Tag: Balkans
A dialogue on Bosnia: why not lighten up?
Colleagues Matthew Parish and Kurt Bassuener, both long-term observers of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), clashed recently over at Balkans Insight in ways that I thought shed light on the situation, so I’ve invited them to continue the conversation here at peacefare.net I get to pose the questions and post their answers, a privilege for which I thank them.
Here is the first question:
International attention is no longer focused, as it was in the early 1990s, on Bosnia-Herzegovina. Why can’t the international community lighten its presence in the country and move from the current High Representative, who has American and Russian as well as European Union backing and unusual powers to impose legislation and remove officials, to a European Union representative, who would no longer be expected to intervene but merely to encourage Bosnia’s preparations for European Union membership?
Matthew responds:
I think this question misstates the extent to which the international community is really involved at the current time. The principal step change was in January 2006, when the assertive and politically astute High Representative Paddy Ashdown retired and was replaced by Christian Schwarz-Schilling. Schwarz-Schilling is remembered as ineffective; but it is forgotten that by Ashdown’s departure the international community had already tired of Bosnia, in my view irreversibly. His explicit mandate – to close OHR – was supported by all members of the PIC at the time. That agenda triggered Dodik’s assertiveness, which rendered some western powers nervous. The policy since then has been to drag OHR out indefinitely in a half-hearted way, always suggesting it would be closed in the next six months but then finding another reason why it should continue for just a little longer.
In the mean time Bosnian politicians have mostly grown to ignore the Office, which is a shadow of its former self. Division between the European powers about the desirability of a heavy-handed presence in the country has enabled the Serbs, and to a lesser extent the Croats, to divide the PIC. The net result is that the organisation is now ignored. Dodik has publicly stated that High Representatives’ decisions will not have force in the RS. He could hardly more explicit.
Thus the notion that the international presence in Bosnia should become lightened assumes that it currently has extraordinary powers. It does not. OHR is a dead letter. The European Union mission cannot emerge from its shadow until the organisation formally closes; but the continued existence of OHR is only symbolic. No High Representative wishes to admit as much, lest they become the scapegoat for Bosnia’s future problems; they would rather pass the poisoned chalice onto the next incumbent. But the international community has ceased to be a significant political actor in Bosnia’s politics. We no longer make a difference.
Some have argued for rejuvenating OHR or some other kind of hard international power in Bosnia, urging that if this does not happen then the country’s existence and maybe even peace are in peril. Those warnings may or may not be auspicious; but I do not think it is realistic to revert to a stronger role. OHR’s authority was supported by recent memories of an atrocious war; significant numbers of foreign peacekeeping troops; and large quantities of aid money. All those things have gone. Moreover many in the EU remain deeply ambivalent about the anti-democratic nature of OHR’s authority and the way in which it exercised its authorities without regarded to fundamental legal standards. There is no appetite for returning to the old days of peremptory dismissals and unilaterally imposed legislation, drafted within the hallways of OHR and imposed upon Bosnian politicians in disregard of the ordinary legislative procedures. The international community created a constitutional structure in Dayton, and ultimately we will have to let that structure run its course.
I think the Dayton structure was inherently unsustainable and we are now in the midst of watching it fly apart. But the opportunity for the international community unilaterally to rewrite the Dayton constitution is long past; and OHR was just a sticking plaster.
And Kurt says:
The short answer to your question, Dan, would be that’s been the practical effect of international policy since 2006 – and look at where it got us.
The PIC Steering Board came to the conclusion that peace implementation was basically finished in 2005, aside from unfinished business like police restructuring and constitutional reform. The dominant view was that Bosnia was functional enough to propel itself into the Euro-Atlantic mainstream; it was just a question of time. So the EU would take on the pre-eminent international role, without need of any executive instruments. So the PIC could also choose someone like Christian Schwarz-Schilling to be a closer. “Ownership” and “partnership” – as well as the still undefined term “transition” – were the buzzwords. I think the assumption in Brussels was that, like the handover of military matters from NATO to the EU, this would be another low-risk way for the EU to build a track record for its Common Foreign and Security Policy with no risk. It was a sure thing.
This prevailing assumption was proven wrong within a span of four months in 2006, in a perfect storm that began with the departure of Ashdown at the end of January. Milorad Dodik became RS Premier in March and all cooperation on making the state more functional stopped. Then the “April package” of modest but constructive constitutional changes was shot-down in the BiH House of Representatives. The election campaign began in earnest that spring, with the Montenegrin independence referendum giving Dodik a talking point and returning “referendum” back into the political lexicon. It took some months for it to sink in that the reality didn’t fit the script. The international community has been consistently behind events ever since, begetting what amounts to a rules-free environment in Bosnia.
I disagree that the international executive tools of the OHR (and EUFOR) are irretrievably broken. They’ve just been allowed to become moribund because of a lack of collective will to employ them.
There is a larger philosophical – even theological – issue at play here when it comes to the EU role. The whole EU approach is based on assumptions of what incentives should be working, since BiH has an enlargement perspective. According to this framework, BiH politicians are representative of (and accountable to) the citizens and their interests, recognize the benefits of joining the EU, and are willing to do the heavy lifting of reform to join the club. Clearly this isn’t happening, but for the EU it doesn’t compute. Why not? Because their “partners” are those who benefit from the current system, and this gives them a better deal than what the EU is offering. These are the “owners” of the system over which the EU wants them to take “ownership.” The current drift toward violent dissolution into ethnocratic (and surely autocratic) fiefdoms is what happens when there is no external corrective to that incentive structure.
Instead of adjusting its approach and employing policy instruments outside the enlargement framework, the EU has instead opted to try to “restore momentum” by simply declaring progress in the vain hope that reality will follow. The grant of the SAA in 2008, despite police reform not being realized, is the most visible example of this dynamic. The rest of the PIC has essentially gone along for the ride on this. Though there is increasing disquiet at the lack of clear thinking of how to match the EU’s means to the situation at hand on the part of the US, Britain, Turkey, Japan, and Canada, there has not been an active counterproposal to the prevailing approach.
I guess the official version from Brussels would be that the EU can’t perform its alchemy because the big bad OHR and its wicked Bonn Powers get in the way, but the reality for five years just doesn’t bear that out.
Sounds to me as if Kurt and Matthew basically agree on the diagnosis, but they look in different directions for the cure. To be continued tomorrow. Tune in then!
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A Bosnia watcher worries about war
I found this note in my email this morning, from a well-informed Bosnia watcher:
After all the time, money and energy the US has spent on Brcko, it appears that the upcoming Peace Implementation Council meeting in Sarajevo (29-30 March) will see an effort to end Supervision of the independent District of Brcko.
This comes at a time when Republika Srpska President Milorad Dodik has begun to make unqualified statements that now is the time for BiH to dissolve; at a time when the Federation is entering its deepest crisis since the 2001 third entity attempt; at a time when there is not only no state government but also no sign of one being formed anytime soon; at a time when most state institutions are either blocked or dysfunctional; and at a time when the centrifugal forces tearing at BiH have begun to accelerate. It also comes on the heels of a rather insulting and arrogant public letter from Dodik to the Brcko Supervisor in which Dodik refused to provide assurances that he would respect the Brcko Final Award or the territorial integrity of Brcko District.
Brcko is important in that it is one of the few real levers we have to influence good behavior, both on the part of Republika Srpska and the Federation. It is also the place where the first shots will probably be fired in the event that BiH breaks up and conflict begins anew. It is the strategic bottleneck for Republika Srpska: without control of Brcko, the main population centers of RS have no contiguous contact with Serbia. Belgrade wants to seek compensation for losing Kosovo in Republika Srpska, and is facing an increasing acquiescence to such an approach from the Brussels bureaucracy.
Brcko is also a major success story in terms of refugee returns and is one of the few areas where substantial numbers of refugees have been able to re-establish their pre-war homes. Should supervision end without a stable, functional Bosnian state government and institutions, and as the situation continues to deteriorate, RS will probably attempt to regain control, and ethnic cleansing would most certainly be one of the outcomes.As such, we should not be considering closing Brcko Supervision for at least another decade and until we see proof of long-term good behavior from Republika Srpska. Yet, for some reason the Peace Implementation Council and the US seem hell-bent on recommending the closure of Brcko Supervision. This is one of those moves that makes one wonder if State Department and the EU are taking crazy pills.
Brcko is truly a game-changer, both for better and for worse. If Brcko goes, we will have started the countdown towards picking up where we left off in 1995.
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Anyone still interested in Macedonia?
Last time I headlined a blog post asking whether anyone out there was interested in Macedonia, I got a ton of visitors to www.peacefare.net, so I thought I would try again. Here are my notes for a presentation I did yesterday. I was asked to focus on cross-border linkages. No fair asking what others said, or who else was there, or where this discussion was held: it was done (in DC) under Chatham House rules. Needless to say, these notes were not delivered verbatim, but they are true to what I said and represent my views:
Macedonia
March 21, 2011
1. I was asked to explore the interconnections in the Balkans – including cross-border issues – from a Macedonia-focused perspective.
2. I suppose being a talking head on the Balkans over the past 15 years does gives me some perspective on the issues. Before that I was Mr. Federation in Bosnia as well as an office director in State Department Intelligence and Research in 1996-97, when we tracked Dayton implementation, the virtual collapse of Albania, the rise of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the Zajedno demonstrations.
3. Let there be no doubt: what happens in Kosovo does not stay in Kosovo, and what happens in Bosnia doesn’t stay in Bosnia.
4. I imagine it is perfectly obvious to all of us that ethnic partition in either of Macedonia’s neighbors could be catastrophic for Macedonia. Certainly the Macedonians understood this when they recognized Kosovo, hoping that its borders would not be changed, and proceeded successfully with the demarcation of their own border with the new state.
5. Likewise, if Macedonia comes apart it will affect Kosovo and Bosnia. That is not the issue today, but I can assure you it was the issue in 2000/2001, when a very calm and rational Prime Minister Georgievski called me in, making me promise that I would not bring the American Ambassador or Jim Pardew.
6. He then told me he wanted to partition Macedonia and asked that I take that message back to Washington.
7. I refused, telling him I did not work for the U.S. Government but knew perfectly well how unwelcome his proposal would be.
8. The problem with partition is not only the idea of drawing a line, but the difficulty of deciding where to draw it. This is especially true for Macedonia, where the largest Albanian city is Shkup. Look at the difficulties that have arisen over a Church museum on the “wrong” side of the river. Can you imagine what it would take to draw a new national border at the river? The answer is clear: war. And that war would quickly spread to Kosovo and to Bosnia.
9. So disintegration is subject to the domino theory in the Balkans. What about integration?
10. Certainly we know that integration works well for the organized crime networks, which have no difficulty cooperating across borders.
11. I hasten to add that this is also true for the taxi drivers. One day in 2000 or 2001, when my staff had failed in weeks of efforts to arrange ground transportation from Belgrade to Pristina, I called the concierge at the Hyatt.
12. The next day Milenko, the doctor of taxi cab science, deposited me at Gate 3, Podujevo, and I was picked up by his “colleague” from Pristina.
13. I have taxi-hiked all over the Balkans since.
14. Once I got to Pristina, I quickly ran out of Serbian cell phone credits. Psst, I whispered to the concierge in the hotel Baci. Would it be possible to buy more here in Pristina. Of course he said loudly, any of the guys on the street will sell you credits for your Serbian phone.
15. So integration is possible in the Balkans, and basically healthy even if it involves gray market cell phone credits.
16. The problem is that the official efforts at integration are always running behind the unofficial ones.
17. Macedonia in particular has been slow to take advantage of what Europe is offering.
18. There are reasons for this: The big threat in the Balkans today is lack of progress: on the Macedonia name issue, on Bosnia’s constitutional reforms, on Pristina/Belgrade dialogue. That last has begun to move, and I hope it will produce good results.
19. These are long-standing irritants that are being allowed to remain unresolved and are blocking progress towards NATO and the EU. This is a mistake—Brussels and the Balkan capitals need to find a way of moving forward, even if only slowly. Washington should help, but it doesn’t want to play the primary mover role any longer.
20. Macedonia has been a candidate country for EU membership since December 2005. Its progress is at best slow: the progress report in November 2010 has lots of “little progress,” “limited progress,” “modest progress.”
21. It seems to me the way the government covers for this is to be belligerent: towards the EU, the US and Greece.
22. Let me say a final word on the name issue, because it is the main obstacle to more rapid integration of Macedonia into NATO and the EU.
23. I testified years before the US recognized Macedonia by its constitutional name that it should do so, and I got then Senator Joe Biden wagging a finger “no” in my face for my trouble.
24. I am entirely sympathetic to the Macedonian position in substance: a country is entitled to call itself, its people and its language anything it wants. If nothing else, the interim accord, which allows Macedonia to use the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, should apply.
25. I hope they win their case at the International Court of Justice, which might at least get Macedonia into NATO, where it belongs.
26. But I can’t help but suspect that Prime Minister Gruevski uses the name issue for political purposes, not only getting votes but also hiding lack of progress on EU reforms.
27. The EU could be tougher with Macedonia—they give a lot of euros to Skopje every year.
28. The name issue will presumably be settled in court, or not.
29. But is it time to make the money more conditional on EU-required reforms?
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One big decision made, another coming
With kind permission of theatlantic.com, here is my piece they published this evening:
The Strikes on Libya: Humanitarian Intervention, Not Imperial Aggression
This has much more in common with the international response to Bosnia than it does with the war in Iraq
The destroyer USS Barry fires Tomahawk missile at Libya from Mediterranean Sea. By Reuters.
A coalition of the willing attacks an Arab country. French warplanes strike armored vehicles. American cruise missiles take down air defenses. It all sounds to some too much like Iraq redux. But it is not. The proper analogy is Srebrenica. This is the international community acting under international law to prevent mass murder.
The current military action against Libya is clearly authorized by the UN Security Council. Qaddafi has claimed it is illegal, but even China and Russia (who abstained from the UN vote) cannot doubt that Resolution 1973 authorized the use of force to protect Libyan civilians. Neither will Germany, Brazil, nor India (all of whom abstained). Angela Merkel has already said “We share the aims of this resolution. Don’t confuse abstention with neutrality.” The others may not like it, but if they had serious legal or political objections they could have voted against. Or maybe their interests in becoming permanent Security Council members overwhelmed their reserves. Either way, the resolution had all the votes it needed.
These strikes are not based on doubtful evidence. Qaddafi has said plainly what he intends to do to civilians who resist, even peacefully, and he has demonstrated repeatedly that he is prepared to carry out his threats. Even on the morning of the attacks, his armor entered Benghazi, in clear contradiction of his own Foreign Minister’s declaration that Tripoli would respect the cease-fire. Later Qaddafi’s spokesman disowned the foreign minister’s statement.
There is a solid coalition backing the military action, one that includes several Arab countries as well as the U.S., France and the United Kingdom. Even the Italians, who have historically close relations with Libya and even with Qaddafi personally, are on board. Iraq, Qatar, Jordan, Morocco, and the United Arab Emirates were present for the meeting in Paris that launched implementation of the UN resolution, as was the Arab League. (Saudi Arabia was missing.) While Russia, China, India, and Brazil were absent, Germany was present.
The U.S., while it has claimed outsized credit for the diplomacy, is not visibly in the lead of the military action. UK and France have claimed that honor, with NATO as the operational forum. American contributions are likely to be substantial, in particular when it comes to cruise missiles, intelligence, command and control and other U.S. assets. But this is not an American operation with a coalition tacked on.
This leaves the question of purpose. Is this offensive, like the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, an effort at regime change, with Qaddafi the ultimate target? Or is the objective, as Hillary Clinton claimed after the Paris meeting, only to protect civilians? For the moment, this is a distinction without a difference. Unless Qaddafi changes not just his tune but his behavior, he represents an imminent threat to civilians throughout Libya. It is up to him to convince the coalition that he is prepared to change his behavior, as he successfully did in 2003 when he gave up his nuclear weapons program.
But it seems Qaddafi won’t change: he appears as attached to the use of force against his people as Ratko Mladic was against thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica, Bosnia. Qaddafi rightly knows he can only stay in power if he can kill Libyans.
Srebrenica, not Iraq, is the right historical precedent for what is happening in Libya. In 1995 the West failed its declared intention to protect civilians in a Muslim-populated enclave in eastern Bosnia, declared a “safe area” by the UN. There weren’t enough Dutch peacekeepers in the area to defend the Muslims and, as a result, thousands of men and boys were massacred in cold blood.
Only a few weeks later NATO responded to Serb attack on another “safe area,” Sarajevo. NATO launched a bombing campaign that broke apart the Bosnian Serb Army and allowed Croat and Muslim Federation forces to advance on the Serb army. As the Serbs reeled from the air attack, they took hostages and used them as human shields. They also parked armored vehicles near mosques and schools. We should expect Qaddafi to do likewise.
When NATO stopped the war, the Muslim Federation had taken about 66 percent of Bosnian territory and might well have gotten to 80 percent within 10 days. At the Dayton Peace Accords, we rolled the federation forces back to 51 percent of the territory, because of a previous agreement between parties on how to bring peace to Bosnia. This decision to curb the federation made implementing peace the difficult task that it remains today, more than 15 years after the end of the conflict.
If history is a guide, then, the next big decision on Libya will be when to draw down the international military campaign. Does it stop when Qaddafi backs down, even if his forces still control a good part of Libya? That would be a hard peace to implement. Or do we wait a bit until his regime collapses and he flees or dies? This may be as important as the decision to launch the military strikes, as it will determine whether Libya remains a single state or suffers the kind of semi-dismemberment that still makes Bosnia, and Iraq, difficult places to govern.
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This is interesting
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Bozidar Djelic is cited today as saying that Serbia has to find a solution for Kosovo before it can enter the EU, which might happen by 2015. This is not new, nor is it as promising as it sounds at first reading, because he adds:
Such compromise would guarantee economic and political autonomy of Kosovo, without jeopardizing Serbia’s territorial integrity….We cannot have a long-term peace if we support one nationalism against the other. It’s good to support the European kind of compromise which is not satisfactory but it is functional.
It is also said that he cited two precedents: Hong Kong and the two Germanies. Both of these are cases in which reintegration into a single sovereign state was the eventual result.
Anyone who follows Kosovo knows that autonomy within the context of even nominal Serbian sovereignty is no longer possible, if it ever was. Nor will reintegration happen, except in the context of EU membership for both Belgrade and Pristina. Belgrade cannot hope to govern Kosovo the way China today governs Hong Kong or Berlin governs East Germany. That’s a pipedream.
Djelic’s statements are nevertheless interesting, as they suggest that Belgrade is beginning to think seriously about what it has to do about Kosovo in order to get into the EU. This should be the vital question for Belgrade. It is also urgent, since the EU is unlikely to move quickly on an application for membership from a state that cannot define its own borders.
It should also be the vital question for Brussels, which so far has not spoken unequivocally about the need to resolve the Kosovo issue before Serbia can enter the EU. It is of course hard for Brussels to speak with one voice on this subject, as 22 of its member states have recognized Kosovo and 5 have not. Some of those 22 are sure to block Serbian membership so long as the Kosovo issue remains unresolved and have said as much publicly and privately. Getting an unequivocal statement out of the 27 would go a long way to clarifying the situation. You don’t need to have recognized Kosovo to know that EU membership for Serbia is impossible without resolving the Kosovo issue.
Washington will also have to be clear with Belgrade about the need to resolve Kosovo before Serbia can enter NATO. This is less urgent, as Serbia understandably shows few signs of really wanting NATO membership. But no one should be encouraging Belgrade to think that anything less than a full resolution of the Kosovo issue is vital to Serbia’s long-term relationship with the United States.
Pristina should take notice too. It would be perilous for Kosovo if Serbia were to enter the EU first, even if it has accepted Kosovo as a sovereign state. Belgrade would then have a veto on Pristina’s EU membership. The only reasonable solution to this problem is for Pristina to accelerate its own efforts at preparing for EU membership. It has done well to meet the EU technical requirements for the Schengen visa waiver, and I hope the EU will come to its senses and allow that to go forward. But there are many other areas in which Pristina is lagging. It needs to get its own house in order. Governing well is the best revenge.
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That was easy!
EU mediator Robert Cooper opened talks between Pristina and Belgrade Tuesday in Brussels, marking the launch of a dialogue process called for by the UN General Assembly last fall and likely to last many months if not years. Chief negotiators Borko Stefanovic and Edita Tahiri are eminently capable and qualified exponents of their respective sides and will be expected to try to keep the talks going despite shaky political situations in both capitals.
I’ve now heard several different versions of the agenda, with Stefanovic saying the first item was land registers, diplomatic sources saying it was supposed to be customs (an obviously sensitive issue for the Serbian side) and the Americans originally interested in establishing the authority of the Kosovo courts in northern Kosovo.
I’m not sure it matters much. Whatever works is okay for me. But I do think it will be difficult to keep the focus on practical issues without wandering off into status questions. If you don’t think land registers can be linked to status issues, guess again. Serbian government and Church land claims in Kosovo are extensive. The link of status to customs and courts is too obvious to mention.
This is one of those diplomatic dances that drives outsiders nuts. All the diplomats agree the talks are about practical issues, not status, but it is also perfectly clear that the eventual goal is to get to a situation in which Serbia can accept Kosovo as a sovereign state, one way or another. Membership in the UN might be sufficient, if formal diplomatic recognition proves too difficult.
Nothing less than that will get Serbia into the EU, and nothing less than that will satisfy Pristina and Washington either. We just don’t say it in polite company, because it will make life harder for those Belgrade who want to prioritize Serbia’s EU membership. But that symmetrical table, with the Pristina delegation on one side and the Belgrade delegation on the other, already presages the eventual outcome.
That is not to say there isn’t a lot of work to be done on practical issues, or that it won’t be useful to start with them. The potential agenda is long: land registers, customs, authority of the Pristina institutions in northern Kosovo, mutual recogntion of documents, return of artefacts, state property, citizenship, pensions, salary arrears, transportation and telecommunication links, police and border patrol cooperation…. Resolving at least some of these issues will improve relations between Pristina and Belgrade–which have been virtually non-existent since the 1999 NATO/Yugoslavia war.
I trained both Serbian foreign service officers and Kosovan officials for these talks years ago. I’m delighted to see that they are happening, and I wish both sides well in pursuing their legitimate interests. Success in these talks will help a good deal to move the Balkans closer to the EU. Failure is not an option. Best wishes to Edita and Borko!
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