Tag: Balkans
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.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The EU prepares for a worthy new member
This evening I got a note from HINA, the Croatian press agency, declaring me “the best US expert for the Balkan,” so it was hard to resist responding quickly to their request for a comment on the completion of Croatia’s negotiations for membership in the EU. This is what I said:
This is a great moment for Croatia and for the region. It demonstrates that the promise of European Union membership can become a reality, provided the Balkan states make a concerted effort, as Croatia has done, to meet the tough EU requirements. Washington will be delighted that Croatia is finding its proper home in Europe and will want to use this achievement to encourage others to make the same kind of effort. My congratulations both the Croatian officials directly involved and to the people of Croatia, for whom this is a historic moment!
There is however a bit more to say.
Things get harder as you move south through the Balkans. Bosnia cannot become an EU member with its current constitution, which creates a dysfunctional set of governments, especially at the Sarajevo level (where by the way I am headed tomorrow). Serbia, while constitutionally better equipped, is slowing its progress towards the EU by continuing to harbor one last indicted war criminal and dragging its feet in talks with Kosovo intended to solve a few of the practical problems remaining between the antagonists. Serbia will also have to establish “good neighborly relations” with Kosovo before it can join the EU. Kosovo, which has only been independent for three years, lags substantially behind Serbia, while Macedonia is stalled by a dispute with Greece over its name, which Athens claims as its own. Montenegro, bless its small but exceptional heart, is moving rather more expeditiously than the rest.
So the Balkans are in no danger of becoming entirely European before your next vacation. If you want to visit the funkier version, I’d say you still have at least a decade, especially in the more southern reaches (though you’ll already be able to use euros in Kosovo and a euro-pegged “convertible mark” in Bosnia).
I hasten to add that even America’s best Balkan expert would not have predicted Croatia on the threshold of joining the EU as early as 2011. It still has a way to go–27 member states will have to ratify Zagreb’s accession treaty. There can be accidents and delays along the way, especially in this era of euro-skepticism and enlargement fatigue. But never mind, for today the Croatians are correct to celebrate, and my hat is off to them!
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Pleasant surprises but no firm conclusions
So I’ve returned to Pristina after an absence of eight years. What have I found? Let me say up front: not much, as I’ve been here for two days. But I’ll offer at least my initial impressions, based on a dozen or so conversations. I’ll reserve the right to revise once I’ve heard a good deal more.
The variable weather–one moment pouring rain, the next moment pouring sunshine–has kept me wary. Kosovo when I last visited had a government: there were ministers, ministries, directors general and the rest. But there was little of what I would call a state: that is, a set of institutions that could be relied upon to maintain some reasonable level of continuity and objectivity regardless of who was elected. More than one reader has assured me that I wouldn’t find the situation much improved.
I haven’t of course been able to test the services the state provides to ordinary citizens, other than to walk briefly in the main street and enjoy its conversion to a pedestrian mall. Mobbed with young people enjoying intervals between rainstorms, the atmosphere is certainly upbeat among those who can afford to enjoy a coffee in one of the many cafes that line Pristina’s main “Mother Teresa” drag.
I spent the day yesterday mainly in the foreign ministry. The people I dealt with there–admittedly among the best–would measure up as intelligent and well-trained professionals in the State Department or elsewhere. They have studied the issues we were discussing carefully and have prepared comprehensive dossiers that were informative, objective and up to date. This was a great leap forward from eight years ago, when there was a kind of necessary conformity to government policy that shaped every conversation and prevented the preparation of honest assessments.
I also had the opportunity to meet with some of the political leadership in the state and government. I first entered what is today the President’s office in 1998, when I called on the Serbian administrators of the then-province of Kosovo. I had just come from the Council for Human Rights and Freedoms, only a hundred meters or so away, where I had seen careful and extensive documentation of the abuses committed by the Serbian security forces. The authorities of the time denied there were any abuses and declined to join me in a visit to the Council.
I later visited Bernard Kouchner and Hans Haekkerup (UN mission chiefs) in 2000 and 2001 in that same room, as they struggled to try to administer post-war Kosovo, removed from Serbian administration by UN Security Council resolution 1244 after the NATO/Yugoslavia war. Theirs was a difficult role, which they played with whatever skills and resources could be mustered in a thoroughly broken society only recently traumatized by war.
Today that same room is a lot brighter and cheerier, not only because of the redecorating. The soft-spoken President Atifete Jahjaga joined the post-war Kosovo police in an effort to reverse the abuses of power that she had witnessed under the Serbian administration. Determined she says to protect and serve, she was one of the few women to break with the practice of male dominance in the security forces.
Whatever your stand on the status of Kosovo, it is important to recognize that her elevation to president represents a real break with the past. She is a non-politician whose candidacy it is said was favored by the American Ambassador. Elected by a wide margin in parliament in the aftermath of a Supreme Court decision that invalidated on procedural grounds the narrow victory of a more traditional politician, she is trying hard to project an image of stability and inclusivity.
On the basis of a couple of other meetings with ministers, it is appears that the government gives unequivocal verbal priority to law and order, perhaps because it faces investigations and accusations that are embarrassing and potentially damning. This situation is made doubly difficult by the requirement to cooperate with the very international officials who are at the same time investigating the government. But everyone says they are ready to cooperate and see the investigations run their course.
The view from the government’s critics is harsher. Some of them feel strongly that little is done about serious corruption allegations against high Kosovo government officials, whose claims to probity they view as less than truthful or sincere. Yes, there are corruption investigations, but they are selective and not sweeping. Too many allegations go uninvestigated.
I don’t envy the internationals who are still here trying to help Kosovo’s institutions build their capacity to act effectively. At a certain point only locals with democratic legitimacy can really govern effectively, or deal decisively with organized crime. The Kosovo authorities will err–the recent decision to raise salaries in defiance of the IMF will be counted as a blunder by many–but when it comes to learning there really is no substitute for making your own mistakes. At least in the case of the IMF, those who made the decision will now need to fill the budget hole that they themselves created.
So I admit that I may regret tomorrow what I’ve written today, as I learn more about the realities of life and government today in Kosovo. But if so I’ll try to admit that honestly. For today, I am happy to have found some pleasant surprises, including the strong dissent of the government’s critics, which makes any firm judgment on the merits of its law and order stance premature.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Half a Big Mac is not a smorgasbord
Jerry Gallucci over at Transconflict says Serbia is offering Kosovo a smorgasbord of possible solutions to the status question. Looks more like half a Big Mac to me. Not something I’d be interested in.
Anyone who thinks the European Union will accept Serbia as a member without settling the issue of Kosovo status, as Gallucci suggests, is living in a different reality from mine. That would require twenty-two European states that have recognized Kosovo as sovereign to go mad, suffer amnesia or more likely brain damage. Even if twenty-one of them did, the Dutch can be relied upon stay sane, remember and insist, as they did with the arrest and transfer to The Hague of Ratko Mladic. Several EU members have already stated that settling Kosovo’s status will be a precondition, and those that haven’t will rely on the EU requirement of “good neighborly relations” to make the same point.
Gallucci’s smorgasbord consists of one basic idea: Serbia retaining control of northern Kosovo. To agree to that, Pristina would have to gain control of the Albanian-majority areas of southern Serbia. After all, Kosovo has its political pressures, too, including from the Self-Determination movement Gallucci mentions. And Serbia would have to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity before any territorial exchange, since Kosovo could only engage in such an act as a sovereign.
In the unlikely event such an agreement could be reached, Pristina and Belgrade would then have to figure out how to guarantee that it would not destabilize Bosnia and Macedonia. This would be particularly important for Belgrade, since instability could of course spread from Bosnia to Sandjak, a part of Serbia in which many Muslims (they call themselves “Bosniaks”) live.
Gallucci wonders why ethnic states are such a bad thing. They aren’t. The problem is that forming them often entails a process known as violent conflict. It did in the 19th century, it did in the 20th and it would in the 21st. It’s admittedly difficult, but best to avoid war whenever possible. And fighting, or even quarreling, over half a Big Mac would just be ridiculous.
It is time for Belgrade to accept reality. Kosovo Serbs as well as the Serbian religious institutions in Kosovo can and should be treated properly. Putting forward a smorgasbord of ideas on how to satisfy those requirements would be a good idea. A one-way partition of Kosovo is not.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Preparing for the Balkans
I confess I haven’t done a lot to prepare for my next two weeks in the Balkans, apart from one or two subjects I need to be up to date on, but maybe my fans there will find it interesting to know what I’ll be reading to get ready. I’ll also be delighted if they would make some suggestions.
I was inspired to this blogpost by reading Ted Galen Carpenter’s piece in The National Interest. Ted does not quite merit the “Srebrenica denier” category, because he doesn’t really deny it–he just doesn’t mention it, preferring instead to refer to Ratko Mladic as “repulsive” and responsible for “repulsive” acts.
Instead he attacks inflated figures for overall civilian deaths in the Bosnian war and claims the Muslim/Croat fighting has been ignored. The civilian casualty figures were corrected many years ago, but that correction really has no bearing on the issue Ted raises of whether genocide was committed, which depends more on intent than numbers. I don’t use the G-word myself except for Srbrenica, where the Hague Tribunal has made the determination. I hardly need mention that the United States paid a good deal of attention to the Croat/Muslim fighting and was instrumental in bringing it to an end–I was the special envoy responsible for maintaining that peace from October 1994 to June 1996.
That short, disappointing piece was just an accidental read, but it reminded me of how polarized opinion on the Balkans can be. No one ever wants to let anything rest, even the Americans.
My more intentional reads are these:
- B92 (English service), which I use regularly to stay up to date with regional events–my hat is off to Veran Matic and his team for their decades of hard work;
- Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, which is a bit less every day events and more broader issues and commentary–a tip of the hat to them as well;
- Foreign Policy Initiative papers, especially their recent piece on the “myth” of closure of the Office of the High Representative;
- Matthew Parrish’s latest tirade against what the “international community” has done in Kosovo and Bosnia, published in the Journal of Eurasian Law;
- Anything interesting I find on the website of the Kosovar Stability Initiative;
- The Coordinator’s Office for Strategy Regarding the North of Kosovo, “Report on Parallel Institutions: Belgrade – with a foot on the north and an open hand in Brussels”;
- My own “Albanians in the Balkans” published more than 10 years ago (!);
- Ditto Bosnia’s Next Five Years: Dayton and Beyond;
- As an antidote, whatever strikes my fantasy on the TransConflict website;
- Everything Tim Judah has published lately;
- Anything friends–some unnameable, so I won’t name any–in the Balkans send me.
ICG’s stuff is the obvious omission, but unless they put out something new before I get to the region, I think I’ve read it all.
Some people will see obvious bias in my reading material. I like to think that I am reading broadly and gathering diverse perspectives. And I’ll welcome more if you send me links or attachments! Best to do that to daniel@serwer.org, since daniel@peacefare.net does not see to be working perfectly these days. With appreciation for those who respond,
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
A brighter view of the Arab spring
I wrote yesterday about the pessimistic views of the Arab spring prevalent among experts at a Harvard/Carnegie Endowment event. They know a whole lot more about the Middle East than I do–that’s why I go to their events and write them up. But I think they are overly pessimistic. Why?
First, because I’ve seen things come out all right. I am not just talking South Africa, where admittedly Nelson Mandela’s leadership and stature counted for a lot, as did F.W. de Klerk’s. I am not seeing any Mandelas or de Klerks in the Middle East. Nor do there seem to be any Vaclav Havels or Lech Walesas. But in Serbia, Ukraine and Georgia protest leaderships that were notably lacking in vision and stature had at least temporary success and left their countries better off than they would otherwise have been.
Second, because it seems to me the protesters in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Yemen have shown a combination of nonviolent restraint and persistence that is laudable, and likely to lead in good directions. I am less convinced of the wisdom of the demonstrators in Libya and Bahrain, where it seems to me they fell victim to the temptations of violence and recalcitrance, respectively. But the Libyan Transitional Council shows at least some signs of promise. We’ll see if the Bahrainis can do better in the next “dialogue” phase.
Third, because I have more confidence in a bottom-up process than a top-down one. Here I disagree with Marwan Muasher, who explicitly prefers to see top-down reform. I don’t really know any place where that has worked terribly well in the transition from dictatorship to democracy, though obviously there are leaders like Gorbachev (or de Klerk for that matter) who made the process easier than it might otherwise have been. But people have to want democracy and freedom–it really can’t be given to them.
Nor do I think the consequences of the Arab spring will be quite as negative for U.S. interests as many of the experts say. Middle Eastern leaders who have to be more responsive to public opinion may be more supportive of the Palestinians, but they would be foolish to take their countries to war when the people they lead are looking for prosperity. So, okay, we’ll get Egypt opening the border with Gaza, but closing it was an approach that wasn’t worth a damn anyway. Hamas is likely to need to cut its margins on smuggled goods when they can enter more freely. Maybe an open border will serve American purposes better than the closed one.
I admit that it is hard to see how Yemen comes out of this anything but a basket case, which is where it was headed under Saleh anyway. Certainly it will be a while before any future government in Sanaa gets a grip on the provinces. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula may have a field day in the meanwhile, but they don’t appear so far to have been particularly effective at exploiting the chaos.
That said, the Arab spring is not about American interests, which will have to take a back seat for a while throughout the Middle East. It is however about American values. We should be happy to see them spreading among young Arabs willing to demand their rights. Let’s see where things go before we get too pessimistic.
RSS - Posts
