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From Bosnia to Iraq, with love

Some colleagues interested in Iraq asked what lessons had been learned from states that have emerged from a collapse of central authority. I was assigned Bosnia. Here is what I had to say:

1. Central authority never completely collapsed in Bosnia. The internationally recognized government continued to exist in Sarajevo.

2. But its authority did not extend during more than three years of the war to the three-quarters of the country controlled by unrecognized Croat and Serb military and governing structures, analogous in a way to Kurdistan under Saddam Hussein.

3. Nor has central authority in Bosnia been fully restored, 22 years after the wars ended.

4. Let me offer a short version of the story.

5. After Croat (Catholic) and Bosniak (Muslim) “Federation” forces swept through western Bosnia in August and September 1995, the US peace initiative imposed a ceasefire.

6. At Dayton, we rolled back the Federation forces from about 67% of the territory to 51% and accepted the governing authority of Republika Srpska on the remaining 49%. The Federation and Republika Srpska are two sub-state units of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

7. This was done with the concurrence of Croatia and Serbia, Bosnia’s nearest neighbors. They were responsible for the war; peace could not be made without them.

8. NATO initially deployed 60,000 troops, one-third Americans, to guarantee no reversion to war.

9. We also created a thin central government with limited competences: foreign affairs, customs, currency, immigration, and a few other things like international communications and law enforcement.

10. The currency used was the Deutschmark, as there was no possibility of agreement on anything else. As a consequence, there could be no: no printing of money and no devaluation.

11. Under the Dayton constitution, this thin central government and the corresponding parliament were power-sharing arrangements: no important decisions could be made without all ethnic groups agreeing. This was repeated in the Federation down to the municipality level.

12. Most responsibilities were devolved to the two “entities” created by the warring parties: the Federation and Republika Srpska. The Croat entity was to disappear.

13. But that Dayton formula proved insufficient to create a functioning state. A civilian international community “High Representative,” designed at Dayton as powerless, was entrusted in 1997 with virtually dictatorial powers to fire officials and promulgate laws.

14. From 1997 to 2006, he undertook the strengthening of the central government by fiat, with authority derived from a Peace Implementation Council in which the major powers were represented.

15. With support from the NATO forces, he and the other civilian organizations he reigned over dismantled the separate Croat governing structures, organized elections, unified the army and defense ministries, the customs, the banking system, the license plates, and to some degree the courts, arrested war crime indictees, vetted the police, blocked broadcast of hate speech, instituted direct election of mayors, and beefed up the central government’s authority.

16. This was vigorous international state-building backed by the stick of military force.

17. The carrot was entry into Euro-Atlantic institutions.

18. In 1999, four years after the war, a summit meeting in Sarajevo opened for all the countries of former Yugoslavia the prospect of membership in NATO and the European Union, a commitment that has been reiterated several times since.

19. While Bosnia lags most of the rest of the Balkans in qualifying because of its still dysfunctional governing structure, incentives like a Stabilization and Association Agreement and a Schengen visa waiver have proven critical in thickening the authority of the central government.

20. Present circumstances—which include Brexit, the refugee crisis, and a long recession as well as a decision not to admit any new EU members before 2020—have postponed the most important carrot and reduced its attractiveness, which accounts for a lot of the difficulties the Balkans, and Bosnia specifically, are facing right now.

21. One other detail from Bosnia that may have some relevance to Iraq: the international community, in the person of an American “supervisor,” took on direct governing authority over the Brcko District, perhaps the most contested area during the war.

22. It controlled the corridor connecting two “wings” of Republika Srpska. No agreement could be reached with the Muslims and Croats about it at Dayton, so it was subjected to an American-controlled arbitral tribunal.

23. The Brcko issue was eventually settled by an American arbitrator: it was awarded to both sides, to govern in a condominium. This has meant in practice that it is governed separately, an arrangement that has now been formalized in a constitutional amendment.

24. After 10 years of efforts to strengthen central authority through the High Representative, the US sponsored negotiation of changes to the constitution that would have gone further to ease the country’s preparations for European Union membership.

25. The constitutional amendments failed to gain the two-thirds majority required in the Bosnian parliament by just two votes in 2006.

26. Since then, polarization of Bosnian politics along ethnic lines has sharpened and the central government has weakened. Republika Srpska is loudly proclaiming its intention to call an independence referendum and to secede.

27. The lure of European Union membership and US arm-twisting have contained but not negated the centrifugal forces.

28. Let me say a word about all this in the Iraqi context, which in many ways differs from Bosnia. An analogous international military and civilian presence in Baghdad with executive powers at the national level is today inconceivable. That would require something like the US occupation, which clearly isn’t going to happen again.

29. The Iraqi government will have the primary responsibility for leading the post-war reconstruction and transition, not the internationals.

30. That said, it might keep in mind a few fundamental points:

31. Powersharing among Shia, Sunni and Kurds may be unavoidable at the national level, but it should not be enshrined in a difficult-to-amend constitution. If it is, it serves to keep war-time forces in power and prevents cross-sectarian or cross-ethnic political mobilization.

32. Strengthening of the central authority should not be done without devolution of as much power as possible to provincial and local authorities. Devolution or decentralization has been an inevitable consequence of virtually all post-Cold War conflicts.

33. It may not have escaped your notice that Brcko is somewhat analogous to Kirkuk city, which is claimed by both Arabs and Kurds, not to mention the Turkomen. Brcko has no oil or other natural resources, but its location was vital to both the Muslims and Serbs.

34. It might be possible to put Kirkuk under international administration while its fate is decided, but it would need to be a brave international administrator to take on the task.

35. The Kurds will want the fate of Kirkuk and other disputed territories, as well as the KRG itself, settled by referendum.

36. In Bosnia, referenda have a bad history: Republika Srpska conducted one even before the country was independent, and the subsequent national independence referendum led directly to war.

37. Republika Srpska is even now threatening a referendum for 2018. It will be firmly opposed by the international community, as it would inevitably lead to further conflict.

38. One more lesson from the Balkans: we refused to move internal boundaries to accommodate ethnic differences when they were upgraded to international borders. We did this to prevent further wars. Partition and independence without agreement on borders is a formula for war, not peace.

39. But this policy choice in favor of existing boundaries/borders meant that the successor states of former Yugoslavia were all mixed in ethnicity, putting a premium on protection of human rights and rule of law.

40. That is vitally important in Iraq, where there are quite a few disagreements about the existing internal boundaries, not only but also the territories disputed between Erbil and Baghdad.

41. The uneven distribution of oil resources makes agreement on moving boundaries very difficult, if not impossible.

42. My bottom lines are these: for now, Iraq should remain a single country, with a central government focused on a relatively few, mainly international, responsibilities as well as internal security, with substantial functions devolved to the provincial, regional and even municipal levels.

43. But a scheme of this sort cannot be imposed in Iraq, as it was in Bosnia, and would require the Iraqis to show far more commitment to rule of law, human rights and revenue-sharing than they have shown to date.