(This event was organised by MEI’s Transsystemic Law Research Cluster, as part of its quarterly public talks series.)

Abstract

The 1992-1995 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was a defining moment of the post-Cold War order, pivotal to the development of UN peacekeeping and the project of European integration. Less well-explored is Bosnia’s significance throughout the Muslim world and the numerous solidarity efforts that emerged during the war. As a predominantly Muslim country in Europe, Bosnia presented opportunities and dilemmas for universalist projects in both the West and the Muslim world. This paper traced two of the most important attempts to embody Islamic solidarity with Bosnia and their respective relationships to international law and legal institutions: foreign volunteers in the Bosnian army (“mujahidin”) and military units seconded to the United Nations peacekeeping forces by predominantly Muslim countries, such as Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey. This paper was part of a broader project to move away from a Eurocentric conversation on the Balkans crisis by connecting it to histories of empire, race, religion, and Non-Alignment.  It showed how both migratory movements for jihad as well as peacekeeping forces from the global south are embedded in colonial histories and presents a set of views of the Bosnia crisis that are neither those of the Eurocentric “International Community” nor that of the local population. It was based on 13 months of ethnographic research in Bosnia with Bosnian, Arab, and other ex-fighters, as well as interviews in Egypt, France, Pakistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, United States, and Yemen. It also made extensive use of the archives of the United Nations peacekeeping force in ex-Yugoslavia and the trial records of the UN International Criminal Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia.