Experiences with peace-building in the postwar city of Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, provide cause for serious reflection on how economic inequalities between formerly hostile groups can lead to social divisions. These inequalities can fuel ethnic, religious, cultural, and racial tensions, which have the potential to reignite armed conflicts. Vesna Bojičić-Dželilović examines the material conditions necessary for a dignified and peaceful life.
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Restoring and maintaining peace after war is a major concern and a significant challenge for the modern world order. Wars are becoming longer, involve a wide range of diverse actors, and have devastating impacts on human development and the environment. How do societies recover from armed conflicts, and why do some encounter greater obstacles than others in their quest for peace, leading to locally specific realities that hinder sustainable and lasting peace?
Conditions for peace
Much has been said about the merits of the two principal conceptualizations of peace, namely ‘security peace’ and ‘social peace,’ in relation to current peace-building practices. The former involves achieving stability by removing threats of physical violence to local society. It forms the basis for internationally supported peace-building interventions focused on establishing formal institutions, such as professional and accountable security forces, which have been pursued in conflict zones worldwide, including in Bosnia and Herzegovina after the 1992-1995 war. The latter involves addressing unjust structures that drive and perpetuate societal fragmentation, which is widely regarded as a root cause of many contemporary intrastate wars. Experience from countries recovering from armed violence shows that failing to ensure complementarity between security and social dimensions hinders the transition to peace.
Peace defies a simple definition, but in a post-war context, it can be linked to a social condition characterized by a low likelihood of renewed armed conflict over an extended period, allowing for a dignified life and the material conditions that support it. Although imprecise, this characterization, which highlights respect for one’s former opponent’s equal rights as the core of living a dignified life, helps us understand the quality of peace that evolves over time through various phases of peace-building.
The concept of “quality peace” is relatively new, drawing attention to the fact that, although the meaning of peace varies across and within societies and cultures, there are fundamental qualities that enable societies to resolve internal conflicts peacefully. These concern mutual respect for human dignity and the moral worth of others, serving as a cornerstone of creating everyday life-affirming relations. In essence, quality peace relates to relationships built on dignity, safety, and predictability. When applied to Bosnia and Herzegovina, it is fair to say that thirty years after the war’s end and a substantial internationally supported peace-building effort, the quality of peace remains elusive. This is evident in ongoing latent violence (e.g. in the context of environmental struggles) and the persistence of conflict attitudes that deny equality among ethnic and religious groups.
Contesting different visions of peace through peace-building
What explains such outcomes? The perspectives on this matter are numerous and varied. I take as a point of departure the evidence that political settlements aimed at ending armed violence in contemporary intra-state wars often leave key conflict issues unresolved. The consequence of Realpolitik pragmatism, which has become more apparent in the Trump era, is that peacebuilding becomes a struggle – or, more explicitly, a war by other means – over contested visions of peace among former adversaries.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, these are ‘ethnic visions of peace’ pursued by political elites claiming to represent the country’s three main ethnic groups. This means that, although ethnic-based social fragmentation was not a root cause of the 1992-1995 armed conflict (and therefore should not feature in the peace-building agenda), it was nonetheless made a central issue within the peace settlement. The point is that the peace settlement was designed to protect ethnic group interests as a way of resolving conflict rooted in ethnic fragmentation, in line with the security peace logic.
Therefore, given this flawed premise, not only has peace-building been fundamentally misunderstood, but it has also created a new form of postwar social injustice, which Fred W. Powell (citing Nancy Fraser), describes as ‘cultural misrecognition of others’. Cultural misrecognition of others reflects an absence of mutual respect for diversity. The political settlement that ended the Bosnian War (1992–1995) laid the foundation for this phenomenon.
Production of social fragmentation
For many readers familiar with Bosnia and Herzegovina or comparable contexts, this is probably hardly worth emphasizing. After all, cultural and symbolic injustice (cultural domination, non-recognition, disrespect) are at the core of ethnic nationalism – a force that has shaped Bosnia and Herzegovina’s political landscape and the everyday lives of ordinary citizens since the early 1990s.
However, I emphasize this because I believe insufficient attention has been given to what happens when cultural misrecognition occurs alongside material inequality, and how this influences disputes over different visions of peace in post-war contexts. On an individual level, material inequality significantly impacts how people perceive peace, particularly regarding improvements in their quality of life, their expectations, and attitudes. At the political level, the extent and nature of cultural and symbolic practices that foster inter-group divisions largely depend on the material foundations of the governing structures. Ultimately, these interconnected dynamics may lead to a form of hegemonic pacification – where peace is defined as one group’s dominance over another – undermining social harmony while maintaining the status quo linked to security peace. This, in turn, perpetuates social fragmentation.
I elaborate on these points, drawing from experience in peace-building at the city level. The reason is that ensuring territorial control is the central pillar of ethno-national political power struggles, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, cities are the key battlegrounds. As Francesco Strazzari points out, the urban base-nationalism-conflict nexus is essential for explaining the transformation of conflict dynamics, with plentiful evidence demonstrating how the transformation of urban landscapes can serve that purpose through cultural and symbolic means.
Realities of hegemonic pacification in the city
Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s second-largest city, is among the most studied cases in peace-building scholarship, offering valuable insights into its complex postwar trajectory as a ‘divided city in a divided nation state’ and convincingly challenging simplistic narratives. While the city has a similar percentage of Bosnian Croats and Bosnian Muslims, along with a small Bosnian Serb minority, it established itself during the war as the Bosnian Croat urban stronghold and its political and economic center. The majority of the Bosnian Croat population lives in the western part of the city, which was less affected by the war. Better initial economic conditions, coupled with ongoing financial and other support from Croatia, have led to a much stronger post-war economic recovery in this area than in the eastern part, where most of the Bosnian Muslim population lives.
Material inequality manifests in various ways, notably in differing living standards among ethnic groups due to unequal access to economic opportunities in a society that relies heavily on clientelism and informal practices to navigate neoliberal realities. Furthermore, Bosnian Croats living in the more affluent territory, contiguous with Croatia and holding dual Croatian citizenship, enjoy more and better economic opportunities. Material inequality also shows in the city’s built environment, with post-war redevelopment of ‘the West side’ creating a stark contrast to the slower, more limited rebuilding in the eastern part. Modern buildings, improved roads, street lighting, and well-maintained green spaces stand as visible symbols of modern urban living and economic vitality.
This urban transformation simultaneously reflects and reinforces the cultural misrecognition of others as a form of social injustice. Religious buildings and monuments honoring prominent Croats are scattered throughout the western part of the city. Additionally, key cultural and sports institutions – such as a theater and a sports hall with Croatian-themed names currently under construction – are located near the former frontline (and an invisibilized postwar intra-city division), forming part of a changing urban landscape dominated by Bosnian Croat influence.
Tackling ‘unstable stability’
The economic strength enabling rapid urban transformation also drives the construction of a growing network of modern roads connecting the West side of the city to Croatia, deepening divergence between the two communities. Cities are often credited with fostering mutuality – a shared identity stemming from common interests in urban spaces that require joint action. However, in Mostar, where strong political obstructions continue, such capacities are limited, and interdependencies are difficult to forge because the Bosnian Croats’ material advantages allow them to address many issues independently.
If a dignified life and the material conditions that support it are what quality peace primarily entails, then the experience of establishing peace in a post-war city in Bosnia and Herzegovina warrants serious reflection on how economic disparities between formerly conflicting groups can lead to societal divisions – spatial, symbolic, and cultural – that foster ethnic, religious, cultural, and racial tensions with the potential to reignite armed conflict. To facilitate meaningful societal change and shift the current ‘unstable stability’ resulting from competing visions of peace among different groups, we must address material inequalities and provide equal access to economic opportunities across diverse communities.