Challenging the post-Yugoslavian borders: The enclaves of Sastavci and Dubrovnik

Challenging the post-Yugoslavian borders:The enclaves of Sastavci and DubrovnikJaume Castan Pinos, Dorte Jagetiæ Andersen

1. Introduction

Officially, and as defined in traditional international politics, the disintegration of

the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) produced one enclave – Sastavci

Medjurecja, a Bosnian village located in Serbian territory – as well as an exclave, the

Dubrovnik-Neretva region, which is the most Southern part of the Croatian repub-

lic, bordering on Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the North and East and on

Montenegro in the South.

91

Figure 1. Maps showing the location of Sastavci Medjurecja

and Dubrovnik-Neretva

What marks these two areas is that their statuses as enclave and exclave, respec-

tively, are rooted in historical soil, reaching back to the presence of the Ottoman Em-

pire in this region (see below). However, it also has to be noted that the existence of

de facto enclaves in this region is far more extensive, and thus the potential for areas

becoming officially recognized enclaves or exclaves is vast. In most geographical

areas of the former Yugoslavia where we find de facto enclaves/exclaves, their exis-

tence is closely connected with ethnic conflicts, past grievances, violent nation-

alisms and genocide experienced in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Former Yugoslavia is therefore a particularly interesting case for researching en-

claves and exclaves since the potential for ethnic enclavization is unprecedented.

Not only is this area a part of what Vinokourov calls the Fourth wave of enclavization

at a global scale, following the disintegration of the communist systems in the East-

ern parts of Europe and beyond1 – but in the former Yugoslavia, enclavization

(juridico-political, de facto as well as potential) also reflects the nature of the conflicts

experienced in the 1990s. These conflicts were directly linked to, if not caused by the

violent and separatist nationalist political ideologies influencing mainly Serbia and

Croatia at the time2; a type of nationalism that we usually term ethno-nationalism3.

The ideological foundation of the conflicts was a general distrust towards “the eth-

nic other”, a distrust which was not just utilized at state level to legitimize ethnic

cleansing, but became part of civil society and thus the very existence of most

people in the regions affected4. In many parts of the former Yugoslavia, the eth-

no-nationalism unfolding during the conflicts now penetrates everyday life prac-

tices.

In this article we use these phenomena and thus experiences gained within the

context of the former Yugoslavia to discuss the conceptual extension of the terms

enclave and exclave. The question is whether we need to extend our understanding

of enclaves and exclaves to be able to capture enclavization processes, which may

not be an integral part of the recognized political territorial divisions of space but

which may influence political and social life nevertheless.

Usually, the existence of officially recognized enclaves or exclaves would create

problems within the context of international law, as well as in relation to state integ-

rity and administrative issues: problems of control and thus access to the areas in

question, problems of political management and economic development, as well as

problems generated by the existence of incongruous identity between mainland

and enclave/exclave populations5. Hence, the existence of these areas is often

a source of tension between countries. However, is it similarly a problem for people

92 Jaume Castan Pinos, Dorte Jaget iæ Andersen

1 E. Vinokourov, A Theory of Enclaves, Lexington books 2007.2 J. R. Lampe, Yugoslavia as History – twice there was a country, Cambridge University Press,Cambridge 2000.3 E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism – new perspectives on the past (second edition), CornellUniversity Press, Ithaca 2009, pp. 85 ff.4 Thereto also M. Kaldor, New and Old Wars (second edition), Polity Press, Cambridge 2006.5 E. Vinokourov, A Theory of…, op. cit.

living in the enclave/exclave? And if so, in what ways does this living-in constitute

a problem?

As a connected problématique this article therefore takes a closer look at the every-

day life practices within the two official enclaves/exclaves of Sastavci Medjurecja

and Dubrovnik-Neretva, asking questions about the obstacles and benefits of living

in and being part of an – in legal/political jargon – “anomalous” area of the world6.

In this section of the article the findings are based on fieldwork where we have

made an effort not simply to engage with the usual suspects, so to speak – that is, ac-

tors who are in one way or another directly related to political institutions at a local,

regional and national level. Instead we have used problems experienced as politi-

cally loaded in order to reflect how the populations of the areas make sense of their

lives, in what is perceived to be an exceptional area.

The approach is ethnographic narrative and relational where the researcher fol-

lows relationships that penetrate everyday life practices in a locality. This infers that

the researcher is ‘sent’ from actor to actor in transference of the actors’ experiences

– transference which is guided by these experiences but not determined by them7.

Rather, the researcher engages in narrative reconstructions of the experiences in or-

der to make sense of them. Hence, the researcher recognizes orderings in the experi-

ences, patterns that in our case follow the logics of mobility (ability of and practices

involving movements), identity (belonging and othering), and transitions (under-

stood in the light of geopolitical changes). The approach also infers that the actors

involved might not be physically present in the location where the research is done,

and that they might not be human agents – hence, they could be a backyard, flags or

a border checkpoint.

The insights gained by engaging with the everyday practices in enclaves/ex-

claves once again highlight that the official definitions of these spatial entities are in-

sufficient. When viewed in the context of life-forming practices in these places,

what are recognized in international law to be static dividing lines between territo-

ries and identities become blurred crossings, flowing corridors, or abstract and hy-

brid relations. As put by Reece Jones, “the everyday lives of the enclave residents expose

the rough edges of the sovereign state”8. Hence, lived life produced by enclavization

is not significantly different from what is evidenced about life lived in border ar-

eas, especially those border areas that have continuously experienced turbulent

Challenging the post-Yugoslavian borders : The enclaves of Sastavci . . . 93

6 Ibidem, p. 5.7 Transference in psychotherapy is typically an unconscious process (from the side of thepatient) where the attitudes, feelings, and desires of the patient’s (very early) significant rela-tionships get transferred onto the therapist. Here the term is extended to the social uncon-scious, so to speak, naming the process whereby the ethnographer gains access to investigatesignificant relationships in a locality. For an introduction to the use of transference in anthro-pology see Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Ethnographic Seduction, Transference, and Resistance inDialogues about Terror and Violence in Argentina, “Ethos”, vol. 24, no 1, 1996.8 R. Jones, Sovereignty and statelessness in the border enclaves of India and Bangladesh, “PoliticalGeography”, no 28, 2009, p. 377.

geopolitical changes9. This is also to say that when we deal with enclaves we might

want to view them metaphorically as borderlands, buffer zones, or even Third-spaces10

rather than naturally occurring exemptions and anomalies. In the end, as stated by

Ann Kennard, enclaves constitute “quintessentially bordered regions”11.

2. Enclavization in the former Yugoslavia

Conceptually, the terms enclaves and exclaves can be viewed as products of the idea

of the Westphalian state-system, and hence “Enclaves are often viewed as the anoma-

lous objects of world political geography (‘archaic remnants’, in Raton 1958, p. 193), as

something peculiar, a curiosity in the world of geography and international relations. Even

the authors who write about individual enclaves often regard them as an exception to the

norm”12. However, as Vinokourov suggests, they should perhaps rather be regarded

as features of the system, created by the system, and inevitable because the system

is practically instituted. Vinokourov thus perceives enclaves not as geographical cu-

riosities but as an independent class of spatial political objects13.

What seems clear is that enclaves challenge the often taken-for-granted connec-

tion between sovereignty and the state. The role that enclaves play in terms of geo-

politics is extremely interesting to analyze since they “expose the cracks and fissures in

the fiction of coterminous nations, states, and territories and displace the notion of the abso-

lute sovereignty of the state over its people and territory”14. The challenges of these cracks

and fissures are sometimes resolved with very simple solutions, as the case of

Sastavci will show, whereas they at other times open towards somewhat alternative

ways of doing place-territory-identity, as is the case in Dubrovnik-Neretva.

In the case of the Yugoslav state, its disintegration – in addition to the emergence

of traditional territorial politics – has created a complex territorial landscape which

is not yet stable. This lack of stability can be clearly seen for instance in the case of

the Northern municipalities of Kosovo containing a Serbian majority. In effect, since

Kosovo became a UN protectorate in 1999, Northern Kosovo – and to a lesser extent

other de facto Serbian enclaves – has become a focus of ethno-territorial tensions. De-

spite pressure from Pristina (and Washington), Serbian institutions are fully opera-


9 Hereto for instance D. J. Andersen, The Multiple Politics of Borders: Images of the Slove-nian-Croatian Border on Istria from the Perspective of An Ethnographer on the move, [in:]D. Andersen, M. Klatt, Sandberg (eds), The Border Multiple – The Practicing of Borders betweenPublic Policy and Everyday Life in a Re-scaling Europe, Ashgate, Aldershot 2012, pp. 141–159.10 Following Edward W. Soja’s definition: “I define Thirdspace as an-Other way of understandingand acting to change the spatiality of human life, a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is ap-propriate to the new scope and significance being brought about in the rebalanced trialectices of spati-ality-historicality-sociality”, E. W. Soja, Thirdspace, Blackwell, Malden, Mass. 1996, p. 57.11 A. Kennard, Old Cultures, New institutions. Around the New Eastern Border of the EuropeanUnion, Lit Verlag, Münster 2010, p. 19.12 E. Vinokourov, A Theory of…, op. cit., p. 5.13 Ibidem, p. 5.14 R. Jones, Sovereignty and statelessness…, op. cit., p. 380.

tional in Serbian municipalities15 and have the full support of the local Serbian

population, which is overwhelmingly reluctant to accept the institutions of the

self-declared Republic of Kosovo16.

Processes of disintegration present particularly fertile conditions for enclaves

to emerge from. Obvious examples that fit the traditional definition would be

Nagorno-Karabakh, or Kaliningrad. However, in ethnic terms multiple enclaves

have been formed, for example, in Latvia, with a Russian (speaking) minority that

has little or no allegiance to Riga. In this respect, what is important in our case is the

fact that Yugoslavia was a multinational and multi-ethnic state, including six recog-

nized nationalities (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Muslims, Montenegrins and Macedo-

nians) and 18 different ethnic groups17. For decades, Yugoslavia attempted to create

cohesion through brotherhood and unity, sweeping the latent ethnic conflict under

the rug and using Tito’s personality cult, ideology and the partisan tales as a subli-

mation mechanism in order to repress the ‘nationalist impulses’ of the different eth-

nic groups. However, with the death of Tito and the temporal distance from the

heroic resistance of the partisans in WWII, it ran out of sources of legitimacy. As

Bakiæ-Hayden and Hayden anticipated when the conflict in the Balkans was esca-

lating: “The peak of Yugoslavia’s multifaceted crisis reveals that its identity can no longer be

defined through the ideology of the post-war communist era. All that this kind of unity has

left behind it are differences: cultural, linguistic, religious, economic”18.

Indeed, with the construction of a Pan-Yugoslav national identity, the communist

authorities attempted to neutralize all other potentially problematic nationalities19.

The complexity of the national/ethnic composition of this former multinational

state suggested that any partition would lead inevitably to the creation of many en-

claves, and, presumably, further tensions. Among other factors, Yugoslavia col-

lapsed as a result of the rise of elites with exclusionary ideologies (nationalism)20.

Its disintegration led to the emergence of several independent republics. Chaim

Kauffman is, amongst others, a strong advocate of such partition in cases of

multi-ethnic states affected by war. Basing his conclusion on his study of ethnic

wars from 1944–1994, he claims that war rules out the possibility of cooperation in

those states and, consequently, resolution of ethnic conflicts is only possible when

“the opposing groups are demographically separated into defensible enclaves”21. Kaufmann


15 Except for the police and the army.16 Based on interviews carried out in Serbian enclaves in Kosovo by Jaume Castan Pinos inJuly and August 2012.17 E. Petroviæ, Ethnonationalism and the Dissolution of Yugoslavia, [in:] J. M. Halpern, D. A. Kideckel(eds), Neighbours at War, The Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania 2000, p. 164.18 Bakiæ-Hayden, R. M. Hayden, Orientalist Variations on the Theme ‘Balkans’: Symbolic Geogra-phy in Recent Yugoslav Cultural Politics, “Slavic Review”, no 51, 1992, p. 15.19 E. Petroviæ, Ethnonationalism and…, op. cit., p. 165.20 See D. Joviæ, The Disintegration of Yugoslavia: A Critical Review of Explanatory Approaches,“European Journal of Social Theory”, no 4 (1), 2001, pp. 101–120.21 C. Kaufmann, Possible and Impossible solutions to ethnic civil wars, “International Security”,no 20 (4), 1996, p. 137.

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concludes that this solution reduces the chances of further combat and the potential

for ethnic cleansing.

However, the Yugoslavian case shows that the ethnic lines are often chaotic and

do not always have territorial continuity. With partition, therefore, in this case, the

roots of conflicts are not tackled – just the effects – and, as a result, the strategy only

offers temporary solutions. If the two ingredients are still present – nationalism on

the one hand, and some degree of territorial heterogeneity – then the potential for

conflict (and indeed the formation of enclaves) remains intact. In the former Yugo-

slav areas this has had a mushrooming effect triggering the emergence of de facto en-

claves. Bosnia is a paradigmatic example, with a territorial structure that does not fit

within our usual definitions of a state. State-building in a post-conflict multi-ethnic

environment entails, logically, numerous challenges. The Dayton agreement estab-

lished a highly complex system of governance, characterized by decentralization,

where the three constituent peoples22 are represented in central institutions and en-

titled to veto central state decisions23. The agreement, which ended three and a half

years of devastating ethno-territorial war, divided the country into two entities; the

Bosniak-Croat federation and the Republika Srpska. In other words, Bosnia was

structured following ethnic parameters.

One of the main challenges BiH faces today is its lack of legitimacy among sig-

nificant sections of its citizens, particularly among Serbs. The President of the

Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, for instance, has stated that Bosnia and Herze-

govina “is an impossible country (…) we have now entered a farce, where basically nobody

wants this country”24. More bluntly, McMahon and Western claim that Bosnia “is on

the brink of collapse”, despite the considerable efforts of the international community,

that is the US and the EU, to build stable political institutions25. Hence, its complex

political architecture and its ethnic diversity are elements that encourage the

enclavization trend. It is therefore not surprising that the Bosnian state is present in

both of the two cases analyzed in this article: with regards to Sastavci it constitutes

the mainland state, whereas in the case of Dubrovnik, BiH is (one of) the surround-

ing state(s).

Despite the fact that they are not the only cases worthy of consideration in the

former Yugoslav context, the two de iure enclaves which are analyzed in this article

are still worth scrutinizing, since they illustrate the complexities of enclave manage-

ment, and to a certain extent they force central governments to renounce sover-

eignty in order to adapt to the reality on the ground. As both cases show, in different


22 There are currently two entities; the Bosniak-Croat federation and the Republika Srpska.23 R. L. Ivie, T. W. Waters, Discursive democracy and the challenge of state building in divided soci-eties: reckoning with symbolic capital in Bosnia and Herzegovina, “Nationalities papers”, no 38 (4),2010, p. 451.24 B92, 16/08/2012, http://www.b92.net/eng/news/regionarticle.php?yyyy=2012&mm=08&dd=16&nav_id=81798 (accessed 11.09.2012).25 P. C. McMahon, J. Western, The Death of Dayton. How to stop Bosnia from Falling Apart, “For-eign Affairs”, no 88, 2010, p. 69.

ways, these territorial units are handled by locals in manners that prevent the

enclavization from interfering with issues concerning identity-formation and mo-

bility patterns. By focusing on everyday practices we are able to scrutinize the com-

plexities in enclaves and exclaves, and by doing so, we aim to gain an insight into

the bordering practices in these territories.

3. The case of the Dubrovnik-Neretva exclave

If you want to travel by car or bus from Split to Dubrovnik you have to pass through

the “Neum corridor”, an approximately 22 kilometer-long strip of Bosnia and

Herzegovina sticking into the Adriatic coast and cutting Croatian Dalmatia in two,

thus separating the region of Dubrovnik-Neretva from its mainland. In the treaty of

Karlowitz of 1699, Dubrovnik (at that time a republic) ceded the Neum corridor to

the Ottoman Empire to create a buffer zone to the Venetian territories – the same

happened with Sutorina, South-East of Dubrovnik and today part of Montenegro.

Together the two corridors caused the fragmentation of the Austrian rule in the

1800s, and Austria tried therefore to gain power over the corridors – but without

success. The corridors were important for the Ottoman Empire due to trade-relations,

providing access to the Adriatic as they did, and they gained even more importance

after 1850–51 in connection with conflicts between the Ottoman Empire and the

people of Bosnia and Herzegovina26.

As part of the process whereby the Ottoman Empire lost more and more of

its Balkan territories in the late 1800s, Austria took over power in Bosnia and

Herzegovina, thereby also gaining power over the two corridors, and thus recon-

necting these parts of Dalmatia into one common territorial unit. Within the second

Yugoslavia, Bosnia and Herzegovina – one of six republics within the Yugoslav Un-

ion – kept Neum, but had to hand Sutorina over to Montenegro. Even when the

significance of borders between the republics was not as loaded in the second Yugo-

slavia as it is today, this still implied that the Neum corridor was under a different

administrative system to the rest of Dalmatia. Dubrovnik-Neretva was therefore to

a certain extent cut off27. During the conflict between Croatia and Bosnia and

Herzegovina, Croatia controlled the corridor and was unwilling to give up its sov-

ereignty in the area due to the fact that this would fragment Dalmatia. However,

with the mutual recognition of the Croatian and Bosnian states in 1992 ending the

warfare in Herzegovina, Neum was recognized as belonging under BiH jurisdic-

tion28.

Today, the corridor remains part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but is populated by

people who associate more with their coastal ancestors than with the new Bosnian


26 G. H. Blake, D. Topaloviæ, C. H. Schofield, The Maritime Boundaries of the Adriatic Sea, “Mar-itime Briefing”, vol. 1, no 8, 1996, pp. 36–39.27 Ibidem.28 The mutual recognition of the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

federation in which the corridor is located. Moreover, around 90% of the population

is ethnically Croatian29. Visiting Neum, you will see Croatian flags being flown on

the houses rather than their Bosnian blue-yellow counterpart, something which

symbolizes not only the connections to the Croatian state but also the unity of the

Dalmatian region.

Despite the turbulent history of this region, belonging within and being split by

republics, empires and states, the populations living here never lost their coastal

identity, thus connecting them more with the sea and trade relations than to what-

ever is behind the mountains – mountains which also make the coastal zone

a strangely limited strip of land in this part of Dalmatia30.


Figure 2. Neum greeting sign. For those not familiar with the flags, the Bosnia and

Herzegovina flag is blue-yellow, whereas the Croatian flag is blue, red and white,

with the characteristic red-white squares

Source: Dorte Jagetiæ Andersen.

29 According to NationMaster.com, http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Neum#Features (accessed 20.07.2012).30 Thereto also, F. Violich, The Bridge to Dalmatia: A Search for the Meaning of Place, The JohnHopkins University Press, 1998.

However, the fact that Dalmatia is cut into different pieces has created problems in

the relationship between the two now independent states, not least because tourism

is the main means of income for people in Croatian Dalmatia. For visitors to

Dubrovnik and the surrounding region who choose to travel by land, it is not en-

tirely clear for instance whether visas are required for transit through the Neum cor-

ridor. Under the terms of a treaty between Croatia and Bosnia, travelers entering the

Neum corridor in order to gain transit without stopping are not subject to the usual

Bosnian entry requirements31; one may encounter border controls, but it should be

sufficient to have documents allowing entrance to Croatia in order to also be per-

mitted to pass through the corridor.

On the other hand, the tourism site Balkanology.com reports that “at least one

traveler recently reported being told by a Bosnian official that those nationalities that re-

quire a visa to enter Bosnia ‘proper’ do need a transit visa”32. Despite the existent Neum

agreement state affiliations and nationalist sentiments are, it seems, being im-

posed by officials upon visitors to the region. To counteract the negative effects of

such tendencies, in the year 2000 the Croatian state added local plans to build

a bridge connecting the two parts of Dalmatia by road, a decision which caused

much disturbance in the diplomatic relations between Croatia and BiH and are

now put on hold (see below).

Not only is the corridor problematic in regards of the many tourists entering the

Dubrovnik-Neretva region by land, it has also been – and still is – subject to other

problems. A report made by The Foreign Policy Initiative BH states: “The following

fall under the broader context of outstanding issues in relation to the border between Croatia

and Bosnia and Herzegovina since the end of the nineties to the present day: the issue of the

State Border Agreement, the issue of the sea border delineation and the issues of the bridge to

the Peljesac Peninsula, as well as the issue of the status of the Port of Ploèe, i.e. the Agree-

ment on Free Transit through the Territory of Croatia to and from the Port of Ploèe and

through the Territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina at Neum”33.

The harbor in Neum does not have much commercial value, so the commercial

port which Bosnia and Herzegovina depends upon is Ploèe, located in Croatian ter-

ritory. For obvious reasons, control over the Port of Ploèe is not a key political issue

for Bosnia and Herzegovina, or a reason to block Croatia’s infrastructural and eco-

nomic projects. On the other hand, the Port of Ploèe depends on companies located

in BiH, particularly on the Zenica Steelworks, Lukavac cox plant, Biraè from

Zvornik and Aluminij from Mostar, companies which are mainly under foreign


31 Treaty on the State Border between the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina,30 July 1999, thereto for instance M. Klemenciæ, The Border Agreement Between Croatia andBosnia-Herzegovina: The First But Not the Last, “Boundary and Security Bulletin”, vol. 7, no 4,2000, p. 99.32 www.Balkanology.com (accessed 1.06.2012).33 Foreign Policy Initiative BH, Policy Analysis. The Republic of Croatia’s Accession to the Euro-pean Union. Outstanding issues between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia and their implicationsfor Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, March 2012.

ownership, and therefore concerned with access to high quality services at low

prices rather than the bureaucratic control of the port.

Issues concerning territorial integrity and extensions are still contested, in

other words, and will probably remain so for many years to come. As stated in the

Foreign Policy Initiatives report on Croatia’s EU-accession: “At the moment it is

clear that Croatia’s accession to the European Union will have a significant impact on bor-

der issues, in particular the following: inspection services, trade in industrial and agricul-

tural products, property-rights relations, the status of the Port of Ploèe, traffic corridors,

citizenship and travel documents, the electric power industry and trade relations. Almost

none of these issues are new in the history of relations between the two young countries”34.

However, at stake here, according to the report, is BiH’s status as respected negoti-

ation partner for the EU, rather than regional issues in themselves: “The fragmented

constitutional framework of BiH – used to obstruct the resolution of outstanding issues

(locally or bilaterally) – risks to be a constantly disruptive factor in the European con-

text”35.

Locally, in the Dubrovnik-Neretva region, there has been some concern with the

border settlements between Croatia and BiH36. However, what one has to under-

stand in relation to Dubrovnik-Neretva’s exclave status is that life in this region

does not gravitate towards the capital of Zagreb or other parts of the mainland. Seen

from the perspective of the everyday practices of people living in the region of

Dubrovnik-Neretva, life gravitates towards the town of Dubrovnik and especially

to its old core, something which influences all flows of people and goods in the re-

gion. The political life of the region is administered from the city of Dubrovnik – the

economic life, which is dominated by tourism, has Dubrovnik’s Old Town as its

dominant attraction, the unrivalled jewel of the Eastern Adriatic coast, and the cul-

tural life of the region is strongly influenced by the city’s history as a cultural centre.

As Povrzanovic Frykman puts it: “Dubrovnik, The Town37, is not only a national symbol,

but also an experiential anchor of identity for all the people from the region. It is a point of ref-

erence in the landscape bearing the aura of lasting – ‘eternal’ – value and beauty, but it is also

the historical and actual centre of the region”38. The region’s self-understanding, its spa-

tial identity, so to speak, is thus constructed around The Town.

Rural life in the region is also defined by its connection to The Town, even when

the life of the city could not be upheld without its rural surroundings and the soil

upon which city life depends. However, the rural hinterlands are also where the re-

gional identity reaches its boundaries and where ‘otherness’ as such begins: rural

vs. city, or peasant vs. gospar – an ancient term for nobleman, with the local meaning


34 Ibidem.35 Ibidem.36 M. Klemenciæ, The Border Agreement…, op. cit., p.99.37 The term Town or Grad in Croatian is the name used by locals for the old core of the city,M. Povrzanovic Frykman, Violence and the re-discovery of place, “Ethnologia Europaea”,vol. 32, no 2, 2002.38 Ibidem, p. 86.

today of a person from the Dubrovnik region, who, just by living there, is consid-

ered noble39.

This narrative of centre and periphery is to a large extent supported by the re-

gion’s location at the Adriatic coast, and what could be referred to as the historical

spirit of the region. Everyday practices in the region are and have been for centuries

oriented towards the sea, and the trade relations it makes possible. Moreover,

the narrative of independence and ultimately freedom penetrates the regional

self-understanding. Dubrovnik, or Ragusa as it was called at the time, was an inde-

pendent republic from the 14th until the 19th century, and this history still reso-

nates in the symbolism with which people associate themselves in being from

Dubrovnik-Neretva. As emphasized on the official site of the Dubrovnik-Neretva

tourist board: “Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro – ‘Freedom cannot be sold for

all the gold in the world’ – was engraved into the hard stone above the gates of Lovrijenac, the

unconquerable Dubrovnik citadel back in the times of the Dubrovnik Republic”40. The iden-

tity of Dubrovnik-Neretva and its people is thus that of a historical, independent re-

gion with close connections to the world due to its coastal location.

Hence, Dubrovnik-Neretva is a region separate from the Croatian mainland, not

just because of the Neum corridor but more importantly because of its regional

identity and its status as people’s home’(as in Heimart); it is a place of belonging for

the people living here, a place as destiny41. As such, everyday practices in the region

are defined foremost in terms of flows; a mobility always gravitating towards the

region’s centre, The Old Town itself, as well as a mobility of foreigners visiting the

region and made possible by the sea and trade relations to Europe and the East.

The land borders surrounding the region can therefore not, by definition, be con-

sidered an integral part of life in this region, being markers of something that stops

flows of practices. The borders are where home ends and another way of life begins,

foremost a way of life which has to do with geopolitics and struggles over what is

rightfully yours, but also a life which is not that of the gospar. As Igor Zidiæ puts it:

“Dubrovnik is a city – and expression – of the cosmopolitan, peaceful, maritime, hardwork-

ing, educated and cultured Croatia, the birth place of great scientists and scholars, writers,

sea captains, entrepreneurs, excellent cartographers, and engineers … It was neither servile

nor xenophobic … It was also the Frontier: Light on the Border of Darkness”42. Seen in this

perspective, the fact of living in an exclave is and must remain irrelevant to ‘real

life’. When borders become relevant, as they did for instance when Dubrovnik was

under siege in 1991, life turns into what it is not.

However, as indicated in the above quote, the story is not as clear-cut as it might

seem. Since the Serbian-Montenegrin siege in 1991, The Town has also been inte-


39 Ibidem, p. 86.40 The official site of Dubrovnik and Neretva County Tourist Board, http://visit-dubrovnik.hr/en-GB/Home (accessed 20.08.2012).41 M. Povrzanoviæ Frykman, Violence and the…, op. cit.42 I. Zidiæ, The siege of Dubrovnik and the city’s wounds (a letter to an Italian friend), [in:]M. Foretiæ (ed.), Dubrovnik in War, Matica Hrvatska Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik 2000, p. 62.

grated into the narrative of the nation as the heart of what it is to be Croatian; taking

pride in freedom from external aggressors and being willing to give one’s life for inde-

pendence. Hence, its history of independence became the symbol of the entire Croatian

state’s independence, thus also intensifying its significance in the region. Faced with

struggling against and finally overcoming an aggressor much more powerful than the

inhabitants of the city, the metaphors used to describe the life of the city grew almost

out of proportion. It is no longer uncommon to meet the opposing pair of peaceful and

open to the world – describing people in Dubrovnik – vs. aggressive and destructive,

describing the Serbs (and not forgetting that this includes Montenegrins and Serbian

Bosnians): “In October 1991, the cruelty came down, loaded with hatred, stirred by envy and

fired by greed, the all-destroying barbaric aggression by the Serbs and Montenegrin on our

peaceful, harmonic, kind and open to the world, hospitable people, city and region”43. Despite

the fact that the battle with the Serbian and Montenegrin aggressors was conducted out

of love for home, the mediated discourse of national symbolism brings geopolitics back

into the construction of the region’s identity, again playing on the opposition to the bar-

baric aggressors in the East. Hence, even when the region’s exclave status and its bor-

ders occur only as an alien presence, so to speak, in relation to everyday life practices,

being part of Croatia and not Bosnia and Herzegovina or Montenegro remains consti-

tutive to the self-understanding of the region and its people.

4. The case of the Sastavci-Medjurecja enclave

The villages of Sastavci and Medjurecja belong officially to the municipality of

Rudo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They constitute an enclave which is surrounded

by the municipality of Priboj, in Western Serbia. Its distance to the BiH mainland,

that is to the eastern part of Republika Srpska, is approximately one kilometer44. Due

to the reduced size of its territory (396 hectares) and its small population, Sastavci

can be conceptualized as a micro-enclave. With regard to population, according to

the last census (1991) there were 75 households and 261 inhabitants in the enclave

(185 Serbs, 56 Muslim Slavs/Bosniaks and 20 from other nationalities). Sveto

Vilotiæ, the mayor of Sastavci, estimates that the figure in 2012 is much lower, with

fewer than 30 households and a total population of fewer than 100 inhabitants. Ac-

cording to Vilotiæ the residents, especially the young population, leave due to eco-

nomic reasons, in particular due to a lack of job opportunities45.

Cirkoviæ and Goliæ point out that the details of the formation of the enclave are

little known46. Local residents recount a story/legend according to which a local


43 The official site of Dubrovnik and Neretva County Tourist Board, http://visit-dubrovnik.hr/en-GB/Home (accessed 20.08.2012).44 It should be noted that the enclave does not appear as such in Google Maps.45 Sveto Vilotiæ, author interview, Sastavci (BiH), 5th July 2012.46 M. Cirkoviæ, R. Goliææ, Problem granice izmeðu Srbije i Bosne i Hercegovine kod naselja Sastavci,“Journal of the Geographical Institute Jovan Cvijic”, no 57, 2007, p. 327.

governor, during the Ottoman rule, gave the land of the current Sastavci and

Medjurecja as a dowry to his son-in-law from Bosnia. The Austro-Hungarians in-

stantly registered the land as part of their territory. What seems clear is that the ori-

gins of the enclave are imperial, since its existence is connected with the occupation

of BiH and Serbia by the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires. More specifi-

cally, the existence of today’s enclave has its roots in the distribution of Balkan terri-

tories by the Great Powers at the Congress of Berlin in 1878. During that congress,

the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed by Austria. According to

Kennard, due to ‘specific matters of ownership’ the enclave was also annexed47. For

Micoviæ, the explanation is in fact military, since the Berlin Congress entitled the

Austro-Hungarian Empire to keep defensive military garrisons inside the Ottoman

borders48. In any case, after the Berlin Congress, Sastavci, unlike other neighboring

villages from the municipality of Priboj, did not remain part of the Ottoman Empire.

During the SFRY, Sastavci belonged to the Socialist Republic of Bosnia and

Herzegovina.

The enclave was not immune to the war in Bosnia (1992–1995). Residents gave

accounts of how the Serbian-Bosnian army and the Yugoslavian army were sta-

tioned at the top of the hills, on the border of the enclave. The war had consequences

for the ethnic composition of the enclave. According to Safeta Bi Evac nearly the en-

tire Bosniak-Muslim population left the enclave in late 1992, after 17 Muslim Slavs

were kidnapped in the neighboring village of Mioèe (BiH) and allegedly assassi-

nated in Eastern Bosnia49. In 2012, only two Bosnian families have returned thus far,

according to the local mayor50. After BiH seceded from Yugoslavia, the enclave re-

mained part of its territory, under the administration of the entity of Republika

Srpska.

Currently, therefore, the vast majority of the residents are Serbs. This is very

significant since Sastavci legally constitutes an enclave, but is not an ethnic en-

clave, as most of the residents identify not with the mainland state (BiH) but with

the state that surrounds the enclave (Serbia). When the author engaged in conver-

sations in a local Kafana (bar), in the supermarket or by visiting people in their

houses, the response was unanimous. The phrase We are Serbs, we don’t feel Bosnian

is repeated like a mantra. A local police officer adds that the residents do not feel

like they are living in an enclave because ‘we are Serbs and we are surrounded by

Serbia’, and consequently the only reminders of being in an enclave are the border

crossings51.


47 A. Kennard, Old Cultures, New institutions. Around the New Eastern Border of the EuropeanUnion, Lit Verlag, Münster 2001, p. 24.48 Cited by M. Cirkoviæ, R. Goliæ, Problem granice izmeðu..., op. cit., p. 327.49 S. Bi Evac, Bosniaks in Sandzak and interethnic tolerance in Novi Pazar, [in:] N. Dimitrijevic(ed.), Managing multi-ethnic local communities in the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Open So-ciety Institute, Budapest 2000, p. 391.50 Sveto Vilotiæ, author interview, Sastavci (BiH), 5th July 2012.51 Local police officer, author interview, Sastavci, 4th July 2012.

Aside from the identity and the ethnic composition of the enclave, there is an-

other element that makes Sastavci a non-enclave: every single state institution in the

enclave is Serbian. A local resident elucidates the situation in plain words: “this is

BiH, but there is nothing from Bosnia, everything comes from Serbia”52. By everything the

resident meant not only the institutions – the primary school, the local police and

the post office (see Figure 3.) – but also telecommunication services such as tele-

phone landlines and electrical energy supply. Even the (single) ambulance is pro-

vided by the Priboj Medical Centre. The primary school, for instance, follows

entirely the Serbian education curriculum as set by the Ministry of Education of Ser-

bia. Likewise, the postal service operates through a local network which includes

different Serbian villages of the Priboj municipality (Batkovici, Repusevici, Crnu-

govici, Olandici) as well as Sastavci and Medjurecja. The latter are, thus, considered

as ordinary Serbian towns according to the Serbian Posta.

A local postal worker claims that this situation is a legacy from Yugoslavia: the

new borders did not replace the old institutions. According to this Serbian public worker

the survival of the old institutions can be explained by pragmatic reasons: the govern-

ment of BiH allowed the exception in order to save money. Similarly, by maintain-

ing its institutions, the Serbian government also saved money as it did not have to

build new institutions at the other side of the border, that is, a few hundred meters

away53. With regard to policing, both the Serbian Police and the Police from the

Republika Srpska (BiH) cooperate when a crime is committed in the enclave. The for-

mer carry out the investigation and the latter are entitled to monitor the process54.

In addition to its unique institutional arrangements, the enclave is also interest-

ing in terms of banal nationalism. Michael Billig claims that banality contributes to

making flags powerful symbols, since they operate unconsciously, they are part of


Figure 3. Serbian institutions in Sastavci:

Public school, Police station and Post Office

Source: Jaume Castan Pinos.

52 Interview with Sastavci resident, author interview, Sastavci, 3rd July 2012.53 Sastavci postal worker, author interview, Sastavci, 5th July 2012.54 Interview with a local police officer, author interview, Sastavci, 4th July 2012.

the social milieu and, consequently, they remain unsaluted, unwaved and even un-

noticed55. As explained in previous paragraphs, the enclave officially belongs to

Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, as in the case of the Neum corridor, the Bosnian

flag is nowhere to be seen. On the contrary, the Serbian flag is present on posters, in

houses, as well as in the Serbian state institutions (see Figure 3.). This fact, which

could be seen as anecdotal, is significant because national flags are not only banal

reminders of nationhood, as Billig points out, but are also the repository of the legit-

imate power of the state56. In the case of Sastavci, in institutional and symbolic/ba-

nal terms this state is Serbia.

What then is the presence of the Bosnian state in the enclave? Firstly, it’s present

through the municipal taxes, which are paid to the municipality of Rudo (BiH). Sec-

ondly, through the border. In effect, the residents need to cross two borders to reach

mainland Bosnia, and four border crossings to reach Priboj (in Serbia), the city

where many of them work. In order to access this city, the residents need to cross the

border crossings of Vagan-Ustibar and subsequently the Uvac-Uvac border. Obvi-

ously, the several borders isolate the enclave and create communication problems

between Sastavci and the local centers both in BiH and Serbia. An additional prob-

lem for the residents is the fact that they need to pay custom taxes whether they go

to Rudo (BiH) or Priboj (Serbia), and that this represents a burden for local farmers

who intend to sell their goods and cattle outside the enclave57. Nonetheless, as the

popular saying goes every law (and every border) has its loophole, and the borders that

surround Sastavci are no exception. A local police officer acknowledges that since

2000 the central Bosnian government has replaced local Bosnian-Serb border guards

with guards from other provinces (favoring Bosniaks) in order to tackle smuggling

and other illegal activities more effectively58. Moreover, he also admits that it is

a common practice for residents to use the road across the mountain in order to

avoid paying customs tax59. It can be argued that illegal activities play an important

role in attempting to undermine the border – that is, in de-bordering practices.

Being a micro-enclave surrounded by borders triggers not only illegal activities

but also absurd situations. The case of the Markoviæ family provides an illustrative

example. The houses of Momir and his sister-in-law are divided by a red fence (see

Figure 4., right-hand picture), that not only divides two yards but also separates

two states: he lives in Serbia, she lives in Bosnia. More dramatically, the border

slashes the cemetery and some graves into two parts60. Momir Markoviæ, who


55 M. Billig, Banal nationalism, Sage Publications Ltd, London 1995, p. 40.56 H. Driessen, The “New Immigration” and the Transformation of the European-African Frontier,[in:] M. Wilson, H. Donnan (eds), TBorder Identities: Nation and State at International Frontiers,Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1998, p. 112.57 Interview with local farmers, author interview, Sastavci, 3rd July 2012.58 He claims that before the year 2000 there was collusion between border guards from RepublikaSrpska and local residents and, as a result, there was too much tolerance towards smuggling.59 Interview with a local police officer, author interview, Sastavci, 4th July 2012.60 In figure 3 (left-hand picture) the stone demarcates the border. To the right, Serbia; to theleft Bosnia.

Ryszard

Podświetlony

works as a farmer, complains that “not even the dead can escape from borders. My father,

who was a [Yugoslavian WWII] Partisan, would be very upset to see his own land divided

in two parts and his country divided in so many pieces”. Momir deeply regrets the col-

lapse of Yugoslavia and claims that “this border is between states, not between people, for

us it is totally insignificant”61.

There have been official attempts to resolve the territorial conundrum of Sastavci

by the central governments of Serbia and BiH through an International Diplomatic

Commission62. The negotiations began in 2001 and have hitherto been unsuccessful.

The Serbian side has suggested a land exchange based on the principles of quantita-

tive and qualitative reciprocity – in other words, Serbia would compensate BiH

with a similar territory (in terms of both size and characteristics). It must be noted

that for Serbia the interest in solving this issue is not territorial per se but is rather

connected with tackling communication problems, more specifically the isolation of

a dozen villages of the Priboj municipality. Because of Sastavci, these villages are cut

off from Priboj, the capital of the municipality, where many of the villagers work on

a daily basis. Bosnia, on the other hand, preferred the option of establishing a nar-

row corridor between the enclave and the municipality of Rudo. The failure of the

negotiations is, according to the Sastavci mayor, partly due to the lack of EU interest

in altering the territorial status quo in the Balkans63. Whether his perception is based

on facts or just personal intuition, what seems clear is that any territorial modifica-

tion in the Balkan puzzle (even a mutually agreed and peaceful one) has the poten-

tial of destabilizing other areas in the region, such as Macedonia or indeed Bosnia

and Herzegovina itself.


Figure 4. Border absurdities

Source: Jaume Castan Pinos.

61 Momir Markoviæ, author interview, Sastavci, 5th July 2012.62 R. Balfour, D. Basiæ, A bridge over troubled borders: Europeanising the Balkans, European Pol-icy Center. Policy Briefing, November 2010. See also Kennard (2010, p. 25) and Cirkoviæ,Goliæ (2007, p. 331).63 Sveto Vilotiæ, author interview, Sastavci (BiH), 5th July 2012

5. Conclusions

When engaging with people on the ground, so to speak, it is clear that the linkages be-

tween state, territory, nation and ethnicity become blurred. We therefore need to re-

consider the terms enclave and exclave, and ask whether they really capture what is

at stake in regions and locations which are situated in ways contrary to usual expec-

tations, bearing in mind the relationships between space-place-territory. We con-

sider it necessary to extend the vocabulary, in order to open up a discussion around

the ways that people come to determine their belonging, and the relationships be-

tween space-place-territory. There are multiple ways of expressing such a trichotomy.

In the case of the Dubrovnik-Neretva region and the Neum corridor the sense of

belonging is local, regional as well as divided between states. Moreover, state divi-

sions reappear in multiple forms due to regional belonging splitting identity into

several levels of association. In practical terms this multiplicity gives way for

a “Third-space: a distinct mode of critical spatial awareness that is appropriate to the

new scope and significance being brought about in the rebalanced trialectics of spatiali-

ty-historicity-sociality”64. The notion is for instance open to an understanding of how

tourists in the region can be absorbed into everyday practices; as well as the ques-

tion of why the presence of a state border separating the region from its mainland

does not seem to trouble these everyday practices. The limits to the Third-space are,

however, marked by the state division between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina;

the space stops and the limit appears in its most profound symbolic and physical

shape in the mountains – that is, where the presence of the Bosnian state begins.

In relation to bordering processes we would therefore say that borders appear

(in many shapes) as soon as the belonging and presence of BiH becomes an is-

sue-not-to-be-ignored. The populations may wish the borders to remain invisible, but

they nevertheless remain part of the regional identity, and not only when state dis-

putes and political-administrative questions force them to put the border on the

agenda.

Similar to Dubrovnik, the existence of Sastavci is due to the Austro-Hungarian

and Ottoman colonial past of the Balkan region. The size of this enclave is not pro-

portionate to the attention it has raised in Belgrade and Sarajevo, which set up an In-

ternational Diplomatic Commission in order to solve the fate of what is only a 396

hectare territory. The practical solution applied to this enclave – to keep the Serbian

institutions – is due to pragmatic visions from both governments, and also due to

the fact that these institutions are welcomed by a population which is overwhelm-

ingly Serbian. De-bordering practices often go hand in hand with illegal activities in

order to avoid paying custom tax. The main motivation for these common and mi-

nor border subversion practices is an economic one. However, they also express a re-

fusal to be bordered with a territory that is not considered to be foreign by the vast

majority of the enclave’s residents.


64 E. W. Soja, Thirdspace, Blackwell, Malden, Mass. 1996, p. 57.

The two cases challenge the Post-Yugoslavian state borders, where lines in the

sand have been drawn in locations which are, and have historically been, character-

ized by their ethnic diversity. It also shows that in the post-Yugoslavian context it is

problematic, to say the least, to construct the state as a container of ethnic identity.

Enclavization therefore seems to be a symptom of the problem rather than a solu-

tion, and as the exclave of Dubrovnik and the enclave of Sastavci illustrate, the lines

in the sand will always be transcended and contradicted by the everyday practices

of the local populations.


Challenging the post-Yugoslavian borders: The enclaves of Sastavci and Dubrovnik

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