16 April marks the anniversary of the war crimes committed against the Bosniak civilian population in the village of Ahmići. At least 116 people were killed, including 32 women and eleven children. The youngest victim was just three months old.
Up to 2,000 people are expected to attend the 30th anniversary central commemorative events in Ahmići and the surrounding area. A total of eleven days of various artistic and religious events are planned in close cooperation with local victims’ organisations to commemorate and remember the civilian victims.
Ahmići is located in the Lašva Valley near Vitez in central Bosnia. Until 16 April 1993, the village had around 800 inhabitants, 90 percent of whom were Bosniaks. At the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995), an estimated 300 refugees who had been forcibly displaced from other areas sought refuge in the village. The crime against the civilian population in Ahmići was committed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the context of the Croat-Bosniak war, also known as the ‘war within the war’. The perpetrators included members of the 4th Battalion of the Military Police of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) – a unit of Bosnian Croats in western Herzegovina that had been formed in the summer of 1991. Other perpetrators belonged to the special forces of the HVO military police, the so-called ‘Jokers’, which consisted of around thirty members, as well as members of the special unit ‘Vitezovi’, ‘The Knights’.
On the morning of 16 April 1993, Ahmići was surrounded, and barns and nearby mosques set on fire. The mosque in Ahmići was destroyed with several kilograms of explosives. In small groups, the perpetrators broke into residents’ homes, set them on fire, and deliberately murdered the Bosniak civilian population. In view of the brutality and extent of the war crimes, and the widespread media attention, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) initiated investigations immediately afterwards.
The social, political, and ideological background to the crimes in Ahmići is complex; the political (co-)responsibility of the Croatian state founded in 1991 under the leadership of then President Franjo Tuđman was long considered controversial. Annexation plans for parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as the Croatian HDZ’s (Croatian Democratic Community) support of the ultra-nationalist HDZ wing in Bosnia and Herzegovina suggest a shared responsibility. Furthermore, the local politician and convicted war criminal Dario Kordić, under whose leadership the acts of violence in Ahmići were committed, received enormous support from Zagreb.
The crimes in Ahmići must therefore be viewed within the historical context of the Croat-Bosniak war, which is officially dated from 18 October 1992 to 23 February 1994 and was fought between the army of the Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina, or the aforementioned Croatian Defence Council, and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH). Before military hostilities and human rights violations were committed by both sides, the HVO and the ARBiH fought together against the army of the Bosnian Serbs and the Yugoslav People’s Army. The alliance fell apart after the ultra-nationalist wing of the Bosnian-Croat HDZ proclaimed the so-called Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and areas inhabited mainly by the Bosniak civilian population were taken over by the HVO. The military conflict between the HVO and the ARBiH was fuelled by xenophobic and racist propaganda, including racist stereotypes from the Second World War. The racist rhetoric against Bosniaks increased rapidly and with great effect.
Of all the armed conflicts that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s, the Croat-Bosniak war is the least researched, which has led to continuing disagreements on its historical narrative. For Croatia, this circumstance is useful for its remembrance politics, as it does not challenge the country’s victim narrative. In recent years, however, civilian organisations and NGOs in Croatia, such as the Youth Initiative of Human Rights Zagreb and the Centre for Women War Victims Zagreb – ROSA, have commemorated the victims of the crimes in Ahmići in public spaces. Nevertheless, this period remains largely unaddressed in Croatia’s reckoning with its wartime past.
In a broad European context, commemoration of the victims of the Ahmići war crimes plays an important role in the pluralisation of European cultures of remembrance, not least as a reminder that the victims were members of Europe’s plural societies.
