Adil Zulfikarpašić

Adil Zulfikarpašić (23 December 1921 – 21 July 2008) was a Bosnian intellectual and politician who served as vice president of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, during the Bosnian War of the 1990s, under the first president of the Presidency of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegović. After the war he retired from politics and opened the Bosniak Institute, a museum in Sarajevo focused on the Bosniak culture.
Although in the early period of his life he was close to the Croatian national idea, Zulfikarpašić over time advocated the position that Bosnian Muslims should build their own national identity and advocated the adoption of the Bosniak name. At first there was resistance to this idea, including within the leading political party of Bosnian Muslims - the Party of Democratic Action - the idea still prevailed in 1993, when the new name was adopted at the Bosniak Congress attended by the Bosnian Muslim political and cultural representatives.
Early life
Family
Zulfikarpašić was born on 23 December 1921 in Foča, a town along the Drina river in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Bosnia and Herzegovina). He was a member of the Čengić family through both parents.
His father Husein Bey Čengić-Zulfikarpašić was a landowner and an intellectual, son of Ali Bey Čengić and a grandson of Zulfikar Pasha Čengić, after whom his paternal family was surnamed Zulfikarpašić. Zulfikaršašić wrote that he used the dual surname throughout his elementary school, but that his family dropped the "Čengić" from their surname while he was still in his youth. Husein served as the mayor of Foča for 25 years after the Austrian-Hungarian occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1878. Adil's mother Zahida married Husein when she was 18 years old, while he was in his late 80s. Husein never had several wives at the same time, and his previous three wives died. Zahida was his fourth wife and originated from the Ratalj branch of the Čengić family. The two of them had another son Sabrija and six daughters. The oldest half-brother of Adil was Alija who was 55 years older than him. Husein died in 1936 aged 102 or 104 years when Adil was 15 years old, while Zahida died in 1956.
Adil's half-brothers were Alija and Hilmo, both of whom moved to the Ottoman Empire after Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina and changed their surname to Aq Qoyunlu; Ibrahim, Hasan, Hivzo, Hamdija, while Sabrija was his full brother. His half-sisters were Arfa, Fatima and Haša, and full sisters Zumruta, Hasiba, Hajrija, Hamijera, Fahra and Šefika,
Education and World War II
In his youth, Zulfikarpašić felt close to the Croatian national idea, rather than Serbian. He was also active in the Croatian Peasant Party. While attending gymnasium in Foča he became a leftist and joined a certain group of the League of Communist Youth of Yugoslavia (SKOJ). Eventually, he was expelled for disseminating communist literature, and had to continue his education in Rogatica. Just before graduation, he was expelled again with other ten colleagues without the right to take the graduation exam. However, a local politician helped to abolish these punishments, so Zulfikarpašić was able to continue his education at the Commercial Academy in Sarajevo. He was again expelled, and continued to educate in Osijek and Banja Luka, where he took private classes since his further education at commercial academies was forbidden. In 1938 he joined the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ), when he was 17 yars old. In 1940 he enrolled at the High Commercial School in Belgrade because Belgrade had more active leftist politics than Zagreb.
In 1941, he joined Yugoslav Partisans and was a member of partisans' brigade "Zvijezda" of Vareš. In 1942, during World War II, he was caught by the Ustaše (the Croatian pro-Nazi forces) in Sarajevo and was tortured by them and sentenced to death. With the help of Yugoslav Partisans he escaped and in 1945 with the war ending in victory over the Axis powers, the Communists came into power and Zulfikarpašić was appointed Deputy Minister of Trade.
Exile
After becoming disillusioned with Josip Broz Tito's government shortly after the end of the war, Zulfikarpašić fled into exile in Zurich, Switzerland.
While on his way to Switzerland, Zulfikarpašić stayed in Innsbruck, Austria. There he met Tatjana Nikšić, daughter of the NDH diplomat Ante Nikšić. The relationship between the two caused a stir among the Croat emigres, especially the Franciscans. However, her father who was in Buenos Aires at the time, approved the relationship writing that Zulfikarpašić's head was "in the right place", though he preferred if Zulfikarpašić would convert to Catholicism.
Zulfikarpašić, a self-identified Croat, found allies in the exiled leaders of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS), Juraj Krnjević especially, who was sympathetic towards Bosnian Muslims. Zulfikarpašić also befriended August Juretić, a Croat Catholic priest close to HSS, whom he succeeded jointly with Pavao Jesih as a co-editor of Hrvatski dom, the official magazine of HSS after Juretić died in 1954. However, he became more convinced that Bosnian Muslims need to develop their own political direction. Writing in January 1956 to Indiana sociologist Dinko Tomašić, Zulfikarpašić blamed the Ustaše for the interruption of the development of Bosnian Muslims towards Croatdom, stating that Tomašić's statement that "the rise of national consciousness among Muslims Bosnia and Herzegovina developed [...] exclusively in the direction of Croatdom" was correct, but added that "on the account of Ustaše transgressions during the war, there were instances of distancing from Croatdom even among those layers that had already started identifying themselves and becoming conscious in that direction" and that "the process of national awakening in the direction of Croatdom experienced heavy blows in the course of the war and was slowed."
In 1963, Zulfikarpašić founded the Liberal-Democratic Alliance of Bosniaks-Muslims. The Alliance brought together Muslims who studied outside of Yugoslavia during World War II, together with former imams of the German 13th Waffen-SS Division Handschar and former Young Muslims. It promoted the national name "Bosniak" with the aim of severing ties with Croatian and Serbian national identities.
Fall of Yugoslavia
At the beginning of the Party of Democratic Action (est. 1990), the party also included a very influential secular nationalist grouping, led by Zulfikarpašić and Muhamed Filipović.
On 26 December 1991, Serbia, Montenegro, and the Serb rebel-held territory in Croatia (Serb Krajina) agreed that they would form a new "third Yugoslavia". Efforts were also made in 1991 to include Bosnia and Herzegovina within the federation, with negotiations between Milošević, Bosnia's Serbian Democratic Party, and the Bosniak proponent of union – Bosnia's Vice-President Adil Zulfikarpašić taking place on this matter. Zulfikarpašić believed that Bosnia could benefit from attempting to forge a union with Serbia, Montenegro, and Krajina; and promoted a compromise between the Serbs and Bosniaks, in which Serb Krajina and Bosniak Sanjak from Serbia would be annexed into a Greater Bosnia that within a union with Serbia and Montenegro, would secure both the unity of Serbs and Bosniaks. Zulfikarpašić's proposition opposed any cantonization of Bosnia. The Bosnian Serbs did not include Zulfikarpašić's proposition alongside their propositions. However Milosević continued negotiations with Zulfikarpašić to include Bosnia within a new Yugoslavia. Efforts to include the whole of Bosnia within a new Yugoslavia effectively terminated by late 1991 as Izetbegović planned to hold a referendum on independence while the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats formed autonomous territories.
Zulfikarpašić returned to Bosnia and Herzegovina and in the lead up to the Bosnian War, as Bosnia and Herzegovina held an independence referendum for independence, he stood alongside the future Bosnian president, Alija Izetbegović. He was a member of Izetbegović’s Party of Democratic Action, but soon formed another party because of differing political views, the Muslim Bosniak Organisation with Muhamed Filipović.
Post-war
In 2001, Zulfikarpašić established the Bosniak Institute in Sarajevo. In 2002, he was elected an honorary member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Books
Gace, N., Đilas, M. (1998), The Bosniak: Adil Zulfikarpasic, London, Hurst & Company
Filandra, Š., Karic, E. (2004), The Bosniac Idea, Zagreb, Globus
Imamović, M. (1996), Bošnjaci u emigraciji: monografija Bosanskih pogleda, Sarajevo, Bošnjački institut Zurich, Odjel Sarajevo
Zulfikarpašić, A. (1991), Članci i intervjui povodom 70-godišnjice, Sarajevo, Bošnjački institut
Zulfikarpašić, A., Gotovac, V., Tripalo M., Banac, I. (1995), Okovana Bosna, Zurich, Bošnjački institut
Zulfikarpašić, A. (2005), Osvrti, Sarajevo, Bošnjački institut – Fondacija Adila Zulfikarpašića
Zulfikarpasic, A., Bučar, F. (2001), Sudbonosni događaji: historijski presjek presudnih zbivanja i propusta, Sarajevo, Bošnjački institut – Fondacija Adila Zulfikarpašića
Footnotes
References
Books
Journals
1921 births
2008 deaths
People from Foča
Bosniaks of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina Muslims
League of Communists of Bosnia and Herzegovina politicians
Party of Democratic Action politicians
Bosniak history
History of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Members of the Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Bosnia and Herzegovina people of World War II
Bosniak nationalists
Yugoslav dissidents