Sarajevo kao lakmus test budućnosti postdejtonske BiH
Sarajevo as an acid test for the future of post-Dayton BiH

Summary/Abstract: The author points to a problem which, though it is, in his opinion, of an extreme significance for the future of BiH, is neither being resolved nor taken as in need of resolution. The problem is the problem of Sarajevo as the Capital of BiH. Despite the fact that, officially, Sarajevo is the Capital, or should be, for Bosniacs, Serbs, and Croats, politically it has not been constituted as such nor the representatives of a majority of its inhabitants act sufficiently responsibly at least to start making it look, to the other peoples of Sarajevo, as something they could identify with, as a capital of their own state. He also points out that his Bosniac interlocutors usually treat Sarajevo as a kind of taboo-theme. One can hardly start to talk to the Bosniac representatives about a possible constitution/reconstitution of Sarajevo as the Capital of post-Dayton BiH. The attitude of the international community representatives to this problem is similar, and somewhat perverse. When asked why nothing has been changed in Sarajevo, and why some phenomena are so easily accepted, they seem to be caught off guard. The author claims that there was some guessing to the effect that, «the extension of status quo for Sarajevo represents a tacit concession of the international community to Bosniacs for the casualties they suffered during the war-time». The author also illustrates this with many examples of Bosniac appropriation of Sarajevo, many cultural interventions that can be explained only as a national marking of one’s own space as exclusively one’s own, as belonging to a single nation: renaming the streets in a militant spirit (Green Berets Street, The Patriotic League Street), or in emphatically political (The Young Moslems Street). One could also mention the treatment of the Museum of Young Bosnia, which was demolished, the calls to cease the practice of inter-marriages that were sent from Sarajevo, or the events related to the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad published in a Danish journal, to which many similar phenomena could be added.

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