Politics of Bosnia and Herzegovina During the First World War – the Disappearance of the United Muslim Organization and the Rise of ‘Insignificant and Frivolous Elements’

Abstract

The political activity of the Bosnian Muslims – Bosniaks – during World War One was characterized by interest-personal differences, inherited from the parliamentary period, but also by the lack of common responses to the challenges that were brought by the current national and political developments. Šerif Arnautović personalized a political orientation close to the Austro-Hungarian authorities, demonstrating willingness to make concessions and compromises in favour of the main goals of the United Muslim Organization (UMO). On the other side there was a small group with Derviš-beg Miralem on its forefront, which was, during the parliamentary period, in the position of continuing "the authentic politics" of the Muslim National Organization (MNO), in terms of opposing the Austro-Hungarian regime and cooperation with Serbian political representatives. The party-political mosaic was completed by the group that pulled its roots from the former Muslim Progressive Party (MNS), whose notable figures were dr. Halid-beg Hrasnica and dr. Mehmed Spaho. None of these groups, during the war, functioned as a compact party. With the dissolution of the Bosnia-Herzegovinian Parliament (Sabor) and vanishing of political life in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the party-political activity gave way to individual political engagement, which was restricting the social basis of the participation of the Bosniaks in processes of solving the Yugoslav question, including redefining the state-legal status of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The personalization of party activity, the time had shown, brought the most evident damage to the strongest party – the United Muslim Organization – which, due to Arnautović’s conservative political attitudes, crucially tied itself to the Austro-Hungarian regime and thus conceded, in the wake of the Yugoslav state, public political space to a marginal group led by Dr. Mehmed Spaho, as well as individuals who were leaning towards the political and national heritage of Đikić’s Samouprava. This political development had led to a kind of discontinuity in the Bosniak politics and decisively determined internal Bosniak political and social relations in the next quarter century. Ten years after the election for the first Bosnia-Herzegovinian Parliament, in 1920, the Yugoslav Muslim Organization, the party that had its roots in the "insignificant and frivolous elements", as Arnautović described its embryo to Nikola Pašić, received strong support in the Bosniak masses, while the remnants of the UMO completely disappeared from the Bosnian political scene.