BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA - Croatia and Slovenia - page 631

changed their ornate Turkish gowns for snazzy Austrian business suits...which they wore,
proudly, with their old fezzes and turbans.
Of course, not everybody bought what the Habsburgs were selling. Fierce underground
resistance movements—such as the Black Hand—emerged, determined to bring about self-
rule for the South Slavs, who had been under control of the Ottomans, and then the Aus-
trians, for centuries. Just 40 years after the Habsburgs took over, their empire began to
topple—losing a Great War that began when the Habsburg heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand,
was assassinated in Sarajevo (see sidebar on here ) .
Following World War I, Bosnia was swept up in the movement to create a union of
the South Slavs. The original incarnation of Yugoslavia, called “the Kingdom of the Serbs,
Croats, and Slovenes,” ignored the Bosniaks both in name and in political influence—they
were merely along for the ride.
During World War II, Bosnia was part of the so-called “Independent State of Croatia”
(run by the Nazis' puppet Ustaše government). Hitler's right-hand man, Heinrich Himmler,
came to Bosnia to assess where the Bosniaks might fit into the Führer's ethnic vision. He
determined that they were “Croats with Muslim culture”—that is, good ol' Aryans, who
wouldbeconscriptedtofight.HimmlerandtheUstašeleader,AntePaveli ć (aBosnian-born
Croat), squabbled over whether the Bosniaks would fight for the SS or the Ustaše. Ultim-
ately they created an SS Hanjar/Handschar unit (named for a Turkish knife), issuing the
conscripts a Germanic-style uniform with a ceremonial fez. The unit fought fiercely against
Tito's Partisan Army, and participated in the Ustaše's genocidal efforts against Serbs, Jews,
and other “undesirables.” But as the war wore on, more and more of these troops became
disillusioned with the Nazi cause, and deserted in large numbers.
Some of the most dramatic WWII battles between the Yugoslav Partisans and the Nazis
took place here in Bosnia—including the Battle of the Neretva, in which Tito ingeniously
saved more than 4,000 of his wounded troops—effectively turning the tide of the war (for
more on this battle, see here ).
Thepostwarcommunist countryofYugoslavia wasbornintheBosnian townofJajce on
November 29, 1943, when Partisan generals met to outline the future of a hoped-for post-
Nazi state. But in the new incarnation of Yugoslavia, many Bosniaks still felt like second-
class citizens. Local Muslims recall that Yugoslav government-issued textbooks reinforced
negative stereotypes. For example, they might say “Sasha [a typically Serb name] is work-
ing,” but “Mujo [a typically Muslim name] is a bad boy.”
Even after the outbreak of violence between breakaway republics Slovenia and Croatia
and Serb-dominated Yugoslavia in 1991, things stayed strangely calm in Bosnia. But when
theBosnianconflictfinallyeruptedin1992,itwaswarofthemostbrutalkind.Athree-way
war exploded between Bosnian Croats (supported by Croatia proper), Bosnian Serbs (sup-
ported by Serbia proper), and Bosniaks (who, caught in the crossfire, realized they had no