Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 22 No. 1 (2024)

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Browsing Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 22 No. 1 (2024) by Subject "Bosniaks"

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    Being Bosnian: The Means and Ends of Territoriality and the Genocide of Bosniaks in the Fromer Yugoslavia
    (University of Oregon, 2024) Petrik, Charles
    The “Bosnian Civil War” (1992–1996) was a conflict that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims, or Bosniaks. In the vacuum left by the fall of Communism, religious identification across space opened doors for various populist leaders to campaign for a newly defined Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, the 1990 election results, which left a majority Bosniak coalition in power, led to the swift aggression of Orthodox Serbian and Croatian nationalists from the east and west, respectively. This research employs a spatial lens to deeply examine what fueled the genocidal campaigns that ensued, identifying how culture, religion, and history were symbolically challenged through the systematic redefinition of territory. Ultimately, nationalist influences from Croatian and Serbian political spheres played off fears of rising challenges to Bosnia and Herzegovina’s nationhood in the political vacuum post-Communism, resulting in violence and the systematic destruction of spatial identity. Though eventually thwarted by NATO intervention, the mark of this genocide scars the former Yugoslavia’s geopolitical landscape today, providing a brutal example of how redefinitions of space and place can begin and sustain a conflict—and how historical grievances, differences in religious and national identity, and a lack of individualism across territory can be exploited for personal geopolitical ambitions. There exists much scholarship on the Bosnian War, especially in the realm of international intervention; however, this article seeks to provide a novel historical analysis of the conflict by examining how conceptions of territory and those making place within it were reframed for geopolitical purposes before and during the genocide.