Smoldering conflicts, deceptive calm

The silence. The eerie absence of familiar sounds. That’s the first thing Marie-Janine Calic thinks of when she recalls driving through war-torn Herzegovina 30 years ago. No cars on the roads, no tractors in the fields. It’s only when you can’t hear a single engine that you realize how much they’re part of our normal everyday life in Europe, says Calic: “And then you drive into the city of Mostar and all you see are ruins. And in the ruins, people just sitting there, motionless. It’s awful.”

In 1995, the historian was an advisor to UN Special Envoy Yasushi Akashi, who was sent to help find a peaceful solution for the countries into which the former Yugoslavia had disintegrated. She was happy to contribute her expertise as a historian at the time. Today, her analyses benefit from her having experienced contemporary history first hand. She is constantly reading and hearing analyses from, as she puts it, people “who are very far removed from the real world.”

Dangerous ignorance

Currently, she is concerned about the silence she’s hearing in Germany over the Balkans. While she says it’s understandable that there is a lot of attention directed at the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East right now, Calic believes it’s “short-sighted and worrying” if we take our eye off other unstable regions as a result. Just because there’s no armed conflict there at the moment doesn’t mean the smoldering conflicts don’t still need to be addressed, she says, especially given that the Balkans are a key region for Europe. “What we should have learned from the war in Yugoslavia is that conflicts need to be tackled proactively and preventively in these regions and that we can’t just let everything slide, like we’re doing now,” says Calic.

The situation is particularly dangerous in the country Calic calls “Dayton Bosnia.” In 1995, an agreement was signed on a military base near the US city of Dayton, Ohio, which established the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The treaty ended a war that had raged for three and a half years and cost the lives of more than 100,000 people. However, Calic is convinced that the conflicts underlying the war have not been resolved: “Nobody really wants that state.”

A large proportion of the Serbian residents of the multi-ethnic state are demanding more independence from the government in Sarajevo. The Bosniaks, on the other hand, want more centralism. And among much of the Croatian part of the population, demands for more federalism can be heard. The people of Bosnia-Herzegovina are not only divided by their ethnic origin and different language variants, but also by their religion: Croats are often Roman Catholic, Serbs Serbian Orthodox, and Bosniaks Muslim. Particularly around religion, Calic is seeing developments she views as dangerous, for example the fact that Wahhabism, a purist interpretation of Islam rooted primarily in Saudi Arabia, is gaining more and more followers among the Bosniaks.

Calic also considers the situation in Kosovo to be explosive. The country is referred to as a “de facto state” because it is recognized by the majority of UN members, but by no means all of them. Even five EU countries do not recognize Kosovo as a sovereign state: Besides Slovakia and Romania, Greece, Spain, and Cyprus refuse to recognize it.

Calic is seeing unrest in Serbia, too. And borders are constantly being called into question throughout the region. Officially, there is stability on border issues. But as one example, Albania is typical of the situation in the Balkans, explains Calic: “The country would never officially say that it’s laying claim to neighboring regions. But it is actually an issue, not only for many people but also for the political classes.”

»What we should have learned from the war in Yugoslavia is that conflicts need to be tackled proactively and preventively in these regions and that we can’t just let everything slide, like we’re doing now.«

Marie-Janine Calic

Why is it that the Balkans are so strife-torn and have such a checkered and violent history? Marie-Janine Calic does not consider this a naive question. For her, the answer lies partly in a factor she calls the “linchpin function.” As far back as 2,000 years ago, different powers clashed in that very region. After the fall of the Roman Empire, Constantinople became East Rome’s center of power and the spiritual center of Orthodox Christians. The metropolis was later named Byzantium and was conquered by the Muslim Ottomans in 1453, who continued their advance from this bridgehead out towards Central and Western Europe.

The list of ethnic groups that were always moving between different settlements, often accompanied by violence and forced displacement, is long: Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Bosniaks, Albanians, Greeks, Macedonians, and Turks are just some of them. And time and again, the powers that fought out their conflicts of interest in the Balkans had their center of gravity somewhere else entirely: in Venice or Vienna.

The region’s centuries-long role as a geostrategic bone of contention and its long period of foreign domination stoked something that still fuels conflicts today: a nationalism that often links a desire for self-determination with a battle against other nationalities.

However, this potential for aggression has by no means always characterized the nationalist movements in the Balkans, stresses Calic: “The national idea was an idea of emancipation, a bourgeois idea. Even by today’s standards, these were progressive people who stood up for independence, equality, and the ideals of the French Revolution.” Rebelling as a Bosniak against the Sultan in Constantinople or as a Serb against the Kaiser in Vienna was not automatically linked to being hostile towards people in one’s own neighborhood.

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Aggressive, chauvinistic nationalism

At a certain point, Calic saw something happen that she calls a “flip-over”: “into an aggressive, backward-looking, chauvinistic nationalism”. People didn’t just emphasize their own traditions and lore, customs, songs, literature, and religion — they overemphasized them. Setting themselves apart from other ethnic groups was a way of strengthening their own identity. Calic sees this nationalism, which has its roots primarily in the 19th century, as a precursor to the First World War. And it has prevented many regions of the Balkans from finding peace to this day.

Even today, Calic notes, aggressive, chauvinistic nationalism is being deliberately stirred up by certain politicians. One example is Milorad Dodik, the president of Republika Srpska. He is vehemently calling for the separation of the Serb-dominated autonomous republic he heads from the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Calic recalls that she got to know Dodik 30 years ago — “back then he was the great hope for peace,” she adds with a hint of sarcasm. Today, Dodik exists in permanent conflict with the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Christian Schmidt, whose job it is to monitor compliance with the rules of the Dayton Agreement. In March 2025, the judiciary of Bosnia-Herzegovina issued an arrest warrant for Dodik for violating the rules of Dayton.

Given the experiences of the past decades, Calic fears the region will remain paralyzed by unresolved conflicts for a long time to come. She hopes the world will start looking more closely at the Balkans again.

Lack of honesty

Calic is skeptical when she hears slogans like “strengthen pro-European forces!” Of course it’s important to bring the countries that emerged from the former Yugoslavia closer to the European Union, she says. But in the same breath, she adds: “In my opinion, the EU has not been being honest for a long time.”

True, rapprochement scenarios or even prospects for EU accession may be being drawn up for countries like Serbia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and North Macedonia. But it’s not just problems with corruption or the rule of law that make it difficult for the aspiring EU members to someday be accepted into the community: “It’s going to become increasingly difficult for the EU to act if it keeps on accepting more and more members.” Especially if their admission causes internal conflict within the EU.

For years, Greece has been involved in a naming dispute with the country that is now called North Macedonia (and not Macedonia as it once was). But Bulgaria, too, is in conflict with North Macedonia: “The government in Sofia is demanding that Macedonians recognize their language and history as Bulgarian. It’s absurd,” says Calic.

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Beyond nationalities

What kind of approach to national origin would Calic, who was born in Berlin, like to see? The kind she takes herself, she says. Her father was Croatian, her mother is German. Of her own background, Calic says: “Of course I’m German.” In addition to German, she speaks Croatian and Serbian. She can also get by in Macedonian. “I can read Bulgarian and Russian,” she says, without wanting to boast. The fact that she speaks fluent English and French goes without saying.

However, her international life story does not protect her from others wanting to pin her down to a certain nationality. During her time as an advisor in the conflict zone of the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s, she was therefore advised not to travel to certain regions: “Because of my name. Because I might be identified as Croatian and taken prisoner.”

Her attitude to her name shows just how relaxed she is about the subject of her heritage. Asked which pronunciation of her surname is correct between “Calich,” “Chalich,” and “Calik,” the historian shrugs and says, “I answer to all of them.”

Asked what worries her, Calic can list many things. And what gives her hope? “Looking at the history,” says the woman who has made history her profession. “Because I can see that there’s a lot of potential in the region. There have always been clever people there who had a vision, who had courage, and who moved the countries forward.” And what do these smart people need? “For us to keep out of it. The Balkans were always at their best when there was little external influence.” Support, yes, but not instrumentalizing the region for the political ends of third parties, says Calic. That has already led to endless fighting and suffering.

Marie-Janine Calic is Professor for East and Southeast European History at LMU. Her new book Balkan-Odyssee, 1933-1941. Auf der Flucht vor Hitler durch Südosteuropa will be published by C.H.Beck in autumn.

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