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Abstract: This article critically addresses the idea that ethnic remixing alone fosters reconciliation and tolerance after sectarian conflict, a vision that has been forcefully cultivated by international interventionists in post-war Bosnia and Herzegovina. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the town of Banja Luka, it presents a multi-faceted analysis of the effects of ethnic minority return on the (re)building of social relations across communal boundaries. Although returnees were primarily elderly Bosniacs who settled in parts of the town traditionally populated by their own ethnic group, some level of inter-ethnic co-existence and co-operation had developed between the returnees and displaced Serbs who had moved into these neighborhoods. In the absence of national reconciliation, peaceful co-existence in local everyday life was brought about by silencing sensitive political and moral questions related to the war, indicating a preparedness among parts of the population to once again share a social space with the Other.
Keywords: Bosnia and Herzegovina, co-existence, ethnic minority return, reconciliation, social relations
The good news is that the spirit of "brotherhood and unity" (bratstvo i jedinstvo)-Marshal Tito's famous slogan for rebuilding multi-national co-existence in Yugoslavia after the atrocities of World War II-is alive and well, even after the brutal wars and ethnic cleansing operations that haunted this part of the Balkans in the 1990s. The bad news is that so far these positive feelings between former enemy groups seem to be limited to a few prison cells in The Hague. At least this is the reality as depicted in They would never hurt a fly: War criminals on trial in The Hague (2004) by the internationally recognized Croatian author Slavenka Drakulic. In the chapter titled "Brotherhood and Unity," Drakulic provides a stunning and deeply ironic account of the sense of cross-national solidarity and cooperation that prevailed among the indicted war criminals in The Hague detention facility at the time. Apparently without tension whatsoever, Slobodan Milosevic and his fellow detainees shared their meals and newspapers, played handball together, and even wrote an informal anthem celebrating the peace that had come to exist between them. This leads Drakulic to conclude that in this place "Serbs and Croats and Bosnians, who for years fought each other, live happily together ... Tito's Yugoslavia still seems to be alive" (2004: 204f.).