Returning to Sarajevo

This is an interview that appeared this week in the Sarajevo weekly Dani. I arrived in Bosnia’s capital just this afternoon, and it has certainly fulfilled my expectations of being livelier and more normal than during the war.

Dani:  When was the last time you visited Sarajevo? Are you looking forward to coming again next week and what are your expectations, if any?

A.  I’m not entirely sure when I was last in Sarajevo, but it is about 10 years ago.

Yes, I am looking forward to coming next week. I expect to find a much livelier and more normal Sarajevo than the one I knew during the war, when I had to worry when walking to the Embassy about making sure I couldn’t be seen by snipers. On the morning of the day the Dayton agreements were signed in Paris, I was awakened in the “Holiday Inn” by a barrage of anti-aircraft fire hitting the façade just one room from where I was sleeping. I expect nothing resembling that!

It seems to me that some of the same conflicts that were once fought with snipers and anti-aircraft guns are now fought in the political arena. That is progress, but it is not the kind of progress I had hoped to see. I’d prefer to hear that Bosnians are discussing how they can cooperate to accelerate their progress towards EU membership rather than how they can protect their own ethnic group.

Dani:  You are a Senior Fellow at CTR – SAIS. At the conference, you will moderate session on Regional Cooperation and Reconciliation. This ended up to be very high level panel, looking at the speakers list. You have vast experience in issues of Regional Cooperation and Reconciliation. Which one of them you consider to be the best and which are the worst, from your own experience?

A.  My view is that every country needs to decide for itself what level of reconciliation and regional cooperation is appropriate to its particular circumstances. There are lots of things I would not want to ask people to be reconciled to.  But at the same time it just isn’t possible to live always in the past.  The countries of the Balkans need each other and will need to cooperate if they are going to prosper in the future.  My job is to help people find the right balance, not to tell them what to do.

Dani:  Do you think that Mladic arrest will help this process in our region and first and foremost in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

A.  I don’t know—it is one of the issues I’ll be interested in discussing with Bosnians. It seems to me that the prospect of justice in this case should help at least some Bosnians to see their way to greater cooperation. And others may begin to see that those who claimed to be protecting them were in fact criminals who created problems rather than solving them.

At The Hague, Mladic clearly acknowledged the heinous nature of the crimes of which he accused—he couldn’t bear to have them read out.   But he claimed all he was doing was protecting his people.   What he in fact did was to deepen a conflict that put his people at great risk and created the conditions in which his army came close to defeat—it was saved only by the Dayton ceasefire. For those who are seriously interested in this history, let me recommend Ingrao and Emmert’s “Confronting the Yugoslav Controversies,” which is now available in—what shall I say—“the language.”

Dani:  How do you comment on obvious differences between the US and EU in respect to Dodik and how to deal with him? Is there any way out from this situation now and have a jointly agreed and firm policy towards Dodik, and to that end, anyone else who would obstruct national building process in BiH?

A.  This is a serious problem. The Americans and Europeans have been telling everyone for years that they are on the same page in the Balkans, but Lady Ashton’s agreement with Dodik was not only a surprise to the Americans, it was also unwelcome because it undermined in both style and substance the Bosnian state. I am entirely with the Americans on this—the agreement suggested that the Europeans were prepared to discuss Bosnian state institutions with Republika Srpska, whose president gained in prestige from Ashton’s going to Banja Luka and appearing with Dodik without even a flag of Bosnia and Herzegovina present. I hope a lot of this will be walked back now:   the “structured dialogue” should deal with the RS court system as well as the state courts, the question of a supreme court will have to be raised, and state officials will, I hope, lead the Bosnian side, in particular because the EU will be represented by the enlargement commissioner.

This is all very surprising at a moment when the EU has been doing a good job with the Belgrade/Pristina talks. It is important to get the Americans and Europeans back on the same page. The headline on that page is this: Bosnia and Herzegovina will need to qualify for EU membership, not either of the entities.

Dani:  Dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina.  Do you think significant progress will be made soon and what the Mladic arrest means for both Belgrade and for Pristina?

A.  The Mladic arrest helps Belgrade to argue with Brussels that it should be given candidacy status for the EU, though of course there is still one indictee outstanding. I don’t think it affects Pristina much, though it is certainly an indication that this Serbian government is capable of acting responsibly and doing the right thing.  I hope it can also see its way to doing the right thing on Kosovo.

President Tadic’s failure to go to the regional meeting in Warsaw last month was unfortunate and I imagine will have annoyed the Americans a good deal. It is time for Serbia to accept that the authorities in Kosovo are democratically elected and legitimate, regardless of status. The Serbian chief negotiator did the right thing visiting Pristina, and the Kosovars did the wrong thing to protest his visit violently.

Dani:  If you were government official and you have religious leaders interfering with the Government policy, what would you do? We know that one of the pillars of healthy democracy is separation of church and state businesses.

A.  Since you’ve asked me what I would do, here’s my answer: I’d tell them where to go.

But there are lots of countries in which religious leaders have a good deal of influence—I spent 10 years in Italy, where the Vatican has at times been decisive in Italian politics. But I would add this: religious leaders put themselves in peril, and ultimately reduce their own influence, when they even appear to favor one politician over another.  The Vatican has learned to stay out of most Italian government business, a habit that increases its prestige.

Dani:  Many prominent US and EU people are coming to the upcoming conference. Strong follow-up is planned. Civil society organizations in the whole region are excited about this.  Sarajevo did not have a major conference of this magnitude. Do you think it came at an late hour already?  Or you think there is still time to make BiH a functional and truly European country?

A.  No it is not too late for BiH to become a functional and truly European country. I would even say it made a great deal of progress in the first decade after the war, and that progress was not been completely reversed in the subsequent five years of political stalemate.  People forget too readily how truly terrible the war and immediate post-war period were.

That said, there are real challenges now. People don’t feel sure they will be treated fairly, regardless of ethnicity, and throughout the whole country. That is a serious problem, one that the European Court of Human Rights decision requires be fixed not only in the constitution but in fact as well.  Non-discrimination is fundamental to the rule of law. The day all Bosnians feel they are treated equally will be a day on which a lot of problems disappear.

Bosnia also needs a new bargain that will empower the state government to do the business it needs to, especially negotiating membership in the EU and all that entails, while leaving a lot of other things to the entities and the municipalities.  I hope Bosnian citizens of all groups will demand functional, accountable governance at all levels.  It is overdue.