Category: Daniel Serwer
Bosnia’s way forward
Here are the remarks I prepared for the conference at SAIS today and tomorrow on Twenty Years after Dayton: Prospects for Progress in Reforms in Bosnia and Herzegovina:
1. I want first to thank my colleagues at the Center for Transatlantic Relations here at SAIS—Sasha Toperich and Dan Hamilton—for entrusting me with a privileged place on the program and the most difficult question to answer.
2. This I suspect is my “reward” for twenty years of thinking I really did know the way forward but then proving beyond any doubt that I was unable to find it.
3. Before and at Dayton, I thought the way forward involved ensuring that the Federation, which Dick Holbrooke had entrusted to my care in October 1994, could govern effectively.
4. At the fifth anniversary in 2000, I thought it lay in applying the European Convention on Human Rights, which had been incorporated into the Dayton constitution.
5. By the time of the 10th anniversary in 2005, I was sure it lay in revising that constitution, an effort pursued by Don Hays, Paul Williams and Bruce Hitchner under my aegis at the US Institute of Peace.
6. They helped the Bosnians produce what became known as the “April package” of constitutional amendments that failed in parliament by two votes in 2006.
7. I don’t remember what I was thinking in 2010 at the 15th anniversary, when I was busy moving from USIP to SAIS.
8. None of my previous impulses have succeeded, so this time around I’m going to offer you three different directions for a way forward in Bosnia. I do hope one of them pans out, but hope is not a policy. I’ll try also, at the end, to enunciate a policy, after considering three additional propositions that are not ways forward.
9. The first way forward is that old standby: constitutional change. A constitution distributes power. In Bosnia it distributes power in ways that enable ethnic nationalists to control the country and exploit their position for personal rather than societal gain.
10. We imposed the Dayton accords, but we imposed what the ethnic nationalist warring parties told us they could live with.
11. It is therefore unsurprising that one way or another, ethnic nationalists have dominated Bosnia almost continuously, making it ungovernable, since 1995.
12. Kresimir Zubak, then President of the Federation, gave me my first lesson in ethnic nationalism during the war. Serwer, he said, one man one vote will never work in Bosnia.
13. Though by far not the most extreme of ethnic nationalists, Zubak was still determined to prevent Croats from being “outvoted,” something he regarded as anti-democratic.
14. There is nothing I might wish for more than recognition and protection of equal individual rights in Bosnia today so that people could be outvoted without feeling bereft of their identity, but even the application of equal individual rights to the Sejdic Finci case has been a bridge too far for Zubak’s successors.
15. I have to conclude that constitutional change is not looking promising, even though it is the most direct and compelling route forward. The failure in 2006 and the more dismal failure at Butmir in 2010 have poisoned the well.
16. The second way forward is what the Europeans are calling reform. There is a nice thick document written by non-Bosnians that you can read to see what that means: reducing the public sector, improving the investment climate and making the labor market more flexible would be my summary.
17. The Bosnian political leadership has pledged the political will to get on with it. Combined with conditionality from the EU, the World Bank and IMF, I hope it works, though I hasten to add that it is likely to make things worse for many Bosnians before it makes them better.
18. Moreover, politicians have been relentlessly clever in blunting European pressure for reform and converting it into new opportunities for expropriation of state assets and opportunities for individual and party enrichment, as carefully documented in a paper written by Srdjan Blagovcanin and Boris Divjak published earlier this year by CTR.
19. I therefore regrettably doubt the European reform program as much as I doubt the prospects for constitutional change.
20. The third possible way forward is for the Bosnian people to demand change, along the lines of what has happened recently in Romania.
21. That is what appeared to be happening in the aftermath of the 2014 floods, but the plenums produced little in the way of serious political pressure for change and generated significant nostalgia for a more state-administered economy. I wouldn’t count that as the way forward.
22. If my three ways forward won’t work, that doesn’t mean someone else’s ideas won’t.
23. Some Croats want a third entity, claiming that would re-establish equality and enable them to participate more fully in the Bosnian state.
24. I don’t buy that. At Dayton the Croats got a very good deal: one-third of the state and one-half of the Federation.
25. That was when they were in the driver’s seat, providing the military force that enabled the Federation offensive to succeed in the summer of 1995 and controlling the flow of weapons and everything else from the Adriatic into central Bosnia.
26. Croats are now a smaller percentage of the population than they were before the war, they have lost their wartime stranglehold and military prowess counts for little within the region.
27. The third entity idea is hard to kill, but it is going nowhere.
28. Milorad Dodik also has a proposition: detaching his Republika Srpska from the judicial system of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the clear intention of preventing any prosecution of himself or his sidekicks and laying the basis for eventual secession, or if that is not possible a kind of complete autonomy like that of Taiwan. Read more
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Better, but Assad’s fate is still unclear
Friday’s Vienna meeting of what is now being called the International Syria Support Group (ISSG) took a step or two in the right direction by defining more clearly ceasefire and transitional governing arrangements in Syria. The transitional arrangements are based on the June 2012 UN communique, which was not clear last time this group met. But it is still unclear what is to happen with Bashar al Assad and his regime, or when. So the main point of divergence between the Americans and the Syrian opposition, on the one hand, and the Iranians, Russians and the regime on the other hand, remains unresolved, even if progress has in theory been made.
The first step is to be a nationwide ceasefire, endorsed by the UN Security Council, and deployment of monitors in those parts of the country where they would not be subject to terrorist attacks. Where that might be is unclear, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for arrival of the observers. You would have to be nuts to put them in most of Syria at this point. The ceasefire does not apply to offensive or defensive operations against the Islamic State, Jabhat al Nusra or other (undefined) groups the ISSG designates. Humanitarian access is supposed to happen regardless, and the use of indiscriminate weapons (read especially barrel bombs) is supposed to cease.
In parallel, there is to be a political process under UN auspices that convenes the Syrian government and opposition representatives by a target date of January 1. Syrians are to somehow choose their own representatives, in an undefined process under UN envoy De Mistura’s aegis.
The big step forward is this outline of the transition process:
The ISSG members reaffirmed their support for the transition process contained in the 2012 Geneva Communique. In this respect they affirmed their support for a ceasefire as described above and for a Syrian-led process that will, within a target of six months, establish credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance, and set a schedule and process for drafting a new constitution. Free and fair elections would be held pursuant to the new constitution within 18 months. These elections must be administered under UN supervision to the satisfaction of the governance and to the highest international standards of transparency and accountability, with all Syrians, including the diaspora, eligible to participate.
So negotiations should start January 1, a new government is formed within six months, a new constitution is written and elections held under UN supervision within 18 months. That is a far clearer timetable for the transition process than previously agreed. It corresponds more or less to what the Iranians have been pushing for some time.
But there is a missing link: what happens to Bashar al Assad and his security apparatus. Implicitly, they remain in place for the six months of negotiations and formation of a new government, which presumably is empowered with full executive authority (the key provision of the June 2012 communique that this one mentions repeatedly). I might imagine that would mean the Assad regime leaves power once the new government is formed, but nowhere is that specified. I suspect the Russians and especially the Iranians have not agreed on that point.
Much of this timetable will prove difficult if not impossible to implement. Are the Russians going to stop the more than 80% of their bombing that is directed against what the Americans regard as moderate opposition forces? Will the regime stop its incessant barrel bombing of civilian areas? Will the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, its Shia militia allies (the National Defense Forces) and Hizbollah stop their efforts to clear the opposition from the Damascus/Latakia axis so vital to the regime? Will the Americans and Saudis throttle back on the supply of anti-tank and other weapons that the moderate opposition are using to blunt the regime/Russian/Iranian offensive?
As for the political process, who among the serious opposition would be prepared to go to a Damascus still controlled by Assad to negotiate or take positions in a transitional government? Is Assad ready to delegate “full executive authority” to a government he does not control? If he remains nominally in office as chief of state, who protects him and how? Secretary of State Kerry in a speech at the US Institute of Peace Thursday was more insistent than in the past that Assad had to go, because even the moderate opposition would continue fighting if he didn’t. But precisely when and how he goes is still not agreed.
So there are still lots of unanswered questions, and little likelihood that the timetable outlined in this communique will be observed. But it is better than what we’ve had until this point.
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Remember Paris
The pundit world will spend the next week debating what went wrong to allow the Paris attacks to happen and how similar attacks there and elsewhere might be prevented. The culprits will include Edward Snowden (for inhibiting eavesdropping), Barack Obama (for not doing enough in Syria), George W. Bush (for invading Iraq), the Quran (for inspiring violence), Arab autocrats (for repressing their populations), France (for not integrating its Muslim population), multinational corporations (for globalization that has lowered wages and impoverished people worldwide), Russia (for intervening in Syria), the internet (for enabling recruitment of extremists) and at least a dozen other contributing forces and factors.
None of this will enlighten us much. The sad fact is that you and I can do precious little to protect ourselves from violence of this sort: weapons and explosives are readily available to those who want them in many countries, including the US. Nor can our governments do much more than they are already doing. Killing sprees that target random individuals can always get past the limited security defenses at a rock concert or the non-existent defenses at an outdoor cafe. The Paris attacks might have killed and wounded many more people. Once perpetrators open fire, only brave souls willing to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others–like the three Americans on a French train a couple of months ago–can stop the carnage before security forces arrive.
The American equivalent of the Paris attacks would be on the order of 600 people killed. That is fewer than 9/11, but getting up to the same order of magnitude. The effects in France and beyond will be dramatic: lowered tourism, tightened security measures, hindered travel, lower economic growth, strengthened nativist political movements, military retaliation, and likely more attempts to up the ante. We’ll return to the rhetoric of the “war on terror,” forgetting how misguided that idea was 14 years ago and the mistakes it led us to make.
Political violence is a technique, not an enemy.
Our enemy should be political extremism. The Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, as well as the downing of a Russian airliner over Sinai. If those claims are confirmed (I fully expect they will be), the enemy should be called by the name he uses: Muslim political extremism. The Islamic State is a self-declared mass murderer that targets civilians and aims to terrorize those it regards as its enemies into submission to its will, in particular by withdrawing from Muslim countries and leaving them to be welded into a caliphate ruled in accordance with a distorted interpretation of the Quran.
The irony is that Islamic State activities are discouraging Western withdrawal from the Middle East, not encouraging it. Most Americans (among them the President) would gladly leave Libya, Syria and Yemen to pursue their own civil wars, if they thought no harm would cross the Atlantic or the Mediterranean as a result. There really isn’t much in any of those benighted countries to attract American interest other than al Qaeda and the Islamic State, which may be able to kill random Americans at home and abroad but present no existential risk to the United States.
We have to remember Paris, in particular the victims. The French authorities need to prosecute the perpetrators, who surely go beyond the narrow circle of the already dead shooters. The American-led coalition should press the fight against the Islamic State’s military forces in Iraq and Syria. But we need to be careful not to do things that will make things worse: prejudice against Muslims as a group, denial of their equal and inalienable rights, and indiscriminate military or police attacks. Doing too much of the wrong things can be just as harmful as doing too little of the right things.
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A good news Balkans story
- Infantry Battalion (Livno) -Bosnian Croat
- Infantry Battalion (Gorazde) – Bosniak
- Infantry Battalion (Bileca) -Bosnian Serb
- Reconnaissance Company (multi-ethnic)
- Signals Platoon (multi-ethnic)
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Kurdistan under pressure
I enjoyed a couple of hours serving on a panel this morning with Kurdistan Regional Government Representative in Washington Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the Atlantic Council’s Nusseibeh Younes, and SAIS second year student Yael Mizrahi. Sasha Toperich of SAIS Center for Transatlantic Relations and leader of its Mediterranean Basin Initiative moderated. I won’t even try to reproduce the nuanced and fine-grained presentations by Bayan, Nusseibeh and Yael, but here are the talking points I used:
1. I am, like most Americans, an admirer of Iraqi Kurdistan and what it has achieved, even if I wouldn’t say the democratic transition there is even near complete.
2. That’s not surprising: Kurdish national aspirations were frustrated in the aftermath of World War I. Even in recent decades, Kurdistan has seen oppression, war, expulsion, and chemical attacks.
3. It has taken a hundred years for a fraction of the Kurdish population—the part fortunate enough to live in Iraq—to gain some degree of self-governance.
4. Until recently, it looked to some people as if that self-governance might progress towards independence and sovereignty.
5. I had my doubts, not I hasten to add due to weakness in the Kurds case: they were treated at least as badly as Kosovo Albanians and arguably much worse.
6. But geopolitical pressure from Iraqi Kurdistan’s neighbors has made independence a dicey proposition. Ankara, though friendlier than ever with Erbil, does not want independence for Kurdistan. Tehran is dead set against it. Baghdad doesn’t want it either.
7. In the last year, the situation has become even more complicated.
8. Kurdistan is under pressure for three dramatic reasons:
• The fall of oil prices;
• ISIL’s successful takeover of most of Sunni Iraq;
• Its own internal political strife.
9. Let me consider these one by one.
10. Oil prices are now at less than half their level of June 2014. At $100/barrel, Kurdistan needed production of something like 500,000 barrels per day to replace its share of Iraq’s overall oil production.
11. I’m guessing, but it seems to me likely it now needs production of well over 1 million barrels per day to replace the money it expects from Baghdad.
12. Even 500,000 bpd was a stretch. A million is a much bigger stretch, even with Kirkuk production now in Kurdistan’s control.
13. Second, Kurdistan now has to defend about six hundred miles of confrontation line with the Islamic State, as well as something like two million displaced people and refugees it is hosting with international assistance.
14. That is a daunting battle front and a massive humanitarian requirement.
15. Third is the serious political strife within Kurdistan, which pits President Barzani and his PDK against Gorran and other dissenters from his desire to prolong his stay in the presidency. They want a more parliamentary and less presidential system.
16. Soldiers who are expected to fight ISIL will want to know who and what they are fighting for. There is more ambiguity and dissension about that today than there has been for many years.
17. I don’t see any of these pressures letting up soon.
18. Erbil is getting ready to return to Baghdad in an effort to restore the agreement on oil that was supposed to allow exports directly from Kurdistan in exchange for payment of what Baghdad owes Erbil.
19. Let’s hope that issue can be sorted out, but even if it is oil prices remain under $50 per barrel and are unlikely to go above $80, due to unconventional production enabled by US technology that is now spreading to other countries.
20. Oil is priced in a global market. Kurdistan now has little prospect of meeting its budgetary needs as an independent state.
21. ISIL is not going away. Even if it is forced to withdraw from Ramadi, as it has been forced to do from Tikrit and Bayji, it will be some time before Mosul is retaken. The Kurdish confrontation line with ISIL is likely to remain long for some time to come.
22. Even after ISIS is defeated, I would anticipate extremist attacks on the KRG, as have occurred in the past.
23. Nor is Kurdistan’s internal strife likely to go away. Barzani is standing his ground. So is Gorran, which has been suspended from the parliament and the coalition government. Even if things were to get patched up, the differences remain profound and the willingness to resolve them weak.
24. So Kurdistan faces some intractable problems, even without mentioning the complications that come from the war in Syria: Turkish attacks on the PKK inside Iraqi Kurdistan and the help Erbil has given to the Kurdish forces flying PYD/YPG banners, which Ankara resents.
25. So what looked like a natural slide towards independence a year or two ago now looks like a return to the 20th century: a Kurdistan hemmed in on all sides and unable to pursue the self-determination that its people unquestionably want.
26. What should the U.S. do?
27. It should certainly support the Kurds, both Syrian and Iraqi, in the fight against ISIS, so long as they are prepared to treat Arabs and other non-Kurds well.
28. It should also continue to provide generous humanitarian assistance.
29. And Washington should do what it can to help Erbil and Baghdad resolve their dispute over the distribution of oil revenue.
30. On the internal Kurdistan issues, we should want to see them resolved sooner rather than later, since later could mean disrupting the fight against ISIS.
31. But we also need to nudge our Kurdish friends in a direction that respects the rule of law and democracy.
32. No president is forever. No governing party is forever. Adherence to the constitution as well as fair and free competition for votes is what we should expect of our partners, no matter what the outcome for longstanding friends.
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Defending your right to say it
Friends in Serbia have informed me of the latest blowup there over press freedom. The Adria Media Group, which owns both Newsweek Serbia and the daily tabloid Kurir, has been publishing results of its corruption investigations, in particular in the Belgrade city government.
The response has been ferocious on the part of pro-government media, including publication of the home address of the head of Adria, along with the provocative “if Mr. Rodic survives, Serbia cannot.”
Aleksandar Rodic, whom I don’t know, responded in turn with an open letter that reads in part (check the original Serbian if in doubt):
I want to tell the truth facing the whole Serbian public: the media in Serbia are not free and, moreover, political pressure on media is being done on a daily basis….I myself took an active part in beautifying the ugly social reality in Serbia along with 80% other Serbian media owners….
…All of you already know that it is an open secret that media are “requested” by political decision-makers for some content not to go public or, in clear contrast to that, for some other content to be “fabricated.” That kind of media propaganda goes a long way here in Serbia.It is sad that this kind of media practice turned into unprecedented self-censorship that is closely related to government pressure dominating the Serbian media. Journalistic autonomy is threatened, since they are not willing or allowed anymore to offer critical investigation of a politics-related topic. One doesn’t know which journalist is under political pressure or blackmailed within entities such as editorial staffs.
…People are not stupid but they are resigned and that’s why they give up. They give up on this country and they give up on us. Nevertheless, we need to remain the “voice of the people” no matter what, taking our responsibility for the future of our country.
The pressures I have been suffering were always taking the form of economic weakening of my company while, at the same time, I was threatened to be put on trial for fabricated deeds with no evidence in terms of criminal responsibility.
I openly declare that I consciously agreed to do whatever I’ve been told to do, including censorship that, consequently, led to self-censorship. I do admit that censorship in Serbia is in its full swing.
Distinguished colleagues, prominent media owners, editors-in-chief, media personnel, you are aware that there is both censorship and self-censorship operational in Serbia. We all agreed to be put under pressure we suffer now and even those who consider themselves to be out of media mainstream are not fully censorship-free and autonomous.
All editors-in-chief and journalists are totally aware of what the truth is.Today, when I am put under direct pressure from politicians I stand in front of our profession saying: “Enough is enough!” This time I won’t let myself be threatened or blackmailed, no matter the cost. I appeal to all that you do our profession credit. Serbian citizens deserve to always hear the truth, including the truth pronounced by media professionals.
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…I can – and I do – understand that everyone has someone they would like to protect, something they find so dear to them, and taking a risk is always hard and painful thing to do. However, this system of political ruling – sustained by threats and blackmailing – is substantially inhuman and no one deserves such treatment….….Dear fellow colleagues working in all Serbian media, I kindly encourage you to get rid of all kinds of fear because this is the only way for us to be journalists in the proper sense of the word. Where ignorance and fear stop is exactly where truth begins.
I confess to sympathy with Rodic, but I am in no position to defend him personally or what his publications have alleged. I just don’t know whether the corruption charges are true or false–that should be decided in court, if there is sufficient evidence to indict anyone.
I do however want to speak up for press freedom, which is still not well-established anywhere in the Balkans. Editors and journalists tell me often that they are subjected to direct and indirect pressure from government authorities, who wield the power of withholding advertising from their antagonists. In the still small economies of the Balkans, that is a serious threat. So too is incitement of violence against journalists and editors, which is all too frequent.
What many Balkans countries still lack are government authorities prepared to speak out to defend press freedom, even if they may disagree with the allegations the press publishes. They instead blame these blowups on unprofessional journalism or claim that their political opponents are behind the allegations. It would be refreshing to hear prime ministers respond by saying the allegations will be thoroughly investigated and accountability pursued wherever it may lead.
That is what demonstrators in Romania were demanding when they brought down their government this week. I suspect it is also what Serbian citizens want. It is what most Americans expect both at home and in friendly democracies abroad. I am saddened when our politicians substitute criticism of the media for honest responses to the questions they raise, as the Republican presidential candidates have recently been doing. Europeans are no less exigent about press freedom. If Serbia wants membership in the European Union, it needs to abide by the most famous thing Voltaire never said:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Or at least by this, which he did say:
The supposed right of intolerance is absurd and barbaric. It is the right of the tiger; nay, it is far worse, for tigers do but tear in order to have food, while we rend each other for paragraphs.
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