‘Arizona Road’



‘Arizona Road’ in 2001







Entry to the market via metered parking lots



Entrance to bazaar-like heart of the market in 2001

Warehouse structures erected by Italproject now housing the new indoor markets


One of the nightclubs at Arizona Market in 2001

Less frequented warehouses partly used as sleeping quarters for Asian workers



A UN vehicle at the market in 2001

Commercial development where building the facade is part of the individual fit-out



Members of the International Community browsing magazines in 2001

Nowadays, Arizona Market is characterised by two things that are ultimately related to one another. Although – or because – the international community has intervened massively in the regulation of the market, the purging of the market by means of centralised controls has been an extremely nebulous affair: on the one hand, for example, Italproject’s Italian lenders are persistently not named and, on the other hand, Italproject refuses to ask where the buyers of new market properties obtain the money they need to make their purchases. Rumours range from assertions of lucrative deals being made by organised veterans of paramilitary associations and the employment of suspected war criminals, to allegations of deals being struck with former brothel-owners who are not content to rent one stall only, but invest in ‘turbo penthouses’ occupying several floors.

The convoluted flows of international money and goods at Arizona Market may have now entered a new phase, yet the form of capitalism that prevails there now is no less ‘rampant’ than it used to be. Its attraction lies in an all-pervading motivation to gain some form of control – ranging from the need to survive, at one end of the scale, to international relations at the other – by seizing anything that is not yet subject to controls. All these many different levels of exchange have created the countless trade situations that one finds at Arizona Market, which promise everyone an opportunity to exploit the market to their own ends, even if this only means purchasing a cheap T-shirt.

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(1) Office of the High Representative (OHR) and EU Special Representative (EUSR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, “International Community to clean up trade at the Arizona Market, Brcko”, Press Release (26 October 2000)
Online: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/presso/pressr/default.asp?content_id=4092
(2) Office of the High Representative (OHR) and EU Special Representative (EUSR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Supervisory Order on the Use of Land in Arizona Market’ Press Release, (17 February 2001)
Online: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-offices/brcko/bc-so/default.asp?content_id=5323
(3) Office of the High Representative (OHR) and EU Special Representative (EUSR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ‘Opening Remarks of Brcko Supervisor on land expropriation in Arizona Market at a press conference in Brcko on 25 July 2002’ Press Release (25 July 2002)
Online: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/presso/presssp/default.asp?content_id=27536
(4) Office of the High Representative (OHR) and EU Special Representative (EUSR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ‘PDHR to attend the formal opening of the Arizona Market’ Press Release (10 November 2004)
Online: http://www.ohr.int/ohr-dept/presso/pressb/default.asp?content_id=33492
(5) Madeleine Rees (UNHCR Sarajevo), ‘Markets, Migration and Forced Prostitution’, Humanitarian Exchange Magazine No 14 (June 1999). Online: http://www.odihpn.org/report.asp?id=1054
(6) US Agency for International Development (USAID): ‘Bosnia and Herzegovina. ACTIVITY DATA SHEET. FY 2002’. Online: http://www.usaid.gov/pubs/cbj2002/ee/ba/168-031.html