Tag: Balkans
Accept, acknowledge, move on
Yesterday’s Serbian government statement responding to the guilty verdicts against former Republika Srpska leader Radovan Karadzic walks a tightrope. It implicitly acknowledges the legitimacy of the court’s decisions in this particular case but refuses any implication of collective responsibility and complains about the failure to hold people responsible for crimes against Serbs:
…every crime must be punished, as well as any individual who took part in them, but that any kind of politicisation and placing collective guilt on individual nations for the crimes committed by people with names and surnames is impermissible.
…the Serbian government does not want to react to the content and explanation of any single verdict of the Hague Tribunal, but that, after many years of work of that court, a bitter taste remains due to the fact that the masterminds of the policy of crimes against Serbs have not been punished in any way.
I know lots of people who might have liked the statement to have been more explicit and to have accepted Serbian government responsibility. In particular the Srebrenica genocide was carried out under the command of a Yugoslav National Army (JNA) officer, Ratko Mladic, who was at least equally responsible alongside Slobodan Milosevic as well as Karadzic. But I am tiring of waiting for Belgrade to acknowledge official responsibility and confident history will record the truth of the matter. I even hope it will some day be taught in Serbian schools.
Americans should be understanding: it is only recently that we are acknowledging official responsibility for atrocities against our continent’s indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans.
The Serbian government is correct in rejecting collective guilt. While those who voted repeatedly for Slobodan Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic bear some indirect responsibility for what they did with the power entrusted to them, I know lots of Serbs who had the courage and dignity to object. I’m reminded of Zoran Djindjic’s first appearance in Washington after the fall of Milosevic. When an audience member prefaced a question by stating that Serbs were not collectively responsible, he responded that it would nevertheless be necessary for history to consider how Milosevic came to power and the extent of the support he enjoyed.
The complaint about the failure to hold others responsible for crimes against Serbs is unfortunately accurate. It would be a mistake to view everyone as equally guilty. But Albanians, Croats and Bosniaks unquestionably committed crimes against Serb civilians in the 1990s, for which their commanders should have been held responsible. The International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) will not be fondly remembered for many reasons: it has been too slow, too inconsistent, too aloof and too wedded to tortuous process rather than just outcomes. Maybe each of its individual decisions can be defended as just, but I fear the overall result is justice that looks dictated by victors rather than facts.
Karadzic was unquestionably guilty morally and now legally of genocide, crimes against humanity and crimes of war. While well within its rights to complain that others have not been held accountable for their own misdeeds, the Serbian government is wise to accept, acknowledge and try to move on.
Better than nothing
Welcome though it must be, it is difficult to applaud today’s guilty verdicts at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslovia (ICTY) for Radovan Karadzic, the wartime president of Republika Srpska. Coming more than 20 years after the end of the Bosnian war, this is certainly justice delayed. Karadzic, who hid for 15 years and has been on trial for five, will now appeal and eventually serve out the rest of his life in relative luxury in a first-class European prison. Few of his victims or their surviving families will feel much “closure” from this outcome. His supporters will see the ICTY verdict as selective and prejudiced against Serbs.
Worse, people who support his political program of independence for Republika Srpska are very much in charge there. I can’t get too excited about the naming of a university dormitory in his honor. What bothers me far more is RS President Dodik’s repeated advocacy of independence for an entity that was founded on ethnic cleansing, murder, rape and genocide committed against Bosniaks and Croats that Karadizic commanded from 1992 to 1995. Since then, only the current Syrian war has done as much damage proportionally as the deaths and displacement inflicted on Bosnia during those years.
Dodik is an elected official and no doubt represents the views of a majority of his Serb constituency. It might even be argued that naming a university dormitory for Karadzic is damning with only the requisite faint praise. But Karadzic was convicted of one count of genocide (acquitted on another), five of crimes against humanity and four violations of the rules and customs of war, including murder, terror, unlawful attacks against civilians and taking of hostages. How easy should the students sleep in such a dormitory?
This is not the same as an American university named after slaveholders George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. America today doesn’t celebrate them for holding slaves but rather for other contributions to a society still trying to come to terms with what we recognize as the crimes against humanity they and their contemporaries committed. Washington was our revolutionary military commander and Jefferson the author of the declaration of independence that declared all men created equal, quite the contrary of his personal behavior.
Karadzic and Dodik have demonstrated much more consistency than our founders. They have not deviated from claiming that Republika Srpska belongs to the Serbs who rightfully wrested most of the towns and much of the rural area from Muslims, Croats and others who had lived there for centuries. For them all people are not created equal and military success is its own justification. Those ideas are inconsistent with today’s standards, as enunciated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the now voluminous laws of war. Dodik’s modest virtue is that he merely espouses odious ideas. Karadzic’s crime was that he acted on them.
The conviction puts Belgrade in an awkward spot. I expect lots of nationalist Serbs there to praise and defend Karadzic and denounce the tribunal. But I certainly hope the Serbian government understands that its aspirations to EU membership are inconsistent with even modest official complaints. The Serbian parliamentary election campaign may tempt some to don the nationalist mantle. But for anyone wanting to maintain good relations with Washington and Brussels doing so would be a big mistake. It is bad enough that Karadzic for years managed to hide in Serbia. Compounding that felony would be a bigger mistake.
I understand those who will say that justice delayed is justice denied. But in this case justice delayed is better than the only realistic alternative: no justice at all. It would have been worse had Karadzic managed to remain at large, in Serbia or elsewhere, or if he had–like Slobodan Milosevic–died in prison. I’m not celebrating: these verdicts come far too late. But I’m not disappointed either: Karadzic led a criminal enterprise whose basic ideas Dodik still espouses. For the sake of Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as the Balkans region, better to have a clear decision of the Tribunal than not to have anything at all.
PS: For those who have the stamina, 1.75 hours of verdicts:
Peace Picks March 21-25
- New Voices, New Visions: The Impact of the Arts in Saudi Arabia | Tuesday, March 22nd | 12:00-1:30 | Middle East Institute | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The Middle East Institute (MEI) in partnership with Art Jameel is pleased to host internationally acclaimed Saudi artist Ahmed Mater for a discussion about the impact of his art in presenting new perspectives of Saudi Arabia and its role in shaping fresh narratives reflecting the growing aspirations of the Kingdom’s youth. He will be joined in conversation by scholar Kristin Diwan, an expert on youth activism in the Gulf, and British artist Stephen Stapleton, director of the arts organization Culturunners, who founded the Saudi arts collective, Edge of Arabia, with Mater in 2003. The conversation will be moderated by MEI Senior Vice President Kate Seelye.
- Confronting Far-Right Extremism in Europe | Tuesday, March 22nd | 4:00-5:30 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | A wave of far-right populism is sweeping across Europe. Once on the fringes of politics, extremist parties are capitalizing on the refugee crisis and the financial meltdown of 2008 to gain at the polls. The re-emergence of anti-immigrant and isolationist groups and parties in Europe erodes the European Union’s ability to coordinate policies for solving Europe’s crises. Indeed, their growing popularity undermines the basic tenets of the European project. Taking advantage of Europe’s far-right turn, Russia has been aiding its far-right allies, which in turn publicly support Putin’s geopolitical interests and foreign policy agenda. Western policymakers have been slow to recognize the problem and to effectively respond. At a time when Europe faces some of its greatest challenges, we urgently need strategy-driven policies to strengthen the transatlantic relationship. Dr. Frances Burwell, Vice President of the Atlantic Council’s European Union and Special Initiative department, will offer welcome remarks. Susan Corke, Director of the Antisemitism and Extremism department at Human Rights First, Marlene Laurelle, Professor at George Washington University, and Alina Polyakova, Deputy Director of the Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council, will offer their thoughts. Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy Magazine Editor, will moderate.
- The Changing Landscape of Environmental Public Participation and Protest in China | Wednesday, March 23rd | 9:00-10:30 | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | As the ‘war’ on pollution continues in China, the Chinese public and environmental NGOs have been taking advantage of more formal and informal channels to voice their concern about worsening air, water and soil quality. At this March 23rd CEF meeting, speakers will discuss China’s evolving space for public participation vis-a-vis environmental problems. Wu Fengshi (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) will speak about the changing nature of public contention in China exemplified by recent large-scale anti-development and environmental protests. Drawing on the second edition of her highly acclaimed book—China’s Environmental Challenges—Judith Shapiro (American University) will highlight other ways that citizens and NGOs are responding to the intense pollution enveloping their country.
- Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation | Wednesday, March 23rd | 12:00-1:30 | Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Having historically been the only oil producer with sufficient spare capacity to shape the world economy, Saudi Arabia has held a critical position in 21st century geopolitics. Despite the increasingly robust role Saudi Arabia has been playing more recently on the regional scene, the kingdom has faced internal and external challenges that have kept it from fulfilling its vast potential. In Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation, Gulf expert Neil Partrick, and other regional analysts, address the kingdom’s relations in the Middle East and wider Islamic world, and its engagement with established and emergent global powers. AGSIW is pleased to host a discussion on Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation with Neil Partrick and a contributor to the book, Mark N. Katz, who will look at Russian relations with Saudi Arabia. They will be joined by Fahad Nazer, who will discuss the work and Saudi foreign policy, and AGSIW Senior Resident Scholar Hussein Ibish, who will moderate the panel.
- The emerging China-Russia axis: The return of geopolitics? | Thursday, March 24th | 9:00-11:00 | Brookings | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Over the past decade, Russia and China have come into closer alignment and their bilateral collaboration has grown. At the same time, Beijing and Moscow have each taken steps to alter the status quo in their respective peripheries (e.g. Russia in Ukraine and China in maritime East Asia). Warmer Sino-Russo relations elicit the question of whether the closer alignment of these two neighbors is somehow changing international politics to the disadvantage of the United States and its friends in Europe and Asia. On March 24, the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at Brookings will hold a public forum that brings together experts from Japan and the United States to examine how recent actions by China and Russia have affected the global order. Additionally, panelists will analyze whether new geopolitical rivalries have returned both between and within the East and the West. After the panel discussion, the speakers will take audience questions. Panelists include Akihiro Iwashita, Professor at Hokkaido University, Thomas Wright, Director of the Project on International Order and Strategy, Chisako T. Masuo, Associate Professor at Kyushu University, and David Gordon, Senior Advisor of the Eurasia Group. Richard C. Bush III, Director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies, will moderate.
- A Conversation with President of Kosovo H.E. Atifete Jahjaga | Wednesday, March 23rd | 4:00-5:00 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Seventeen years ago, NATO intervened in then-Yugoslavia in the mission known as Operation Allied Force. It was almost ten years later, in 2008, when Kosovo declared independence. Today, the country has made progress in its European integration, but ensuring regional security and political stability have remained significant challenges. Though Montenegro recently received an invitation to join the NATO Alliance, joining Albania and Croatia, it is unlikely that other Balkan countries will soon be brought into the NATO fold. Against the backdrop of a serious migration crisis and continuing uncertainty from Europe’s East, deep divisions threaten the stability of the region and endanger its collective security. As President of the Republic of Kosovo, H.E. Atifete Jahjaga has been a vocal proponent of the path for Kosovo toward membership in the EU and other institutions. In her final visit to Washington before concluding her mandate, President Jahjaga will provide an outlook on the progress Kosovo has made in the years since NATO’s intervention, as well as ways to address the contemporary security challenges faced by Kosovo and the wider region.
- Report Launch: Ilya Yashin on Ramzn Kadyrov | Thursday, March 24th | 12:00-1:30 | Atlantic Council | REGISTER TO ATTEND | The harassment and sanctioned murder of opposition voices are no longer the exception in Russia; rather, they are part and parcel of President Vladimir Putin’s strategic intent to suppress those who challenge his government. Ramzan Kadyrov, Mr. Putin’s close ally and leader of Chechnya, is widely believed to be responsible for orchestrating the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in February 2015. In recent months, Kadyrov and his supporters have systematically harassed and threatened Russian opposition politicians who bravely speak out against Putin’s regime. In his revealing report, A Threat to National Security, Ilya Yashin details the extent of Kadyrov’s criminal activities and unrestrained corruption. Kadyrov now exercises complete control over Chechnya with a private army of thirty thousand loyal only to him. Kadyrov’s increasingly brazen actions signal that the Kremlin may not have complete control over the Chechen leader.
- Running an Independent Russian Media Outlet | Friday, March 25th | 10:00-11:30 | Wilson Center | REGISTER TO ATTEND | Since its launch in October 2014, the independent, Riga-based media outlet Meduza has reached an audience of 4 million unique visitors per month, 70% of whom live in Russia. How does Meduza ensure comprehensive coverage of Russian news while being based outside the country? How have the Russian establishment and official media responded to Meduza’s rise? Publisher and journalist Ilya Krasilshchik shares the story of Meduza’s challenges and success. Ekaterina Krongauz, journalist and editor of Meduza, will also speak.
Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps 2
Kurt Bassuener of the Democratization Policy Council replied to my Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps:
You’re right, Dan, about the fear element in voting. But fear and patronage are usually a package deal. For example, if a) you’re not sure your vote is actually secret (a commonly held concern) and b) Uncle Adnan has a public sector job and feeds a family of five, are you really going to vote for the powers-that-be? Doubtful. You may stay home, disgusted with all the options on the menu – 46% of the eligible electorate did precisely that. And voters have voted in the past for alternatives, but have usually been disappointed. Witness the SDP’s rise in 2010 and fall in 2014, after a massive proportion of its vote punished the party for perceived betrayal.
So the sense of disgust, despair and hopelessness around elections is justified – one’s vote, at least above the municipal level (where mayors are directly elected), doesn’t seem to matter a bit in terms of delivering meaningful change. The fact that the SDA and HDZ, two parties which have been at the trough since Dayton (with brief spells in the wilderness at the state and entity, but never cantonal, levels) got elected not in spite of what they are, but because of what they are: parties of power and patronage. All voters are rational actors acting within a perverse incentive structure that once was constrained by the “international community,” but hasn’t been for a decade. Voting is purely transactional for a large segment of the electorate, not votes of affirmation.
What’s telling is that even the self-described civic parties – SDP, DF, and Nasa Stranka – exerted no appreciable effort to seek Serb votes in the RS. I’m not saying that’s an easy task. This assessment of seven polls by Valery’s former colleague Raluca Raduţa demonstrates there is a lot of potential common ground with which to work. But to transform that latent potential into political and social power, an effort to develop a supermajority behind a positive agenda for a rules-based society would have to begin well before an election. The only way to change the system through the system would require a coherent 2/3 majority (including overriding the entity vote) behind a common agenda. Nobody is aiming that high right now.
There is no obvious political vehicle – and as you note, no international will to be a catalyst. The understandable but myopic focus solely on “CVE” [countering violent extremism] neglects the fact that by effectively paying for quiet (while thinking it is buying stability), the West is supporting the patronage structure and maintaining a system which can only generate violent extremism. So the current approach amounts to whack-a-mole triage to deal with effects after years of unwillingness to tackle the systemic root cause: institutionalized lack of accountability.
This isn’t a problem that can be solved programmatically; it’s a POLICY problem. Absent the will to be confrontational with the beneficiaries of the Dayton system, who are supposed to be partners in reform according to the EU’s enlargement theology, even the programs you suggest, Dan, won’t make a dent. The West has it within its power to painfully constrain the political class’ room to maneuver by reducing their ability to leverage fear, then their ability to employ patronage funded with external infusions. Then developing a partnership with citizens to squeeze them in the right direction is possible.
Finally, “holding perpetrators accountable” means getting them convicted and keeping them convicted in the second instance, which rarely if ever happens. Right now, it seems likely that the EU will surrender on a crucial element of BiH’s judicial architecture – the ability of the state to assume cases begun at lower levels if it is determined the crimes in question have sufficient impact on the state. RS Prime Minister Dodik has wanted this for a long time, but politicians in both entities would benefit from a retreat on this, getting de facto immunity.
If the US and EU were serious on criminal accountability – and on “CVE” – we’d maintain that extended jurisdiction, and furthermore return international prosecutors and judges to the state judicial systems organized crime and corruption investigation, prosecution, and adjudication continuum. The Organized Crime and Corruption chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina is the body which tries violent extremism and terrorism-related cases, so if we’re really serious, that’s where it will show.
Filling Bosnia’s reform gaps
This USAID “gap analysis” for Bosnia and Herzegovina dropped into my inbox last week. I encourage those interested in the prospects for political and economic reform there to have a flip through the powerpoint slides. Bottom line: whatever the international community and the Bosnians have been doing about reform since 2006, it isn’t working.
There are likely several reasons for this. The ethnonationalist polarization of Bosnian politics intensified rapidly in 2006 after the rejection of the “April package” of constitutional amendments. Bosniak candidate for the presidency Haris Silajdzic amped up his rhetoric against Republika Srpska leader Milorad Dodik, who replied in kind. Both enjoyed political success as a result, though Dodik has last much longer and gotten much louder.
At about the same time, the European Union chose Christian Schwarz-Schilling as the international community’s High Representative responsible for ensuring implementation of the Dayton accords. Schwarz-Schilling was committed to lightening the touch of the Hirep and vowed not to use the dictatorial “Bonn powers” that had been bestowed on that office in 1997. This relieved a great deal of the pressure for reform and freed the country’s politicians to pursue their private interests at the expense of the state, as they would no longer find themselves summarily sacked for doing so.
The financial crisis of 2007/8 then took the wind out of the Bosnian economy’s sails. With growth slackening, the politicians found less cream to skim and naturally slowed the pace of reform even further, hoping to husband some state resources for their own benefit and to protect themselves from the electorate’s wrath at the reduced patronage benefits available. The corrupt and costly consequences of their behavior are well-documented. Corruption in Bosnia is not an aberration. It is the system, as Valery Perry has recently shown.
The question is: what should a foreign assistance organization like USAID do with its money in a situation like this?
Obviously not what it was doing before, which was grants to lots of widely scattered even if worthy projects. Nor, in my view, should it try to push reform by financing it. The money AID is likely to have in the future for Bosnia is nowhere near enough to convince a rational actor to undertake the kinds of reforms that are needed. Only the EU and the international financial institutions have that kind of money these days.
But conditionality and external pressure is not enough. The current Bosnian leaders won’t reform unless they feel some pressure not only from the international community but also from their own constituencies. One of the few reforms Bosnia has gotten right in recent years is its electoral system, which runs reasonably well. The problem has been that voters keep electing the same ethnonationalists who promise to protect them from other ethnonationalists. This mutual security dilemma keeps all three varieties in power, each for fear of the others.
Were I in charge, I would take all of the AID money and put it on a single objective: mounting a serious, sustained campaign across ethnic lines to unseat corrupt politicians and replace them with people committed to transparent and accountable governance, again across ethnic lines. The money might go to independent investigatory media, auditing bodies, judicial training, civil society organizations and thinktanks to support the kind of analysis and social mobilization required to unveil corrupt practices and hold perpetrators accountable.
The 2009 AID Anticorruption Assessment Handbook recommends pretty much that kind of program. In a country where “high-level figures collude to weaken political/economic competitors,” it suggests:
–seek gradual pluralization of political system with new competing groups emerging based on open, vigorous and broad-based economy
–build independence and professionalism in the bureaucracy, courts and legislative institutions.
There is a serious question whether an effort of this sort can be run out of an American embassy. Valery Perry thinks yes. I doubt it. American embassies have too many other urgent priorities to worry about the merely important. The latest is countering recruitment of foreign fighters, which has pretty much taken precedence in all countries with significant Muslim populations for the past year or two. Bosnia has contributed a more than proportionate number of fighters, so that priority is likely to crowd out most everything else.
Of course any ambassador worth her salt would want to know if the US government is funding a program of the sort I suggest and exercise oversight. But wisdom might dictate that it be conducted, transparently and accountably, through non-governmental channels. There are lots of American and non-American civil society organizations capable of such work. I hope they get the resources needed to make a real go of it.
Dear Hashim,
The Kosovo parliament yesterday elected Hashim Thaci President, to be inaugurated in April. Here is what I have to say to him today:
Congratulations! You have been privileged to lead the government for six years, including at independence, you have served more than a year as foreign minister, and now you will be chief of state. Not bad for a guy still under 50.
As you know all too well, such jobs come with responsibilities. They are like owning a boat: the first day and the last are the best.
For the next five years you face enormous challenges. The first is to heal the rift that your election has created in Kosovo’s polity. You won only on the third ballot and without opposition support. Parts of the opposition preferred to take to the streets and even to violence in an effort to derail, or at least diminish, your election.
I’ve got no sympathy whatsoever for the violence, which besmirches Kosovo more than you. That I am afraid is the purpose: the leadership of the violent protests opposes Kosovo statehood and wants instead to exercise the right of self-determination in order to join Albania, something that the Kosovo constitution prohibits. This is no less a threat to the state that you will represent than are the efforts by Belgrade to gain effective control over the Serb population of Kosovo. Both are anti-constitutional forces that will require a great deal of your attention and all the wisdom you can muster.
One of your greatest challenges will be to enlarge the sphere of moderate politics and transform these fringes of the Kosovo political space into something more like loyal oppositions. That will be enormously difficult, as the fringes despise each other even if they share a disdain for Kosovo’s statehood. Every move you make to be proper, fair and respectful to Serbs will find opposition among some Albanians. Any move you make to accommodate your Albanian critics will generate criticism in Belgrade. Your constitutional court’s wise guidance on implementation of the Association of Serb Municipalities should help on that especially contentious issue.
Even if it does, you will still face implacable opposition from part of your Albanian opposition, which not only loathes you personally but is also committed to ending the Belgrade/Pristina dialogue precisely because it helps to consolidate Kosovo as an independent and sovereign state. The best antidote will be the Kosovo state’s success in meeting the expectations of its people, many of whom are disappointed in the fruits of independence. There is far too much unemployment and underemployment, especially among young people.
I’d be the first to admit that the European economic recession is a primary factor in limiting Kosovo’s ability to provide jobs and prosperity to its own people. There is not a lot the Kosovo state can do to respond to that exogenous factor, especially since you wisely use the euro as your currency and therefore are unable to devalue. Nor is the president in charge of economic policy.
You can however do something about other factors that are shaping the public’s mood. Kosovo’s economic growth has in fact been relatively robust compared to Europe and the rest of the Balkans. Your citizens aren’t giving much credit for that because the benefits seem unfairly distributed. We have that problem in the United States too. In Kosovo, people believe nepotism, corruption and organized crime are the reasons. As president, you will need to set an example, as your predecessor has done, and insist on a level of probity, transparency and accountability that has too often been lacking, including in governments you have led.
The still pending European investigation of crimes committed against Serbs, Albanians and others after the Kosovo war will pose a particular problem for you. I imagine Brussels and Washington will continue to press for creation of a special court to try the accused. Because of the Marty report, which implied much but proved little, it is widely believed you may be among them. You will have to decide whether to use your new position to push ahead or to impede creation of the special court. You will also have to decide how to react if the Europeans bring an indictment against you personally.
Pristina’s relationship with Belgrade continues to fall short of what I would like to see. I believe it is important to convince Belgrade to recognize Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity sooner rather than later, if only by allowing Kosovo to become a member of the United Nations. This is not a big leap from the April 2013 political agreement that you negotiated, but it will require the same savvy diplomacy you employed as well as a lot of international community support, including from some of the European countries that don’t yet recognize Kosovo. International support will depend in large part on whether you are successful in convincing people that Kosovo is cleaning up its act, enforcing the rule of law and treating all its citizens equally.
Hashim: though strong politically within the governing coalition and your own political party, you are still a divisive figure domestically and an ambiguous one internationally. Your presidency will be an opportunity to overcome both defects. I know that won’t be easy. But I also know that you have demonstrated talents, ingenuity and determination that have served your country well in the past, both in war and peace. I wish you success in meeting the challenges ahead!