The ethnic cleansing of Banja Luka : national homogenization, political repression, and the emergence of a Bosnian Muslim refugee community / by Jasmina Beširević-Regan.

This dissertation represents an exploratory study of the experiences of war and ethnic conflict of the Bosnian Muslim community from the Banja Luka region. It traces and analyzes the history and characteristics of the city and its population from its establishment through the medieval era, the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian occupations, the First and Second World Wars, and the communist period, leading up to the Yugoslav disintegration in the early 1990s. The study offers a thorough examination of the political and economic mechanisms that led to the violent conflict, and provides a sociological ground level analysis of ethnic cleansing in the Banja Luka region. It examines how the Bosnian Muslims, who shared land, language, and culture with their “Christian” neighbors, became enemies and “others,” and how the war and ethnic cleansing affected them both physically and emotionally. The dissertation also explores the effects of war and ethnic cleansing on the reconstruction and the importance of the Bosnian Muslim identity, especially after the conflict. Finally, it concludes with a brief overview of the current state of refugee life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and their prospects for future.