Day: May 9, 2011
Red card
The High Representative for Dayton peace agreement implementation in Bosnia has submitted two reports to the Secretary General, one more a routine update and the other finding that one of the two entities constituting Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republika Srspska (RS), is in breach of the Dayton agreements. HiRep Valentin Inzko adds:
The recent decisions taken by the RS authorities represent the most serious violation of the GFAP [General Framework Agreement for Peace] since it was signed more than 15 years ago.
This is the more or less the equivalent of giving Republika Srpska a red card. The problem of course is that RS’s sin is refusing to recognize the authority of the referee, by calling a referendum that will reject his decisions and those of Bosnia’s state court.
This puts Inzko, and the international community, in a difficult spot. What would a soccer ref do if a player refused to leave the field? What if the player suspected the referee did not have sufficient force or sanctions to make it happen? And the player knew half the stadium was full of people ready to back him up, while the other half would not want to fight?
The issue was raised at my discussion this afternoon at the Woodrow Wilson Center with Jim O’Brien and Gerald Knaus, two experienced Bosnia hands for whom I have a great deal of respect. Nida Gelazis was in the chair.
Gerald argued that Inzko is playing into Dodik’s hands by making a big deal about the referendum. We should oppose it in a more low key way, saying that it violates Dayton and would only delay progress on the EU accession project. Inzko should not try to stop it, since he doesn’t have the power, but he should make it clear we will not respect its results.
Jim O’Brien wisely suggested that we make clear to Belgrade that its path to the EU will be encumbered if Dodik crosses whatever the international community decides is its red line. He also suggested we should focus on the consequences of Dodik’s move, which will hurt prospects for trade and investment. We should continue to build consensus on technical issues to recreate the positive dynamic evident in the case of visa liberalization policy.
I imagine that the internationals will find a way to muddle through this one, yielding a bit more ground to RS while trying to reassure the Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims to the American press) that it really doesn’t make much difference. That is basically what we’ve been doing for years–accommodating Serb and Croat nationalists while soothing those among more Dayton-friendly forces who might want to stand up and object. In my view, this is taking us down a path to state dissolution, which is the RS’s stated objective.
The real problem will come the day the Bosniaks decide to engage rather than yield. I have no idea when that will be.
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Obama laps to the wrong side of history
While he is wisely not spiking the football, President Obama is still taking a few victory laps. The problem is that there are other races still going on in the stadium. He is supposed to be competing in those as well: the autocrats in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria should not be left to win their competitions. How do we think they will behave if they are successful in their current efforts to repress the demonstrations?
The picture is different in each of these countries. Obama has made it clear enough that Gaddafi must leave Libya, but the NATO military effort seems to be falling short and the diplomatic maneuvering hasn’t yet produced the desired result. In Yemen, the slippery president has refused to sign an agreement negotiated with the Gulf Cooperation Council to step down and has returned to beating up on demonstrators. King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifa in Bahrain is busy bulldozing Shia mosques, as if that will make the 70% Shia population go away. In Syria the supposed reformer Bashar al Assad has killed hundreds, rounded up thousands and subdued towns one by one using grossly excessive military force against civilians.
We are not hearing much from either President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton about these developments. I would argue that the outcome of the still ongoing rebellions in the Arab world are more important to U.S. vital interests than the killing of Osama bin Laden, who wasn’t living much better in Abbottabad than he would have in Guantanamo (though he was clearly in better communication with his network). Yemen is already a weak state where terrorists hide and Syria provides support to Hizbollah and Hamas. Libya has undertaken state-sponsored terrorism in the past and may well revert in the future. Bahrain? How does the Sunni king expect his Shia majority population to react once he is finished depriving it of its political rights as well as many houses of worship?
I won’t propose a full package of solutions. What it seems to me is needed is simpler than that: a Presidential decision to make the cause of democracy in the region his own, and a tasking to the State Department to come up with the (non-military) propositions that will make it real. Failing that, Obama risks lapsing to the wrong side of history.
PS: Jackson Diehl treats the Syrian case well in this morning’s Washington Post, as does Brian Whitaker in The Guardian.
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