‘The only thing I “earned” in the damned war was PTSD.’ Reconsidering veteran sociality and politics in Bosnia and Herzegovina

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the monies that circulate in the system of veteran protection in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and shows that they are enacted in economically and morally conflicting ways. While the federal authorities treat the monies inconsistently, sometimes portraying them as compensation for service in the war, and other times branding them as dubious entitlements overused in the post-war years, ordinary war veterans, such as those living with posttraumatic stress disorder in the city of Tuzla where the author conducted ethnographic fieldwork, understand veterans’ monies as a moral (and inviolable) entitlement rooted in their wartime experience. Besides these actors, there are also international creditors involved that denounce these monies as an economically harmful and corrupting gift. Current studies see veteran sociality and politics in post-Yugoslav conditions as a result of local post-war and post-socialist struggles for symbolic and material gains. However, this case foregrounds how veteran sociality and politics are also shaped by the interventions of international actors.

KEYWORDS:

• Bosnia and Herzegovina
• money
• morality
• posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
• veterans
• welfare

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Yasar Abu Ghosh, Stef Jansen, David Kocman, Linda Popić, Tereza Stöckelová, Ondřej Žíla, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In the article I draw on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork in BiH between 2006 and 2012 conducted among war veterans (Klepal 2013, 2015, 2017). To uphold the ethical principles used in my fieldwork and previous writing, and to grant relevant actors privacy, the names of particular organizations, such as ‘Bratstvo,’ and persons (referred to here by the first name) have been changed.

2. Although the casualty figures of the 1992–1995 war in BiH are contested, Bougarel’s estimates have been supported by other studies such as those pursued by the Research and Documentation Center (2007) and by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (Zwierchowski and Tabeau 2010).

3. To some extent a similar argument can be drawn from the study that Xavier Bougarel and colleagues wrote for the WB that discusses the danger of reproducing fragmentation and distrust among social groups in BiH, including war veterans, through international policies and funding (WB 2002).

4. Here I use the expression ‘system of veteran protection’ (boračko-invalidska zaštita) for a set of institutions (federal and cantonal ministries, municipal offices for veterans), practices (commemorations, payments, certification), and apparatuses (boards of medical examiners, archives, legislation) dealing with social and status issues (socijalno-statusna pitanja) of veterans and their families.

5. In 2008 the FBiH’s Ministry of Veteran Affairs registered 190,000 beneficiaries (80,000 unemployed demobilized soldiers, 55,000 disabled war veterans, 50,000 family members of fallen soldiers, and 5,000 medal holders) (Crnkić 2008).

6. According to a document that the Ministry of Veterans Affairs obtained from the Ministry of Defense in 2008, in total 380,000 vojne devizne knjižice were issued to people who had served in ARBiH and their families. Another 200,000 were issued to people who had served in HVO and their families.

7. The manual is mainly used by the Office of Veterans Affairs (which manages veteran issues on the municipal level) and by medical assessors reviewing claimants’ eligibility.

8. In the manual ‘A List of the Percentages of Military Disability,’ the value of PTSD is enacted as follows: the ‘mild’ version of PTSD equals 20% disability (around a 15 EUR monthly benefit at the time of my fieldwork); 20–40% disability (up to 30 EUR) is for ‘complex’ PTSD; and 40–50% disability (up to 50 EUR) for ‘PTSD with comorbidity.’

9. I would even suggest that veterans’ voting ‘with their hearts’ might have voted differently. Ognjen, who considered himself Yugoslav rather than Bosniak, has voted for the former communists since the general elections in 1990 because of his ideals and ‘mixed marriage’ (Lucija is non-Bosniak). So did Fahro, who after the war became involved in a marginal political party of disabled persons and later voted for Naša stranka, a party of urban liberals, when his psychiatrist became a candidate.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Grantová Agentura České Republiky under grant no. 15-16452S.

Notes on contributors

Jaroslav Klepal

Jaroslav Klepal is a researcher in medical anthropology in the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy. He received his PhD in Anthropology from Charles University in Prague. His dissertation focuses ethnographically on multiple enactments of posttraumatic stress disorder among war veterans in Bosnia and Herzegovina.