforded gentler accommodations. Border officials have been providing dry meals, and nearby friends and relatives of those quarantined are allowed to bring them food.

A general stay-at-home policy has been decreed throughout the country. As in the rest of the world, businesses are shutting down and people are joining the already swollen ranks of the unemployed. Officials have warned that tens of thousands of people could lose their jobs. Tourism is down at least 90%, with some 185,000 overnight stays cancelled. Daycare centers, schools, sports arenas and training centers, factories, kafanas, restaurants, and nightclubs are all shut, and public transportation is for the most part parked. Prayer sessions at churches and mosques—including praying on the parking lots outside—have been banned. On the streets of the cities there's a ghost town-like atmosphere prevailing in this ordinarily very sociable culture.

The various levels of government have announced that they will provide assistance to working parents who need help taking care of their children, and will make additional funds available to support those who have been left without income.

In the midst of the fear and chaos, there are people who have chosen to volunteer and help out those in need. The Travnik-based Association "Help" (Udruzenje Pomozi.ba) has distributed between 400,000 and a half million face masks throughout the country, along with a thousand protective face shields for medical practitioners. Members are also providing dinners to sick people and the elderly in Travnik. The mayor of Kalesija donated his salary for the month of March for the purchase of masks and food for the needy. Boy scouts in Zenica are out helping the elderly, as are volunteers from the Youth Film Festival in Sarajevo. Even members of the Sarajevo soccer fan club Horde Zla (Hordes of Evil) have volunteered to help.

Melika Mahmutbegović is vice-president of the Federation, and is also a doctor. She has put her services at the disposal of the hospitals of Sarajevo. And the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje announced that on March 31, it would be giving each of its readers a free mask with purchase of the newspaper.

In other good news, it was announced in Goražde that the air is cleaner than ever, the Drina River is clear, and politicians don't have time for prepucavanje—rhetorical sniping at each other.

And in a show of international solidarity, the lovely Sarajevo Vijećnica (Austro-Hungarian era Town Hall and then library, bombed during the war and then rebuilt) displayed the colors of the Italian flag.

Meanwhile, as the economy breaks down and imports dry up, there's a threat of food shortage. President Dodik warned that people should start tilling whatever land they have, including garden plots in the cities, to grow food for themselves. And several municipal governments around the country have promised to supply seeds, fertilizer, and fuel to farmers to grow food, saying that they will buy up any surplus. Other sectors of the economy are redirecting resources to local production too, as international trade dries up.

These are some instances of people rising to the challenges and doing positive things. Then there are people doing things that look good, but perhaps with ulterior motives. For example, leaders of the RS opposition party PDP gave up their incomes for the benefit of medical workers at the University Clinical Center in Banja Luka, to date collecting 17,000 KM for this purpose. Good for them. Was this entirely altruistic, or were there any political points to be scored?

Then there's the bad behavior. On the individual level, this is most often manifested by people who ignore their isolation orders. Thousands of people have been told to quarantine themselves, either because they've recently come home from abroad, or because they have been in contact with people who were confirmed as infected. The police in both entities are checking up on those under quarantine, and on March 23, for example, in the RS of 10,257 people quarantined, 129 of them were not found at home when police checked. These people will be subject to fines as high as 1,000 KM.

In one over-the-top case of recklessness, a citizen of Tuzla returning from Germany by airplane was told to go home and self-quarantine for 14 days, but instead he went to a kafana in Srebrenik for a plate of čevapčići—and then complained on Facebook about the restrictions. He wrote, "In Bosnia I'm not allowed to eat čevapčići?!" The police came to his home and slapped him with a fine. Similarly, a driver returning from Germany went out for a beer, instead of going home, and received a 150 KM fine (about $100).

Owners of restaurants in several parts of the country have also defied the restrictions and earned fines for that. And in Doboj, an inspector reported a woman and her son for violating quarantine, whereupon the husband threatened the inspector. He was arrested.

In Brčko, one customs official accepted a bribe to let three people cross the border without going to quarantine. He was arrested and held pending prosecution.

There has been a wave of charlatans practicing deception around Sarajevo. False volunteers have shown up at the homes of older people promising to go shopping for them, taking money, and never returning. Others come into people's homes masquerading as cable inspectors—where the real inspection never involves coming inside.

In the western Herzegovinan town of Međugorje there is a shrine dedicated to the visitation of the Virgin Mary, who in 1981 showed up and spoke to a group of teenagers taking a walk...so they say. The Holy Mother has been appearing and speaking to some of these people regularly over the years, and they convey the messages to the public. Thousands of pilgrims—especially from Italy—flock to Međugorje every year. One of the seers (as they're called), Mirjana Dragičević, recently announced that there will no longer be regular visitations, but that the Virgin Mary will appear only on Ms. Dragičević's birthday, which is March 18. A disappointed pilgrim asked why the holy Virgin would stop appearing in this time of particular troubles.

One of the more distressing developments has been an increase in domestic violence in places where families are shut in. As in the rest of the world, victims of that violence now have fewer or no options for escape. 

There's bad behavior on higher levels as well. A grand celebration for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Igman ammunition factory in the town of Konjic was announced long in advance. Then, in spite of a governmental warning two days earlier, 300 people attended the gala on March 11. Reporters, visitors from Serbia, photographers, singers, and company directors all attended the event and then went home and spread the virus around. Now one of the biggest clusters of Coronavirus is in Konjic, and people in nearby Mostar were infected too. At least two people who were infected in Konjic have died and, as of March 26, 17 people in Konjic had contracted the disease.

The Federation Prime Minister Fadil Novalić and Federation Minister of Energy Nermin Džindić attended, bringing on criticism that members of the government and of the elite are flouting the very rules they promote. In a similar incident in the RS, a number of high officials went out to celebrate at a kafana after a mid-month ski outing, necessitating testing for half of the entity's government.

On the other hand, then-presiding member of the three-member state level presidency Željko Komšić took responsibility for quarantining himself after a visit to Canada (where he was in contact with Justin Trudeau and his infected wife), and conducted one presidency meeting remotely.

As in the rest of the world, it's not so hard for the elite to get themselves tested, but many others are languishing at home with symptoms, but no way to get tested.

In the US we have seen with some astonishment the way our 45th "president," who some affectionately call "President Nero," has shown himself able to make even dreadful figures like George W. Bush look like statesmen in comparison to himself. And by comparison, President Dodik—who arguably gave Trump lessons in how to be Trump—has in some cases recently also been seen to behave responsibly. He has, certainly by necessity, dropped his pledge to boycott all decision-making processes in the Bosnian government (see the previous entry in this blog). And for that matter, his erstwhile pledge not to allow Bosnia's armed forces to be stationed on the border between the RS and Serbia—a border he would prefer did not exist—has also fallen through, with soldiers assisting in the setup of quarantine tents. Dodik's separatist plans—if they are anything more than an election gambit—will have to wait for another day.

Political manipulation continues, with Dodik's ruling SNSD party in the RS exploiting the crisis to hurt its rival parties in the opposition. On March 19 the RS government announced that it would punish people who "cause panic or convey false news." Five days later Dr. Maja Stojić-Dragojević, a cardiologist and doctor of internal medicine working in Prijedor, was cited for these offenses. During a television interview, she had expressed serious criticism of the state of the RS health system, saying, "In the RS a number of health institutions have no infectious disease specialists nor epidemiologists. We have no teams, no organized services, nor enough ventilators. We lack sufficient intensive care units, which we should have been thinking about a long time ago. Beds don't mean anything if we don't have adequate equipment, educated staff, and urgent therapy."

Perhaps this could have "caused panic." Maybe it's not so irrational to panic a bit under the present circumstances. But it sounds like Dr. Stojić-Dragojević was simply telling the inconvenient truth. And it sounds a bit like what just happened to the ER doctor Ming Lin of Bellingham, who was fired for pleading publicly that his hospital supply more protective equipment for the staff.

Maja Stojić-Dragojević is a member of the presidency of the SDS, the main opposition party in the RS. Her fine will be in the neighborhood of 1,000 KM (about $600, roughly the average monthly wage for the country). Some of the other people hit with the same punishment are also those who have criticized RS government policies.

It is a rare time when the relationship between Bosnia-Herzegovina and "Europe"—that is, the European Union—has not been problematic in one way or another. During the present crisis the EU has closed its borders not only externally, but to a large extent internally. Germany closed its borders to Austria, Switzerland, and France. And the EU has banned the export of medical equipment beyond its borders. Bosnians are observing all this with dismay, noting that Italy has received more aid from China than from other European states (and, I must mention, Cuba sent a brigade of 52 doctors to help)—but no masks to Bosnia. One doctor commented that his hospital had more masks during the 1990s war than they do now.

In Srebrenica there have been no recorded infections (as of March 30), though around 100 people are in isolation. The factory "6 Novembar“ based in that town, ordinarily producing clothing for medical workers, has re-purposed its operations so that its 30-person staff is creating some 6,000 masks per day.

In the realm of "transitional justice" (which most of the time looks like all transition and no justice), an association of defense lawyers, the Association of Defence Counsel Practising Before the International Courts and Tribunals, felt compelled to make a plea for the release of their defendants and convicted war criminals. Since most of them are on in years, the reasoning goes, these perpetrators of genocide and other war crimes are at risk of serious harm from the Coronavirus if left confined in Scheveningen prison and other facilities around Europe. As this news just came out on March 27, there has been no response from officials of the UN Tribunal at The Hague to date.

For several years, migrants from western Asia and north Africa have been stuck in various parts of Bosnia-Herzegovina, especially in the northwest, around Tuzla, and Sarajevo. They have been living under the worst of conditions, lacking in essential hygiene, medical services, food, and shelter. Ordinary Bosnians have tried to help, but the government has been disorganized and always late with a remedy for their plight (see my 2019 report on this subject, "Travails of the migrants stuck in Bosnia" and my 2018 report, "Migrants, environmental wreckage, sports").

In mid-March, the Bosnian Ministry of Security proposed that all migrants be cleared from the streets of the country and confined to their reception centers and camps, citing a danger to public health. A couple of days later the Sarajevo Canton police force began removing migrants, some 3,500 of them, from the streets of the city. Then on March 27, the government began to cram thousands of migrants located in the northwestern part of the country into a rural camp at Lipa, some 15 miles away from the border with Croatia.

The move was justified as a way to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus. Authorities have prohibited the use of any public transportation or taxis by migrants. Some 2,000 people are expected to be confined at Lipa without a way to leave. As with any other facility where people are contained without adequate hygienic conditions, there are great fears of an outbreak of the plague there. 

Many good-hearted local people and some brave international activists have gathered in the Bihać region to help the stranded migrants in whatever way they can, providing food and bedding, among other things. Unfortunately there are xenophobic elements among the local population who have forgotten the help they received in Europe not so long ago, and who are lashing out at the activists for trying to help the migrants.

I will end here with an excerpt from the organization Transbalkanska solidarnost (Trans-Balkan Solidarity Group), which wrote,

"The State of Emergency now in force in many countries of the region reinforces social inequalities. However, this exceptional situation must not become an excuse for continued policies of exclusion, restriction and expulsion, suffering and distress. These uncertain times lead us to radically question the system of geopolitical hierarchies, racial and class divides, producing a population of undesired and rejected people across the world and in our countries alike. We must work towards the removal of imposed inequalities based on social and national status.

"We, therefore, call for an end to all official and unofficial discriminatory and dehumanizing practices, for the legalization of everyone’s existence, for the closure of all forms of detention and collective centers that restrict freedom of movement and fail to secure humane and hygienic conditions. As individuals we call for an affirmation of the values of equality and freedom, appealing to acts of care and solidarity...No one is safe until we are all protected!"
For the full text of this communique, go here.

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