Tag: Balkans
No one gets dragged into NATO
Vladimir Filipović of Belgrade daily Blic asked me some questions about the US bombing in Libya that killed, among others, two Serbs. I asnwered:
1. Do you think that this incident will affect Serbia’s relations with NATO and US, and that maybe Russia will try to use this situation to get closer to Serbia at that expense?
DPS: First let me say how regrettable the death of the Serbian diplomats is. There is no excuse for their abduction and imprisonment. Their deaths in an American raid against their captors was clearly unintended.
Russia will use any incident it can to denounce NATO and the US, as Moscow seeks to block NATO expansion in the Balkans. You can tell how sincere the Russians are by watching how many civilians they are killing in Syria, despite their continuing denials.
2. Do you think that something would be different if the US knew that there are two Serbian hostages in Sabratha, in that specific terrorist object? That the attack maybe would be postponed or differently conducted?
DPS: My understanding of American policy is that Washington seeks to avoid civilian deaths. I certainly hope that the attack would have been postponed or conducted differently had Washington known of the presence of the Serbs, or any other prisoners. But on that subject you really need to talk with an official spokesperson.
Vladimir wasn’t satisfied, so he asked me to expand and I replied again:
3. If you could expand your yesterday’s statement about Russia trying to use the incident in Libya to get closer to Serbia at the expense of NATO and USA.
DPS: What’s to add? It is clear that Moscow is desperate to keep Serbia out of NATO and will use any incident to accomplish its objective.
No one gets dragged into NATO. They come because they believe it will make their country more secure. With Russia increasingly aggressive in Europe and the Middle East, it is not hard to imagine ways in which NATO membership will make a country more secure. The only humiliation comes from toeing the Russian line rather than helping to shape the NATO line.
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Russian “immunity”
Milana Pejic of the Belgrade daily Blic asked me yesterday about immunity for Russian troops stationed in Serbia, which President Putin has reportedly requested. I responded:
I’m not sure what “immunity” means. As the state sending soldiers, sailors or airmen to deploy in a foreign country, the US always requires that it retain jurisdiction over them. If they commit a crime, they get tried in the US, not in the state in which they are deployed, unless the US waives its right to exercise jurisdiction (which it occasionally does). There is no “immunity” in the sense of protection from prosecution. This is all regulated in what is called a “status of forces agreement.” I really don’t know what the Russians do, though I wouldn’t be entirely surprised if they insist on something closer to immunity.
Quite apart from the question of criminal jurisdiction, I can’t think of any EU countries that host Russian bases on their territory. Are there any?* If Serbia is serious about EU membership, I wonder if it wants to continue to host the Russians at all. If not, there would be no point in providing immunity (or even sending state jurisdiction). An easy way out might be to refuse the Russian request.
I see Prime Minister Vucic is talking in the press about the importance of NATO to the protection of Serbs in northern Kosovo. Belgrade needs to weigh carefully whether its present policy of hedging between NATO/EU and Russia is really in the Serbian interest.
Some day fairly soon all Serbia’s neighbors will be NATO members. What sense would it make then for Serbia to host a Russian base? What impact will that have on relations with the neighbors? Moscow may call it a humanitarian center, but we know from the recent intentional Russian bombing of hospitals in Syria how serious Moscow is about humanitarian issues.
*PS: the answer to this question is no.
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Applying
A Facebook friend wondered over the weekend whether I was being skeptical or just superficial when I tweeted:
The one thing on which #Bosnia‘ns agree is that the country is not qualified for EU membership. So what do they do? Apply.
Skeptical was more like it. All you have to do to understand in depth why is take a glance at last year’s European Commission progress report on Bosnia and Herzegovina. Guess what? It shows little progress.
Brussels reads its own reports, so we can be sure the Europeans know that. The European Union remedy has been to push a “Reform Agenda” that starts with labor market reform. The reasoning is that only by lowering labor costs and increasing labor flexibility will Bosnian companies be able to compete effectively and expand in the future.
So far so good, but that is an indirect way of attacking Bosnia’s problems, which lie in a political economy that enriches politicians and impoverishes most of the population. I don’t say labor market reform won’t help, in particular if it reduces costs, increases competition and makes it harder for politicians to exploit patronage, but it is far from sufficient.
Bosnia needs prosecutions. The rip-offs are well-documented. It seems to me inconceivable that professional prosecutors would not have sufficient evidence. The international community should be able to help by tracing the tycoons’ finances and freezing ill-gotten gains. Precious little of that has been done.
The only really high-level prosecution these days is directed at an upstart politician, Fahrudin Radoncic, not for ripping off the state but rather for witness tampering in a Kosovo drug investigation. I don’t have any idea whether Radoncic is guilty or innocent (and he should be presumed the latter of course), but I am pretty sure that case will not do much to undermine the web of corruption and misappropriation of state assets that plagues Bosnia. The prosecutors’ use of wiretaps, however, demonstrates unequivocally that the judicial system in Bosnia has the means, but not the will, to attack other high-level corruption.
I’d be the first to admit that the United States suffers from high-level corrupt practices as well. A year doesn’t go by without charges against a governor here, a couple of members of Congress there, and dozens of state legislators, including in states far larger and with bigger economies than Bosnia. You need to be worried not when such cases are pursued but when they aren’t.
That’s the situation in Bosnia today. Despite a newly inked anti-corruption plan, the European Commission reports:
Organized crime cases in 2015 led to the confiscation of 550,000 euros. That’s peanuts. Hundreds of millions if not billions would be more like it.
If Bosnia and Herzegovina is serious about getting into the EU, it will need to skip confiscating the peanuts and trap the elephants. If the application for membership helps to mobilize the political will required, it’s all for the better. But it is far more likely to amount to nothing more than a maneuver to convince an already disheartened electorate that progress is being made.
Bosnia needs not only to apply to the EU, but also to apply itself to qualifying for membership.
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Kosovo’s glass half full
Kosovo daily Koha Ditore asked questions. I responded, more or less on the even of the country’s February 17 independence day:
Q: How do you see the journey of Kosovo eight years after independence? Which are the achievements and failures of the state?
A: Kosovo has built a state with wide but not universal recognition that seeks to govern as a parliamentary democracy and interacts effectively with other countries, including those that don’t recognize its sovereignty and territorial integrity. I’ll leave to Kosovo’s citizens the privilege of judging the adequacy or inadequacy of the state in managing domestic affairs at the next election, but it seems to me internal security and the economy are vastly improved since 1999 and even since 2008.
Q: Kosovo independence continues to be challenged not only from abroad but also from within. Seven years after independence, Kosovo is not part of the UN and is not recognized by all EU members, while constitutionality is not yet extended to northern Kosovo, where the Serbs are the majority. Do you see improvement related these issues, in the near future?
A: I hope for improvements on these issues, but I really don’t know if it will happen in the near future. It is important to note that Belgrade has acknowledged the validity of the Kosovo constitution on its entire territory and will have to accept implementation of the Association of Serb Municipalities, for example, in accordance with the decision of the Kosovo constitutional court.
A main challenge from within are the political formations that don’t accept Kosovo’s constitution and statehood. They exist both among the Serbs and among the Albanians. The Kosovo state would be far strong if they abandon their hopes that Kosovo be taken over by Belgrade or Tirana.
The big international recognition issue in my view is Serbia’s non-recognition and blocking of Kosovo from UN membership. The Europeans have made it clear to Belgrade that its progress towards accession will depend on completely normalizing relations with Kosovo, which means at the very least UN membership and some sort of exchange of diplomatic representatives beyond liaison officers. I expect the next Serbian government to have to make some difficult decisions.
Q: After independence, the international community has assisted Kosovo in strengthening institutions by sending a mission responsible for Justice–EULEX. But this mission has been heavily criticized for no progress in fighting corruption and organized crime, as well in war crimes prosecutions. How do you evaluate the work of EULEX?
A: I don’t feel confident to evaluate EULEX, but I’ve long been convinced that success in fighting corruption and organized crime will require Kosovo’s citizens to take up the cudgels. Your press, civil society organizations, prosecutors, judges and government officials need to find the courage to confront those who are ripping off the country.
War crimes are different. It seems to me there the international community has a stronger role to play, through the Special Court once it is created. No Balkans country has yet found the capacity to deal adequately with its own war-time criminals, because they fought in a cause that most of the citizens supported. I won’t claim the US does a great job of prosecuting its own soldiers either. But for Kosovo bringing people to justice who committed atrocities against Serbs, Albanians and likely others is a necessary step in the state-formation process. I’d like to see parliament create a court that can get on with the job.
I also commend to interested readers Congressman Engel’s well-crafted piece on Keeping Kosova on the Path Toward Democracy.
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The Butcher’s Trail
I was unable to attend Julian Borger’s book presentation today in DC, but here is my appreciation of his recently published account of the search for and trial of Balkans war criminals:
Who knew the search for war criminals could be so entertaining? Julian Borger, now the Guardian diplomatic editor who reported from the Balkans during the 1990s, has a sharp eye for relevant detail and an ironic sense of its role in the story of how war criminals were tracked and captured in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia after the Dayton peace accords were signed in 1995.
His Butcher’s Trail is enlivened with a menagerie of well-drawn and memorable characters: the “Serb Adolf” (that’s what he called himself), an evangelical American general trying to redeem the loss of Marines in Somalia, a former mayor so anxious for status that he drives into Croatia to keep an appointment with the senior UN official plotting his capture, the American-trained Polish special forces who in their first operation ever snatch him, the planned use of a gorilla costume to distract Radovan Karadzic’s guards on a winding mountain road at night and his frumpy wife’s successful effort to evade massive and concerted American efforts–coordinated in part by David Petraeus–to track her to her husband.
This would all make for an interesting, if sometimes excessively John Irving, novel. It makes for captivating non-fiction.
I was involved as a State Department officer in some of the earlier and notably unsuccessful efforts to capture war criminals in Bosnia. The generals commanding the hunt thought the protection of their troops far more important. A deputy to the Supreme Allied Commander told me point blank in the summer of 1997 that President Clinton wasn’t interested in capturing war criminals. The general and his boss–Wes Clark–got me withdrawn from the effort in order to block reports to the State Department about what they were doing, or more likely what they were not doing.
Later the hunt for war criminals–PIFWCs in milspeak (Persons Indicted for War Crimes)–became far more serious, though the Americans lagged the British and Dutch in the effort. Trying to minimize risk, Washington often deployed far too many people and too much apparatus, without however knowing much about the environment and terrain in which they had to operate. Borger tells the story of their bumbling well. Nor does he spare the French, late-comers to the competition to capture PIFWCs, whose keystone cops even ended up facing off with each other in the hotel room of one of Radovan Karadzic’s mistresses. But Borger also gives some credit: the Americans at least learned and applied their lessons later in the hunt for Al Qaeda and other terrorist operatives.
While Borger’s focus is on the hunt, he never looses perspective on the reasons for it. He colors in the stark words of criminal indictments with vivid eye-witness descriptions of rape, ethnic cleansing, torture and cold-blooded murder. And he fits these crimes into the main political programs they served: primarily the Croatian and Serbian efforts to carve up Bosnia.
By dying in 1999, Croatian President Tudjman escaped accountability for his concerted efforts to force Bosnia’s Muslims away from his borders and annex territory where the Bosnian Croats were in the majority. Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic wasn’t so lucky. Defeated at the polls in 2000, he was shipped to The Hague in 2001 for trial at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), a precursor of the International Criminal Court. Borger’s account of how and why the Serbian government took on that responsibility is compelling, as is his description of how Serbian security forces continued to provide protection for Karadzic and Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic.
Borger is keen to make a sharp distinction between the judicial bungling of the Tribunal–whose trials are lengthy and unedifying, with highly variable and sometimes reversible outcomes–and the critical role of its chief prosecutors (especially Louise Arbour and Carla del Ponte) and their small intelligence units in tracking down war criminals and pressuring Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia into handing them over, often with leverage provided by the European Union and the United States. His point is well argued, but it is unlikely to save the Tribunal from those who think it should have done far more far faster to hold its indictees accountable.
It would be hard for any court–even a well-established one–to proceed expeditiously and still provide due process to the butchers Borger describes so well. ICTY has proven unequal to those demanding criteria. But it has still set an important precedent of holding at least some people accountable for the horrors they perpetrate. And, as Borger is right to emphasize, it removed homicidal leaders from countries in which they would have otherwise played spoiler roles. That is, he rightly emphasizes, the Tribunal’s major contribution.
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You decide
Shpend Limoni of Pristina daily Gazeta Express asked some questions today. I answered:
Q: The political stalemate in Kosovo is continuing for months. The opposition parties and the government are still in the opposing positions regarding the demarcation process with Montenegro and Brussels Agreement on the Association of Serb Municipalities. Do you think that early general elections are a solution for this crisis?
A: Whether to hold early elections is a choice Kosovars need to make, not foreigners. That is what parliament is for.
On the merits of the two issues, I’m surprised either one has aroused so much passion and have my doubts that early elections will lead to their easy resolution.
Q: Mr. Thaçi is insisting on becoming President of Kosovo as a fulfilment of the governing coalition agreement. Yesterday he met with State Secretary John Kerry which is seen as a decisive moment for his candidacy. Do you think that Thaçi has US support in his intentions to become next President of Kosovo?
A: You will have to ask US government officials about official US government support. Generally Washington tries to stay out of choices of this sort in countries with democratic systems. We really do believe in government of the people, by the people and for the people. I realize that in Kosovo that principle may have been violated in the past, but I don’t really see any good reasons for violating it now.
Q: Considering the large international support for Mrs. Jahjaga do you think that she has a chance for a second mandate as President of Kosovo?
A: I think President Jahjaga has done a great job of representing Kosovo both to the international community and in her domestic capacity. But to get a second mandate she needs to find the support required in parliament.
Q: Do you believe that the Special Court somehow could affect the election of the President and the overall situation that is Kosovo is facing right now?
A: I imagine that the cases the Special Court might consider will be a factor in the minds of at least some of the parliamentarians who elect the President and who need to find a way out of the current situation. But it is impossible to predict now precisely who will be indicted and for what. That will attenuate somewhat the impact of what the court might do.
My main point throughout this interview, and in many others, is that people in the Balkans need to start taking responsibility for their own decisions. The unipolar, imperial moment is over. Washington has a lot of other things to worry about. Friends and allies who want to make a serious contribution will be taking care of their own business, not leaning on Washington to make decisions for them.
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