Tag: Balkans
Better late than never
Goran Hadžić, the last remaining Serb fugitive from indictments by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was arrested today and will be transferred to The Hague for trial on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Hadžić was president of the so-called “Serbian Autonomous District /Sprska autonomna oblast/ Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem” and later of the Republic of Serbian Krajina /Republika Srpska krajina, the Serb parastate created in the early 1990s inside Croatia. He is accused of participating in a joint criminal enterprise to persecute and murder Croats and other non-Serbs as well as imprisoning and torturing them in inhumane and cruel ways. He is also accused of deporting and forcibly transferring non-Serbs as well as the wanton destruction of their property.
With this arrest, Belgrade fulfills one of the important conditions for it to achieve candidacy status for European Union membership, thus relieving the Dutch of their promise of a veto unless cooperation with the Hague Tribunal was complete. It also opens the door to a thorough reform of Serbia’s own security services, which have clearly been implicated in helping Hadžić and Ratko Mladić to hide for many years. I hope the investigation will extend to the Serbian Orthodox Church as well, which the Serbian war crimes prosecutor alleges was implicated in hiding Hadžić.
Is this the end of the conditions Serbia will have to meet? No. There will be many more as it makes its way through the many “chapters” of the acquis communitaire, the laws and regulations of the EU. Important among the conditions will be “good neighborly relations” with both Kosovo and Bosnia, which do not exist today even if there has been some improvement on both fronts. Further Belgrade/Pristina talks have however been put off until September, suggesting that there are problems in coming to closure on the few, rather elementary items that are said to have been agreed already.
Belgrade, Zagreb, Brussels and Washington all have good reasons to be happy with this arrest, which closes the book on the Serbian indictees even if there are long trials still ahead. Better late than never.
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Let’s be practical
As I thought I might be giving a talk this week about the Balkans, I prepared the following text, which I would not want to see go unused. So here are my latest, but not very new, thoughts about the Balkans:
The Balkans are a region that produces more history than it can consume but also generates less future than its people would like.
There are two places that still merit attention in Washington. One is Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the state created at Dayton in 1995 is facing a serious partition challenge from Republika Srpska, its Serb-dominated half. The other is Kosovo, where a similar challenge arises from Serbia’s desire to hold on to the northern 11% of the country.
These are the last territorial issues in the Balkans, a region once wracked by ethnic claims. Either one might, if mishandled, generate instability and ethnic conflict, vitiating 15 years of progress. Not only Bosnia and Kosovo might be affected, but also Macedonia and Serbia, which has Muslim and Albanian-majority areas that will want whatever the Serbs get in Bosnia or Kosovo. We need to ensure that Pandora’s box remains closed.
That reassurance can no longer come only from the United States. Today, the European Union holds most of the leverage in the Balkans. The prospect of EU membership—now ensured for Croatia and not too far off for Montenegro—has become a major incentive for Balkan reform, where otherwise there is an inclination towards ethno-territorial breakdown.
We need the Europeans to secure stability in the Balkans, but they also need us. American-led interventions ended the Bosnian war as well as Yugoslav repression in Kosovo. Nowhere are Americans more appreciated than among Bosnian Muslims and Kosovars.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Let’s start with Bosnia. In the first 10 years after the Dayton agreements were signed, it made good progress with a lot of international tutelage. But Bosnia has stalled for the past five years, since rejection in 2006 of the April package of constitutional amendments. They failed to reach a two-thirds majority in the Bosnian parliament by just two votes. It was a setback from which Bosnia has still not recovered.
Since then, Milorad Dodik, now president of the Serb-controlled 49% of Bosnia, has set course to make his Serb entity as autonomous as possible, denying the validity of decisions by the internationally designated High Representative and challenging the authority of Sarajevo-based governing institutions and courts. His stated goal is independence for Republika Srpska, even if he has often stepped back from irreversible steps in that direction. It is not an accident that Dodik has also been predicting that EU membership for Bosnia is 50 years in the future.
We need to recognize that Dodik is serious. His strategy is to maximize the separation of Republika Srpska from the Bosnian state so that he can, if political conditions ever permit, achieve independence in the future. This is essentially the same strategy that was pursued successfully by Milo Djukanovic in Montenegro, which became independent in 2006.
There is, however, a big difference between Montenegro and Republika Srpska, whose population today is overwhelmingly Serb because of an aggressive ethnic cleansing campaign during the Bosnian war. Montenegro gained the support of all but its Serb minority for independence and conducted a referendum under strict supervision of the international community. Dodik has no intention of allowing the return to Republika Srpska of its pre-war Muslim plurality. To the contrary, the RS is unwelcoming to Croat and Muslim returnees and maintains an atmosphere hostile to non-Serbs in its schools, press, governing institutions and social life. Ratko Mladic, now on trial in The Hague for genocide and crimes against humanity, is still a hero in Republika Srpska, which is funding his defense.
There is another difference in Bosnia: secession of Republika Srpska would lead quickly to secession of at least some Croat-majority areas of Bosnia, leaving in central Bosnia the “green garden”: a non-viable, rump Islamic state. Neither Zagreb nor Belgrade would want to see the green garden planted in their midst, and it is hard to picture the Americans or Europeans liking the idea either. Avoiding this outcome was a major motive for the Americans in supporting a united Bosnia in the 1990s; it is no less important in 2011.
If ever there is a referendum in Bosnia, it should be conducted in the entire country on a serious proposition: do you want to live in a Bosnia that can qualify to become a member of the European Union? I have no doubt at all that such a proposition would pass with a strong majority and silence most talk of secession.
The European Union approach to this problem has been accommodation. Dodik this spring scheduled a contentious referendum on the Bosnian court system and the High Representative that would have set a precedent for an independence referendum. The High Representative was prepared to annul the legal arrangements for the voting, something he can do as the referendum violated the Dayton agreements. Instead, the European Union, without telling the Americans, arranged to accommodate Dodik’s demand for discussions on the Bosnian court system, without consulting the Bosnian government.
I have rarely seen American diplomats more outraged, though they have largely kept their fury out of the public eye. Blind-siding the Americans—actually it is usually called sand-bagging in the bureaucratic world—no doubt gave Dodik a great deal of satisfaction, as it meant that the European Union came to him and met his demand for discussion of institutions belonging to the Bosnian state, without representatives of that state present.
So what we are seeing in Bosnia is obvious deterioration of the international consensus on how to handle Dodik’s determined and consistent efforts to gain the kind of autonomy that will make independence some day in the future possible.
Kosovo
I am pleased that we are not seeing the same thing in dealing with Kosovo, where the EU has been leading a dialogue effort between Belgrade and Pristina intended to resolve practical problems that would improve life for both Serbs and Albanians. Robert Cooper, who has led this effort on behalf of Brussels, has kept the Americans at the table and in the loop.
The dialogue has now produced its first modest results: agreements on mutual recognition of documents and license plates as well as provision by Serbia to Kosovo of copies of official records taken at the end of the NATO/Yugoslavia war. Other more far-reaching agreements are thought to be imminent. This illustrates clearly what can be achieved when the Americans and Europeans act together.
There is still, however, a long way to go. Belgrade has said it will never recognize an independent Kosovo, which is not a problem so long as it eventually lifts the Russian veto on its membership in the UN General Assembly. This it will have to do before Serbia can enter the EU, which will not want to accept a new Cyprus-like divided member. In fact, Serbia is under pressure to specify sooner rather than later on what territory it intends to apply EU laws and regulations—the acquis communitaire. It hopes to hold on to at least the part of Kosovo north of the Ibar river, which is contiguous with Serbia and is still governed by Belgrade. If it specifies all or part of Kosovo, Serbia won’t be taken seriously as a candidate for EU membership–it would be best if the EU can be convinced not to allow it candidacy status until it settles the issue of the north with Pristina.
The Serbian political leadership, even its more forward-looking and pro-European president Boris Tadic, has painted itself into a corner on Kosovo issues. Belgrade refuses to meet with Pristina officials who are clearly identified as such. It needs to find its own way out of this cul-de-sac. I would suggest it work along this path: recognition not of Kosovo’s independence, but of the legitimacy of the Kosovo’s democratic institutions, with whose representatives it has already reached limited agreements.
Pristina could help this process if President Atifete Jahjaga would invite Tadic to visit Kosovo’s capital and pay a courtesy call. If he refuses, he embarrasses himself: why wouldn’t he call on the democratically legitimized president of a territory he claims is part of Serbia? If he accepts, we get past a silly hurdle that the Serbs have erected for themselves.
The American role
What is the American role in all of this? We need to do what we can to complete the state-building process in Bosnia and Kosovo so that American troops and civilians can turn their attention to more pressing matters.
Here are my relatively few recommendations for what the United States should still do in the Balkans:
1. Working with the EU, get Serbia to tell RS it will never be independent or part of Serbia and that Dodik needs to turn his attention to strengthening the Bosnian state so that it can become an EU member.
2. Urge Pristina to invite Tadic to visit.
3. In a joint statement with the EU, declare that Kosovo and Bosnia will not be divided and can only hope to enter the EU as states within their well-established borders.
Even the five members of the EU that have not recognized Kosovo’s sovereignty can, I believe, acknowledge that its independence will not be reversed and that partition of either Bosnia or Kosovo is a bad idea. If we expect Belgrade to be practical, we should expect ourselves to be practical as well.
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All about Serbia
From one perspective, the news this morning seems all about Serbia: Novak Đoković won Wimbledon, Ratko Mladić got tossed out of court in The Hague for being disruptive, and Belgrade reached some agreements with Pristina. These are apparently only on freedom of movement and civil registries, not on other items under discussion.
This represents serious, if agonizingly slow, progress. Mladić would surprise me only if he accepted responsibility for the murders he is alleged to have ordered at Srebrenica. Denying it is nothing new, but his having to deny it in The Hague is certainly progress.
The minimal agreements between Belgrade and Pristina are significantly less than what was hoped for and even expected, and so far as I can tell they haven’t yet been published. While the press is saying the agreements were “signed” or “inked,” I’ll be surprised if that is the case. More likely, the EU will issue them. Still, kudos to EU facilitator Robert Cooper as well as Serbia and Kosovo negotiators Borko Stefanović and Edita Tahiri for getting at least a few things done.
Nor do the agreements reached so far seem sufficient to justify EU serving up its “big potatoes” to Serbia: candidacy and a date for starting membership negotiations. I trust the EU will insist on most of the other items under discussion being resolved before moving ahead on the membership front. I hope it will also be prepared to meet Pristina’s desire for a “contractual” relationship with the EU and a roadmap for the visa waiver.
So far as I can tell, Đoković’s victory has nothing whatsoever to do with Serbian or Balkan politics. It is the result of a sterling rise to the professional forefront of a talented and disciplined athlete. How refreshing!
That said, politics will not shrivel up and die any time soon. Serbian President Tadić is thought to be planning an official visit to Bosnia this month. I’ve got to hope that he uses the occasion to make it clear that Serbia supports a Bosnia and Herzegovina that can enter the European Union. This will require significant changes to Bosnia’s Dayton constitution, which has already been ruled out of line with the European Convention on Human Rights. Don’t be fooled if Tadic merely declares Serbia committed to “One Bosnia.” That is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for Bosnia to qualify for the EU.
Serbia is on its way to becoming a normal European country, albeit one with residual issues stemming from the Milošević period, which is now more than 10 years in the past. The faster it establishes normal state-to-state relations with Bosnia and Kosovo, the better.
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Independence is over-rated
Yes, that’s what I said: over-rated. Despite the inspirational words, the declaration of July 4, 1776 didn’t change much. Seven years of war ensued. That didn’t settle it either: the British continued to interfere with American shipping, so we fought another war in 1812 (-15). Friendship with Britain did not begin until late in the 19th century, and the “special relationship” is a product of the 20th.
My Kosovar and Southern Sudanese friends are discovering that things haven’t changed much.
The NATO/Yugoslavia war over Kosovo ended in June 1999. Seventy-six countries have recognized Kosovo since its independence in February 2008, but Belgrade is using Russia to block Kosovo’s entry into the United Nations General Assembly, which is the modern world’s equivalent of universal recognition. Pristina is now engaged in discussions of practical issues with Belgrade, with modest results, but good neighborly relations are still far off. The promise of eventual EU membership–much sooner for Belgrade and much later for Pristina–may keep things on track, but there are no guarantees.
Sudan’s independence will be declared July 9. Despite extensive arrangements for this eventuality in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between Khartoum and Juba in 2005, things are not going smoothly. The Abyei region is still contested, despite two arbitration decisions. Ethiopian peacekeepers are now being deployed there, after Khartoum’s army displaced more than 100,000 people last month. There is instability in two northern states, Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan, where southern sympathies are strong (and some of the sympathizers armed). There are still no agreements on crucial issues: citizenship for northerners in the South and southerners in the North, division of assets and debt, as well as oil revenue and oil transport from the South through the North.
Independence can be declared, but it is sovereignty and statehood that really count. Neither is a function of saying, only of doing. They are acquired through practice, not expression. The three concepts are often confused, and in a well-established state they in fact are congruent. But they are three distinct concepts: statehood depends on the existence of an organized distribution of political power, sovereignty on the state having a monopoly on the legitimate means of violence, and independence–a relative term–on the sovereign state being able to make its own decisions without seeking the approval of others. Neither Southern Sudan nor Kosovo is yet a fully independent sovereign state, though I trust both will make it in due course.
There will be a lot of ups and downs along the way. There certainly were in the United States. The Washington, DC I visited as a child was a segregated city, not by law but by preference of the white majority. Many times while I served abroad in the U.S. Foreign Service I was asked whether a black president was possible. I always said “yes,” but I wasn’t at all sure it would happen in my lifetime. It did, and a lot of people had to change their conception of what it means to be American for it to happen (which is why I’m not surprised that some haven’t changed and are still worrying themselves about the President’s birth certificate).
This process of infusing new meaning into old concepts is important to acquiring statehood and sovereignty: an inclusive concept of what it means to be Southern Sudanese or “Kosovan” is vital to organizing political life and exercising a monopoly on the legitimate means of violence. If some people are excluded, or demoted to second class citizenship, the state will be less than worthy and sovereignty less than complete. So I conclude with Marvin Gaye’s effort to infuse new meaning into an old German drinking song, not so much because I like the results, but because I like the process:
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Small beans, big potatoes and one more thing
Usually I don’t comment on an agreement or the like until it is published, or at least reliably leaked. But while the few remaining Balkan-watchers are holding their collective breath for the results of the Belgrade-Pristina dialogues, word is circulating widely on what the results might be. So I’m tempted to comment, in a conditional and hypothetical way. I reserve the right to change my mind on any of these points once we’ve got a text. I readily admit that my judgments may change once I see the details, and that I am biased because I am not “status-neutral.” I accept Kosovo’s sovereignty.
Here is what I am hearing:
1. Telecomms: Serbian and Kosovar mobile providers will be allowed reciprocal roaming rights in both Kosovo and Serbia at low rates. Serbia will maintain and provide service over landlines in Kosovo’s Serbian enclaves.
Comment: Reciprocity is always nice, though I suspect it will be hard for Kosovar providers to offer service in any but nearby parts of Serbia. Who cares about landlines? Few people will be using them, but might Belgrade be interested because they can be made more secure than mobiles?
2. Trade: “Republic” of Kosova, which is what the Pristina authorities call themselves, will not be allowed on trade documents or products, but Serbia will accept imports from Kosovo without the “R” word.
Comment: I imagine the trade is worth more than the symbolism.
3. Documents: Serbia will accept Pristina-issued identification cards as valid for entry into Serbia (as Kosovo already does for Serbian ID cards).
Comment: sounds good to me.
4. License plates and car insurance: Serbia will not accept the usual Pristina-issued plates, which are marked “RKS” (as in Republic of Kosovo) but will require that cars entering Serbia use new “KS” plates, issued by Pristina (or cover the offending “R”). Verification of insurance for Kosovo-plated cars that have an accident in Serbia will be handled through EULEX, not directly between the two police forces.
Comment: This is bizarre, and stupid since it will continue to make Serbs readily identifiable by their license plates, putting them at risk inside Kosovo. And inserting EULEX into the insurance verification process is even sillier. But I imagine someone in Belgrade thinks the display of that offending “R” would suggest in Serbia that Belgrade had given something away, and you wouldn’t want any serious cooperation to develop with that Kosovo Police Service, would you?
5. Electricity: Serbia would continue to provide electricity in northern Kosovo, but the company would have to register in Pristina and make payments to the Kosovo electric company.
Comment: Sounds OK to me. I’m told there is a lot of money involved.
6. Official documents: Kosovo will only get copies of the cadastral (real estate property) records and civil registries that Belgrade took in 1999, at the end of the NATO/Serbia war. EULEX, the EU’s rule of law contingent, will verify the copies (but will have no way of being certain that the originals have not been altered).
Comment: I put this in the “yech” category: the original records should be returned to the Kosovo authorities. You don’t have to recognize Kosovo’s independence to appreciate that those authorities are the legitimate ones, democratically validated.
None of this is great, but it should not trouble anyone–Serb or Albanian–too much. These are, as promised, practical issues that are finding–according to my informants–more or less practical solutions, with the occasional impractical prohibition of an “R.” Serbia is still thoroughly hung up on the sovereignty question, to the point of embarassing itself through trivia.
But there are three other things happening at the same time.
1. There seems to be no movement on the EU giving Kosovo what everyone refers to as a “contractual” relationship, that is the possibility of signing agreements with the EU. This is important–without it Kosovo cannot even begin to proceed with a process that could end in EU membership. I know this is hard for an EU where five members have not recognized Kosovo, but they are going to have to get over it. Better sooner than later. How do they expect Serbia to deal with Kosovo in a practical way if they can’t?
2. Nor is Kosovo being given a “roadmap” to obtain a visa waiver program, allowing Kosovars to enter the Schengen area without a visa. Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia already have the visa waiver. Shutting the door on Kosovo encourages pan-Albanian political sentiments (as in “I’d do better if I were an Albanian citizen”) that are not healthy.
3. To add insult to injury from the Kosovar perspective, Serbia is seeking a UN Security Council statement endorsing a EULEX task force to investigate allegations of organ trafficking, including against Kosovo’s sitting prime minister. I am all for the investigation, which I understand has already begun. But this Security Council statement is a dreadful idea, as Belgrade will use it worldwide to prevent countries from recognizing Kosovo until the investigation has been completed, a pitch they are already making. I hear the Americans are saying a loud “no” at the Security Council. I hope they stick with it.
Belgrade on the other hand is rumored to be getting out of this process exactly what it wanted: EU candidacy status and a date to begin membership negotiations. This will put it leagues ahead of Kosovo in the membership “regatta.” No real harm in that, but I do think Kosovo should get a contractual relationship with the EU and the visa waiver roadmap, which are small beans by comparison with Serbia’s big potatoes. And Serbia should be told it will have to settle its problems with Kosovo before entering the EU.
One more thing: Pristina should ask for an office in Belgrade. Serbia has one in northern Kosovo (it was previously in Pristina). It is occasionally necessary, but I would never want to negotiate with a country in whose capital my country was not represented. For both public information and reporting purposes, Kosovo should have a capable Serbian-speaking representative in Belgrade. No need for diplomatic status.
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Here’s another idea for Bosnia
One question plagues every discussion of Bosnia: do Bosnians want to live in the same country? Nationalist leaders of two of the main ethnic groups (Croat and Serb) seem to be saying “no,” while most Bosniaks (that’ s Muslim to most Americans, but without the religious connotation) say “yes.” They are the largest group (44% of the pre-war population).
What would happen if they voted on it?
Of course they did vote on it once, in 1992. The result was 98% for Bosnian independence, with many Serbs boycotting (turnout was 68%). The rules then–and now–are that 50% wins (55% if you are in Montenegro, ask the Europeans why). Boycotts don’t invalidate the results.
Republika Srpska (RS) President Milorad Dodik has lately pumped up the idea of a new referendum, which he wanted to conduct in the RS on an obviously biased and contentious proposition that would seek to delegitimize institutions of the Bosnian state as well as the international community representative in Sarajevo, thus laying the groundwork for an independence bid. But there is no reason why any referendum on a question concerning the country as a whole should be conducted only in the RS, from which many Bosniaks and Croats were ethnically cleansed and where they still find themselves unwelcome.
This leads me to wonder out loud what the results of a new referendum might be, but one conducted in the whole country on a serious proposition: “do you want to live in a Bosnia and Herzegovina that can become a member of the European Union?” That is the real choice Bosnians face: to split up the state and give up hopes of joining the EU, or stick together and get into the EU some time in the next decade or so.
Of course I wouldn’t wonder out loud if I didn’t think I knew the outcome. I believe well over 50% of Bosnians would vote “yes” in a free and fair referendum of this sort: easily 90% of the more or less 50% of the country that is today Bosniak, plus an overwhelming majority of those refusing to identify ethnically and significant percentages (I’d guess close to half on the proposition as I’ve formulated it) of the Croats and Serbs.
You’ll be able to tell right away if I am correct: nationalist Croats and Serbs will reject this whole-country referendum proposal, knowing well that they would lose. Some Bosniaks will also not like the idea, concerned that it will exacerbate interethnic relations. I may even get a cross-ethnic coalition to oppose me. That would be gratifying, in a perverse kind of way.
Lest there be any doubt about my own views: I know full well no referendum of this sort will be held, and I think breakup of Bosnia would be a disaster for the Balkans and for Europe. It would result in creation of Croat and Serb statelets that the “mother” countries would not want to absorb and an isolated Islamic republic in central Bosnia whose population would radicalize in an effort to survive (and attract Islamic support) in difficult circumstances. There is no prospect of an easy agreement on the borders of these statelets, so violence in the process of breakup would be likely. Nor would it be possible to contain the breakup to Bosnia. Muslim-majority areas of Sandžak in Serbia would grow restive, not to mention possible echoes in Kosovo, southern Serbia and Macedonia.
As I’ve said before in the Kosovo context, best to keep Pandora’s box closed. But that should not prevent us from being realistic about the horrors that lie inside.
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